Daisy Does It Herself is a funny, heartwarming romantic comedy. Fans of warm and witty romantic comedies with a guaranteed happily-ever-after will be entranced.
A NEW YORK TIMES NOTABLE BOOK OF THE YEAR “[A] skillfully crafted gothic mystery . . . Johnson pulls off a great feat in this book.” —Financial Times “It reminded me, in its general refusal to play nice, of early Ian McEwan.” —The New York Times Book Review “Johnson crafts an aching thriller about the dangers of loving too intensely.” —Time From a Booker Prize finalist and international literary star: a blazing portrait of one darkly riveting sibling relationship, from the inside out. “One of her generation’s most intriguing authors” (Entertainment Weekly), Daisy Johnson is the youngest writer to have been shortlisted for the Man Booker Prize. Now she returns with Sisters, a haunting story about two sisters caught in a powerful emotional web and wrestling to understand where one ends and the other begins. Born just ten months apart, July and September are thick as thieves, never needing anyone but each other. Now, following a case of school bullying, the teens have moved away with their single mother to a long-abandoned family home near the shore. In their new, isolated life, July finds that the deep bond she has always shared with September is shifting in ways she cannot entirely understand. A creeping sense of dread and unease descends inside the house. Meanwhile, outside, the sisters push boundaries of behavior—until a series of shocking encounters tests the limits of their shared experience, and forces shocking revelations about the girls’ past and future. Written with radically inventive language and imagery by an author whose work has been described as “entrancing” (The New Yorker), “a force of nature” (The New York Times Book Review), and “weird and wild and wonderfully unsettling” (Celeste Ng), Sisters is a one-two punch of wild fury and heartache—a taut, powerful, and deeply moving account of sibling love and what happens when two sisters must face each other’s darkest impulses.
All twenty-year-old Daisy Haites has ever wanted is a normal life, but as the heiress to London’s most notorious criminal empire, it’s just not in the cards for her. Raised by her older brother, Julian, after their parents were murdered, Daisy has never been able to escape the watchful gaze of her gang-lord brother. But Julian’s line of work means that Daisy’s life is . . . complicated. And things don’t become any easier when she falls hard for the beautiful and emotionally unavailable Christian Hemmes, who happens to be one of the few men in London who doesn’t answer to Julian. Christian’s life is no walk in the park either, since he’s in love with his best friend’s girlfriend, Magnolia Parks. He’s happy enough to use Daisy to throw off the scent of his true affections—until she starts to infiltrate those, too. As their romance blossoms into something neither was anticipating, Daisy and Christian must come to terms with the fact that in this life everything comes at a price. Relationships intersect and tangle, and Daisy, Christian, and Julian will learn that sometimes life’s most worthwhile pursuits can only be paid in blood.
Twelve-year-old Grace and her mother have always been their own family, traveling from place to place like gypsies. But Grace wants to finally have a home all their own. Just when she thinks she's found it her mother says it's time to move again. Grace summons the courage to tell her mother how she really feels and will always regret that her last words to her were angry ones. After her mother's sudden death, Grace is forced to live with a grandmother she's never met. She can't imagine her mother would want her to stay with this stranger. Then Grace finds clues in a mysterious treasure hunt, just like the ones her mother used to send her on. Maybe it is her mother, showing her the way to her true home. Lyrical, poignant and fresh, The Secret Hum of a Daisy is a beautifully told middle grade tale with a great deal of heart.
Turning sixteen is an unforgettable milestone, and each of these four sisters has her own story to tell. Rose, the oldest, feels like she has the most responsibility when her father dies, and yearns to be true to herself. Daisy wants to break free from her family, but trouble arises when she falls for a bad boy. Laurel struggles with the loss of a close relative and finds herself drawn to a boy who may actually understand. And Lily, the youngest sister, feels like nothing could be more difficult than actually being herself. These four books in one special bind-up make for a great value—and an even better read.
A memoir of the author's quest for motherhood details her six-year odyssey from her decision to have a baby, through her desperate pursuit of everything humanly possible to achieve her goal, to the repercussions of the ordeal for her marriage.
With Mama's warm, steady gaze and patient smile, she conveys to readers that parents are with their children every step of the way---even when those steps may be tentative. And, in the book's final pages, when Daisy finally hops, skips and jumps, the happiness that radiates from the tip of her floppy ears to the bottoms of her paws proves that persistence really does pay off.
As Told by Herself offers the first systematic study of women's autobiographical writing about childhood. More than 175 works—primarily from English-speaking countries and France, as well as other European countries—are presented here in historical sequence, allowing Lorna Martens to discern and reveal patterns as they emerge and change over time. What do the authors divulge, conceal, and emphasize? How do they understand the experience of growing up as girls? How do they understand themselves as parts of family or social groups, and what role do other individuals play in their recollections? To what extent do they concern themselves with issues of memory, truth, and fictionalization? Stopping just before second-wave feminism brought an explosion in women's childhood autobiographical writing, As Told by Herself explores the genre's roots and development from the mid-nineteenth century, and recovers many works that have been neglected or forgotten. The result illustrates how previous generations of women—in a variety of places and circumstances—understood themselves and their upbringing, and how they thought to present themselves to contemporary and future readers.
Pretty, flighty Daisy Devreaux can either go to jail or marry the mystery man her father has chosen for her. Arranged marriages don't happen in the modern world, so how did the irrepressible Daisy find herself in this fix? Alex Markov, as humorless as he is deadly handsome, has no intention of playing the loving bridegroom to a spoiled little feather-head with champagne tastes. He drags Daisy from her uptown life to a broken down traveling circus and sets out to tame her to his ways. But this man without a soul has met his match in a woman who's nothing but heart. Before long, passion will send them flying sky high without a safety net... risking it all in search of a love that will last forever.