One day eight-year-old Auggie Pound, the caretaker of the rare animals in the Fabled Stables, ventures into the swamp to save a new rare creature, the wisp.

Since the publication of My Brilliant Friend, the first of the Neapolitan novels, Elena Ferrante's fame as one of our most compelling, insightful, and stylish contemporary authors has grown enormously. She has gained admirers among authors--Jhumpa Lahiri, Elizabeth Strout, Claire Messud, to name a few--and critics--James Wood, John Freeman, Eugenia Williamson, for example. But her most resounding success has undoubtedly been with readers, who have...

The part of third grade Ellen Tebbits likes most is having Austine Allen for her best friend. But after Ellen does something that makes Austine stop talking to her, she wonders if she will ever be able to prove her friendship.

The story begins in the 1950s, in a poor but vibrant neighborhood on the outskirts of Naples. Growing up on these tough streets the two girls learn to rely on each other ahead of anyone or anything else. As they grow, as their paths repeatedly diverge and converge, Elena and Lila remain best friends whose respective destinies are reflected and refracted in the other. They are likewise the embodiments of a nation undergoing momentous change. Through...

The Waves by an English writer, who is considered as one of the most important modernist 20th Century authors and also a pioneer in the use of the stream of consciousness as a narrative device, Virginia Woolf. It is an experimental novel which is considered a key text of the Modernist literary movement. Interspersed with lyrical descriptions of waves breaking against the shoreline, the novel traces the intertwining lives of six friends from childhood...

Pen Calloway, estranged from her college friends Cat and Will for six years, has missed them through the birth of her daughter, the death of her father, and the struggles of single motherhood, and must decide how far she will go to get her friends back in her life after Cat ends the silence between them with an urgent summons to a college reunion.

"Claudia has always been the most outrageous kid in her class...until Ashley Wyeth comes along, Ashley's really different--she wears hippie clothes, has six holes in her ears, and is the most fantastic artist Claudia has ever met. Ashley says Claudia has artistic talent, too. She thinks Claudia should spend more time on her "calling" and forget about the Baby-sitters Club: It's just a waste of time. The Baby-sitters are sick of Ashley Wyeth, and...

"A scholarship girl from Brooklyn, Kate Moran thought she found a place among Smiths Mayflower descendants, only to have her illusions dashed the summer after graduation. When charismatic alumna Betsy Rutherford delivers a rousing speech at the Smith College Club in April of 1917, looking for volunteers to help French civilians decimated by the German war machine, Kate is too busy earning her living to even think of taking up the call. But when her...

After a freak accident--ice fell on him as he walked in the street--a man lies in a coma in a hospital in St. Paul, Minnesota. Lainey, his wife, is the only one who believes he will recover. She visits him every day, bringing family objects and talking of home, becoming ever more aware of the wonder and richness of daily life.

"When a best friend moves away, it can be painful for the child who is left behind. But the spunky boy in this upbeat story makes up his mind to find his missing playmate. Young readers will cheer on the boy as he braves currents, climbs mountains, and dashes through rain before, finally, reuniting with his friend. A story alive with love and perseverance, brightened with vibrant art and Eric Carle's trademark fostering of imagination. This deeply...