"Trevor McKinney, a twelve-year-old boy in a small California town, accepts his teacher's challenge to earn extra credit by coming up with a plan to change the world. His idea is simple: do a good deed for three people and instead of asking them to return the favor, ask them to 'pay it forward' to three others who need help"--

Teens Kendall and Max witness a tragic accident during the holidays and, racked with guilt, accept a dare to perform seven random acts of kindness to strangers by New Year's Eve.

"Claire Petrenko always knew it was coming. Breast cancer has claimed the lives of both her mother and her younger sister. Now, as she cobbles the pieces of her own life back together, the devastating family legacy returns, and Claire receives the same diagnosis. So when her old friend Jenna Hogan suddenly shows up at her door -- like a fairy godmother offering to grant a wish -- Claire seizes the chance to revisit her past... and salvage her future....

Seven-year-old Paulie, an ordinary boy, brings peace to his home and school through small acts of kindness, but needs help to achieve his goal of world peace.

"Elegy plus comedy is the only way to express how we live in the world today, says a character in Sigrid Nunez's ninth novel. The Vulnerables offers a meditation on our contemporary era, as a solitary female narrator asks what it means to be alive at this complex moment in history and considers how our present reality affects the way a person looks back on her past. Humor, to be sure, is a priceless refuge. Equally vital is connection with others,...

When Ms. Albert teaches a lesson on kindness, Chloe realizes that she and her friends have been wrong in making fun of new student Maya's shabby clothes and refusing to play with her.

"Mr. Fish's friends are all about to pout, and soon the whole class is in a bad mood. What can Mr. Fish do to turn the day around? All it takes is a simple act of kindness!" --

Lucille Howard is getting on in years, but she stays busy. Thanks to the inspiration of her dearly departed friend Arthur Truluv, she has begun to teach baking classes, sharing the secrets to her delicious buttercream yellow cake, the perfect pinwheel cookies, and other sweet essentials. Her classes have become so popular that she's hired Iris, a new resident of Mason, Missouri, as an assistant. Iris doesn't know how to bake but she needs to keep...

"When he finds a lost beagle in the hills behind his West Virginia home, Marty tries to hide it from his family and the dog's real owner, a mean-spirited man known to shoot deer out of season and to mistreat his dogs"--Title verso page.