1938. The Golden Age of Hollywood. Palm trees and movie stars. Film studios pumping out musicals, westerns, and gangster films at a furious pace. Everyone wants to be a star--except society girl and aspiring astronomer Kate Hildebrand, who'd rather study them in the night sky. She's already famous after a childhood tragedy turned her into a newspaper headline. What she craves is stability. But when Kate has to move to Hollywood to live with her washed-up...

This history of the world for young readers, published in 1921, won the first Newbery Medal for outstanding contribution to children's literature in 1922. Beginning with primitive man, Van Loon sets out to trace the various strands of civilization, from art to agriculture to religion, focusing on the importance of singular events and individuals.

Publisher Annotation: Cash, Fitch, and Bird Nelson Thomas are three siblings in seventh grade together in Park, Delaware. In 1986, as the nation waits expectantly for the launch of the space shuttle Challenger, they each struggle with their own personal anxieties. Cash, who loves basketball but has a newly broken wrist, is in danger of failing seventh grade for the second time. Fitch spends every afternoon playing Major Havoc at the arcade on Main...

Chess is a sport, a science, and an art. For more than a thousand years, people around the world have enjoyed this game of skill and tactics and intellectual prowess. From Parisian nightclubs to Hollywood films to everyday dining rooms and dens, you can find people furrowing their brows in concentration over their next strategic move. The fun of the game is that anyone can play, and there is always something more to learn—especially with the right...