Books published by publisher West 44 Books

Hannah works as the only female river-rafting guide in her closed-minded small town. Labeled a tomboy, she often struggles to reconcile the way she fits into normal gender stereotypes. Hannah meets Ezra, who blurs the lines between woman and man. They begin an exciting new relationship, but soon Ezra starts pushing Hannah's limits and her definition of love.

Project Apogee had one mission: to create biologically engineered perfect teenagers. The teenagers were supposed to be expressions of a perfect genetic mapping of traits, an example of the New Human. But when the teens go before the project committee, they are found to be utterly normal and unremarkable, a disappointment. Then there's Alex, the lost teen who failed years ago, who might just be the most remarkable of them all.

Cam, Tyler, and Markus are upset that their school cut the basketball team because of lack of funding. They decide to make their own. They don't have jerseys, a coach, or even a regular court to practice on. There's one more problem, they need at least two more people on the team to play. Can the team find two more players? Can they win their first game against the snooty prep school kids that keep stealing their court?

Christmas is coming. Victor and Isaac want to spend the holidays together. But they're stuck in their new foster homes and their mom is stuck in jail. Victor and Isaac struggle to adjust to the unfamiliar customs of their foster families. They worry that their own traditions will be lost. Does accepting their present lives mean they've rejected their past?

Winner of Four Book Awards including: 2018 SILVER NAUTILUS BOOK AWARD, 2019 INDEPENDENT PUBLISHER BOOK AWARD BRONZE MEDAL, 2019 NEXT GENERATION INDIE BOOK AWARD FINALIST, and 2019 BEST BOOK AWARD FINALIST“. . . provides a fresh take not only on the Holocaust, but also the proper response to the seemingly inerasable stain left by profound anguish . . . A moving and original contribution to an inexhaustible body of literature.” —Kirkus Reviews To the chagrin of her parents, Polish Jews who survived the Holocaust, the author became a Buddhist at 19. Over three decades later, on a German train, Ellen felt the presence of spirits who had died in the Holocaust and had lost their trust in basic goodness. Sixty years after the liberation of Auschwitz, their plea for help sent her on a series of life-changing journeys to Poland to explore this cosmic wound and reconcile it with basic goodness. Would years of Buddhist meditation prove helpful to her people instead of a betrayal? In 2006, she travels to Poland, the Holocaust’s largest graveyard, to reconnect with her family's tragic history and later moves to her mother's city of Łódź to study Polish at a language school called “Babel,” where she is the only American. With no elders alive to consult, she relies on an account dictated before his death by her bullying uncle, an Auschwitz survivor, for clues to her family’s past. As she retraces her mother’s and uncle’s steps through Europe and walks in the places where ancestors lived for centuries, she stumbles into a mysterious stream of love—if only she can receive it. Increasingly aware of her own traumatic imprints, she realizes that helping the dead is inseparable from healing her own wounds. And that opening to events previously hidden, and to the darkness we avoid, brings a transformation that widens our perception and changes us forever. Beyond recovering her family’s lost history, "Buried Rivers" reveals powerful connections between spirituality and trauma, Judaism and Buddhism, and intimately explores family loyalty, religious boundaries, and the invisible blessings of ancestors.

Earth has no sorrow that earth cannot heal. (John Muir)The best of John Muir: 332 quotations, the distillation of his thought, the essence of his beliefs. Muir was the foremost conservationist of his time: nature writer, social critic, realist, a romantic, a visionary. If asked for a succinct statement of his beliefs, Muir might have replied:In every walk with nature one receives far more than he seeks.

Dani tries to get her parents back together by lying about how much one person loves and misses the other. Her dad even comes to visit. Dani thinks her plan worked perfectly and they can be one happy family again. However, old problems creep in. Dani's parents are fighting more than ever, and she's in the middle of it. Can she keep her family together, or will she have to accept that it might never work?

Sophie lives on the border between the United States and Mexico. She spends most of her time taking care of her little sister and working at the family restaurant, hoping to catch the eye the Mexican boy who delivers baked goods. Her father and uncle spend their free time scouring the desert as part of a civilian militia, trying to stop undocumented immigrants from entering the United States. When Sophie becomes involved with an immigrant-aid organization called Human Kind, it challenges everything she's ever known. Suddenly, Sophie is stuck at the borderline of family and justice.