After her father's untimely death, Theresa faced a rocky and unstable childhood. But there was one place she felt safe: her grandmother's house in Mason, a depressed former copper mining town in Michigan's Upper Peninsula. Gram's passing leaves Theresa once again at the mercy of the lasting, sometimes destructive grief of her Ojibwe mother and white stepfather. As the family travels back and forth across the country in search of a better life, one thing becomes clear: if they want to find peace, they will need to return to their roots. The Mason House is at once an elegy for lost loved ones and a tale of growing up amid hardship and hope, exploring how time and the support of a community can at last begin to heal even the deepest wounds.
WINNER OF THE ROYAL PHILHARMONIC SOCIETY STORYTELLING AWARD 2021 ‘Riveting, taking in prejudice as well as sacrifice. There are 4.30am starts, lost instruments, fractured wrists, all captured with vivid flourishes. A paean to camaraderie.’ Observer Seven brothers and sisters. All of them classically trained musicians. One was Young Musician of the Year and performed for the royal family. The eldest has released her first album, showcasing the works of Clara Schumann. These siblings don’t come from the rarefied environment of elite music schools, but from a state comprehensive in Nottingham. How did they do it? Their mother, Kadiatu Kanneh-Mason, opens up about what it takes to raise a musical family in a Britain divided by class and race. What comes out is a beautiful and heartrending memoir of the power of determination, camaraderie and a lot of hard work. The Kanneh-Masons are a remarkable family. But what truly sparkles in this eloquent memoir is the joyous affirmation that children are a gift and we must do all we can to nurture them.
The old, abandoned house at the end of Grace's street is a local legend. All the neighbors say it's haunted, but every Halloween someone leaves candy on the front porch. Grace and her friends decide to investigate, hoping to find out once and for all if someone—or something—really is haunting the place. But what if there is more to the house than there seems?
Harold Godwineson was king of England from January 1066 until his death at Hastings in October of that year. For much of the reign of Edward the Confessor, who was married to Harold’s sister Eadgyth, the Godwine family, led by Earl Godwine, had dominated English politics. In The Rise and Fall of the House of Godwine, Emma Mason tells the turbulent story of a remarkable family which, until Harold’s unexpected defeat, looked far more likely than the dukes of Normandy to provide the long-term rulers of England. But for the Norman Conquest, an Anglo-Saxon England ruled by the Godwine dynasty would have developed very differently from that dominated by the Normans.
When a scaredy-housecat is home alone for the first time, he and his furry friends are forced to face monsters and their fears on a quest to save the day. This middle-grade graphic novel series is filled with silly jokes, adventure, and a whole lot of fun. One house, three cats, and a lot of trouble! Buster has only one job: keep the house safe. Too bad he is a massive scaredy-cat. When his owner goes away and he suddenly finds his home filled with monsters, Buster has the biggest challenge he’s ever faced. Can he learn to be brave before his owner gets back? In the first volume of a hijinks-filled graphic novel series, the colorful artwork and hilarious characters will keep you laughing until the very end.
Finding Home shows readers an inside look at the lives of six beneficial native creatures through an engaging and educational tale of a mason bee's search for a new home. North America is home to almost 4,000 species of native bees, most of which fly below our radar as they perform indispensable environmental services. Finding Home: A Story of a Mason Bee is an informational realistic fiction, with a focus on science, nature, and conservation written in prose focused on bringing attention to these forgotten creatures. Finding Home: A Story of a Mason bee shows readers the unique lives mason bees lead, and also gives a look at some other common beneficial wildlife. Follow a mason bee as she emerges from her nest to discover her habitat is being destroyed by human development and is propelled into the surrounding landscapes in order to find a place to make a new home. During her search, she comes across various other important wildlife, such as bumble bees, ants, and hummingbirds. Each encounter teaches the mason bee and the reader a little bit about the animals encountered, and the book ends with a glossary of terms including more information about each animal seen in the story.
In the small town of Glenmont, a vacant, forgotten house sits atop an overlooking bluff. William and Emily Broadmoor are in dire strait when the economic implosion puts a severe dent in their small home renovation business. When all hope seems lost, William is approached by a man with an unrefusable offer-the chance to fix a dilapidated stone mansion in Maine. Initially, the details of the offer seem too good to be true, but with nowhere else to turn, William and Emily decide taking a look can't hurt.
Howard Van Doren Shaw designed stately country houses in and around Chicago—from affluent Lake Forest, Illinois, and Lake Geneva, Wisconsin, to Iowa, Minnesota, Ohio, and Indiana—from 1894 to 1926, a period in American architecture that spanned the Gilded Age, the adoption of Beaux-Arts classicism as the ideal for civic architecture, the invention of the skyscraper, and the beginning of modernism. Born in 1869, he worked for the leading industrialists of that period, including Reuben H. Donnelley of printing fame, newspaper giant Joseph Medill Patterson, Edward Forster Swift, the meatpacking king, and Edward L. Ryerson of Ryerson Steel. A contemporary of Frank Lloyd Wright, Shaw explored many of the same ideas as the Prairie School Architects within the forms of traditional architecture. Though he was recognized as one of the leading country house architects of the early twentieth century, his name was largely forgotten after his death. Like many traditional architects practicing today, Shaw was skilled at adapting historic precedents to suit contemporary living, in particular the easy flow of interior space that became a design hallmark of the period for traditionalists and modernists alike. For the new and fashionable suburb of Lake Forest, Shaw created Market Square, the town center, which was lauded for its design as both a unique town green and the first American shopping center designed to accommodate automobiles. This timely reappraisal of Howard Van Doren Shaw’s work features many previously unpublished images from the Shaw Archive in the Burnham and Ryerson Library at the Art Institute of Chicago and the Chicago History Museum, rare construction drawings, and new color photography as well as a catalogue of Shaw’s residential work. His legacy includes substantial houses in prosperous communities, many of which are still standing—including Ragdale, once Shaw’s own summer house in Lake Forest, now home to the prestigious artists’ community; the Becker Estate on Chicago’s North Shore; and The Hermann House overlooking Lake Michigan.
