Ben Cohen’s dad didn’t know anything about the sport his young son had taken up, but he was happy to drive him to practice, and was soon helping out at the club. When his business went bankrupt money was tight, but Ben’s hard working parents inspired their son to put his all into rugby. Then, when Ben was 20, his father intervened in a fight in the nightclub where he worked. He was viciously beaten and one month later he died in hospital. Ben was doing an England press conference at the time, and it was down to coach Clive Woodward to deliver the devastating news. But the ordeal was far from over. The inquest lasted five months before the funeral could be held, and it was a year before the family were in court, facing Peter’s assailants. Ben put all of the anger and pain from his father’s death into his rugby. Fast and powerful on the wing, he was soon the best in the world in his position and a cornerstone of the England team, culminating in the legendary World Cup win in Sydney in 2003. And yet he always felt like an outsider. Most people didn’t know that Ben is clinically deaf. His sixth sense for the game got him through on the pitch, but off it his poor hearing was often taken for arrogance. This is an inspirational story of passion and pain; of the highs of achieving your goals, and the grief of losing something you can never get back.

The love of family. The heartbreak of war. The triumph of coming home. 1940. Rural Wisconsin. Sixteen-year-old Earl “Earwig” Gunderman is not like other boys his age. Fiercely protected by his older brother, Earwig sees his town and the world around him through the prism of his own unique understanding. He sees his mother’s sadness and his father’s growing solitude. He sees his brother, Jimmy, falling in love with the most beautiful girl in town. And while Earwig is unable to make change for customers at his family’s store, he is singularly well suited to understand what other people in his town cannot: that life as they know it is about to change; the coming war will touch them all. For Jimmy will enlist in the military. And Earwig will watch his parents’ marriage buckle under the strain of a family secret. And when Jimmy returns–a fractured shadow of his former self–it is Earwig’s turn to care for him. His struggles to right the wrongs visited upon his revered older brother by war, women, and life are at once heartwarming and riotously funny. Their family and town irrevocably altered, Earwig and Jimmy fight to find their own places in a world changed forever.

Twelve-year-old Lulu, burdened with caring for her sister, Serena, since their father disappeared, must learn to trust her new friends and community when secrets and lies catch up with her.

Now with a new afterword, the Pulitzer Prize-winning dramatic account of the civil rights era’s climactic battle in Birmingham as the movement, led by Martin Luther King, Jr., brought down the institutions of segregation. "The Year of Birmingham," 1963, was a cataclysmic turning point in America’s long civil rights struggle. Child demonstrators faced down police dogs and fire hoses in huge nonviolent marches against segregation. Ku Klux Klansmen retaliated by bombing the Sixteenth Street Baptist Church, killing four young black girls. Diane McWhorter, daughter of a prominent Birmingham family, weaves together police and FBI records, archival documents, interviews with black activists and Klansmen, and personal memories into an extraordinary narrative of the personalities and events that brought about America’s second emancipation. In a new afterword—reporting last encounters with hero Reverend Fred Shuttlesworth and describing the current drastic anti-immigration laws in Alabama—the author demonstrates that Alabama remains a civil rights crucible.

Black Silk presents a poignant collection of humorous and heartfelt pieces of poetry and prose. Author Shay Cook shares witty anecdotes and earnest life messages in an assortment of rhyme and free verse, with words that sway and saunter into the heart. The title references the smooth, luscious feel of silk against skin. Her verse seeks to evoke the same sensations-sumptuous, sensual, soothing, and sinister. Shay's work captures aspects of the human experience, exploring an abundance of topics including love, forgiveness, and grief. Divided into four intimate sections, this collection ventures into the thoughts and emotions of all with poems like "The Pianist" and "An Impatient Winter." Savor the opulence of silk in this new compilation of works past and present. Timeless Standing close I feel the wind against this frigid sky, I kick off my shoes, curl on the couch, with me, myself and I. With lemon tea, a well-read book, I grab my warm afghan, And nestle beneath the crocheted yarn and think about this man who is timeless. Timeless as the autumn leaves which dance upon the foliage. Like summer rain which grows the grain and tulips in the spillage. Like music, like the painter's brush which strokes his work of art, As Beethoven and Chopin who plays upon the heart, this man is timeless. ...