The launch of an exciting, hilarious new series narrated by an underdog every Minecrafter can relate to.Gerald Creeper Jr. is a self-proclaimed pacifist (which, by the way, has nothing to do with a pacifier), but he finds himself in the war zone when he starts his first year at Mob Middle School. At his new school, every monster in the Overworld is jockeying for power, and the skeletons seem to have it out for him.Armed with a 30-day plan (he can thank his mom's self-help obsession for that), Gerald makes it his mission to use his brains—instead of his blasts—to survive the school year. It all starts with:Day 1: Come up with a nickname. (Gerald is not gonna cut it.)Day 2: Keep a low profile. (Not easy when your new best friend is a super bouncy slime!)Day 3: Avoid being target practice for skeletons, and somehow get in with super-popular Eddy Enderman. (Easier said than done.)The first book in this laugh-out-loud...

Emma Bontrager is spending her first Christmas alone after her husband of 45 years, Henry, passed away in July. Although the Amish don't normally allow animals in their homes, a big, fat, orange barn cat keeps coming into Emma's house. She shoos the cat away, but it continues to appear in her house, settling on Henry's favorite wingchair. But the cat isn't the only Christmas visitor: a group of young people help bring the Christmas spirit to Emma, reminding her that love and hope abide.

The story of the world's largest, longest, and best financed scientific expedition of all time, triumphantly successful, gruesomely tragic, and never before fully told The immense 18th-century scientific journey, variously known as the Second Kamchatka Expedition or the Great Northern Expedition, from St. Petersburg across Siberia to the coast of North America, involved over 3,000 people and cost Peter the Great over one-sixth of his empire's annual revenue. Until now recorded only in academic works, this 10-year venture, led by the legendary Danish captain Vitus Bering and including scientists, artists, mariners, soldiers, and laborers, discovered Alaska, opened the Pacific fur trade, and led to fame, shipwreck, and "one of the most tragic and ghastly trials of suffering in the annals of maritime and arctic history."

Unwritten & Underwater by Amanda M. Lee Avery Shaw is living the dream ... kind of. She's officially moved to her dream house and her boyfriend Eliot Kane is making her host a housewarming party to show off the new digs to her family. All is going well - other than the endless arguments over food and hiding from Avery's family, of course - until one of Avery's enemies comes calling. Avery's former boyfriend Jake Farrell broke up with Cara Carpenter weeks before but she's still stalking him ... and Avery in the process. When Cara turns up dead at a high-profile event, not only is Jake a suspect, but Avery and Eliot are, too. The Michigan State Police wrestle the investigation from Jake, promptly turning Avery from the hunter to the hunted. The state police investigator assigned to the case is all up in Avery's business - and Avery is cracking under the pressure even as she insists on covering the case, much to almost everybody's chagrin. From the stress associated with the new house, Grandpa's constant naked visits to the pool, and Eliot's insistence that Avery own up to something illegal, things are starting to get tense. Avery is on her heels for a bit before starting to put the pieces together. When the truth comes out, though, the answers are welcome but the danger is not. Can Avery survive to irritate everyone another day? Or will Michigan's favorite reporter finally succumb to a mouth she can't quite seem to control?