All sorts of things begin to happen when an orphaned boarding school student finally meets the wealthy guardian with whom she has corresponded for years sight unseen.

From New York Times bestselling author Peter Straub, the tale of a literary sojourn that turns into something far more sinister. Esswood House. Home and estate of the Seneschal family, aristocratic patrons of the literary arts for well over a hundred years. D. H. Lawrence, T. S. Eliot, Ford Madox Ford, and Henry James were privileged to call themselves guests. There was always talk of a hidden secret in Esswood's past, and the Seneschal children...

The author's grandfather, Sam Stone, placed an ad in the Canton, OH, newspaper shortly before Christmas in 1933, offering cash gifts to seventy-five families in distress. Readers were asked to send letters describing their hardships to a benefactor calling himself Mr. B. Virdot. The author investigates a suitcase full of letters responding to these ads as he learns more about his grandfather's hidden past as well as the suffering and triumphs of strangers...

Kentucky novel, of mingled humor and sentiment, about a plucky widow and her children who live in a struggling community along the railroad tracks.

Every Christmas in the small town of Pine River, a tree appears in the town square and people tie wishes to it, but nobody knows where the tree comes from--but this year four children are determined to solve the mystery of the Angel Tree.

In New England in the late nineteenth-century, a fatherless family, happy in spite of its impoverished condition, is befriended by a very rich gentleman and his young son.

"Almost twenty years after forbidding him to contact her, Vita receives a letter from a man who has long stalked her from a distance. Once, Royce was her benefactor and she was one of his brightest protǧěs. Now Royce is ailing and Vitas career as a filmmaker has stalled, and both have reasons for wanting to settle accounts. They enter into an intimate game of words, played according to shifting rules of engagement. Beyond their murky shared history,...

"Pip is a poor orphan, a boy with "no expectations" being raised by his unkind sister and her husband in a small home on the marshes of Kent. But when Pip meets the bizarre Miss Havisham and her beautiful ward, Estella, he starts to yearn for a life as a gentleman. However, Pip will discover that wealth and honesty do not go hand in hand, and that kindness can be found in the most surprising places. A love story, a mystery, and a sharp critique of...

A manga adaptation of the classic literary novel by Charles Dickens, a rags-to-riches tale of Pip, a young orphan and the transformation he endures through the circumstances of his life.

"The story of the John Hope Settlement House in Providence, Rhode Island, is an intricate web of relationships between people who catalyzed a city, on a mission to develop and support future leaders. This book recognizes and names the people who served, who inspired, who led, and who achieved remarkable successes" --