Alice MacCauley's eleventh summer is shaped by new friendship, the twinges of first love, and adult lessons about life and death when she and Theo, a New York City boy of mixed race visiting his white New England grandparents, become the companions of Kenneth, an artist dying of and losing his eyesight to AIDS, reading him the journals of Lewis and Clark and building him a secret "rope walk" through the woods.

This book is Sapphire's latest, a sequel to Push coming 15 years after its publication and one year after Precious, the film based on Push, got Academy Award attention. It is the story of Precious's son, Abdul, opening on the day of his mother's funeral. This book brings us deep into the interior life of Abdul Jones, son of Sapphire's unforgettable heroine, Precious. It is a story of survival and awakening, and of one young man's remarkable strength....

In 1985, Benji and his brother, Reggie, are the only black kids at an elite prep school in Manhattan and are trying hard to fit in. One would think that spending every summer in a small community of African Americans in Sag Harbor would be easier, but it's not. Benji feels as confused about the all-black refuge as he is about the white world he navigates during the school year. In this coming-of-age tale, Benji learns a lot about race, class, and...