This story takes the reader on a journey of how growing up in an Italian family in a predominantly Italian neighborhood within the protective glow of the boy's family and the local Mob bosses, as well as learning how to survive in the streets of the East New York section of Brooklyn forms the character of a young man. The era of racism, the dawning of rock and roll music, and an angelic visit - all events that helped shape the man as he is today. The story demonstrates how all of these events affected the writer personally and deeply. The reader is engrossed by the struggle of the boy trying to heed the morals and values instilled by family and church, keeping those intact while attempting to balance them with societal demands and the clash of surviving the mean streets of Brooklyn.
NATIONAL BOOK CRITICS CIRCLE AWARD WINNER • A complusively readable riff on the classic detective novel from America's most inventive novelist. "A half-satirical cross between a literary novel and a hard-boiled crime story narrated by an amateur detective with Tourette's syndrome.... The dialogue crackles with caustic hilarity.... Unexpectedly moving." —The Boston Globe Brooklyn's very own self-appointed Human Freakshow, Lionel Essrog is an orphan whose Tourettic impulses drive him to bark, count, and rip apart our language in startling and original ways. Together with three veterans of the St. Vincent's Home for Boys, he works for small-time mobster Frank Minna's limo service cum detective agency. Life without Frank Minna, the charismatic King of Brooklyn, would be unimaginable, so who cares if the tasks he sets them are, well, not exactly legal. But when Frank is fatally stabbed, one of Lionel's colleagues lands in jail, the other two vie for his position, and the victim's widow skips town. Lionel's world is suddenly topsy-turvy, and this outcast who has trouble even conversing attempts to untangle the threads of the case while trying to keep the words straight in his head. Motherless Brooklyn is a brilliantly original, captivating homage to the classic detective novel by one of the most acclaimed writers of his generation.
"After her mother, Mirella, abandoned her family to reclaim her roots in the Dominican Republic, Penelope Grand moved back to Brooklyn to keep an eye on her ailing father. When she receives a postcard from Mirella seeking reconciliation, old wounds are reopened, secrets revealed, and a journey across an ocean of sacrifice and self-discovery begins"--
Can you ever really start over? It's the question that follows Ariana now that she's reunited with the boys from the Sound of Us. Haunted by the past and her hopefully soon to be ex-husband, Ari is dragged along as the band continues its world tour. Touring the world together...it's what they all used to dream about. Sold out stadiums and screaming fans, it's everything anyone would want. But with broken hearts to mend, groupies to ignore, and someone who clearly wants Ariana to leave for good, is their dream more of a nightmare? Can Ariana discover her own song before it's too late?
For thirteen-year-old Judy Strand, summers in Bay Ridge, Brooklyn, bustle with games of stickball played in the street, fun-filled outings to neighboring Coney Island, and her family’s yearly trip to the Catskill Mountains. But in July 1944, Judy’s carefree days and her innocence are shaken by a discovery: The man she’s always called Pa isn’t her real father. Even more shocking, Judy learns that the father she doesn’t remember was an alcoholic who abandoned his family. That’s why Judy’s mother emigrated to America from Norway. Now Judy feels jumbled inside: She’s angry at her mother for keeping the truth from her–and she’s suddenly awkward around Pa. Nothing her parents say soothes the hurt. At first, even the attentions of Jacob Jacobsen don’t make her feel any better. Judy likes Jacob; it’s just that his dad’s drinking binges hit too close to home. Ashamed, Judy doesn’t want anyone to find out her secret. But as misfortune befalls Jacob, Judy’s close friends, and her own family, Judy rallies to their side, and in the process recognizes that growing up encompasses forgiveness–of others and of herself.
Amy Shearn has written a fierce and vivacious book about motherhood, astounding in its honesty, fearless in its humor and exploding with love. THE MERMAID OF BROOKLYN is a joyful and exhilarating read' Maria Semple, author of the New York Times bestselling WHERE'D YOU GO, BERNADETTE? Jenny Lipkin, former up-and-coming magazine editor and current stressed-out mother of two, is struggling. With two demanding children, she is adjusting to life as an average mother, drinking coffee in the playground and complaining about breastfeeding, sleepless nights and how to get the buggy on the subway. And then, one summer evening, her husband Harry goes out to buy cigarettes and doesn’t return. Jenny reaches breaking point. She is contemplating ending it all, but when she falls off the Brooklyn Bridge into the East River, she finds a surprising ally – and a magical way to rethink her ideas about success, motherhood and relationships. But confronting her inner demons is no easy task . . .
This “masterful epic” spans decades and oceans from Trinidad to the American frontier during the tumultuous days of westward expansion (Publishers Weekly). Trinidad, 1796. Young Rosa Rendón quietly rebels against the life others expect her to lead. Bright, competitive, and opinionated, she does not intend to cook and keep house, for it is obvious her talents lie in running the farm she views as her birthright. But when her homeland changes from Spanish to British rule, the fate of free black property owners—Rosa’s family among them—is suddenly jeopardized. By 1830, Rosa is living among the Crow Nation in Bighorn, Montana, with her children and her husband, Edward Rose, a Crow chief. Her son Victor is of the age where he must seek his vision and become a man. But his path forward is blocked by secrets Rosa has kept from him. So Rosa must take him to where his story began and, in turn, retrace her own roots. Along the way, she must acknowledge the painful events that forced her from the middle of an ocean to the rugged terrain of a far-away land. A Booklist Editor’s Choice Book of the Year
Around the corner. The next block. Across the At the end of the line. Borough Park. Gowanus. Flatbush. Canarsie. Ridgewood. Greenpoint. Brownsville. Bay Ridge. Bensonhurst. City Line. What was the place called Brooklyn really like back then... when Brooklyn was the world? Elliot Willensky, born in Brooklyn and now official Borough Historian, takes us back to a sweeter time when a trip on the new BMT subway was a delightful adventure, when summer days were a picnic on the sand and evenings were Nathan's hotdogs at Coney Island and a whirl of lights, spills, and chills at dazzling Luna Park. Remembering Brooklyn, it's the neighborhoods you think of first -- or maybe it's your own block, the one you were raised on. In those days, the street was a more animated, more colorful place. Jacks and jump rope, hit-the-stick, double-dutch and skelly or potsy (hopscotch to you) were played everywhere. The street was a natural amphitheater, and the stoop was the perfect place for grown-ups to sit and watch and visit with neighbors. Stores-on-wheels selling fruit, baked goods, and the old standby, seltzer, rolled right down the block, and the Fuller Brush man and Electrolux vacuum-cleaner salesmen worked door to door, saving housewives countless shopping trips. For many, a big night out was dinner at a Chinese restaurant, where 99 percent of the patrons were non-Chinese, and you could get mysterious-sounding dishes like moo goo gai pan and subgum chow mein -- "One from column A, two from column B." If you could afford to go somewhere really classy, the Marine Roof of the Bossert Hotel was one of the hottest nightspots. A hot date on Saturday night featured big bands at the clubs on TheStrip (Flatbush Avenue below Prospect Park) -- the Patio, the Parakeet Club, the Circus Lounge -- or gala stage shows at the Brooklyn Academy of Music or the enormous Paramount Theatre. Still, for family entertainment you couldn't beat a day at the beach and a night on Surf Avenue, taking in the sideshows and the penny arcades. For Brooklyn, the years between 1920 and 1957 were a special time. It was in 1920 that the subway system reached to Brooklyn's outer edge -- linking the entire borough with Manhattan and making it an ideal spot for millions of new families to build their homes. The end of the era came in 1957 -- the last year that Brooklyn's beloved Dodgers played at Ebbets Field before moving to sunny California. For many loyal fans the fate of "Dem Bums" represents the fate of Brooklyn. With a brilliant, entertaining text and hundreds of exciting, nostalgic photographs (many never before published), When Brooklyn Was the World recovers the history of this lively city, as remembered by the millions of people who knew Brooklyn in its golden era.
Song of Brooklyn gathers the oral testimony of nearly one hundred Brooklynites past and present, famous and unknown, about a mythic borough that is also an indisputably real place. These witnesses speak eloquently of what it was like back then, when the Dodgers played in Ebbets Field; later, when the borough fell on hard times; and now, when it has come roaring back on the tracks of a real-estate boom, giving it celebrity chic and hipster cred. With this surprising and inspiring renaissance in full swing, the story of Brooklyn is one of the great and still ongoing chapters of the American urban experience, and Song of Brooklyn sings that tune in pitch-perfect key.
