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A cabin boy winds up on an infamous pirate ship called the Giant Rat of Sumatra — and in the middle of the war with Mexico. Swashbuckling adventure moves swiftly along even as the boy yearns to return to New England and pirate Captain Gallows to leave the sea.

A very poor, young couple, who are deeply in love, want to buy each other Christmas presents but have no money to do so. They each figure out a way to get the money to buy each other gifts. What unpleasant surprises await them on Christmas Day?

Sixteen-year-old Deka lives in fear and anticipation of the blood ceremony that will determine whether she will become a member of her village. Already different from everyone else because of her unnatural intuition, Deka prays for red blood so she can finally feel like she belongs.

But on the day of the ceremony, her blood runs gold, the color of impurity–and Deka knows she will face a consequence worse than death.Then a mysterious woman comes to her with a choice: stay in the village and submit to her fate, or leave to fight for the emperor in an army of girls just like her. They are called alaki–near-immortals with rare gifts. And they are the only ones who can stop the empire’s greatest threat.

Suraya, a twelve-year-old Malaysian girl, inherits her grandmother’s pelesit and becomes best friends with the ghostly demon, whom she names Pink. 

Sixteen-year-old Sonia Ocampo was born on the night of the worst storm Tres Montes had ever seen. And when the winds mercifully stopped, an unshakable belief in the girl’s protective powers began. Sonia knows she has no special powers, but how can she disappoint those who look to her for solace? When she gets a chance to travel to the city and work in the home of a wealthy woman, she seizes it. But when news arrives that her beloved brother has disappeared while looking for work, she learns to her sorrow that she can never truly leave the past or her family behind.

Molly and her Dad always shared a love of baseball — especially the hard-luck Chicago Cubs — and he taught her how to throw a tricky knuckleball. After her father passes away, Molly wants to try out for the boys’ baseball team, as a way of keeping her connection to her Dad. This tender novel combines sports action with Molly’s struggle to accept her loss.

Jonas’s world is perfect: no crime, no pain, no illness. Like other 12-year-olds in this society, Jonas prepares for his assignment in the adult world. What Jonas learns in his new and special role as Receiver of Memory shatters his complacency and jumpstarts a journey into the unknown.

The Glass Castle is the 2005 memoir by the American author Jeannette Walls. In it, Walls recounts her deeply dysfunctional yet vibrant upbringing, emphasizing her resilience and her father’s attempts toward redemption.

Twelve-year old Alice must face issues beyond her years. Her sister has run off, her mother won’t get out of bed, and the family horse farm is failing. Can she keep the family from falling apart?

The addition of a runt pig to their New Hampshire farm — as a pet, not for the plate — allowed the author to observe close-up how affection (even inter-species) builds community and friendship. Personal recollections of family, how Christopher Hogwood (the pig named after the British conductor) helped develop camaraderie is combined with animal fact in this engrossing memoir.

Barbie just might be the most famous doll in the world. She’s represented fifty different nationalities. She’s stepped into the always-fashionable shoes of more than one hundred careers. She has been played with, studied, celebrated, and vilified for more than fifty years. And she has unquestionably influenced generations of girls — whether that influence has been positive or negative depends on who you ask.

When the Crown Princess of Kildenree is passed over for the throne and sent to marry the prince of Bayern, she escapes and disguises herself as a goose until she is able to reclaim the throne that is rightfully hers. Based on the Grimm’s fairy tale, this story-the first in the Books of Bayern series-is filled with treachery and romance, and features a powerful female protagonist.

The novel focuses on Josh Swenson, a teenager who preaches his anti-consumerism beliefs under his online pseudonym of “Larry” and must deal with the sudden popularity of his web presence.

The feline adventures begin when Marco and Polo, always indoor cats, taste freedom (and the Burger King dump). The cat brothers meet others memorable mousers along the way in this first of a series of books about the Cat Pack.

Often considered one of the greatest fantasy series, the ten-book Amber Chronicles are collected here in one volume. The stories tell of first Corwin, then his son Merlin, and their life on both Earth and its parallel city Amber. Amber is a fully realized world, and the books are fantasy, humor and adventure in one long but compelling package.

Are the wealthiest people in America the happiest? Nick Carraway seems to think so until he gets involved with his rich neighbors, including the mysterious Jay Gatsby. Through Nick’s love interest Jordan, and his budding friendship with Jay, Nick discovers that Gatsby’s world is filled with love, betrayal and murder. 

Eel has troubles of his own: As an orphan and a “mudlark,” he spends his days in the filthy River Thames, searching for bits of things to sell. He’s being hunted by Fisheye Bill Tyler, and a nastier man never walked the streets of London. And he’s got a secret that costs him four precious shillings a week to keep safe. But even for Eel, things aren’t so bad until that fateful August day in 1854—the day the deadly cholera (“blue death”) comes to Broad Street.

Celebrities Ellen DeGeneres, Jennifer Aniston, Tim McGraw, Dale Earnhardt, Jr. and others contribute suggestions of small changes you can make daily to have a positive impact on the health of our planet. Learn how you too can live green!

Sixteen-year-old Starr lives in two worlds: the poor neighborhood where she was born and raised and her posh high school in the suburbs. The uneasy balance between them is shattered when Starr is the only witness to the fatal shooting of her unarmed best friend, Khalil, by a police officer. Now what Starr says could destroy her community. It could also get her killed.

Profiles of inspiring, courageous, and selfless individuals.

This nonfiction work is the description of how this heroine of the anti-Nazi underground in Holland and her family hid persecuted Jews in their home. Eventually they were betrayed, and they, too, spent some time in concentration camps.

This classic of Latin American literature tells the story of Esperanza, who lives in a poor Hispanic neighborhood in Chicago. Told in a series of vignettes, Esperanza tries to leave, while realizing the house on Mango Street will always be with her.

Matteo Alacrán was not born; he was harvested. His DNA came from El Patrón, lord of a country called Opium — a strip of poppy fields lying between the United States and what was once called Mexico. He is a boy now, but most consider him a monster — except for El Patrón. El Patrón loves Matt as he loves himself, because Matt is himself. As Matt struggles to understand his existence, he is threatened by a sinister cast of characters. Escape is the only chance Matt has to survive. But escape is no guarantee of freedom, because Matt is marked by his difference in ways he doesn’t even suspect.

Product Description: In one of the most important and beloved Latin American works of the twentieth century, Isabel Allende weaves a luminous tapestry of three generations of the Trueba family, revealing both triumphs and tragedies. Here is patriarch Esteban, whose wild desires and political machinations are tempered only by his love for his ethereal wife, Clara, a woman touched by an otherworldly hand. Their daughter, Blanca, whose forbidden love for a man Esteban has deemed unworthy infuriates her father, yet will produce his greatest joy: his granddaughter Alba, a beautiful, ambitious girl who will lead the family and their country into a revolutionary future.