In 1992, a young boy whose father is away at war discovers, from their flower stall, the power of beauty and kindness in the wake of the bombing of Sarajevo.

"Journalists Geoff Manaugh and Nicola Twilley explore the history and future of quarantine, from the Black Death to Big Data"--

In the decades before the Civil War, Americans appealed to the nation's sacred religious and legal texts - the Bible and the Constitution - to address the slavery crisis. The ensuing political debates over slavery deepened interpreters' emphasis on historical readings of the sacred texts, and in turn, these readings began to highlight the unbridgeable historical distances that separated nineteenth-century Americans from biblical and founding pasts....

"For the whole of human history, we have lived alongside birds. We have hunted and domesticated them for food; venerated them in our mythologies, religions, and rituals; exploited them for their natural resources; and been inspired by them for our music,art, and poetry. In Ten Birds That Changed the World, naturalist and author Stephen Moss tells the gripping story of this long and intimate relationship through key species from all seven of...

An unconventional history of homosexuality We all remember Oscar Wilde, but who speaks for Bosie? What about those ‘bad gays’ whose unexemplary lives reveal more than we might expect? Many popular histories seek to establish homosexual heroes, pioneers, and martyrs but, as Huw Lemmey and Ben Miller argue, the past is filled with queer people whose sexualities and dastardly deeds have been overlooked despite their being informative and instructive. Based...

"The Year of Jubilee is a lyrical coming-of-age novel set against the backdrop of the turbulent South in the early 1960s. Stifled by tragedy, thirteen-year-old Grace Mockingbird yearns to escape her mother's controlling, grieving hand and find her voice in a small Kentucky coal mining town. A tragic family loss has driven a wedge between Grace and her mother, who seems to be silently punishing Grace by withholding her love. Grace does penance in every...

Adolf Hitler's Nazi forces have violently conquered lands across Europe. They have created brutal camps where Jews, prisoners of war, and other perceived enemies work themselves to death. You are fighting against the Nazis on the frontlines in Europe. YOU CHOOSE what part will you play in fighting for freedom. Are you willing to pay the ultimate price?