The Newbery Award winning author of Up a Road Slowly presents the unforgettable story of Jethro Creighton—a brave boy who comes of age during the turbulent years of the Civil War.

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Warm, funny, and deeply moving, China Boy is a brilliantly rendered novel of family relationships, culture shock, and the perils of growing up in an America of sharp differences and shared humanity. "It would be hard to find a more all-American story than the delightful China Boy." —Time magazine

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Written in remembrance of his Polish-born, Southern-raised Jewish mother—who married a black man and raised twelve children, all of whom completed college—The Color of Water is a classic of the memoir genre, a testament to love, and a truly American story.

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Hailed as the first great play to lay bare the emptiness of America's relentless drive for material success, Death of a Salesman is Miller's classic portrait of an ordinary man's struggle to leave his mark on the world.

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Part satire, part soap opera, Election is an uncommon look at an ordinary American high school, and the extraordinary people who inhabit it.

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In Jasper Fforde's Great Britain, circa 1985, time travel is routine, cloning is a reality (dodos are the resurrected pet of choice), and literature is taken very, very seriously. But when someone begins kidnapping characters from works of literature and plucks Jane Eyre from the pages of Brontë's novel, Thursday Next—renowned Special Operative in literary detection—is faced with the challenge of her career.

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Narrated by A. Square, Flatland is a delightful mathematical fantasy about life in a two-dimensional world. Abbott's amiable narrator provides an overview of this fantastic world—its physics and metaphysics, its history, customs, and religious beliefs—but when a strange visitor mysteriously appears and transports the incredulous Flatlander to the Land of Three Dimensions, his worldview is forever shattered.

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When an art professor encounters a Vermeer painting that has been kept secret for decades, the reasons for hiding such an important work unfold in a series of events that trace the ownership of the painting back to World War II and Amsterdam, and still further back to the moment of the work's inspiration. As the painting moves through each owner's hands, what was long hidden quietly surfaces, illuminating poignant moments in multiple lives.

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History and fiction merge seamlessly in this luminous novel about artistic vision and sensual awakening. Girl with a Pearl Earring tells the story of sixteen-year-old Griet, whose life is transformed by her brief encounter with genius...even as she herself is immortalized in canvas and oil.

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In this "classic account of growing up male in America" (New York Times Book Review), Samuel Hynes looks back with a clear-eyed, unsentimental gaze at his early years growing up during the lean times of the Great Depression. With eloquence and humor Hynes recaptures the dreams, adventures, sins, and triumphs of his American boyhood in the years of hardship and innocence before the war.

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This is the story of cancer survivor Lance Armstrong—the only person to ever win an unprecedented six wins in the Tour de France—and his journey through triumph, tragedy, transformation, and transcendence

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In this remarkable book, 103-year-old George Dawson, a slave's grandson who learned to read at age 98, reflects on his life and offers valuable lessons in living as well as a fresh, firsthand view of America during the twentieth century. From segregation and civil rights, to the wars, presidents, and defining moments in history, George Dawson's description and assessment of the last century inspires readers with the message that—through it all—has sustained him: "Life is so good. I do believe it's getting better."

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When the Durrell family can no longer endure the damp, gray English climate, they do what any sensible family would do: sell their house and relocate to the sun-soaked Greek island of Corfu. There, ten-year-old Gerry pursues his interest in natural history with a joyful passion, revealing the engrossing, hidden world of the island's fauna.

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In his first-hand account of the Revolutionary War, Martin narrates his true adventures as an eighteen-year old private in the Continental Army—and gives a rare glimpse of the nation's beginnings.

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This is the story of three friends who grew up on the streets of Newark, facing city life's temptations, pitfalls, even jail. But one day these three young men made a pact—they promised each other they would all become doctors, and stick it out together through the long, difficult journey to attain that dream.

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Set in the fictional town of Rattlebone, Kansas, in the 1950s, these eleven interrelated stories reveal the emotional, financial, and social conflicts that govern the lives of the African Americans who live there.

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This cycle of coming-of-age stories tells of a spirited adolescent boy whose encounters with birth and death teach him about loss and profound emptiness, instead of giving him the more conventional hero's pragmatic "maturity."

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Robot Dreams collects 21 of Isaac Asimov's short stories spanning the body of his fiction from the 1940s to the 1980s—exploring not only the future of technology, but the future of humanity's maturity and growth.

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Set in South Carolina in 1964, this intoxicating debut novel of "one motherless daughter's discovery of...the strange and wonderful places we find love" (Washington Post) tells a remarkable story about divine female power and the transforming power of love—a story that women will share and pass on to their daughters for years to come.

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Erik Weihenmayer was born with retinoscheses, a degenerative eye disorder that would leave him blind by the age of thirteen. But Erik was determined to rise above this devastating disability and lead a fulfilling and exciting life. In this poignant and inspiring memoir, he shares his struggle to push past the limits imposed on him by his visual impairment-and by a seeing world. From the snow-capped summit of McKinley to the towering peaks of Aconcagua and Kilimanjaro to the ultimate challenge, Mount Everest, this is a story about daring to dream in the face of impossible odds. It is about finding the courage to reach for that ultimate summit, and transforming your life into something truly miraculous.

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