Download or read book Before We Were Yours written by Lisa Wingate and published by Ballantine Books. This book was released on 2017-06-06 with total page 354 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: THE BLOCKBUSTER HIT—Over two million copies sold! A New York Times, USA Today, Wall Street Journal, and Publishers Weekly Bestseller “Poignant, engrossing.”—People • “Lisa Wingate takes an almost unthinkable chapter in our nation’s history and weaves a tale of enduring power.”—Paula McLain Memphis, 1939. Twelve-year-old Rill Foss and her four younger siblings live a magical life aboard their family’s Mississippi River shantyboat. But when their father must rush their mother to the hospital one stormy night, Rill is left in charge—until strangers arrive in force. Wrenched from all that is familiar and thrown into a Tennessee Children’s Home Society orphanage, the Foss children are assured that they will soon be returned to their parents—but they quickly realize the dark truth. At the mercy of the facility’s cruel director, Rill fights to keep her sisters and brother together in a world of danger and uncertainty. Aiken, South Carolina, present day. Born into wealth and privilege, Avery Stafford seems to have it all: a successful career as a federal prosecutor, a handsome fiancé, and a lavish wedding on the horizon. But when Avery returns home to help her father weather a health crisis, a chance encounter leaves her with uncomfortable questions and compels her to take a journey through her family’s long-hidden history, on a path that will ultimately lead either to devastation or to redemption. Based on one of America’s most notorious real-life scandals—in which Georgia Tann, director of a Memphis-based adoption organization, kidnapped and sold poor children to wealthy families all over the country—Lisa Wingate’s riveting, wrenching, and ultimately uplifting tale reminds us how, even though the paths we take can lead to many places, the heart never forgets where we belong. Publishers Weekly’s #3 Longest-Running Bestseller of 2017 • Winner of the Southern Book Prize • If All Arkansas Read the Same Book Selection This edition includes a new essay by the author about shantyboat life.

Download or read book Before We Were Free written by Julia Alvarez and published by Laurel Leaf. This book was released on 2007-12-18 with total page 186 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Anita de la Torre never questioned her freedom living in the Dominican Republic. But by her 12th birthday in 1960, most of her relatives have emigrated to the United States, her Tío Toni has disappeared without a trace, and the government’s secret police terrorize her remaining family because of their suspected opposition of el Trujillo’s dictatorship. Using the strength and courage of her family, Anita must overcome her fears and fly to freedom, leaving all that she once knew behind. From renowned author Julia Alvarez comes an unforgettable story about adolescence, perseverance, and one girl’s struggle to be free.

Download or read book Before and After written by Judy Christie and published by Ballantine Books. This book was released on 2019-10-22 with total page 321 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The compelling, poignant true stories of victims of a notorious adoption scandal—some of whom learned the truth from Lisa Wingate’s bestselling novel Before We Were Yours and were reunited with birth family members as a result of its wide reach From the 1920s to 1950, Georgia Tann ran a black-market baby business at the Tennessee Children’s Home Society in Memphis. She offered up more than 5,000 orphans tailored to the wish lists of eager parents—hiding the fact that many weren’t orphans at all, but stolen sons and daughters of poor families, desperate single mothers, and women told in maternity wards that their babies had died. The publication of Lisa Wingate’s novel Before We Were Yours brought new awareness of Tann’s lucrative career in child trafficking. Adoptees who knew little about their pasts gained insight into the startling facts behind their family histories. Encouraged by their contact with Wingate and award-winning journalist Judy Christie, who documented the stories of fifteen adoptees in this book, many determined Tann survivors set out to trace their roots and find their birth families. Before and After includes moving and sometimes shocking accounts of the ways in which adoptees were separated from their first families. Often raised as only children, many have joyfully reunited with siblings in the final decades of their lives. Christie and Wingate tell of first meetings that are all the sweeter and more intense for time missed and of families from very different social backgrounds reaching out to embrace better-late-than-never brothers, sisters, and cousins. In a poignant culmination of art meeting life, many of the long-silent victims of the tragically corrupt system return to Memphis with the authors to reclaim their stories at a Tennessee Children’s Home Society reunion . . . with extraordinary results. Advance praise for Before and After “In Before and After, authors Judy Christie and Lisa Wingate tackle the true stories behind Wingate’s blockbuster Before We Were Yours, of the orphans who survived the Tennessee Children’s Home Society. With a journalist’s keen eye and a novelist’s elegant prose, Christie and Wingate weave together the stories that inspired Before We Were Yours with the lives that were changed as a result of reading the novel. Readers will be educated, enlightened, and enraptured by this important and flawlessly executed book.”—Pam Jenoff, author of The Orphan’s Tale and The Lost Girls of Paris

Download or read book Before We Were Strangers written by Renée Carlino and published by Simon and Schuster. This book was released on 2015-08-18 with total page 320 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: From the USA TODAY bestselling author of Sweet Thing and Nowhere But Here comes a love story about a Craigslist “missed connection” post that gives two people a second chance at love fifteen years after they were separated in New York City. To the Green-eyed Lovebird: We met fifteen years ago, almost to the day, when I moved my stuff into the NYU dorm room next to yours at Senior House. You called us fast friends. I like to think it was more. We lived on nothing but the excitement of finding ourselves through music (you were obsessed with Jeff Buckley), photography (I couldn’t stop taking pictures of you), hanging out in Washington Square Park, and all the weird things we did to make money. I learned more about myself that year than any other. Yet, somehow, it all fell apart. We lost touch the summer after graduation when I went to South America to work for National Geographic. When I came back, you were gone. A part of me still wonders if I pushed you too hard after the wedding… I didn’t see you again until a month ago. It was a Wednesday. You were rocking back on your heels, balancing on that thick yellow line that runs along the subway platform, waiting for the F train. I didn’t know it was you until it was too late, and then you were gone. Again. You said my name; I saw it on your lips. I tried to will the train to stop, just so I could say hello. After seeing you, all of the youthful feelings and memories came flooding back to me, and now I’ve spent the better part of a month wondering what your life is like. I might be totally out of my mind, but would you like to get a drink with me and catch up on the last decade and a half? M

Download or read book Before We Were Trans written by Dr. Kit Heyam and published by Seal Press. This book was released on 2022-09-13 with total page 278 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A groundbreaking global history of gender nonconformity Today’s narratives about trans people tend to feature individuals with stable gender identities that fit neatly into the categories of male or female. Those stories, while important, fail to account for the complex realities of many trans people’s lives. Before We Were Trans illuminates the stories of people across the globe, from antiquity to the present, whose experiences of gender have defied binary categories. Blending historical analysis with sharp cultural criticism, trans historian and activist Kit Heyam offers a new, radically inclusive trans history, chronicling expressions of trans experience that are often overlooked, like gender-nonconforming fashion and wartime stage performance. Before We Were Trans transports us from Renaissance Venice to seventeenth-century Angola, from Edo Japan to early America, and looks to the past to uncover new horizons for possible trans futures.

Download or read book We written by Yevgeny Zamyatin and published by . This book was released on 2015-07-28 with total page 232 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "1000 Novels Everyone Must Read: # 1 Best Dystopias" The Guardian"Fantastic!" The New York Times "A dystopian novel for the 21st century" The Week "Years before "1984," Yevgeny Zamyatin wrote We - a dystopian nightmare that remains eerily relevant even as Huxley and Orwell seem almost quaint." Salon The time is around a thousand years from now, and the place is a great city-state in which a mathematically perfect society has been established. People here do not have names, but numbers only. Since they have nothing to hide from each other, they live in buildings made of glass. Their lives are regulated by The Time Tablet, a universal schedule that clearly states which number should do what at a particular hour.The novel starts with a call. As a new spaceship, called Integral, is being built, the One State calls upon its citizens to write something praising their state so that the Integral could carry this message to other civilizations in the depths of the Universe. A 32-year-old mathematician "named" D-503, who is a Constructor of the Integral and a sincere admirer of the One State, starts a diary to describe his life to his unknown extraterrestrial readers. He writes about FREEDOM and LOVE, CONTROL and HAPPINESS. This diary is the novel itself.EXTRACT "You are afraid of it because it is stronger than you; you hate it because you are afraid of it; you love it because you cannot subdue it to your will. Only the unsubduable can be loved." "...Those two, in paradise, were given a choice: happiness without freedom, or freedom without happiness. There was no third alternative..." Yevgeny Zamyatin

Download or read book Before We Were Blue written by E. J. Schwartz and published by North Star Editions, Inc.. This book was released on 2021-09-14 with total page 336 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In a treatment center for eating disorders, teenagers Shoshana and Rowan develop an intense, sometimes destructive connection. Ultimately, the girls will have to make a choice: get healthy on their own—or stay sick together.

Download or read book Before We Were Strangers written by Brenda Novak and published by MIRA. This book was released on 2018-12-04 with total page 391 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: New York Times–Bestselling Author: “I loved this twisty tale of friends, enemies, lovers, liars, and a family fractured by secrets.” —Susan Wiggs Five-year-old Sloane McBride couldn’t sleep that night. Her parents were arguing again, their harsh words heating the cool autumn air. And then there was that other sound—the ominous thump before all went quiet. In the morning, her mother was gone. The official story was that she left. Her loving, devoted mother! That hadn’t sat any better at the time than it did when Sloane moved out at eighteen, anxious to leave her small Texas hometown in search of anywhere else. But not even a fresh start working as a model in New York could keep the nightmares at bay. Or her fears that the domineering father she grew up with wasn’t just difficult—he was deadly. Now another traumatic loss forces Sloane to realize she owes it to her mother to find out the truth, even if it means returning to a town full of secrets and lies, a jilted ex-boyfriend, and a father and brother who’d rather see her silenced. But as Sloane starts digging into the past, the question isn’t whether she can uncover what really happened that night—it’s what will remain of her family if she does . . . “A dark, twisty plot that will leave readers unsure until the very end keeps the pages turning in this engrossing, insightful romantic thriller.” —Library Journal “The kind of book best swallowed in one sitting: suspenseful, surprising, and 100% addictive.” —Kimberly Belle, USA Today–bestselling author of The Marriage Lie

Download or read book Before We Were Wicked written by Eric Jerome Dickey and published by Penguin. This book was released on 2020-04-07 with total page 370 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: From New York Times bestselling author Eric Jerome Dickey, “one of the most successful Black authors of the last quarter-century”* comes a novel about the how one chance meeting can change everything in this thrilling, sexy tale of star-crossed lust. They say the love of money is the root of all evil, but for Ken Swift, it's the love of a woman. Ken is twenty-one, hurting people for cash to try to pay his way through college, when he lays eyes on Jimi Lee, the woman who will change the course of his entire life. What's meant to be a one-night stand with the Harvard-bound beauty turns into an explosion of sexual chemistry that neither can quit. And when Jimi Lee becomes pregnant, their two very different worlds collide in ways they never could have anticipated. Passion, infidelity, and raw emotion combine in Eric Jerome Dickey's poignant, erotic portrait of a relationship: the rise, the fall, and the scars⁠—and desire⁠—that never fade. *The New York Times

Download or read book When We Were Orphans written by Kazuo Ishiguro and published by Vintage. This book was released on 2001-01-16 with total page 481 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: From the winner of the Nobel Prize in Literature and author of the Booker Prize–winning novel The Remains of the Day comes this stunning work of soaring imagination. Born in early twentieth-century Shanghai, Banks was orphaned at the age of nine after the separate disappearances of his parents. Now, more than twenty years later, he is a celebrated figure in London society; yet the investigative expertise that has garnered him fame has done little to illuminate the circumstances of his parents' alleged kidnappings. Banks travels to the seething, labyrinthine city of his memory in hopes of solving the mystery of his own painful past, only to find that war is ravaging Shanghai beyond recognition—and that his own recollections are proving as difficult to trust as the people around him. Masterful, suspenseful and psychologically acute, When We Were Orphans offers a profound meditation on the shifting quality of memory, and the possibility of avenging one’s past.

Download or read book Before You Were Mine written by Maribeth Boelts and published by Penguin. This book was released on 2007 with total page 34 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Adopting a shelter dog can come with many questions, but also endless love. A little boy imagines what life was like for his new dog before he adopted him from a shelter. Maybe he had a boy who loved him, but the family had to move and couldn't keep him. Maybe he belonged to someone who didn't appreciate how mischievous puppies can be. Maybe he was treated badly, and now he can be shown all the love he's been missing. This boy wonders about all of these things, but maybe they don't matter. Because now, his dog is home. Winner of the Humane Society KIND Children's Picture Book Award and the ASPCA Henry Bergh Children's Book Award, this touching story celebrates all who support, care for, and adopt shelter dogs.

Download or read book Mothers Before written by Edan Lepucki and published by Abrams. This book was released on 2020-04-07 with total page 211 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Who was your mother before she was a mother? Essays and photos from Brit Bennett, Jennifer Egan, Danzy Senna, Laura Lippman, Jia Tolentino, and many more. In this remarkable collection, New York Times–bestselling novelist Edan Lepucki gathers more than sixty original essays and favorite photographs to explore this question. The daughters in Mothers Before are writers and poets, artists and teachers, and the images and stories they share reveal the lives of women in ways that are vulnerable and true, sometimes funny, sometimes sad, and always moving. Contributors include: Brit Bennett * Jennine Capó Crucet * Jennifer Egan * Angela Garbes * Annabeth Gish * Alison Roman * Lisa See * Danzy Senna * Dana Spiotta * Lan Samantha Chang * Laura Lippman * Jia Tolentino * Tiffany Nguyen * Charmaine Craig * Maya Ramakrishnan * Eirene Donohue * and many others

Download or read book Who We Were Before written by Leah Mercer and published by Lake Union Publishing. This book was released on 2016-10 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Romantic Novel Award Nominee Zoe knows that it wasn't really her fault. Of course it wasn't. But if she'd just grasped harder, run faster, lunged quicker, she might have saved him. And Edward doesn't really blame her, though his bitter words at the time still haunt her, and he can no more take them back than she can halt the car that killed their son. Two years on, every day is a tragedy. Edward knows they should take healing steps together, but he's tired of being shut out. For Zoe, it just seems easier to let grief lead the way. A weekend in Paris might be their last hope for reconciliation, but mischance sees them separated before they've even left Gare du Nord. Lost and alone, Edward and Zoe must try to find their way back to each other--and find their way back to the people they were before. But is that even possible?

Download or read book The People We Were Before written by Annabelle Thorpe and published by Hachette UK. This book was released on 2016-04-21 with total page 380 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: If war is madness, how can love survive? Yugoslavia, summer 1979. A new village. A new life. But eight-year-old Miro knows the real reason why his family moved from the inland city of Knin to the sunkissed village of Ljeta on the Dalmatian Coast, a tragedy he tries desperately to forget. The Ljeta years are happy ones, though, and when he marries his childhood sweetheart, and they have a baby daughter, it seems as though life is perfect. However, storm clouds are gathering above Yugoslavia. War breaks out, and one split-second decision destroys the life Miro has managed to build. Driven by anger and grief, he flees to Dubrovnik, plunging himself into the hard-bitten world of international war reporters. There begins a journey that will take him ever deeper into danger: from Dubrovnik, to Sarajevo, to the worst atrocities of war-torn Bosnia, Miro realises that even if he survives, there can be no way back to his earlier life. The war will change him, and everyone he loves, forever. (P)2016 Headline Digital

Download or read book Before You Were Born written by Deborah Kerbel and published by Pajama Press Inc.. This book was released on 2019-05-03 with total page 19 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: “Before…You were a song in our hearts, a star in our eyes.” Told from the perspective of new parents welcoming their baby to the world, this touching love letter to young children by Governor General’s Literary Award–nominated author Deborah Kerbel describes with lyrical grace all of the promise held by new life. As the seasons change from fall through winter and into spring, the expectant parents’ anticipation over the baby’s arrival is mirrored in the animals around the family’s seaside home, marrying the natural world to the family’s experience. Suzanne Del Rizzo, author-illustrator of My Beautiful Birds — a New York Times Notable Children’s Books selection and winner of the 2018 SCBWI Crystal Kite Award — adds an intricately tactile element with her lush illustrations rendered in polymer clay and acrylic wash, depicting the animals in scenes at times playful and other times serene.

Download or read book I ll See You in Paris written by Michelle Gable and published by A Thomas Dunne Book for St. Martin's Griffin. This book was released on 2017-04-25 with total page 497 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "I'll see you in Paris is based on the rich and storied real life of Gladys Spencer-Churchill, the Duchess of Marlborough. Nearly a century after Gladys' heyday, a young woman's quest to understand the legendary duchess takes her from a charming hamlet in the English countryside, to a dilapidated manse kept behind barbed wire, and ultimately to Paris. In the end, she not only solves the riddle of the duchess, but also uncovers the missing pieces in her own life." -- p.4 of cover.

Download or read book The Book of Lost Friends written by Lisa Wingate and published by Ballantine Books. This book was released on 2020-04-07 with total page 417 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • From the bestselling author of Before We Were Yours comes a dramatic historical novel of three young women searching for family amid the destruction of the post–Civil War South, and of a modern-day teacher who learns of their story and its vital connection to her students’ lives. “An absorbing historical . . . enthralling.”—Library Journal Bestselling author Lisa Wingate brings to life startling stories from actual “Lost Friends” advertisements that appeared in Southern newspapers after the Civil War, as newly freed slaves desperately searched for loved ones who had been sold away. Louisiana, 1875: In the tumultuous era of Reconstruction, three young women set off as unwilling companions on a perilous quest: Hannie, a freed slave; Lavinia, the pampered heir to a now destitute plantation; and Juneau Jane, Lavinia’s Creole half sister. Each carries private wounds and powerful secrets as they head for Texas, following roads rife with vigilantes and soldiers still fighting a war lost a decade before. For Lavinia and Juneau Jane, the journey is one of stolen inheritance and financial desperation, but for Hannie, torn from her mother and siblings before slavery’s end, the pilgrimage west reignites an agonizing question: Could her long-lost family still be out there? Beyond the swamps lie the limitless frontiers of Texas and, improbably, hope. Louisiana, 1987: For first-year teacher Benedetta Silva, a subsidized job at a poor rural school seems like the ticket to canceling her hefty student debt—until she lands in a tiny, out-of-step Mississippi River town. Augustine, Louisiana, is suspicious of new ideas and new people, and Benny can scarcely comprehend the lives of her poverty-stricken students. But amid the gnarled live oaks and run-down plantation homes lie the century-old history of three young women, a long-ago journey, and a hidden book that could change everything.