Meli Lleshi is positive that her drawing of her teacher with his pelican nose started it all. The Lleshis are Albanians living in Kosovo, a country trying to fight off Serbian oppressors, and suddenly they are homeless refugees. Old and young alike, they find their courage tested by hunger, illness, the long, arduous journey, and danger on every side. Then, unexpectedly, they are brought to America by a church group and begin a new life in a small...

After Jane Hardy is appointed sheriff in Pelican Harbor, Alabama, her father is arrested for theft and implicated in a murder. Jane quickly realizes that someone is out to destroy the only family she has. Fifteen years ago, she escaped with her father from a cult that her mother refused to leave. Has someone from that hoffible past found them? Meanwhile, documentary filmmaker Reid Dixon's latest project is covering Jane's career. Soon the two begin...

Police Chief Jane Hardy is still reeling from the scandal that rocked her small-town department just as she took over for her retired father--the man who wrecked her life with one little lie. Now she's finally been reunited with her presumed-dead fifteen-year-old son, Will, and his father, documentarian Reid Bechtol. When a murder aboard the oil platform Zeus exposes an environmental terrorist's plot to flood Mobile Bay with crude oil, Jane and Reid...

"Originally meant to be brief and exceptional, solitary confinement in U.S. prisons has become long-term and common. Prisoners spend twenty-three hours a day in featureless cells, with no visitors or human contact for years on end, and they are held entirely at administrators discretion. Keramet Reiter tells the history of one "supermax," Californias Pelican Bay State Prison, whose extreme conditions recently sparked a statewide hunger strike by 30,000...

In "Pelican Song," a thirty-year-old modern dancer who moonlights as a movie ticket taker visits her parent's picturesque home to discover that her stepfather has begun mistreating her too-accommodating mother. "Horse" follows maladjusted honeymooners in Atlantic City whose romantic weekend is saved from emotional catastrophe. A holiday in New York City turns from shopping sprees to a young girl's sharp discovery of her father's secret life in "Rome." With...

Each member of a family writes an anonymous "I'm thankful for" note and places it in the Thanksgiving bowl, but after the family guesses who wrote each note, the bowl is accidentally left outside, where it rolls off on a year-long series of adventures.

"Feeling more Jew-ish than Jewish these days? Author Barbara Sheklin Davis, a New York City native and longtime Jewish educator, offers a tonge-in-cheek list of practical and easy ways to embrace and uphold Jewish influences in everday life."--Back cover.

"In her stunning twelfth poetry collection, Lightning Falls in Love, Laura Kasischke makes magic with a complex alchemy of nostalgia and fire, birdwing and sorrow. In new poems that search the murky lake for news of the past, she evokes unsayable trauma and gleans possibility. This is poetry that is existential in scope but grounded in the body, surreal yet suburban, reaching for clarity just beyond the fog of the day-to-day. Kasischke has found an...

"It has been called Wonderland, America's Serengeti, the crown jewel of the National Park System, and America's best idea. But how did this faraway landscape evolve into one of the most recognizable places in the world? As the birthplace of the national park system, Yellowstone witnessed the first-ever attempt to protect wildlife, to restore endangered species, and to develop a new industry centered on nature tourism. Yellowstone remains a national...