In Leah Ferguson's debut novel, All the Difference, Molly Sullivan is a career-driven, 30-year-old Philadelphian who works really hard to keep everything in her life in perfect order. So when Molly discovers that she's pregnant on New Year's Eve--the same day her long-term boyfriend proposes marriage--she finds out all too suddenly that even the best plans can be torn apart in an instant. All the Difference tells the story of what happens after that New Year's Eve. Molly is faced with a choice, and in alternating chapters, we follow her over the course of the next year to discover how her life changes if she says yes...or if she says no. Molly will discover that while she can't pick the path she's been given to walk, it's up to her to decide how she'll travel it. It all depends on whether she chooses courage to be her guide.

We are so excited for Kim van Alkemade's return visit to Whistlestop for another reading and signing for those who did not have a chance to come for her initial book launch!

In this stunning new historical novel inspired by true events, Kim van Alkemade tells the fascinating story of a woman who must choose between revenge and mercy when she encounters the doctor who subjected her to dangerous medical experiments in a New York City Jewish orphanage years before.
In 1919, Rachel Rabinowitz is a vivacious four-year-old living with her family in a crowded tenement on New York City’s Lower Eastside. When tragedy strikes, Rachel is separated from her brother Sam and sent to a Jewish orphanage where Dr. Mildred Solomon is conducting medical research. Subjected to X-ray treatments that leave her disfigured, Rachel suffers years of cruel harassment from the other orphans. But when she turns fifteen, she runs away to Colorado hoping to find the brother she lost and discovers a family she never knew she had.
Though Rachel believes she’s shut out her painful childhood memories, years later she is confronted with her dark past when she becomes a nurse at Manhattan’s Old Hebrews Home and her patient is none other than the elderly, cancer-stricken Dr. Solomon. Rachel becomes obsessed with making Dr. Solomon acknowledge, and pay for, her wrongdoing. But each passing hour Rachel spends with the old doctor reveal to Rachel the complexities of her own nature. She realizes that a person’s fate—to be one who inflicts harm or one who heals—is not always set in stone.
Lush in historical detail, rich in atmosphere and based on true events, Orphan #8 is a powerful, affecting novel of the unexpected choices we are compelled to make that can shape our destinies.

A kitten’s stroll down a keyboard leads to a celebrated one-minute composition in this charming portrait of a remarkable true friendship.

Moshe Cotel was a composer who lived in a noisy building on a noisy street in a noisy city. But Moshe didn’t mind. Everything he heard was music to his ears. One day, while out for a walk, he heard a small, sad sound that he’d never heard before. It was a tiny kitten! “Come on, little Ketzel,” Moshe said, “I will take you home and we will make beautiful music together.” And they did—in a most surprising way. Inspired by a true story, Lesléa Newman and Amy June Bates craft an engaging tale of a creative man and the beloved cat who brings unexpected sweet notes his way.

Amy June Bates is the illustrator of many wonderful children's books. She is best known for her watercolor and ink illustrations, and her graphic designs have been described as "uncluttered and inviting." She has worked with Harper Collins, Hyperion, Cricket Magazine, Barnes and Noble, and Farrer, Strauss and Giroux, among others. Amy grew up in Utah and graduated in Illustration from Brigham Young University. While in Utah, she worked with the Waterford Institute, where she worked on over twenty early readers. Most importantly, Amy gets to draw, which makes her happy.

How to Articulate and Assess What Success Looks Like
The Social Profit Handbook offers those who lead, govern, and support mission-driven organizations and businesses new ways to assess their impact in order to improve future work rather than merely judge past performance.
For-profit institutions measure their success primarily by monetary gains. But nonprofit institutions are different; they aim for social profit. How do you measure the success of these social profit institutions, where missions are focused on the well-being of people, place, and planet?
Drawing upon decades of leadership in schools and the foundation and nonprofit worlds, author David Grant offers strategies from creating mission time to planning backwards to constructing qualitative assessment rubrics that help organizations take assessment back into their own hands, and improve their work as a result. His insights, illustrated by numerous case studies, make this book a unique organizational development tool for a wide range of nonprofit organizations, as well as emerging mission-based social venture businesses, such as low-profit corporations and B Corps.
The Social Profit Handbook presents assessment and evaluation not as ends in themselves but as the path toward achieving what matters most in the social sector. The result: more benefits to society and stronger, more unified, more effective organizations prepared to make the world a better place