English Poverty

When Eric Hofstein changed his career path, he didn’t expect to meet hundreds of lost souls, many of whom were desperate to be found. Here he shares what he learned about how the people he met became homeless, what kept them on the streets, and how to help them improve their lives. He learned what true harm reduction is and how to manage his expectations and not center himself in his outreach work.

In The Skin I'm In, listeners saw into the life of Maleeka Madison, a teen who suffered from the ridicule she received because of her dark skin color. For decades fans have wanted to know the fate of the bully who made Maleeka's life miserable, Char. Now in Sharon Flake's latest and unflinching novel, The Life I'm In, we follow Charlese Jones, who, with her raw, blistering voice speaks the truths many girls face, offering insight to some of the causes and conditions that make a bully.

In her powerful memoir His Bright Light, number-one New York Times best-selling author Danielle Steel opened her heart to share the devastating story of the loss of her beloved son. In A Gift of Hope, she shows us how she transformed that pain into a campaign of service that enriched her life beyond what she could imagine. For 11 years, Danielle Steel took to the streets with a small team to help the homeless of San Francisco. She worked anonymously, visiting the "cribs" of the city's most vulnerable citizens under cover of darkness, distributing food, clothing, bedding, tools, and toiletries.

Best-selling author Robert Cormier's suspenseful and masterfully told novel takes bold steps into some of the most difficult topical territory ever conceived for young adult fiction.

In an alternate reality a lot like our world, every person's physical size is directly proportional to their wealth. The poorest of the poor are the size of rats, and billionaires are the size of skyscrapers. Warner and his sister Prayer are destitute - and tiny. Their size is not just demeaning, but dangerous: day and night they face mortal dangers that bigger, richer people don't ever have to think about, from being mauled by cats to their house getting stepped on. There are no cars or phones built small enough for them, or schools or hospitals, for that matter - there's no point, when no one that little has any purchasing power....

With the rising global demand for cotton - and thus, slaves - in the 1840s and 1850s, the need for white laborers in the American South was drastically reduced, creating a large underclass who were unemployed or underemployed. These poor whites could not compete - for jobs or living wages - with profitable slave labor. Though impoverished whites were never subjected to the daily violence and degrading humiliations of racial slavery, they did suffer tangible socioeconomic consequences as a result of living in a slave society.

A small prison cell in India holds an 18-year-old penniless waiter from a Mumbai slum. But Ram Mohammad Thomas isn't a criminal. He is under arrest for correctly answering 12 tricky trivia questions on the show Who Will Win a Billion? Reluctant to part with the jackpot of one billion rupees, the show directors bribe the police to arrest Ram, accusing him of cheating.

Poverty is bad for everyone. Being at the sharp end of disadvantage is shameful, reduces brainpower, and hampers positive action. It increases crime, burdens healthcare systems and raises taxpayers' bills. With millions around the world struggling to make ends meet and increased socioeconomic uncertainty making poverty a more probable prospect for many more, tackling poverty has never been more urgent. The Empathy Fix exposes the realities of poverty and reveals why policies don't work. It is a radical rethink of current efforts to tackle poverty, what it means and how we break the cycle.

Seventeen-year-old Amelia Gannon (just "Gannon" to her friends) is invisible to almost everyone in her life. To her parents, to her teachers - even her best friend, who is more interested in bumming cigarettes than bonding. Some days the only way Gannon knows she is real is by carving bloody lines into the flesh of her stomach. Then she meets Michael Brooks, and for the first time she feels like she is being seen to the core of her being.

When 15-year-old Romeo's mother leaves one day and doesn't return, he finds himself homeless and trying to survive on the streets. Mute and terrified, his silence makes him vulnerable, and one night, he is beaten by a gang of other kids, only to be rescued by a boy who pledges to take care of him. Julian is barely two years older than Romeo. After running away from an increasingly violent home life, he makes some difficult choices and ends up selling himself on the street to survive. Taking care of Romeo changes him, gives him a purpose in life.

Lazarus "Laz" Weathers has always been shy, and his issue with stuttering when he speaks hasn't helped. Stuck in a Seattle trailer park, Laz finds baseball helps him escape from the world of poverty and drugs. When he gets an opportunity to pitch for the rich kids across town, he has a chance to get drafted by the major leagues. But playing for the other team means leaving behind his family, including Antonio, Laz's younger brother, who more and more, seems to be drawn to the dark world of the Jet City's drug ring.

One morning Rafe wakes up to discover his bedroom is floating in a vast sea of water. Alone with only his dog for company, Rafe adapts to this strange new world by fishing cans of food out of the water and keeping watch. Boxes float by, as does a woman, playing her cello. Then, one day, Rafe fishes out a young girl, who joins him in his room -- they don't speak the same language, but they will face this uncertain future together.

Josh's father has gone missing without a trace, and Gran's ready to call social services. If Josh wants to keep himself and and his little brother, Twig, out of the system, he'll have to take to the streets and track down his dad. But when Josh digs too deep, his dad's old accomplices catch up to Josh and plunge him into a dangerous underground where putting his trust in the wrong person could number Josh in a growing pile of bodies.

The Spanish military coup of 1936 was launched to overturn the social and economic reforms of the democratic Second Republic, and its educational and cultural challenges to the established order. The consequent civil war was fought in the interests of the landowners, industrialists, bankers, clerics and army officers whose privileges were threatened. However, a central justification for a war that took the lives of around 500,000 Spaniards was that it was being fought to combat an alleged scheme for world domination by a non-existent ‘Jewish-Masonic-Bolshevik Conspiracy’.

Tyrell is a young African-American teen who can't get a break. He's living (for now) with his spaced-out mother and little brother in a homeless shelter. His father's in jail. His girlfriend supports him, but he doesn't feel good enough for her - and seems to be always on the verge of doing the wrong thing around her. There's another girl at the homeless shelter who is also after him, although the desires there are complicated. Tyrell feels he needs to score some money to make things better. Will he end up following in his father's footsteps?

Finally, Amira is 12. Old enough to wear a toob, old enough for new responsibilities. And maybe old enough to go to school in Nyala - Amira's one true dream. But life in her peaceful Sudanese village is shattered when the Janjaweed arrive. The terrifying attackers ravage the town and unleash unspeakable horrors. After she loses nearly everything, Amira needs to dig deep within herself to find the strength to make the long journey - on foot - to safety at a refugee camp.

Food is a conduit for connection; we envision smiling families gathered around a table-eating, happy, content. But what happens when poverty, mental illness, homelessness, and addiction claim a seat at that table? In The Meth Lunches, Kim Foster peers behind the polished visions of perfectly curated dinners and charming families to reveal the complex reality when poverty and food intersect.

Jamie Mustard was born into one of the most influential fringe movements in the 1970s: Scientology. Raised on a mythos of spaceships and made to believe that it was his life’s purpose to help save the world, he was determined to survive—not only unsurvivable neglect but also the impossible physical and psychological gauntlet of extreme poverty and illiteracy. Child X is a dark existential journey into a deepest hole of human existence and the road back.

Parisian teenager Lou has an IQ of 160, OCD tendencies, and a mother who has suffered from depression for years. But Lou is about to change her life - and that of her parents - all because of a school project about homeless teens. While doing research, Lou meets No, a teenage girl living on the streets. As their friendship grows, Lou bravely asks her parents if No can live with them, and is astonished when they agree. No's presence forces Lou's family to come to terms with a secret tragedy.

John and Lorraine happen to be passing by the Pigman’s abandoned house when they receive the shock of their lives: someone or something is watching them from the upstairs window. Convinced this is a sign from beyond the grave, John and Lorraine decide they have been given a chance to make up for what happened to the Pigman. Can they make things right once and for all?