Kate DiCamillo meets Lemony Snicket in this darkly comic novel about two sisters who learn they are each others' most important friend! Imagine two twin sisters, Arabella and Henrietta--nearly identical yet with nothing in common. They're the best of friends . . . until one day they aren't. Plain and quiet Henrietta has a secret plan to settle the score, and she does something outrageous and she can't take it back. When the deed is discovered, Henrietta is sent to live with her eccentric great-aunt! Suddenly life with pretty, popular Arabella doesn't seem so awful. And, though she's been grievously wronged, Arabella longs for her sister, too. So she hatches a plan of her own and embarks on an unexpected journey to reunite with her other half.

The Trouble with Twin Studies questions popular genetic explanations of human behavioral differences based upon the existing body of twin research. Psychologist Jay Joseph outlines the fallacies of twin studies in the context of the ongoing decades-long failure to discover genes for human behavioral differences, including IQ, personality, and the major psychiatric disorders. This volume critically examines twin research, with a special emphasis on reared-apart twin studies, and incorporates new and updated perspectives, analyses, arguments, and evidence.

In London with their family, telepathic twelve-year-old twins Liberty and July receive strange emanations from an early residence of Arthur Conan Doyle and discover a literary ghost.

Are Big Bird's eyes playing tricks on him? He keeps seeing the same boy again and again on Sesame Street! This story about identical twins shows children that even though people may look alike, everyone is unique.

With his stunning debut novel, She's Come Undone, Wally Lamb won the adulation of critics and readers with his mesmerizing tale of one woman's painful yet triumphant journey of self-discovery. Now, this brilliantly talented writer returns with I Know This Much Is True, a heartbreaking and poignant multigenerational saga of the reproductive bonds of destruction and the powerful force of forgiveness. A masterpiece that breathtakingly tells a story of alienation and connection, power and abuse, devastation and renewal--this novel is a contemporary retelling of an ancient Hindu myth. A proud king must confront his demons to achieve salvation. Change yourself, the myth instructs, and you will inhabit a renovated world. When you're the same brother of a schizophrenic identical twin, the tricky thing about saving yourself is the blood it leaves on your bands--the little inconvenience of the look-alike corpse at your feet. And if you're into both survival of the fittest and being your brother's keeper--if you've promised your dying mother--then say so long to sleep and hello to the middle of the night. Grab a book or a beer. Get used to Letterman's gap-toothed smile of the absurd, or the view of the bedroom ceiling, or the influence of random selection. Take it from a godless insomniac. Take it from the uncrazy twin--the guy who beat the biochemical rap. Dominick Birdsey's entire life has been compromised and constricted by anger and fear, by the paranoid schizophrenic twin brother he both deeply loves and resents, and by the past they shared with their adoptive father, Ray, a spit-and-polish ex-Navy man (the five-foot-six-inch sleeping giant who snoozed upstairs weekdays in the spare room and built submarines at night), and their long-suffering mother, Concettina, a timid woman with a harelip that made her shy and self-conscious: She holds a loose fist to her face to cover her defective mouth--her perpetual apology to the world for a birth defect over which she'd had no control. Born in the waning moments of 1949 and the opening minutes of 1950, the twins are physical mirror images who grow into separate yet connected entities: the seemingly strong and protective yet fearful Dominick, his mother's watchful "monkey"; and the seemingly weak and sweet yet noble Thomas, his mother's gentle "bunny." From childhood, Dominick fights for both separation and wholeness--and ultimately self-protection--in a house of fear dominated by Ray, a bully who abuses his power over these stepsons whose biological father is a mystery. I was still afraid of his anger but saw how he punished weakness--pounced on it. Out of self-preservation I hid my fear, Dominick confesses. As for Thomas, he just never knew how to play defense. He just didn't get it. But Dominick's talent for survival comes at an enormous cost, including the breakup of his marriage to the warm, beautiful Dessa, whom he still loves. And it will be put to the ultimate test when Thomas, a Bible-spouting zealot, commits an unthinkable act that threatens the tenuous balance of both his and Dominick's lives. To save himself, Dominick must confront not only the pain of his past but the dark secrets he has locked deep within himself, and the sins of his ancestors--a quest that will lead him beyond the confines of his blue-collar New England town to the volcanic foothills of Sicily 's Mount Etna, where his ambitious and vengefully proud grandfather and a namesake Domenico Tempesta, the sostegno del famiglia, was born. Each of the stories Ma told us about Papa reinforced the message that he was the boss, that he ruled the roost, that what he said went. Searching for answers, Dominick turns to the whispers of the dead, to the pages of his grandfather's handwritten memoir, The History of Domenico Onofrio Tempesta, a Great Man from Humble Beginnings. Rendered with touches of magic realism, Domenico's fablelike tale--in which monkeys enchant and religious statues weep--becomes the old man's confession--an unwitting legacy of contrition that reveals the truth's of Domenico's life, Dominick learns that power, wrongly used, defeats the oppressor as well as the oppressed, and now, picking through the humble shards of his deconstructed life, he will search for the courage and love to forgive, to expiate his and his ancestors' transgressions, and finally to rebuild himself beyond the haunted shadow of his twin. Set against the vivid panoply of twentieth-century America and filled with richly drawn, memorable characters, this deeply moving and thoroughly satisfying novel brings to light humanity's deepest needs and fears, our aloneness, our desire for love and acceptance, our struggle to survive at all costs. Joyous, mystical, and exquisitely written, I Know This Much Is True is an extraordinary reading experience that will leave no reader untouched.

Stephanie's in charge of planning the sixth graders' carnival, but she has to baby-sit the twins at the same time. She thinks she can handle it -- until she almost loses one of the twins while baby-sitting. Then the day of the carnival is nearly a disaster.

“Double trouble finds comic relief.” —Kirkus Reviews From beloved author-illustrator Rosemary Wells comes a brand-new story about the inimitable brother and sister Max and Ruby. Max and Ruby’s family is expanding and soon enough nobody will be getting any sleep! Max and Ruby are in for a big surprise. Mama has a baby in her tummy and soon the family will be bigger and better. Luckily Ruby knows all about babies: what they eat, how to bathe them, and where they come from. Ruby tells Max all about it. Soon no one will be getting any sleep, but Max has an idea on how to help! Max and Ruby have their own TV show on Nick Jr.!