"Based on [the author']s own experiences as a young man, the book's two novellas and short story are set in the small towns and mountains of western Montana. It is a world populated with drunks, loggers, card sharks, and whores, but also one rich in the pleasures of fly-fishing, logging, cribbage, and family. By turns raunchy and elegiac, these superb tales express, in [the author']s own words, 'a little of the love I have for the earth as it goes...

Quick-witted, ambitious Ji Lin is stuck as an apprentice dressmaker, moonlighting as a dancehall girl to help pay off her mother's Mahjong debts. But when one of her dance partners accidentally leaves behind a gruesome souvenir, Ji Lin may finally get the adventure she has been longing for. Eleven-year-old houseboy Ren is also on a mission, racing to fulfill his former master's dying wish: that Ren find the man's finger, lost years ago in an accident,...

Having lost touch with each other over the years, Carmen, Lena, and Bridget are surprised when they receive plane tickets to travel to Australia for a reunion with Tibby, but after tragedy strikes their lives are changed forever.

"As the daughter of a drug dealer, Wavy knows not to trust people, not even her own parents. It's safer to keep her mouth shut and stay out of sight. Struggling to raise her little brother, Donal, eight-year-old Wavy is the only responsible adult around. Obsessed with the constellations, she finds peace in the starry night sky above the fields behind her house, until one night her star gazing causes an accident. After witnessing his motorcycle wreck,...

Set in Nazi-occupied Poland just before the Warsaw ghetto uprising, Spinelli's first historical novel tells a tale of heartbreak, hope, and survival though the eyes of a young orphan.

In 1943, during the German occupation of Denmark, ten-year-old Annemarie learns how to be brave and courageous when she helps shelter her Jewish friend from the Nazis.

A young Navajo boy comes of age following his family's return from Bosque Redondo.

A landmark coming-of-age novel that launched the career of one of this country's most distinctive voices. Rita Mae Brown tells the story of Molly Bolt, the adoptive daughter of a dirt-poor Southern couple who boldly forges her own path in America. With her startling beauty and crackling wit, Molly finds that women are drawn to her wherever she goes-- and she refuses to apologize for loving them back.

I don't know who was most excited that morning when the three of us hoisted packs on our backs and started off down the trail. Just before we disappeared from view of our yard, I turned for one more wave. You would've thought we were marching off to war or something. I even saw Aunt Lou blow her nose on her white hankie. They all looked glad and sad at the same time happy we were doing something we really wanted to do, anxious that everything would...

Living in an igloo of ice and trash bags half a year after a cataclysmic nuclear disaster, Emily, convinced that she will be hated as the daughter of the drunken father who caused the meltdown, assumes a fictional identity while protecting a homeless boy.