In 1930s Alabama, twelve-year-old Hoodoo Hatcher is the only member of his family who seems unable to practice folk magic, but when a mysterious man called the Stranger puts the entire town at risk from his black magic, Hoodoo must learn to conjure to defeat him.

By mistake, Anne, an eleven-year-old orphan, is sent to live with a lonely, middle-aged brother and sister on a farm on Prince Edward Island in 1878 and proceeds to make an indelible impression on everyone.

At age fifty-eight, John Steinbeck and his poodle, Charley, embarked on a journey across America. This chronicle of their trip meanders from small towns to growing cities to glorious wilderness oases. Written during a time of upheaval and racial tension in the South-which Steinbeck witnessed firsthand-Travels with Charley is a stunning evocation of America on the eve of a tumultuous decade.

Thirteen-year-old fraternal twins Dallas and Florida have grown up in a terrible orphanage but their lives change forever when an eccentric but sweet older couple invites them each on an adventure, beginning in an almost magical place called Ruby Holler.

"Growing up in the shadows cast by two world wars, Annabelle has lived a mostly quiet, steady life in her small Pennsylvania town. Until the day new student Betty Glengarry walks into her class. Betty quickly reveals herself to be cruel and manipulative, and while her bullying seems isolated at first, things quickly escalate, and reclusive World War I veteran Toby becomes a target of her attacks. While others have always seen Toby's strangeness, Annabelle...

In 1945, in Florida, ten-year-old Birdie Boyer and her family struggle to make their new farm prosper despite heat, droughts, cold snaps, and rowdy neighbors.

"Inspired by the twenty-three "tales," Matthew Dennison takes a selection of quotations from Potter's stories and uses them to explore her multifaceted life and character: repressed Victorian daughter; thwarted lover; artistic genius; formidable country woman. This dramatic narrative charts her transformation from a young girl with a love of animals and fairy tales into a bestselling author and canny businesswoman--so deeply unusual for the Victorian...

In 1930, a great ocean wave blots out a Bengali village, leaving only one survivor, a young girl. As a maidservant in a British boarding school, Pom is renamed Sarah and discovers her gift for languages. Her private dreams almost die when she arrives in Kharagpur and is recruited into a secretive, decadent world. Eventually, she lands in Calcutta, renames herself Kamala, and creates a new life rich in books and friends. But although success and even...

World War I stands as one of history's most senseless spasms of carnage, defying rational explanation. In his riveting narrative, Hochschild brings it to life as never before while focusing on the long-ignored moral drama of the war's critics, alongside its generals and heroes.