Kek, an African refugee, is confronted by many strange things at the Minneapolis home of his aunt and cousin, as well as in his fifth grade classroom, and longs for his missing mother, but finds comfort in the company of a cow and her owner.

Eleven-year-old April is delighted when President and Mrs. Hoover build a school near her Madison County, Virginia, home but her family's poverty, grief over the accidental death of her brother, and other problems may mean that April can never learn to read from the wonderful teacher, Miss Vest.

Having lost his mother and his hearing in a short time, twelve-year-old Ben leaves his Minnesota home in 1977 to seek the father he never knew in New York City, and meets there Rose, who is also longing for something missing from her life. Ben's story is told in words; Rose's in pictures.

"Laura hails from the Upper East Side of Manhattan, born into old money ... One weekend in 1981 she meets Jefferson. The two sleep together. He vanishes. And Laura realizes she's pregnant ... Despite her progressive values, Laura raises Emma by herself in the same blue-blood world of private schools and summer homes she grew up in ... Meanwhile, the apple falls far from the tree with Emma, who begins to question her environment in a way her mother...

The iconic Country Music Hall of Fame artist and 10-time Grammy winner shares the story of his personal life and career, from his early ambitions and indelible relationships through his bankruptcy and founding of Farm Aid.

"Their average age was twenty-five. They came from Berkeley, Cambridge, Paris, London, Chicago--and arrived in New Mexico ready for adventure, or at least resigned to it. But hope quickly turned to hardship as they were forced to adapt to a rugged military town where everything was a secret, including what their husbands were doing at the lab. They lived in barely finished houses with P.O. box addresses in a town wreathed with barbed wire, all for...

Young pigeoneer Olive Bright has been conscripted, with her racing birds, to aid the fight against the Nazis. It's not the daring role she'd envisioned for herself, but her quiet little English village is not nearly as sheltered as she imagined... Returning to Pipley following her FANY (First Aid Nursing Yeomanry) training, Olive is eager to step up her involvement in the war effort. Her pigeons are being conscripted to aid the Belgian resistance,...

"On a humid summer day, the phones begin to ring: disaster has struck. Chateau de Sully, a Boeing 707 chartered to ferry home more than one hundred of Atlanta’s most prominent citizens from a European jaunt, crashed in Paris shortly after takeoff. It is the second-deadliest disaster in the history of aviation. Overnight, the city of Atlanta changes. Left behind are children, spouses, lovers, and friends faced with renegotiating their lives. Robert,...

"One life-changing summer Charlie meets Fran ... In 1997, Charlie Lewis is the kind of boy you don't remember in the school photograph. His exams have not gone well. At home he is looking after his father, when surely it should be the other way round, and if he thinks about the future at all, it is with a kind of dread. Then Fran Fisher bursts into his life and despite himself, Charlie begins to hope. But if Charlie wants to be with Fran, he must...

Fifteen-year-old Nevaeh Levitz is torn between two worlds, passing for white while living in Harlem, being called Jewish while attending her mother's Baptist church, and experiencing first love while watching her parents' marriage crumble.