Synopsis: Written in the form of a suspense novel, Emil & Karl draws readers into the dilemma faced by two young boys--one Jewish, the other not--when they suddenly find themselves without homes or families in Vienna on the eve of World War II. A taut, gripping page-turner, it offers a picture of life during the period and the moral challenges faced under Nazism--and a prescient glimpse of the early days of the Holocaust. Written in Yiddish, it is here translated into English for the first time.

Synopsis: The Pulitzer Prize-winning epic of the Great Depression, a book that galvanized—and sometimes outraged—millions of readers. Nominated as one of America’s best-loved novels by PBS’s The Great American Read

First published in 1939, Steinbeck’s Pulitzer Prize-winning epic of the Great Depression chronicles the Dust Bowl migration of the 1930s and tells the story of one Oklahoma farm family, the Joads—driven from their homestead and forced to travel west to the promised land of California. Out of their trials and their repeated collisions against the hard realities of an America divided into Haves and Have-Nots evolves a drama that is intensely human yet majestic in its scale and moral vision, elemental yet plainspoken, tragic but ultimately stirring in its human dignity. A portrait of the conflict between the powerful and the powerless, of one man’s fierce reaction to injustice, and of one woman’s stoical strength, the novel captures the horrors of the Great Depression and probes into the very nature of equality and justice in America. At once a naturalistic epic, captivity narrative, road novel, and transcendental gospel, Steinbeck’s powerful landmark novel is perhaps the most American of American Classics.

This Penguin Classics edition contains an introduction and notes by Steinbeck scholar Robert Demott.

For more than seventy years, Penguin has been the leading publisher of classic literature in the English-speaking world. With more than 1,700 titles, Penguin Classics represents a global bookshelf of the best works throughout history and across genres and disciplines. Readers trust the series to provide authoritative texts enhanced by introductions and notes by distinguished scholars and contemporary authors, as well as up-to-date translations by award-winning translators.

Synopsis: Embark upon a quest rife with magic, wonder, and forces as dark as midnight. . . .

Parallel universes and grave danger are nothing new to Nathan Ward. During his last mission, he risked life and limb to retrieve the Grail for safekeeping. But Nathan’s adventures are just beginning. Lately his dreams have been transporting him to a desolate city whose people have fled—save for a sickly king and his daughter, Princess Nell. In their decaying hilltop castle, they live in the shadow of a terrifying curse inflicted by a sword that holds within its gleaming metal an ancient demon conjured by the universe’s most powerful wizard. It is a sword that brings death to anyone who dares to draw it from its sheath.

But the king is dying, and the legend claims that only a stranger can save him . . . and that this stranger alone is destined to awake—and defeat—the dark evil in the sword. But who among mortals and spirits could ever imagine that a boy materializing into alternate worlds still dressed in his pajamas could be the chosen one . . . the one entrusted with the long-lost plan to retrieve the Grail relics and save a dying cosmos?

Synopsis: Amma is the creator god, the master of life and death, and he is worried. His people have always known how to take care of the spirits of the dead – the nyama – so that they don’t become destructive forces among the living. But amid the chaos of the African slave trade and the brutality of American slavery, too many of his people are dying and their souls are being ignored in this new land. Amma sends a young man, Ekundayo, to a plantation in Virginia where he becomes a slave on the eve of the Civil War. Amma hopes that Ekundayo will be able to find a way to bring peace to the nyama before it is too late. But Ekundayo can see only sorrow in this land – sorrow in the ownership of people, in the slaves who have been separated from their children and spouses, in the restless spirits of the dead, and in his own forbidden relationship with his master’s daughter.
How Ekundayo finds a way to bring peace to both the dead and the living makes this an unforgettable journey into the slave experience and Julius Lester’s most powerful work to date. Time's Memory is a 2007 Bank Street - Best Children's Book of the Year.

Synopsis: Set in apartheid South Africa, this powerful and lyrically written novel is Linzi Glass's debut.

As twelve-year-old Emily Iris explains it, her mother and father have always been eager to take in travelers and vagabonds, relying on the presence of outsiders to ease the tension between them. Emily has her gentle older sister, Sarah, and Buza, the old Zulu nightwatchman, for company and comfort. But her parents' continuing discontent leads them to welcome some peculiar strangers.

One spring, a family of wanderers--a wildlife photographer, his wife, and two boys--comes to stay, and their strange, compelling, and dangerous presence will leave the Iris family infinitely changed.

Synopsis: Excited about her new, laid back school, Octavia feels that her life may be taking a turn for the better and more normal, but when the paparazzi start following her again and the scandal of her celebrity mother resurfaces, Octavia loses faith in ever having a simple life or finding a sweet boy to call her own.