Greenville County

Resolving to become the world's greatest stand-up comedian despite less-than-funny challenges in his life, wheelchair-bound middle school student Jamie Grimm endures bullying from his mean-spirited cousin and hopes he will be fairly judged when he enters a local comedy contest.

"When Maggie Spritzer, former editor-in-chief of the Post and an honorary member of the Sisterhood, arrives with a new mission in mind, the Vigilantes are soon gathering in their war room once more. While catching up on each other's lives, they plan a brilliant campaign against a duo of corrupt judges running a moneymaking racket that sends young offenders to brutal boot camps, often on trumped-up charges. Their enemies are powerful and ruthless,...

Sasha Samokhina, a third-year student at the Institute of Special Technologies, was in the middle of taking the final exam that would transform her into a part of the Great Speech. After defying her teachers' expectations, Sasha emerges from the exam as Password, a unique and powerful part of speech. Accomplished and ready to embrace her new role, she soon learns her powers threaten the old world, and despite her hard work, Sasha is set to fail. However,...

Sassy, streetwise Sammy is falling through the cracks. Neglected by an alcoholic mother, the problems she endures at school and home lead her to act out, seeking attention from unseemly adults when what she wants most is protection. Meanwhile, in a small Eastern European village, sweet Nico is about to turn 13. As her family falls upon desperate times, her father receives an offer of money to marry her off. But when she's shuttled across the border...

"A towering figure in world literature gives us a tour de force, his first novel in nearly one-half century: a savagely satiric, gleefully irreverent, rollicking, fictional meditation on how power and greed can corrupt the soul of a nation. ("You don't see things the same way when you encounter a voice like that."-Toni Morrison) In an imaginary Nigeria, a cunning entrepreneur is selling body parts stolen from Dr. Menka's hospital for use in ritualistic...

Author Wolf shows that there are ten classic steps would-be dictators always take when they wish to close down an open society, and shows how each of those ten steps is underway in the United States today. Our Constitution was built to protect civil liberties and develop a careful system of checks and balances which protect our freedom from tyranny. Wolf argues that the escalation of executive power has eroded these core values and systems, limiting...

An unflinching investigation reveals the human rights abuses behind the Congo's cobalt mining operation - and the moral implications that affect us all. Cobalt Red is the searing, first-ever exposé of the immense toll taken on the people and environment of the Democratic Republic of the Congo by cobalt mining, as told through the testimonies of the Congolese people themselves. Activist and researcher Siddharth Kara has traveled deep into cobalt territory...

Welcome to the world of women's gymnastics and figure skating-the real world that happens away from the cameras, at the training camps and in the private lives of these talented teenage competitors. From starvation diets and debilitating injuries to the brutal tactics of tyrannical gymnastics guru Bela Károlyi, Little Girls in Pretty Boxes portrays the horrors endured by girls at the hands of their coaches and sometimes their own families-and is...

This book provides a theology of power through the lens of the triumphs and failures of the church, showing that whenever the church has aligned itself with worldly power, it has been on the wrong side of crucial justice issues. But when the church submits to and cooperates with God's power, the world is disrupted and changed.

More than a decade ago, Mira fled her segregated hometown of Kipsen, leaving behind her best friend, the white Celine, and Woodsman Plantation - rumored to be haunted by the spirits of slaves. Now, Mira is back in Kipsen for Celine's wedding weekend at that same plantation. Mira hopes to reconnect with her old friends, especially Jesse, the boy she secretly loved. Woodsman remains a monument to its racist history and the darkest elements of the plantation's...