Seventeen-year-old David Balfour's villainous uncle has him kidnapped in order to steal his inheritance. David escapes only to fall into the dangerous company of rebels who are resisting British redcoats in the Scottish highlands.
Young Peony is sold into a rich Chinese household as a bondmaid - an awkward role in which she is more a servant, but less a daughter. As she grows into a lovely, provocative young woman, Peony falls in love with the family's only son. However, tradition forbids them to wed. How she resolves her love for him and her devotion to her adoptive family unfolds in this profound tale, based on true events in China over a century ago.
Ray Bradbury's moving recollection of a vanished golden era remains one of his most enchanting novels. Dandelion Wine stands out in the Bradbury literary canon as the author's most deeply personal work, a semi-autobiographical recollection of a magical small-town summer in 1928.
Twelve-year-old Douglas Spaulding knows Green Town, Illinois, is as vast and deep as the whole wide world that lies beyond the city limits. It is a pair of brand-new tennis shoes, the first harvest of dandelions for Grandfather's renowned intoxicant, the distant clang of the trolley's bell on a hazy afternoon, It is yesteryear and tomorrow blended into an unforgettable always. But as young Douglas is about to discover, summer can be more than the repetition of established rituals whose mystical power holds time at bay. It can be a best friend moving away, a human time machine who can transport you back to the Civil War, or a sideshow automaton able to glimpse the bittersweet future.
Come and savor Bradbury's priceless distillation of all that is eternal about boyhood and summer.
In The Voyage Out, one of Virginia Woolf's wittiest, socially satirical novels, Rachel Vinrace embarks for South America on her father's ship and is launched on a course of self-discovery in a modern version of the mythic voyage.
Samuel Butler's autobiographical account of a harsh upbringing and troubled adulthood satirizes Victorian hypocrisy in its chronicle of the life and loves of Ernest Pontifex. Along the way, it offers a powerful indictment of nineteenth-century England's major institutions.
Before You Take a Stand ... You Got to Take a Chance.
Holden Harris is an eighteen-year-old locked in a prison of autism. Despite his quiet ways and quirky behaviors, Holden is very happy and socially normal---on the inside, in a private world all his own. In reality, he is bullied at school by kids who only see that he is very different.
Ella Reynolds is part of the 'in' crowd. A cheerleader and star of the high school drama production, her life seems perfect. When she catches Holden listening to her rehearse for the school play, she is drawn to him ... the way he is drawn to the music. Then, Ella makes a dramatic discovery---she and Holden were best friends as children.
Frustrated by the way Holden is bullied, and horrified at the indifference of her peers, Ella decides to take a stand against the most privileged and popular kids at school. Including her boyfriend, Jake.
Ella believes miracles can happen in the unlikeliest places, and that just maybe an entire community might celebrate from the sidelines. But will Holden's praying mother and the efforts of Ella and a cast of theater kids be enough to unlock the prison that contains Holden?
This time, friendship, faith, and the power of a song must be strong enough to open the doors to the miracle Holden needs.
The wondrous Aimee Bender conjures the lush and moving story of a girl whose magical gift is really a devastating curse.
On the eve of her ninth birthday, unassuming Rose Edelstein, a girl at the periphery of schoolyard games and her distracted parents’ attention, bites into her mother’s homemade lemon-chocolate cake and discovers she has a magical gift: she can taste her mother’s emotions in the cake. She discovers this gift to her horror, for her mother—her cheerful, good-with-crafts, can-do mother—tastes of despair and desperation. Suddenly, and for the rest of her life, food becomes a peril and a threat to Rose.
The curse her gift has bestowed is the secret knowledge all families keep hidden—her mother’s life outside the home, her father’s detachment, her brother’s clash with the world. Yet as Rose grows up she learns to harness her gift and becomes aware that there are secrets even her taste buds cannot discern.
The Particular Sadness of Lemon Cake is a luminous tale about the enormous difficulty of loving someone fully when you know too much about them. It is heartbreaking and funny, wise and sad, and confirms Aimee Bender’s place as “a writer who makes you grateful for the very existence of language” (San Francisco Chronicle).
Anthropology of an American Girl is a semi-autobiographical novel. It is the story of a young woman and her culture that strives for a measure of narrative depth, detail, and objectivity. It follows its protagonist, Eveline Auerbach, as she moves through a pre-digital American landscape during the 1970s and 1980s. In the most basic respect, it is a coming of age story that prescribes a return to simplicity as the most rational and ethical response to the chaos and confusion of upward mobility.
Introducing a fresh, exciting Chinese-American voice, Girl in Translation is an inspiring debut about a young immigrant in America, a smart girl who, living a double life between school and sweatshop, understands that her family's future is in her hands.
Skylar and Storm Morrison may be gorgeous twin sisters, but they are as different as night and day. Skylar is savvy and book-smart; Storm is shrewd and street-smart. But a twist of fate lands Storm in jail, where she must trade her Fendi bags and Prada boots for an orange jumpsuit and laceless white sneakers. Meanwhile Skylar makes a name for herself by transforming the restaurant that once belonged to the twins' late father, Dutch, into Legends, Philadelphia's hottest new nightclub.
Now, newly released from prison, Storm has some serious living to do. And she's ready to take control of what's rightfully hers—a share of Legends—with the help of some of Philly's most notorious thugs. But moving back into the real world will prove much harder than Storm ever imagined. And as Skylar and Storm negotiate their new relationship, both women will feel the pull of Dutch, a figure so powerful he can keep his girls in line years after his death. In the end, the sisters will have to face their shared, tumultuous past—and a future that's both uncertain and wide open.
From Gail Godwin, three-time National Book Award finalist and acclaimed New York Times bestselling author of Evensong and The Finishing School, comes a sweeping new novel of friendship, loyalty, rivalries, redemption, and memory.
It is the fall of 1951 at Mount St. Gabriel's, an all-girls school tucked away in the mountains of North Carolina. Tildy Stratton, the undisputed queen bee of her class, befriends Chloe Starnes, a new student recently orphaned by the untimely and mysterious death of her mother. Their friendship fills a void for both girls but also sets in motion a chain of events that will profoundly affect the course of many lives, including the girls' young teacher and the school's matriarch, Mother Suzanne Ravenel.
Fifty years on, the headmistress relives one pivotal night, trying to reconcile past and present, reaching back even further to her own senior year at the school, where the roots of a tragedy are buried.
In Unfinished Desires, a beloved author delivers a gorgeous new novel in which thwarted desires are passed on for generations–and captures the rare moment when a soul breaks free.
Adventurous and fun-loving Becca Daniels loves the rush of new experiences and is constantly pushing the envelope---trying everything from extreme sports, to wild hair colors, to skydiving. So when a broken leg grounds her temporarily, Becca doesn't take the interruption well. Grumpy, restless, and at loose ends, Becca bristles one day when some of her Getaway Girls Book Club friends tease her about being commitment-phobic. To prove them wrong, Becca impulsively promises to accept a date with the next guy who asks her out; and to date him for three months or twenty-five dates---whichever comes first. Unfortunately, the first invitation comes from Ben---too 'churchy' and definitely not Becca's type. Determined to win the bet, however, the two embark on a hilarious series of dates that plunge the outspoken, purple-haired Becca into a sea of church potlucks and prayer meetings. Ultimately, the dating experiment opens Becca's eyes to a new perspective on her life's purpose and a new understanding of who's directing her path---an epiphany that could lead to her biggest adventure yet.
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