What do you do when your mother makes you invite the most obnoxious kid in your class to your birthday party?
- Or when you have to wait another thirty-three and a third years to see a shower of stars?
- Or your parents ship you off to fat camp?
- Or you have to share your private lunch hour with a girl who's mean to you just because of the color of your skin?
In E. L. Konigsburg's witty and perceptive short stories, four young people cope with difficult situations and, in doing so, learn something that changes their lives.

Elvis Presley's clever manipulation of his numerous interests remains one of the music world's great marvels. His synthesis of country, rhythm & blues and gospel resulted in an inventive mixture of hair-raising rock & roll and balladry. This book focuses on the music of Presley's groundbreaking early years and includes a comprehensive analysis of every Presley recording session from the 1950s. Chapters show how Presley, with one foot in delta mud and the other in a country hoedown, teamed with Scotty Moore and Bill Black to fuse two distinctly American musical forms-country and blues-to form what would come to be known as "rockabilly." Also detailed is Presley's influence on music and how his contributions are still celebrated today.

Jethro Tull was one of the truly innovative rock bands to emerge from the late 1960s. At their peak the idiosyncratic group, fronted by multi-instrumentalist Ian Anderson, resembled a troupe of roving English minstrels. Crafting a signature progressive rock sound that resisted easy categorization, they were often derided by critics as too British, too eccentric, too theatrical. Over the span of a decade, "Tull" would release a string of sublime albums featuring intricate compositions in a wide range of musical styles, with little regard for the showbiz maxim "give the public what it wants." Focusing on the band's peak creative period of 1971-1980, this history includes insider accounts based on exclusive interviews with key members and rare photographs from Anderson's personal collection.

Two boys find a penny in the dust of Scott's Creek, a small country town in central Queensland. The public squabble over ownership of the coin causes their father, the local Blacksmith to mete out some rough punishment. In his rage, he seriously harms the eldest boy, Lindsay, starting a chain reaction of events that changes the lives of so many. It is 1899, and Australia is recruiting soldiers to fight in South Africa. Forced onto a ship and away from his family, Lindsay's father finds that he is the only one with the knowledge of a plot to destroy many lives. He has no way to warn his fellow enlistees, and the fact that he is widely hated by most in his home town does not help him in his quest to bring down the man responsible. Follow Malachi Tanner and his sons Lindsay and Henry as the story takes them through war, survival, joy and tears over the span of almost 100 years, up to a modern investigation that still needs to know exactly what happened at the turn of the last century.