Séamas O'Reilly's mother died when he was five, leaving him, his ten (!) brothers and sisters, and their beloved father in their sprawling bungalow in rural Derry. It was the 1990s; the Troubles were a background rumble, but Séamas was more preoccupied with dinosaurs, Star Wars, and the actual location of heaven than the political climate. ­An instant bestseller in Ireland, Did Ye Hear Mammy Died? is a book about a family of loud, argumentative,...

"As the German army invades the Netherlands in 1940, Aleida van der Zee Martens escapes to London to wait out the Occupation. Separated from her three-year-old son, Theo, in the process, the young widow desperately searches for her little boy even as she works for an agency responsible for evacuating children to the countryside.When German bombs set London ablaze, BBC radio correspondent Hugh Collingwood reports on the Blitz, eager to boost morale...

Castellamare is an island far enough away from the mainland to be forgotten, but not far enough to escape from the world's troubles. At the center of the island's life is a cafe¿¿ draped with bougainvillea called the House at the Edge of Night, where the community gathers to gossip and talk. Amedeo Esposito, a foundling from Florence, finds his destiny on the island with his beautiful wife, Pina, whose fierce intelligence, grace, and unwavering...

The year is 1938. Yal and her sister milie are two ordinary children growing up in a village in the south of France. But even if they dont understand everything they see, they are starting to catch glimpses of the secrets that adults struggle to keep. Who is hiding behind the curtain in the guest room? Why does their maternal grandfather call their father a goy? What does it mean to be Jewish? As Yal grows up, she is caught up in the harsh realities...

"It is the summer of 1992 and a gypsy moth invasion blankets Avalon Island. Ravenous caterpillars disrupt early summer serenity on Avalon, an islet off the coast of Long Island--dropping onto novels left open on picnic blankets, crawling across the T-shirts of children playing games of tag and capture the flag in the island's leafy woods. The caterpillars become a relentless topic of island conversation and the inescapable soundtrack of the season....

"Sofija Stefanovic makes the first of many awkward entrances in 1982, when she is born in Belgrade, the capital of socialist Yugoslavia. The circumstances of her birth (a blackout, gasoline shortages, bickering parents) don't exactly get her off to a running start. While around her, ethnic tensions are stoked by totalitarian leaders with violent agendas, Stefanovic's early life is filled with Yugo rock, inadvisable crushes, and the quirky ups and...

"Like millions of Americans, Mark Leibovich has spent more of his life than he'd care to admit tuned into pro football. Being a lifelong New England Patriots fan meant growing up with a steady diet of lovable loserdom. That is until the Tom Brady/Bill Belichick era made the Pats the most ruthlessly efficient sports dynasty of the 21st century, its organization the most polarizing in the NFL, and its fans the most irritating in all of Pigskin America....

An informative and compelling guide for families to enrich their home life in our age of distraction. Like millions of parents, bestselling author and New York Times family columnist Bruce Feiler felt squeezed between the needs of aging parents and rapidly growing children. Over three years, he traveled across the United States, seeking out the smartest people and the most effective families to assemble a collection of best practices for families...

"An entirely fresh take on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict that examines the life-shaping reverberations of wars and ongoing tensions upon the everyday lives of families in Jerusalem. A secular, diaspora Jew, Lis Harris grew up with the knowledge of the historical wrongs done to Jews. In adulthood, she developed a growing awareness of the wrongs they in turn had done to the Palestinian people. It gave her an intense desire to understand how the Israelis'...

In a time when discussions of race are once again coming to the fore, the event that launched the civil rights movement--the 1955 lynching of a fourteen-year-old black boy named Emmett Till--is now reexamined by an award-winning author with access to never-before-heard accounts from those involved as well as recently recovered court transcripts from the trial.