Orphan Beth Harmon overcomes her fears and shyness by learning to play chess and, over the years, improves her game to become a national champion and to play the world grandmasters.

An abridged version of Dicken's story of the orphan forced to practice thievery and live a life of crime in nineteenth-century London. Illustrated notes throughout the text explain the historical background of the story.

"Three hundred years after the events of the Mistborn trilogy, Scadrial is on the verge of modernity, with railroads to supplement the canals, electric lighting in the streets and the homes of the wealthy, and the first steel-framed skyscrapers racing for the clouds. Kelsier, Vin, Elend, Sazed, Spook, and the rest are now part of history or religion. Yet even as science and technology are reaching new heights, the old magics of Allomancy and Feruchemy...

Set in the mountains of southern Appalachia, this is the story of a boy born to a teenaged single mother in a single-wide trailer, with no assets beyond his dead father's good looks and copper-colored hair, a caustic wit, and a fierce talent for survival. In a plot that never pauses for breath, relayed in his own unsparing voice, he braves the modern perils of foster care, child labor, derelict schools, athletic success, addiction, disastrous loves,...

Hunted across the True Sea and haunted by the lives she took on the Fold, Alina must try to make a life with Mal in an unfamiliar land, all while keeping her identity as the Sun Summoner a secret.

Growing up in rural Kentucky, Taylor Greer always knew she would get away someday. After buying a used car, Taylor heads west, with no set destination in mind. Along the way she "inherits" a young Native American girl named Turtle. Just after Taylor and Turtle settle in Arizona and begin to finally fit in somewhere, Taylor faces a challenge for Turtle's custody and must first come to terms with her own feelings about abandonment, belonging, love and...

"A brilliant and immersive, all-consuming read about one fourteen-year-old girl's heart-stopping fight for her own soul. Turtle Alveston is a survivor. At fourteen, she roams the woods along the northern California coast. The creeks, tide pools, and rocky islands are her haunts and her hiding grounds, and she is known to wander for miles. But while her physical world is expansive, her personal one is small and treacherous: Turtle has grown up isolated...

After narrowly escaping the menacing clutches of the dastardly Count Olaf, the three Baudelaire orphans are taken in by a kindly herpetologist with whom they live happily for an all-too-brief time.

Sara Crewe looks like a little princess - that's what her schoolmates say when Sara's rich father brings her to Miss Minchin's Select Seminary for girls. Yet when Sara's fortunes vanish and she must live as a servent in a cold attic room, she proves that being a real princess takes heart, hope, and perhaps a little magic.