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The Winters in Bloom
ISBN: , SKU: , AUTHOR: Tucker, Lisa, PUBLISHER: Atria Books, Kyra and David have been married for almost a decade and consider themselves happy - their home is comfortable, their jobs are stable, and their five year-old son, Michael, is simply perfect. Yet for reasons they've never fully shared with each other, the Winters have always been afraid that something will happen to the life they've created, and more importantly, to their little boy. David is a historian - he knows the past is inescapable, and yet he has spent fifteen years trying to escape the tragedy that ended his first marriage; trying to convince himself that if only he works hard enough, his new family will be safe. Kyra writes questions for a math textbook company; she loves puzzles and worships logic, yet she lives in fear of karma punishing her for the way she betrayed her sister, Amy, in college. After all, Amy was more than a sister - she was Kyra's only real family since their mother abandoned them as young children - and their estrangement weighs heavily on her conscience. So when Michael mysteriously disappears from his backyard one ordinary summer day, Kyra and David feel like the mistakes of their past have finally caught up to them. Each is convinced they know who has their son, but to find him, the Winters must embark upon an odyssey through time and memory. Their journey will involve David's mother, Sandra, who offers both her son and her daughter-in-law a path to understanding, and David's ex-wife Courtney, who lives just across town but in a universe away, where she struggles with the demons that caused her to lose everything she loved that fateful night fifteen years ago. It's only when a mysterious stranger enters their lives that they will discover it's not too late to become the kind of family they've always wanted to be--if only they can find a way to forgive themselves, and believe in the gift of a second chance. Lisa Tucker's most optimistic work since "Once Upon a Day, The Winters in Bloom "is a wise, life-affirming tale that is both poignant and surprisingly funny. Though the fast-paced, captivating story will keep readers turning pages, the novel's true power lies in its profound engagement with what it means to be alive: the mistakes we make, the price we pay, the fragility of human happiness but also the stubborn strength of the human heart.
Touching Winter
ISBN: , SKU: , AUTHOR: Rozelle, Ron, PUBLISHER: Texas Christian University Press, Ron Rozelle's new novel, Touching Winter, is a four-part-evocation of memory and place and the yearning for home. Each part of the novel begins with a meditation on one aspect of the protagonist's life as he watches the unpredictable weather of East Texas. When Will was a young boy, he and his grandfather enjoyed being out in the spectacular East Texas storms. These sessions taught Will many things about life--ranching, weather, character, how to be a man--and bound Will to the family land and to his grandfather. Only at the ranch does Will feel like the person he was, or would like to be, before wrong decisions turned his life down an entirely different path. A powerful, early romance proved disastrous, and the relationship haunts him. To compensate for lost love, Will carved a niche for himself in the competitive concrete industry, inventing a technique to make mixing trucks more efficient and becoming wealthier than he could have dreamed. His marriage to a Houston socialite is thin and brittle, unsatisfying for his wife, Lauren, and for himself. Their daughter Aimee lives in California, as far away from her family as possible. As Will ages, he turns to the ranch as a place of clarity in times of crisis, eventually moving back there entirely. He exchanges the public life he and Lauren led in Houston for the simplicity of walks along the rustic fence, lunch with old friends at the town's only diner, and long evenings on the porch watching the stars. Along the way, a fierce, red-breasted hawk comes to represent the spiritual for Will, and he is forced to face the consequences of earlier decisions. "After his soup and crackers he came out here, not interested in the inane offerings ontelevision on such a splendid night. All those years away from here-down in the flat, concrete and steel landscape of Houston--he missed this porch. These hills. These stars. This porch swing, and the larger one that once hung here. He finds Orion, the hunter, in a sky packed with stars. It is a clear, cool night that often precedes a big norther, as if Nature has done a good cleaning, making sure everything is scrubbed bright before the onslaught of a particularly rambunctious visitor. He listens for geese; hopes for them. For the reassurance of their presence, of things moving along... None yet. So far there's just been the sound of a car as it passes, and the slight rustling of leaves in the giant cottonwood that was already old before he was born."
Mama's Heart
ISBN: , SKU: , AUTHOR: Boomhower, Mary J., PUBLISHER: Xlibris Corporation, I‛ll Carry You My Child ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ I just remember praying so silently, "Dear Jesus, will you please take my trembling hand?" Lord can‛t you see, I‛m losing all of my courage, I‛m weak, my legs are shaking, and I can barely stand. I know that you see this door in front of me, my precious daughter is resting in peace on the other side. I am just so afraid of seeing what I most want to see, "Lord, Do you think, this time, you could carry me inside?" Then Jesus said, "My child you must have forgotten, for this surely isn‛t the very first time. You‛ve had other troubling times in your life, as I did then, I‛ll carry you now, and you will be just fine." I can‛t tell you this won‛t be painful, for it will, there will be things that you won‛t want to see. But someday even painful memories become cherished, and they‛ll remain "deep, in the heart of you and me." Don‛t you remember the day that you followed me child, as we walked lazily along in the sand? There was only "one set of footprints" then, don‛t you know, "my child, I‛ll carry you again?" 18 MARY J. BOOMHOWER Did You See The Angels? ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ Danni, "Did you see the angels hovering near, and did you ask them to please go away?" "Did you tell them you would go another time, but that you just couldn‛t go that day?" Danni, "Did you tell them you were on your way home, and that I was counting the minutes to see you?" "Did you tell them your new life had barely begun, and that you still had so many things to do?" Danni, "Did you tell them, that you really loved "The Lord," and you would gladly go to Heaven someday?" "Did you tell them that we hadn‛t said our good-byes, and that you just couldn‛t leave me that way?" Danni, "Did you tell them that your mama wasn‛t that strong," and that I just couldn‛t bear losing my child?" "Did you tell them how we had to hug every day, and how much I would miss your smile " MAMA'S HEART 19 Our Last Cuddle ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ All signs of life were gone from you, when I first saw you that day. The pain that you had suffered, was still on your face, and I wanted so badly to take it away. I needed to wrap my arms around you, and to give you lots of baby kisses. Just the way we did when you were small, and when you had all of those "near misses " I gently blew kisses over your body, while I prayed that you safely made it "home." Then I really thought I heard you say, "Mama, please cuddle me once more, while we‛r
The Day the World Came to Town: 9/11 in Gander, Newfoundland
ISBN: , SKU: , AUTHOR: DeFede, Jim, PUBLISHER: William Morrow & Company, "For the better part of a week, nearly every man, woman, and child in Gander and the surrounding smaller towns stopped what they were doing so they could help. They placed their lives on hold for a group of strangers and asked for nothing in return. They affirmed the basic goodness of man at a time when it was easy to doubt such humanity still existed." When thirty-eight jetliners bound for the United States were forced to land in Gander, Newfoundland, on September , due to the closing of United States airspace, the citizens of this small community were called upon to come to the aid of more than six thousand displaced travelers. Roxanne and Clarke Loper were excited to be on their way home from a lengthy and exhausting trip to Kazakhstan, where they had adopted a daughter, when their plane suddenly changed course and they found themselves in Newfoundland. Hannah and Dennis O'Rourke, who had been on vacation in Ireland, were forced to receive updates by telephone on the search for their son Kevin, who was among the firefighters missing at the World Trade Center. George Vitale, a New York state trooper and head of the governor's security detail in New York City who was returning from a trip to Dublin, struggled to locate his sister Patty, who worked in the Twin Towers. A family of Russian immigrants, on their way to the Seattle area to begin a new life, dealt with the uncertainty of conditions in their future home. The people of Gander were asked to aid and care for these distraught travelers, as well as for thousands more, and their response was truly extraordinary. Oz Fudge, the town constable, searched all over Gander for a flight-crew member so that he could give her a hug as a favor to her sister, a fellow law enforcement officer who managed to reach him by phone. Eithne Smith, an elementary-school teacher, helped the passengers staying at her school put together letters to family members all over the world, which she then faxed. Bonnie Harris, Vi Tucker, and Linda Humby, members of a local animal protection agency, crawled into the jets' cargo holds to feed and care for all of the animals on the flights. Hundreds of people put their names on a list to take passengers into their homes and give them a chance to get cleaned up and relax. "The Day the World Came to Town" is a positively heartwarming account of the citizens of Gander and its surrounding communities and the unexpected guests who were welcomed with exemplary kindness.
The Color of Water: A Black Man's Tribute to His White
ISBN: , SKU: , AUTHOR: McBride, James, PUBLISHER: Riverhead Books, Make this your next book club selection and everyone saves. Get 15% off when you order 5 or more of this title for your book club. Simply enter the coupon code MCBRIDECOLOR at checkout. This offer does not apply to eBook purchases. This offer applies to only one downloadable audio per purchase. Who is Ruth McBride Jordan? A self-declared "light-skinned" woman evasive about her ethnicity, yet steadfast in her love for her twelve black children. James McBride, journalist, musician, and son, explores his mother's past, as well as his own upbringing and heritage, in a poignant and powerful debut, "The Color Of Water: A Black Man's Tribute to His White Mother." The son of a black minister and a woman who would not admit she was white, James McBride grew up in "orchestrated chaos" with his eleven siblings in the poor, all-black projects of Red Hook, Brooklyn. "Mommy," a fiercely protective woman with "dark eyes full of pep and fire," herded her brood to Manhattan's free cultural events, sent them off on buses to the best (and mainly Jewish) schools, demanded good grades, and commanded respect. As a young man, McBride saw his mother as a source of embarrassment, worry, and confusion--and reached thirty before he began to discover the truth about her early life and long-buried pain. In The Color of Water, McBride retraces his mother's footsteps and, through her searing and spirited voice, recreates her remarkable story. The daughter of a failed itinerant Orthodox rabbi, she was born Rachel Shilsky (actually Ruchel Dwara Zylska) in Poland on April . Fleeing pogroms, her family emigrated to America and ultimately settled in Suffolk, Virginia, a small town where anti-Semitism and racial tensions ran high. With candor and immediacy, Ruth describes her parents' loveless marriage; her fragile, handicapped mother; her cruel, sexually-abusive father; and the rest of the family and life she abandoned. At seventeen, after fleeing Virginia and settling in New York City, Ruth married a black minister and founded the all- black New Brown Memorial Baptist Church in her Red Hook living room. "God is the color of water," Ruth McBride taught her children, firmly convinced that life's blessings and life's values transcend race. Twice widowed, and continually confronting overwhelming adversity and racism, Ruth's determination, drive and discipline saw her dozen children through college--and most through graduate school. At age 65, she herself received a degree in social work from Temple University. Interspersed throughout his mother's compelling narrative, McBride shares candid recollections of his own experiences as a mixed-race child of poverty, his flirtations with drugs and violence, and his eventual self- realization and professional success. The Color of Water touches readers of all colors as a vivid portrait of growing up, a haunting meditation on race and identity, and a ly
The Average Human
ISBN: , SKU: , AUTHOR: Toby-Potter, Ellen / Potter, Ellen, PUBLISHER: MacAdam/Cage Publishing, Every small town in America has one: the family whose daughters are perpetually pregnant and whose sons go directly from the eleventh grade to the county lock-up. In the town of Loomis, in rural New York, that family is the Mayborns. Long haunted by accusations of incest and infanticide, the Mayborns have become a tribal clan of pariahs, with a roster of monstrosities attached to their name. June Mayborn, a fourteen-year-old with a preternatural sense of smell and a dubious code of morals, has an affair with a married candy-store owner. When the affair sours, June sets a deadly fire, accidentally killing an elderly man who had, over a decade before, established a cult-like commune in the foothills of Loomis. The subsequent funeral draws the beautiful and capricious Iris Utter, whose two-year-old son went missing from Loomis eight years earlier. Both Iris and her somber sixteen-year-old daughter, Lee, embark upon a dangerous and disturbing relationship with the Mayborns, which will both ravage and redeem their lives. When I was a child, my family rented a cabin in rural upstate New York, and down the road lived a family of local pariahs. Tales of their alleged misdeeds ranged from petit larceny to incest to murder, turning them into a band of provincial monsters. And, as if to cinch the case against them, all the daughters in the family had fingernails that were black and twisted, as though corruption sprouted directly from their fingertips. They kept to themselves, the girls bearing a disturbing shell-shocked look in their pale eyes, until they all simply picked up and left one day without a word, providing the town with yet more fodder for gossip. Only later, when I wrote about thefictional Mayborns, a much fiercer version of this real-life family, did I wonder about their aura of impending doom. Had they simply become trapped within the town's collective fiction of them, or were they truly a monstrous second cousin to the average human? For me, my first novel, The Average Human, will always be associated with schlepping bowls of pad thai, since I wrote the bulk of it while I waitressed in a Thai restaurant. Another waitress at the restaurant was also writing a novel, and together we made a pact to exchange at least two pages of writing every day. We kept the storylines and the characters alive by speculating about them endlessly, in between hauling plates of curried chicken or while we were polishing silverware. I'm sure we annoyed the hell out of the rest of the wait staff, but we finished our novels within months of each other. And we were each other's constant reminder that we were writers, not waitresses, despite the peanut sauce stains on our shirtsleeves. The Average Human is vivid, flawlessly written, and perfectly constructed. It's easy to remember whole passages at a time, because they instantly take root in your imagination. Ellen is the type of writer that readers will clamor for more of as soon as they finish this book.--P.W.