Seven-year-old Avery is determined to discover what makes her special. She tries soccer, swimming, gymnastics, ballet, tap dancing, painting, and almost everything else she can imagine—but nothing feels like it truly belongs to her.Everything changes after Avery turns eight and visits her best friend, Mia. When a favorite song begins playing, Avery starts singing without realizing how beautiful her voice sounds. Mia hears something Avery has never recognized in herself and encourag...

Riley Davis remembers exactly what it felt like to be a beginner gymnast—excited, curious, and a little nervous. In Riley Davis: My First Gymnastics Adventure, Riley and her best friend, Addisyn, help young readers discover what happens inside the gym and what it really means to become a gymnast.With guidance from Coach Mia, readers are introduced to warm-ups, proper gymnastics clothing, forward rolls, handstands, cartwheels, balance beam, uneven bars, vault, floor exercis...

Riley Davis loves everything about gymnastics—the chalk on her hands, the narrow beam beneath her feet, and the thrill of mastering a new skill. But on the morning of her first Level Seven competition of the year, excitement gives way to fear.When Amanda and Tyler stop by to wish her "bad luck," their hurtful words follow Riley all the way to the gym. Every event becomes more than a test of skill. Riley must manage her nerves, recover from mistakes, listen to the people who believe...

Before freedom became law, William Murrell lived in a world where other men could determine the value of his name, the meaning of a debt, and the direction of his family's future.In Civil War–era Kentucky, William watches the country fracture around the same questions that have shaped his life. When the opportunity comes to enlist in the 109th United States Colored Infantry, he leaves behind Mary, his young son Samuel, and the only home he has ever known. His journey carries him fr...

In 1940s New Orleans, Mary Lee Morris dreams of creating a loving and secure home for her family. Her marriage to William Bernard Williams begins a new chapter filled with hope, duty, sacrifice, and the everyday demands of raising children during uncertain times. At the center of their lives stands the house at 3239 Bloomingdale Court—a place that will hold far more than walls and rooms. It will hold people, stories, sorrow, and return.When tragedy leaves Mary Lee a widow, she must...

Riley dreams of becoming a great gymnast, but reaching her goals will take more than strength and skill. She must also learn to believe in herself.With encouragement from her friend Addisyn, Riley enters the exciting world of gymnastics, where every practice brings a new challenge. From learning the basics and improving her technique to facing the fears that threaten to hold her back, Riley discovers that mistakes are part of growing—and that courage means trying again even when so...

A family name can survive even when history forgets the man who carried it.Born in 1896, William Percy Williams comes of age among the roaring glass furnaces and unforgiving steel mills of western Pennsylvania. As the son of George Williams and Josephine C. Payton Williams, he inherits more than a name—he inherits the struggle to build a life in a country where a Black man's labor is often recorded more carefully than his story.William's journey carries him through marriage...

What do we really know about the people who came before us?In Beneath the Surface, the life of Edward William Murrell becomes the doorway into a much larger family story—one shaped by military service, migration, marriage, loss, memory, and the difficult work of separating fact from family legend.Edward was a United States Navy veteran remembered by his family as a diver, a man with a big smile, and someone whose later work brought him close to death and the offici...

At 3239 Bloomingdale Court in New Orleans, one family's hopes, hardships, and secrets are woven into the walls of a beloved home. At the center of the story is Robert Louis Williams Sr., a man shaped by family, history, and the difficult choices that carried him from Louisiana to California—and eventually back again.Inspired by true family history, The House on Bloomingdale Court explores love, separation, resilience, and the lasting power of ancestry. Through remembered m...

Spanning the eighteenth century to the modern era, *The Greatest Historical Romance Novels of All Time* maps the enduring dialogue between private desire and public history. Its selections range from epistolary seduction narratives, Gothic inheritances, and domestic comedies of manners to adventure romances, realist social chronicles, and transatlantic tales of conquest and displacement. Courtly intrigue, revolutionary upheaval, imperial encounter, ancestral memory, and forbidden attachmen...

Any master starts at the beginning. Dip your brush into oil, acrylic, and watercolor paints, and sharpen your pastels. Develop essential techniques that will propel your art from scribbles to masterpieces.

It was a hot, shimmering July afternoon, and it was much pleasanter to sit out of doors on a tombstone, listening to the vicars voice as it came though the dark lancets like a sound of running water. Half a mile or so away, nestled in trees, was the village of Omberley, with its glimpses of white walls and tiled or slated roofs. Then there were soft, hazy stretches of pasture, with idyllic groupings of cattle and sheep and trees. The fields of wheat and barley, turnips and potatoes, lay ou...