Taken in by a near-alcoholic artist and a jaded academic, a young Dominican girl in Brooklyn's Fresh Air Fund program explores the contrasts between her inner-city life and her hosts' privileged world and finds her realities powerfully shaped by her relationship with a horse.

In a crumbling house in the remote northeastern Himalayas, an embittered, elderly judge finds his peaceful retirement turned upside down by the arrival of his orphaned granddaughter, Sai. Kiran Desai's tragicomic novel The Inheritance of Loss spans two continents and three generations. The story cuts between New York and India, contrasting the menial jobs and meager conditions of immigrant life in the city with the political unrest engulfing an isolated...

John Dunbar has spent the last eleven years living in peace with his wife, a white-born woman raised as a Comanche from early childhood, and his three children, but when a group of white raiders tries to push their Comanche tribe onto a reservation, violence ensues.

Two teens from different ethnic groups in present-day Afghanistan must fight their culture, tradition, families, and the Taliban to stay together as they and another village boy relate the story of their forbidden love.

In alternating voices, friends Asha and Yesofu, one Indian and one African, find their world turned upside-down when Idi Amin decides to expel Asian Indians from Uganda in 1972.

In 1950, a young doctor called Norton Perina signs on with the anthropologist Paul Tallent for an expedition to the remote Micronesian island of Ivu'ivu in search of a rumored lost tribe. They succeed, finding not only that tribe but also a group of forest dwellers they dub "The Dreamers," who turn out to be fantastically long-lived but progressively more senile. Perina suspects the source of their longevity is a hard-to-find turtle; unable to resist...

In 1960 twelve-year-old Peggy Sue and her family move to the island of Oahu, and she is finding it anything but paradise, because from the first day at school she is bullied and made fun of by the Hawaiian children, and she is worried sick about her beloved cat who is in manditory quarantine--and then the tsunami hits Hilo where her parents have gone on business.

"In early 20th century British East Africa, there are rules for the British and different ones for the Africans. Vera McIntosh, the daughter of Scottish missionaries, doesn't feel she belongs to either group; having grown up in Africa, she is not interested in being the well-bred Scottish woman her mother would like her to be. More than anything she dreams of seeing again the handsome police officer she's danced with. But more grisly circumstances...

"The world renowned, American epic Dances With Wolves is the eternal story of one man's search for his place in the world. Set in 1863, the novel follows Lieutenant John Dunbar on a magical and unpredictable journey from the ravages of the Civil War to the far reaches of the imperiled American frontier, a frontier he naively wants to see "before it's gone". His posting to a desolate and deserted outpost is the springboard for contact with the lords...

"In December 1930, just before Christmas, the Gibbsville, Pennsylvania, social circuit is electrified with parties and dances. At the center of the social elite stand Julian and Caroline English. But in one rash moment born inside a highball glass, Julian breaks with polite society and begins a rapid descent toward self-destruction" --