She was up long before the sun to begin her farm work, as usual. But this would be no ordinary day, this second Friday of the new year. This was the day Leonida and a group of smallholder farmers in western Kenya would begin their exodus, as she said, “from misery to Canaan,” the land of milk and honey.Africa’s smallholder farmers, most of whom are women, know misery. They toil in a time warp, living and working essentially as their forebears did a century ago. With tired seeds, meager soil nutrition, primitive storage facilities, wretched roads, and no capital or credit, they harvest less than one-quarter the yields of Western farmers. The romantic ideal of African farmers––rural villagers in touch with nature, tending bucolic fields––is in reality a horror scene of malnourished children, backbreaking manual work, and profound hopelessness. Growing food is their driving preoccupation, and still they don’t have enough to feed their families throughout the year. The wanjala––the annual hunger season that can stretch from one month to as many as eight or nine––abides.But in January 2011, Leonida and her neighbors came together and took the enormous risk of trying to change their lives. Award-winning author and world hunger activist Roger Thurow spent a year with four of them––Leonida Wanyama, Rasoa Wasike, Francis Mamati, and Zipporah Biketi––to intimately chronicle their efforts. In The Last Hunger Season, he illuminates the profound challenges these farmers and their families face, and follows them through the seasons to see whether, with a little bit of help from a new social enterprise organization called One Acre Fund, they might transcend lives of dire poverty and hunger.The daily dramas of the farmers’ lives unfold against the backdrop of a looming global challenge: to feed a growing population, world food production must nearly double by 2050. If these farmers succeed, so might we all.

    By making small changes like sleeping under mosquito nets and big ones like building a clinic with outside help, the Malahos and their neighbors transform their Kenyan village from one afraid of illness to a thriving community. "A great resource for introducing children to the issues surrounding global health and empowering them to get involved." — Ophelia Dahl, Executive Director, Partners In Health

    Brought up in an evangelical household in the Bible Belt, his religion had provided no answers to his parents' broken marriage, or, indeed, his own divorce. The key to his salvation would come from a most unlikely source: a flyer calling for Peace Corps volunteers. A year later, Hatcher finds himself in Tanzania, East Africa. As a geography teacher at an all-girls' boarding school, he's expected broaden his students' horizons, but instead it is his own worldview that is challenged—by encounters with local shamans; dangerous ascents on Mounts Kenya, Kilimanjaro, and Meru; and especially a friendship with a Muslim student. Through tragedy and triumph, by questioning the very core of his being, he manages to escape the confines of his "marble room" and gain a new understanding of himself and God. Filled with breathtaking accounts of death-defying mountain climbs and the spectacular beauty of the African countryside, this memoir is both a tale of adventure and self-discovery—and proof that even the most naive and insular American can achieve a spiritual awakening.

    But human communication?Not so much, thinks Starlite Higgins, the talented young vet he has hired over the objection of others. He is prickly, remote, critical, and Starlite, anxious to please and accustomed to success, is unable to win his approval.When Renny and Starlite set out on a dangerous mission, they rescue a severely injured baby rhino whose mother has been killed by poachers. Upon their return to Kihali, they must work together to save the little orphan, now named Zuri--the word means "beautiful" in Swahili.The little orphan's courage and determination and the idyllic beauty of Kihali, gradually break down Renny's and Starlite's emotional walls. Little by little, they each confront their own painful, invisible wounds.But how can Starlite know the secret Renny guards is as shocking as the past she conceals?A KISS AT KIHALI is an inspirational story of grief, healing, and second chances.(A KISS AT KIHALI contains no sex or cursing and is appropriate for adult and young adult readers. A KISS AT KIHALI was originally published under the title Zuri.)