Frank Carlson Library

Lila, homeless and alone after years of roaming the countryside, steps inside a small-town Iowa church -- the only available shelter from the rain -- and ignites a romance and a debate that will reshape her life. She becomes the wife of a minister, John Ames, and begins a new existence while trying to make sense of the days of suffering that preceded her newfound security. Neglected as a toddler, Lila was rescued by Doll, a canny young drifter, and...

Set in modern-day Vietnam, tells the tale of Iris and Noah, two Americans, who, as a way of healing their own painful pasts, open a center to house and educate Vietnamese street children. Irish and Noah find themselves reborn in an exotic land filled with corruption and chaos, sacrifice and beauty. Inspired by the street children she meets, Iris walks in the footsteps of her father, a man whom Vietnam both shattered and saved. Meanwhile, Noah slowly...

Maddie Grande grew up a thief and beggar in a tribe of street urchins in New Orleans. Hoping for a new life, she moves to the bayou with her twin "brothers" and fellow tribemates. But her brothers kidnap the daughter of a wealthy carpetbagger and force Maddie to hide the precocious eight-year-old. As Maddie stands at a crossroads in her life, the child escapes. When Pinkerton agent Tom Abbott is assigned to the case, there's no denying their mutual...

Warren takes you on a journey into the workhouses, slums, factories, and schools of Victorian England, and into the world of Dickens. She shows now he used his pen to do battle on behalf of the poor, becoming one of the great reformers of his or any age.

A fourteen-year-old British street person with extraordinary powers of observation and self-control must face murderous thugs connected with a past he has tried to forget, when his skills with a knife earned him the nickname, Blade.

Looking for his younger sister, Meghan, Kyle travels through Calgary's street culture, finding more than he expected.

"Born covered in black feathers, abandoned as a baby in the slums of the Maze, Poe has lived his entire eleven-year-old life hidden away under the protection of his adoptive father, Gabriel. He spends his days secretly helping the Mice, bands of orphans who roam the slums, but there is a whisper of an altogether more sinister figure in the shadows, making street children disappear. When Bianca, an overprotected girl from the wealthy City beyond the...

In Chennai, india, after spending his whole life in jail with his mother, who is serving time for a crime she did not commit, nine-year-old Kabir is suddenly released and has to figure out how to survive on his own in the outside world.

Tells the story of Christina Noble, who leaves the slums of her childhood in Ireland to work for the welfare of the street children of Vietnam.