"The never-before-published diaries of Alathea Fitzalan Howard-who spent her teenaged years living out World War II in Windsor Great Park with her close friends Princess Margaret and Princess Elizabeth, the future queen of the United Kingdom-provide an extraordinary and intimate look at the British Royal Family. Like so many others in Great Britain, young Alathea Fitzalan Howard's life was turned upside down by the start of the Second World War. Sent...

"In this knock-out collection, Major Jackson savors the complexity between perception and reality, the body and desire, accountability and judgment. Inspired by the philosophy of Albert Camus, Major Jackson's fifth volume subtly configures the poet as "absurd hero." With intense musicality and buoyant lyricism, The Absurd Man follows the titular speaker as he confronts the struggle for meaning in a technological world and the difficulty of social...

"As a teenager, filmmaker Pearl Gluck left her [Hasidic] Jewish community in Brooklyn for secular life in Manhattan. Many years later, Pearl's father has one wish: that she marry and return to the community . Pearl, however, takes a more creative approach to mend the breach. She travels to Hungary to retrieve a turn-of-the-century family heirloom: a couch upon which esteemed rabbis once slept. En route for the ancestral divan, Pearl encounters a colorful...

"William and Benjamin Frank joined the Second Rhode Island Regiment in the spring of 1777, following the tradition of military service established by their father, a veteran of the French and Indian War. The brothers became part of a cohort of free Black soldiers serving in an integrated Continental Army. The Second Rhode Island saw action along the Delaware River in the defense of Fort Mercer and the battle of Red Bank, before falling back with the...

"In 2016, Globe and Mail reporter Ann Hui drove across Canada, from Victoria to Fogo Island, to write about small-town Chinese restaurants and the families who run them. It was only after the story was published that she discovered her own family could have been included--her parents had run their own Chinese restaurant, The Legion Cafe, before she was born. This discovery, and the realization that there was so much of her own history she didn't yet...

When siblings Charlie and Hannah receive the call that their grandfather has been hospitalized, they load up the car and drive north to visit him. Charlie insists on packing camping equipment. He wants to visit Tahquamenon Falls once they arrive at their favorite place to camp as children. Halfway to their destination, Hannah's depression takes a serious hold on her. She abandons her brother and runs off. She books it into the woods and down the beach....

Renton Thurston's a young 14-year-old who is tired of his monotonous life. The only thing that makes him happy is when he "lifts," an extreme form of aerial hoverboarding. His feelings of frustration come from his life of toil in his Grandfather's garage and being the son of an enigmatic yet legendary "hero." One day, a large LFO (Light Finding Operation) craft called Nirvash falls from the sky and a beautiful young girl named Eureka emerges and asks...