Diary entries written by five Holocaust victims document the ordeals suffered in Nazi-occupied Lithuania, Hungary, Belgium, and Holland.

    Above all, as a very young child she decided one day that even if there was no other person in the world who loved and wanted her, she was going to love and care for herself—and that decision changed the course of her life. Africa’s Child is the story of a mixed-race girl growing up in the Usambara Mountains of Tanzania, East Africa. Raised in an orphanage with no knowledge of her origins or family, she endured abandonment, hardships, severe illnesses, and bullying. Her experiences as a child and teenager included physical, emotional, and sexual abuse, social stigma, and racial discrimination.Yet Nhambu tells her inspiring story with warmth and humor. Her questioning mind probes the African tribal realities and multi-cultural complexities that impacted her life both at the orphanage and schools run by German nuns as well as at an African high school with American nuns. Nhambu not only survived her childhood but triumphed. Her faith and resilience, along with a belief in learning and her tenacious pursuit of an education, sustained her through many challenges. Dance, especially African tribal dance, became the way she healed and nourished her spirit. Through the love and commitment of an American teacher she met in Africa, Nhambu was able to pursue her dream of education and a new life for herself. The first book in her three-part memoir ends as she is leaving Africa for university studies in America on a full scholarship.Maria Nhambu is the creator of Aerobics With Soul®, a fitness workout based on African dance.

    Growing up in Las Vegas with her fun-loving mother, she's learned to be tough. But she never expected a betrayal that would land her in a foster care. When she's placed with the Murphys, a lively family with three boys, she's blindsided. Do happy families really exist? Carley knows she could never belong in their world, so she keeps her distance. It's easy to stay suspicious of Daniel, the brother who is almost her age and is resentful she's there. But Mrs. Murphy makes her feel heard and seen for the first time, and the two younger boys seem determinded to work their way into her heart. Before she knows it, Carley is protected the boys from a neighbourhood bully and even teaching Daniel how to play basketball. Then just when she's feeling like she could truly be one of the Murphys, news from her mother shakes her world.

    Long considered one of the best poets in America today, Baca was illiterate at the age of twenty-one and facing five to ten years behind bars for selling drugs. A Place to Stand is the remarkable tale of how he emerged after his years in the penitentiary -- much of it spent in isolation -- with the ability to read and a passion for writing poetry. A vivid portrait of life inside a maximum-security prison and an affirmation of one man's spirit in overcoming the most brutal adversity, A Place to Stand stands as proof there is always hope in even the most desperate lives -- (Fort Worth Morning Star-Telegram). A Place to Stand is a hell of a book, quite literally. You won't soon forget it. -- Luis Urrea, The San Diego Union-Tribune This book will have a permanent place in American letters. -- Jim Harrison

    For as long as he can remember, people have been saying the same thing about life being a series of choices. The problem is, he's never been particularly good at making the right ones, especially since he was born and raised in Flint, Michigan, where most people are cheated out of all the better options in life. So when a normal night spent hanging out, drinking with his two best friends, ends in a deadly mistake, individual decisions suddenly seem more important than Mick ever realized. And when he's sitting in the police interrogation room, it will all come down to one choice. But once he heads down one road, will it ever be possible to turn back?

    Beah tells how, at the age of twelve, he fled attacking rebels and wandered a land rendered unrecognizable by violence. By thirteen, he’d been picked up by the government army, and became a soldier.My new friends have begun to suspect I haven’t told them the full story of my life.“Why did you leave Sierra Leone?”“Because there is a war.”“You mean, you saw people running around with guns and shooting each other?”“Yes, all the time.”“Cool.”I smile a little.“You should tell us about it sometime.”“Yes, sometime.” This is how wars are fought now: by children, hopped-up on drugs and wielding AK-47s. Children have become soldiers of choice. In the more than fifty conflicts going on worldwide, it is estimated that there are some 300,000 child soldiers. Ishmael Beah used to be one of them. What is war like through the eyes of a child soldier? How does one become a killer? How does one stop? Child soldiers have been profiled by journalists, and novelists have struggled to imagine their lives. But until now, there has not been a first-person account from someone who came through this hell and survived.In A Long Way Gone, Beah, now twenty-five years old, tells a riveting story: how at the age of twelve, he fled attacking rebels and wandered a land rendered unrecognizable by violence. By thirteen, he’d been picked up by the government army, and Beah, at heart a gentle boy, found that he was capable of truly terrible acts. This is a rare and mesmerizing account, told with real literary force and heartbreaking honesty.

    Beyond the stereotypes and cliche's of Rez dogs, drinking, and bingos, the story of a girl who loved to read and her family begins to unfold.

    . . ."Once, in a house on Egypt Street, there lived a china rabbit named Edward Tulane. The rabbit was very pleased with himself, and for good reason: he was owned by a girl named Abilene, who treated him with the utmost care and adored him completely. And then, one day, he was lost. Kate DiCamillo takes us on an extraordinary journey, from the depths of the ocean to the net of a fisherman, from the top of a garbage heap to the fireside of a hoboes' camp, from the bedside of an ailing child to the bustling streets of Memphis. And along the way, we are shown a true miracle — that even a heart of the most breakable kind can learn to love, to lose, and to love again.

    The longer Anne was there, the more no one could image Green Gable without her.Anne Of AvonleaIt seemed only yesterday the freckled redhead had come to the island. Here was Anne, at pretty sixteen, teaching at the Avonlea school. Not quite grown up. Anne was not very different from her restless young pupils, as spirited as ever.Anne Of The IslandWishing couldn't keep Anne of Green Gables from growing up. Anne's whole world was changing—her childhood friends marrying, Anne herself leaving the Island for four years of college. But as much as life changed, important things stayed the same; especially irrepressible Anne.The Anne SeriesDelightful, unpredictable Anne Shirley has been charming readers of all ages, in every part of the world, for over half a century. a bestseller from the moment it was published, the series has allowed generations of children to grow up joyfully right along with Anne.

    For no apparent reason, she's singled out from her siblings, blamed for her family's problems and targeted for unspeakable abuse. The loving environment she's come to know becomes an endless nightmare of twisted punishments as she's forced to confront the dark cruelty lurking inside the mother she idolizes. Based on a true story, Call Me Tuesday recounts, with raw emotion, a young girl's physical and mental torment at the mercy of the monster in her mother's clothes--a monster she doesn't know how to stop loving. Tuesday's painful journey through the hidden horrors of child abuse will open your eyes, and her unshakable love for her parents will tug at your heartstrings.

    She cannot walk or talk, but she has a photographic memory; she can remember every detail of everything she has ever experienced. She is smarter than most of the adults who try to diagnose her and smarter than her classmates in her integrated classroom - the very same classmates who dismiss her as mentally challenged because she cannot tell them otherwise. But Melody refuses to be defined by cerebral palsy. And she's determined to let everyone know it - somehow.

    A serial killer is on the loose in Detroit, murdering men and leaving her mark, and each of these women has a motive to kill. Simone, a sexual abuse survivor and advocate for young girls, has begun to heal her wounds over the past ten years, but she is still trying to reclaim her life. Her mother, Jessica, thinks it’s unhealthy for Simone to immerse herself into a world of pain and jaded love when she has yet to fully heal herself. A new, unexpected love interest only complicates things further. Ryan is willing to do whatever it takes to become a mother, even if it means betrayal. With her biological clock screaming and a shameful ten-year secret bubbling to the surface, Ryan is determined to get what she wants, but she may lose her husband—and her mind—in the process. Lauren, one of Detroit’s most prominent defense attorneys, redefines justice and seeks a way out of the career that has left her feeling trapped and torn. She can’t set her moral standards aside for a $400,000 salary, winning acquittal after acquittal for the demonstratively guilty. But how far will she go to rid Detroit of its criminal filth? As Lauren, Ryan, and Simone’s lives collide yet again, forcing them to deal with the tragedies of their pasts, the three women regretfully learn that no one is safe behind the thin shield of a Smoke Screen.

    But it seems things are only going to get weirder, as Danni's been given her own reality TV series - & they're all going to be filmed. No way does Sam want her life on screen, but the director convinces her to give it a go. Can she handle her starring role as a pop star's little sister?

    Or having a gun shoved in your face by the man you call stepdad. Envision feeling so depressed you cut yourself repeatedly or down a bottle of pills to make the pain go away. Consider what it takes to tell your parents that you are transgender, or what it feels like to have the dad you love addicted to meth. We Are Absolutely Not Okay is a collection of unsparing true stories written by fourteen teenagers who have experienced life at its darkest but have made it through and are now picking up the pieces. By writing and sharing their stories, they are coping with their past and seizing their future. They are also reaching out to other teenagers-to let them know that they are not alone and that even if their life now is Absolutely Not Okay, they have the power within themselves to make it better.

    As a boy from a very poor neighborhood in Warsaw, he can't run away when Polish kids attack the Jews, because his legs are weak. So he learns to use his fists, his head and other weapons to defend himself and his brothers.When the family moves to Paris in 1929, everyone finds work and life improves slowly. Moshe, now Maurice, is a leather worker and a young husband. At a Jewish sports club, he takes up boxing, and becomes an amateur flyweight. But the war comes to Paris, and by 1942, the French police round up foreign Jews and the Germans deport them by the hundreds every day. They send Maurice to the death camp at Auschwitz.In the camp, SS officers sense Maurice's strength. They command him to box against a dying prisoner. Now Maurice is faced with an impossible moral dilemma: kill the prisoner or be killed by the SS for refusing to obey them. Or will he find a way out?Translated from French by award-winning author Jean-Jacques Greif, The Fighter isn't simply another book about the Holocaust. It is a book about a hero who discovers the death-defying power of his own humanity.