"Keiko Furukura had always been considered a strange child, and her parents always worried how she would get on in the real world, so when she takes on a job in a convenience store while at university, they are delighted for her. For her part, in the convenience store she finds a predictable world mandated by the store manual, which dictates how the workers should act and what they should say, and she copies her coworkers' style of dress and speech...

"The rising star and face of the new field "science of the individual" draws from the latest psychological and sociological research to show that success is found in individual strengths and weaknesses that don't fit along any average curve--a powerful manifesto for change in the ranks of Emotional Intelligence and The Power of Habit.Modern science has proven that people behave and learn in distinctive ways. And yet these individual patterns get lost...

Bjorn is a compulsive, meticulous bureaucrat who discovers a secret room at the government office where he works--a secret room that no one else in his office will acknowledge. When Bjorn is in his room, what his co-workers see is him standing by the wall and staring off into space looking dazed, relaxed, and decidedly creepy. Bjorn's bizarre behavior eventually leads his co-workers to try and have him fired, but Bjorn will turn the tables on them...

"Once upon a time in a castle high on a hill lived an inventor whose greatest creation was named Edward. Although Edward had an irresistible charm, he wasn't quite perfect. The inventor's sudden death left him unfinished, with sharp shears of metal for hands. Edward lived alone in the darkness until one day a kind Avon lady took him home to live with her family. And so began Edward's fantastical adventures in a pastel paradise known as Suburbia"--Container....

Fifty years after Hannah Arendt examined the dynamics of conformity in her seminal account of the Eichmann trial, "Beautiful Souls" explores the flipside of the banality of evil, mapping out what impels ordinary people to defy the sway of authority and convention.

After being captured and surgically transformed into a "special," teenaged Tally Youngblood, now a government agent programmed to protect society from outside threats, is ordered to eliminate the rebel colony New Smoke, Tally's former home.

A dystopian society is tightly controlled by the computers that oversee and regulate it. Rebels against its drug-induced conformity must therefore try to change the computer's fundamental programming. This Perfect Day is set in a seemingly perfect global society. Uniformity is the defining feature; there is only one language and all ethnic groups have been eugenically merged into one race called 'The Family'. The world is ruled by a central computer...

When the lemmings encounter a bear, they are determined to help him be more "distinguished'--just like they are--but little do they realize this bear could be exactly what they need to save them from themselves.--

"The world tilted for Elodee this year, and now it's impossible for her to be the same as she was before. Not when her feelings have such a strong grip on her heart. Not when she and her twin sister, Naomi, seem to be drifting apart. So when Elodee's mom gets a new job in Eventown, moving seems like it might just fix everything. Indeed, life in Eventown is comforting and exciting all at once. Their kitchen comes with a box of recipes for Elodee to...

In a future where most people have computer implants in their heads to control their environment, a boy meets an unusual girl who is in serious trouble. So says Titus, a teenager whose ability to read, write, and even think for himself has been almost completely obliterated by his "feed, " a transmitter implanted directly into his brain. Feeds are a crucial part of life for Titus and his friends. After all, how else would they know where to party...