Between 1929 and 1935 Evelyn Waugh travelled widely and wrote four books about his experiences. In this collection he writes, with his customary wit and perception, about a cruise around the Mediterranean; a train trip from Djibouti to Abyssinia to attend Emperor Haile Selassie's coronation in 1930; his travels in Aden, Zanzibar, Kenya and the Congo, coping with unbearable heat and plagued by mosquitoes; a journey to Guyana and Brazil; and his return to Addis Ababa in 1935 to report on the war between Abyssinia and Italy. Waugh's adventures on his travels gave him the ideas for such classic novels as Scoop and Black Mischief.

A laugh-out-loud take on early teenage life by the author of My Best Friend and Other Enemies. When Ella's dad refuses to let her have cool school shoes or stay up later than 9:30, Ella decides to take things into her own hands. Being good hasn't got her anywhere, so why not try being bad for a while? It certainly looks a lot more fun and what's a few detentions here and there? But going bad is a slippery slope and soon things are starting to spiral out of control. Can Ella get things back on track? Or is she going to end up with egg on her face? A brilliantly funny new story from Catherine Wilkins, stand-up comedian and author of the much-loved 'My Best Friend and Other Enemies' series.

It has been said that in a marriage you only get eighty percent of what you need. When the other twenty percent is too tempting to turn down, do you decide to go with your family life, or do you take advantage of a once in a lifetime opportunity? Simone, Te'Nae, and Shay are picture perfect wives and career women. Although they're able to juggle prestigious jobs, motherhood, and wifely duties with ease, they share a dark secret that, if exposed, could ruin everything they've worked hard to maintain. They will only get one chance to figure out if their families and marriages are worth more than the risks they're taking. They better hope they make the right decision, because once good wives go bad, there is no turning back, and the consequences can be major.

One of the few things in life that’s certain is death—and here’s a realistic, practical, and even humorous book about preparing for it. From cremation ("Making an Ash of Yourself") to funeral plans (“Plan and Plot Your Own Demise”) to choosing executors and dealing with family relationships, media figure Jo Myers covers it all. It’s sure to appeal to boomers caring for aging parents and anyone else who needs help approaching this not-so-easy-to-talk-about subject.

With the help of his recently deceased Uncle Fred, Danny must battle an army of prankster ghouls to break the curse on a small Minnesota town.

The Challenge Built to Last, the defining management study of the nineties, showed how great companies triumph over time and how long-term sustained performance can be engineered into the DNA of an enterprise from the verybeginning. But what about the company that is not born with great DNA? How can good companies, mediocre companies, even bad companies achieve enduring greatness? The Study For years, this question preyed on the mind of Jim Collins. Are there companies that defy gravity and convert long-term mediocrity or worse into long-term superiority? And if so, what are the universal distinguishing characteristics that cause a company to go from good to great? The Standards Using tough benchmarks, Collins and his research team identified a set of elite companies that made the leap to great results and sustained those results for at least fifteen years. How great? After the leap, the good-to-great companies generated cumulative stock returns that beat the general stock market by an average of seven times in fifteen years, better than twice the results delivered by a composite index of the world's greatest companies, including Coca-Cola, Intel, General Electric, and Merck. The Comparisons The research team contrasted the good-to-great companies with a carefully selected set of comparison companies that failed to make the leap from good to great. What was different? Why did one set of companies become truly great performers while the other set remained only good? Over five years, the team analyzed the histories of all twenty-eight companies in the study. After sifting through mountains of data and thousands of pages of interviews, Collins and his crew discovered the key determinants of greatness -- why some companies make the leap and others don't. The Findings The findings of the Good to Great study will surprise many readers and shed light on virtually every area of management strategy and practice. The findings include: Level 5 Leaders: The research team was shocked to discover the type of leadership required to achieve greatness. The Hedgehog Concept (Simplicity within the Three Circles): To go from good to great requires transcending the curse of competence. A Culture of Discipline: When you combine a culture of discipline with an ethic of entrepreneurship, you get the magical alchemy of great results. Technology Accelerators: Good-to-great companies think differently about the role of technology. The Flywheel and the Doom Loop: Those who launch radical change programs and wrenching restructurings will almost certainly fail to make the leap. “Some of the key concepts discerned in the study,” comments Jim Collins, "fly in the face of our modern business culture and will, quite frankly, upset some people.” Perhaps, but who can afford to ignore these findings?

“I don’t master the mountain, I master speed.” Coming from Bode Miller, this isn’t boasting, it’s just the way he lives: fast, honest, and wide open. In this candid book, the two-time Olympic medalist and champion skier shares his story, the secret of his success, and his philosophy of life. Born and raised “off the grid”–without electricity or indoor plumbing–in the cabin built by his father in the woods near Franconia, New Hampshire (pop. 850), Bode is unconventional to the core. The strong values of his simple upbringing, where he and his family had to “invent, grow, or carry in” all the essentials have made Bode unique among today’s top sports stars. Bode’s approach to life is straightforward: “Get a plan, stick to it, and trust your instincts . . . and almost anything is possible.” And practically since birth, the iconoclastic Bode has been achieving the impossible and laying down tracks for others to follow. He revolutionized his sport by adopting new and crossover technologies, such as “shape” skis. He drives his tradition-bound European rivals to distraction, skiing and winning by instinct. His outsider status, killer smile, and outspoken yet laid-back persona have earned him a reputation as the Michael Jordan of skiing. Men’s Journal named Bode the second greatest athlete in the world. And in the 2005 season, Bode may have moved up a notch by becoming the first American to win the Overall World Cup Alpine championship in twenty-two years. In short, he is the kind of person everybody wants to know and hang out with. In a book loaded with insight, good humor, and eye-opening stories about the world of competitive skiing, Bode, as always, holds nothing back.