Showing results by narrator "Emily Zeller" in All Categories

Rural China, 1942. Twenty-two-year-old Eugenia Baker exists in a bubble as yet untouched by WWII. Content to help her father with his missionary work, Genie sees her future as a straight, if narrow, road - until an American pilot arrives, warning them of the approaching Japanese army. Lieutenant Ted Younan is one of the Flying Tigers, volunteer fighters protecting China from aerial attacks. After rescuing Ted from his downed plane, Genie’s father asks the flyboy to get his daughter across the mountains so she can escape to the United States.

With the Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882, Chinese laborers became the first group in American history to be excluded from the United States on the basis of their race and class. This landmark law changed the course of US immigration history, but we know little about its consequences for the Chinese in America or for the United States as a nation of immigrants. At America's Gates is the first book devoted entirely to both Chinese immigrants and the American immigration officials who sought to keep them out.

The raucous and surprisingly poignant story of a young, Russia-obsessed American writer and comedian who embarked on a solo tour of the former Soviet Republics, never imagining that it would involve kidnappers, garbage bags of money, and encounters with the weird and wonderful from Mongolia to Tajikistan.

In 2157, the Adryil, an advanced race of telepathic humanoids contacted Earth. A century later, 15-year-old violist Iris Lei considers herself lucky to attend Papilio, a prestigious performing arts school powered by their technology. A sudden encounter with an Adryil boy upends her world. Iris longs to learn about him and his faraway realm, but the only evidence she has of his existence is the mysterious alien device he slipped to her. When she starts hearing his voice in her head, she wonders if her world of backstabbing artists and pressure for perfection is driving her insane.

A group of young girls descends on Camp Forevermore, a sleepaway camp in the Pacific Northwest, where their days are filled with swimming lessons, friendship bracelets, and camp songs by the fire. Filled with excitement and nervous energy, they set off on an overnight kayaking trip to a nearby island. But before the night is over, they find themselves stranded, with no adults to help them survive or guide them home. The Lost Girls of Camp Forevermore traces these five girls through and beyond this fateful trip.

In These Schools Belong to You and Me, MacArthur Award-winning educator, reformer, and author Deborah Meier draws on her 50-plus years of experience to argue that the purpose of universal education is to provide young people with an "apprenticeship for citizenship in a democracy". Through an intergenerational exchange with her former colleague and fellow educator Emily Gasoi, the coauthors analyze the last several decades of education reform, challenging narrow profit-driven conceptions of school success.

Sunflower is an only child, and when her father is sent to the rural Cadre School, she has to go with him. Her father is an established artist from the city and finds his new life of physical labor and endless meetings exhausting. Sunflower is lonely and longs to play with the local children in the village across the river. When her father tragically drowns, Sunflower is taken in by the poorest family in the village, a family with a son named Bronze. Until Sunflower joins his family, Bronze was an only child, too.

Rookie cop Laura Mori catches her first investigation when the fiery crash of a sports car lights up the night sky. The fire burns the car and the body within it beyond recognition, but the police are able to identify the vehicle as belonging to Kent Jameson, a celebrity author and benefactor of their small town of Sunrise Lake, Oregon. Kent Jameson fears that the body is that of his 17-year-old daughter, Lucy, who stormed out of the house that night after an argument.

After so many summers together, Emma, Jess, Megan, Becca, and Cassidy are reunited for one final hurrah before they go their separate ways. The plan is to spend their summer as counselors at Camp Lovejoy in a scenic, remote corner of New Hampshire, but things get off to a rocky start when their young charges are stricken with a severe case of homesickness. Hopefully, a little bit of bibliotherapy will do the trick, as the girls bring their longstanding book club to camp.

Born in India, Carolyn Rydell moves her shipping business to London. Although she is exotically beautiful and wealthy, her late husband's aristocratic family rejects her because of her profession and heritage. Feeling increasingly isolated, Caro uses work as a shield against loneliness. Then she finds an injured man floating in the Thames - and the pattern of her life changes.

After being diagnosed in her early 30s with terminal breast cancer, Heather McManamy felt like her life was crumbling. Her "normal" vanished and was replaced with multiple surgeries and dozens of chemo treatments that could briefly extend her life but would not prevent her inevitable death. With an effervescent spirit and a new perspective, Heather started to live each day as if it were her last. She learned to soak in the moment, appreciate the beauty around her, and celebrate her blessings.

This one-of-a-kind treasury brings together the talents of nearly two dozen best-selling middle-grade authors - including Shannon Hale, Brandon Mull, Ally Condie, and Jennifer A. Nielsen - who have created original short stories and modern-day fairy tales based on the lives and dreams of children they have met who all have two things in common: They have very big hopes and dreams, and they are all cancer patients.

Could the book club break up? When Jess is offered an anonymous scholarship to a prestigious boarding school, she's not sure that leaving home - and her friends - is what she wants to do. Meanwhile Megan's grandmother comes for a long visit and turns everything in the Wong household upside down; Emma crusades against her middle school's new uniforms; and Cassidy finds out there's a big change ahead for her family.

The Mother-Daughter Book Club is back! This year the mothers have a big surprise in store for Emma, Jess, Cassidy, and Megan: They've invited snooty Becca Chadwick and her mother to join the book club! But there are bigger problems when Jess finds out that her family may have to give up Half Moon Farm. In a year filled with skating parties, a disastrous mother-daughter camping trip, and a high-stakes fashion show, the girls realize that it's only through working together - Becca included - that they can save Half Moon Farm.

Gunslinging, chain-smoking, and Stetson-wearing Taoist psychopomp Elouise "Lou" Merriwether might not be a normal 19-year-old, but she's too busy keeping San Francisco safe from ghosts, shades, and geung si to care much about that. It's an important job, though most folks consider it downright spooky. Some have even accused Lou of being more comfortable with the dead than the living, and, well...they're not wrong.

Things I will never forget: my name, my made-up birthday...the dark of the hospital at night. My mother’s face when she was young. Things other people will forget: where they come from, how old they are, the faces of the people they love. The right words for bowl and sunshine...what is a beginning and what is an end. Joy spends her days working the graveyard shift at a store outside Boston and nursing an addiction to cough syrup, an attempt to suppress her troubled past.

By 2035, 11.5 million Americans will be over the age of 85 - more than double today's five million - and living longer than ever before. To enable all of us to age with dignity and security in the face of this coming Age Wave, our society must learn to value the care of our elders. The process of building a culture that supports care is a key component to restoring the American dream and, as Ai-Jen Poo convincingly argues, will generate millions of new jobs and breathe new life into our national ideals of independence, justice, and dignity.

Betrayed by everyone she loves, Valerie Dearborn will do anything to get out of Fey and avoid becoming Cerdwellyn's queen. Even if it means she has to rely upon Lucas, the monster who betrayed her.

Jordan O'Malley has everything she ever wanted: a job she loves, a beautiful home, and a dependable boyfriend. When her life unravels after a breast cancer scare, Jordan decides to join her wildest childhood friend in San Francisco and track down her drifter brother Cam, who harbors secrets of his own. When Cam suddenly flees the country, Jordan follows, determined to bring him home. Her journey takes her to the farthest reaches of majestic Nepal, where she encounters tests - and truths.

When Lily was three, her mother put her up for adoption, then disappeared without a trace. Or so Lily was told. Lily grew up in her new family and tried to forget her past. But with the Korean War raging and the fear of "Commies" everywhere, Lily's Asian heritage makes her a target. She is sick of the racism she faces, a fact her adoptive parents won’t take seriously. For Lily, war is everywhere - the dinner table, the halls at school, and especially within her own skin.