A law student gets a second chance A Chinese woman law student defies the one-child policy to bestow the gift of life upon a rural family while saving a baby panda. A story of passion and conviction set in the mountains of rural China, Living Treasures celebrates the value of life and nature. This debut novel told from a unique perspective gives insight into the Chinese way of life as well as modern thinking and issues. The characters are thoughtfully well rounded, the plot lines are true to life -Library Journal Living Treasures is nothing short of spectacular -Midwest Book Review A deeply human and sympathetic portrait of people living as best they can in an imperfect society -Foreword Reviews A knotty, engaging novel of China's recent history -Kirkus

A migrant novel based on the true story of Lost Boy of Sudan Michael Majok Kuch

The best war novel told from a young boy's perspective since Jerzy Kozinski's The Painted Bird. --Nyoul Lueth Tong, author of There is a Country: New Writing from the New Country of South Sudan

Set across a backdrop of refugee migration that spans Africa, America and Australia, How Fast Can You Run is the inspiring story of Michael Majok Kuch and his journey to find his mother. In 1988, Majok, as a five-year-old boy, fled his burning village in southern Sudan when the North systematically destroyed it, searching for John Garang, the South's leader. Majok, along with thousands of other fleeing people, many of them unaccompanied minors, trekked through the wilderness in Sudan, Ethiopia, and Kenya to arrive at a series of refugee camps where he would live for the next ten years. When the U.S. brokered an agreement, granting approximately 4,000 unaccompanied minors political asylum, Majok, now Michael, was given a new start in the U.S. Yet his new life was not without trauma. He faced prejudice once again, disrupting the promise of his new beginnings. This is a story of a survivor who in facing challenge after challenge summons the courageous spirit of millions of refugees throughout history and today.

On May 4, 1970, the campus of Kent State University became the final turning point in Americans' tolerance for the Vietnam War, as National Guardsmen opened fire on unarmed student protestors, killing four and wounding nine. It was one of the first true school shootings in our nation's history. A new young adult novel, Leaving Kent State (Harvard Square Editions), by debut author Sabrina Fedel, brings to life America's political and social turmoil as it ushered in the new decade of the 1970s. Throughout the harsh winter of 1969-1970, Kent, Ohio, became a microcosm of the growing unrest that threatened the very nature of democracy.

Told from the viewpoint of seventeen-year-old Rachel Morelli, Leaving Kent State explores themes of the day that are strikingly similar to our own: terrorism, war, racial injustice, and gender inequality. As Rachel struggles to convince her dad that she should go to Pratt University in New York to pursue her dream of becoming an artist, Kent slips ever further off of its axis, in step with the growing discord across the nation. Caught between her love for her next door neighbor, Evan, a boy who has just returned from Vietnam, and her desire to escape Kent, Rachel must navigate a changing world to pursue her dreams.

While our nation has largely forgotten what happened on May 4, 1970, says the author, it was a defining moment for the way in which Americans consider involvement in war. While popular sentiment initially blamed the students for the massacre, it became clear in the years immediately following that something had gone terribly wrong in our democracy for American troops to have opened fire on unarmed college students. In our own protest laden present, the shootings at Kent State remain a valuable lesson in the escalation of force during peaceful citizen protests.

As it moves from Chicago in the late 80's to Los Angeles on the cusp of a new millennium, Patchwork encompasses a mercurial decade in the lives of its characters. This debut novel - told with candor, insight, and a humor both gentle and scathing - sets the story of lovers in transition, and a family in the midst of personal upheaval, as they struggle to redefine themselves in the shadow of tragedy. A deeply moving story of human relationships, yours and mine, in elegant prose that tackles tragedy and hope, loss and grief, with refreshing honestly and humor. Loughry's brilliant voice and haunting story will follow you long after you've turned the last page. - Dora Levy Mossanen, author of HAREM and COURTESAN Dan Loughry is a maestro of memory and observation. In Patchwork, he achieves the impressive feat of telling a story that feels archetypal in its outlines - as it follows its protagonist through three eventful decades, from the beginning of the age of AIDS to the era of bemused long-term survivors - but ultimately wins us over through its masterful recording and layering of the specific human details and discoveries that make up a particular journey, and a particular life. - Dave Awl, author of WHAT THE SEA MEANS and FACEBOOK ME , and editor of 200 NEO-FUTURIST PLAYS

Meet Bettina Grosjean, a professor of Women's History, and her husband, a high-ranking environmental policymaker in the New York City mayor's office. Once a pair of student radicals, they are now raising their two brainy children on New York's Upper West Side. Upper West Side Story is the tale of fierce parental love tested in a startling eruption of racial hostility and political chicanery within the very community they have long loved and helped to build. Despite the deep love and affection they have for each other, their domestic life is suddenly thrown into crisis by a shocking and tragic event: During a school field trip, their son Zach and his best friend, Cyrus, are horsing around when, in a freak accident, Cyrus falls down a flight of stairs. The fact that Cyrus is black, that his mother is Bettina's closest friend, that jealousy, suspicion and resentment have long been simmering in the community, and that there are powerful political forces at work as well-all conspire to reveal an ugly underbelly of the community the Grosjeans have worked so hard to fashion into a model of an enlightened, multiracial world. Upper West Side Story is also the story of a remarkable multi-racial friendship, a love of two women united by their ideals and their devotion to their children, then divided by events that spiral out of control.

Gossipy, intimate, and provocative, and set in Trinidad and New York City, People and Peppers, A Romance gives a diverting peek into the nuances of a Caribbean island's callaloo of inter-racial and multicultural social mores. James's main characters are complex, motivated, and fun to know. Tall and handsome, the main protagonist, Vivion K Pinheiro, is the bastard of a half-Portuguese, half Afro-Haitian woman, and an attractive New Yorker with carrot-colored hair who danced beautifully. Accomplished as well, Vivion has earned national prestige as a scholar and athlete. As a young man trying to realize dreams, he can be selfish yet thoughtful, deceptive yet generous-no real villain, just a callow fella getting over by pulling the tricky strings of privilege and personal charm.

A Novel based on the true story of Lost Boy of Sudan Michael Majok Kuch. Five-year-old Majok fled his village when the government in the North of Sudan ordered attacks against the South. Along with thousands of other refugees, Majok trekked through war zones and wilderness to a series of refugee camps where he would live for the next ten years. Michael Majok Kuch attended high school, college and graduate school in Philadelphia. He was a featured Lost Boy of Sudan in the PBS documentary, Dinka Diaries.

Gossipy, intimate, and provocative, and set in Trinidad and New York City, People and Peppers, A Romance gives a diverting peek into the nuances of a Caribbean island's callaloo of inter-racial and multicultural social mores. James's main characters are complex, motivated, and fun to know. Tall and handsome, the main protagonist, Vivion K Pinheiro, is the bastard of a half-Portuguese, half Afro-Haitian woman, and an attractive New Yorker with carrot-colored hair who danced beautifully. Accomplished as well, Vivion has earned national prestige as a scholar and athlete. As a young man trying to realize dreams, he can be selfish yet thoughtful, deceptive yet generous-no real villain, just a callow fella getting over by pulling the tricky strings of privilege and personal charm. An important factor in his dream actualization is Vivion's doting, wealthy mother to whom he confessed an ambition to construct an ecologically sensitive, self-sufficient house on countryside property she bought for him. He imagines the finished structure to be surrounded by a pepper farm that grows Moruga Red Scorpion peppers-the hottest on the planet. A significant stubbing-stone to his ambitions though, is a habit of dodging difficulties-when the goings get tough, Vivion's gone. How he deals with this failing is only one serving of this fine novel. Of other satisfying portions is the influence of the women in his life. In earlier novels, James's female characters have been admirable stalwarts and he doesn't disappoint here. Andaluza, the mother, is an indulgent one. Nikki, the lover, is a strong other. This empathetic novel superbly speaks to women's compassion and tolerances in the name of love. So let's live with Vivion as he discovers and submits to the sublime effects of romantic love and father issues. Peoples and Peppers, A Romance, draws on complex interactions between diverse peoples, men and women, from Dominican Republic, Trinidad, New York, and Japan. Kelvin Christopher James captures their intimacies and compromises with fluent, accurate, and tasty expression in an ecology of people and pepper varieties in the field, and with sweet language, they linger on the reader's mental palate. -Dr. Brader Brathwaite Praise for his Jumping Ship and Other Stories: A warm and gifted raconteur. -New York Times Praise for Secrets, a novel: Incantatory . . . the finest novel to come out of the Caribbean experience since V.S. Naipaul's A House for Mr. Biswas. -Washington Post

A story of ordinary people making extraordinary ripples in the ocean of life.

That One Cigarette is a counterfactual history novel following four families from November of 1963 to January of 2009. In November '63, Ed Callahan is an assistant manager at the Texas School Book Depository in Dallas. His promise to his wife to quit smoking as soon as he finishes the pack in his pocket ends up changing the course of events on November 22. The fallout of this action alters the lives of the Scott family in Rochester, New York, the Kaufman/Goldman family in Los Angeles and the extended Kashat family in Baghdad, Iraq.

It's not until the final chapters that all of these lives intersect, but along the way, That One Cigarette explores questions of fate, love, loyalty and the ability of each of us to make defining contributions to our world by simply being present in our own lives.

Anomie is a uniquely told story of Michael, a middle-aged university professor and writer. After a series of tragic events, he seeks closure through myriad experiences, in order to bring balance to his world. Will he find himself in China? With strong clear prose Jeff Lockwood illuminates the state of moving between cultures, physically, emotionally, and romantically. It's not that his character, Michael, has no connections, or no heritage. And yet, from the age of three, he has chosen to separate himself, to be an outsider even in the places, and with the people, he loves. - Rachel Pollack, recipient of the Arthur C. Clarke Award and the World Fantasy Award Jeffrey Lockwood hails from Michigan's Upper Peninsula, but has lived internationally for many years. Presently, he writes in Inner Mongolia. Anomie is his first novel.

Meet Bettina Grosjean, a professor of Women's History, and her husband, a high-ranking environmental policymaker in the New York City mayor's office. Once a pair of student radicals, they are now raising their two brainy children on New York's Upper West Side. Upper West Side Story is the tale of fierce parental love tested in a startling eruption of racial hostility and political chicanery within the very community they have long loved and helped to build. Despite the deep love and affection they have for each other, their domestic life is suddenly thrown into crisis by a shocking and tragic event: During a school field trip, their son Zach and his best friend, Cyrus, are horsing around when, in a freak accident, Cyrus falls down a flight of stairs. The fact that Cyrus is black, that his mother is Bettina's closest friend, that jealousy, suspicion and resentment have long been simmering in the community, and that there are powerful political forces at work as well-all conspire to reveal an ugly underbelly of the community the Grosjeans have worked so hard to fashion into a model of an enlightened, multiracial world. Upper West Side Story is also the story of a remarkable multi-racial friendship, a love of two women united by their ideals and their devotion to their children, then divided by events that spiral out of control.

In the mid-19th century, the itinerant Vlad D'Agostino arrives in New York City after a long stay in Japan, bringing with him a samurai mask and a terminal case of tuberculosis. In Manhattan, he learns of an innovative doctor who claims to have found a treatment for the disease using 'alpine air, ' but Vlad will have to travel to the physician's clinic in the Rocky Mountains, in a place known as Never Summer.... On his quest to save himself and prolong his life, he inadvertently makes discoveries about his traumatic past--and about how to live more fully in the present.... Vlad is a thoughtful hero, and Blaine seems just as interested in evoking Herman Melville's work as he is Zane Grey's. Adventure fans of all stripes will find something compelling in the tragic, mysterious protagonist. An original, philosophically minded Western adventure.

--Kirkus Reviews

Nineteenth century women are committed to an insane asylum for reasons that have nothing to do with their sanity: When New York physician, Adam Fletcher takes the position of medical doctor at the Illinois State Hospital for the Insane in 1857, he quickly realizes the asylum is not a place of healing. His compassion for the women under his care, and his shock at the perversity of their treatment propel him into actions no one could have predicted. Inspired by true events, For Their Own Good reveals the murky, often terrifying world of nineteenth century insane asylums. Touted as havens for patients receiving innovative treatments, the hospitals confined society's powerless, whether insane or not. The brilliant presentation of a fictionalized true epoch in the history of American 'therapeutic' intervention holds our attention from first page to last. As a physician, woman, and lover of great stories, I highly recommend For Their Own Good. -R. S. Lipkind, M.D.

What happens when a handful of unruly but authentic young people grow up absurd in 1950s America and rush headlong into the social and political upheavals of the 1960s? Through the hearts, minds, and actions of its young protagonists, Gates of Eden explores the excitement and urgency of the turbulent 60s and the struggles of an earlier generation that dared rage against the machine. From their scattered beginnings through a surge to resistance, Gates' complex, colorful characters invite us to join them as they transform 'hell no, we won't go' into a celebration of collective action, shared consciousness, and the realizations of their own fiercely personal dreams.

Desperate to escape the tedium of small island life, Florian finds himself drawn to Zar, not realizing how thoroughly her unconventional spirit will challenge his beliefs. The arrival of Emily relieves some of the tension that exists between the two, but hidden agendas provide new sources of conflict as the three characters discover each other and themselves.Elsewhere in the space-time continuum, Jo, an American in Brazil, stumbles upon an anarchist theater group studying the Outernet, a plane of paranormal consciousness that functions as a global communications system. As her latent psychic talents emerge, Jo is drawn into a high-stakes battle to escape the constriction of the ego and overthrow a totalitarian consortium. All at Once constructs an Escher-like world of illusion and exquisite detail, where lost identities surface in unexpected places. The novel invites the reader to new heights of awareness by leading them nowhere and everywhere at once, blurring the boundaries between fiction and reality.

The Conjuror's Boy is the saga of Thomas Faye, a fatherless boy who enters a junk shop on a gray Chicago day in 1962 and is forever changed by the two men he meets there. Arthur Farrell, the proprietor, is a sometime-magician, raconteur, wanderer, a wounded veteran of the carnage at the Somme, who can heal - and perhaps far more - with the mere touch of his hand. His belligerent friend Meyer, a seemingly indestructible survivor of the fall of the Warsaw Ghetto, lives on the street, a magnet for trouble and violence. Under the influence of these two mysterious men Thomas comes to see the world in ways he could never have imagined. As his own travels take him to Vietnam and the far corners of America, he adopts one persona after another: drifter, soldier, carny worker, detective, lover. Through it all, three people hover at the edge of his existence: Farrell, Meyer, and a troubled girl. As he notes the troubling changes in his own abilities, he begins to understand why fate sent him into the conjuror's shop that day in 1962. Michael Raleigh is the author of seven previous novels, including IN THE CASTLE OF THE FLYNNS. He has received the Eugene Izzi award for crime fiction and four Illinois Arts Council awards for fiction. He teaches writing at DePaul University and lives in Chicago with his wife Katherine and his three children.

The Handbook for Literary Analysis: How to Evaluate Prose Fiction, Drama, and Poetry reclaims the metaphor, rhetoric, and literary analysis. It has a high view of the reader, the critic, and the student. All three are invited to think critically and to discuss thoroughly the great literary works of all civilizations. Systematically, this Handbook defines, explains, and illustrates a wide range of significant literary terms in fiction, drama, and poetry. Along the way, readers explore copious, inspired examples, including biblical examples. Finally, readers read real literary analytical essays by American high school students. If readers learn how to do literary analysis well, they will be better able to create and to share vital truths with future generations. Dr. Stobaugh's Handbook of Literary Criticism is an outstanding resource for educators and the students. Over the past several decades, the influence of literature produced by Christians has significantly declined. From my perspective as a Christian culture influencer, I believe we must reverse that trend. We need more effective authors who are producing world class literature framed in the Christian worldview. I see Dr. Stobaugh's handbook to be essential to reverse that trend. I highly recommend it. -Ray Traylor, Homeschool Dad, Author True Riches & Besetting Sin This book is appropriate for junior high students through adults. You can work through the book sequentially or selectively, depending upon your need. The book reads like a literature text with plentiful use of literary excerpts, including many from Scripture, as examples. It also should help familiarize readers with some great literary works. There are no questions or assignments as you would find in a course. Instead, it is expected that the reader will be using it for self-directed education. Parents might assign particular sections for the student lacking self-direction, then follow up with a discussion regarding what they have read. -Cathy Duffy, homeschool review guru

Should family therapy be a spectator sport? Close, Erika Raskin's debut novel explores the familiar dynamics of a family in crisis and then adds TV therapy to the mix. This book tells a poignant and edgy story of a divorced-family dynamic through complex characters and the real life struggles of parenting and adolescence. Close follows the Marchesons who are still dealing with the fallout from an ugly divorce. Wry, single mom Kik and her three complicated and imaginative daughters are all paddling hard to stay afloat. When being swamped becomes a real possibility, they grab a lifeline, one that is unfortunately tethered to living room couches all over the country. While trying to get help for the Marcheson daughters this family experiences something that will shock you. -LitPik A page-turner of significance -Best-selling author Alice Randall

The epic tale of two teens in a fight to save a warming planet...the universe...and their love. A cli-fi quest to outsmart polluters, full of romance, honour and adventure.

The eco-novel is wonderful...universal symbols are unearthed, codes are investigated, fat corporations are dominating, romance is blossoming, computers come alive, and native tribes and Nature on another planet bring our own treasured past into the future. --The Guardian

Readers' Favorite Award Winner

Book Excellence Finalist

A Top 10 Best Science Fiction book

Best Climate and Environmental Fiction book

LitPick Award winner

Included in 12 Works of Climate Fiction Everyone Should Read
'Top Fiction Read' of the Year

New York Book Festival Honorable Mention
An excerpt received an Eco-Fiction Story Contest Honorable Mention

Honestly, it's not my fault. Humans were polluting the planet to desolation. What else could I do? I had to save her.

When a smart-mouthed, mixed-race teen wonders why the work that needs to be done pays nothing compared to the busywork glorified on holovision news, the search for answers takes him on the wildest journey of anyone's lifetime. With the girl of his dreams, he inadvertently invents living computers. Just as the human race allows corporations to pollute Earth into total desolation, institute martial law and enslave humanity, the two teens set out to save civilization. Can they thwart polluters of Earth and other fertile planets? The heroes come into their own in different kinds of relationships in this diverse, multi-cultural romance. Along the way, they enlist the help of female droid Any Gynoid, who uncovers cutting-edge scientific mysteries. Their quest takes them through the Big Bang and back. Will Starliament tear them from the project and unleash 'intelligent' life's habitual pollution, or will youth lead the way to a new way of coexisting with Nature?

Nature's Confession couldn't be more timely, just as the IMF reveals that governments give $5.3 trillion in fossil fuel subsidies every year, while we continue to propagate the idea that solar and wind power are unprofitable. The ideal classroom tool, with illustrations and topics for discussion at the back of the book. JL Morin entertains questions about busywork; economic incentives to pollute; sustainable energy; exploitation; cyborgs; the sanctity of Nature; and many kinds of relationships in this diverse, multi-cultural romance.