"Filled with lively humor, compassion, and intimacy." —Alice Hoffman, The New York Times Book Review "When I was little I would think of ways to kill my daddy." With that opening sentence we enter the childhood world of one of the most appealing young heroines in contemporary fiction. Her courage, her humor, and her wisdom are unforgettable as she tells her own story with stunning honesty and insight. An Oprah Book Club selection, this powerful novel has become an American classic. Winner of the American Academy of Arts and Letters' Sue Kaufman Prize for First Fiction and the Ernest Hemingway Foundation's Citation for Fiction.
A “vivid, unsentimental, powerful” portrait of a Southern marriage by the New York Times–bestselling author of Ellen Foster (Publishers Weekly). “She hasn’t been dead four months and I’ve already eaten to the bottom of the deep freeze. I even ate the green peas. Used to I wouldn’t turn my hand over for green peas . . .” Ruby Stokes has died too young and left her husband, Blinking Jack, behind. With alternating entries from each of them, A Virtuous Woman recounts the tale of their years together in an “exquisitely realised piece of writing” (Elizabeth Buchan, The Mail on Sunday). From their very different backgrounds—Ruby a daughter of wealth, Jack a penniless tenant farmer—to their relationships with their landlord and his family, and the strength they drew from each other in the face of hardship, this story of a marriage is “full of fantastically gritty metaphors . . . A book that will change your dreams” (The Observer). “Gibbons again flawlessly reproduces the humor and idiom of rural eastern North Carolina.” —Library Journal
The triumphant return of the New York Times bestselling novel’s orphaned heroine—“the Southern Holden Caulfield . . . the female Huck Finn” (Bookmarks Magazine). Ellen Foster, fifteen years old, formidable, and back in North Carolina with a loving new foster mother, has written to the president of Harvard, asking for early admission. Having already crammed a lot of tragedy, adversity, and trauma into her young years, surely she’s due something. In the meantime, she’s got a lot on her plate: composing poetry and selling it to classmates; trying to tactfully back away from a marriage proposal from her best friend; administering compassion to a slow-witted neighbor who’s found herself pregnant; and planning ahead for a writing camp for the gifted. Fueled by an indomitable spirit, undeterred by a naiveté she refuses to acknowledge, and patiently waiting on word from Mr. Derek Bok about her admission to the Ivy League, Ellen is going to continue to cram, while plotting her own deliverance from a town she knows in her heart she’s outgrown. Alice Hoffman, in The New York Times Book Review, said Ellen Foster “may be the most trustworthy character in recent fiction.” After her debut in Kaye Gibbons’s Ellen Foster— awarded the Sue Kaufman Prize from the American Academy of Arts and Letters and a special citation from the Ernest Hemingway Foundation, and chosen for Oprah Winfrey’s book club—Ellen returns in this unforgettable sequel.
Having suffered abuse and misfortune for much of her life, a young child searches for a better life and finally gets a break in the home of a loving woman with several foster children.
It's the summer of 1960 in Atkinson, Vermont. Maria Fermoyle is a strong but vulnerable divorced woman whose loneliness and ambition for her children make her easy prey for dangerous con man Omar Duvall. Marie's children are Alice, seventeen—involved with a young priest; Norm, sixteen—hotheaded and idealistic; and Benny, twelve—isolated and misunderstood, and so desperate for his mother's happiness that he hides the deadly truth he knows about Duvall. We also meet Sam Fermoyle, the children's alcoholic father; Sam's brother-in-law, who makes anonymous "love" calls from the bathroom of his failing appliance store; and the Klubock family, who—in contrast to the Fermoyles—live an orderly life in the house next door. Songs in Ordinary Time is a masterful epic of the everyday, illuminating the kaleidoscope of lives that tell the compelling story of this unforgettably family.
The acclaimed New York Times bestselling author of Ellen Foster,Kaye Gibbons paints intimate family portraits in lyrical prose, using as her palette the rich, vibrant colors of the American South. Sights Unseen shows the author at her most passionate and heartfelt best -- an unforgettable tale of unconditional love, and of a family's desperate search for normalcy in the midst of mental illness. It is a novel of rare poignancy, wit, and evocative power -- the story of the relationship between Hattie Barnes and her emotionally elusive mother, Maggie, known by their neighbors as "that Barnes woman with all the problems." This P.S. edition features an extra 16 pages of insights into the book, including author interviews, recommended reading, and more.
Winner of the American Academy of Arts and Letters' Sue Kaufman Prize for First Fiction and of the Ernest Hemingway Foundation's Citation for Fiction. An eleven-year-old heroine tells her unforgettable story with honesty, perceptivity, humor, and unselfconscious heroism. "The honesty of thought and eye and feeling and word!"--Eudora Welty; "A lovely, breathtaking, sometimes heart-wrenching first novel."--Walker Percy. A LITERARY GUILD SELECTION.
From the acclaimed author of Floating in My Mother’s Palm and Children and Fire, a stunning story about ordinary people living in extraordinary times—“epic, daring, magnificent, the product of a defining and mesmerizing vision” (Los Angeles Times). Trudi Montag is a Zwerg—a dwarf—short, undesirable, different, the voice of anyone who has ever tried to fit in. Eventually she learns that being different is a secret that all humans share—from her mother who flees into madness, to her friend Georg whose parents pretend he’s a girl, to the Jews Trudi harbors in her cellar. Ursula Hegi brings us a timeless and unforgettable story in Trudi and a small town, weaving together a profound tapestry of emotional power, humanity, and truth.
Generations of Southern women deal with hard times and heartless men in this “joyous” novel by the New York Times–bestselling author of Ellen Foster (The Washington Post Book World). In “a witty and explosive story about men and women, bad girls and good girls, love and laundry,” Kaye Gibbons paints a portrait of shrewd, resourceful women prevailing through hardships and finding unexpected pleasures along the way: gossip, gambling, and the quiet satisfaction of knowing more than they’re supposed to (The Houston Post). In A Cure for Dreams, the acclaimed author “once again demonstrates her extraordinary talent . . . Utterly engaging and convincing” (The Boston Globe). “This episodic novel, Gibbons’s third, is set during the Depression in back-country Virginia and Kentucky. In 19 vignettes, Betty Davies Randolph reveals her childhood and her mother’s life along Milk Farm Road. Gibbons, winner of several literary awards for her first novel Ellen Foster, has captured magnificently the dailiness and sense of community of rural life—from midwives and WPA ballads to suicides and men gone wild. Southern, and full of the folk wisdom of generations, Gibbons’s voice reveals life’s truths.” —Library Journal “Years from now, [these] women’s clear, strong words will still be resonating in my mind.” —Anne Tyler, Chicago Tribune “What a good ear Kaye Gibbons has, and what a good heart. A Cure for Dreams takes the reader down the back roads, and then points out what incredible lives are lived in those ordinary places.” —The Washington Post Book World
“The wonderful cathedral of Notre-Dame de Paris, one of the greatest achievements of European civilization, was on fire. The sight dazed and disturbed us profoundly. I was on the edge of tears. Something priceless was dying in front of our eyes. The feeling was bewildering, as if the earth was shaking.” —Ken Follett “[A] treasure of a book.” —The New Yorker In this short, spellbinding book, international bestselling author Ken Follett describes the emotions that gripped him when he learned about the fire that threatened to destroy one of the greatest cathedrals in the world—the Notre-Dame de Paris. Follett then tells the story of the cathedral, from its construction to the role it has played across time and history, and he reveals the influence that the Notre-Dame had upon cathedrals around the world and on the writing of one of Follett's most famous and beloved novels, The Pillars of the Earth. Ken Follett will donate his proceeds from this book to the charity La Fondation du Patrimoine.
