Da Qin—Big Piano—and her younger sister, Xiao Qin—Little Piano—live in the city of Wuhan with their parents. For decades, China's government had kept the country separated from the rest of the world. When their country's leader, Chairman Mao, dies, new opportunities begin to emerge. Da Qin and Xiao Qin soon learn that their childhood will be much different than the upbringing their parents experienced.

    Her patience snaps, eventually. Pure in her love, this gentle woman is transformed into an avenging angel, raining death and doom on all her foes, until the gods are forced to intervene. Ilango Adigal's Tamil classic, Shilappadikaram presents life with all its flaws but also with hope.

    Born and raised in South Carolina as a son of immigrants, he knew that his parents had fled Vietnam during the fall of Saigon. But even as they struggled to adapt to life in America, they preferred to forget the past—and to focus on their children’s future. It was only in his late twenties that GB began to learn their extraordinary story. When his last surviving grandparents die within months of each other, GB visits Vietnam for the first time and begins to learn the tragic history of his family, and of the homeland they left behind. In this family saga played out in the shadow of history, GB uncovers the root of his father’s remoteness and why his mother had remained in an often fractious marriage; why his grandfather had abandoned his own family to fight for the Viet Cong; why his grandmother had had an affair with a French soldier. GB learns that his parents had taken harrowing flight from Saigon during the final hours of the war not because they thought America was better but because they were afraid of what would happen if they stayed. They entered America—a foreign land they couldn’t even imagine—where family connections dissolved and shared history was lost within a span of a single generation.In telling his family’s story, GB finds his own place in this saga of hardship and heroism. Vietnamerica is a visually stunning portrait of survival, escape, and reinvention—and of the gift of the American immigrants’ dream, passed on to their children. Vietnamerica is an unforgettable story of family revelation and reconnection—and a new graphic-memoir classic.

     Mother Teresa wanted to do “something beautiful for God.” At the time of her death in 1997, there were nearly 4,000 Missionaries of Charity Sisters established in 610 houses in 123 countries. The congregation did not cease growing with her death. Today, there are more than 5,000 Sisters. The work continues to thrive as the network of Missionaries of Charity continues to operate centers in countries throughout the world. In 1985, Mother Teresa was invited to address the United Nations General Assembly. On that occasion, the Secretary General of the United Nations, Javier Pérez de Cuéllar, called her “the most powerful woman in the world.” At the end of 1999, two years after Mother Teresa’s death, Gallup published a poll of America’s most widely admired people of the 20th century. Mother Teresa topped the list, ahead of such luminaries as Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr., Helen Keller, Winston Churchill, and Albert Einstein.

    (It's like camping, but much more expensive.) Loosely based on actual events, but sometimes veering unexpectedly into fantasy, the story plays with the challenges nature presents to city folk as they forage for berries, get stuck up a tree, make perilous encounters with stinging wildlife, compete to build the best fire and discover the importance of finding good sticks. Also, it rains. It's about the human desire to get back to nature. Or to return to childhood and hit things with sticks.Funny, moving, beautifully drawn, Collecting Sticks can stand beside Joff Winterhart’s classic graphic novel of family life, Days of the Bagnold Summer.

    This authorized biography (formerly titled Mercy My Mission), includes many excerpts from Faustina's famous diary. Whether read alone or as a study aid to reading the diary itself, this book is an inspiring and reliable introduction to this remarkable twentieth-century saint.

    Tossed on a ship bearing him to the icy northern reaches of Britannia, Jurian dreams of a mysterious woman and a sword driven into a stone. Kneeling in the candlelight in Cyrene, Sabra hears the whisper of the dragon in the depths of the earth. Taking the mantle from her gravely ill father, Aikaterina rules her fragile city under the threat of imperial disfavor. As the fourth century dawns over Rome, Jurian seeks to regain his honor along the Empire’s brutal northern frontier. When Casca brings back word from the oracle of Apollo, the Emperor decides that the only way to save the Empire is to solve the “Christian problem” once and for all. He needs only one spark to set the world ablaze. As the storm of fire and blood sweeps across the Empire, Jurian relinquishes his sword and the honor he most desires to fulfill the prophecy along with his destiny. Saints aren’t born. They are forged.

    Francine and Katchoo are high-school best friends who are reunited when Francine comes back to town after years away from her hometown. David is their new friend entangled in their complicated lives. From creepy ex-boyfriends and insensitive bosses to the reality of AIDS and underworld prostitution, you never know what will come up next - but you can always count on laughing and crying at the same time. This foil-stamped casebound hardcover with color dust jacket includes a special color cover art section, sketches, and more.

    As Josephine contends with life, family, and work in Cleveland, letters from Leonard sustain her. But official censorship forces him to leave out much of the most significant action he sees.Finally, with the war coming to an end, Leonard is able to tell his full story. In a quietly beautiful letter to Josephine, Leonard writes of the loneliness he felt, the camaraderie he experienced, and the terrible violence he witnessed.Now, Josephine and Leonard's grandson Joseph Sieracki has carefully researched the battles Leonard describes and expanded the letter into a moving tale of a young man's fears and bravery far from home. Brought to heart-wrenching life by the paintbrushes of Kelly Williams (Creepy, Eerie), A Letter to Jo is at once a tender love story and harrowing battlefield memoir.

    The son of white explorers. Gabriel is actually the reincarnation of the Grand Lama of Tibet. In his quest to learn the sacred ways and confront a great prophecy, Gabriel begins an arduous physical training program under the tutelage of the master warrior, Tzu. Meanwhile, corruption has found its way into the Grand Lama's own monastery in his absence. Now Gabriel must awaken his own mystical powers and overcome great challenges if he is to find his way to the monastery and fulfill his destiny.

    It was the worst bloodbath to take place in more than a century in the heart of the supreme authority of the world's one billion Roman Catholics. Four hours later, the Vatican announced that the lance corporal, twenty-three-year-old Cédric Tornay, had shot the couple, then committed suicide in "a fit of madness" brought on by frutstration with the unit's discipline - a conclusion it reaffirmed after a nine-month internal inquiry.But as John Follain's hard-hitting exposé shows, the official report was a travesty, a tissue of suppositions, contradictions, and omissions. Based on an exhaustive three-year investigation - the first independent attempt to establish the truth - 'City of Secrets' reveals how the Vatican, the oldest and most secretive autocracy in the world, staged an elaborate plot to obstruct justice and hide the scandals it dares not confess. Echoing the pace and plotting of a highstakes thriller, Follain's true-life tale of intrigue moves from the guards' barracks and the pope's palace in Vatican City to Paris, Berlin, and the Swiss Alps, and features a fascinating cast: an old, suffering John Paul II; his chief bodyguard, formerly accused of spying for the Soviet bloc; a mysterious priest punished by the Vatican; and the powerful Opus Dei sect.Timely and explosive, 'City of Secrets' is the story of a still-unsolved crime committed on holy territory, and of a systematic attempt to hide the fatal failings of a security force charged with protecting one of the world's most influential leaders.

    That was the year the war broke out in Sarajevo, Bosnia, the year that genocide revisited the planet. It was the year that Ervin Rustemagic - an international businessman whose clients included author Joe Kubert - found himself and his family trapped in a city under siege. Ervin's only means of communication to the outside world was via his fax machine. As Joe began to receive these messages from Ervin, he did what he had done for years - he put the story to paper. Renowned comics creator Joe Kubert has been writing and illustrating comic books since the 1940s, including Batman, Superman, Tarzan, Enemy Ace, and Sgt. Rock. Fax from Sarajevo is by far one of the highest achievements of one of comics' greatest living masters.

    Jonathan Vankin's Big Book of the '70s looks in surprising depth at the trends and the notable figures of that decade, using illustrations from dozens of excellent comics artists like Shary Flenniken and Terry Laban. Richard Nixon, Jane Fonda, Burt Reynolds, and Jimmy Carter all get the Big Book treatment in a delicious combination of behind-the-scenes peeks and easily digested history lessons. Fads and phenomena like disco, running, and the rise of the women's movement are also explained and, in some cases, followed up through modern times. The writing is clear and snappy, the illustration is consistently well-done, and the topics chosen are a thorough, comprehensive mix of lightweight (pet rocks) and serious (Vietnam). --RobLightner

    But Dasha is more worried about her own challenges as she negotiates family, friendships and school without her mother. Just as she begins to find her own feet, she gets word that she is to join her mother in America — a place that seems impossibly far from everything and everyone she loves.This gorgeous and subtly illustrated graphic novel signals the emergence of Dasha Tolstikova as a major new talent.