There's nothing fabulous about 50 for L.A. film critic Jeremy Lerner, who loses his marriage, his job, and the use of his right arm just days after the birthday party he begged his now ex-wife not to throw him. But fate is a sly devil.Jeremy's string of calamities leads to a game-changing emotional and creative rebirth after he meets the intoxicating Annabelle, a beguiling widow who comes to his rescue-and Jeremy to hers. If only their baggage didn't match quite so well. With the added support of his wise and spirited mom, Joyce, his capricious and big-hearted son, Matty, and Matty's steadfast new boyfriend, Gabe, Jeremy begins to change in ways that surprise, inspire, and galvanize him. All of this while his career makes a head-spinning leap. The thing is, can it last?The Last Birthday Party combines wry observation with an everyday wistfulness for a warm, propulsive, humanly funny tale of second chances set against the alluring nuttiness of Hollywood.

The birthday of the Emperor of Japan has always been special. It’s Akihito’s birthday too, and he spends it with his best friend, Kenji. But with the emperor abdicating and adulthood looming, it might be Akihito’s last chance to tell Kenji how he really feels.

My birthday is 5 months, 3 weeks, 2 days, and 8 hours away. Today I'm starting to plan my party. So what if the Big Day's not exactly around the corner? This little girl is planning her party now. She has to, if she wants to have the best birthday party ever. She'll have the tallest birthday cake in the world, plus camels, elephants, a ferris wheel (of course), and a castle . . . with a moat. Kids will laugh out loud at the girl's wild plans, and love the oh-so-sweet ending, which involves a modest but fun party. Jennifer LaRue Huget and LeUyen Pham brilliantly capture what it feels like to be the Birthday Girl—a feeling many children will relate to.

Knopf Canada is proud to welcome an internationally acclaimed, award-winning writer with his brilliant novel that tells the story of one of world’s richest and most infamous tycoons. As dawn breaks on a small island late in the summer of 1975, a tycoon wakes up to oversee the final preparations for his daughter’s birthday party. Finding out that she is pregnant by someone he does not approve of, he tries to persuade her to end the pregnancy: his private doctor – and oldest friend – is standing by to perform the procedure. Among the other guests is the tycoon’s ambitious biographer. The story intersperses the riveting events that unfold during the day of the party with the tycoon’s rise to wealth and fame, from childhood in Asia Minor to old age, via Buenos Aires, New York, London and Paris, and the attempts of his young biographer to bring his subject’s true personality to light. The Birthday Party is at once fascinating, revealing and hilarious – a gripping novel that comments upon the art of biography and the invention of a human life.

On January 22, 1994, two-year old Renee Goode played happily with her sisters and cousin, as the four of them enjoyed an impromptu "slumber party" at the home of her father, Shane Goode. The next day she was dead. The local medical examiner could not determine the cause of little Renee's death. But her mother Annette and grandmother Sharon were convinced she'd been murdered--and that they knew the identity of Renee's killer: her handsome father, Shane Goode, a manipulative, emotionally abusive man who displayed virtually no interest in Renee--until he took out a $50,000 insurance policy on her life. With the help of a courageous female police investigator and Assistant DA, Sharon launched a case against Shane and had Renee's tiny coffin, lovingly filled with her favorite stuffed animals, exhumed from its final resting place. And her small corpse revealed what her grandmother had suspected all along: cold, calculating Shane Goode had murdered his own daughter to cash in on her death. To the Last Breath is the winner of the 1999 Edgar Award for Best Fact Crime.

Anne Geraghty was a clinical psychologist and psychotherapist when her son, Tim Guest, author of My Life in Orange died suddenly. Her old life ended. She went on a search for her lost son. Where was he? What was he? Did he live on in some other realm? Or had he fallen into the darkness of oblivion? Her search for Tim became an exploration into the nature of death itself. We die as we have lived. Our lives are not like those of a C12th Tibetan, a C15th Cardinal or a Zen monk; we cannot, therefore, simply turn to old maps and myths of what happens when we die. We need a new narrative of death that embraces our modern understandings of our humanity and the workings of the universe. This book is the story of a grieving mother looking for her dead son, an investigation into death in our modern world, and an exploration of our struggles to live well in the ever-present shadow of death. It is not a book with answers; it is an invitation to look at death differently. This book offers fresh and original ideas about death and dying. And it will radically change your understanding of what death is.

V. 12 contains: The Archer...Christmas, 1877.