When Bad Things Happen to Rich People is a novel of social satire, a black comedy set in Chicago in the summer of 1995. The novel's protagonist, Nix Walters, is an adjunct instructor of English at a communications college in the loop with few prospects for advancement. He had become a literary punch line when his novel, touted as the next big literary phenomenon, was universally panned by critics. He and his pregnant wife, Flora, are struggling financially;...

When the hippie crossing guard, Mr. Louie, puts a love potion in the water fountain before Valentine's Day, everyone at Ella Mentry School falls in love.

Picked last for kickball, Amelia Bedelia gets another chance to prove her athleticism when her class holds a mini-Olympics.

When shoelace heir Neddie Wentworthstein and his family take the train from Chicago to Los Angeles in the 1940s, he winds up in possession of a valuable Indian turtle artifact whose owner is supposed to be able to prevent the impending destruction of the world, but he is not sure exactly how.

Charlie and Mouse are getting ready for Mom's birthday and things are not going exactly as planned ... but with plenty of humor and imagination, they'll prove that sometimes when things are not perfect, what they turn out to be is even better.

Relates the surprising gifts bestowed on twelve-year-old Bob Barnhart and his family, who have recently moved to a small Illinois town in 1958, by their larger-than-life neighbor, Mrs. Dowdel.

In the summer of 1986, eleven-year-old April Grace, who lives on a rural Arkansas farm with her family, across a field from her grandmother, has her sense of Christian charity tested when a snooty couple from San Francisco moves into a dilapidated house down the road and her grandmother takes up with a loud, obnoxious, and suspicious-acting Texan.

"OK. It's time to stop messin' around. In this book, the One is going to be reunited with the Others. You are going to actually meet the real dread overlord Splaarghön. And one character is going to change everything you thought you knew. This is the one you've been waiting for!"--

"Ross Maloy just wants to be a normal seventh grader. He doesn't want to lose his hair, or wear a weird hat, or deal with the disappearing friends who don't know what to say to 'the cancer kid.' But with his recent diagnosis of a rare eye cancer, blending in is off the table. Based on the author's real life experience." --

When George and Harold use their traveling purple potty to travel to another dimension where the school is nice and the principal, Mr. Krupp, thinks they're funny, they meet up with their evil twins and must face their cleverest enemies ever -- themselves.