A gripping historical fiction friendship story that will grab everyone by the heartstrings and never let go.A giant, a dwarf, and three doomed circus animals . . .By her fourteenth birthday, Babe Killingsworth measures 6ʹ9ʺ and weighs 342 pounds. In 1896, what other options does a giant have but to join a carnival?Her only real talent is handling animals: "Critters is folks to me." The cheap outfit her feckless father sells her off to offers critters galore; an escape from Neal, Idaho; and a bit of fame. It also opens the doorway to exploitation and neglect.But Babe's love for Euclid (a chimp) and Jupiter (a bear) keeps her anchored, and in Professor Renoir's Collection of Oddities, Curiosities, and Delights, she is among her own kind.Enter Carlotta Jones, billed as the world's smallest girl, whose elephant act leaves much to be desired. At thirty inches tall, Carlotta is beautiful, spoiled, and...

They call her the Arab of Warsaw, a young girl who is forced to turn her back on her family, her fortune, her future, her Jewish faith, and her people. Running with a gang on the streets, she steals, lies, cheats, cons, and sometimes is forced to do worse. But she also survives, even thrives, the coming of the German army, as it goose-steps into Warsaw, Poland, 1939. As a seller of cigarettes and anything else she can trade or steal, Arab meets a young SS Nazi lieutenant, Fritz Von Segen. They find they have many things in common: a fondness for cigarettes, liquor, and, of all things, language. Arab finds she can survive if she caters to the vices, whims, and the arrogance of the Germans. Who is she to get in their way?The Arab of Warsaw is a story of heroism and cowardice, insignificant acts and monumental acts, standing out and standing up, and turning to look the other way. It is a story of sparing lives, taking lives, and forgiving others and ourselves for...

Just about everyone is incommunicado in the small, sleepy Oregon coastal town of Sea Park during winter. Until Pearl Harbor, that is, when it springs to patriotic life. But is Ruby Opal Pearl (a.k.a. Jewels) Stokes the only person to see what's really happening here? Tommy Kasamoto, the one person in her life who has provided security, shelter, and a smidgeon of respect—and who owns the biggest resort on the coast—is now the cause of the town's rage. Tommy's Japanese ancestry makes him the prime target of an angry mob, not to mention he's also rich, has a shady past, and everyone in town owes him money. As the town's patriotism blossoms into paranoia and turns violent, Jewels has to do something to protect Tommy from internment (or worse), even if that something is going up against the town and the government, not to mention the FBI. Thus begins a fourteen-year-old girl's war within a war.Randall Platt's Incommunicado is both timely and timeless. It's...