In the latest diary of middle-schooler Greg Heffley, he records his attempts to spend his summer vacation sensibly indoors playing video games and watching television, despite his mother's other ideas.

When Ian Lightfoot comes of age, his mother gives him the magical staff of his late father, which will let him cast a spell to spend one more day with his dad. But the spell goes awry and he has only 24 hours to set it right, so he and his older brother embark on an epic quest, with their mother trailing after, trying to protect them from a dangerous curse.

"A hilarious and heartfelt debut novel following three generations of a boisterous family whose simmering tensions boil over when a home aide enters the picture, becoming the calamitous force that will either undo or remake this family--perfect for fans of Where'd You Go, Bernadette and Evvie Drake Starts Over. When Kevin Gogarty's irrepressible eighty-three-year-old mother, Millie, is caught shoplifting yet again, he has no choice but to hire a caretaker...

Along with Saul Bellow's Herzog, Philip Roth's Portnoy's Complaint defined Jewish American literature in the 1960s. Roth's masterpiece takes place on the couch of a psychoanalyst, an appropriate jumping-off place for an insanely comical novel about the Jewish American experience. Roth has written several great books--Goodbye, Columbus and When She Was Good among them, but it is perhaps Portnoy's Complaint for which he is best known.

Till is a profoundly emotional and cinematic film about the true story of Mamie Till Mobley's relentless pursuit of justice for her fourteen-year-old son, Emmett Till, who, in 1955, was lynched while visiting his cousins in Mississippi. In Mamie's poignant journey of grief turned to action, we see the universal power of a mother's ability to change the world.