Coming Soon

Papa has promised to bring home a perfect etrog for Sukkot from his journey across the sea. Rachel and Abe go to the docks every day to wait for his ship. But Rosh Hashanah passes, then Yom Kippur, and still Papa's ship doesn't arrive. Grandpapa Luis comforts Rachel with a beautiful silver etrog cup, but will her papa return in time for Sukkot, bringing the promised etrog?

Papa plays beautiful music on the violin, sometimes quick and lively and sometimes slow and sorrowful. But one night, there is a pounding on the door, and a Nazi soldier snatches the violin away. The violin is silent for years until a luthier finds it and says, "I can fix you."

Each night when she says her prayers, Rebecca thinks of her Papa who lost a hand while fighting in President Lincoln's war. He still believes the war was righteous: "We Jews, who were once slaves in Egypt, should never let another human being be held in slavery. Our America should not be their Egypt."

Every morning, Baila klops (Yiddish for "bangs") on all the village doors to wake people up so they get to synagogue on time. At each house she sings, "Get up! It's early, but soon will be later. Roll out of bed to serve your Creator!" But one day, Eliezer the blacksmith does not want to get up. A neighbor's music kept him up. The neighbor can't sleep because of a howling baby who can't sleep because all she wants is a bagel, and Bentzi the baker is always sold out. Can Baila make sure everyone gets to synagogue on time and has fresh bagels to eat?

“The People Could Fly,” the title story in Virginia Hamilton’s prize-winning American Black folktale collection, is a fantasy tale of the slaves who possessed the ancient magic words that enabled them to literally fly away to freedom. And it is a moving tale of those who did not have the opportunity to “fly” away, who remained slaves with only their imaginations to set them free as they told and retold this tale.

Twins Pew and Basket Church dream of escaping the gloomy orphanage where they grew up. Or, even better, the return of their unknown parents. But even in their wildest dreams, they never imagined the truth. They can travel through time! Armed only with perplexing clues to their past and a time travel talisman that is key to their future, Pew and Basket embark on an epic quest. Their voyage takes them from battlefields to pirate colonies, all in a race to uncover the secrets of their family – and outsmart time’s greatest villain.

Twelve-year-old Ann Maria Weems works from sunup to sundown, wraps rags around her feet in the winter, and must do whatever her master or mistress orders—but she has something that many plantation slaves don't have. She has her wonderful family around her. To Ann, her teasing brothers, her older sister, and her protective and loving parents are everything. And then one day, they are gone. Separated from her family by her master and shipped off as a housemaid, Ann learns something about independence and about love before the opportunity for escape arrives.

Best friends Molly and Bram are on a mission in London. Famous writer Charles Dickens has been kidnapped! The pals set out to search the darkest corners of the city. On their travels, they meet all sorts of characters, among them a foul-mouthed fowl and Worshipful Company of Fishmongers. Can they solve the riddle of the disappearing Dickens before it's too late?

Britain, 1940, the world is at war and 10-year-old twins Harry and Sophie are evacuated from London to live with their Great Uncle. The twins immediately miss home and perhaps most of all for Harry, the tearoom where their mum works, and Harry spends hours watching the professional dancers – secretly dreaming of the day he might do the same.

When the tyrannical family patriarch Sir Ignatious Gristle is murdered on his 90th birthday at his country estate, every one of his gathered family members is a suspect. Trapped by a snowstorm with no way to contact the police, it's up to his mettlesome granddaughter, Edna, and her trusted tortoise, Charles Darwin, to determine whodunnit!

Tess loves to dance – even when her tummy is empty and her boots are pinching. She and her brothers and sisters are all alone in the world after their mum dies and their pa abandons them. They have to eat bread and dripping, and take in washing to earn a few pennies. How will they afford food – and milk for baby Ada? Tess’s big brother and sister go out to look for work, but Tess has to stay in class at The Ragged School and look after Ada too. But Tess is determined that even though she is poor, she will still get to go to the ball . . .

1879, Mississippi. Young dreamer Lettie may have her head in the stars, but her body is on a covered wagon heading westward. Her father, Thomas, promises that Nebraska will be everything the family needs: an opportunity to claim the independence they’ve strived for over generations on their very own plot of land. But Thomas’ hopes—and mouth—are bigger than his ability to follow through. With few supplies and even less money, the only thing that feels certain is danger.

Every day, more and more people fleeing war in the north show up at Kyung Tak and her family’s house on the southeastern shore of Korea. With nowhere else to go, the Taks' home is these migrants' last chance of refuge “before falling into the sea,” and the household quickly becomes crowded, hot, and noisy. Then war sirens cry out over Kyung's city too, and her family and their guests take shelter underground. When the sirens stop, Kyung is upset—she wishes everything could go back to the way it was before: before the sirens, before strangers started coming into their home.

Barrio Logan, one of San Diego’s oldest Chicane neighborhoods, once brimmed with families and stretched all the way to the glorious San Diego Bay. But in the decades after WWII, the community lost their beach and bayfront to factories, junkyards, and an interstate that divided the neighborhood and forced around 5,000 people out of their homes. Then on April 22, 1970, residents discovered that the construction crew they believed was building a park—one the city had promised them years ago—was actually breaking ground for a police station.

After years of loss and sacrifice, the end of the war with Napoleon is approaching. Cobweb knows nothing of the war – he loves being a young puppy and playing with his owner, Bethan, exploring the countryside and chasing rabbits. But when he is taken away from Bethan and sold, Cobweb must learn to become a Drover’s Dog – herding sheep and cattle for hundreds of miles on the long, treacherous journey to London.

Mose and her daughter Agna are incomers in the village, treated with suspicion. But young Liva, left out of the secrets her sister Tove and brother Hakken share, idolises Agna and follows her everywhere. Unwittingly, they lead the German soldiers to a perfect island. Once a haven for picnics and storytelling under the midnight sun, it is transformed into a grim POW camp. This is an unlikely place to find buried treasure, but it's there.

When her beloved horse Porcellus sires a new foal, Dido hopes he will be the missing piece in her quest to train the greatest team ever seen at the Circus Maximus. But grief and a desire for revenge are clouding her judgement. Then her old friend Parmenion asks her to shelter the runaway son of her bitterest rival and help him fulfil his dream of becoming a charioteer. Can Dido and the boy, Damon, help each other find a way out of darkness?

After fleeing persecution in the Russian Empire, eleven-year-old Shoshana and her family, Jewish immigrants, start a new life on the prairie. Shoshana takes fierce joy in the wild beauty of the plains and the thrill of forging a new, American identity. But it’s not as simple for her older sister, Libke, who misses their Ukrainian village and doesn’t pick up English as quickly or make new friends as easily. Desperate to fit in, Shoshana finds herself hiding her Jewish identity in the face of prejudice, just as Libke insists they preserve it.

Charlie and Ralph’s mom has waited a long time to vote because countless obstacles have been put in Black people’s way to stop them from having a say in elections—obstacles that it took a lot of hard work to tear down. But now, in 1969, Madear is going to vote for the very first time, and the boys are coming along on this exciting day. A day that puts a new bounce in their mom’s step, and enables them all to begin to dream of a better future.

Orphaned twelve-year-old Tigg is the Bandicoot Bushranger, the youngest bushranger on the Ballarat goldfields in 1859. When a robbery goes wrong, Tigg must flee in disguise as one of the tens of thousands of Chinese men and boys braving heat, thirst, starvation and murderous attacks on the long road from Robe in South Australia to the goldfields in Victoria. But even further danger threatens. Why has the mysterious Mr Rudolf offered one hundred pounds for Tigg's capture? And is Henry Liu a friend or enemy? To be safe, Tigg must solve the greatest mystery of all.