Books with author Richard Stead

Bill McCoy believes that his major winter challenge will be surviving two weeks of being the wrestling "dummy" for Blake Proper. Bill, a sophomore at Lionwood High, is committed to helping prepare his senior teammate for making a run at the state wrestling championship. On a daily basis, Bill knows he will be pummeled and pinned when the two boys work together after school on the school's wrestling mats. However, a bigger challenge for Bill arises when his thirteen-year-old sister, Diana, is accused of coercing younger brother, Jack, into an inappropriate sexual act. Bill's overbearing dictatorial father reacts to the news about his son and daughter in a characteristically irrational fashion. He refuses to allow Diana to reside any longer in the McCoy home and blocks Mrs. McCoy's desire to visit Diana when Diana is temporarily assigned by the juvenile court system to a juvenile detention center. When Diana disavows her involvement with her younger brother to Diana's court appointed therapist, Carrie Thompson, Bill becomes the go-between. He seeks help in his role of diplomatic liaison between his parents and Carrie and his sister from Susan Myers with whom he has developed a tentative, budding romance. Susan's and Bill's relationship, rapidly strengthening by their respect and concern for each other, is juxtaposed with the debilitating and gradually disintegrating relationship of Bill's father and mother. Bill's maturation is evident as he struggles to assist in the healing of his sister, to deal with his difficult father, and to manage his own romance. The Go Between also reveals both a family whose unstable relationships are exposed and shattered by the ill conceived behavior of daughter with son and the processes followed by social services in their attempts to remedy the emotional damage that results from the family's incest. The story also tactfully illuminates a current trend in the sexual experimentation of high school students.

Richard Stengel has distilled countless hours of intimate conversation with Nelson Mandela into fifteen essential life lessons. In Mandela's Way, Stengel recounts the moments in which "the grandfather of South Africa" was tested and shares the wisdom he learned: why courage is more than the absence of fear, why we should keep our rivals close, why the answer is not always either/or but often "both", how important it is for us to find something away from the world that gives us pleasure and satisfaction. Woven into these life lessons are remarkable stories - of Mandela's childhood, of his early days as a freedom fighter, of the twenty-seven-year imprisonment, and of his new marriage at the age of eighty.

Jonathan Quail is a twelve-year-old boy living with his parents, a younger sister, and a baby brother until the day that his father is killed when he leaves the city bus that he drives to protect a woman from an abusive man. Jonathan's mother is unable to cope both financially and emotionally with the loss of her husband and the responsibilities of raising her three children. Jon and his sister and brother are placed in a foster home by the child protection agency. Readers will be able to relate to the challenges that Jonathan faces as he journeys from biological home to foster home to group homes. He finds both assistance and resistance from new schools and classmates, and from new surrogate parents and siblings. His self confidence and coping skills are strengthened through his encounters with peers and from the encouragement and guidance provided by his various caretakers. As he matures, he also finds solace and excitement from building relationships with girls his age. 'Climbing The Ropes' was written to provide insight and hope to a young boy who was encountering similar experiences to Jonathan's. Consequently, young people who are involved with the various child protection and probation agencies as well as children who reside with their biological parents will find valuable understanding about improving their interpersonal relationships, and an appreciation for the frustration and satisfaction experienced by the youth workers who daily strive to provide love, structure, and guidance to children in their care. Mr. Read currently lives in a small town in Pennsylvania where he and his wife raised two daughters who are now professional women. After graduating from Bucknell University with a B.A. in English, he spent two years teaching high school math and English with the Peace Corps in Eritrea. He worked for twenty-five years as a high school counselor and basketball coach, and five years counseling sexually abused children and their families.