Highlights the life and literary career of Stephenie Meyer. Includes a glossary, resources for further information, text-related questions, and color photographs.

Explores the life and career of author and scriptwriter, Suzanne Collins, from her childhood moving around the world as part of a military family to her college days at Indiana University to the success of her trilogy "The Hunger Games."

Provides a brief biography of African American writer Kwame Alexander, chronicling his childhood, education, and writing career. Includes color photographs, critical thinking questions, poetry activities, a glossary, and further resources.

In the wake of her mother's death, Cheryl Strayed's family scattered and her marriage was destroyed. Four years later, twenty-six years old with nothing to lose, Cheryl made the decision to hike the Pacific Crest Trail from the Mojave Desert to Washington State - alone. She had no experience as a long-distance hiker and the trail was little more than an idea. But it was a promise of piecing back together a life that had come undone.

A new anthology of fiction and memoir by African American women writers showcases twenty-three fresh voices in American literature, including Rebecca Walker, ZZ Packer, Danzy Senna, and Carolyn Ferrell.

"... a memoir of an immigrant family coming to America, as told by a lifelong misfit who forged from his imagination an essential literary voice and, against all odds, a place in the world."--

Father Greg Lockwood is unlike any Catholic priest you have ever met, a man who lounges in boxer shorts, loves action movies, and whose constant jamming on the guitar reverberates "like a whole band dying in a plane crash in 1972." His daughter is an irreverent poet who long ago left the Church's country. When an unexpected crisis leads her and her husband to move back into her parents' rectory, their two worlds collide. In Priestdaddy, Lockwood interweaves...

A disabled foreigner in Japan--a society historically hostile to difference--Kenny Fries spins a tale of exciting, bewildering adventure. As he visits Japanese gardens, experiences Noh and butoh, and meets artists and scholars, he also discovers disabled gods, one-eyed samurai, blind chanting priests, and A-bomb survivors. When he is diagnosed as HIV-positive, all his assumptions about Japan, the body, and mortality are shaken, and he must find a...

"Janice Gary never walked alone without a dog - a big dog. Once, she was an adventurer, a girl who ran off to California with big dreams and hopes of leaving her past behind. But after a brutal rape, her youthful bravado vanished, replaced by a crippling need for safety. When she rescues a gangly Lab-Rottweiler pup, Gary is sure she's found her biggest protector yet. But after Barney is attacked by a vicious dog, he becomes a clone of his attacker,...