Big action. Bigger thrills. And the hero always wins.But Gene doesn’t get sports. As a kid, his friends called him “Stick” and every basketball game he played ended in pain. He lost interest in basketball long ago, but at the high school where he now teaches, it's all anyone can talk about. The men’s varsity team, the Dragons, is having a phenomenal season that’s been decades in the making. Each victory brings them closer to their ultimate goal: the California State Championships.Once Gene gets to know these young all-stars, he realizes that their story is just as thrilling as anything he’s seen on a comic book page. He knows he has to follow this epic to its end. What he doesn’t know yet is that this season is not only going to change the Dragons’s lives, but his own life as well.

    She starts visiting a website for “completers”— www. through-the-light.com.While she’s on the site, Daelyn blogs about her life, uncovering a history of bullying that goes back to kindergarten. When she’s not on the Web, Daelyn’s at her private school, where she’s known as the freak who doesn’t talk.Then, a boy named Santana begins to sit with her after school while she’s waiting to for her parents to pick her up. Even though she’s made it clear that she wants to be left alone, Santana won’t give up. And it’s too late for Daelyn to be letting people into her life... isn't it?National Book Award finalist Julie Anne Peters shines a light on how bullying can push young people to the very edge.

    Then the family is rounded up, deported to Auschwitz, and separated. Now Riva is alone. At Auschwitz, and later in the work camps at Mittlesteine and Grafenort, Riva vows to live, and to hope - for Mama, for her brothers, for the millions of other victims of the nightmare of the Holocaust. And through determination and courage, and unexpected small acts of kindness, she does live - to write the unforgettable memoir that is a testament to the strength of the human spirit.

    Rough receives the test results that confirm she is a carrier of the genetic condition "hypohidrotic ectodermal dysplasia," or H.E.D., it propels her on a journey deep into her family's past in the American West.At first glance, H.E.D. seems only to be a superficial condition: a peculiar facial bone structure, sparse hair, few teeth, and an inability to sweat. But a closer look reveals the source of a lifetime of infections, breathing problems, and drug dependency for Bonnie's grandfather Earl, who suffered from the disorder. After a boyhood as a small-town oddity and an adulthood fraught with disaster, Earl died penniless and alone at the age of 49. Bonnie's mother was left with an inheritance that included not just the gene for H.E.D., but also the emotional pain that came from witnessing her father's misery.As Bonnie and her husband consider becoming parents themselves, their biological legacy haunts every decision. The availability of genetic testing gives them new choices to make, choices more excruciating than any previous generation could have imagined. Ultimately, Carrier is a story of a modern moral crisis, one that reveals the eternal tension between past and future."

    In the midst of the overwhelming struggles that accompanied autism, he continues to persevere. Her father’s love enabled her to overcome insurmountable obstacles, discovered the power of love and embraced the gift of life.

    Lauderdale beach community through psychological, physical and sexual abuse. But on a summer night in 1993, Bobby was lured to the edge of the Florida everglades with a promise of sex and drugs and was never seen alive again. The tormentor had become the victim in a bizarre and brutal act of vengeance carried out with ruthless efficiency and cold-blooded premeditation by seven of his high school acquaintances, including his lifelong best friend and instigated by one overweight, under-loved teenager who believed her life would be perfect if only Bobby Kent were dead.Bully is a riveting story of adolescent rage and bloody revenge all the more harrowing and horrific because it's true.

    In 2004, four Latino teenagers arrived at the Marine Advanced Technology Education Robotics Competition at the University of California, Santa Barbara. They were born in Mexico but raised in Phoenix, Arizona, where they attended an underfunded public high school. No one had ever suggested to Oscar, Cristian, Luis, or Lorenzo that they might amount to much - but two inspiring science teachers had convinced these impoverished, undocumented kids from the desert who had never even seen the ocean that they should try to build an underwater robot. And build a robot they did. Their robot wasn't pretty, especially compared to those of the competition. They were going up against some of the best collegiate engineers in the country, including a team from MIT backed by a $10,000 grant from ExxonMobil. The Phoenix teenagers had scraped together less than $1,000 and built their robot out of scavenged parts. This was never a level competition—and yet, against all odds... they won! But this is just the beginning for these four, whose story—which became a key inspiration to the DREAMers movement—will go on to include first-generation college graduations, deportation, bean-picking in Mexico, and service in Afghanistan. Joshua Davis' Spare Parts is a story about overcoming insurmountable odds and four young men who proved they were among the most patriotic and talented Americans in this country—even as the country tried to kick them out.