Rising War Office star Mycroft Holmes persuades his brother, Sherlock, to volunteer at a friend's orphanage, where the suspicious death of a street urchin and a mysterious Chinese woman lead the brothers into the London opium trade's dark underside.

With his friend Charlotte, twelve-year-old William Eng, a Chinese-American boy, escapes from a Seattle orphanage determined to find his mother Willow and discover his connection to the exotic film star.

"Lady Juliana, daughter of the Earl of St. Maur, needs all the help she can get. She's running a ramshackle orphanage, London's worst slumlord has illicit designs on her, and her father has suddenly become determined to marry her off. Enter Major Neil Wraxall, bastard son of the Marquess of Kensington, sent to assist Lady Juliana in any way he can. Lucky for her, he's handy with repairs, knows how to keep her and the orphans safe, and is a natural...

Every once in a while a novel does not record reality but creates a whole new reality, one that casts a light on our darkest feelings. Kafka did that. Bruno Schulz did that. Now the Spanish writer Andrés Barba has done it with the terrifying Such Small Hands."Edmund WhiteLife changes at the orphanage the day seven-year-old Marina shows up. She is different from the other girls: at once an outcast and object of fascination. As Marina struggles to...

"They call him Dog. Enoch is a teenage boy growing up in a rundown orphanage in Georgia during the 1980s. Abandoned from the moment they were born, Enoch and his friends are different. People in the nearby town whisper that the children from the orphanage are monsters. The orphanage is not a happy home. Brutal teachers, farm labor, and communal living in a crumbling plantation house are Enoch's standard day to day. But he dreams of growing up to...

"In all the years that Elinora Gassbeek has been matron of the Little Tulip Orphanage, not once have the Rules for Baby Abandonment been broken--until the autumn of 1880, when five babies are left in outrageous circumstances: one in a tin toolbox, one in a coal bucket, one in a picnic hamper, one in a wheat sack, and finally, one in a coffin-shaped basket ... And although their cruel matron might think they're 'unadoptable,' they know their individuality...

"In a foster home outside Oslo, a twelve-year-old boy is causing havoc. The institution's steely director, Agnes Vestavik, sees something chilling in Olav's eyes: sheer hatred. When Vestavik is found murdered at her desk, stabbed in the back with an Ikea kitchen knife--with Olav nowhere to be found--the case goes to maverick investigator Hanne Wilhelmsen, recently promoted to chief inspector in the Oslo Police. Could the child be a murderer? As police...

"At the Iron Mountain Home for Boys, there was nothing but time. Time to burn and time to kill, time for two young orphans to learn that life isn't won without a fight. Julian survives only because his older brother, Michael, is fearless and fiercely protective. When tensions boil over and a boy is brutally killed, there is only one sacrifice left for Michael to make: He flees the orphanage and takes the blame with him. For two decades, Michael has...

"St. Vincent's Orphanage for Boys. Turn of the century, in a remote valley in Pennsylvania. Here, under the watchful eyes of several priests, thirty boys work, learn, and worship. Peter Barlow, orphaned as a child by a gruesome murder, has made a new life here. As he approaches adulthood, he has friends, a future...a family. Then, late one stormy night, a group of men arrive at their door, one of whom is badly wounded, occult symbols carved into his...