How the Steel Was Tempered is a classic novel that offers a fictionalized account of author Nikolai Ostrovsky's experiences during the Civil War and his journey of overcoming crippling injuries after the war ended. The story centers on a young man, Pavel Korchagin, and follows his transformation from an ill-mannered malcontent to a disciplined soldier of the revolution.

In a time when the achievements of humanity are being threatened by capitalist barbarism, this novel serves as an inspiration, reminding us of the power of the human spirit and the potential for self-realization. More than just a tale of socialism, it heralds the arrival of a new type of human being, free from material and economic chains.

This literary work is one of the great revolutionary novels that brings the dry analysis of socialism to life, presenting it as a vibrant, historical experience. It is a testament to the enduring importance of revisiting revolutionary literature, as these stories play a crucial role in understanding the evolution of human ideals.

The Gods of Women Have Gone Mad is a raw and candid account of the horrors of female genital mutilation, a heartbreaking coming-of-age dystopian story, and a powerful and moving tale of the indomitable spirit of women in the face of immense adversity.

In the culturally rich land of Rolami, where tradition and gods rule, young women face the harrowing practice of circumcision. Lami, the privileged daughter of a prominent chief, has managed to avoid this fate for four seasons. But even her power and determination can't shield her from tradition forever.

When her best friend returns from exile to offer comfort, Lami discovers that the consequences of her culture's cruel rites of passage are even worse than she had imagined. Together with her friends, she must fight to bring revolution to Rolami. But will their changes be for the better or the worse? It all depends on who is telling the story and who is listening...

Inspired by the life of a real World War II heroine, this debut novel reveals a story of love, redemption, and secrets that were hidden for decades.

New York socialite Caroline Ferriday has her hands full with her post at the French consulate and a new love on the horizon. But Caroline’s world is forever changed when Hitler’s army invades Poland in September 1939—and then sets its sights on France.

An ocean away from Caroline, Kasia Kuzmerick, a Polish teenager, senses her carefree youth disappearing as she is drawn deeper into her role as courier for the underground resistance movement. In a tense atmosphere of watchful eyes and suspecting neighbors, one false move can have dire consequences.

For the ambitious young German doctor, Herta Oberheuser, an ad for a government medical position seems her ticket out of a desolate life. Once hired, though, she finds herself trapped in a male-dominated realm of Nazi secrets and power.

The lives of these three women are set on a collision course when the unthinkable happens and Kasia is sent to Ravensbrück, the notorious Nazi concentration camp for women. Their stories cross continents—from New York to Paris, Germany, and Poland—as Caroline and Kasia strive to bring justice to those whom history has forgotten.

From the internationally bestselling author of The Vegetarian, Human Acts is a rare and astonishing portrait of political unrest and the universal struggle for justice.

In the midst of a violent student uprising in South Korea, a young boy named Dong-ho is shockingly killed. The story of this tragic episode unfolds in a sequence of interconnected chapters as the victims and the bereaved encounter suppression, denial, and the echoing agony of the massacre.

From Dong-ho's best friend who meets his own fateful end; to an editor struggling against censorship; to a prisoner and a factory worker, each suffering from traumatic memories; and to Dong-ho's own grief-stricken mother; through their collective heartbreak and acts of hope is the tale of a brutalized people in search of a voice.

This novel is a timeless, pointillist portrait of an historic event with reverberations still being felt today, tracing the harsh reality of oppression and the resounding, extraordinary poetry of humanity.

After a globally devastating virus sweeps across the world, the ones that are left are trying desperately to survive and pick up the pieces. Paisley Roberts did not have it easy growing up, but the unfortunate knowledge she learned as an adolescent actually elevates her in this new world.

She quickly used those skills to forge ahead, creating a place not only in the world, but in the new government controlling the land as well. However, nothing is the same, including relationships. Love comes in many forms like before, but a new environment complicates the old-fashioned ideas once strongly held.
Will she allow emotions to cloud her judgment? Will traditional values hold up when nothing in the world is the same anymore?

Some boys go too far. Some boys will break your heart. But one boy can make you whole.

When Grace meets Ian, she's afraid. Afraid he'll reject her like the rest of the school, like her own family. After she accuses the town golden boy of rape, everyone turns against Grace. They call her a slut and a liar. But... Ian doesn't. He's funny and kind, with secrets of his own.

But how do you trust the best friend of the boy who raped you? How do you believe in love?

A gut-wrenching, powerful love story told from alternating points of view by the acclaimed author of Send.

Brooke Nolan is a battered child who makes an anonymous phone call about the escalating brutality in her home. When social services jeopardize her safety, condemning her to keep her father’s secret, it’s a glass of spilled milk at the dinner table that forces her to speak about the cruelty she’s been hiding.

In her pursuit for safety and justice, Brooke battles a broken system that pushes to keep her father in the home. When jury members and a love interest congregate to inspire her to fight, she risks losing the support of family and comes to the realization that some people simply do not want to be saved.

Spilled Milk is a novel of shocking narrative, triumph, and resiliency.

Elizabeth Berg, bestselling author of The Art of Mending and The Year of Pleasures, has a rare talent for revealing her characters' hearts and minds in a manner that makes us empathize completely.

It is the summer of 1964. In Tupelo, Mississippi, the town of Elvis's birth, tensions are mounting over civil-rights demonstrations occurring ever more frequently—and violently—across the state. But in Paige Dunn's small, ramshackle house, there are more immediate concerns.

Challenged by the effects of the polio she contracted during her last month of pregnancy, Paige is nonetheless determined to live as normal a life as possible and to raise her daughter, Diana, in the way she sees fit—with the support of her tough-talking black caregiver, Peacie.

Diana is trying in her own fashion to live a normal life. As a fourteen-year-old, she wants to make money for clothes and magazines, to slough off the authority of her mother and Peacie, to figure out the puzzle that is boys, and to escape the oppressiveness she sees everywhere in her small town. What she can never escape, however, is the way her life is markedly different from others'. Nor can she escape her ongoing responsibility to assist in caring for her mother.

Paige Dunn is attractive, charming, intelligent, and lively, but her needs are great—and relentless. As the summer unfolds, hate and adversity will visit this modest home. Despite the difficulties thrust upon them, each of the women will find her own path to independence, understanding, and peace. And Diana's mother, so mightily compromised, will end up giving her daughter an extraordinary gift few parents could match.

Every Last One is a breathtaking and beautiful novel by the Pulitzer Prize-winning author, Anna Quindlen. In this unforgettable story, Quindlen creates a poignant portrait of a mother, a father, a family, and the explosive, violent consequences of what seem like inconsequential actions.

Mary Beth Latham has built her life around her family, caring for her three teenage children and preserving the rituals of their daily life. When one of her sons becomes depressed, Mary Beth focuses her attention on him, only to be blindsided by a shocking act of violence.

What unfolds is a testament to the power of a woman's love and determination, and to the invisible lines of hope and healing that connect one human being with another. Ultimately, Every Last One is a novel about facing every last one of the things we fear most, finding ways to navigate roads we never intended to travel, and living a life we never dreamed we'd have to live, but find ourselves brave enough to try.

Partly autobiographical, this is the first of the internationally acclaimed trilogy by Judith Kerr telling the unforgettable story of a Jewish family fleeing from Germany at the start of the Second World War.

Suppose your country began to change. Suppose that without your noticing, it became dangerous for some people to live in Germany any longer. Suppose you found, to your complete surprise, that your own father was one of those people.

That is what happened to Anna in 1933. She was nine years old when it began, too busy with her schoolwork and tobogganing to take much notice of political posters, but out of them glared the face of Adolf Hitler, the man who would soon change the whole of Europe – starting with her own small life.

Anna suddenly found things moving too fast for her to understand. One day, her father was unaccountably missing. Then she herself and her brother Max were being rushed by their mother, in alarming secrecy, away from everything they knew – home and schoolmates and well-loved toys – right out of Germany…

It's a long way back to happily ever after.

Sean and Kyle have enjoyed six perfect years of what their friends called a disgustingly happy relationship. But what happens one sunny Tuesday morning in October might be more than even the most loving couple can survive.

When the bell rings that morning in chemistry teacher Sean Farnham's first-period class, a terrifying sound fills the halls - gunshots. Without considering the consequences, Sean runs to tackle the shooter, sustaining a bullet wound to his leg. Despite his actions, he is unable to save the lives of the principal and two students.

Architect Kyle DeRusso hears about the shooting on the radio, and in the flash of an instant finds his life irrevocably altered. Everything - especially his heart - hangs suspended in a nightmare until he finds out Sean is alive. It doesn't matter that Sean will be left with a permanent limp. Kyle's just relieved the worst is over.

Or is it? Putting that day behind them isn't as simple as it sounds. As Sean struggles to make something positive out of the tragedy, Kyle fights to save their relationship from the dangers of publicity - and Sean's unwillingness to face how the crisis has changed him.

When we first meet Michael Oher, he is one of thirteen children by a mother addicted to crack; he does not know his real name, his father, his birthday, or how to read or write. He takes up football and school after a rich, white, Evangelical family plucks him from the streets.

Then two great forces alter Oher: the family's love and the evolution of professional football itself into a game in which the quarterback must be protected at any cost. Our protagonist becomes the priceless package of size, speed, and agility necessary to guard the quarterback's greatest vulnerability: his blind side.

Tennessee, 1864. On a late autumn day, near a little town called Franklin, 10,000 men will soon lie dead or dying in a battle that will change many lives forever. None will be more changed than Carrie McGavock, who finds her home taken over by the Confederate army and turned into a field hospital.

Taking charge, she finds the courage to face up to the horrors around her and, in doing so, finds a cause. Out on the battlefield, a tired young Southern soldier drops his guns and charges forward into Yankee territory, holding only the flag of his company's colors. He survives and is brought to the hospital.

Carrie recognizes something in him—a willingness to die—and decides on that day, in her house, she will not let him. In the pain-filled days and weeks that follow, both find a form of mutual healing that neither thinks possible.

In this extraordinary debut novel based on a true story, Robert Hicks has written an epic novel of love and heroism set against the madness of the American Civil War.

The hope-filled sequel to the bestselling One Tuesday Morning.

In this new novel by Karen Kingsbury, three years have passed since the terrorist attacks on New York City. Jamie Bryan, widow of a firefighter who lost his life on that terrible day, has found meaning in her season of loss by volunteering at St. Paul’s, the memorial chapel across the street from where the Twin Towers once stood. Here she meets a daily stream of people touched by the tragedy, including two men with whom she feels a connection. One is a firefighter also changed by the attacks, the other a police officer from Los Angeles.

But as Jamie gets to know the police officer, she is stunned to find out that he is the brother of Eric Michaels, the man with the uncanny resemblance to Jamie’s husband, the man who lived with her for three months after September 11. Eric is the man she has vowed never to see again. Certain she could not share even a friendship with his brother, Jamie shuts out the police officer and delves deeper into her work at St. Paul’s.

Now it will take the persistence of a tenacious man, the questions from her curious young daughter, and the words from her dead husband’s journal to move Jamie beyond one Tuesday morning.

Jamie Bryan took her position at the far end of the Staten Island Ferry, pressed her body against the railing, eyes on the place where the Twin Towers once stood. She could face it now, every day if she had to. The terrorist attacks had happened, the World Trade Center had collapsed, and the only man she’d ever loved had gone down with them.

Late fall was warmer than usual, and the breeze across the water washed over Jamie’s face. If she could do this, if she could make this journey three times a week while Sierra was in school, then she could convince herself to get through another long, dark night. She could face the empty place in the bed beside her, face the longing for the man who had been her best friend, the one she’d fallen for when she was only a girl.

Sun-hee and her older brother Tae-yul are proud of their Korean heritage. Yet, they live their lives under Japanese occupation. All students must read and write in Japanese, and no one can fly the Korean flag. Hardest of all is when the Japanese Emperor forces all Koreans to take Japanese names. Sun-hee and Tae-yul become Keoko and Nobuo.

Korea is torn apart by their Japanese invaders during World War II. Everyone must help with war preparations, but it doesn’t mean they are willing to defend Japan. Tae-yul is about to risk his life to help his family, while Sun-hee stays home guarding life-and-death secrets.

Sarah Byrnes and Eric Calhoune have been friends for years. When they were children, his weight and her scars made them both outcasts. Now, Sarah Byrnes—the smartest, toughest person Eric has ever known—sits silent in a hospital. Eric must uncover the terrible secret she’s hiding before its dark current pulls them both under.

This story will appeal to fans of Marieke Nijkamp, Andrew Smith, and John Corey Whaley. Dive into a world where class discussions about the nature of man, the existence of God, and other contemporary issues serve as a backdrop for a high-school senior's attempt to answer a friend's dramatic cry for help.

Possessing the Secret of Joy is the powerful story of Tashi, a tribal African woman who lives much of her adult life in North America. As a young woman, she is led by a misguided loyalty to the customs of her people to voluntarily submit to the tsunga's knife and undergo genital mutilation. Severely traumatized by this experience, she spends the rest of her life battling madness, trying desperately through psychotherapy to regain the ability to recognize her own reality and to feel.

It is only with the help of the most unlikely ally she can imagine that she begins to study the mythological "reasons" invented by her ancient ancestors for what was done to her and to millions of other women and girls over thousands of years. As her understanding grows, so does her capacity to encounter her overwhelming grief. Underneath this grief is her glowing anger. Anger propels her to act. Action brings both feeling—life, the ability to exist with awareness in the moment—and death, of which she finds she has completely lost her fear.

While not a sequel to The Color Purple or The Temple of My Familiar, Possessing the Secret of Joy follows the life of a barely glimpsed character from those books. Combining fact and fiction, communing with the spirits of the living and the dead, Alice Walker in this novel strikes with graceful power at the heart of one of the most controversial issues of our time.