Though Big Boy 4014 played a crucial role in history—transporting soldiers and equipment across the country during World War II—she’s been inert for the past 50 years, rusting at an outdoor museum in Pomona, California. (The author explains that engineers and crew members historically used female pronouns to refer to these trains, even ones named …
It’s 1988, and Ben Davidson lives with his family in Tacoma, Washington. He has a passion for creating objects out of wood; more specifically, he makes custom mailboxes that look like houses as a hobby. Ben would love to do it for a living, but he wonders how he could ever make enough money selling …
Seventeen-and-a-half-year-old Alex thinks she’s seen every variety of foster mom. Her latest one, Monica, seems to be the overly earnest and anxious type. Alex has always been an urbanite, residing in San Francisco and other cities, so living in rural Jefferson, California, with Monica is an adjustment. (There is dial-up internet, and many cows.) In …
It’s 1979, and Mickey, who was Surf City’s chief of police and is now Long Beach Island’s “one and only detective,” is in a helicopter above the southern New Jersey shoreline. The pilot is Claude Stellwag, who, like her recently deceased husband, is a Vietnam War veteran; he’s also one of her two current suitors. …
Growing up on an Arizona ranch, young Sandra rode horses, herded cattle, and changed tires. Later, she attended the posh Radford School for Girls in Texas, where she excelled academically but often felt out of place. A school visit from Eleanor Roosevelt planted an early interest in public service, but when Sandra eventually graduated from …
Through an unfolding series of raw moods and memories, author Backus transports himself back to 1983, when, as a young man out of college, he’d just arrived in Manhattan from Indiana, driving his dead grandmother’s 1968 Chevy Caprice to work at a pork-packing company with dreams of becoming a writer. His mundane work of meat …
This sing-along picture book adaptation takes “Giant Steps” by John Coltrane and fashions it into “Baby Steps,” adding lyrics that encourage little ones to move “first your right, then your left” to start their journey through life on their feet. Most of the pages feature a baby or toddler alongside parents, grandparents, and other trusted …
PJ Halliday may have won $1.5 million from the scratch-off lottery ticket he drunkenly bought at a gas station 10 years ago, but his life has been far from lucky. At 63, he’s an alcoholic hoarder who’s had three heart attacks and been fired from his job as a postal worker in Pondville, Massachusetts (they …
Out of love, out of money, and pretty much out of luck, Amber Winslow arrives at Arizona’s Seven Ponds Retirement Community hoping against hope that her grandmother—whom she’s never met—isn’t the heartless bitch her mother makes her out to be. Now that she’s left her detective boyfriend, Bones, in Seattle after discovering that he never …
Sheila is the self-aware star of her own story. She’s “rather proud” of being “a girl who [lives] in a book,” since a captive audience will “read the book and wonder about her and want to know just what her deal” is. Pale-skinned with sandy-brown hair, Sheila hits developmental milestones: She walks, she talks, she …