"In 1972, when workers in Pottstown, Pennsylvania, were digging the foundations for a new development, the last thing they expected to find was a skeleton at the bottom of a well. Who the skeleton was and how it got there were two of the long-held secrets kept by the residents of Chicken Hill, the dilapidated neighborhood where immigrant Jews and African Americans lived side by side and shared ambitions and sorrows. Chicken Hill was where Moshe and...

"The stories in Five-Carat Soul--none of them ever published before--spring from the place where identity, humanity, and history converge.They're funny and poignant, insightful and unpredictable, imaginative and authentic--all told with McBride's unrivaled storytelling skill and meticulous eye for character and detail. McBride explores the ways we learn from the world and the people around us. An antiques dealer discovers that a legendary toy commissioned...

August 1944. Follows four black soldiers of the all-black 92nd Infantry Division who get trapped near the small Tuscan village of Sant'Anna di Stazzema on the Gothic Line during the Italian Campaign of World War II. One of the men will risk his life to save an Italian boy who lives in the city where the Waffen-SS have massacred most of the citizens of the town in retaliation for Italian partisan activity. A sculpted head from the Ponte Santa Trinita...

Readings of excerpts from and critical analysis of Amy Tan's The Joy Luck Club, a novel about four mothers, four daughters, and four families whose paths cross in 1949 in San Francisco as four Chinese women begin meeting to eat dim sum, play mahjong, and talk.