From the moment she met Samantha, star of the school basketball team, on her first day at Daniel Boone Middle School, Allison Drake felt she had found a friend, something she needs badly since her brother died and her father left--but as their friendship grows it begins to evolve into a deeper emotion, and in North Carolina in 1977, it is not easy to discover that you might be gay.

"In August of 1966, Jim Grimsley entered the sixth grade in the same public school he had attended for the five previous years in his small eastern North Carolina hometown. But he knew that the first day of this school year was going to be different: for the first time he'd be in a classroom with black children ... Now, over forty years later, Grimsley ... revisits that school and those times, remembering his personal reaction to his first real exposure...

"Ruth David was growing up in a small village in Germany when Adolf Hitler rose to power in the 1930s. Under the Nazi Party, Jewish families like Ruth's experienced rising anti-Semitic restrictions and attacks. Just going to school became dangerous. By November 1938, anti-Semitism erupted into Kristallnacht, the Night of Broken Glass, and unleashed a wave of violence and forced arrests. Days later, desperate volunteers sprang into action to organize...

"With Candide, Voltaire bumptiously skewered the fashionable misinterpretation of the doctrine of philosophical optimism, unerringly offending kings, scientists, fanaticals, publishers, journalists, and even priests; composed in a mere three days, Candide's capacity to amuse, disgust, and surprise endures today, roughly ninety thousand days later. Theo Cuffe's new translation is invaluable for those English-speaking readers who cannot understand French,...

"On a winter day in 1910, at a train station in Ohio, two girls wait in the cold with their mother to begin a new life in the West. Tommy, the eldest, feels responsible for her sister, and in the years to come, as their mother campaigns for women's suffrage and teaches in one-room schoolhouses across Montana, she takes care of Katherine: trapping animals, begging, keeping house, cooking, while her sister goes to school. But as soon as Katherine graduates,...

"On December 7, 1941 -- "a date which will live in infamy" -- the Japanese navy launched an attack on the American military bases at Pearl Harbor, Hawaii. The next day, President Franklin Roosevelt declared war on Japan, and the US Army officially entered the Second World War. Three years later, on December 18, 1944, President Roosevelt signed Executive Order 9066, which enabled the Secretary of War to enforce a mass deportation of more than 100,000...

"From one of our finest literary biographers comes a brilliant biography of Roald Dahl: the much-loved author and creator of countless iconic literary characters. Roald Dahl was one of the world's greatest storytellers. He conceived his vocation as that of any fearless explorer and, in his writing for children, he was able to tap into a child's viewpoint throughout his life. He crafted tales that were exotic in scenario, frequently invested with a...

"Billy Collins's thirteenth collection, and first in four years, contains more than fifty new poems that showcase the playfulness, wit, and wisdom that have made him one of our most celebrated and widely read poets. This collection covers many themes, including Collins's profound insights on aging and mortality"--

"The saga of the Superior Spider-Man continues as Doc Ock takes Peter Parker's body for a joyride through the Marvel Universe, taking on heavy hitters from both sides of the coin! Russian assassins infiltrate a S.H.I.E.L.D. Helicarrier on a contract for the Cameleon's head, but when he escapes custody, Superior Spider-Man fights alongside Nick Fury and his Secret Avengers to put the shady shape-shifter back behind bars. Then, Spider-Man and the Punisher...

Takes place in the sleepy New Mexico town where a UFO supposedly crash-landed in 1947. We meet best friends Liz and Maria, who juggle their high school studies with work in the Crashdown Cafe.