When you reach for the moon sometimes you land among the stars. Santiago’s biggest dream is to perform on stage. But when he doesn’t get the lead role in the school play, he can’t help but doubt himself. Encouraged by his father’s inspiring words, Santiago rebuilds his confidence and finds that with passion and dedication, you can achieve amazing things beyond your wildest imagination. From international superstar Ricky Martin, comes a timeless story of a boy who follows his heart and a father who believes in his son’s boundless potential.
International superstar, Ricky Martin, who has sold more than 60 million albums worldwide, opens up for the first time about memories of his early childhood, experiences in the famed boy band Menudo, struggles with his identity during the Livin' la Vida Loca phenomenon, reflections on coming to terms with his sexuality, relationships that allowed him to embrace love, and life-changing decisions like devoting himself to helping children around the world and becoming a father. Me is an intimate memoir about the very liberating and spiritual journey of one of the most iconic pop-stars of our time.
This collection of poems that tell the story of the quilt-making community in Gee’s Bend, Alabama, is now available as a Dragonfly paperback. For generations, the women of Gee’s Bend have made quilts to keep a family warm, as a pastime accompanied by sharing and singing, or to memorialize loved ones. Today, the same quilts hang on museum walls as modern masterpieces of color and design. Inspired by these quilts and the women who made them, award-winning author Patricia C. McKissack traveled to Alabama to learn their stories. The lyrical rite-of-passage narrative that is the result of her journey seamlessly weaves together the familial, cultural, spiritual, and historical strands of life in this community.
Winner, Discover Great New Writers Award. Winner, Minnesota Book Award for Fiction. "Profound.... a quietly stunning work that leaves soft tracks in the heart."--The Washington Post BookWorld "Merits placement beside some of the mesmerizing new literature with its roots in Latin America."--The New York Times Book Review
One woman’s dark night leads her on a journey to find her light. Butterfly Awakens depicts the story of the extraordinary transformation of a forty-something Italian American attorney as she moves through unimaginable grief and sadness watching her beloved mother lose her battle to breast cancer. This tumultuous life experience shifts her world, causing her to question her life choices and opening her up to her soul’s calling. Nocero brings readers along on her journey through a dark night of the soul as she deals with the grieving process, a toxic work environment, and intense stress that results in depression, anxiety, and an acquired somatic nervous disorder called tinnitus. Through it all, she never gives up, instead looking for the help she needs to start to heal and find her light. In the end, like the metamorphosis from caterpillar to butterfly, this story is a beautiful love letter that honors Nocero’s mother’s legacy while detailing the awakening of her own. There are many stories about breast cancer and grief, but none are quite like this one. Throughout her tale, Nocero pulls the reader deep into her story through the intensity of her emotions; and in the end, after resigning from her career as a federal prosecutor due to a toxic administration, she searches for the lighthouse she saw in a vision when her mother died. Embarking on a spiritual pilgrimage on El Camino de Santiago in Northern Spain to get to the lighthouse at Cap Finisterre, she sets out to wake up and live again; the butterfly connection and stark honesty of her writing offers readers important lessons learned from moving through grief so that each person can shine their light again.
With her first novel, Angie Cruz established herself as a dazzling new voice in Latin-American fiction. Junot Diaz called her "a revelation" and The Boston Globe compared her writing to that of Gabriel García Márquez. Now, with humor, passion, and intensity, she reveals the proud members of the Colón family and the dreams, love, and heartbreak that bind them to their past and the future. Esperanza did not risk her life fleeing the Dominican Republic to live in a tenement in Washington Heights. No, she left for the glittering dream she saw on television: JR, Bobby Ewing, and the crystal chandeliers of Dallas. But years later, she is still stuck in a cramped apartment with her husband, Santo, and their two children, Bobby and Dallas. She works as a home aide and, at night, stuffs unopened bills from the credit card company in her lingerie drawer where Santo won't find them when he returns from driving his livery cab. Despite their best efforts, they cannot seem to change their present circumstances. But when Santo's mother dies, back in Los Llanos, and his father, Don Chan, comes to Nueva York to live out his twilight years in the Colóns' small apartment, nothing will ever be the same. Santo had so much promise before he fell for that maldita woman, thinks Don Chan, especially when he is left alone with his memories of the revolution they once fought together against Trujillo's cruel regime, the promise of who Santo might have been, had he not fallen under Esperanza's spell. From the moment Don Chan arrives, the tension in the Colón household is palpable. Flashing between past and present, Let It Rain Coffee is a sweeping novel about love, loss, family, and the elusive nature of memory and desire, set amid the crosscurrents of the history and culture that shape our past and govern our future.
A collection of stories in which an Austrian writer analyzes the craft of writing and describes the people he met over the years. One of them is a former Miss Yugoslavia with whom he had a romance.
A novel of England during the Viking era, from an author who “has vividly and colorfully portrayed life during the tumultuous Dark Ages” (Historical Novels Review). The last quarter of the tenth century was a time of conflict and exploration—while the Anglo-Saxons fought against the Vikings, Norsemen voyaged into the unknown looking for new lands to pillage, and so discovered America. Prince Rumon of France, descendant of Charlemagne and King Alfred, was a searcher. He had visions of the Islands of the Blessed, perhaps King Arthur’s Avalon, “where falls not hail, or rain, or any snow.” Merewyn grew up in savage Cornwall—a lonely girl, sustained by stubborn courage and belief in her descent from great King Arthur. Chance—or fate—in the form of a shipwreck off the Cornish coast brought Rumon and Merewyn together, and from that hour their lives were intertwined. Bound by his vow to her dying mother, Rumon brings Merewyn safely to England, keeping hidden the shameful secret of her birth. He considers his responsibility ended. At court, he is dazzled by the beautiful Queen Alfrida—but when a murderous truth is revealed, he turns to Merewyn, only to discover that he may have lost her. And he will journey across the Atlantic to find her again . . . From the beloved bestselling author of Katherine and Dragonwyck, this is a romantic tale of history and adventure “characterized by an authentic sense of time” (The New York Times Book Review).
In 1849 a twelve-year-old girl who calls herself Lucy is distraught when her mother moves the family from Massachusetts to a small California mining town. There Lucy helps run a boarding house and looks for comfort in books while trying to find a way to return "home."
