Kearney, Cheyenne, Rawlins. Reno, Sacramento, San Francisco. At each train station, a few lucky orphans from the crowded streets of New York City receive the fulfillment of their dreams: a home and family. This "orphan train" is the vision of Charles Loring Brace, founder of the Children's Aid Society, who cannot bear to see innocent children abandoned in the overpopulated cities of the mid-nineteenth-century. Yet it is not just the orphans whose...

Eleven-year-old bird watcher Ben must defy his brother to save their father after the glass plague sweeps through their town and a voice on the radio demands the simultaneous shattering of all plague victims.

Sadie doesn’t want a new life; her old one suits her just fine. But times are hard in drought-plagued Missouri, and Daddy thinks they’ll be better off in Texas. It’s tough for Sadie to give up her beloved home for this strange place, where even children clean shrimp at the cannery to help make ends meet and where people are rude to her disabled father.
Yet when trouble comes, it is the kindness of these new neighbors that helps...

Miranda Hanford, a widow and mother of six, feels trapped by her close-knit church and its controlling pastor Mason Chandler, who has threatened to dig up secrets from her past if she tries to leave, but she gets a glimpse at freedom when an injury forces her to call upon her estranged brother-in-law, college professor Jack Hanford, to help care for the children while she recovers.

Nursery rhymes are rarely as innocent as they seem--there is a wealth of concealed meaning in our familiar childhood verse. More than a century after Queen Victoria decided that children were better off without the full story, London librarian Roberts brings the truth to light. He traces the origins of the subtle phrases and antiquated references, revealing religious hatred, political subversion, and sexual innuendo. A history lesson that makes astonishing...

"These 15 women work with animals on land, air, and sea. Corina Newsome is saving seaside sparrows while Michelle LaRue uses satellites to study Antarctic birds. Lizzy Lowe takes on what many fear in researching spiders, and Erin Ashe lives out the dream of many studying dolphins and whales. Kristen Hecht chases the elusive hellbender amphibian while Enikö Kubinyi uses robots to get information on wolf pups. These women are working on issues that...