Faced with the difficulties of growing up and choosing a religion, a twelve-year-old girl talks over her problems with her own private God.

"Alice Metcalf was a devoted mother, loving wife, and accomplished scientist who studied grief among elephants. Yet it's been a decade since she disappeared under mysterious circumstances, leaving behind her small daughter, husband, and the animals to which she devoted her life. All signs point to abandonment . . . or worse. Still Jenna--now thirteen years old and truly orphaned by a father maddened by grief--steadfastly refuses to believe in her...

A mother and daughter confront challenges, cope with celebrity, and work through tragedy while maintaining an idyllic facade to the outside world.

Jordan Woods is the female captain and quarterback of her high school football team and is fine with being treated like "one of the guys," as long as she lands an athletic scholarship for college, but when a new kid shows up, Jordan gets competition for her starting position and discovers she is developing a crush.

Set in South Carolina in 1964, [this book] tells the story of Lily Owens, whose life has been shaped around the blurred memory of the afternoon her mother was killed. When Lily's fierce-hearted "stand-in mother," Rosaleen, insults three of the town's fiercest racists, Lily decides they should both escape to Tiburon, South Carolina--a town that holds the secret to her mother's past. There they are taken in by an eccentric trio of black beekeeping sisters...

"Steel Magnolias" meets "The Help" in this Southern debut novel sparkling with humor, heart, and feminine wisdom. Laugh-out-loud funny, Hoffman's charming work offers the story of a young girl who loses one mother and finds many others. For years, 12-year-old CeeCee Honeycutt has been the caretaker of her psychotic mother, Camille-the tiara-toting, lipstick-smeared laughingstock of an entire town. But when Camille is hit by a truck and killed, CeeCee...

An improverished Russian country girl Elena Rudina and the aristocratic Ekatrina meet and set in motion an escapade that includes mistaken identity, a monk locked in a tower, a prince traveling incognito, and the witch Baba Yaga.

"...I'm Trella. I'm a scrub. A nobody. One of thousands who work the lower levels, keeping inside clean for the Uppers. I've got one friend, do my job, and try to avoid the Pop Cops. So what if I occasionally use the pipes to sneak around the Upper levels. The only neck at risk is my own...until I accidentally start a rebellion and become the go-to-girl to lead a revolution"--Cover, P.[4].

The beloved classic that turned Carson McCullers into an overnight literary sensation and one of the Modern Library's top 20 novels of the 20th century.

"A remarkable book...From the opening page, brilliant in its establishment of mood, character, and suspense, the book takes hold of the reader."

In a Georgia Mill town during the 1930s, an enigmatic John Singer, draws out the haunted confessions of

...

Enduring a hardscrabble existence as the children of alcoholic and absent parents, four siblings from a coastal Mississippi town prepare their meager stores for the arrival of Hurricane Katrina while struggling with such challenges as a teen pregnancy and a dying litter of prize pups.