Our hero confronts a large and varied cast, including Wackford Squeers, the fantastic ogre of a schoolmaster, and Vincent Crummles, the grandiloquent ham actor, on his comic and satirical adventures up and down the country. Punishing wickedness, befriending the helpless, strutting the stage, and falling in love, Nicholas shares some of his creator's energy and earnestness as he faces the pressing issues of early Victorian society.--Publisher's description....

"The first great adventure story in the Western canon, The Odyssey is a poem about violence and the aftermath of war; about wealth, poverty, and power; about marriage and family; about travelers, hospitality, and the yearning for home. In this fresh, authoritative version--the first English translation of The Odyssey by a woman--this stirring tale of shipwrecks, monsters, and magic comes alive in an entirely new way. Written in iambic pentameter verse...

Who was Abraham Lincoln? A boy who only had a year of schooling? A practical joker? One of the greatest presidents ever? All of the above! Find out more about the real Abraham Lincoln in this illustrated biography.

At The Center of Martin Chuzzlewit -- the novel Angus Wilson called "one of the most sheerly exciting of all Dickens stories" -- is Martin himself, very old, very rich, very much on his guard. What he suspects (with good reason) is that every one of Iris close and distant relations. now converging in droves on the country inn where they believe he is dying, will stop at nothing to become the inheritor of Iris great fortune. Having unjustly disinherited...

"A powerful true story of a young girl who has never known life outside a refugee camp and a father determined to help her dream beyond the fences that confine them"--

There's something for every guy in this collection of stories, mini-memoirs, advice, poems, comics and drawings chosen by readers on the Guys Read web site.

"A distinctive new voice: Rex Ogle's story of starting middle school on the free lunch program is timely, heartbreaking, and true. Free Lunch is the story of Rex Ogle's first semester in sixth grade. Rex and his baby brother often went hungry, wore secondhand clothes, and were short of school supplies, and Rex was on his school's free lunch program. Grounded in the immediacy of physical hunger and the humiliation of having to announce it every day...

Hospitalized with the dreaded atom bomb disease, leukemia, a child in Hiroshima races against time to fold one thousand paper cranes to verify the legend that by doing so a sick person will become healthy.

"A little girl and her Sephardic Jewish family joyfully greet the Jewish New Year. "When leaves begin falling, the shofar comes calling. The halá golden brown is shaped round like a crown. Anyada Buena! Shanah Tovah!""--