The King Of Mulberry Street

In 1892, nine-year-old Dom’s mother puts him on a ship leaving Italy, bound for America. He is a stowaway, traveling alone and with nothing of value except for a new pair of shoes from his mother. In the turbulent world of homeless children in Manhattan’s Five Points, Dom learns street smarts, and not only survives, but thrives by starting his own business. A vivid, fascinating story of an exceptional boy, based in part on the author’s grandfather.

Sarah Brandt, a midwife in turn-of-the-century New York City, has seen more than her share of joy and sorrow, birth and death. Now she will see for the first time how the squalor of the streets can breed madness and murder… The Prodigal Son Mission on Mulberry Bend stands as a refuge for girls who otherwise would have to live by selling the only thing they have of value—themselves. The work being done there so impresses Sarah that she volunteers to help out however she can—with clothes, with medical assistance, with the organization of a benefit dinner. And when one of the girls is found dead and refused burial because of her former life, Sarah’s passion for justice is aroused. Reluctantly, Sergeant Frank Malloy agrees to look into the death, if only to keep Sarah from endangering herself by pursuing the matter. But Sarah cannot be kept out of the investigation—and just as Malloy feared, her attempts to find the cause of the unfortunate girl’s death in the circumstances of her life put her in deadly danger—from an unexpected source…

In 1592, Donata is a noble girl living in a palazzo on the Grand Canal. Girls of her class receive no education and rarely leave the palazzo. In a noble family, only one daughter and one son will be allowed to marry; Donata, like all younger daughters, will be sent to a convent. Donata longs to be tutored like her brothers and to see the Venice she has glimpsed only on the map. What is the world beyond her balcony, beyond what she sees when she glides, veiled, in a gondola down the canal? She dresses as a boy and escapes the palazzo on the Grand Canal to see the world before she is shut away, and to try to find a way to escape her fate. Donata risks everything; she changes her life, and her family’s life, forever when she walks through the door and encounters a Venice she never knew existed.

As topical today as when it was first published in 1938, this book tells of Bartholomew Cubbins (from Caldecott Honor winner Bartholomew and the Oobleck) and his unjust treatment at the hands of King Derwin. Each time Bartholomew attempts to obey the king’s order to take off his hat, he finds there is another hat on his head. Soon it is Bartholomew’s head that is in danger . . . of being chopped off! While The 500 Hats is one of Dr. Seuss’s earliest works, it is nevertheless totally Seussian, addressing subjects that we know the good doctor was passionate about: abuse of power (as in Yertle the Turtle), rivalry (as in The Sneetches), and of course, zany good humor! This Read & Listen edition contains audio narration.

Newbery Honor–winning, New York Times–bestselling, and as full of fun and adventure as it is of deeper family issues. School’s out for summer, and Penny and her cousin Frankie have big plans to eat lots of butter pecan ice cream, swim at the local pool, and cheer on their favorite baseball team—the Brooklyn Dodgers! But sometimes things don’t go according to plan. Penny’s mom doesn’t want her to swim because she’s afraid Penny will get polio. Frankie is constantly getting into trouble, and Penny feels caught between the two sides of her family. But even if the summer doesn’t exactly start as planned . . . things can work out in the most unexpected ways! Set just after World War II, this thought-provoking novel also highlights the prejudice Penny’s Italian American family must confront because people of Italian descent were “the enemy” not long ago. Inspired by three-time Newbery Honor winner Jennifer Holm’s own Italian American family, Penny from Heaven is a story about families—about the things that tear them apart and the things that bring them back together. Includes an author’s note with photographs and background on World War II, internment camps, and 1950s America, as well as additional resources and websites. Booklist: “Holm impressively wraps pathos with comedy in this coming-of-age story, populated by a cast of vivid characters.”

In a vast ocean, a single grain of sand seems hopelessly small and unimportant. But over time, the sand begins to change. Layer by layer, it grows and transforms. Its beauty starts to shine. Exquisitely crafted by an award-winning author-illustrator team, this luminous, uplifting story reminds us of the amazing capacity for change within us all.

Boston-bred girl fights for the cause of the free state of Israel.

Poplar Street is a lively book about growing up in a multi-generational Catholic household in the mid-century American South. Raised in a family whose ancestors helped settle Memphis, Tennessee, Adrienne Adler Downs and Michele Adler share stories about a father who needed adult supervision, a take-no-prisoners grandmother who cheerfully admitted she married for the money, and a raucous celebration that resulted in their Poplar Street house being unofficially blacklisted by the officials of a local men's college. Through it all was a stoic grandfather, a Rosary-praying mother, a ghost or two, a host of convivial cousins, and a Grand-Central-Station atmosphere that kept the whole family in a state of high alert. "The mystery of family bonds can never be understood, only appreciated," the authors write in Poplar Street's preface. Readers will say the same thing about the book.

The vivid history of Beale Street—a lost world of swaggering musicians, glamorous madams, and ruthless politicians—and the battle for the soul of Memphis. Following the Civil War, Beale Street in Memphis, Tennessee, thrived as a cauldron of sex and song, violence and passion. But out of this turmoil emerged a center of black progress, optimism, and cultural ferment. Preston Lauterbach tells this vivid, fascinating story through the multigenerational saga of a family whose ambition, race pride, and moral complexity indelibly shaped the city that would loom so large in American life. Robert Church, who would become “the South’s first black millionaire,” was a mulatto slave owned by his white father. Having survived a deadly race riot in 1866, Church constructed an empire of vice in the booming river town. He made a fortune with saloons, gambling, and—shockingly—white prostitution. But he also nurtured the militant journalism of Ida B. Wells and helped revolutionize American music through the work of composer W.C. Handy, the man who claimed to have invented the blues. In the face of Jim Crow, the Church fortune helped fashion the most powerful black political organization of the early twentieth century. Robert and his son, Bob Jr., bought and sold property, founded a bank, and created a park and auditorium for their people finer than the places whites had forbidden them to attend. However, the Church family operated through a tense arrangement with the Democrat machine run by the notorious E. H. “Boss” Crump, who stole elections and controlled city hall. The battle between this black dynasty and the white political machine would define the future of Memphis. Brilliantly researched and swiftly plotted, Beale Street Dynasty offers a captivating account of one of America’s iconic cities—by one of our most talented narrative historians.