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Pregnancy is a time of excitement, joy, and no small amount of anxiety. Fortunately, you don’t have to go it alone! The Pregnancy Instruction Manual is a comprehensive yet irreverent guide to everything you need to know, with information and advice on:

–Your baby’s-and your-growth, trimester by trimester
–What to expect from your doctor’s visits
–The joys of “pregnancy brain” and what to do about it
–Separating fact from fiction when it comes to labor and delivery

Each chapter is brimming with essential tips for expectant moms and dads and illustrated in the fresh, award-winning visual style that has made our Baby Owner’s Manual (more than 350,000 copies sold!) a huge hit with readers everywhere.

SARAH JORDAN has written on parenting for magazines and newspapers and is the coauthor of The Worst-Case Scenario Survival Handbook: Parenting and The Worst-Case Scenario Survival Handbook: Weddings. She lives in Philadelphia with her husband and two children.

DAVID UFBERG, M.D., a board-certified obstetrician and gynecologist at Pennsylvania Hospital and father of three, has delivered thousands of babies. He lives outside Philadelphia.

Expecting moms have plenty of weird and blush-worthy questions they’d rather not ask their doctors:

    * Is it okay to get a bikini wax?

    * Can my baby cry in the womb?

    * Why have I gained so much weight?

The Pregnancy Test turns these questions and others into a delightful multiple-choice guessing game, complete with carefully researched and informative responses to the wildest and most outrageous concerns.

Authors Melissa Heckscher and Dr. Emily Sikking test readers’ knowledge of everything from fetal development to labor and delivery—and along the way, you’ll learn why pregnant women should stay off roller coasters and go easy on caffeine.

The perfect gift for new moms (and a terrific refresher course for seasoned veterans), The Pregnancy Test answers everything you’ve ever wondered while expecting.

MELISSA H ECKSCHER is the mother of a wonderful 1½-year-old boy. She also writes for several newspapers in the Los Angeles area, including The Los Angeles Daily News and the San Bernadino Sun. DR. EMILY SIKKING is a board-certified ob-gyn at St. John’s Hospital in Santa Monica, California.

Just like people, plants search far and wide for perfect companions—their soil mates are special plants who bring out their best traits and keep bad influences away. And it’s our job as gardeners to help these lovelorn veggies find each other.

In this charming guide to companion planting for all your vegetable-garden favorites, you’ll learn why Broccoli ❤ Rosemary and whether Potato + Corn = friends with benefits. (Just watch out for Celery! “Leggy and leafy, she is notoriously easy-going and will happily settle down with just about anyone, raising a ruckus in your raised beds.”) Complete with 20 pairings, full plant information, tasty recipes, and more, Soil Mates is the perfect partner for your horticultural matchmaker.

SARA ALWAY is a graphic designer who believes in sustainable agriculture. She lives in Ohio, where she tends her own garden of happy soil mates. A former farm specialist at Seeds of Change, KELLE CARTER manages her own market garden and CSA in Colorado.

This is ridiculous. You’re sitting there reading commercial copy-of all things!!-when there’s an insanely cute puppy at the top of this page, just begging to be fawned over. Look at the puppy! Look at his wet wittle nose! And his precious wittle ears. Isn’t he adorable? Don’t you want to snuggle with him? Isn’t he so cute you could die?

Inside this book you’ll find hundreds of ridiculously cute photographs. Kittens, ducklings, baby seals, grinning dolphins, hamsters with silly hats-they’re all here, and they’re all irresistible. Other publishers would be afraid to put so much cuteness in a single book. But we see that puppy and our hearts just melt. Look deep into his eyes. Now tell us you won’t give him a home.

JENNIE SUMMERS is supercute. She lives in Philadelphia.

The English language is full of words that sounds obscene but aren’t. Terms like arsole (an organic chemical compound) and crack spread (a calculation showing theoretical market values of petroleum). Words like cunctator (a person who procrastinates, delays, or wastes time) and spotted dick (a traditional English dessert made with hot, thick custard).

Seventh-grade language arts teacher Eric Groves Sr. has spent years listening to his students giggle after he used words like thespian, coccyx, and masticate. Now he has compiled hundreds of these foul-sounding terms into a delightfully innocent dictionary, complete with illustrated definitions of their true meanings. From air cock (a valve on a boiler) and bushmaster (a large venomous snake) to cummingtonite (a mineral) and beyond, Butt Rot and Bottom Gas is a wonderful reference for word lovers and the snickering seventh grader in all of us.

ERIC GROVES SR. is a middle-school teacher in California.

Feuding in-laws, manipulative wedding planners, rehearsal dinner meltdowns—there’s no end to the ways a wedding can go wrong. But have no fear: The Bride’s Instruction Manual covers all the topics the bride-to-be needs to know to march down the aisle with confidence.

In a concise and irreverent approach, noted wedding expert Carrie Denny offers advice for setting the date, choosing the dress, selecting attendants, deciding on a wedding site, drafting a guest list, designing invitations, and more. And it’s all illustrated in the trademark “techy” style that has helped Quirk Owner’s and Instruction Manuals sell more than one million copies worldwide.

Complete with tons of useful information (and chock-full of cheat sheets to keep readers on track and on budget), The Bride’s Instruction Manual is the perfect shower gift for every blushing bride-to-be.

CARRIE DENNY is editor of Philadelphia’s Elegant Weddings magazine.

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