This year the bead-snatching grad game called "Gotcha" has been banned as an official school activity because the teachers have decided to put an end to a dangerous tradition. After paying an entry fee the players are given a bead and someone's name. The object of the game is snatch the bead of your victim and take their name. The winner ends up with all the beads--and all the money.After the game is banned it becomes even more appealing. The game goes underground and more grads than ever are participating. Katie is reluctant to join in, but as a member of grad council she feels she has to go along.The game quickly spins out of control. Katie finds herself losing friends and falling victim to her classmates' obsession with the game. She considers dropping out of the game but then devises a better way of getting even with her classmates. Katie finds herself sliding further and further down the chute that leads to disaster. Can she bring a safe end to this deadly game?

     Growing up in Chicago in the 1950s, Neecey once felt that her world was perfect. She was loved and protected by her father, Jesse, and lived in relative comfort with her mother, Ruby, her grandmother, Ma ’Dear, and her siblings. But when Ruby and Jesse’s marriage falls apart due to Jesse’s cheating ways and Ruby’s hot temper, the children are eventually abandoned by their father and end up living in poverty in a housing project. Ruby plunges into depression and anger, yelling at and hitting her children without warning. Ruby brings shiftless suitors into her home and gives them her body and her time, leaving Neecey to learn on her own how to cook and care for her five younger siblings, some mere babies. Yet despite the trauma, Neecey’s love for her sisters and brother, and ultimately herself, helps her find the inner strength to succeed. Cris Burks has created a poignant portrait of a child who strives to soar above a world of pain.

    She books a trip to India, hoping that there she will be able to put her grief into perspective. Though this is her first visit, India has always tantalized her: her English mother, Rose, was raised in Calcutta during the twilight of the British Raj, but seldom spoke of her childhood. Then, as Anna departs, Rose gives her a manuscript in which she has recorded her Indian memories, torn between two cultures and belonging completely to neither.

    Christian Europe was seen as an outer darkness of barbarism and unbelief from which there was nothing to learn or to fear. And then everything changed. The West won victory after victory, first on the battlefield and then in the marketplace.In this elegantly written volume, Bernard Lewis, a renowned authority an Islamic affairs, examines the anguished reaction of the Islamic world as it tried to make sense of how it had been overtaken, overshadowed, and dominated by the West. In a fascinating portrait of a culture in turmoil, Lewis shows how the Middle East turned its attention to understanding European weaponry, industry, government, education, and culture. He also describes how some Middle Easterners fastened blame on a series of scapegoats, while others asked not "Who did this to us?" but rather "Where did we go wrong?"With a new Afterword that addresses September 11 and its aftermath, What Went Wrong? is an urgent, accessible book that no one who is concerned with contemporary affairs will want to miss.

    Roxanne is desperate to be like them.When Liat, a fellow Israeli, moves into the "Cursed House" next door, things begin to change and Roxanne realizes that maybe real life isn’t like TV—maybe it’s even better. The novel is set on Staten Island, New York, in the early 1980’s.

    Extra material: An Author’s Note is included in the back of the book.Mike Costa has lived his whole life in The Strip, Pittsburgh’s warehouse and factory district. His father’s large Italian family runs a food wholesale business, and Mike is used to the sounds and smells of men working all night to unload the trains that feed the city. But it’s 1933, and the Depression is bringing tough times to everyone. Money problems only add to Mike’s worries about his beloved grandfather, who is getting forgetful and confused.     Mike is being tormented at school by a loud-mouth named Andy Simms, who calls Mike “Macaroni Boy.” But when dead rats start appearing in the streets, that name changes to “Rat Boy.” Around the same time Mike notices that his grandfather is also physically sick. Can whatever is killing the rats be hurting Mike’s grandfather? It’s a mystery Mike urgently needs to solve in this atmospheric, fast-paced story filled with vibrant period detail.From the Hardcover edition.

    As dreams turn slowly into nightmares, they cross paths and decide to face their challenges together. This is a powerful tale of friendship and a stark, authentic portrait of modern China.

    It didn't help when he used her as his excuse: "How else is a guy like me supposed to send his daughter to college?" She and her mother fled their town and their notoriety, started over, and vowed never to let anyone know about their past.Now a senior in high school, Becca has spent the last four years hiding in anonymity. But when it's time to apply to colleges and for financial aid, her mother gives her a rude awakening: If she applies, her past may be revealed to the worldBut Becca has already applied for a full-ride scholarship. And as she begins to probe deeper into the secrets of her past, she discovers that she and her mother might be in danger of more than simple discovery - by revealing the truth about their past, she might be putting their very lives in jeopardy.

    

    Zygmunt Bauman explores the silences found in debates about the Holocaust, and asks what the historical facts of the Holocaust tell us about the hidden capacities of present-day life. He finds great danger in such phenomena as the seductiveness of martyrdom; going to extremes in the name of safety; the insidious effects of tragic memory; and the efficient, "scientific" implementation of the death penalty. Bauman writes, "Once the problem of the guilt of the Holocaust perpetrators has been by and large settled . . . the one big remaining question is the innocence of all the rest, not the least the innocence of ourselves."Among the conditions that made the mass extermination of the Holocaust possible, according to Bauman, the most decisive factor was modernity itself. Bauman's provocative interpretation counters the tendency to reduce the Holocaust to an episode in Jewish history, or to one that cannot be repeated in the West precisely because of the progressive triumph of modern civilization. He demonstrates, rather, that we must understand the events of the Holocaust as deeply rooted in the very nature of modern society and in the central categories of modern social thought.

    Open this book and you will step into the world of a generation gone, of pre- and post-war Hungarian Jewry, as young Leichu moves between two communities and their divergent lifestyles. This is a gripping story of separation and reunion, of pure faith and acceptance of G-d's will, and of triumph over despair.

    So it is a dream come true when a British scout sees him playing in the park and offers him a trial with one of England's top Premiership clubs. Determined to succeed, Santiago leaves behind his struggling family and his modest home, and flies halfway around the world to give it his best shot.But it's not smooth sailing when Santiago arrives in northern England. Team practices are intense, and in this place where people live and breathe the sport, many seem eager to find fault with the new Latino player from L.A. The pressure even spurs Santiago to keep a secret that could sabotage his performance. There is no doubt that Santiago has skill, flair, and dedication. But does he have the stamina he will need for the English game? Based on the action-packed movie, Goal! is a gripping tale of trial and tribulation set against the backdrop of the world's most popular and exciting sport.

    The present selection is based on Celan's own 1968 selected poems, though enlarged to include both earlier and later poems, as well as two prose works, The Meridian, Celan's core statement on poetics, and the narrative Conversation in the Mountains. This volume also includes letters to Celan's wife, the artist Gisèle Celan-Lestrange; to his friend Erich Einhorn; and to René Char and Jean-Paul Sartre—all appearing here for the first time in English.

    Eichengreen exposes the heartbreaks of her closed allies and the brutality of the Jews, prisoners, and women she thought she could trust. Most memoirs about the Haulocaust - at least until about 15 years ago - were written by male survivors. Looking back, both men and women were subjected to various forms of sexual abuse. In female camps there were rapes, as well as sexual favors bartered for a slice of bread or a potato. Do we comdemn these people? Of course not! Driven to both mental and physical limits, anything was and is possible. There were true love stories. There were commitment and devotion. Some of these loves survived separation and war and lasted for years beyond liberation.

    It consists of 68 short stories in which children describe their experiences during the Holocaust. The author was a Dutch children's writer. She began work on the book in 1943, was imprisoned in Bergen-Belsen, was sent to Palestine in a prisoner exchange in 1944, where she finished the project.