In this tongue-in-cheek take on classic themes in children's literature, the four Willoughby children set about to become "deserving orphans" after their neglectful parents embark on a treacherous around-the-world adventure, leaving them in the care of an odious nanny.

Twenty-three years ago, Guenter and Karyn Schrader were killed in a plane accident in India, leaving their four-year-old daughter and orphan. Now grown, Liana is plagued by questions about her parents and her own inability to form a romantic relationship with a man she's starting to care about. Adopted by her mother's sister, she has always felt like an outsider in the family, and her disjointed memories—and nightmares—of the past make

...

When ten year-old orphan Peter Augustus Duchenne encounters a fortune-teller in the marketplace one day and she tells him that his sister, who is presumed dead, is in fact alive, he embarks on a remarkable series of adventures as he desperately tries to find her.

The orphan Kim, whose father was an Irish soldier, makes his living by begging on the streets of Lahore and running errands. An aged Tibetan Lama is on a journey to find the mythical "River of the Arrow" and in doing so free himself from the Wheel of Things. Becoming his disciple, Kim joins the Lama to travel along the Grand Trunk Road. But Kim also gets himself involved in the Great Game, Russia and Britain's political conflict in Central Asia,

...

Yann Martel's imaginative and unforgettable Life of Pi is a magical reading experience, an endless blue expanse of storytelling about adventure, survival, and ultimately, faith. The precocious son of a zookeeper, 16-year-old Pi Patel is raised in Pondicherry, India, where he tries on various faiths for size, attracting "religions the way a dog attracts fleas." Planning a move to Canada, his father packs up the family and their menagerie and they...

Upon the death of her father, seventeen-year-old Charlotte struggles to keep the family's woolen mill running in the face of an overwhelming mortgage and what the local villagers believe is a curse, but when a man capable of spinning straw into gold appears on the scene she must decide if his help is worth the price.

"The man known as Wilde is a mystery to everyone, including himself. Decades ago, he was found as a boy living feral in the woods, with no memory of his past. After the police concluded an exhaustive hunt for the child's family, which was never found, he was turned over to the foster system. Now, thirty years later, Wilde still doesn't know where he comes from, and he's back living in the woods on the outskirts of town, content to be an outcast, comfortable...

Falsely accused of theft and murder, an orphaned peasant boy in fourteenth-century England flees his village and meets a larger-than-life juggler who holds a dangerous secret.

Flight follows a troubled foster teenager--a boy who is not a "legal" Indian because he was never claimed by his father. The journey begins as he's about to commit a massive act of violence. At the moment of decision, he finds himself shot back through time to resurface in the body of an FBI agent during the civil rights era, where he sees why "Hell is Red River, Idaho, in the 1970s." Red River is only the first stop in an eye-opening trip through...

After her parents die nineteen-year-old Annette Downing is left with the responsibility of raising her unruly younger brothers.