Product Description: During the last decades of the nineteenth century, our country's expanding wealth and influence moved progressive thinkers to evaluate the role of public institutions in providing for the welfare of a growing population. A burgeoning interest in issues as diverse as criminality among the poor, the health of immigrants, overcrowding in slums, and the education of the disabled spurred the development of new means to investigate, document, and analyze their living conditions with an eye toward improving their lives...read more

Product Description: Library Journal Editor’s PickReader’s Digest “Great Books from Small Presses That Are Worth Your Time”“Witty and insightful.” —Reader’s Digest“Readers who enjoyed Tom Perrotta’s Little Children will want to try Suzanne Greenberg’s Lesson Plans, an entertaining, funny, and thoughtful debut novel about three California homeschooling families...read more

Product Description: Abigail Iris has a half-birthday coming up, and it's the perfect excuse to ask for the adorable kitten up for adoption at her local farmer's market. She knows being a pet owner means new responsibilities, and with lots of other changes happening around her-like a new baby brother for Only Friend-Abigail has her work cut out for her with this pet project...read more

Product Description: Readers of all kinds will fall in love with the precocious, adorable Abigail Iris! Abigail Iris is sick of being One-of-Many—brothers and sisters, that is. She’d rather be an Only, like all her best friends, and not have to compete with siblings for time or attention...read more

Product Description: The characters in Speed-Walk and Other Stories often find themselves dislocated, living in places that do not resemble or feel like home. Their lives have somehow been turned on their axes, and often they cannot comprehend why. The stories in this exciting debut collection are united by their protagonists' common quest to make sense of the world, to bring it into focus, to set it right, to adapt...read more

Product Description: These 45 enjoyable "invention exercises," drawing on everyday experiences, could help novice and experienced writers strike gold. Virtually anything that the writer encounters can be valuable, once touched by their creative efforts and marked with their individual signature...read more (view table of contents, read Amazon.com's description)

Product Description: Everyday Creative Writing is for writers who wish to discover the worlds of fiction, poetry, and creative nonfiction. In addition to inspiration, this text provides helpful recommendations for evaluating your work for freshness and originality, along with guidance on practical issues such as getting your work published and overcoming writer's block...read more (view table of contents, read Amazon.com's description)