A mystery baby is quite a surprise… But love may be the biggest shock of all There’s no holiday joy for grieving widower Brent Carson anymore. But as much as he wants to shut himself away this season, the unexpected baby on his doorstep means he’ll need some help. He turns to the only person he can think of—Zoe Price, the bubbly foster mom next door. She agrees to help, but on one condition—Brent helps her answer the town’s Dear Santa letters. And to Brent’s surprise, the more time he spends with Zoe making Christmas wishes come true, the easier it is to believe there’s Christmas hope for him, too. From Love Inspired: Uplifting stories of faith, forgiveness and hope.

Four sisters search for true family in this story of resilience by a Newbery Honor author. When the McCready sisters' parents are washed away in a tsunami, their Great Aunt Martha volunteers to have them live with her on Pine Island in British Columbia. But while they are traveling there, Martha dies unexpectedly, forcing Fiona, the eldest, to come up with a scheme to keep social services from separating the girls - a scheme that will only work if no one knows they are living on their own. Fiona approaches their grouchy and indifferent neighbor Al and asks if he will pretend to be their live-in legal guardian should papers need to be signed or if anyone comes snooping around. He reluctantly agrees, under the condition that they bring him dinner every night. As weeks pass, Fiona takes on more and more adult responsibilities, while each of the younger girls finds their own special role in their atypical family. But even if things seem to be falling into place, Fiona is sure it's only a matter of time before they are caught. Written in Polly Horvath's inimitable style, gentle humor and tough obstacles are woven throughout this story about the bonds of sisterhood and what makes a family. Don’t miss the sequel, Pine Island Visitors, which Kirkus Reviews described as “terrifically entertaining” in a starred review. A Junior Library Guild Gold Standard Selection A Bank Street Best Children's Book of the Year

The prospects were bleak for the four Whitehouse children in 1929 when they were orphaned at the start of the Great Depression. They faced life in dangerously overcrowded orphanages in New York City or the uncertainty of a trip on the orphan trains. They were fortunate enough to land at the Children's Cottages Orphanage in Sayville, New York and St. Ann's Episcopal Church. Author Jack Whitehouse spins a personal tale of the compassion exhibited by the entire Sayville community, including such families as the Roosevelts and Astors, which allowed the children to thrive. Discover how the town came together to love and nurture these members of the Greatest Generation, who became true American heroes

Author-editor Edie Clark shares the happiness and strength she found through her husband, carpenter Paul Bolton, revealing how they nurtured a love and built a life together as beautiful and enduring as the rustic cottage Paul restored for Edie. Reprint.

In August 2004, Parliamentary senators wept as they presented Forgotten Australians, the report from the Senate Inquiry into the treatment of children in care. Half a million children grew up in 'care' in twentieth-century Australia, and most often these children lived with daily brutal physical and emotional abuse in the sterile environment of an institution. In Orphans of the Living, drawing from interviews, submissions to the Senate Inquiry, and her own experience, Joanna Penglase describes, for the first time, the experience from the perspective of the survivors. With tenderness, compassion and intellect, Penglase begins to unravel the seemingly inexplicable: how and why did this happen? She looks not only at the profound personal costs to these children, but the huge social and economic costs of these past policies.

An old man visits a closed and decaying building which he remembers entering some sixty years earlier as a small, frightened nine-year-old. He then mines those distantmemories for this stark recounting of growing up in a large, military orphanage. He tells of newkie lessons perhaps too well-learned and a kiddie dormitory perhaps too well-ordered; of violent daytime battles and innocent nighttime rendezvous; of a happy-go-lucky garbage man and a not so lucky marksman; of unconsummated first love and an unexpected last message. These memories, and many more, are flanked by two sad goodbyes, one wistful and one anguished, but each demarcating a decisive fork in life's road. Finally, in a dramatic epilogue, former classmates return for the annual orphan's reunion and gather in an off-campus bar to revel and reminisce.