First Kill Your Family: Child Soldiers of Uganda and the Lord's Resistance Army

Ever since Britney transformed herself from freak-and-geek to the most popular girl at school, her life has been touched by tragedy. First it was her mom, who drowned on a family rafting trip. Then her hockey-star boyfriend, Ricky, was killed in a hit-and-run.

When the deaths continue to pile up, everyone fears for Britney. Sure she's popular, blond, and fabulous.

These six powerful short stories chronicle bits of the lives of characters, major and minor, who have walked the rugged terrain of Chris Crutcher's earlier works. They also introduce some new and unforgettable personalities who may well be heard from again in future books. As with all Crutcher's work, these are stories about athletes, and yet they are not sport stories. They are tales of love and death, bigotry and heroism, of real people doing their best even when that best isn't very good. Crutcher's straightforward style and total honesty have earned him an admiring audience and made readers of many nonreaders.

From the author of the acclaimed novel A Pigeon and a Boy comes a charming tale of family ties, over-the-top housekeeping, and the sport of storytelling in Nahalal, the village of Meir Shalev’s birth. Here we meet Shalev’s amazing Grandma Tonia, who arrived in Palestine by boat from Russia in 1923 and lived in a constant state of battle with what she viewed as the family’s biggest enemy in their new land: dirt.
 
Grandma Tonia was never seen without a cleaning rag over her shoulder. She received visitors outdoors. She allowed only the most privileged guests to enter her spotless house. Hilarious and touching, Grandma Tonia and her regulations come richly to life in a narrative that circles around the arrival into the family’s dusty agricultural midst of the big, shiny American sweeper sent as a gift by Great-uncle Yeshayahu (he who had shockingly emigrated to the sinful capitalist heaven of Los Angeles!). America, to little Meir and to his forebears, was a land of hedonism and enchanting progress; of tempting luxuries, dangerous music, and degenerate gum-chewing; and of women with painted fingernails. The sweeper, a stealth weapon from Grandpa Aharon’s American brother meant to beguile the hardworking socialist household with a bit of American ease, was symbolic of the conflicts and visions of the family in every respect.
 
The fate of Tonia’s “svieeperrr”—hidden away for decades in a spotless closed-off bathroom after its initial use—is a family mystery that Shalev determines to solve. The result, in this cheerful translation by Evan Fallenberg, is pure delight, as Shalev brings to life the obsessive but loving Tonia, the pioneers who gave his childhood its spirit of wonder, and the grit and humor of people building ever-new lives.

Strange things are happening in Maya's tiny Vancouver Island town. First, her friend Serena, the captain of the swim team, drowns mysteriously in the middle of a calm lake. Then, one year later, mountain lions are spotted rather frequently around Maya's home-and her reactions to them are somewhat . . . unexpected. Her best friend, Daniel, has also been experiencing unexplainable premonitions about certain people and situations.

It doesn't help that the new bad boy in town, Rafe, has a dangerous secret, and he's interested in one special part of Maya's anatomy-her paw-print birthmark.

Forever...

For nearly twenty years, those three words dictated the life of Lillian Manville. Quiet, unassuming, and overweight, Lillian did anything and everything to please her husband, the illustrious self-made billionaire James Manville. Since the tender age of seventeen, she had obeyed this powerful older man's every command and in return she received a life beyond her wildest dreams. Elaborate mansions. Trips around the world. The finest jewels and the most luxurious fashions.

Whatever I wanted,

he gave me long before I knew I wanted it.

But when Jimmie dies suddenly in a plane crash, Lillian's pampered life comes to an abrupt halt. She learns that Jimmie has bequeathed all of his riches to his devious siblings, Atlanta and Ray. All, that is, except an old farmhouse in small-town Calburn, Virginia. Although Lillian is devastated by Jimmie's death and apparent betrayal, she soon discovers a well of secrets connected to Jimmie's past that originate in Calburn and to a long-ago tragedy concerning a group of boys hailed as the "Golden Six." Uncovering those secrets, Lillian thinks, will help her to better understand the man she loved and mysteriously lost.

Are you responsible for lifting a centuries-old curse from the sexiest vampire you’ve ever seen?

Does a demon lord want to destroy you?

Have you somehow inadvertently bound several mummies to your soul?

Are you the last hope for a lost little boy?

If you’ve answered “yes” to any of the above . . . you’re in big trouble!

Those are a few of the problems facing Nell Harris, a real charmer—no, really . . . a real Charmer—once she hooks up with Adrian Tomas. A devastatingly hot Dark One who’s earned the unfortunate title “the Betrayer” for selling out his own kind to a very nasty demon, Adrian needs Nell in the worst way. Though she’d be way better off keeping her distance, Nell can’t help but find this tormented, undead Betrayer dude just a little too tempting. And this time her penchant for bad boys might cost her more than her heart . . . but her immortal soul as well!