Twelve-year-old Sora and her eight-year-old brother, Youngsoo, must try to escape North Korea's oppressive Communist regime on their own in 1950. Includes historical notes, photographs of the author's mother, glossary of Korean words, and timeline.

"Dust Bowl refugee Gloria Mae Willard finds herself uprooted and working on a California peach orchard, where she tries to join the secret, all-boys baseball team that she's desperate to play on"--

In 1993, twelve-year-old Becca, who struggles with a anxiety disorder, visits her divorced father in Vienna, Austria, where she befriends a Muslim refugee fleeing the Bosnian genocide.

"Kenan loves drawing and playing soccer with his friends. He wants to be a famous athlete, hates it when his classmates trash his buck teeth by calling him 'Bugs Bunny,' and fights with his big brother, who's too busy and cool for him lately. Sometimes his parents drive him crazy, but he feels loved and protected--until the war ruins everything. Soon, Kenan's family is trapped in their home with little food or water, surrounded by enemies. Ten long...

1960's. Maisie's first day of high school should be exciting, but all she wants is to escape the world: an abusive mother and a father who is rarely there to help. Finding refuge in her art, Maisie meets Rachel and her mother, a painter. She catches a glimpse of a very different world-- full of life, creativity, and love-- and latches on. But as she discovers her strengths through Rachel's family, Maisie finds herself risking new friendships, and...

"Vienna is demolished by war, the city an alien landscape of ruined castles, a fractured ruling class, and people picking up the pieces. Elisabeth de Waal's mesmerizing The Exiles Return is a stunningly vivid postwar story of Austria's fallen aristocrats, unrepentant Nazis, and a culture degraded by violence. The novel follows a number of exiles, each returning under very different circumstances, who must come to terms with a city in painful recovery....

"Andrew Carnegie funded fifty-nine public libraries in Kansas in the early 20th century, but it was frontier women who organized waffle suppers, minstrel shows, and women's baseball games to buy books to fill them. Now, a century later, Angelina returns to her father's hometown of New Hope to complete her dissertation on the Carnegie libraries, just as Traci and Gayle arrive in town, Traci as an artist-in-residence at the renovated Carnegie Arts Center...

With the fall of the Barksdale empire, and the ascent of a new young drug king in Baltimore, McNulty, Bunk and the rest of the detail continue to "follow the money" up the political ladder amidst a hotly contested mayoral campaign. Prez witnesses first-hand the role of inner-city education in the formation of youth as four students, Michael, Namond, Randy and Dukie, face dangerous decisions and adolescent angst in a city rife with the temptations...