Hussein's illegal pork business has started to cause some headaches, and not just because of his permanent hangovers-- the town is tired of the smell, a mujahid has arrived on his doorstep, his American niece is visiting, and his sister has joined the Syrian rebel cause, but worst of all, his sow is severely depressed
Picking up where her modern classic The Bean Trees left off, Barbara Kingsolver’s bestselling Pigs in Heaven continues the tale of Turtle and Taylor Greer, a Native American girl and her adoptive mother who have settled in Tucson, Arizona, as they both try to overcome their difficult pasts. Taking place three years after The Bean Trees, Taylor is now dating a musician named Jax and has officially adopted Turtle. But when a lawyer for the Cherokee Nation begins to investigate the adoption—their new life together begins to crumble. Depicting the clash between fierce family love and tribal law, poverty and means, abandonment and belonging, Pigs in Heaven is a morally wrenching, gently humorous work of fiction that speaks equally to the head and the heart. This edition includes a P.S. section with additional insights from Barbara Kingsolver, background material, suggestions for further reading, and more.
"In loving yet unsentimental prose, Sy Montgomery captures the richness that animals bring to the human experience. Sometimes it takes a too-smart-for-his-own-good pig to open our eyes to what most matters in life.” —John Grogan, author of Marley & Me: Life and Love with the World’s Worst Dog A naturalist who spent months at a time living on her own among wild creatures in remote jungles, Sy Montgomery had always felt more comfortable with animals than with people. So she gladly opened her heart to a sick piglet who had been crowded away from nourishing meals by his stronger siblings. Yet Sy had no inkling that this piglet, later named Christopher Hogwood, would not only survive but flourish—and she soon found herself engaged with her small-town community in ways she had never dreamed possible. Unexpectedly, Christopher provided this peripatetic traveler with something she had sought all her life: an anchor (eventually weighing 750 pounds) to family and home. The Good Good Pig celebrates Christopher Hogwood in all his glory, from his inauspicious infancy to hog heaven in rural New Hampshire, where his boundless zest for life and his large, loving heart made him absolute monarch over a (mostly) peaceable kingdom. At first, his domain included only Sy’s cosseted hens and her beautiful border collie, Tess. Then the neighbors began fetching Christopher home from his unauthorized jaunts, the little girls next door started giving him warm, soapy baths, and the villagers brought him delicious leftovers. His intelligence and fame increased along with his girth. He was featured in USA Today and on several National Public Radio environmental programs. On election day, some voters even wrote in Christopher’s name on their ballots. But as this enchanting book describes, Christopher Hogwood’s influence extended far beyond celebrity; for he was, as a friend said, a great big Buddha master. Sy reveals what she and others learned from this generous soul who just so happened to be a pig—lessons about self-acceptance, the meaning of family, the value of community, and the pleasures of the sweet green Earth. The Good Good Pig provides proof that with love, almost anything is possible.
I was back in a hospital bed, with a doctor sitting beside me. 'Try to describe how you feel,' he said. 'I feel dislocated,' I told him. 'Not part of life.' 'Whose life?' 'Mine. Everybody's. Life.' And the familiar sensation started up in my belly, the shaking spread into my arms. I covered my face with my hands, but I couldn't block out what I saw.' A year ago Patrick Winter, a young South African, was sent to Namibia to complete his military service and to defend his country against 'terrorism'. Now he is back, to meet Godfrey, his mother's freedom fighter boyfriend, and to witness the country's first free elections. But Patrick needs to confront and process much more than a country in transition, and in doing so he is forced to revisit his past and to face the pain and the demons that haunt him.
This charming picture book celebrates all our differences while questioning the idea that there is only one way to be “normal.” Pip is a normal pig who does normal stuff: cooking, painting, and dreaming of what she’ll be when she grows up. But one day a new pig comes to school and starts pointing out all the ways in which Pip is different. Suddenly she doesn’t like any of the same things she used to...the things that made her Pip. A wonderful springboard for conversations with children, at home and in the classroom, about diversity and difference.
How big is a pig? To find out, follow in the footsteps of a cheerful piglet as he takes you on a trail around the farmyard. You will meet beasts, birds, and insects of all shapes and sizes, until at last you come to a big surprise in the pigsty. With a clever, repetitive text, How Big Is a Pig? offers a gentle and humorous way of introducing pre-school children to all kinds of opposites. Ages 1-4 Colour illustrations
Originally published in hardcover in 1972, A Day No Pigs Would Die was one of the first young adult books, along with titles like The Outsiders and The Chocolate War. In it, author Robert Newton Peck weaves a story of a Vermont boyhood that is part fiction, part memoir. The result is a moving coming-of-age story that still resonates with teens today.
Author/poet/journalist Gabriel Hart compresses twenty pieces of his most irreverent 'world-burning' fiction spanning 2015-2020, including the previously unpublished novelette-length American nightmare Skattertown. "Gabriel Hart is hands down one of the most energetic writers out there. In fact, I'm hard-pressed to name one besides Hunter S. Thompson off the top of my head that could crank out line after line of insightful, muscular, serpentine prose and make it look so easy. And Hart's energy isn't only apparent because he's a musician, a journalist, a fiction writer, and a poet whose seemingly tireless productivity is tough to keep up, but because the words he lays down--no matter the form or genre--are highly charged and consistently propulsive. Always. Without fail. I have yet to read a paragraph or stanza or sentence of his that I haven't reread multiple times simply out of reverence for the skill on display." -- William S. Soldan, author of In Just the Right Light