Over the span of a week, Rosemary Jenkins encounters people dealing with various forms of loss, mirroring her own sorrow from the passing of her husband two years before. This story explores the complexity of life and death, and how the two are linked. It emphasizes the solace one can find in companionship when we choose to open our hearts and the intriguing ways our paths can intertwine without ever truly crossing.
The definitive story collection “by one of the most celebrated American short-story writers…. Powerful, important, compassionate, and full of dark humor. This is a book that will be reread with admiration and love many times over” (Vanity Fair). Joy Williams has been celebrated as a master of the short story for four decades, her renown passing as a given from one generation to the next even in the shifting landscape of contemporary writing. At long last the incredible scope of her singular achievement is put on display: thirty-three stories drawn from three much-lauded collections, and another thirteen appearing here for the first time in book form. Forty-six stories in all, far and away the most comprehensive volume in her long career, showcasing her crisp, elegant prose, her dark wit, and her uncanny ability to illuminate our world through characters and situations that feel at once peculiar and foreign and disturbingly familiar. Virtually all American writers have their favorite Joy Williams stories, as do many readers of all ages, and each one of them is available here.
A compelling dual-narrated tale from Jennifer Latham that questions how far we've come with race relations. Some bodies won't stay buried. Some stories need to be told. When seventeen-year-old Rowan Chase finds a skeleton on her family's property, she has no idea that investigating the brutal century-old murder will lead to a summer of painful discoveries about the present and the past. Nearly one hundred years earlier, a misguided violent encounter propels seventeen-year-old Will Tillman into a racial firestorm. In a country rife with violence against blacks and a hometown segregated by Jim Crow, Will must make hard choices on a painful journey towards self discovery and face his inner demons in order to do what's right the night Tulsa burns. Through intricately interwoven alternating perspectives, Jennifer Latham's lightning-paced page-turner brings the Tulsa race riot of 1921 to blazing life and raises important questions about the complex state of US race relations--both yesterday and today.
Life is about balance. That's what Felicia has been telling herself. She has her struggles, like everybody else, but is it fair? That seemingly everyone but her is lucky? That no matter what, she is never benefitting? Felicia is taken on a journey after meeting Ezra; a boy coming into her life, changing it for the better, without him even realizing it. He makes her realize that there is so much more than all the struggles and unfairness that life makes us face. But what happens when Ezra is forced to face his past and has to leave her? Will Felicia let him leave and go back to the life she had been living, or will she try to make him stay? Follow their journey and watch a friendship blossom into something more, while finding out about secrets, that could potentially change everything.
Phoebe experiences some strange and unexplainable incidents on her first day of middle school and her aunt's wedding day. But can she figure out what is causing these mysterious events before the fun turns into chaos and she loses her sanity?
THEN Daisy Everything I have ever wanted was to be someone. Getting out of Edinburgh and making a name for myself. I told you, I would do anything. You should have known. (Please help me forget his lifeless eyes.) NOW Daisy Everything I have ever wanted was to be loved. I did what I had to do. (Please help me forgive myself.)
