You can look at something every day and never really see it. Payton Gritas looks at the back of Sean Griswold's head in most of her classes and has for as long as she can remember. They've been linked since third grade (Griswold-Gritas; it's an alphabetical order thing), but aside form loaning Sean countless number-two pencils, she's never really noticed him.

Then Payton's guidance counselor tells her she needs a focus object—something

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"Twelve-year-old Annabelle must learn to stand up for what's right in the face of a manipulative and violent new bully who targets people Annabelle cares about, including a homeless World War I veteran"--

"Annie Zook, the preacher's daughter, struggles to keep her promise to her father--to abandon her art for a full six months. Will Annie's intention to join the Amish church be derailed by the attention of a handsome Englisher?"--Provided by publisher.

Returning to her hometown of Catawissa, Pennsylvania, in 1867 to marry a man she has never met, seventeen-year-old Verity Boone gets caught up in the a mystery surrounding the graves of her mother and aunt and a dangerous hunt for Revolutionary-era gold.

Still moping months after being dumped by her Arizona boyfriend Leo, fifteen-year-old Stargirl, a home-schooled free spirit, writes "the world's longest letter" to Leo, describing her new life in Pennsylvania.

John Updike had already made a name as a contributor of stories and poems to The New Yorker when, in January 1959, at the age of twenty-six, he published his first novel, The Poorhouse Fair, launching one of the most extraordinary literary careers in American letters. Now, Library of America inaugurates a multi-volume edition of Updike's novels with this volume gathering his first four novels, including the landmark Rabbit, Run, chosen in 2010 by...

Amos Decker and his journalist friend Alex Jamison are visiting the home of Alex's sister in Barronville, a small town in western Pennsylvania that has been hit hard economically. When Decker is out on the rear deck of the house talking with Alex's niece, a precocious eight-year-old, he notices flickering lights and then a spark of flame in the window of the house across the way. When he goes to investigate he finds two dead bodies inside and it's...

In their Pennsylvania town in 1942 twelve-year-old Charlotte and her classmates collect scrap metal for the war effort only to have it disappear from the school basement.

From the author of A Little Hope--a Read with Jenna Bonus Pick--comes an enormously powerful and life-affirming novel about three individuals whose lives intersect in unforeseen ways. Set in a close-knit Pennsylvania suburb in the grip of winter, A Quiet Life follows three people grappling with loss and finding a tender wisdom in their grief. Chuck Ayers used to look forward to nothing so much as his annual trip to Hilton Head with his wife, Cat--that...