"Merry Smith is pretty busy these days. She’s taking care of her family, baking cookies, decorating for the holidays, and hoping to stay out of the crosshairs of her stressed and by-the-book boss at the consulting firm where she temps. Her own social life is the last thing she has in mind, much less a man. Without her knowledge, Merry’s well-meaning mom and brother create an online dating profile for her—minus her photo—and the matches start...

"A war-torn soldier overhears the doctors give up hope for his recovery. He has a feeling that if he could go to the sea and get plenty of fresh air, exercise and sunshine, he might make a real effort to cure himself. So one day he slips out of the government hospital, and tottering down toward the sea, he starts penniless and weak on his great adventure. Within a few days he finds a home, becomes a bee-keeper in a green little California valley,...

When a well-to-do family asks Sallie Riehl to be their daughter's nanny for the summer at their Cape May, New Jersey, vacation home, she jumps at the chance to broaden her horizons beyond the Lancaster County Amish community where she grew up. Curious by nature, Sallie loves reading and learning, and she fears that her chances of making a good match with an Amish farmer will be hampered because of it. Though she loves taking care of nine-year-old...

Steinbeck records his emotions and experiences during a journey of rediscovery in his native land. A quest across America, from the northernmost tip of Maine to California's Monterey Peninsula. To hear the speech of the real America, to smell the grass and the trees, to see the colors and the light--these were John Steinbeck's goals as he set out, at the age of fifty-eight, to rediscover the country he had been writing about for so many years. With...

ROMANCE. Now with a new look celebrating 20 years of Nicholas Sparks! Divorced and disillusioned about relationships, Theresa Osborne is jogging when she finds a bottle on the beach. Inside is a letter of love and longing to "Catherine," signed simply "Garrett." Challenged by the mystery and pulled by emotions she doesn't fully understand, Theresa begins a search for this man that will change her life. What happens to her is unexpected, perhaps miraculous-an...

Lucas Davenport has seen many terrible murder scenes. This is one of the worst. In the small Minnesota town of Deephaven, an entire family has been killed--husband, wife, two daughters, dogs. There's something about the scene that pokes at Lucas's cop instincts--it looks an awful lot like the kind of scorched-earth retribution he's seen in drug killings sometimes. But this is a seriously upscale town, and the husband was an executive vice president...

The author and poet recalls the anguish of her childhood in Arkansas and her adolescence in northern slums. "Here is a book as joyous and painful, as mysterious and memorable, as childhood itself. I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings captures the longing of lonely children, the brute insult of bigotry, and the wonder of words that can make the world right. Maya Angelou's debut memoir is a modern American classic beloved worldwide. Sent by their mother...

The adventures of five sisters growing up in a Jewish family in New York in the early twentieth century.

Set in the Limberlost Swamp area of Indiana, “Freckles” is American writer and naturalist Gene Stratton-Porter's 1904 novel about the titular character, a one-handed adult orphan who takes a job guarding timber in the swamp. Freckles has lived all his life in a Chicago orphanage and has been missing his right hand as long as he can remember. Now an adult, he is hired on by the Grand Rapids lumber company to guard their valuable timber in the Limberlost...

Written by a very smart, very self-aware, and very charming thirteen-year-old boy with autism, this memoir demonstrates how an autistic mind thinks, feels, perceives, and responds in ways few of us can imagine. Using an alphabet grid to painstakingly construct words, sentences, and thoughts that he is unable to speak out loud, Naoki answers even the most delicate questions that people want to know. Parents and family members who never thought they...