Away Running

Matt, a white quarterback from Montreal, Quebec, flies to France (without his parents’ permission) to play football and escape family pressure. Freeman, a black football player from San Antonio, Texas, is in Paris on a school trip when he hears about a team playing American football in a rough, low-income suburb called Villeneuve-La-Grande. Matt and Free join the Diables Rouges and make friends with the other players, who come from many different ethnic groups. Racial tension erupts into riots in Villeneuve when some of their Muslim teammates get in trouble with the police, and Matt and Free have to decide whether to get involved and face the very real risk of arrest and violence.

Showing how one decision can alter the course of a life, a journalist shares his personal journey of coming back up after hitting rock bottom by developing a passion for long-distance running.

A middle class, Midwestern family in search of meaning uproot themselves and move to their ancestral village in Croatia. "We can look at this in two ways," Jim wrote, always the pragmatist. "We can panic and scrap the whole idea. Or we can take this as a sign. They're saying the economy is going to get worse before it gets better. Maybe this is the kick in the pants we needed to do something completely different. There will always be an excuse not to go..." And that, friends, is how a typically sane middle-aged mother decided to drag her family back to a forlorn mountain village in the backwoods of Croatia. So begins author Jennifer Wilson's journey in Running Away to Home. Jen, her architect husband, Jim, and their two children had been living the typical soccer- and ballet-practice life in the most Middle American of places: Des Moines, Iowa. They overindulged themselves and their kids, and as a family they were losing one another in the rush of work, school, and activities. One day, Jen and her husband looked at each other–both holding their Starbucks coffee as they headed out to their SUV in the mall parking lot, while the kids complained about the inferiority of the toys they just got–and asked themselves: "Is this the American dream? Because if it is, it sort of sucks." Jim and Jen had always dreamed of taking a family sabbatical in another country, so when they lost half their savings in the stock-market crash, it seemed like just a crazy enough time to do it. High on wanderlust, they left the troubled landscape of contemporary America for the Croatian mountain village of Mrkopalj, the land of Jennifer's ancestors. It was a village that seemed hermetically sealed for the last one hundred years, with a population of eight hundred (mostly drunken) residents and a herd of sheep milling around the post office. For several months they lived like locals, from milking the neighbor's cows to eating roasted pig on a spit to desperately seeking the village recipe for bootleg liquor. As the Wilson-Hoff family struggled to stay sane (and warm), what they found was much deeper and bigger than themselves.

What kid hasn't wanted to make their parents feel sorry for treating him badly? And how better to accomplish this than to run away? Here's a guide showing how, from what to pack (gum--then you won't have to brush your teeth) to how to survive (don't think about your cozy bed). Ultimately, though, readers will see that there really is no place like home. Like Judith Viorst's Alexander and the Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Day, here's a spot-on portrait of a kid who's had it. And like Maurice Sendak's Where the Wild Things Are, it's also a journey inside a creative kid's imagination: that special place where parents aren't allowed without permission.

When Maisie reconnects with her estranged 22-year-old brother abroad while trying to save her family’s portrait studio, she uncovers a truth about her parents that changes everything.

A perfect family is shattered when their daughter goes missing in this "brilliantly executed" New York Times bestselling thriller from a "master storyteller" (Providence Sunday Journal). You've lost your daughter. She's addicted to drugs and to an abusive boyfriend. And she's made it clear that she doesn't want to be found. Then, by chance, you see her playing guitar in Central Park. But she's not the girl you remember. This woman is living on the edge, frightened, and clearly in trouble. You don't stop to think. You approach her, beg her to come home. She runs. And you do the only thing a parent can do: you follow her into a dark and dangerous world you never knew existed. Before you know it, both your family and your life are on the line. And in order to protect your daughter from the evils of that world, you must face them head on.

At a turning point in his life, George Fetherling embarked on an adventure to sail round the world on one of the last of the tramp freighters. The four-month voyage carried him 30,000 nautical miles from Europe via the Panama Canal to the South Pacific and back by way of Singapore, Indonesia, the Indian Ocean, and Suez. Written with dash, colour, and droll humour, Fetherling’s narrative is peopled by a rich cast of characters, from the Foreign Legionnaires of French Polynesia to the raskol gangs of Papua New Guinea. The author captures the reality of life aboard a working cargo ship – the boredom, the seclusion, the differences of nationality and culture that isolation and cramped quarters seem to exaggerate. But the routine of loneliness or tranquility is punctuated by moments of near-panic – shipboard fires, furniture-smashing storms, even a brush with pirates in the Straits of Malacca.

When I opened the door of the flat there was a picture postcard lying in the hallway. It showed a reproduction of a painting by Joan Miró. I turned the card over. Neatly written, in green ink, was what appeared to be a date and time: 20 May–11:00. There was no explanatory message, no indication of who had written the card. The printed details told me that the reproduction was entitled “Woman of the Night.” The painting could be found at the Miró Foundation. May 20 was the next day. Lucas, a musician and translator living in Barcelona’s Gothic Quarter, comes home one day to find this cryptic invitation. When he appears at the appointed time, he sets in motion a series of bizarre, seemingly interconnected events that disrupt his previously passive existence. He meets the alluring Nuria and they begin an intense love affair. He is approached by a band of Barcelona’s mythic roof dwellers and has a run-in with a fire-eating prophet. But when he and Nuria are kidnapped by a religious cult with roots stretching back to the thirteenth-century, Lucas realizes that his life is spinning out of control. The cult’s megalomaniac leader, Pontneuf, maintains that Nuria and Lucas are essential to his plan to revive the religion. While Nuria is surprisingly open to Pontneuf and his theories, Lucas is outraged and makes his escape. Back in Barcelona, Lucas wanders the streets in a drug-and-alcohol induced haze, pining for Nuria and struggling to make sense of what happened to him. He recounts his improbable adventures to his friends, who are wholly entertained by the story and deeply dubious of its truth, an understandable skepticism as Lucas fast becomes the quintessential unreliable narrator. With the alluring and enchanting Barcelona as a vibrant backdrop, The Color of a Dog Running Away is a love story, tale of adventure and historical thriller all rolled into one unforgettable and mesmerizing package; a novel that will beguile and disturb in equal measure.