Heartrending subject matter conveyed in poetic prose excavates pain from the realm of memory. Dig with a pen, said poet Seamus Heaney. Kathryn Winograd uses a pickax to excavate old pains and buried memories as part of a personal... Read More

Sharing moving anecdotes about a juvenile detention center library, Zeman offers insight into literacy, society, and growing up. As a librarian at a jail for juvenile offenders, Marybeth Zeman has collected anecdotes from her years of... Read More

Thematic reinforcements add interesting layers of complexity to this tale of wilderness survival. With metaphoric elements and emotional catharses, the newest novella from John Smelcer, "Edge of Nowhere", overcomes some pacing issues to... Read More

This book offers young people a candid, compassionate view of an often-misunderstood problem. People often joke about obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD), as if it were little more than a funny quirk. “I’m so OCD!” people say about... Read More

Social and cultural beliefs can imprison people and separate them from love—this is a powerful theme Pineau conveys with emotional weight. “Black folk with black folk, white folk with white folk, and the world will keep on turning... Read More

Observations and memories juxtapose tributes to beauty with the gracelessness of aging. A timeless work from Czech writer Bohumil Hrabal becomes accessible to English-speaking audiences, thanks to a loving translation by Stacey Knecht.... Read More

A glimpse at how sworn virgins allow women to have some semblance of independence in Albania, even if it means giving up most of their identity. Identity, culture, and tradition get both honored and skewered in Elvira Dones’s English... Read More

Smith weaves emotional tension into this spiritual story of leukemia and baseball. A nine-year-old boy suffering from leukemia makes a selfless wish that challenges his father in Jake Smith’s moving "Wish". Their shared love of... Read More