New Releases by Veronika

This introductory textbook on the structure of English gives a comprehensive, descriptive grammar of contemporary standardized and non-standardized American English dialects. The book challenges conventional perspectives and offers an exploration of American English grammars. The authors include Chicano English, African American English, Southern American English, Appalachian English and other dialects to show students that all varieties of English should be represented and recognised. They also delve into the historical and social contexts of these dialects, shedding light on how they've been perceived over time. Grammatical structures and features are introduced and illustrated through examples that demonstrate each of the dialect features including signage, text from published sources, snippets from actual conversations as well as dialogue from print, film, and television. The numerous examples show how different dialects construct sentences, offering a comprehensive view of linguistic diversity and illuminating the intricacies of these grammars, dispelling myths and prompting critical thinking. The authors present these data samples and lead the reader through guiding questions and comments before expanding on the linguistic terms, import, theories, and applications. Recommended readings and ideas for student projects are provided in key chapters, and a companion website offers resources for instructors. Providing ample practice and iterative exercises, as well as suggestions for real-world application, Foundations of Grammar promotes linguistic equality and ensures students have an increased awareness and appreciation for a variety of dialects and languages. This groundbreaking exploration of American English dialects, particularly those that have been stigmatized in the past, challenges prevailing myths about language and invites readers to think critically about their own English.

📖 Master Russian with Advanced Stories – A Deep Dive into Language & Culture 🇷🇺✨ Are you ready to take your Russian skills to the highest level? This Advanced Russian Storybook is designed for C1 & C2 learners who want to enhance their fluency, comprehension, and cultural understanding through immersive storytelling. Explore 25 classic fairytales, including timeless Russian legends such as Руслан и Людмила (Ruslan and Ludmila), Конёк-Горбунок (The Humpbacked Horse), and Кащей Бессмертный (Kashchey the Deathless), alongside legendary world tales like King Arthur, The Nutcracker, and Robin Hood. 🌟 What Makes This Book Special? 📝 Perfect for C1 & C2 learners – Advanced grammar, complex sentence structures, and rich vocabulary. 📚 In-depth bilingual lessons – Every story includes detailed grammar explanations, idiomatic expressions, and advanced word studies. 📖 Russian Classics & Global Masterpieces – A mix of authentic Russian folklore and internationally recognized tales. 🔄 Complex Sentence Structures – Subjunctive mood, conditional clauses, figurative language, and poetic expressions. 🦊 Highlighted key phrases & expressions – Making it easier to understand nuanced meanings and advanced wordplay. 🎯 What You’ll Learn: 🔤 Advanced Vocabulary – Literary terms, poetic descriptions, and symbolic language. 🗣 Complex Sentence Constructions – Master subordinate clauses, reported speech, and passive voice. ⌛ Past, Present & Future Perfect Tenses – Handle multiple timelines within narratives. 🤩 Idioms & Cultural Expressions – Gain insight into Russian proverbs, sayings, and traditional wisdom. 🔎 Grammar Deep Dive – Understand how advanced grammatical forms shape meaning. 💡 How This Book Works: Read the story in Russian – Written in a rich, engaging style to challenge advanced learners. Analyze grammar & vocabulary – Discover subtle word choices and intricate sentence structures. Practice pronunciation & expressions – Learn poetic and idiomatic phrasing naturally. Enjoy deep cultural insights – Uncover the symbolism and themes behind classic fairytales. 🏆 Perfect for: ✔️ Russian language learners looking to reach full fluency. ✔️ Students preparing for C1 & C2 proficiency exams. ✔️ Teachers searching for advanced-level reading materials. ✔️ Lovers of Russian literature and storytelling. 📖 Step into the world of advanced Russian – Start your journey today! 🇷🇺✨

This collaborative monograph presents a deeply researched, inclusive history of women’s labour activism in Eastern Europe, Austria, Turkey and transnationally. It explores women’s activism and organizing to improve the working conditions and living circumstances of lower-income and working-class women and their communities in the region and internationally. Moving beyond the celebratory or partisan perspectives of many classical and some feminist labour histories, Women’s Labour Activism in Eastern Europe and Beyond provides a careful historicization of women’s actions in a multiscalar perspective. The authors follow women aligned with a wide range of political persuasions, highlighting unexpected elements and continuities of women’s labour activism. Women’s activities are seen in the workplace, in the everyday, within and across social movements and organizations, and inside the state. They are presented through a framing that spotlights long-term developments and bridges the divide between the literatures on gendered labour politics and activism in state socialist and capitalist societies. The authors examine activism unfolding in the region and the role of activists from the region within international women’s, labour and inter-state organizations. Moving women’s labour activism from the margins of labour, gender and European history to the centre of historical study, the volume makes an innovative contribution to the new global histories of labour and gender.

This book addresses the growing complexity of sustainable construction, emphasizing the need for effective knowledge transfer among diverse project participants. With new materials, technologies, and techniques constantly being introduced, the construction workforce is often overburdened and lacks the time for upskilling. „Enhancing Knowledge Transfer for Sustainable Construction” explores how knowledge is shared within teams working on sustainable projects, focusing on bridging the gap between design and implementation. The book uses Social Network Analysis to examine knowledge transfer dynamics, revealing hidden communication pathways in construction teams. Drawing on case studies from Germany and the UK, it uncovers the complexities of sharing sustainable construction knowledge among stakeholders. The book highlights the human aspects of knowledge transfer, including the influence of factors like age, job level, and training. It also provides practical strategies for improving knowledge flow, aiming to ensure higher quality in sustainable building practices.

In a world where time has split into Before and After, the protagonist finds himself at the epicenter of an impending catastrophe. The city he loved and dedicated his entire life to is on the brink of destruction. In these final moments, before the sirens have even wailed, he already knows that the end is near. The feeling of cold, piercing to the bone, and the sounds of the city slowly dying gradually envelop his mind, extinguishing the last sparks of optimism. Sitting on a bench by the embankment, he writes his final thoughts in a notebook, understanding that his words may never be read. But in these lines, he tries to leave a mark, even if ephemeral, in this dying world. Time flows like sand through his fingers, and he feels a strange calm, accepting his fate. His writings are a cry of the soul, an attempt to capture the moments before the inevitable end.

Please don''t ask me what the stories are about. Honestly, I really don''t know. It''s not like I don''t wanna tell you or anything, I just can''t explain it. I mean, I guess the stories are about being a human being and everything that comes with that. Like growing up and all the memories and feelings and all that shit. And how living is basically a constant struggle or something like that? Or maybe let me rephrase it: I think my main topic is life and living includes having emotions and changing and falling in love and experiencing heartbreak and anxiety and depression and wishing for things and dreaming about things and regretting things and having interactions with other people and, I mean, obviously so much more. And I guess all of these things, and the writing and thinking and talking about it ... that''s what the stories are about. Happy?

Virginia Woolf as a Process-Oriented Thinker: Parallels Between Woolf’s Fiction and Process Philosophy introduces Virginia Woolf as a nondualist and process-oriented thinker whose ideas are, despite no direct influence, strikingly similar to those of Alfred North Whitehead. Veronika Krajícková argues that in their respective fields, literature and philosophy, Woolf and Whitehead both criticized the materialist turn of their time and attempted to reattribute importance to experience and undermine long-rooted dualisms such as subject and object, the animate and the inanimate, the human and the nonhuman, or the self and the other. By erasing the gaps between these dualities, the two thinkers anticipated the poststructuralist thought with which Woolf has been anachronically associated in the last decades. Krajícková shows that there is no need to analyze Woolf’s fiction via critical and philosophical theories that developed much later. This book demonstrates that Woolf and Whitehead’s ideas may help us adopt more ecologically friendly, selfless, intersubjective, and harmless modes of being in the present day. Both figures emphasize the intrinsic value and importance of each constituent of reality and teach us to appreciate the aesthetic values dispersed throughout our environment.

Zooming in on commercial surrogacy in Russia and Ukraine, Intimate Strangers addresses market expansion into the intimate spheres of life that play out on women's bodies as mothers and workers. Veronika Siegl follows the inner workings of a surrogacy market marked by secrecy, distrust, and anonymous business relationships. She explores intended mothers' anxious struggles for a child in light of stigmatized infertility and the aggressive biopolitics of motherhood; the uncertain but pragmatic pathways in and out of fertility clinics as surrogates navigate harsh economic realities and resist being objectified or morally judged; and the powerful role of agents and doctors who have found a profitable niche in nurturing and facilitating other people's existential hopes. Intimate Strangers discusses these issues against the backdrop of ultra-conservatism and moral governance in Russia, the rising international popularity of the Ukrainian surrogacy market, and the pervasiveness of neo-liberal ideologies and individualized notions of reproductive freedom.

How curious do you think you are? This book will help you to explore and expand your curiosity potential. Just like Alice in Wonderland, you will become ''curiouser and curiouser...'' Are you ready? Let''s discover a brand new, curious YOU...

Agnes lives in the virgin forest tribe of Magreys. Each member of the tribe is born with an exceptional gift. As soon as a Magrey discovers and masters their gift,there comes the time to perform it during a Full Moon Celebration and to promise not to misuse it and serve for the good of the tribe. The only catch is that a Magrey must do so before reaching the age of twelve years old or they turn into a Shadow.Agnes just celebrated her eleventh birthday. And unlike the others, she still has no idea what her gift is.So, she sets out on a dangerous journey to the Forbidden Mountain. To the very same mountain from which her father never returned five years ago. An adventurous story about a journeyto find her inner self lets the reader ponder such questions as:How do you make sense of your time on Earth,which is ridiculously short?How do you follow your heart?How do you not cling to all the things that we have borrowed in our lives?How do you find happiness in the mundane?How do you awaken kindness to your own body?How do you take care of your soul and not let others hurt you?And how do you come to terms with your own mortality? Veronika Hurdová:“I strongly believe that developing andpampering our own unique skills is the right wayto make the world around us a more beautiful place.” The book is intended for children from eight to one hundred years old.

The mechanical properties of cells are largely determined by the cytoskeleton. The cytoskeleton is an intricate and complex structure formed by protein filaments, motor proteins, and crosslinkers. The three main types of protein filaments are microtubules, actin filaments, and intermediate filaments ( IFs ). Whereas the proteins that form microtubules and actin filaments are exceptionally conserved throughout cell types and organisms, the family of IFs is diverse. For example, the IF protein vimentin is expressed in relatively motile fibroblasts, and keratin IFs are found in epithelial cells. This variety of IF proteins might therefore be linked to the various mechanical properties of different cell types. In the scope of this thesis, I combine studies of IF mechanics on different time scales and in systems of increasing complexity, from single filaments to networks in cells. This multiscale approach allows for the simplification necessary to interpret observations while adding increasing physiological context in subsequent experiments. We especially focus on the tunability of the IF mechanics by environmental cues in these increasingly complex systems. In a series of experiments, including single filament elongation studies, single filament stretching measurements with optical tweezers, filament-filament interaction measurements with four optical tweezers, microrheology, and isotropic cell stretching, we characterize how electrostatic (pH and ion concentration) and hydrophobic interactions (detergent) provide various mechanisms by which the mechanics of the IF cytoskeleton can be tuned. These studies reveal how small changes, such as charge shifts, influence IF mechanics on multiple scales. In combination with simulations, we determine the mechanisms by which charge shifts alter single vimentin filament mechanics and we extract energy landscapes for interactions between single filaments. Such insights will provide a deeper understanding of the mechanisms by which cells can maintain their integrity and adapt to the mechanical requirements set by their environment.

This Element provides an introduction to the hiddenness argument, as presented by John Schellenberg, and its up-to-date discussion in a comprehensible way. It concludes with a brief assessment of where things stand, from the author's point of view, and why divine hiddenness should not reduce a reflective theist's confidence in theism.

Fantasy o tajné lidské rase s kořeny ve starověkém Egyptě. Příběh plný akce, nebezpečí, tajemství a sesterské lásky s ne příliš vzornou hrdinkou v hlavní roli. Stephanie opustila svou kariéru velitelky lovců speciální jednotky Jalských medjayů už před lety. Teď tráví čas ve společnosti své spřízněné duše Olivie. Žijí na vlastní pěst a drží se dál od politiky rodného města Jal. Když ale dojde k sérii únosů, přijíždějí do zdánlivého bezpečí bohatého Jalu. Tam se ale jejich životy obrátí vzhůru nohama a Stephanie je postavena před těžké rozhodnutí. Dokáže opustit své milované a postavit se do první linie, aby zachránila svůj lid?

During the last decades, the industry has been undergoing extensive digitization leading to complex ensembles of humans, machines, autonomous agents, and sensors. With this new setup comes the challenge of how to appropriately support work-practices of industrial operators who now need to monitor and control complex industrial processes through remote interfaces. Information overflow and restrictive interfaces are two significant problems that operators face in their daily routines. In this PhD, I explore approaches to visualization and interaction that would reduce industrial operators' information load and enable them to perform their duties in an efficient, reliable, and safe manner. Industrial users and industrial settings are the starting points of my research. In this thesis, I describe multiple examples of custom-tailored data visualizations that reduce the operator's visual load by consolidating large amounts of data into compact overview displays with often nontrivial data presentation. With respect to interaction, I propose several tangible and tactile interfaces, as well as concepts for natural interaction, that let the user freely interact with the control station and the information it depicts. Finally, I propose several concepts of adaptive systems that adjust to the operator's context to ensure their high situational awareness and convenience of interaction. Even though this thesis is primarily intended for the community of interaction designers, I expect it to be of interest to a broader audience due to its relation to the user experience field. To a certain extent, everyone can resonate with the user's problems because, in our everyday life, we all are users of some technology and services. Furthermore, for a lay reader, this work can be seen as a comprehensive introduction to how the industry works and what role the human plays there. Under de senaste årtiondena har industrin digitaliserats i stor utsträckning och består nu av komplexa strukturer där människor, maskiner, autonoma agenter och sensorer samspelar. Människor arbetar ofta som operatörer i industrin, med uppgift att övervaka och styra maskinella processer på distans från kontrollrum. Den omfattande digitaliseringen medför nya utmaningar för operatörerna i och med att mängden tillgänglig information växer samtidigt som kontrollrummens användargränssnitt är otillräckliga för de ändrade förutsättningarna. I den här avhandlingen utforskar jag nya former av visualisering och interaktion som skulle kunna hjälpa operatörerna hantera de växande informationsmängderna och sköta sitt arbete på ett effektivt, tillförlitligt och säkert sätt. Jag presenterar flera exempel på skräddarsydda datavisualiseringar som minskar belastningen på operatörerna genom att kombinera stora mängder data i kompakta, icke-triviala presentationsformer. När det gäller interaktion föreslår jag flera fysiska och taktila interaktionsformer som kan göra operatörernas arbete mera fritt och självstyrt. Jag presenterar slutligen koncept för adaptiva system som anpassar sig till operatörernas arbetssituation för att skapa smidig interaktion och stödja hög situationsmedvetenhet. Avhandlingen vänder sig i första hand till interaktionsdesignområdet, men jag räknar med att den kan vara av intresse för en bredare publik i och med att den behandlar användarupplevelse. Vi använder alla tekniska produkter och tjänster i någon utsträckning och bör därför kunna relatera till industrioperatörernas utmaningar. Mitt arbete ger också en inblick i hur människans arbetssituation ser ut i dagens industri.

Scholars of state socialism have frequently invoked “nostalgia” to identify an uncritical longing for the utopian ambitions and lived experience of the former Eastern Bloc. However, this concept seems insufficient to describe memory cultures in the Czech Republic and other contexts in which a “retro” fascination with the past has proven compatible with a steadfast critique of the state socialist era. This innovative study locates a distinctively retro aesthetic in Czech literature, film, and other cultural forms, enriching our understanding of not only the nation’s memory culture, but also the ways in which popular culture can structure collective memory.

On March 10, 1948, world-renowned composer and pianist Ernst von Dohnányi (1877−1960) embarked for the United States, leaving Europe for good. Only a few years earlier, the seventy-year-old Hungarian had been a triumphant, internationally admired musician and leading figure in Hungarian musical life. Fleeing a political smear campaign that sought to implicate him in intellectual collaboration with fascism, he reached American shores without a job or a home. A Wayfaring Stranger presents the final period in Dohnányi’s exceptional career and uses a range of previously unavailable material to reexamine commonly held beliefs about the musician and his unique oeuvre. Offering insights into his life as a teacher, pianist, and composer, the book also considers the difficulties of émigré life, the political charges made against him, and the compositional and aesthetic dilemmas faced by a conservative artist. To this rich biographical account, Veronika Kusz adds an in-depth examination of Dohnányi’s late works—in most cases the first analyses to appear in musicological literature. This corrective history provides never-before-seen photographs of the musician’s life in the United States and skillfully illustrates Dohnányi’s impact on European and American music and the culture of the time.

In this book, Veronika Rybanska explores how ritual participation affects the cognitive abilities of children. Rybanska argues that, far from being a simple matter of mindless copying, ritual participation in childhood requires rigorous computation by cognitive mechanisms. In turn, this computation can improve a child's 'executive functioning': a set of cognitive skills that are essential for successful cognitive, social and psychological development. After providing a critique of existing literature on religion and ritual, Rybanska presents a new interdisciplinary approach that draws from anthropology, psychology and cognitive neuroscience. Using cross-cultural examples, including a comparison between Melanesian culture and Western culture, Rybanska shows that some of the most socially important effects of rituals seem to be universal. The implications of this research suggest that we should rethink multiple aspects of child-rearing and educational policy, and shows that the presence of some form of ritual during childhood could have positive evolutionary benefits.

We estimate the impact of the COVID-19 crisis on business failures among small and medium size enterprises (SMEs) in seventeen countries using a large representative firm-level database. We use a simple model of firm cost-minimization and measure each firm’s liquidity shortfall during and after COVID-19. Our framework allows for a rich combination of sectoral and aggregate supply, productivity, and demand shocks. We estimate a large increase in the failure rate of SMEs under COVID-19 of nearly 9 percentage points, absent government support. Accommodation & Food Services, Arts, Entertainment & Recreation, Education, and Other Services are among the most affected sectors. The jobs at risk due to COVID-19 related SME business failures represent 3.1 percent of private sector employment. Despite the large impact on business failures and employment, we estimate only moderate effects on the financial sector: the share of Non Performing Loans on bank balance sheets would increase by up to 11 percentage points, representing 0.3 percent of banks’ assets and resulting in a 0.75 percentage point decline in the common equity Tier-1 capital ratio. We evaluate the cost and effectiveness of various policy interventions. The fiscal cost of an intervention that narrowly targets at risk firms can be modest (0.54% of GDP). However, at a similar level of effectiveness, non-targeted subsidies can be substantially more expensive (1.82% of GDP). Our results have important implications for the severity of the COVID-19 recession, the design of policies, and the speed of the recovery.

This book offers the reader sound advice on how to perform optimal conventional pediatric radiographs and how to obtain quick and easy organ dose estimates in order to improve the optimization process in pediatric imaging. Clear guidelines are provided for minimization of the radiation exposure of children through optimization of the radiation exposure conditions, and conversion coefficients are presented for calculation of the organ doses achieved in organs and tissues during conventional pediatric radiography, taking into consideration both optimal and suboptimal radiation field settings. Previously published conversion coefficients have failed to represent the variation in radiation field settings in daily clinical routine, which has made it difficult for the pediatric radiologist to estimate the impact of the field settings on absorbed doses in organs and tissues. The aim of this book, co-written by a pediatric radiologist, a physician and physicist, and a medical radiation technologist, is to address this issue by providing, for the first time, a thorough overview of clinical radiation field settings and their implications for radiation protection. An accompanying volume is devoted to fluoroscopy.

Easily savor the magnificent food and beauty of Istanbul throughout your day with this inspiring cookbook. The authentic recipes, from mezze to desserts, are surprisingly simple to re-create in any home kitchen and call on the iconic fresh ingredients and spices, all easy to source, that define Turkish cooking. From the resplendent city of Istanbul—known for its rich colors, culture, and cuisine—comes a culinary exploration of the wonderful food far beyond the infamous doner kebab. Spanning breakfast dishes to midnight snacks, with leisurely meals in between, the 65 authentic recipes call on the iconic fresh ingredients and spices, all easy to source, that define Turkish cooking. The exquisite recipes are interlaced with personal stories and gorgeous lifestyle photography, providing a compelling food journey through this beautiful city—and showing how to bring the bold and unforgettable flavors of Turkey into your home kitchen.

In this tour de force inspired by true events, Veronika M. Kaye tells the story of a girl, ruthlessly scorned by Jason, the man she believed to be the love of her life. Veronika is forced to cope with heartbreak. Spending months in angst and depression, she begins to cycle through her moments in an attempt to uncover a loophole in her ended relationship. Veronika probes memories to discover how her past lead to her pain. Reminiscing back to her love expenditures, Veronika begins to question, how much pain is enough? For a woman who has it all, why does she still feel empty? Veronika sets off to find these answers, but with the truth she uncovers, she will never be the same.

The year 2014 was the hottest on record since we’ve begun collecting global temperature measurements in 1880. Even at its midway point, 2015 was already promising to take over this dubious record. As new thresholds are breached, acclaimed Radio New Zealand science writer Veronika Meduna explores our future in a warmer world. Beginning with lessons from our ancient geological past, this BWB Text draws on current observations and increasingly sophisticated climate models to describe possible end-of-century scenarios for New Zealand. Distorted ecosystems, extreme weather, new landscapes and adapted foods are just some of the likely changes that amount to a radically different future for our country.

This book is a survey on the theoretical as well as experimental results on nanostructures in biological systems. It shows how a unifying approach starting from single-particle energy, deriving free energy of the system and determining the equilibrium by minimizing the free energy, can be applied to describe electrical and elastic phenomena. It hel

The book systematically discusses the formal and functional properties as well as the rules of the manifold productive reduplication types of Bikol, an Austronesian language of the Philippines. Based on the author's own fieldwork, this case study demonstrates the highly complex and grammaticized status of reduplication. In addition, the formal and semantic properties of unproductive reduplicative forms of the language are also investigated.

More first books for fledgling readers that offer the enjoyment of a good story with the thrill of accomplishment that comes from independent reading. Written in short, easy phrases with carefully selected vocabulary and plentiful illustrations, each book helps youngsters achieve success as they have fun. The series follows three friends who love to share stories. In each book, one is reminded of a well-known story: It''s Not About the Ball! is based on The Frog Prince; It'' Not About the Tiny Girl! is based on Thumbelina; It''s Not About the Diamonds! is based on the story of Diamonds and Toads; It''s Not About the Straw! is based on Rumpelstiltskin and It''s Not About the Beanstalk! is based on Jack and the Beanstalk. As one friend starts his story, the others are reminded of versions they know so each volume has three stories within one framework. The stories come from around the world, and Veronika Martenova Charles provides a note at the end of each book to describe the origins. Easy-to-Read Wonder Tales are a great first step in developing a lifelong love of reading, and it makes a fine companion to Veronika Martenova Charles''s series, Easy-to-Read Spooky Tales.

More first books for fledgling readers that offer the enjoyment of a good story with the thrill of accomplishment that comes from independent reading. Written in short, easy phrases with carefully selected vocabulary and plentiful illustrations, each book helps youngsters achieve success as they have fun. The series follows three friends who love to share stories. In each book, one is reminded of a well-known story: It's Not About the Ball! is based on The Frog Prince; It' Not About the Tiny Girl! is based on Thumbelina; It's Not About the Diamonds! is based on the story of Diamonds and Toads; It's Not About the Straw! is based on Rumpelstiltskin and It's Not About the Beanstalk! is based on Jack and the Beanstalk. As one friend starts his story, the others are reminded of versions they know so each volume has three stories within one framework. The stories come from around the world, and Veronika Martenova Charles provides a note at the end of each book to describe the origins. Easy-to-Read Wonder Tales are a great first step in developing a lifelong love of reading, and it makes a fine companion to Veronika Martenova Charles's series, Easy-to-Read Spooky Tales.

Wirtschaftsunternehmen sind oft traditionell geprägt, doch die Zeiten ändern sich rasant. Die Konsumierenden und auch B-to-B-Märkte fordern nachhaltiges und gesellschaftsverantwortliches Wirtschaften. Franchising kann diese Werte schnell aufnehmen und systematisch multiplizieren. Damit wird es zum Treiber der Nachhaltigkeitsbewegung. Veronika Bellone und Thomas Matla präsentieren einen grünen Faden zur nachhaltigen Multiplikation, mit Blick hinter die Kulissen.

Having been warned not to open the door for anyone while Mom goes to help a neighbor, the three boys try to outdo each other by telling scary stories about strangers at the door. By the time they have finished, they have scared themselves under the bed. Stories in this book come from Bohemia, the Guyanas, and Peru and are based on the universal theme of not opening the door to strangers.

In short lines, large type, and text broken into phrases, three more stories are told. Marcos, Leon, and “I” try to out-do each other with warnings against tasting things that may not be safe. Dire consequences and ridiculous outcomes take the boys to new heights of hilarity in these spooky tales from Australia, Italy, and Eastern Europe.

Three friends frighten each other with tales of haunted beach houses, sinister cats, and witches in this trio of cautionary stories from Japan and the United States. Beginning readers come away with a satisfying experience and the benefit of good advice!