The teenage son of an Appalachian single mother who dies when he is eleven uses his good looks, wit, and instincts to survive foster care, child labor, addiction, disastrous loves, and crushing losses. Set in the mountains of southern Appalachia, this is the story of a boy born to a teenaged single mother in a single-wide trailer, with no assets beyond his dead father's good looks and copper-colored hair, a caustic wit, and a fierce talent for survival....

Narrator Jack and his mother, who was kidnapped seven years earlier when she was a 19-year-old college student, celebrate his fifth birthday. They live in a tiny, 11-foot-square soundproofed cell in a converted shed in the kidnapper's yard. The sociopath, whom Jack has dubbed Old Nick, visits at night, grudgingly doling out food and supplies. But Ma, as Jack calls her, proves to be resilient and resourceful--and attempts a nail-biting escape.

Henry Childs is just seventeen when he falls into a love affair so intense it nearly destroys him. To escape the wrath of the young girl's father, Henry joins the Marines, arriving in Korea on the eve of the brutal battle of the Chosin Reservoir-the defining moment of the Korean War. There he confronts an enemy force far beyond the scope of his imagining, but the challenges he meets upon his return home, scarred and haunted, are greater by far. From...

In The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay, prose magician Michael Chabon conjured the golden age of comic books, interwining history, legend and story-telling verve. In The Final Solution, he has condensed his boundless vision to create a short, suspenseful tale of compassion and wit that re-imagines the classic 19th-century detective story. In deep retirement in the English countryside, an 89-year old man, vaguely recollected by the locals...

Published in 1850, David Copperfield is Charles Dickens' eighth novel and the one that most closely follows the author's own life. A coming of age story, it describes David's life from childhood with a difficult stepfather, his schooling, his entry into the workforce, his courtship and marriage(s) and his eventual success as an author. Filled with colorful characters like Wilkins Micawber and Betsey Trotwood, and unforgettable villains like Uriah...

Ray Bradbury presents a novel dealing with a timeless parable of friendship, fear and loss where youth invariably abandons its youthful dreams before crossing the threshold to adult responsibility.

Possessing encyclopedia-like intelligence, unusual zookeeper's son Pi Patel sets sail for America, but when the ship sinks, he escapes on a life boat and is lost at sea with a dwindling number of animals until only he and a hungry Bengal tiger remain.