From the dark days of WWII to present-day North Carolina, this New York Times bestseller shares the lives of two couples overcoming destructive secrets -- and finding joy together. Ira Levinson is in trouble. Ninety-one years old and stranded and injured after a car crash, he struggles to retain consciousness until a blurry image materializes beside him: his beloved wife Ruth, who passed away nine years ago. Urging him to hang on, she forces him to remain alert by recounting the stories of their lifetime together - how they met, the precious paintings they collected together, the dark days of WWII and its effect on them and their families. Ira knows that Ruth can't possibly be in the car with him, but he clings to her words and his memories, reliving the sorrows and everyday joys that defined their marriage. A few miles away, at a local bull-riding event, a Wake Forest College senior's life is about to change. Recovering from a recent break-up, Sophia Danko meets a young cowboy named Luke, who bears little resemblance to the privileged frat boys she has encountered at school. Through Luke, Sophia is introduced to a world in which the stakes of survival and success, ruin and reward -- even life and death - loom large in everyday life. As she and Luke fall in love, Sophia finds herself imagining a future far removed from her plans -- a future that Luke has the power to rewrite . . . if the secret he's keeping doesn't destroy it first. Ira and Ruth. Sophia and Luke. Two couples who have little in common, and who are separated by years and experience. Yet their lives will converge with unexpected poignancy, reminding us all that even the most difficult decisions can yield extraordinary journeys: beyond despair, beyond death, to the farthest reaches of the human heart.

For his eighth birthday, Emilio Scotto received a World Atlas. Promptly he announced his plan to make a route that would pass through all the countries of the world, a route he named BLUE ROAD ONE. When, some years later, he found himself astride a black 1100 Honda Gold Wing motorcycle, Blue Road One beckoned, and Scotto set off on a journey that would last more than a decade, take him virtually everywhere in the world, and land him in the Guinness Book of World Records. This is his story, a thrill ride that begins in his native Argentina, crosses Panama in the tumultuous time of Noriega, Mexico in the midst of an earthquake, and finds him broke in L.A. where, in a chance meeting, Muhammad Ali gives him fifty dollars and a signed book. Breaching the Iron Curtain, crossing the Berlin Wall at Checkpoint Charlie, being blessed by the Pope, set upon by cannibals in Sierra Leone, fleeing Somalia on a freighter, Scotto's adventures would be unbelievable if they weren't true. His tale of touring the world from Tunisia to Turkey, Petra to Afghanistan, Yugoslavia to Singapore, traveling miles enough to take him to the moon and back, is unlike any ever told. Come along, for the ride of a lifetime.

In the tumult of 1970s New York City, kids are expected to figure out issues of race that adults haven't when seventh graders are bused from their neighborhood in Queens to integrate a new school in South Jamaica. Jamila, Josie, and Francesca are three mixed-race girls who have always felt like outsiders in their mostly white neighborhood in Queens, but at least they have each other. Now it's seventh grade, and they're part of an experiment where kids will go on a long bus ride to integrate a new school in a black neighborhood. Maybe there the three girls can finally fit in. But Francesca's parents put her in private school. And Jamila and Josie discover that they're not even in the same classes. How do they find their place in a school divided between black and white? And what about the boys wanting to be friends--and maybe more? Can kids come together when grown-ups stay apart? In this tender story of friendship and family love, award-winning author Marina Budhos captures what it's like to tip from twelve to thirteen and to try to carry the dreams of adults.

Riding 2,000 miles on horseback from Montana to New Mexico sounds like a crazy but thrilling dream or pure hardship and exhaustion. According to Bernice Ende, the trip was all that and more. Since swinging her leg over the saddle for that first long ride in 2005 (at the age of 50), Ende has logged more than 29,000 miles in the saddle, crisscrossing North America on horseback - alone. More than once she has traversed the Great Plains, the Southwest deserts, the Cascade Range, and the Rocky Mountains. Along the way, she discovered a sense of community and love of place that unites people wherever they live. From 2014-2016, she was the first person to ride coast to coast and back again in one trek, winning acclaim from the international Long Riders' Guild and awe from the people she met along the way. Bernice Ende's memoirs are illuminated by accompanying maps of her routes and photos from her journeys, capturing the instant friends she meets along the way, and her ongoing encounters with harsh weather, wildlife, hard work, mosquitoes, tricky route-finding, and the occasional worn out horseshoe. Ende reveals her inner struggles and triumphs - testing the limits of physical and mental stamina, coping with inescapable solitude, and the rewards of living life her own way, as she says, "in her own skin." Saddle up and come along for the journey of a lifetime.

In this story, poor Dad had two problems. First he made a mistake because he was thinking hard about his important work. Then a lot of noise stopped him from hearing an important message. He was very sorry.

IPPY 2012 Outstanding Books of the Year, "Most Likely to Save the Planet" Award Benjamin Franklin Award Finalist for Autobiography/Memoirs A vivid, sweeping, passionate story about a modern-day adventure, this is a beautiful chronology of Lucian Spataro and his team’s record-setting Arabian horse ride across the United States to draw attention to the destruction of the world’s rainforests. Told with wit and eloquence, the story moves from the beaches and crowded streets of Los Angeles, across Death Valley and the Painted Desert, through hundreds of towns and cities in the Midwest, before ending on the East Coast in an effort to bring an eye to environmental issues that in 1989 had no visibility or advocate in the United States. The urgency and importance of Spataro’s mission remains today as 20 years later the situation has not improved. Like the original ride itself, this book serves as both a report from the environmental front line and a fresh call to action.