Nory Ryan's family has lived on Maidin Bay on the west coast of Ireland for generations, raising a pig and a few chickens, planting potatoes, getting by. Every year Nory's father goes away on a fishing boat and returns with the rent money for the English lord who owns their cottage and fields, the English lord bent upon forcing the Irish from their land so he can tumble the cottages and clear the fields for grazing. Times are never easy on Maidin Bay, but this year, a terrible blight attacks the potatoes. No crop means starvation. Twelve-year-old Nory must summon the courage and ingenuity to find food, to find hope, to find a way to help her family survive.


From the Hardcover edition.

It's almost Thanksgiving, and Richard Best can't stop thinking about Ms. Rooney's Candy Corn contest. Whoever can guess the exact number of yellow-and-orange candies in the jar on Ms. Roney's desk gets to keep them all. The only problem is Richard has to read a page in a library book for each guess.



Smelly Matthew, who sits in front of him, knows they'll never win. "We're the worst readers in the class, " he says. But Richard won't give up. He can already taste those Candy Corns. And before he knows it, he has. Three fat juicy ones.



What will Ms. Rooney do when she finds out?

Hollis Woods has been in so many foster homes she can hardly remember them all. She even runs away from the Regans, the one family who offers her a home.
When Hollis is sent to Josie, an elderly artist who is quirky and affectionate, she wants to stay. But Josie is growing more forgetful every day. If Social Services finds out, they'll take Hollis away and move Josie into a home. Well, Hollis Woods won't let anyone separate them. She's escaped the system before; this time, she plans to take Josie with her.
Yet behind all her plans, Hollis longs for her life with the Regans, fixing each moment of her time with them in pictures she'll never forget.

"From the Hardcover edition.

Author Patricia Reilly Giff's Newbery Honor-winning Lily's Crossing is now available for the first time in paperback!

Every summer Lily and her father go to her family's house in Rockaway, near the Atlantic Ocean.  But the summer of 1944 is different.  World War II has called Lily's father overseas, Lily's best friend Margaret had to move with her family to a wartime factory town, and Lily is forced to live with her grandmother.

But then a boy named Albert, a refugee from Hungary, comes to live in Rockaway.  He has lost most of his family to the war.  Soon he and Lily form a special friendship, and they have secrets to share.  But they have both told lies, and Lily's lie may cost Albert his life.