The Big House

Lynne and Louise were stepwives for ten years. While they managed a barely civil relationship, each was seething with anger on the inside. It all boiled over in an ugly scene on the day Lynne saw that Louise was wearing shoes identical to her own favorite pair, and then they knew they had to find a new way of being a family.

With the guidance of marriage and family therapist Marjorie Vego Krausz, Lynne Oxhorn-Ringwood and Louise Oxhorn developed a ten-step program that has helped thousands of women begin to go from sworn enemies to CoMamas. You don't have to follow the program together with your stepwife; even if only one of you follows the plan, your stepwife relationship and the happiness of your family will improve. Learn how to:

• Establish a good working relationship with your stepwife

• Put the children first

• Understand your husband's/ex-husband's role and how he can help

• Handle vacations, holidays, and other big occasions

Ramona Quimby is the youngest of all the famous characters in Mrs. Cleary's wonderful Henry Huggins stories. She is also far and away the most deadly. Readers of the earlier books will remember that Ramona has always been a menace to Beezus, her older sister, to Henry, and to his dog Ribsy. It is not that Ramona deliberately sets out to make trouble for other people. She simply has more imagination than is healthy for any one person.

In this book Ramona and her imagination really come into their own. Starting with a fairly mild encounter with the librarian, which is harder on Beezus than anyone else, Ramona goes from strength to strength, winding up by inviting her entire kindergarten class to a part at her home without mentioning it to her mother. The riot that ensues is probably the most hilarious episode in this extremely funny book, which proves that Mrs. Cleary's imagination is almost as lively as Ramona's.

This eBook Contains:

The Wonderful Wizard of Oz
The Marvelous Land of Oz
Ozma of Oz
Dorothy and the Wizard in Oz
The Road to Oz
The Emerald City of Oz
The Patchwork Girl of Oz
Tik-Tok of Oz
The Scarecrow of Oz
Rinkitink in Oz
The Lost Princess of Oz
The Tin Woodsman of Oz
The Magic of Oz
Glinda of Oz
Little Wizard Stories of Oz

The Wizard of Oz, known during his reign as The Great and Powerful Oz, is the epithet of Oscar Zoroaster Phadrig Isaac Norman Henkel Emmannuel Ambroise Diggs, a fictional character in the Land of Oz, created by American author L. Frank Baum.
The character was further popularized by the classic 1939 movie, wherein his full name is not mentioned.

The Wizard is one of the characters in The Wonderful Wizard of Oz. Unseen for most of the novel, he is the ruler of the Land of Oz and highly venerated by his subjects. Believing he is the only man capable of solving their problems, Dorothy Gale and her friends travel to the Emerald City, the capital of Oz, to meet him. Oz is very reluctant to meet them, but eventually each is granted an audience, one by one. On each of these occasions, the Wizard appears in a different form, once as a giant head, once as a beautiful fairy, once as a ball of fire, and once as a horrible monster. When, at last, he grants an audience to all of them at once, he seems to be invisible—nothing but a disembodied voice.
Eventually, it is revealed that Oz is actually none of these things, but rather a kind, ordinary man from Omaha, Nebraska, who has been using a lot of elaborate magic tricks and props to make himself seem "great and powerful." Working as a magician for a circus, he wrote OZ (the initials of his first and middle name) on the side of his balloon for promotional purposes. One day his balloon sailed into the Land of Oz, and he found himself worshipped as a great sorcerer. As Oz had no leadership at the time, he became Supreme Ruler of the kingdom, and did his best to sustain the myth.
He leaves Oz at the end of the novel, again in a hot air balloon. After the Wizard's departure, the Scarecrow is briefly enthroned, until the rightful hereditary ruler of Oz, Princess Ozma, is freed from the witch Mombi at the end of The Marvelous Land of Oz.
In Dorothy and the Wizard in Oz, Oz explains that his real name is Oscar Zoroaster Phadrig Isaac Norman Henkel Emmannuel Ambroise Diggs. To shorten this name, he used only his initials (O.Z.P.I.N.H.E.A.D.), but since they spell out the word pinhead, he shortened his name further and called himself "Oz".
In The Marvelous Land of Oz, the Wizard is described as having usurped the throne of King Pastoria and handed over the baby princess to Mombi. This did not please the readers, and in Ozma of Oz, although the character did not appear, Baum described Ozma's abduction without including the Wizard as part of it.
The Wizard returns in the novel Dorothy and the Wizard in Oz. With Dorothy and the boy Zeb, he falls through a crack in the earth; in their underground journey, he acts as their guide and protector. When Ozma rescues them from the underground kingdoms, he recounts his story of becoming the ruler of Oz, and Ozma explains that before the witches usurped her grandfather's throne (an occurrence happening long before the wizard arrived), the ruler of Oz had always been known as Oz or (if female) Ozma. Ozma then permits him to live in Oz permanently. He becomes an apprentice to Glinda, the most powerful magic-worker in Oz. Ozma decrees that, besides herself, only The Wizard and Glinda are allowed to use magic.
In later books, he proves himself quite an inventor, providing devices that aid in various characters’ journeys. He introduces to Oz the use of mobile phones in Tik-Tok of Oz. Some of his most elaborate devices are the Ozpril and the Oztober, balloon-powered Ozoplanes in Ozoplaning with the Wizard of Oz, and intelligent taxis called Scalawagons in The Scalawagons of Oz.