Twenty-six years ago, Shin Dong-hyuk was born inside Camp 14, one of five sprawling political prisons in the mountains of North Korea. This is the gripping, terrifying story of his escape from this no-exit prison-- to freedom in South Korea.

The Deep South of the late 1950's was another country: a land of lynchings, segregated lunch counters, whites-only restrooms, and a color line etched in blood across Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama, and Georgia. White journalist John Howard Griffin, working for the black-owned magazine Sepia, decided to cross that line. Using medication that darkened his skin to deep brown, he exchanged his privileged life as a southern white man for the disenfranchised...

Midsummer's Eve,1648, England is in the grip of civil war between renegade King and rebellious Parliament. The struggle reaches to every corner of the kingdom, even the remote Tidelands - the marshy landscape of the south coast. Alinor a descendant of wise women, crushed by poverty and superstition, waits in the graveyard under the full moon for a ghost who will declare her free from her abusive husband. Instead, she meets James, a young man on the...

The year is 1934. With the country in the stranglehold of drought and economic depression, Ella Barron runs her Texas boardinghouse with an efficiency that ensures her life will be kept in balance. Between chores of cooking and cleaning for her residents, she cares for her ten-year-old son, Solly, a sweet but challenging child whose misunderstood behavior finds Ella on the receiving end of pity, derision, and suspicion. When David Rainwater arrives...

In this tribute to teachers everywhere. McCourt records the trials, triumphs and surprises he faces in public high schools around New York City. His methods anything but conventional, McCourt creates a lasting impact on his students through imaginative assignments, singalongs and field trips. As he struggles to find his way in the classroom, he spends his evenings drinking with writers and dreaming of one day putting his own story to paper. The book...

In 1860, the Clotilda smuggled the last group of enslaved West Africans to the U.S. through Alabama's Gulf Coast. After being emancipated five years later, these shipmates established Africatown outside Mobile, where they spoke Yoruba and appointed their own leaders. Today, Africatown faces various challenges, including pollution from surrounding industries and legal and economic struggles. After the discovery of the Clotilda's remains in a nearby...

Jane Addams, the co-founder of Hull House, the famous settlement home, writes about her experiences and insights in her autobiography, Twenty Years at Hull House. As a child growing up in Illinois, Addams suffered from Pott's Disease, which was a rare infection in her spine. This disease caused her to contract many other illnesses, then because of these aliments, Addams was self-conscious of her appearance. She explains that she could not play with...

Zulu pastor Stephen Kumalo travels to Johannesburg on an errand for a friend and to visit his son, Absalom, only to learn Absalom has been accused of murdering white city engineer and social activist Arthur Jarvis and stands very little chance of receiving mercy.

London, 1939. In a city on the brink of war, beautiful and ambitious Eva Harlow and her best friend, sweet Southerner Precious Dubose, are young models on the rise--and a duo as close as sisters. But when Eva falls in love with Graham St. John, an aristocrat and former pilot, she finds herself slipping into a web of intrigue, spies, and secrets. Her journey will test the limits of her friendship with Precious--and the mettle of all Britons as the...

Downton Abbey--a sprawling Edwardian mansion and park nestled in the lush North Yorkshire countryside--needs an heir. A tragedy at sea has claimed the life of the presumed heir, and Lord Grantham is faced with the possibility that the house he's loved his whole life might one day belong to a distant cousin he's never met. Before he can worry about that, he must deal with his scandalous daughter, Lady Mary, who many believe to be the rightful heir...