Humorous Fiction Family

Ramona's life changes the moment Howie Kemp's mysterious uncle arrives from Saudi Arabia. Howie and his sister, Willa Jean, talk only about Uncle Hobart. Ramona's mother makes secret phone calls and stops eating dessert, and Aunt Bea is hiding something, too. Whatever surprises are in store, Ramona is determined to be happy and helpful. Whether she's pleasant or pesty, brave or blunderful, she's always wonderful Ramona - forever!

Almost one year ago, Alice TodHunter Moon left her PathFinder village to become Apprentice to ExtraOrdinary Wizard Septimus Heap. Now, in faraway lands, the Castle is in peril. The brilliant blue stone is crumbling to dust, and both the witch Marisa and the wicked Red Queen have their eyes on the throne. But as Tod sets off on a hazardous journey to find a new Keystone, her life may be in the greatest danger of all. Can she save the Castle while evading the fate that befell her mother?

This spring, Mia's determined to have a good time, despite the fact that the student government over which she presides is suddenly broke. Fortunately (or unfortunately, depending on how you look at it) Grandmere has an elaborate scheme to simultaneously raise money, catapult Mia to theatrical fame, and link her romantically with an eligible teen bachelor, not her boyfriend. It's no wonder that Michael, the love of her life, seems to think she's a psycho, or worse: not much fun.

One day, Stan and Jan Berenstain were captured by a family of bears. It was a family of three - an overenthusiastic Papa whose high opinion of himself was exceeded only by his ability to do silly things (often placing himself in jeopardy from bees, skunks, low-hanging branches, whales, irate farmers, etc.) a wise, steady Mama with a firm grip on reality, and a bright enterprising little boy cub.

Princess for president. Student body president, that is. It's all the fault of Princess Mia's power-mad best friend and campaign manager, Lilly, who nominates her in the first place. This is not how Mia imagined kicking off her sophomore year, even if Grandmere thinks ruling her high school makes good practice for ruling Genovia someday.

Following up on the classic children's novel The Saturdays, Elizabeth Enright continues the engaging tale of the Melendy family (Mona, Rush, Randy, Oliver, Father, and Cuffy, the housekeeper) and their move from an old brownstone in New York City to a charming house in the country. Called the Four-Story Mistake for its odd look and confused architectural history, the house offers the Melendys wonderful quirks and surprises.

To celebrate her 14th birthday, Sammy’s newly found, long-lost father takes her and best friend Marissa on a cruise. As Sammy navigates her feelings about this new relationship, she and Marissa become involved in another family’s bizarre drama which includes the mysterious disappearance of the wealthy matriarch and suspicious activity by the greedy heirs.

Pink, pink, pink. More than anything, Pinkalicious loves pink, especially pink cupcakes. Her parents warn her not to eat too many of them, but when Pinkalicious does...she turns pink! What to do?

Bick Kidd and his globe-trotting siblings Beck, Storm and Tommy may have completed their first treasure hunt after their father was lost at sea, but their kidnapped mother is still in the hands of nasty pirates. Their search for a rescue plan takes them down the Nile river in Africa, where they'll have to navigate everything from Egyptian pyramids in the desert to wet-and-wild jungles—not to mention life-threatening encounters with wilderness diseases, angry hippos and some seriously bad guys—in order to find the treasure and save the day.

At twenty-four, Hera is a clump of unmet potential. To her, the future is nothing but an exhausting thought exercise, one depressing hypothetical after another. She’s sharp in more ways than one, adrift in her own smug malaise, until her new job moderating the comments section of an online news outlet—a role even more mind-numbing than it sounds—introduces her to Arthur, a middle-aged journalist. Though she's preferred women to men for years now, she soon finds herself falling into an all-consuming affair with him.

It’s bad enough that Mom and Dad are going on a trip without Judy and Stink and leaving them in the care of Aunt Awful (er, Opal). Now two of Judy’s friends are going Splitsville, too! Just when it looks like her summer is going to be the boringest, snoringest ever, Judy concocts a THRILL-a-delic plan. Judy Moody and Frank Pearl dive headlong into nonstop action in pursuit of the Judy Moodiest summer ever! Based on a screenplay by Megan McDonald and Kathy Waugh, Judy Moody and the NOT Bummer Summer will take listeners on a totally awesome adventure – RARE!

Achim is 11 years old when he moves from the orphanage to the house by the sea. Here everything is strange and new. But one day he discovers an unusual door that leads to a circular room with walls made of rough stone. The light coming through the window is hazy, as if the room is under water. It is a magic room - which he calls “The Adopted Room” - belonging to another world. And on a bed in the room sits a boy who is waiting to take Achim with him into the realm of the powerful Nameless One.

All the troubles in sixth-grader Claudia Harper’s life seem to start with her fourth-grade friend Dunford Wylie Booth V.

From the Waterstones Book Prize shortlisted author of A Boy Called Hope and The Boy Who Sailed the Ocean in an Armchair. Mabel has a suitcase full of worries - it turned up just after her dad disappeared and before her mum started dating Gavin. She worries about big things and little things and shoves them into her suitcase until it’s so full it might explode....

The utterly wonderful Clarice Bean is thinking about the endangered things: the big creatures, the little creatures, the plants and the trees. But it’s not just the planet that needs help – there’s her whole family too.

The Kidd siblings have grown up diving down to shipwrecks and traveling the world, helping their famous parents recover everything from swords to gold doubloons from the bottom of the ocean. But after their parents disappear on the job, the kids are suddenly thrust into the biggest treasure hunt of their lives. They'll have to work together to defeat dangerous pirates and dodge the hot pursuit of an evil treasure hunting rival, all while following cryptic clues to unravel the mystery of what really happened to their parents - and find out if they're still alive.

After sixth grade, the very worst year of his life, Rafe Khatchadorian thinks he has it made in seventh grade. He's been accepted to art school in the big city and imagines a math-and-history-free fun zone. Wrong! It's more competitive than Rafe ever expected, and to score big in class, he needs to find a way to turn his boring life into the inspiration for a work of art. His method? Operation: Get a Life! Anything he's never done before, he's going to do it, from learning to play poker to going to a modern art museum.

A couple awakens in a home in the woods to find themselves rapidly aging as their toddler remains unchanged. A work-worn employee navigates conspiracy theories and the threat of violence in an abandoned office. A tour guide leads a troublesome group to an ancient structure, apparently nonhuman in origin, discovering along the way that the most mysterious creatures of all are right beside him.

Paddington Bear always manages to find himself in tricky situations, sometimes extraordinary situations. Like the time he had a difficult encounter with a policeman or when he found himself in deep water with a newspaper reporter. But since arriving from his native Peru after an earthquake Paddington has always felt at home with the Brown family who found him on Paddington station.

Save the birds! Save the trees! That's what the cubs are saying around Bear Country. If Squire Grizzly gets his way and cuts down the trees in Birder's Woods, the yellow popinjays will have nowhere to rest. They could disappear forever. It's up to the cubs to save this important part of nature before it's too late!