Synopsis: In June 1861, when the Civil War began, Charley Goddard enlisted in the First Minnesota Volunteers. He was 15. He didn't know what a "shooting war" meant or what he was fighting for. But he didn't want to miss out on a great adventure. The "shooting war" turned out to be the horror of combat and the wild luck of survival; how it feels to cross a field toward the enemy, waiting for fire. When he entered the service he was a boy. When he came back…

Synopsis: Since it was first published in 1974, "The Killer Angels" has become the most beloved, widely-read Civil War novel of the post-World War II era. Shaara's unforgettable novel served as the basis for the acclaimed feature film Gettysburg, has sold millions of copies, and inspired the bestselling Civil War novels Gods and Generals and The Last Full Measure by his son, Jeff Shaara. After more than a quarter of a century and three million copies in…

Synopsis: Two men wait through the night in British-controlled Palestine for dawn - and for death. One is a captured English officer. The other is Elisha, a young Israeli freedom fighter whose assignment is to kill the officer in reprisal for Britain's execution of a Jewish prisoner. Elisha's past is the nightmare memory of Nazi death camps. He is the only surviving member of his family. His future is a cherished dream of life in the promised homeland.…

Synopsis: One day when Sophie comes home from school, she finds two questions in her mail: Who are you? and Where does the world come from? Before she knows it, she is pondering all the great questions of Western philosophy (from the Greeks to Kant, to Marx and Freud) with a mysterious mentor. But Sophie is also receiving a separate batch of equally unusual letters. Who is Hilde? And why does her mail keep turning up in Sophie's world? To solve this…

Synopsis: The explosive conclusion to Veronica Roth's #1 New York Times bestselling Divergent series of books reveals the secrets of the dystopian world that captivated millions of readers and film fans in Divergent and Insurgent.One choice will define you. What if your whole world was a lie? What if a single revelation—like a single choice—changed everything? What if love and loyalty made you do things you never expected?Told from a riveting dual…

Synopsis: Ernest Hemingway’s classic novel of love during wartime.Written when Ernest Hemingway was thirty years old and lauded as the best American novel to emerge from World War I, A Farewell to Arms is the unforgettable story of an American ambulance driver on the Italian front and his passion for a beautiful English nurse. Set against the looming horrors of the battlefield, this gripping, semiautobiographical work captures the harsh realities of war…

Synopsis: They say something very strange is happening to some of the people of Salem. That some of the young girls have become - troubled. And the fear is beginning to spread. Mary and her mother don't hear about the rumors right away. They don't know that many of the villagers believe that some of Mary's friends have had spells cast on them - by witches. Or that one of the accused is Mary's mother. Now Mary and her brother, Caleb, have a decision to…

Synopsis: October 1991. It was "the perfect storm"--a tempest that may happen only once in a century--a nor'easter created by so rare a combination of factors that it could not possibly have been worse. Creating waves ten stories high and winds of 120 miles an hour, the storm whipped the sea to inconceivable levels few people on Earth have ever witnessed. Few, except the six-man crew of the Andrea Gail, a commercial fishing boat tragically headed towards…

Synopsis: October, 1991. It was "the perfect storm"--A tempest that may happen only once a century--a nor'easter created by so rare a combination of factors that it could not possibly have been worse. Creating waves ten stories high and winds of 120 miles an hour, the storm whipped the sea to inconceivable levels few people on Earth have ever witnessed. Few, except the six-man crew of the Andrea Gail, a commercial fishing boat tragically headed towards…

Synopsis: This is how wars are fought now: by children, hopped-up on drugs and wielding AK-47s. Children have become soldiers of choice. In the more than fifty conflicts going on worldwide, it is estimated that there are some 300,000 child soldiers. Ishmael Beah used to be one of them.What is war like through the eyes of a child soldier? How does one become a killer? How does one stop? Child soldiers have been profiled by journalists, and novelists have…

Synopsis: It is November 25, 1960, and the bodies of three beautiful, convent-educated sisters have been found near their wrecked Jeep at the bottom of a 150-foot cliff on the north coast of the Dominican Republic. El Caribe, the official newspaper, reports their deaths as an accident. It does not mention that a fourth sister lives. Nor does it explain that the sisters were among the leading opponents of Gen. Raphael Leonidas Trujillo's dictatorship. It…

Synopsis: “A true classic of world literature . . . A masterpiece that has inspired generations of writers in Nigeria, across Africa, and around the world.” —Barack Obama “African literature is incomplete and unthinkable without the works of Chinua Achebe.” —Toni Morrison"A magical writer - one of the greates of the twentieth century." —Margaret AtwoodNamed one of America's most-loved novels by PBS’s The Great American ReadThings Fall Apart is the first…

Synopsis: Lockdown is the powerful tale of fourteen-year-old Reese Anderson, who has spent 22 months in a tiny cell at a “progress center.” Living in fear and isolation, Reese begins looking within himself to find a way out of the prison system.Acclaimed author Walter Dean Myers offers an honest story about finding a way to make it without getting lost in the shuffle. Told with compassion and truth, Lockdown is also a compelling first-person read that "…