Central Kansas Library System

Financial difficulties resulting from an extravagant lifestyle and excessive gambling led Fyodor Dostoevsky to pen his first novel "Poor Folk". First published in 1846, "Poor Folk" is the story of impoverished cousins Varvara Dobroselova and Makar Devushkin. The two live in run-down apartments across the street from each other in St. Petersburg. Through a series of letters to each other we learn of the suffering, humiliation, and isolation that results...

Seventh-grader Zoey Albro focuses on caring for three younger siblings and avoiding rich classmates at school until her fascination with octopuses gets her on the debate team and she begins to speak out.

With love and determination befitting the "world's greatest family," twelve-year-old Deza Malone, her older brother Jimmie, and their parents endure tough times in Gary, Indiana, and later Flint, Michigan, during the Great Depression.

Deals with the adventures of a young orphan boy trying to survive amid greed and poverty in 19th-century London.

This is the story of the coon dog, Sounder, and his devotion to his master. It is also a story of humans: the father, a black sharecropper, who must feed his children, the timid mother fighting for survival, and the son who grows to maturity through his father's prison term and the devotion of Sounder.

Profiles everyday life in the settlement of Annawadi as experienced by a Muslim teen, an ambitious rural mother, and a young scrap metal thief, illuminating how their efforts to build better lives are challenged by religious, caste, and economic tensions.

For sixteen-year-old Andrea, beauty and friendships are a liability and academic achievement is the key to her future, but survival becomes paramount after her addict mother claims custody and puts them at the mercy of her drug dealer boyfriend.

Recounts the experiences of the author, a college graduate, as he spends one year living as a homeless person and learns valuable lessons about what it takes to break out of the cycle of poverty in the United States.

Brenda Thompson's poignant treatise on the treatment of the poor in Nova Scotia and the evolution of private and government-subsidized poor houses. None of these 32 buildings remain. This is a very important book that makes us pause and ask serious questions.

American homelessness is a humanitarian disaster. And we just let it happen. This book is a how-to guide for the people of America to end homelessness TODAY. Bureaucrats, homeless service providers, churches, and politicians are incapable and unwilling to do the work they should be doing. WE THE PEOPLE MUST DO THE WORK. This is the manual on becoming a homeless activist and ending homelessness in the richest, most Christian country in the world.