Thirteen teen-agers experience a period of terror when their school is mysteriously closed, their parents disappear, and a gang of youths plans to build a new world for losers.
This book is full of memories and emotions, and memories of those we love and have loved. Theres so much more to say; yet weve touched some feelings, so that we can again feel what we felt then. We trust the reader will love and enjoy these simple past experiences and ideas we hear everyday. Experiences with feelings, could that explain the poetry, and helpfully something that everyone can be given as a gift to someone who has experienced a loss. We all have and will several times during our life that seems so brief.
'With a deft hand, Meredith Appleyard shows us the beating - and sometimes aching - heart of rural Australia. A poignant tale with characters that linger long after the last page.' Bestselling Australian Author Tricia Stringer She's gone ... will her family pull together, or fall further apart? 'Functionally dysfunctional.' That's how financial analyst Grace Fairley describes her family in the small South Australian farming community of Miners Ridge - a family fractured by tragedy and kept that way by anger, resentment and petty jealousies. As the eldest sibling, Grace tries to keep the family in touch, but now she's accepted a promotion to the London office. Time-zones and an enormous workload mean she's forced to take a step back, although she finds time to stay in contact with Miners Ridge landscape gardener Aaron Halliday. Sarah Fairley, Grace's mother, fled Miners Ridge and her embittered husband eight years ago. Now, in the absence of Grace, she finds herself pulled back to the small town where her estranged children and grandchildren live. Drawn into the local community, and trying to rebuild family relationships, she uncovers a long-kept secret that could change her world ... Can Grace, Sarah and their family find a way to heal? Who will have the courage to make the first move?
From the USA Today bestselling author of Kill All Your Darlings comes a chilling novel of guilt, regret, and a past that refuses to die.... Three months ago, Jenna Barton was supposed to meet her lifelong best friend Celia. But when Jenna arrived late, she found that Celia had disappeared—and she hasn’t been seen since. The only piece of evidence is a lone diamond earring found where Celia and Jenna were planning to meet, leading the national media to dub Celia “The Diamond Mom.” And even though Jenna has obsessively surfed message boards devoted to missing persons cases, she is no closer to finding any answers—or easing her guilt. But when her son’s new girlfriend disappears too, a stricken Jenna begins to unwind the tangled truth behind Celia’s tragedy. And as long-buried secrets finally come to light, she discovers how completely lives can be shattered by a few simple lies.
Winner of the American Academy’s Rome Prize for Fiction and the McKitterick Prize, Eli Gottlieb’s tender, harrowing coming-of-age novel finally returns to print. Denny Graubart, child-narrator and “domestic surveillance expert,” is having some terrible suspicions about his mother and autistic brother. It’s the 1960s, aka the Diagnostic Dark Ages of Autism, and while his mother struggles to keep his brother out of an institution, signs of something more disturbing are beginning to emerge before young Denny’s eyes. Battered by his own tragicomic sexual awakening during a long, hot summer, Denny will eventually find his most horrified suspicions about his family confirmed. A powerfully drawn portrait of two brothers locked into an asymmetrical childhood and a family struggling against a weight of medical ignorance, The Boy Who Went Away is “shockingly, electrically alive” (Phillip Lopate). It is also an indispensable bookend to Gottlieb’s Best Boy, which recounts the impact of autism on the same family from the other side, many years later, in the voice of a middle-aged autistic man.
Wally Thomas didn?t know how many days and nights he had been marching up the coast of the Bataan Peninsula. He was almost too numb to think, too full of pain. He tried to keep a steady pace, but the guards pressured the prisoners to keep moving, forced them close together, and in their exhaustion the men stumbled and knocked each other off stride. When that happened, the extra effort was almost overwhelming; there were times when Wally though he would go down ? and not get up ? the way so many other prisoners had already done. With each day getting worse in the Bataan death march, Wally could die of hunger, exposure, or even violence. Will his growing faith be enough to pull him through?Bobbi, now a nurse in the navy, meets a handsome young officer. She?s not sure how she feels about him, however, or whether he feels anything at all for her.Alex is in training as a paratrooper, but can he stick it out? And even if he can, how can he bring himself to fight the German people, whom he learned to love on his mission?Even young Gene knows he?ll be joining the service, but he wonders what kind of a soldier he?ll make.In Since You Went Away, the second volume of the Children of the Promise series, author Dean Hughes continues his saga of the Thomas family as they struggle to survive World War II. If you?re interested in Church of world history, or if you?re simply looking for a powerful LDS novel, you won?t want to miss Since You Went Away.
The astonishing untold history of the million and a half women who surrendered children for adoption due to enormous family and social pressure in the decades before Roe v. Wade. “It would take a heart of stone not to be moved by the oral histories of these women and by the courage and candor with which they express themselves.” —The Washington Post “A remarkably well-researched and accomplished book.” —The New York Times Book Review “A wrenching, riveting book.” —Chicago Tribune In this deeply moving and myth-shattering work, Ann Fessler brings out into the open for the first time the hidden social history of adoption before Roe v. Wade - and its lasting legacy. An adoptee who was herself surrendered during those years and recently made contact with her mother, Ann Fessler brilliantly brings to life the voices of more than a hundred women, as well as the spirit of those times, allowing the women to tell their stories in gripping and intimate detail.
In New York Times bestselling author Beth Harbison's most emotional novel ever, a fractured family must come together at a beach house haunted by the past. Willa has never fully recovered from the sudden death of her husband, Ben. She became an absent mother to her young son, Jamie, unable to comfort him while reeling from her own grief. Now, years after Ben’s death, Willa finally decides to return to the beach house where he passed. It’s time to move on and put the Ocean City, Maryland house on the market. When Willa arrives, the house is in worse shape than she could have imagined, and the memories of her time with Ben are overwhelming. They met at this house and she sees him around every corner. Literally. Ben’s ghost keeps reappearing, trying to start conversations with Willa. And she can’t help talking back. To protect her sanity, Willa enlists Jamie, her best friend Kristin, and Kristin’s daughter Kelsey to join her for one last summer at the beach. As they explore their old haunts, buried feelings come to the surface, Jamie and Kelsey rekindle their childhood friendship, and Willa searches for the chance to finally say goodbye to her husband and to reconnect with her son. Every Time You Go Away is a heartfelt, emotional story about healing a tragic loss, letting go, and coming together as a family.