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Lizzie Borden took an axe, gave her mother forty whacks. When she saw

what she had done, she gave her father forty-one. Or did she? Lizzie was charged with the August 1892 murders, tried in a court of law, and acquitted, but the court of public opinion convicted her anyway and for the rest of her life she was hated, feared, reviled, and shunned.

Then in May 1927, with Lizzie on her deathbed, Emma, Lizzie’s older sister, broke decades of silence and granted a lengthy interview to an eager young reporter from the Boston Globe. In that interview Emma revealed what really happened that terrible August morning thirty-five years earlier. Her story connected the known facts of the case with a few previously unknown to expose a complex web of greed, petty jealousies, infidelity, loneliness, cruelty, betrayal, and several serious mistakes in judgment. It answered the prosecution’s central question, “If not Lizzie, then who?” Now only one question remains. Why was Emma’s story never published?

 In 1959, Laura Graham, a white 15-year-old from Detroit, moves to rural west Kentucky and enrolls in a recently desegregated high school. Shocked by the mistreatment her black classmates endure she finally speaks out, only to learn how little she truly understands about black lives in twentieth-century America. Told with heart and touches of humor, this fast-paced YA novel is well grounded in history and in the author’s personal experience. 

 In the dead of winter, sixteen-year-old Ben Landry is exiled to a remote island in Lake Michigan, learning to hunt with his uncle and cousin and hiding out from gangsters. On his fi rst day there, he sees a girl at the edge of the woods, her long, white-blonde hair swirling around her. Or is it merely a gust of wind, a rising spiral of snow, and his imagination? Ben wants to be back home with his friends, his swim team, and reliable Internet service. But his father’s enemies have threatened him and his family. As Ben explores the island, the pale girl reappears. He wins her trust and discovers she has a story to tell, of her past life and a tragic death on the island. Ultimately, the unlikely duo become allies in a battle against time and the dangers that stalk Ben. Will he survive, and if he does, how will having befriended this haunting figure affect him? Will it alter his relationships and change his life forever? 

Seventeen year-old DARLA KAYE DIAMOND, the child of carnival stunt motorcycle riders, dreams of a better life than the one into which she was born, but even with her gifts and talents will she be able to leave carnival life or will she discover that her choices merely allow her exchange one kind of carnival for another as people and circumstances conspire against her. 

 During the mid-twentieth century, adoptions were less common than they are today and parents had fewer resources to guide them through the complicated circumstances of such a childhood. As Carole’s memoir unfolds, she wonders who she really is, hungers for a sense of belonging, seeks answers to her questions, seeks her biological roots, and explores the meaning and importance of family in her life. Her story speaks to every person who has ever felt, even for a moment, like an outcast among the people they love the most.