Sophie loves to sing, but no one but the crickets wants to hear her song, that is until a special situation calls for her talents and where her cowgirl songs not only come in handy but save the day as well.

Unprofessional behavior? Sophie's calm, cool professional façade hid many secrets. For a start, Sophie had an incurably romantic nature. So when she was offered a post as Marc Washington's PA she jumped at the chance to return to Venice…a place for lovers, a place for dreams. Yet Marc Washington hardly seemed the sort of man who would tolerate Sophie's romantic heart—or her past, should he ever remember the part he'd played in it!

Seventeen-year-old Gabe Hunter knows he has a purpose in life. He has always strived to be the “best of the best,” but lately nothing has gone his way. Gabe was devastated six months earlier when his half-brother Josh had a drunk driving accident that killed four members of a family and left a sixteen-year-old girl named Sophie an orphan. Josh went to prison and Gabe struggles to forgive him because how can he forgive the unforgivable? When Gabe reluctantly agrees to do math tutoring for his senior service project, he discovers that the girl he will be tutoring is also named Sophie. But in a town of eighty thousand people, what are the odds it will be the same person? Astronomical, Gabe figures. Gabe soon discovers, though, that it is the same Sophie. A former National Merit Scholar finalist, Sophie had a severe brain injury in the accident. She has seizures, amnesia, and can barely read or write. When he meets her, Gabe realizes what his purpose in life must be—to help Sophie and make amends for his brother. His plan is to spend the rest of the school year tutoring Sophie, then say goodbye and go quietly off to college without ever telling her that his brother was the one who killed her family. What Gabe doesn’t count on is falling in love.

Evaluates fiction and nonfiction books featuring girls and women in positive roles, ranking each entry by reading level.

Los Angeles is home to the largest concentration of urban Native Americans in the United States: a geographically dispersed population of tremendous cultural, linguistic, political, and religious diversity. Over the course of more than two decades, Joan Weibel-Orlando has immersed herself in the social, economic, and political life of this population, conducting hundreds of interviews and observing the institutions, rites, and practices that help this urban community define itself. The first ethnographic study of this vibrant community, now expanded and updated, Indian Country, L.A. reveals a society that both incorporates cherished tribal identities and strives constantly to recreate itself within the context of modern urban life. Weibel-Orlando's landmark work proposes a dynamic model of community formation, describing community not by means of static categories but rather in terms of how it is experienced by its members: through collective responsibilities, institutions, cultural continuity, public ritual, locality, communication networks, and shared history.