In the depressed mill town of Coketown, schoolmaster Thomas Gradgrind lives to impose his version of education: feeding the mind while starving the soul and spirit. Inflexible and unyielding, he places conformity above curiosity, and logic over sentiment, only to have his philosophy warp and destroy the lives of his own family. 'Hard Times' is Dickens's scathing portrait of Victorian industrial society and its misapplied utilitarian philosophy.

Alex and his friends from Artimé are stranded on a newly-discovered island, and they are not alone, while in Quill, his twin Aaron's power base grows as he joins with an unlikely ally in a risky plan to finally conquer Artimé.

A junior high school boy idolizes his older brother, the coolest, toughest guy in the neighborhood, and wants to be just like him.

Divided by their society into Wanted and Unwanted at thirteen, estranged twin brothers Aaron and Alex have both run into trouble--as mage of Artime, Alex must defend the island from attack, while Aaron continues to scheme to take over the islands and get rid of the Unwanteds altogether.

As a world-ending war surges to life around them, Todd and Viola face monstrous decisions, questioning all they have ever known as they try to step back from the darkness and find the best way to achieve peace.

Every generation inherits the problems created by the ones before them, but no generation will inherit as many problems--as many crises--as the current generation of young people. From the devastations of climate change to the horrors of gun violence, from rampant transphobia to the widening wealth gap, from the lack of health care to the lack of housing, the challenges facing the next generation can feel insurmountable. But change, even revolution,...

"The forthcoming LOA collection, edited by distinguished poet and scholar of American poetry Kevin Young, will embrace the entire wide-ranging tradition of African American poetry from its eighteenth-century beginnings to the present, and will be representative of many styles, schools, periods, and regions. Familiar poems by Paul Laurence Dunbar, Langston Hughes, Gwendolyn Brooks, and other acknowledged greats will appear alongside less familiar and...

A youth who has known only the primitive life of a galaxy slave is purchased by a beggar who turns out to be a man with many extracurricular activities.

"In Mike Huckabee's new book God, Guns, Grits and Gravy, he asks the question, "Have I been taken to a different planet than the one on which I grew up?" The New York Times bestselling author explores today's American culture, drawing from his travels as a presidential candidate to present average, small-town people and families, and their optimistic resilience in the face of hard times; their stories, says Huckabee, "will inspire readers to think...

"W.H. Auden once wrote that "art is our chief means of breaking bread with the dead." In his brilliant and compulsively readable new treatise BREAKING BREAD WITH THE DEAD, distinguished professor and author Alan Jacobs shows us that engaging with the great writings of the past might help us live less anxiously in the present. Today we are battling too much information, a society changing at lightning speed, algorithms aimed at shaping our every move,...