Three men in Sing Sing - all writers - awaiting execution for the same crime. The body of the victim held only two bullets - one of the men is innocent. How can they find out before morning which one of them is to sign the pardon blank? Sing Sing Nights is a startling example of Mr. Keeler's uncanny power to unravel the most involved plots and during the unraveling deepen the mystery until the very end of the story.
Have you ever wondered who hummed the first tune? Was it the flowers? The waves or the moon? Dove Award-winning recording artist Ellie Holcomb answers with a lovely lyrical tale, one that reveals that God our Maker sang the first song, and He created us all with a song to sing. Go to bhkids.com to find this book's Parent Connection, an easy tool to help moms and dads (or anyone else who loves kids) discuss the book's message with their child. We're all about connecting parents and kids to each other and to God's Word.
A soothing Hebrew lullaby takes on added meaning for a refugee family in this visually stunning debut. As the moon rises, a family steps into the night on a journey toward a new beginning. Along the way, their little girl delights in the wonders of nature, saying good night--lilah tov--to the creatures and landscapes they pass. Wherever she looks--on land, in the sky above and even, eventually, in the water below her boat--there are marvels to behold. "Lilah tov to the birds in the trees, lilah tov to the fish in the sea." Then, when their travels are finally over, her parents tuck her in tight, safe and ready for dreams in their new home. This lyrical lullaby celebrates the beauty of our world and the spirit of resilience in a refugee family.
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.
A captivating and child-friendly look at the extraordinary journey that monarch butterflies take each year from Canada to Mexico; with a text in both English and Spanish. Rhyming text and lively illustrations showcase the epic trip taken by the monarch butterflies. At the end of each summer, these international travelers leave Canada to fly south to Mexico for the winter--and now readers can come along for the ride! Over mountains capped with snow, to the deserts down below. Children will be delighted to share in the fascinating journey of the monarchs and be introduced to the people and places they pass before they finally arrive in the forests that their ancestors called home.
A Morris Award Finalist Longlisted for the National Book Award For fans of The Book Thief and The Boy in the Striped Pajamas comes a lushly illustrated novel about a teen Holocaust survivor who must come to terms with who she is and how to rebuild her life. "A tour de force. This powerful story of love, loss, and survival is not to be missed." --KRISTIN HANNAH, #1 New York Times bestselling author of The Nightingale After losing her family and everything she knew in the Nazi concentration camps, Gerta is finally liberated, only to find herself completely alone. Without her papa, her music, or even her true identity, she must move past the task of surviving and on to living her life. In the displaced persons camp where she is staying, Gerta meets Lev, a fellow teen survivor who she just might be falling for, despite her feelings for someone else. With a newfound Jewish identity she never knew she had, and a return to the life of music she thought she lost forever, Gerta must choose how to build a new future. "What the Night Sings is a book from the heart, of the heart, and to the heart. Vesper Stamper's Gerta will stay with you long after you turn the last page. Her story is one of hope and redemption and life--a blessing to the world." --Deborah Heiligman, award-winning author of Charles and Emma and Vincent and Theo A WALL STREET JOURNAL BEST CHILDREN'S BOOK OF 2018 A KIRKUS REVIEWS BEST BOOK OF 2018
From the riotous days of Prohibition and the Jazz Age to the brutal awakening of Pearl Harbor, one man ruled the fate of America's most dangerous criminals. He was Lewis E. Lawes, warden of Sing Sing prison, the Big House up the river, who believed that no man was beyond redemption. Warden Lawes couldn't banish the electric chair (though he tried) but he knew that humanitarian care and good morale provided better security than the stoutest walls. Lawes befriended the Hollywood greats, Charlie Chaplin and Humphrey Bogart and Spencer Tracy and Harry Warner, opening Sing Sing to the movies and exposing prisoners to the glamour of the silver screen. He brought Babe Ruth to Sing Sing, fielded a winning football team called The Black Sheep that brought gridiron glory to the circuit known as the Big Pen, and ran training shops, school classes and culture programs. Truly, Warden Lawes made Sing Sing sing. But Lawes was no pushover. He brought law to Sing Sing, a tale that comes alive in the hands of prize-winning New York Times reporter Ralph Blumenthal. He killed on orders from the state, consigning 303 condemned men and women to the electric chair. But he crusaded fiercely against the death penalty as useless and preached that every man deserved a second chance, even if, in the end, he faced a terrible betrayal. Lawes taught the nation that a jail was a lockup but a prison was a community. With his perfect name and flawless eye for fashion, Lawes took over as the ninth warden in eight years -- at 39, the youngest man to lead the century-old institution, then overflowing with more than a thousand hardened criminals and luckless youths. Vice was rife -- bribery, alcohol, drugs and sex. The political bosses held sway, swinging deals for favored inmates. Enemies accused him of coddling prisoners but he ridiculed the charge. No one was coddled on a food budget of 18 cents a day. Lawes lived with his wife and daughters in a Victorian mansion abutting the cellblock, where he was shaved each morning by a prison barber convicted of slashing a man's throat, the household cook was a murderer, and his youngest daughter's favorite babysitter was serving twenty-five years for kidnapping. Lawes tamed the tyrannical Charles E. Chapin who had terrorized generations of reporters as the editor of Joseph Pulitzer's Evening World before murdering his wife and winding up as Lawes's favorite horticulturist, the Rose Man of Sing Sing. Lawes championed the advent of radio and used it to inspire his prisoners and educate the public on penal reform. He wrote film scripts and radio plays and dramas and best-selling books. But in the end, his finest tribute came not from the mighty but a lowly prisoner in the yard who muttered, to no one in particular, "There was a right guy."
Ultra-Boiled is a collection of 23 stories about the evil men do, and they're often told in the voice of the evil-doer. Gary Lovisi has a knack for the tough edge of literature, spending his life immersed in the paperback world of Brooklyn, and in these stories, hand-picked for their disturbance factor, he shows you what ULTRA-BOILED really means. Gary talks about his life in crime in an introduction.
