Stressed single mother and law partner Kate is in the meeting of her career when she is interrupted by a telephone call to say that her teenaged daughter Amelia has been suspended from her exclusive Brooklyn prep school for cheating on an exam. Torn between her head and her heart, she eventually arrives at St Grace's over an hour late, to be greeted by sirens wailing and ambulance lights blazing. Her daughter has jumped off the roof of the school, apparently in shame of being caught. A grieving Kate can't accept that her daughter would kill herself: it was just the two of them and Amelia would never leave her alone like this. And so begins an investigation which takes her deep into Amelia's private world, into her journals, her email account and into the mind of a troubled young girl. Then Kate receives an anonymous text saying simply: AMELIA DIDN'T JUMP. Is someone playing with her or has she been right all along?
Broken in body and spirit, she secludes herself in the mystical wilderness of a Georgia island. Can she find herself in the sweetness of old songs, old ways, and the gentle magic of the river people? "Kimberly Brock has an amazing voice and a huge heart; The River Witch welcomes the reader to a haunted landscape, authentically Southern, where the tragedies of the past and the most fragile, gorgeous kind of love-soaked hope are equally alive. This is one debut that you absolutely should not miss."-Joshilyn Jackson, New York Times Bestselling Author of Gods in Alabama "Kimberly Brock's The River Witch achieves what splendid writing ought to achieve-story and character that linger in the reader's consciousness. Such is the power of Roslyn Byrne, who retreats to Manny's Island, Georgia, in search of herself, only to discover her great need of others. Tender and intriguing, often dazzling in its prose, this is a mature work of fiction worthy of the celebration of praise."-Terry Kay, internationally known author of the classic novel, To Dance With The White Dog "There is magic and wonder in The River Witch, but the real enchantment here is the strength of the characters Roslyn and Damascus. Their voices are the current that carries the reader along in this compelling tale of healing and discovery."- Sharyn McCrumb, New York Times Bestselling Author, The Ballad of Tom Dooley "With lyrical prose, Kimberly Brock explores the hidden places of the heart. The River Witch is a magical and bewitching story that, like a river, winds its way through the soul. In the voices of her wounded characters, Brock takes us through both the breaking and the healing of a life." -Patti Callahan Henry, New York Times Bestselling Author of The Perfect Love Song Kimberly Brock is a native Southerner, a former actor and special needs educator. Her work has appeared in anthologies and magazines. She lives with her husband and three children north of Atlanta, Georgia. The River Witch is her first novel. Visit her at KimberlyBrockBooks.com.
Life is hard for Ruby growing up in poverty on the wrong side of the mountain on her grandfather's farm where literally the sun didn’t shine. The Appalachian setting isn’t her friend as she searches for an easy life at the "tippy-top" with contentment and security. Ruby makes a series of bad decisions, causing her life to tumble into an unexpected outcome. The Four Winds meets Blind Tiger in this tale during Prohibition Era Appalachian Tennessee, set in the early 1900s, where setting and mountain community become other characters of the story. Based on a real-life tale of the author’s grandmother, the reader gets immersed in Ruby’s choices as she searches for worthiness and belonging. Was the adventure worth the risk of losing her family? Will Ruby ever find what she is looking for?
Lane Mercer, sent to Longview, Texas in July, 1942 is part of a select group of women working undercover for the fledging federal agency, the Office of Strategic Services. Assigned to protect the man carrying out President Roosevelt's initiative to build the nation's first overland pipeline to hurry East Texas crude to the troops, she discovers there's more to Longview than the dossiers implied. There's intrigue, mayhem, and danger. Shamed from a botched OSS mission in France, Lane struggles to fulfill her mission and keep from drowning in guilt. Getting involved in local life is out of the question. Between family, do-gooders, and Nazi threats, she's knitted into a series of events that unravel all of her carefully constructed plans, revealing that sometimes the life one has to save, is one's own.
“The relationship between a mother and daughter is one of the most complicated and meaningful there is. Kimberly Williams-Paisley writes about her own with grace, truth, and beauty as she shares her journey back to her mother in the wake of a devastating illness.” —Brooke Shields Many know Kimberly Williams-Paisley as the bride in the popular Steve Martin remakes of the Father of the Bride movies, the calculating Peggy Kenter on Nashville, or the wife of country music artist, Brad Paisley. But behind the scenes, Kim was dealing with a tragic secret: her mother, Linda, was suffering from a rare form of dementia that slowly crippled her ability to talk, write and eventually recognize people in her own family. Where the Light Gets In tells the full story of Linda’s illness—called primary progressive aphasia—from her early-onset diagnosis at the age of 62 through the present day. Kim draws a candid picture of the ways her family reacted for better and worse, and how she, her father and two siblings educated themselves, tried to let go of shame and secrecy, made mistakes, and found unexpected humor and grace in the midst of suffering. Ultimately the bonds of family were strengthened, and Kim learned ways to love and accept the woman her mother became. With a moving foreword by actor and advocate Michael J. Fox, Where the Light Gets In is a heartwarming tribute to the often fragile yet unbreakable relationships we have with our mothers.
Summers at Whispering Pines defined Renee's childhood. It was where she spent time with Celia, her favorite aunt. Now Celia is gone and Renee's career is in shambles. Can Renee keep her family safe when mysterious events begin to swirl? Does she dare take another chance at love? Celia's final gift may provide answers, but there are risks.
2023 Tony Award winner for Best Musical! NEW JERSEY, 1999. Kimberly is about to turn sixteen and has recently moved with her family to a new town in suburban New Jersey. Suffering from a disease that causes her to age four and a half times faster than her high school peers, surrounded by a dysfunctional family (and possible felony charges), Kimberly is also navigating her first teenage crush. Ever the optimist, Kimberly is determined to find happiness against all odds and embark on a great adventure.
An autobiographical Memoir detailing the life of a Transgender woman from the Age of 5 until transitioning at 62. Breast implants at the age of 63, and returning to work after a lengthy recovery from the operation. The author describes growing up in the wrong gender and the lifelong yearning to be authentic. Her dream was finally realized in September of 2016 when she came out of the closet and began living full time as a woman.
U.S. Army Captain Kimberly N. Hampton was living her dream: flying armed helicopters in combat and commanding D Troop, 1st Squadron, 17th Cavalry, the armed reconnaissance aviation squadron of the 82nd Airborne Division. An all-American girl from a small southern mill town, Kimberly was a top scholar, student body president, ROTC battalion commander, and highly ranked college tennis player. In 1998 she was commissioned as a second lieutenant in the Army. Then, driven by determination and ambition, Kimberly rapidly rose through the ranks in the almost all-male bastion of military aviation to command a combat aviation troop. On January 2, 2004, Captain Hampton was flying an OH-58D Kiowa Warrior helicopter above Fallujah, Iraq, in support of a raid on an illicit weapons marketplace, searching for an illusive sniper on the rooftops of the city. A little past noon her helicopter was wracked by an explosion. A heat-seeking surface-to-air missile had gone into the exhaust and knocked off the helicopter’s tail boom. The helicopter crashed, killing Kimberly. Kimberly’s Flight is the story of Captain Hampton’s exemplary life. This story is told through nearly fifty interviews and her own e-mails to family and friends, and is entwined with Ann Hampton’s narrative of loving and losing a child. Retired award-winning journalist Anna Simon was been a reporter with The Greenville News in South Carolina for 21 years. She received the South Carolina Press Association’s first place award for Reporting in Depth for 2009, and is a past recipient of multiple awards in education reporting, the press association’s Judson Chapman Award for Community Service, and other news and feature writing awards. Kimberly’s mother, Ann Hampton, first met Anna Simon at the bleakest point in her life, immediately following her daughter’s death, when Ms. Simon wrote a series of stories for The Greenville News about Kimberly’s life and the reaction in the small Southern town of Easley, SC to her death. Ann has traveled twice to Iraq, in 2010, as a Gold Star Mom in a "Hugs for Healing" program sanctioned by the U.S. State Department, where American and Iraqi mothers grieving the deaths of their children worked side-by-side on humanitarian projects, and in 2011 on a humanitarian mission with “Friends of Kurdistan.”
With an ever-growing need to engage young women in science and tech, Kimberly Bryant saw a lack of tech programming for girls of color. So, in 2011, the engineer and entrepreneur founded Black Girls Code, a nonprofit with the tagline imagine, build, and create. Readers will learn how these same principles informed Bryants own rise as a pioneering African American tech innovator and be inspired by her determination to expose young minds to STEM fields.
