Isabel has devoted her life to working with the children in a Calcutta orphanage. Theresa is the multimillionaire leader of a media company who lives with her artist husband in New York. When Isabel hears of a mysterious and generous grant for the financially strained orphanage, she must travel to New York to meet the benefactor, Theresa, in person, who then insists she stay for a family wedding.

After a merciless winter, spring has sprung in 1880 Stockholm, and the city awaits the arrival of the SS Vega, the first ship to have sailed the Northeast Passage. Life is busy at the orphanage, but twelve-year-old Mika quickly notices that the older orphans are up to something--and it doesn't look good. When Constable Hoff approaches her with information about thefts around the city, Mika becomes even more concerned about what the other kids are...

Christiana Mara Coelho was born into extreme poverty in Brazil. After spending the first seven years of her life with her loving mother in the forest caves outside São Paulo and then on the city streets, where they begged for food, she and her younger brother were suddenly put up for adoption. When one door closed on the only life Christiana had ever known and on the woman who protected her with all her heart, a new one opened. As Christina Rickardsson,...

"Helsinki, 1947. Finland teeters between the Soviet Union and the West. Everyone is being watched. A wrong look or a wrong word could end in catastrophe. Natalya Bobrova, from Russia, and Louise Koski, from the United States, are young wives of their country's military attachés. When they meet at an embassy party, their husbands, Arnie and Mikhail, both world-class skiers, drunkenly challenge each other to a friendly--but secret-cross-country wilderness...

This novel follows the intertwining stories of three women from vastly diverse cultures searching for personal peace in postgenocide Rwanda. Lillian Carlson traveled to Africa from Atlanta in 1970 wanting to better the world with an orphanage in Rwanda's rift valley. Two decades later, Rachel Shepherd, a white bartender in her mid-thirties, embarks on a journey to find the father who abandoned her as a child during the 1994 Rwandan genocide. There...

Calvin is an orphan boy who finds a pair of magic sneakers with the initials M.J. on the inside. Once he puts them on, he's got game, and wins a spot in the NBA. But his "skill" pits him against his team's star player - until the two rivals discover they have more in common than they could ever imagine.

In 1905, ten-year-old Billy is taken from an orphanage to live with an aunt and an uncle of whose existence he was previously unaware. He enjoys his first taste of family life until his work in a coal mine and his involvement with a union bring trouble. He then joins a circus in hopes of finding his father.

"It's 1880, and in the frigid city of Stockholm, death lurks around every corner. Twelve-year-old Mika knows that everyone in her orphanage will struggle to survive this winter. But at least the notorious serial killer the Night Raven is finally off the streets...or is he? Mika is shocked when a newborn baby is left at the orphanage in the middle of the night, by a boy with a cryptic message. Who is he? And who is this "Dark Angel" he speaks of? When...

In 1936, three children meet at the Mercy Home for Negro Orphans in New York State, and while not all three are orphans, they are all dealing with grief and loss which together, along with the help of a sympathetic staff member and the boxing matches of Joe Louis, they manage to overcome. Includes author's notes.

One night, Sophie is snatched from her bed at Mrs. Clonkers' orphanage by an awesome giant who whisks her away on a magical and funny adventure.