Groundbreaking and heartbreaking, this triumphant novel by two of America's most acclaimed storytellers follows a family of women from enslavement to the dawn of the twenty-first century. From Reconstruction to both world wars, from the Harlem Renaissance to Vietnam, from spirituals and arias to torch songs and the blues, Some Sing, Some Cry brings to life the monumental story of one American family's journey from slavery into freedom, from country into city, from the past to the future, bright and blazing ahead. Real-life sisters, Ntozake Shange, award-winning author of for colored girls who have considered suicide/when the rainbow is enuf and Ifa Bayeza, award-winning playwright of The Ballad of Emmett Till, achieve nothing less than a modern classic in this story of seven generations of women, and the men and music in their lives. Opening dramatically at a sprawling plantation just off the South Carolina coast, recently emancipated slave Bette Mayfield quickly says her goodbyes before fleeing for Charleston with her granddaughter, Eudora, in tow. She and Eudora carve out lives for themselves in the bustling port city as seamstress and fortune-teller. Eudora marries, the Mayfield lines grows and becomes an incredibly strong, musically gifted family, a family that is led, protected, and inspired by its women. Some Sing, Some Cry chronicles their astonishing passage through the watershed events of American history.
The “extraordinary and wonderful” award-winning play in a new edition featuring an additional poem, production photos, and an introduction by Jesmyn Ward (The New York Times). From its inception in California in 1974 to its Broadway revival in 2022, the Obie Award–winning for colored girls who have considered suicide/when the rainbow is enuf has excited, inspired, and transformed audiences all over the country. Passionate and fearless, Shange’s words reveal what it meant to be a woman of color in the 20th century—and they continue to ring true in the 21st. First published in 1975, it was praised by The New Yorker for “encompassing . . . every feeling and experience a woman has ever had”. This new edition celebrates the play’s enduring legacy with introductions by Jesmyn Ward and Broadway director Camille A. Brown. It also features a poem not previously included in the text, and a selection of photos capturing the play’s evolution and reinvention.
Once a year, Abuelo comes from Mexico to visit his family. He brings his guitar, his music—and his memories. In this story inspired by the life of Apolinar Navarrete Diaz—author Angela Dominguez’s grandfather and a successful mariachi musician—Abuelo and his grandchildren sing through the bad times and the good. Lifting their voices and their spirits, they realize that true happiness comes from singing together.
A lyrical exploration of love and loss, this book centers on several generations of women in a bucolic southern Black township as they live with and sometimes surrender to madness. The Goode-Brown family, led by matriarch and pillar of the community Minnie Mae, is plagued by old secrets and embarrassment over mental illness and illegitimacy. Meanwhile, single mother Francine Clark is haunted by her dead, lightning-struck husband and forced to fight against both the moral judgment of the community and her own rebellious daughter, Mona. The residents of Opulence struggle with vexing relationships to the land, to one another, and to their own sexuality. As the members of the youngest generation watch their mothers and grandmothers pass away, they live with the fear of going mad themselves and must fight to survive. The author offers up Opulence and its people in lush, poetic detail. It is a world of magic, conjuring, signs, and spells, but also of harsh realities that only love - and love that's handed down - can conquer.
NOW A MAJOR MOTION PICTURE—The #1 New York Times bestselling worldwide sensation with more than 18 million copies sold, hailed by The New York Times Book Review as “a painfully beautiful first novel that is at once a murder mystery, a coming-of-age narrative and a celebration of nature.” For years, rumors of the “Marsh Girl” have haunted Barkley Cove, a quiet town on the North Carolina coast. So in late 1969, when handsome Chase Andrews is found dead, the locals immediately suspect Kya Clark, the so-called Marsh Girl. But Kya is not what they say. Sensitive and intelligent, she has survived for years alone in the marsh that she calls home, finding friends in the gulls and lessons in the sand. Then the time comes when she yearns to be touched and loved. When two young men from town become intrigued by her wild beauty, Kya opens herself to a new life—until the unthinkable happens. Where the Crawdads Sing is at once an exquisite ode to the natural world, a heartbreaking coming-of-age story, and a surprising tale of possible murder. Owens reminds us that we are forever shaped by the children we once were, and that we are all subject to the beautiful and violent secrets that nature keeps.
Nominated for a 2014 Lime Award for Excellence in Fiction Named a Best Book of Summer 2014 by Publishers Weekly Named a Pick of the Week for the week of June 30th by Publishers Weekly "An earnest, well-done historical novel that skillfully blends fact and fiction." --Publishers Weekly "A profound story of how one unforeseen event may tear a family apart, but another can just as unexpectedly bring them back together again." --Publishers Weekly, Best Book of Summer 2014 Pick "Solomon enticingly described the novel Sing in the Morning, Cry at Night by Barbara J. Taylor (Akashic), set in a coal-mining town in 1913, as 'one of those sit on the couch and don't bother me' reads." --Shelf Awareness, NCIBA Spring Rep Picks "An absolute gem of a book filled with beautiful characters and classical writing techniques rarely seen in modern literature." --The Christian Manifesto, Top Fiction Pick of 2014 "This story is at once poignant and hopeful, spiced up by such characters as Billy Sunday, the revivalist, and Grief, the specter who haunts Grace to the very edge of sanity. A rich debut." --Historical Novel Society "Like Dickens, the novel faces family tragedy, in this case the town blaming 8-year-old Violet Morgan for her older sister's death. As her parents fall victim to their own vices, Violet learns how to form her own friendships to survive." --Arts.Mic "A fantastic novel worthy of the greatest accolades. Writing a book about a historical event can be difficult, as is crafting a bestseller, but Barbara J. Taylor is successful at both." --Downtown Magazine "Taylor's careful attention to detail and her deep knowledge of the community and its people give the novel a welcome gravity." --The Columbus Dispatch "One of the most compelling books I've ever read...a haunting story that will stay with the reader long after reading this novel." --Story Circle Book Reviews "Rave reviews are pouring in for this historical novel of a family tragedy." --The Halifax Reader, "6 New Books to Look for in July" "This well-written book is peopled with characters the reader can really care about and captures the feeling of a gritty twentieth century coal mining community." --Breakthrough, newsletter of the Osteogenesis Imperfecta Foundation "Like all good historical fiction, I learned from this novel." --Time 2 Read "This book has...prizewinner written all over it....Worth the read!" --I've Read This "This haunting story of tragedy and hope in an early twentieth century mining town is...an expertly crafted arrow that shoots straight for the heart. Reminiscent of classics such as How Green Was My Valley...this book is a must-read for fans of character-driven, authentic historical fiction." --Amy Drown Blog Almost everyone in town blames eight-year-old Violet Morgan for the death of her nine-year-old sister, Daisy. Sing in the Morning, Cry at Night opens on September 4, 1913, two months after the Fourth of July tragedy. Owen, the girls' father, "turns to drink" and abandons his family. Their mother Grace falls victim to the seductive powers of Grief, an imagined figure who has seduced her off-and-on since childhood. Violet forms an unlikely friendship with Stanley Adamski, a motherless outcast who works in the mines as a breaker boy. During an unexpected blizzard, Grace goes into premature labor at home and is forced to rely on Violet, while Owen is "off being saved" at a Billy Sunday Revival. Inspired by a haunting family story, Sing in the Morning, Cry at Night blends real life incidents with fiction to show how grace can be found in the midst of tragedy.
Sing, and Don't Cry is Cate Kennedy's sensual and touching evocation of her time spent working as a volunteer in small town Mexico. The people she comes to love in Tequisquiapan, and their gusto for celebration, pilgrimage and family, force her to cast a penetrating light on her own Western values and ways. ?What is truly essential, and who is truly poor?' asks Kennedy in a book that also challenges the reader to care more for his or her world. Described as ?a travel book with a social conscience' this essential memoir, from the award'winning fiction writer and poet, is funny, warm, yet ultimately disarming.
In a sweeping saga of music and vengeance, the acclaimed author of The Vampire Chronicles draws readers into eighteenth-century Italy, bringing to life the decadence beneath the shimmering surface of Venice, the wild frivolity of Naples, and the magnetic terror of its shadow, Vesuvius. This is the story of the castrati, the exquisite and otherworldly sopranos whose graceful bodies and glorious voices win the adulation of royal courts and grand opera houses throughout Europe. These men are revered as idols—and, at the same time, scorned for all they are not. Praise for Anne Rice and Cry to Heaven “Daring and imaginative . . . [Anne] Rice seems like nothing less than a magician: It is a pure and uncanny talent that can give a voice to monsters and angels both.”—The New York Times Book Review “To read Anne Rice is to become giddy as if spinnning through the mind of time.”—San Francisco Chronicle “If you surrender and go with her . . . you have surrendered to enchantment, as in a voluptuous dream.”—The Boston Globe “Rice is eerily good at making the impossible seem self-evident.”—Time
“Suspenseful . . . startling plot twists and incisive commentary on the social unrest of a coal-mining town during the Great Depression . . . a breathtaking ending.” —Publishers Weekly In 1930, twenty-five-year-old Violet travels with her sixteen-year-old sister, Lily, from Scranton, Pennsylvania, to the Good Shepherd Infant Asylum in Philadelphia, so Lily can deliver her illegitimate child in secret. In doing so, Violet jeopardizes her engagement to her sweetheart, Stanley Adamski. Meanwhile, Mother Mary Joseph, who runs the Good Shepherd, has no idea the asylum’s physician is involved in eugenics and experimenting on girls with various sterilization techniques. Five years later, Lily and Violet are back in Scranton, one married, one about to be, each finding her own way in a place where a woman’s worth is tied to her virtue. Against the backdrop of the sweeping eugenics movement and rogue coal mine strikes, the Morgan sisters must choose between duty and desire. Either way, they risk losing their marriages and each other. The follow-up to Barbara J. Taylor’s debut, Sing in the Morning, Cry at Night—named one of the Best Summer Books of 2014 by Publishers Weekly—All Waiting is Long continues her Dickensian exploration of the Morgan family. “Taylor’s characters—a cast of nuns and prostitutes, mobsters and miners, social activists and church busybodies—reflect the varying pressures and expectations of small-town life with rich, insightful prose and dialogue that rings true to each character’s voice. Will the web of lies the two sisters weave around themselves survive? You’ll have to read it yourself to find out. Recommended.” —Historical Novel Review “Powerful . . . Every page is saturated with the 1930s milieu as the sisters navigate the adversities of their reality . . . The overall result is a thought-provoking book club discussion cornucopia.” —Booklist (starred review)
