When Heaven and Earth Changed Places is the autobiography of Le Ly Hayslip, a Vietnamese woman who came of age during the Vietnam War. Hayslip's journey took her from war-torn Vietnam to America and then back to the land of her birth over a decade after the war's end. She endured unimaginable hardships during her time in the war, serving as a lookout for Vietcong forces and facing harsh reprisals from the South Vietnamese. The book dwells on the horrors of war and the price paid by innocent bystanders.
Spenser's Amoretti and Epithalamion is a work by the English poet Edmund Spenser, first published in 1595. The Amoretti is a sonnet cycle chronicling Spenser's courtship of his future wife, Elizabeth Boyle. The sonnets, following the Petrarchan structure common at the time, are full of themes of courtly and spiritual love, marriage and each corresponds to a passage from the Bible. The Epithalamion is a celebration of marriage that comes at the end, concluding the courtship.
Dead End in Norvelt is an autobiographical novel by Jack Gantos published in 2011. The novel follows Jack's life one summer while living in his hometown of Norvelt, Pennsylvania. After firing his father's sniper rifle, Jack is grounded, allowed to leave the house only to help Miss Volker write a newspaper column and obituaries. The novel follows the life of the town and a murder mystery that Jack and Volker unravel, promoting values of literacy, community and history.