Of all the folks in the mountain shacks, the Casteels were the lowest -- the scum of the hills. Heaven Leigh Casteel was the prettiest, smartest girl in the backwoods, despite her ragged clothes and dirty face...despite a father meaner than ten vipers...despite her weary stepmother, who worked her like a mule. For her brother Tom and the little on...more
Ruth Anne Boatwright ("Bone"), growing up in a close-knit extended family of Southern poor whites, is molested by her violent stepfather. Allison's powerful--and highly autobiographical--novel of family dysfunction and individual survival was a best-seller when it appeared in 1992.
Named Notable Book of 1955 by the American Library Association, this is the very moving story of a peasant woman in a primitive village in India whose whole life was a gallant and persistent battle to care for those she loved. "Comparable in many ways to Cry, the Beloved Country...if anything...better." (Saturday Evening Post)
Today, nearly forty years after his death, Nobel Prize winner John Steinbeck remains one of America’s greatest writers and cultural figures. We have begun publishing his many works for the first time as blackspine Penguin Classics featuring eye-catching, newly commissioned art. This season we continue with the seven spectacular and influent...more
Ruth Anne "Bone" Boatwright, an illegitimate young girl, dreams of escaping her Greenville County, South Carolina, home, her notorious, hard-living family, and the unwanted attentions of her abusive stepfather, Daddy Glen. A first novel. Reprint. National Book Award finalist. NYT.
Dreaming of a better life, Heaven, the prettiest girl in her backwoods community, struggles to protect her siblings from their abusive father and the prejudiced townspeople who ostracize them for their poverty. Reissue.
"Originally titled Dulce compaänâia (1995), novel set in Bogotâa tells the first-person story of a woman journalist's involvement with the people of a poor barrio and the man they call an angel. Ironic, often humorous details of daily life in Colombia combine with passionate descriptions of madness, religion, and love. Excellent...more
While helping Grandpa Mike do volunteer work at a shelter for less fortunate people, Izzy tries to figure out the best way to help a girl her own age who is staying there.