Family Culture

Life is harsh in Chennai's teeming streets, so when runaway sisters Viji and Rukku arrive, their prospects look grim. Very quickly, 11-year-old Viji discovers how vulnerable they are in this uncaring, dangerous world. Fortunately, the girls find shelter - and friendship - on an abandoned bridge. With two homeless boys, Muthi and Arul, the group forms a family of sorts. But when illness strikes, Viji must decide whether to risk seeking help from strangers or to keep holding on to their fragile, hard-fought freedom.

What if the dark magic that runs in your family's blood awakens... in you? I thought I'd outgrown my fear of Mémé. I was wrong. When the shadows lengthen and the storm howls, will you be ready to face what lurks in the corners of your ancestral home? _Can you resist the siren call of forbidden knowledge passed down through generations?_ Uncover the chilling secrets that bind blood and spirit in this gripping tale of inherited power and unspeakable horror. Will you embrace the darkness... or let it consume you? Whispers Of Abaddon is the haunting blend of Southern Gothic and cosmic horror ...

A deranged woman guards an old shed filled with angel statues. A curious teenage girl only wanted a picture. After her husband’s sudden death, Callie grappled with grief while coping with her fifteen-year-old daughter Lili’s hostility and irrational blame. Lili’s father understood her near-mystical relationship with plants, while Callie regards Lili’s “plant friendships” as just another alienating aspect of her autism. Their only mother/daughter connection is a love of horses and riding in the mountains surrounding their northern New Mexico home. When Lili’s horse returns home...

Are You Ready to Relive Your Favorite Pop Culture Moments? Do You Love Classic Movies, Music & Random Fun Facts?… Either Way, This is The Trivia For You! Is your mind filled with random info about celebrities, music, movies, and the latest TV show that you love to binge on? If so, then this is the trivia for you! In this book, you will find: Music Movies/TV The 80s The 90s The 2000s Celebrities & More Our Ultimate Pop Culture Trivia will take you through a roller coaster ride from the 80s to today’s pop culture. There is something for everyone! It’s the perfect trivia night for both ...

Children who grow up outside of their parent’s passport country, third culture kids (TCKs), experience a significant number of losses, grief-inducing experiences, and traumas during their developmental years. These events stack up like blocks on a tower throughout the life of the TCK, creating what Lauren Wells has coined the Grief Tower. If it continues to stack without these experiences being processed, a TCK's Grief Tower is likely to crash in their early adulthood. B

It isn't that Abby Carson can't do her schoolwork, it's just that she doesn't like doing it. And that means she's pretty much failing sixth grade. When a warning letter is sent home, Abby realizes that all her slacking off could cause her to be held back -- for real! Unless she wants to repeat the sixth grade, she'll have to meet some specific conditions, including taking on an extra-credit project: find a pen pal in a foreign country. Simple enough (even for a girl who hates homework).

Eva and her identical twin sister, Miriam, had a mostly happy childhood. Theirs was the only Jewish family in their small village in the Transylvanian mountains, but they didn't think much of it until anti-Semitism reared its ugly head in their school. Then, in 1944, ten-year-old Eva and her family were deported to Auschwitz. At its gates, Eva and Miriam were separated from their parents and other siblings, selected as subjects for Dr. Mengele's infamous medical experiments.

Whether you are just starting your family or are farther along in your parenting journey, The Rhythm of Home will help you create a strong foundation. You don’t have to let the family life you dream of slip through your fingers, you can intentionally cultivate the loving, flourishing home you truly desire. The Rhythm of Home will lead the way!

The dark-eyed woman in the long, black gown was first seen in the 1970s, standing near a fireplace. She was sad and translucent, present and absent at once. Strange things began to happen in the Santa Fe hotel where she was seen. Gas fireplaces turned off and on without anyone touching a switch. Glasses flew off shelves. And in one second-floor suite with a canopy bed and arched windows looking out to the mountains, guests reported alarming events.

Living in the remote town of Tierra del Sol is dangerous, especially in the criatura months, when powerful spirits roam the desert and threaten humankind. But Cecelia Rios has always believed there was more to the criaturas, much to her family’s disapproval. After all, only brujas - humans who capture and control criaturas - consort with the spirits, and brujeria is a terrible crime. When her older sister, Juana, is kidnapped by El Sombrerón, a powerful dark criatura, Cece is determined to bring Juana back.

It's 1953 and 11-year-old Penny dreams of a summer of butter pecan ice cream, swimming, and baseball. But nothing's that easy in Penny's family. For starters, she can't go swimming because her mother's afraid she'll catch polio at the pool. To make matters worse, her favorite uncle is living in a car. Her Nonny cries every time her father's name is mentioned. And the two sides of her family aren?t speaking to each other!

Pink and pretty or predatory and hardened, sexualized girlhood influences our daughters from infancy onward, telling them that how a girl looks matters more than who she is. Somewhere between the exhilarating rise of Girl Power in the 1990s and today, the pursuit of physical perfection has been recast as a source - the source - of female empowerment. And commercialization has spread the message faster and farther, reaching girls at ever-younger ages.

The day the First World War broke out, Alfie Summerfield's father promised he wouldn't go away to fight - but he broke that promise the following day. Four years later, Alfie doesn't know where his father might be, other than that he's away on a special, secret mission. Then, while shining shoes at King's Cross Station, Alfie unexpectedly sees his father's name on a sheaf of papers belonging to a military doctor. Bewildered and confused, Alfie realizes his father is in a hospital close by - a hospital treating soldiers with shell shock.

This smart and witty collection of opinions, observations, and anecdotes covers a broad range of personal topics. Kathie Lee Gifford's stories are often funny, sometimes heartfelt, and always compelling - think Nora Ephron's I Feel Bad About My Neck meets Carol Burnett.

No subject is off-limits: talking to her kids about sex, being married to Frank Gifford, embarrassing professional gaffes, run-ins with celebrities (of which there are many), the harsh and funny realities of aging.

In October 2012, George Shetuni took a trip to the land of his birth Albania, exactly 20 years after his family first immigrated to the US. This essay recounts the visit which was a homecoming and a vacation of a lifetime. This essay is also a unique written description of contemporary Albania, a small and easily overlooked European country.

It’s 1989 in New York City. Reza is an Iranian boy who has just moved to the city with his mother to live with his stepfather and stepbrother. He’s terrified that someone will guess the truth he can barely acknowledge about himself. Reza knows he’s gay, but all he knows of gay life are the media’s images of men dying of AIDS. Judy is an aspiring fashion designer who worships her uncle Stephen, a gay man with AIDS who devotes his time to activism as a member of ACT UP. Art is Judy’s best friend, their school’s only out and proud teen.

Bick Kidd and his globe-trotting siblings Beck, Storm and Tommy may have completed their first treasure hunt after their father was lost at sea, but their kidnapped mother is still in the hands of nasty pirates. Their search for a rescue plan takes them down the Nile river in Africa, where they'll have to navigate everything from Egyptian pyramids in the desert to wet-and-wild jungles—not to mention life-threatening encounters with wilderness diseases, angry hippos and some seriously bad guys—in order to find the treasure and save the day.

One of America's most influential Hispanics - Maria on Sesame Street - delivers a beautifully wrought coming-of-age memoir. Set in the 1970s in the Bronx, this is the story of a girl with a dream. When listeners meet young Sonia, she is a child living amid the squalor of a boisterous home that is filled with noisy relatives and nosy neighbors. Each day she is glued to the TV screen that blots out the painful realities of her existence and also illuminates the possibilities that lie ahead.

Love alone isn’t enough to overcome some obstacles. Lena Kauffman is a young Old Order Amish schoolteacher who has dealt all her life with attention raised by a noticeable birthmark on her cheek. Having learned to move past the stares and whispers, Lena channels her zest for living into her love of teaching. But tensions mount as she is challenged to work with a rebellious young man and deal with several crises at the schoolhouse that threaten her other students.

It is 1939, Nazi Germany. The country is holding its breath. Death has never been busier, and will become busier still. By her brother's graveside, Liesel's life is changed when she picks up a single object, partially hidden in the snow. It is The Gravedigger's Handbook, left there by accident, and it is her first act of book thievery. So begins a love affair with books and words, as Liesel, with the help of her accordion-playing foster father, learns to read. Soon she is stealing books from Nazi book-burnings.