Meredith and Nina are as different as sisters can be. When their father falls ill, they find themselves together, standing with their cold, disapproving mother, Anya. As children their only connection was the Russian fairy tale Anya often told the girls at night. On his deathbed, their father extracts a promise: the fairy tale will be told one last time--and all the way to the end.

A historical fiction novel in verse detailing the life of Clara Lemlich and her struggle for women's labor rights in the early twentieth century in New York.

In a novel that moves back and forth between the Soviet Union during World War II and modern-day America, Marina, an elderly Russian woman, recalls vivid images of her youth during the height of the siege of Leningrad.

Of all the things Anya expected to find at the bottom of an old well, a new friend wasn't one of them. Especially not a new friend who's been dead for a century. Falling down a well is bad enough, but Anya's normal life might actually be worse. She's embarrassed by her family, self-conscious about her body, and she's pretty much given up on fitting in at school. A new friend - even a dead one - is just what she needs. But Anya's new B.F.F. isn't kidding...

When Oksana’s family begins their new American life in Florida after emigrating from Ukraine, her physicist father delivers pizza at night to make ends meet, her depressed mother sits home all day worrying, and her flamboyant grandmother relishes the attention she gets when she walks Oksana to school, not realizing that the street they’re walking down is known as Prostitute Street. Oksana just wants to have friends and lead a normal life—and...

Early in the twentieth century, Nathan embarks on a voyage from Russia to New York City hoping to become an opera singer, and works hard while missing his home and family. Includes note about the author's grandfather, who inspired the story, and his children.

During a scarlet fever epidemic one winter in Michigan, a Jewish family helps make Christmas special for their sick neighbors by making their own Hanukkah miracle. Based on a memory from the author's childhood.