An eleven-year-old foster child tries to cope with her longings and fears as she schemes against everyone who tries to be friendly.

"When Dr. Croft takes in orphan Eleanor Beady, he doesn't realize that he's gained an apprentice. Raised amidst Croft's experiments, "Nora" becomes his most trusted assistant-- an unthinkable and unlawful pursuit for a woman. Nora helps Croft's groundbreaking research and his clinic gain recognition, and she finds she doesn't mind working in the background, as long as she can continue to hone her skills. But the arrival of a new surgical resident...

Alice Bell must learn to fight the undead to avenge her family and learn to trust Cole Holland who has secrets of his own.

Rescued from a rainy, boggy town where she works in a dismal factory, ten-year-old orphan Isabelle learns that she is the last surviving member of a family that tends the world's only remaining magic-producing farm.

Pak Jun Do is the haunted son of a lost mother -- a singer "stolen" to Pyongyang -- and an influential father who runs Long Tomorrows, a work camp for orphans. There the boy is given his first taste of power, picking which orphans eat first and which will be lent out for manual labor. Recognized for his loyalty and keen instincts, Jun Do comes to the attention of superiors in the state, rises in the ranks, and starts on a road from which there will...

Caryl Phillips’s The Lost Child is a sweeping story of orphans and outcasts, haunted by the past and fighting to liberate themselves from it. At its center is Monica Johnson--cut off from her parents after falling in love with a foreigner--and her bitter struggle to raise her sons in the shadow of the wild moors of the north of England. Phillips intertwines her modern narrative with the childhood of one of literature’s most enigmatic lost boys,...

"So long as ignorance and poverty exist on earth, books of the nature of Les Mise;rables cannot fail to be of use," says Victor Hugo in the preface of his famous novel. Certainly, Les Mise;rables is French history recounted through the personal stories of its main characters. The tale offers philosophical insight on the good deeds that can happen even amidst ignorance and poverty. This handsome leather-bound volume is a beautiful addition to any classic...

From the award-winning, bestselling author of Snow Falling on Cedars comes a modern re-imagining of one of the world’s greatest tragedies, Sophocles’ Oedipus Rex—a story of destiny, desire, and destruction. • “Brilliant.... Transcendently dark and dazzling.” —The Seattle Times

In Seattle of 1962, Walter Cousins, a mild-mannered actuary takes a risk of his own and makes...

The Bean Trees is bestselling author Barbara Kingsolvers first novel, now widely regarded as a modern classic. It is the charming, engrossing tale of rural Kentucky native Taylor Greer, who only wants to get away from her roots and avoid getting pregnant. She succeeds, but inherits a 3-year-old native-American little girl named Turtle along the way, and together, from Oklahoma to Tucson, Arizona, half-Cherokee Taylor and her charge search for a new...

Many consider Evangeline Hamilton cursed. Orphaned at a young age and possessing a pair of mismatched eyes--one bright blue, the other dark brown--Eva has fought to find her way in a world that constantly rejects her. Yet the support of even one person can help overcome the world's judgments, and Eva has two--Seth and Zach, two former orphans she now counts as brothers. Seeking justice against the man who stole his birthright and destroyed his family,...