A captivating, absorbing, and suspenseful evocation of the spells of childhood.In a timeless coming-of-age tale as charming and haunting as the movie Stand By Me, Andrew Lovett’s Everlasting Lane tells the story of what happens when nine-year-old Peter’s father dies and his mother moves them from the city to a house in the countryside, for what seem to Peter to be mysterious reasons. He’s soon distracted, though, by the difficulties of being the new, shy kid at school, and he befriends the other two kids who seem to be outcasts: overweight Tommie and too-smart-for-her-own-good Anna-Marie. Together they try to weather the storm of bullying teachers and fellow students, by escaping into explorations of the seemingly bucolic countryside. There, though, they find other outcasts from society such as cranky Mr. Merridew, who won’t leave his cottage in the woods, and Scarecrow Man, who stands in the fields searching the skies. And meanwhile, Peter is disturbed by the growing awareness that his own mother may be some sort of outcast, too—and that she’s hiding something from him in a locked room in the attic, a room she’s expressly forbidden him from entering. Written in beautiful prose, Everlasting Lane is a captivating, absorbing, and suspenseful evocation of the spells of childhood: sun-soaked, nostalgic, with the soft focus and warm glow of a Polaroid—but it’s darker than it seems. Will Peter and his mother find the light in that darkness?

Product Description: Who knew rhinos could be such trouble? This fun picture book takes you deep into the jungles of Nepal, where two young boys have to protect their village from a band of marauding rhinos! This book is based on true events that journalist-turned-author Grant Olsen witnessed while traveling...read more

Product Description: Appearing for the first time in English, this masterful novel by one of the foremost figures of postwar German literature is an indelible portrait of Nazism slowly overtaking and poisoning a small town. Semi-autobiographical, it is also a remarkably vivid account of a childhood fraught with troubles, yet full of remembered love and touched by miracle...read more

Product Description: Chief Wusuri is a wise boy who travels throughout the village looking for problems so he can create solutions. When a man's piece of cornbread is stolen, Chief Wusuri feels like he let his village go hungry. To solve this problem, the Chief orders his men to fetch the cornmeal from the storehouse and make enough bread for the village to share...read more

Product Description: When Peach Blossom Village's bridge disappears, Master Chen must solve the mystery! The Mystery of Dragon Bridge is an English-Chinese bilingual children's fantasy story. The tale revolves around the inhabitants of Peach Blossom Village and the mysterious Dragon Bridge—the villagers' only connection to the outside world—which suddenly vanishes in the middle of the night...read more

Product Description: 1947. Kindly, unassuming widow Dorrie Resterick continually finds herself confidante to others' troubles. She would prefer to keep in the background, but life throws her many a mystery, and once she even found a scrap of evidence in a dreadful local crime – the double murder of two villagers...read more

Product Description: In this unique mystery debut, a shallow grave is found on a Pennsylvania farm, and one woman, straddling the Amish and outside worlds, must uncover a killer and create a life on her own terms.

Product Description: Every Wednesday, strange things happen in Max's village. The townsfolk shutter their windows, lock their doors, and hunker down to outwait this plague of peculiarities referred to simply as "the Wednesdays." But Max is too curious for that, and when he accidentally lets the Wednesdays inside, his furious parents cast him out for the rest of the day...read more

Product Description: An engrossing epic tale with a cast of characters that will hijack your heart. Cam Attling, having lost an arm, is the only one from his town of Kayforl to return after twelve years of war. All his fellow soldiers were slain, and suspicion surrounds him...read more

Product Description: A village on the Devil's Moor: a place untouched by time and shrouded in superstition. There is the grand manor house whose occupants despise the villagers, the small pub whose regulars talk of revenants, the old mill no one dares to mention...read more

Product Description: Shirley Jackson meets The Twilight Zone in this riveting novel of supernatural horrorA village on the Devil‘s Moor: a place untouched by time and shrouded in superstition. There is the grand manor house whose occupants despise the villagers, the small pub whose regulars talk of revenants, the old mill no one dares to mention...read more

Product Description: When the simple, backward village of Wentwater begins disappearing one word at a time, no one can figure out how to stop it. Not the learned men living up in the Heights nor the superstitious leaders of the village. But those who had attended the baby naming ceremony seventeen years earlier remember the words of the marsh witch, and her pronouncement that the babe would one day cause the unraveling of Wentwater...read more

Product Description: The Near Witch is only an old story told to frighten children. If the wind calls at night, you must not listen. The wind is lonely, and always looking for company. There are no strangers in the town of Near. These are the truths that Lexi has heard all her life...read more

Though more than fifteen years have passed since Ursula Hegi's Stones from the River captivated critics and readers alike, it retains its popularity, is on academic reading lists, and continues to be adopted by book groups. Also set in Burgdorf, Germany, Hegi's Children and Fire tells the story of a single day that will forever transform the lives of the townspeople. At the core of this remarkable novel is the question of how one teacher-gifted and joyful, passionate and inventive-can become seduced by propaganda during the early months of Hitler's regime and encourage her ten-year-old students to join the "Hitler-Jugend" with its hikes and songs and bonfires. Membership, she believes, will be a step toward better schools, better apprenticeships. How can a woman we admire choose a direction we don't admire? So much has changed for the teacher, Thekla Jansen, and the people of Burgdorf in the year since the parliament building burned. Thekla's lover, Emil Hesping, is sure the Nazis did it to frame the communists. But Thekla believes what she hears on the radio, that the communists set the fire, and she's willing to relinquish some of her freedoms to keep her teaching position. She has always taken her moral courage for granted, but when each silent agreement chips away at that courage, she knows she must reclaim it. Hegi funnels pivotal moments in history through the experiences of individual characters: Thekla's mother, who works as a housekeeper for a Jewish family; her employers, Michel and Ilse Abramowitz; Thekla's mentally ill father; Trudi Montag and her father, Leo Montag; Fraulein Siderova, midwife to the dying; and the students who adore their young teacher. As Hegi writes along that edge where sorrow and bliss meet, she shows us how one society-educated, cultural, compassionate-can slip into a reality that's fabricated by propaganda and controlled by fear, how a surge of national unity can be manipulated into the dehumanization of a perceived enemy and the justification of torture and murder. Gorgeously rendered and emotionally taut, Children and Fire confirms Ursula Hegi's position as one of the most distinguished writers of her generation.

Product Description: Moyo and Japera travel down the red dusty road to the next village. There, they will gather under the baobab tree, the Tree of Life. Moyo knows that some days the market wagon stops under the baobab tree. Villagers buy brightly colored cloth and heavy pots and pans...read more

Product Description: Long out of print, these poems about mice busily going about their domestic activities—baking bread, reading by candlelight—are accompanied by quaint, cozy watercolors Come and visit Nibbling Village. It's a secret place inhabited by Victorian-attired mice who spend their time cooking, sewing, cleaning, and, of course, nibbling...read more

Seeking the truth about her humble beginnings, widow Kate Herrick travels back to the seemingly tranquil Rose Cottage in rural England only to discover a story of family bitterness, jealousy, and revenge, and to find romance where she leasts expects it

Maria lives with her grandfather in a small mountain village in the snowy north. One winter morning, she is on her way to school when she spots a small grey bundle lying under a tree, half-covered in the powdery snow - a wolf cub! Maria knows that she should leave the cub, but her curiosity and compassion are aroused. Will the cub still be there when she walks home? "Personal and Social Development: New to the Barefoot Young Fiction" series, this debut novel by Rochdale author Richard Knight explores key issues around the relationship between humans and animals, and between the individual and their community.

Product Description: Chirchir just wants to make herself useful like all her other family members. But she drops Mama's water bucket, spills Kogo's tea, and sends Baba's potatoes tumbling down the hill. Isn't there something that Chirchir does best? Set in the rolling hills of rural Kenya, this is a wise and lyrical story about belonging from Kelly Cunnane, the author of the Ezra Jack Keats Award winner For You Are a Kenyan Child, accompanied by Jude Daly's beautiful folk art-style illustrations...read more