Antonia Vega, the immigrant writer at the center of Afterlife, has had the rug pulled out from under her. She has just retired from the college where she taught English when her beloved husband, Sam, suddenly dies. And then more jolts: her bighearted but unstable sister disappears, and Antonia returns home one evening to find a pregnant, undocumented teenager on her doorstep. Antonia has always sought direction in the literature she loves--lines from...

When eighth-grader Cameron Boxer creates the Positive Action Group at school he intends it as a diversion to fool his parents, teachers, and sister into letting him continue to concentrate on his video-gaming--but before he knows it other kids are taking it seriously, and soon he finds himself president of the P.A.G., and involved in community service, so the boy who never cared about anything is now the center of everything, whether he likes it or...

Eight-year-old Just Grace and her best friend Mimi embark on a campaign to convince Grace's parents that they are responsible and dependable enough to get a dog.

Poco después de jubilarse de la universidad donde enseñaba literatura, Antonia Vega, una escritora latina, pierde a su adorado esposo y su vida parece desmoronarse de repente. Hasta entonces parecía haber encontrado consuelo en la literatura que ama--las palabras de sus autores preferidos dan vueltas en su cabeza como plegarias--, pero la desaparición de su hermana, con su personalidad impredecible y su gran corazón, junto con la aparición de...

"Meet The Adults. Claire and Matt are no longer together but decide what's best for their daughter Scarlett is to have a "normal" family Christmas. They can't agree on whose idea it was to go to the Happy Forest Holiday park , or who said they should bring their new partners. But someone did--and it's too late to pull the plug. Claire brings her new boyfriend Patrick (never Pat), a seemingly sensible, eligible from a distance, Iron-Man-in-Waiting....

When fulfilling her duty as a shapeshifting guardian for her village means abandoning the young man she loves, the future she imagines with him, and her values, sixteen-year-old Adele must decide how far she is willing to go to keep her friends and neighbors safe.

After spending her life with her mentally retarded mother and agoraphobic neighbor, twelve-year-old Heidi sets out from Reno, Nevada, to New York to find out who she is. Living with her mentally disabled mother who only knows just over twenty words, young Heidi has learned to live in her special world until a new word is suddenly used and repeated by her mother; causing Heidi to think it might be a key to a secret past about which she knows so little....

Alexia is delighted when Mr. Cooper brings in Bob, a hognose snake, as class pet, but when Bob keels over, is Andrea's toy poodle or Alexia's neglect to blame?

"It begins with Peter, a devoted man of faith, as he is called to the mission of a lifetime, one that takes him galaxies away from his wife, Bea. Peter becomes immersed in the mysteries of an astonishing new environment, overseen by an enigmatic corporation known only as USIC. His work introduces him to a seemingly friendly native population struggling with a dangerous illness and hungry for Peter's teachings--his Bible is their "book of strange new...

A boy steadfastly blames everything from messy homework to a dirty face on inanimate objects until they visit his dreams, reminding him that he must take responsibility for his mistakes.