Masterly crafted Novella and two Short stories that restores Art in Literature. Protagonists, here are living a life led by their own feelings. Like a hummingbird they symbolize the enjoyment of life and lightness of being. Their adaptability, resilience, quality of being in the present moment, independence and playfulness adds joy in reader’s life and mind, indeed. Dear Reader, read and relish few free-spirited aesthetic moments!
"For Flannery Fields, the only respite from the mean girls at school is Miss Sweeney's English class. But when Miss Sweeney doesn't show up to teach her favourite book, Wuthering Heights, Flannery knows something is wrong. When the police are called, Flannery surrenders everything except for Miss Sweeney's precious dog-eared, annotated copy of Wuthering Heights. When she opens it later, it has transformed into her teacher's real-time diary. It appears Miss Sweeney is in New York City - and she's in trouble. So Flannery does something very unFlannery-like: she skips school and sets out for Manhattan, the diary as her guide. There she meets Heath, British, handsome and incredibly smart - yet he's never heard of Albert Einstein or Anne Frank. He could almost have stepped from the pages of Bront�'s novel."
Lucy is a young woman with an uncommon voice and an unusual way of looking at the world. She doesn't understand why her mother has sent her to live with old Mister and Missus on their farm, but she knows she must never leave or her mother won't be able to find her again. Also living at the farm is a pregnant teenager named Samantha who tells conflicting stories about her past and quickly becomes Lucy's only friend. When Samantha gives birth and her baby disappears, Lucy arms herself with Samantha's diary--as well as a pet chicken named Jennifer--and embarks on a dangerous and exhilarating journey to reunite mother and child.
New Cover; Oh, be careful as you judge Emma, dear reader! Few characters in Church history are as misunderstood as Emma Smith. a member of the Church from the beginning and a staunch supporter of her husband through his trials and eventual death, Emma lived a difficult life, yet many wonder how she could have turned her back on the beliefs that she held so strongly and suffered so much for. Judge Me, Dear Reader is the story of Emma, one of the greatest champions - and most criticized members - of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. By showing Emma in a more sympathetic light, the author reminds each of us that Emma - and everyone else - will be judged according to the desires of their heart by the only one who can see things clearly: the Lord. While presiding over the Nauvoo mission, Erwin E. Wirkus developed an interest in Emma's story. He writes, I find few women who were asked to go through as such hardship, heartache, and tragedy as did Emma Smith. with his unique understanding, Wirkus wrote this historical novel from Emma's perspective to give readers a clearer picture of the joys and sorrows she experienced throughout her life.
An emotionally raw and resonant story of love, loss, and the enduring power of friendship, following the lives of two young women connected by a home for “fallen girls,” and inspired by historical events. “Home for Erring and Outcast Girls deftly reimagines the wounded women who came seeking a second chance and a sustaining hope.”—Lisa Wingate, author of Before We Were Yours In turn-of-the-20th century Texas, the Berachah Home for the Redemption and Protection of Erring Girls is an unprecedented beacon of hope for young women consigned to the dangerous poverty of the streets by birth, circumstance, or personal tragedy. Built in 1903 on the dusty outskirts of Arlington, a remote dot between Dallas and Fort Worth’s red-light districts, the progressive home bucks public opinion by offering faith, training, and rehabilitation to prostitutes, addicts, unwed mothers, and “ruined” girls without forcibly separating mothers from children. When Lizzie Bates and Mattie McBride meet there—one sick and abused, but desperately clinging to her young daughter, the other jilted by the beau who fathered her ailing son—they form a friendship that will see them through unbearable loss, heartbreak, difficult choices, and ultimately, diverging paths. A century later, Cate Sutton, a reclusive university librarian, uncovers the hidden histories of the two troubled women as she stumbles upon the cemetery on the home’s former grounds and begins to comb through its archives in her library. Pulled by an indescribable connection, what Cate discovers about their stories leads her to confront her own heartbreaking past, and to reclaim the life she thought she'd let go forever. With great pathos and powerful emotional resonance, Home for Erring and Outcast Girls explores the dark roads that lead us to ruin, and the paths we take to return to ourselves.
A National Best Seller! Calling Me Home by Julie Kibler is a soaring debut interweaving the story of a heartbreaking, forbidden love in 1930s Kentucky with an unlikely modern-day friendship Eighty-nine-year-old Isabelle McAllister has a favor to ask her hairdresser Dorrie Curtis. It's a big one. Isabelle wants Dorrie, a black single mom in her thirties, to drop everything to drive her from her home in Arlington, Texas, to a funeral in Cincinnati. With no clear explanation why. Tomorrow. Dorrie, fleeing problems of her own and curious whether she can unlock the secrets of Isabelle's guarded past, scarcely hesitates before agreeing, not knowing it will be a journey that changes both their lives. Over the years, Dorrie and Isabelle have developed more than just a business relationship. They are friends. But Dorrie, fretting over the new man in her life and her teenage son's irresponsible choices, still wonders why Isabelle chose her. Isabelle confesses that, as a willful teen in 1930s Kentucky, she fell deeply in love with Robert Prewitt, a would-be doctor and the black son of her family's housekeeper—in a town where blacks weren't allowed after dark. The tale of their forbidden relationship and its tragic consequences makes it clear Dorrie and Isabelle are headed for a gathering of the utmost importance and that the history of Isabelle's first and greatest love just might help Dorrie find her own way.
AS THE WORLD BURNS, ONLY A DREAMER CAN SAVE IT New York, 2000. The United Nations has just planted its flag on Mars, and a Green Party senator is about to become the first female president of the United States. At a party in the almost-Utopian world, Kate and Ben fall in love. London, 1593. Kate wakes as Emilia, mistress to a nobleman and friend to a lowly court poet called Will. Afflicted by apocalyptic premonitions, she sets out to save the world. Each decision she makes as Emilia will change Kate's life with Ben forever.
The first middle grade novel from Julie Murphy, #1 New York Times bestselling author of Dumplin’ (now a popular Netflix film), is a funny, heartwarming story perfect for fans of Rebecca Stead, Ali Benjamin, and Holly Goldberg Sloan. Four starred reviews! Patricia “Sweet Pea” DiMarco wasn’t sure what to expect when her parents announced they were getting a divorce. She never could have imagined that they would have the “brilliant” idea of living in nearly identical houses on the same street. In the one house between them lives their eccentric neighbor Miss Flora Mae, the famed local advice columnist behind “Miss Flora Mae I?” Dividing her time between two homes is not easy. And it doesn’t help that at school, Sweet Pea is now sitting right next to her ex–best friend, Kiera, a daily reminder of the friendship that once was. Things might be unbearable if Sweet Pea didn’t have Oscar—her new best friend—and her fifteen-pound cat, Cheese. Then one day Flora leaves for a trip and asks Sweet Pea to forward her the letters for the column. And Sweet Pea happens to recognize the handwriting on one of the envelopes. What she decides to do with that letter sets off a chain of events that will forever change the lives of Sweet Pea DiMarco, her family, and many of the readers of “Miss Flora Mae I?”
“Like Richard Russo’s Straight Man this book has a lot to say about the humanities in American colleges and universities…. Very funny and also moving.” —Tom Perrotta, New York Post A BEST BOOK OF THE YEAR: NPR and Boston Globe Finally a novel that puts the "pissed" back into "epistolary." Jason Fitger is a beleaguered professor of creative writing and literature at Payne University, a small and not very distinguished liberal arts college in the midwest. His department is facing draconian cuts and squalid quarters, while one floor above them the Economics Department is getting lavishly remodeled offices. His once-promising writing career is in the doldrums, as is his romantic life, in part as the result of his unwise use of his private affairs for his novels. His star (he thinks) student can't catch a break with his brilliant (he thinks) work Accountant in a Bordello, based on Melville's Bartleby. In short, his life is a tale of woe, and the vehicle this droll and inventive novel uses to tell that tale is a series of hilarious letters of recommendation that Fitger is endlessly called upon by his students and colleagues to produce, each one of which is a small masterpiece of high dudgeon, low spirits, and passive-aggressive strategies. We recommend Dear Committee Members to you in the strongest possible terms. Don’t miss Julie Schumacher's new novel, The English Experience, coming soon.
After years of watching her best friends Ben and Claire try for a baby, Romily has offered to give them the one thing that they want most. Romily expects it will be easy to be a surrogate. She's already a single mother, and she has no desire for any more children. But Romily isn't prepared for the overwhelming feelings that have taken hold of her and which threaten to ruin her friendship with Ben and Claire-and even destroy their marriage. Now there are three friends, two mothers and only one baby, and an impossible decision to make... Thought-provoking, heart-rending but ultimately uplifting, Julie Cohen's Dear Thing is a book you won't be able to put down, until you pass it on to your best friends.
