"Alice is cast in the mold of a character created by an earlier Alcott, the passionate and spunky Jo March. A refreshingly old-fashioned heroine, she makes THE DARING LADIES OF LOWELL appealing"--The New York Times Book Review"Offers up a compelling slice of both feminist and Industrial Age history"--Christian Science MonitorFrom the New York Times bestselling author of THE DRESSMAKER comes a moving historical novel about a bold young woman drawn to the looms of Lowell, Massachusetts--and to the one man with whom she has no business falling in love. Eager to escape life on her family's farm, Alice Barrow moves to Lowell in 1832 and throws herself into the hard work demanded of "the mill girls." In spite of the long hours, she discovers a vibrant new life and a true friend - a saucy, strong-willed girl name Lovey Cornell.
Publisher: n/a
|
9780385536493
|
Print book
The Forever Year
By Anthony, Ronald
Do you believe that love can last forever?Jesse Sienna doesn't. His own parents' marriage was caring, but passionless, and his own romantic history tells him that love burns brightest before fizzling out completely. So when his elderly father, Mickey, moves in with him and seems unable to understand Jesse's no-strings-attached relationship with his current girlfriend, Jesse barely pays attention. It's just another example of how different they are-and more evidence that he and his father will never connect on any meaningful level.But the truth is, Mickey Sienna knows more about love than most people learn in a lifetime. More than half a century ago, he found the truest love that life can offer. He knows the endless rewards of investing your heart and soul in someone .
Publisher: n/a
|
9780765304056
|
Hardcover
Fear the Worst
By Barclay, Linwood
Tim Blake is an average guy. He sells cars. He has an ex-wife who's moved in with another man. It's not a life without hassles, but nothing will prepare him for when his daughter, Sydney, vanishes into thin air. At the hotel where she supposedly worked, no one has ever heard of her. Even her closest friends seem to be at a loss. As he retraces Sydney's steps, Tim discovers that the suburban Connecticut town he always thought of as idyllic is anything but. What he doesn't know is that his every move is being watched. There are others who want to find Sydney as much as Tim does. And the closer Tim comes to the truth, the closer he comes to every parent's worst nightmare - and the kind of evil only a parent's love has a chance in hell of stopping.
Publisher: n/a
|
553807161
|
Hardcover
Servants of the Map
By Barrett, Andrea
Spanning two centuries, an intricately woven collection of stories and novellas journeys across landscapes of yearning, awakening, loss, and unexpected discovery as the lives of extraordinary characters unfold in a borderland between science and passion.
Publisher: n/a
|
9780393043488
|
Book
The Island Walkers
By Bemrose, John
A powerful first novel about a family that slips from fortunes favor and a town broken by the forces of modernityAcross a bend of Ontarios Attawan River lies the Island, a working-class neighborhood of whitewashed houses and vine-freighted fences, black willows and decaying sheds. Here, for generations, the Walkers have lived among the other mill workers. The familys troubles begin in the summer of 1965, when a union organizer comes to town and Alf Walker is forced to choose between loyalty to his friends at the mill and advancement up the company ranks. Alfs worries are aggravated by his wife, Margaret, who has never reconciled her middle-class English upbringing to her blue-collar reality. As the summer passes, Joe, their son, is also forced to reckon with his familys standing when he falls headlong for a beautiful newcomer on a bridge - a girl far beyond him, with greater experience and broader horizons. As the threat of mill closures looms, the Walkers grapple with their personal crises, just as the rest of the town fights to protect its way of life amid the risks of unionization and the harsh demands of corporate power. Superbly crafted and deeply moving, this remarkable debut follows the Walkers to the very bottom of their night only to confirm, in the end, lifes ultimate hopefulness. The Island Walkers is at once a love letter to a place, a gripping family saga, and a testimony to the emergence of an important new novelist.
Publisher: n/a
|
9780805074116
|
Hardcover
A Manual for Cleaning Women
By Berlin, Lucia
"I have always had faith that the best writers will rise to the top, like cream, sooner or later, and will become exactly as well-known as they should be-their work talked about, quoted, taught, performed, filmed, set to music, anthologized. Perhaps, with the present collection, Lucia Berlin will begin to gain the attention she deserves." -Lydia DavisA MANUAL FOR CLEANING WOMEN compiles the best work of the legendary short-story writer Lucia Berlin. With the grit of Raymond Carver, the humor of Grace Paley, and a blend of wit and melancholy all her own, Berlin crafts miracles from the everyday, uncovering moments of grace in the Laundromats and halfway houses of the American Southwest, in the homes of the Bay Area upper class, among switchboard operators and struggling mothers, hitchhikers and bad Christians.
Publisher: n/a
|
374202397
|
Hardcover
Jayber Crow
By Berry, Wendell
Returning once again to the Port William membership, Berry has written his best novel yet, a book certain to confirm his reputation as one of America's finest novelists. . For thirty-nine years Wendell Berry has brought us stories from the fictional town of Port William, Kentucky. The latest, Jayber Crow, is the story of a man's love for his community and his abiding and unrequited love for Mattie Chatham, "a good woman who had too early made one bad mistake. " Sent to an orphanage at the age of ten, Jayber grows up knowing of loneliness and want, and learns how to be a watchful observer of human goodness and frailty. With the flood of 1937 he returns to his native Port William to become the town's barber. Slowly, patiently, the observer becomes participant. "This is a book about Heaven," writes Jayber, "but I must say too that it has been a close call. For I have wondered sometimes if it would not finally turn out to be a book about Hell-where we fail to love one another, where we hate and destroy one another for reasons abundantly provided or for righteousness' sake or for pleasure, where we destroy the things we need the most, where we see no hope and have no faith...where we must lose everything to know what we have had. "Sounding themes of love and loss, despair and deepest joy, Berry's clear-sighted artistry in depicting the Port William membership will not soon be forgotten.
Publisher: n/a
|
1582430292
|
Print book
Florence of Arabia
By Buckley, Christopher
The bestselling author who made mincemeat of political correctness in Thank You for Smoking, conspiracy theories in Little Green Men, and Presidential indiscretions No Way to Treat a First Lady now takes on the hottest topic in the entire world-Arab-American relations-in a blistering comic novel sure to offend the few it doesn't delight.Appalled by the punishment of her rebellious friend Nazrah, youngest and most petulant wife of Prince Bawad of Wasabia, Florence Farfarletti decides to draw a line in the sand. As Deputy to the deputy assistant secretary for Near East Affairs, Florence invents a far-reaching, wide-ranging plan for female emancipation in that part of the world.The U.S. government, of course, tells her to forget it. Publicly, that is. Privately, she's enlisted in a top-secret mission to impose equal rights for the sexes on the small emirate of Matar (pronounced "Mutter") , the "Switzerland of the Persian Gulf.
Publisher: n/a
|
1400062233
|
Print book
Shotgun Lovesongs
By Butler, Nickolas
NATIONAL BESTSELLER"Impressively original." --The New York Times"Sparkles in every way. A love letter to the open lonely American heartland ... A must-read." --People"The kind of book that restores your faith in humanity." --Toronto StarWelcome to Little Wing.It's a place like hundreds of others, nothing special, really. But for four friends--all born and raised in this small Wisconsin town--it is home. And now they are men, coming into their own or struggling to do so.One of them never left, still working the family farm that has been tilled for generations. But others felt the need to move on, with varying degrees of success. One trades commodities, another took to the rodeo circuit, and one of them even hit it big as a rock star. And then there's Beth, a woman who has meant something special in each of their lives.Now all four are brought together for a wedding. Little Wing seems even smaller than before. While lifelong bonds are still strong, there are stresses--among the friends, between husbands and wives. There will be heartbreak, but there will also be hope, healing, even heroism as these memorable people learn the true meaning of adult friendship and love.Seldom has the American heartland been so richly and accurately portrayed. Though the town may have changed, the one thing that hasn't is the beauty of the Wisconsin farmland, the lure of which, in Nickolas Butler's hands, emerges as a vibrant character in the story. Shotgun Lovesongs is that rare work of fiction that evokes a specific time and place yet movingly describes the universal human condition. It is, in short, a truly remarkable book--a novel that once read will never be forgotten.
Publisher: n/a
|
875375420
|
Hardcover
Cataloochee
By Caldwell, Wayne
“A brilliant portrait of a community and a way of life long gone, a lost America.”–Charles FrazierAgainst the breathtaking backdrop of Appalachia comes a rich, multilayered post—Civil War saga of three generations of families–their dreams, their downfalls, and their faith. Cataloochee is a slice of southern Americana told in the classic tradition of Flannery O’Connor and William Faulkner.Nestled in the mountains of North Carolina sits Cataloochee. In a time when “where you was born was where God wanted you,” the Wrights and the Carters, both farming families, travel to the valley to escape the rapid growth of neighboring towns and to have a few hundred acres all to themselves. But progress eventually winds its way to Cataloochee, too, and year after year the population swells as more people come to the valley to stake their fortune.
Publisher: n/a
|
9781400063437
|
Hardcover
The Trinity Game
By Chercover, Sean
2013 International Thriller Award Nominee Daniel Byrne is an investigator for the Vaticans secretive Office of the Devils Advocatethe department that scrutinizes miracle claims. Over ten years and 721 cases, not one miracle he tested has proved true. But case 722 is different Daniels estranged uncle, a crooked TV evangelist, has started speaking in tonguesand accurately predicting the future. Daniel knows Reverend Tim Trinity is a con man. Could Trinity also be something more The evangelist himself is baffled by his newfound powerand the violent reaction it provokes. After years of scams, he suddenly has the ability to predict everything from natural disasters to sports scores. Now the mob wants him dead for ruining their gambling business, and the Vatican wants him debunked as a false messiah.
Publisher: n/a
|
1612183506
|
Hardcover
The Stuff That Never Happened
By Dawson, Maddie
What if you were married to a wonderful husband for twenty-eight years but in love with another man? What if you were in love with them both? Annabelle McKay knows she shouldn't have any complaints. She's been in a stable marriage that's lasted almost three decades and has provided her with two wonderful children, thousands of family dinners around a sturdy oak table, and a husband so devoted that he schedules lovemaking into his calendar every Wednesday morning. Other wives envy the fact that Grant is not the type of man who would ever cheat on her or leave her for a younger woman. The trouble is Annabelle isn't sure she wants to be married to Grant anymore. The trouble is she's still in love with someone else. In the early tumultuous years of her marriage, Annabelle carried on a clandestine affair with the one person whose betrayal would hurt her husband the most.
Publisher: n/a
|
9780307393678
|
Hardcover
The Garden of Evening Mists
By Eng, Tan Twan
Malaya, 1951. Yun Ling Teoh, the scarred lone survivor of a brutal Japanese wartime camp, seeks solace among the jungle-fringed tea plantations of Cameron Highlands. There she discovers Yugiri, the only Japanese garden in Malaya, and its owner and creator, the enigmatic Aritomo, exiled former gardener of the emperor of Japan. Despite her hatred of the Japanese, Yun Ling seeks to engage Aritomo to create a garden in memory of her sister, who died in the camp. Aritomo refuses but agrees to accept Yun Ling as his apprentice “until the monsoon comes.” Then she can design a garden for herself.As the months pass, Yun Ling finds herself intimately drawn to the gardener and his art, while all around them a communist guerilla war rages. But the Garden of Evening Mists remains a place of mystery.
Publisher: n/a
|
1602861803
|
Paperback
In the Sea There are Crocodiles
By Geda, Fabio
When ten-year-old Enaiatollah Akbarirsquos small village in Afghanistan falls prey to Taliban rule in early his mother shepherds the boy across the border into Pakistan but has to leave him there all alone to fend for himself Thus begins Enaiatrsquos remarkable and often punishshying five-year ordeal which takes him through Iran Turkey and Greece before he seeks political asylum in Italy at the age of fifteen Along the way Enaiat endures the crippling physical and emotional agony of dangerous border crossings trekking across bitterly cold mountain pathways for days on end or being stuffed into the false bottom of a truck But not everyshyone is as resourceful resilient or lucky as Enaiat and there are many heart-wrenching casualties along the way Based on Enaiatrsquos close collaboration with Italian novelist Fabio Geda and expertly rendered in English by an award- winning translator this novel reconstructs the young boyrsquos memories perfectly preserving the childlike perspective and rhythms of an intimate oral history Told with humor and humanity In the Sea There Are Crocodiles brilliantly captures Enaiatrsquos moving and engaging voice and lends urgency to an epic story of hope and survival.
The Daring Ladies of Lowell
By Alcott, Kate
"Alice is cast in the mold of a character created by an earlier Alcott, the passionate and spunky Jo March. A refreshingly old-fashioned heroine, she makes THE DARING LADIES OF LOWELL appealing"--The New York Times Book Review"Offers up a compelling slice of both feminist and Industrial Age history"--Christian Science MonitorFrom the New York Times bestselling author of THE DRESSMAKER comes a moving historical novel about a bold young woman drawn to the looms of Lowell, Massachusetts--and to the one man with whom she has no business falling in love. Eager to escape life on her family's farm, Alice Barrow moves to Lowell in 1832 and throws herself into the hard work demanded of "the mill girls." In spite of the long hours, she discovers a vibrant new life and a true friend - a saucy, strong-willed girl name Lovey Cornell.
The Forever Year
By Anthony, Ronald
Do you believe that love can last forever?Jesse Sienna doesn't. His own parents' marriage was caring, but passionless, and his own romantic history tells him that love burns brightest before fizzling out completely. So when his elderly father, Mickey, moves in with him and seems unable to understand Jesse's no-strings-attached relationship with his current girlfriend, Jesse barely pays attention. It's just another example of how different they are-and more evidence that he and his father will never connect on any meaningful level.But the truth is, Mickey Sienna knows more about love than most people learn in a lifetime. More than half a century ago, he found the truest love that life can offer. He knows the endless rewards of investing your heart and soul in someone .
Fear the Worst
By Barclay, Linwood
Tim Blake is an average guy. He sells cars. He has an ex-wife who's moved in with another man. It's not a life without hassles, but nothing will prepare him for when his daughter, Sydney, vanishes into thin air. At the hotel where she supposedly worked, no one has ever heard of her. Even her closest friends seem to be at a loss. As he retraces Sydney's steps, Tim discovers that the suburban Connecticut town he always thought of as idyllic is anything but. What he doesn't know is that his every move is being watched. There are others who want to find Sydney as much as Tim does. And the closer Tim comes to the truth, the closer he comes to every parent's worst nightmare - and the kind of evil only a parent's love has a chance in hell of stopping.
Servants of the Map
By Barrett, Andrea
Spanning two centuries, an intricately woven collection of stories and novellas journeys across landscapes of yearning, awakening, loss, and unexpected discovery as the lives of extraordinary characters unfold in a borderland between science and passion.
The Island Walkers
By Bemrose, John
A powerful first novel about a family that slips from fortunes favor and a town broken by the forces of modernityAcross a bend of Ontarios Attawan River lies the Island, a working-class neighborhood of whitewashed houses and vine-freighted fences, black willows and decaying sheds. Here, for generations, the Walkers have lived among the other mill workers. The familys troubles begin in the summer of 1965, when a union organizer comes to town and Alf Walker is forced to choose between loyalty to his friends at the mill and advancement up the company ranks. Alfs worries are aggravated by his wife, Margaret, who has never reconciled her middle-class English upbringing to her blue-collar reality. As the summer passes, Joe, their son, is also forced to reckon with his familys standing when he falls headlong for a beautiful newcomer on a bridge - a girl far beyond him, with greater experience and broader horizons. As the threat of mill closures looms, the Walkers grapple with their personal crises, just as the rest of the town fights to protect its way of life amid the risks of unionization and the harsh demands of corporate power. Superbly crafted and deeply moving, this remarkable debut follows the Walkers to the very bottom of their night only to confirm, in the end, lifes ultimate hopefulness. The Island Walkers is at once a love letter to a place, a gripping family saga, and a testimony to the emergence of an important new novelist.
A Manual for Cleaning Women
By Berlin, Lucia
"I have always had faith that the best writers will rise to the top, like cream, sooner or later, and will become exactly as well-known as they should be-their work talked about, quoted, taught, performed, filmed, set to music, anthologized. Perhaps, with the present collection, Lucia Berlin will begin to gain the attention she deserves." -Lydia DavisA MANUAL FOR CLEANING WOMEN compiles the best work of the legendary short-story writer Lucia Berlin. With the grit of Raymond Carver, the humor of Grace Paley, and a blend of wit and melancholy all her own, Berlin crafts miracles from the everyday, uncovering moments of grace in the Laundromats and halfway houses of the American Southwest, in the homes of the Bay Area upper class, among switchboard operators and struggling mothers, hitchhikers and bad Christians.
Jayber Crow
By Berry, Wendell
Returning once again to the Port William membership, Berry has written his best novel yet, a book certain to confirm his reputation as one of America's finest novelists. . For thirty-nine years Wendell Berry has brought us stories from the fictional town of Port William, Kentucky. The latest, Jayber Crow, is the story of a man's love for his community and his abiding and unrequited love for Mattie Chatham, "a good woman who had too early made one bad mistake. " Sent to an orphanage at the age of ten, Jayber grows up knowing of loneliness and want, and learns how to be a watchful observer of human goodness and frailty. With the flood of 1937 he returns to his native Port William to become the town's barber. Slowly, patiently, the observer becomes participant. "This is a book about Heaven," writes Jayber, "but I must say too that it has been a close call. For I have wondered sometimes if it would not finally turn out to be a book about Hell-where we fail to love one another, where we hate and destroy one another for reasons abundantly provided or for righteousness' sake or for pleasure, where we destroy the things we need the most, where we see no hope and have no faith...where we must lose everything to know what we have had. "Sounding themes of love and loss, despair and deepest joy, Berry's clear-sighted artistry in depicting the Port William membership will not soon be forgotten.
Florence of Arabia
By Buckley, Christopher
The bestselling author who made mincemeat of political correctness in Thank You for Smoking, conspiracy theories in Little Green Men, and Presidential indiscretions No Way to Treat a First Lady now takes on the hottest topic in the entire world-Arab-American relations-in a blistering comic novel sure to offend the few it doesn't delight.Appalled by the punishment of her rebellious friend Nazrah, youngest and most petulant wife of Prince Bawad of Wasabia, Florence Farfarletti decides to draw a line in the sand. As Deputy to the deputy assistant secretary for Near East Affairs, Florence invents a far-reaching, wide-ranging plan for female emancipation in that part of the world.The U.S. government, of course, tells her to forget it. Publicly, that is. Privately, she's enlisted in a top-secret mission to impose equal rights for the sexes on the small emirate of Matar (pronounced "Mutter") , the "Switzerland of the Persian Gulf.
Shotgun Lovesongs
By Butler, Nickolas
NATIONAL BESTSELLER"Impressively original." --The New York Times"Sparkles in every way. A love letter to the open lonely American heartland ... A must-read." --People"The kind of book that restores your faith in humanity." --Toronto StarWelcome to Little Wing.It's a place like hundreds of others, nothing special, really. But for four friends--all born and raised in this small Wisconsin town--it is home. And now they are men, coming into their own or struggling to do so.One of them never left, still working the family farm that has been tilled for generations. But others felt the need to move on, with varying degrees of success. One trades commodities, another took to the rodeo circuit, and one of them even hit it big as a rock star. And then there's Beth, a woman who has meant something special in each of their lives.Now all four are brought together for a wedding. Little Wing seems even smaller than before. While lifelong bonds are still strong, there are stresses--among the friends, between husbands and wives. There will be heartbreak, but there will also be hope, healing, even heroism as these memorable people learn the true meaning of adult friendship and love.Seldom has the American heartland been so richly and accurately portrayed. Though the town may have changed, the one thing that hasn't is the beauty of the Wisconsin farmland, the lure of which, in Nickolas Butler's hands, emerges as a vibrant character in the story. Shotgun Lovesongs is that rare work of fiction that evokes a specific time and place yet movingly describes the universal human condition. It is, in short, a truly remarkable book--a novel that once read will never be forgotten.
Cataloochee
By Caldwell, Wayne
“A brilliant portrait of a community and a way of life long gone, a lost America.”–Charles FrazierAgainst the breathtaking backdrop of Appalachia comes a rich, multilayered post—Civil War saga of three generations of families–their dreams, their downfalls, and their faith. Cataloochee is a slice of southern Americana told in the classic tradition of Flannery O’Connor and William Faulkner.Nestled in the mountains of North Carolina sits Cataloochee. In a time when “where you was born was where God wanted you,” the Wrights and the Carters, both farming families, travel to the valley to escape the rapid growth of neighboring towns and to have a few hundred acres all to themselves. But progress eventually winds its way to Cataloochee, too, and year after year the population swells as more people come to the valley to stake their fortune.
The Trinity Game
By Chercover, Sean
2013 International Thriller Award Nominee Daniel Byrne is an investigator for the Vaticans secretive Office of the Devils Advocatethe department that scrutinizes miracle claims. Over ten years and 721 cases, not one miracle he tested has proved true. But case 722 is different Daniels estranged uncle, a crooked TV evangelist, has started speaking in tonguesand accurately predicting the future. Daniel knows Reverend Tim Trinity is a con man. Could Trinity also be something more The evangelist himself is baffled by his newfound powerand the violent reaction it provokes. After years of scams, he suddenly has the ability to predict everything from natural disasters to sports scores. Now the mob wants him dead for ruining their gambling business, and the Vatican wants him debunked as a false messiah.
The Stuff That Never Happened
By Dawson, Maddie
What if you were married to a wonderful husband for twenty-eight years but in love with another man? What if you were in love with them both? Annabelle McKay knows she shouldn't have any complaints. She's been in a stable marriage that's lasted almost three decades and has provided her with two wonderful children, thousands of family dinners around a sturdy oak table, and a husband so devoted that he schedules lovemaking into his calendar every Wednesday morning. Other wives envy the fact that Grant is not the type of man who would ever cheat on her or leave her for a younger woman. The trouble is Annabelle isn't sure she wants to be married to Grant anymore. The trouble is she's still in love with someone else. In the early tumultuous years of her marriage, Annabelle carried on a clandestine affair with the one person whose betrayal would hurt her husband the most.
The Garden of Evening Mists
By Eng, Tan Twan
Malaya, 1951. Yun Ling Teoh, the scarred lone survivor of a brutal Japanese wartime camp, seeks solace among the jungle-fringed tea plantations of Cameron Highlands. There she discovers Yugiri, the only Japanese garden in Malaya, and its owner and creator, the enigmatic Aritomo, exiled former gardener of the emperor of Japan. Despite her hatred of the Japanese, Yun Ling seeks to engage Aritomo to create a garden in memory of her sister, who died in the camp. Aritomo refuses but agrees to accept Yun Ling as his apprentice “until the monsoon comes.” Then she can design a garden for herself.As the months pass, Yun Ling finds herself intimately drawn to the gardener and his art, while all around them a communist guerilla war rages. But the Garden of Evening Mists remains a place of mystery.
In the Sea There are Crocodiles
By Geda, Fabio
When ten-year-old Enaiatollah Akbarirsquos small village in Afghanistan falls prey to Taliban rule in early his mother shepherds the boy across the border into Pakistan but has to leave him there all alone to fend for himself Thus begins Enaiatrsquos remarkable and often punishshying five-year ordeal which takes him through Iran Turkey and Greece before he seeks political asylum in Italy at the age of fifteen Along the way Enaiat endures the crippling physical and emotional agony of dangerous border crossings trekking across bitterly cold mountain pathways for days on end or being stuffed into the false bottom of a truck But not everyshyone is as resourceful resilient or lucky as Enaiat and there are many heart-wrenching casualties along the way Based on Enaiatrsquos close collaboration with Italian novelist Fabio Geda and expertly rendered in English by an award- winning translator this novel reconstructs the young boyrsquos memories perfectly preserving the childlike perspective and rhythms of an intimate oral history Told with humor and humanity In the Sea There Are Crocodiles brilliantly captures Enaiatrsquos moving and engaging voice and lends urgency to an epic story of hope and survival.