Download or read book Floating Twigs written by Charles Tabb and published by . This book was released on 2021-06 with total page 398 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: It's 1968 in the rural coastline town of Denton, Florida, and the only thing with a tougher life than twelve-year-old Jack Turner is a starving dog named Bones. When they meet while Jack is fishing, Jack knows that he and Bones are meant for each other, and he promises his oft-absent alcoholic parents that he'll somehow get a job to pay for his new dog's food and care. In the process of finding work, Jack meets Hank Pittman, a middle-aged man who lives in a dilapidated school bus at the harbor, and Mrs. Mary Jane Dawson, an eccentric but kind older woman in need of gardening help. As Bones nurses back to health, Hank and Mrs. Dawson become the caring parents Jack never had. But gossip and lies about Jack's growing relationships lead to an attack on Bones' life and questions about Hank's past. When Hank is put on trial for a crime he didn't commit, everything Jack holds dear is set in the balance of that small-town courtroom. Floating Twigs is a timeless coming-of-age story about a boy and his dog, the responsibilities that come with loving others, and how sometimes one small moment can change a life forever.

Download or read book Finding Twigs written by Charles Tabb and published by Independently Published. This book was released on 2021-07-19 with total page 398 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The highly anticipated sequel to Floating Twigs! Jack Turner has returned to his hometown of Denton, Florida, to live there for the first time in eighteen years. Despite a career as a criminal defense attorney and the companionship of his new dog, Brinkley, Jack is haunted by what is missing in his life. Whether it's the unanswered questions about his brother, Rick, who never returned from Vietnam, or a budding romance with Jenny Walton, Jack is wary of getting close to anyone beyond a few trusted friends and his beloved dogs. But when he's assigned to represent an old childhood tormentor for armed robbery, Jack is forced to re-evaluate his past and consider his own failings in dealing with others. This endearing sequel to Floating Twigs takes an honest look at love and redemption as Jack discovers that finding twigs is more difficult than floating them. Note: The reader does not need to have read Floating Twigs to read and follow this book, though of course it is better to have read that one before reading Finding Twigs to know more about the main characters.

Download or read book Sex and the River Styx written by Edward Hoagland and published by Chelsea Green Publishing. This book was released on 2011-02-18 with total page 274 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Called the best essayist of his time by luminaries like Philip Roth, John Updike, and Edward Abbey, Edward Hoagland brings readers his ultimate collection. In Sex and the River Styx, the author's sharp eye and intense curiosity shine through in essays that span his childhood exploring the woods in his rural Connecticut, his days as a circus worker, and his travels the world over in his later years. Here, we meet Hoagland at his best: traveling to Kampala, Uganda, to meet a family he'd been helping support only to find a divide far greater than he could have ever imagined; reflecting on aging, love, and sex in a deeply personal, often surprising way; and bringing us the wonder of wild places, alongside the disparity of losing them, and always with a twist that brings the genre of nature writing to vastly new heights. His keen dissection of social realities and the human spirit will both startle and lure readers as they meet African matriarchs, Tibetan yak herders, circus aerialists, and the strippers who entertained college boys in 1950s Boston. Says Howard Frank Mosher in his foreword, the self-described rhapsodist "could fairly be considered our last, great transcendentalist."

Download or read book Canaries Song written by Charles Tabb and published by Independently Published. This book was released on 2021-01-19 with total page 284 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Guaranteed to make the reader recall the author's Floating Twigs! Eric Northcraft is struggling to raise his three daughters without his wife, who recently died of cancer. While he misses his late wife, Emily, he must do his best to be both a father and mother to his young daughters. Lisa, the oldest at fourteen, loves horses, an interest not well-supported by his teacher's salary. Grace, his middle child, is physically and intellectually challenged, mentally more like a five-year-old than a girl of eleven. Monica, the youngest, is the rebellious one and is convinced her father loves her sisters more than he loves her. They each deal with the loss of their mother in different ways, some good, some bad. As Lisa finds a way to be around the horses she loves so much, Monica grows more rebellious and difficult. Grace, however, is happy with her canaries, preferring to sit and listen to their beautiful singing while doing her best to convince her family of the happiness they can bring. Meanwhile, Eric is having difficulties at work. One of his administrators is causing problems, and his best student, an African-American girl with issues of her own, refuses to be coaxed into attending college, even on a scholarship. When tragedy strikes once again, Eric and his family must deal with its outcome. A story of resilience, love, and the beauty that surrounds us to help us through life, Canaries' Song will make you laugh, cry, and finally, turn the last page with feelings of joy and satisfaction. It will remind the reader of Tabb's acclaimed novel, Floating Twigs.

Download or read book Angels Insects written by A. S. Byatt and published by Vintage. This book was released on 2012-04-18 with total page 354 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In these two “astonishing” novellas (The New Yorker), the Booker Prize-winning author of Possession returns to the landscape of Victorian England, where science and spiritualism are popular manias, and domestic decorum coexists with brutality and perversion. "At once quirky and deep, brimming with generosity, imagination, and intelligence." —The New Yorker In Morpho Eugenia, an explorer realises that the behaviour of the people around him is alarmingly similar to that of the insects he studies. In The Conjugal Angel, curious individuals – some fictional, others drawn from history – gather to connect with the spirit world. Throughout both, Byatt examines the eccentricities of the Victorian era, weaving fact and fiction, reality and romance, science and faith into a sumptuous, magical tapestry.

Download or read book Daughter of the Forest written by Juliet Marillier and published by Macmillan. This book was released on 2010-04-01 with total page 384 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Daughter of the Forest is a testimony to an incredible author's talent, a first novel and the beginning of a trilogy like no other: a mixture of history and fantasy, myth and magic, legend and love. Lord Colum of Sevenwaters is blessed with six sons: Liam, a natural leader; Diarmid, with his passion for adventure; twins Cormack and Conor, each with a different calling; rebellious Finbar, grown old before his time by his gift of the Sight; and the young, compassionate Padriac. But it is Sorcha, the seventh child and only daughter, who alone is destined to defend her family and protect her land from the Britons and the clan known as Northwoods. For her father has been bewitched, and her brothers bound by a spell that only Sorcha can lift. To reclaim the lives of her brothers, Sorcha leaves the only safe place she has ever known, and embarks on a journey filled with pain, loss, and terror. When she is kidnapped by enemy forces and taken to a foreign land, it seems that there will be no way for her to break the spell that condemns all that she loves. But magic knows no boundaries, and Sorcha will have to choose between the life she has always known and a love that comes only once. Juliet Marillier is a rare talent, a writer who can imbue her characters and her story with such warmth, such heart, that no reader can come away from her work untouched. At the Publisher's request, this title is being sold without Digital Rights Management Software (DRM) applied.

Download or read book On the Eighteenth of May written by Jordan R. Samuel and published by Archway Publishing. This book was released on 2020-03-13 with total page 305 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: On the evening of May eighteenth, a young woman named Cass walks alone into the small village of Chimney Rock, North Carolina, intending to stay for exactly one year. She is in search of somewhere with peace, a place where she can safely picture herself and escape, shielding herself from recollections of the past. Cass soon meets two precocious children, their mother, a caring and generous business owner, and the neighboring town’s chief of police. Family and loss make up many of their stories, and while these people and others attempt to get to know and help Cass, the history and troubled memories of what led her to this place begin to gradually unfold. As the date of her planned departure approaches, the potential for love and a path to healing become clearer. Cass and those around her must decide how forcefully they are willing to hold on: to the past, to the pain, and to the person. This novel examines the true test of strength in the deepest depths of sorrow and reminds us of the overwhelming power of comforting influences in all of our lives, as our human souls struggle, against all odds, to survive.

Download or read book This Bright River written by Patrick Somerville and published by Reagan Arthur Books. This book was released on 2012-06-26 with total page 317 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: From a writer and producer of HBO's acclaimed apocalyptic drama series The Leftovers comes a compelling story of young love and old secrets. Ben Hanson's aimless life has bottomed out after a series of bad decisions, but an unexpected offer from his father draws him home to Wisconsin. There, he finds his family fractured, still reeling from his cousin's mysterious death a decade earlier. Lauren Sheehan abandoned her career in medicine after a series of violent events abroad. Now she's back in the safest place she knows -- the same small Wisconsin town where she and Ben grew up -- hiding from a world that has only brought her heartache. As Lauren cautiously expands her horizons and Ben tries to unravel his family's dark secrets, their paths intersect. Could each be exactly what the other needs? A compelling family drama and a surprising love story, This Bright River is the work of a natural storyteller, one whose dark humor and piercing intelligence provide constant, lasting delights.

Download or read book At the Water s Edge written by Carl Zimmer and published by Simon and Schuster. This book was released on 1999-09-08 with total page 304 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Everybody Out of the Pond At the Water's Edge will change the way you think about your place in the world. The awesome journey of life's transformation from the first microbes 4 billion years ago to Homo sapiens today is an epic that we are only now beginning to grasp. Magnificent and bizarre, it is the story of how we got here, what we left behind, and what we brought with us. We all know about evolution, but it still seems absurd that our ancestors were fish. Darwin's idea of natural selection was the key to solving generation-to-generation evolution -- microevolution -- but it could only point us toward a complete explanation, still to come, of the engines of macroevolution, the transformation of body shapes across millions of years. Now, drawing on the latest fossil discoveries and breakthrough scientific analysis, Carl Zimmer reveals how macroevolution works. Escorting us along the trail of discovery up to the current dramatic research in paleontology, ecology, genetics, and embryology, Zimmer shows how scientists today are unveiling the secrets of life that biologists struggled with two centuries ago. In this book, you will find a dazzling, brash literary talent and a rigorous scientific sensibility gracefully brought together. Carl Zimmer provides a comprehensive, lucid, and authoritative answer to the mystery of how nature actually made itself.

Download or read book Girl in Glass written by Deanna Fei and published by Bloomsbury Publishing USA. This book was released on 2015-07-14 with total page 321 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Deanna Fei was just five-and-a-half months pregnant when she inexplicably went into labor. Minutes later, she met her tiny baby who clung to life support inside a glass box. Fei was forced to confront terrifying issues: How to be the mother of a child she could lose at any moment. Whether her daughter would survive another day--and whether she should. But as she watched her daughter fight for her life, Fei discovered the power of the mother-child bond at its most elemental. A year after she brought her daughter home from the hospital, the CEO of AOL--her husband's employer--set off a national firestorm about the children he had called “distressed babies.” By blaming the beautiful, miraculously healthy little girl for a cut in employee benefits, he attached a price tag to her life. Girl in Glass is the riveting story of one child's harrowing journey and a powerful distillation of parenthood. With incandescent prose and an unflinching eye, Fei explores the value of a human life: from the spreadsheets wielded by cost-cutting executives to the insidious notions of risk surrounding modern pregnancy; from the wondrous history of medical innovation in the care of premature infants to contemporary analyses of what their lives are worth; and finally, to the depths of her own struggle to make sense of her daughter's arrival in the world. Above all, Girl in Glass is a luminous testament to how love takes hold when a birth defies our fundamental beliefs about how life is supposed to begin.

Download or read book Salt Dancers written by Ursula Hegi and published by Simon and Schuster. This book was released on 2011-05-24 with total page 240 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Salt Dancers is at once a brilliant portrait of an American family, a story of the secrets families guard, and a moving account of one woman's journey back to a past filled with elusive memories and suppressed rage. Why did Julia's mother disappear one day without so much as a word? How did a loving father who taught her such a beautiful thing as the salt dance become such a terrifying and abusive presence? These are the questions which Julia must confront when she returns to Spokane, Washington, after an absence of twenty-three years. Salt Dancers, a superbly written novel, is a poignant and truthful chronicle of self-discovery and the power of resurrection.

Download or read book Migrations written by Charlotte McConaghy and published by Flatiron Books. This book was released on 2020-08-04 with total page 272 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: * INSTANT NATIONAL BESTSELLER * Amazon Editors' Pick for Best Book of the Year in Fiction "Visceral and haunting" (New York Times Book Review) · "Hopeful" (Washington Post) · "Powerful" (Los Angeles Times) · "Thrilling" (TIME) · "Tantalizingly beautiful" (Elle) · "Suspenseful, atmospheric" (Vogue) · "Aching and poignant" (Guardian) · "Gripping" (The Economist) Franny Stone has always been the kind of woman who is able to love but unable to stay. Leaving behind everything but her research gear, she arrives in Greenland with a singular purpose: to follow the last Arctic terns in the world on what might be their final migration to Antarctica. Franny talks her way onto a fishing boat, and she and the crew set sail, traveling ever further from shore and safety. But as Franny’s history begins to unspool—a passionate love affair, an absent family, a devastating crime—it becomes clear that she is chasing more than just the birds. When Franny's dark secrets catch up with her, how much is she willing to risk for one more chance at redemption? Epic and intimate, heartbreaking and galvanizing, Charlotte McConaghy's Migrations is an ode to a disappearing world and a breathtaking page-turner about the possibility of hope against all odds.

Download or read book Watch You Burn written by Amanda Searcy and published by Delacorte Press. This book was released on 2018-10-23 with total page 354 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: From the author of The Truth Beneath the Lies, which the bestselling author of One of Us Is Lying, Karen M. McManus, called "smart, suspenseful, and unpredictable," comes a psychological thriller about a girl who must keep her arsonist ways hidden--or watch her life go up in flames like a wildfire. Jenny didn't want to move to the creepy, possibly haunted town with her dad. But the cops are on to her, and the only way she can protect herself is by moving as far away from her hometown as possible and staying out of trouble. But even after she moves, Jenny still gets the itch. The itch to light a match and then watch it burn. It's something she hasn't been able to stop, ever since an accident years ago. Now, in a new town, Jenny has the strange feeling that someone is watching her every move. Will her arsonist ways be exposed? Or is the burning truth deep inside her a greater danger?

Download or read book Why Icebergs Float written by Andrew Morris and published by UCL Press. This book was released on 2016-10-24 with total page 222 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: From paintings and food to illness and icebergs, science is happening everywhere. Rather than follow the path of a syllabus or textbook, Andrew Morris takes examples from the science we see every day and uses them as entry points to explain a number of fundamental scientific concepts – from understanding colour to the nature of hormones – in ways that anyone can grasp. While each chapter offers a separate story, they are linked together by their fascinating relevance to our daily lives. The topics explored in each chapter are based on hundreds of discussions the author has led with adult science learners over many years – people who came from all walks of life and had no scientific training, but had developed a burning curiosity to understand the world around them. This book encourages us to reflect on our own relationship with science and serves as an important reminder of why we should continue learning as adults.

Download or read book Naturally Curious written by Mary Holland and published by Trafalgar Square Books. This book was released on 2018-04-01 with total page 1703 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: 2011 National Outdoor Book Award for Nature Guidebook Are you ready for a black fly bite to get graphic, for a barred owl's call to take on new meaning, and for the life cycle of the eastern newt to suddenly seem complex, beautiful, and intricately bound to the subtle patterns of mysterious underwater landscapes and damp forest floors? Naturalist Mary Holland's new book Naturally Curious promises a walk in the woods will never be the same. Holland leads you through the New England seasons out-of-doors—through the sun, rain, and snow; along roadsides and wetlands; above underground burrows and under treetop nesting sites. With just a turn of the page you'll suddenly know more about the creatures that frequent your backyard or the pond you visit every summer than you ever thought possible. Naturally Curious perfectly melds practical field guide with informal nature literature, providing you the remarkable opportunity to sit back, relax, and learn something fascinating about the natural world around you.

Download or read book Andy Goldsworthy Ephemeral Works written by Andy Goldsworthy and published by Harry N. Abrams. This book was released on 2015-10-13 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: For forty years, Andy Goldsworthy has worked with an extraordinary range of natural materials, often at their source. On an almost daily basis, he makes works of art using the materials and conditions that he encounters wherever he is, be it the land around his Scottish home, the mountain regions of France or Spain, or the pavements of New York City, Glasgow, or Rio de Janeiro. Out of earth, rocks, leaves, ice, snow, rain, sunlight and shadow he makes artworks that exist briefly before they are altered and erased by natural processes. They are documented in his photographs, and their larger meanings are bound up with the conditions, forces and processes that they embody: materiality, temporality, growth, vitality, permanence, decay, chance, labour and memory. Ephemeral Works features approximately two hundred of these works, selected by Goldsworthy from thousands he has made between 2001 and the present, and arranged in chronological sequence, capturing his creative process as it interacts with material, place, and the passage of time and seasons.

Download or read book Sophie s World written by Jostein Gaarder and published by Farrar, Straus and Giroux. This book was released on 2007-03-20 with total page 735 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A page-turning novel that is also an exploration of the great philosophical concepts of Western thought, Jostein Gaarder's Sophie's World has fired the imagination of readers all over the world, with more than twenty million copies in print. One day fourteen-year-old Sophie Amundsen comes home from school to find in her mailbox two notes, with one question on each: "Who are you?" and "Where does the world come from?" From that irresistible beginning, Sophie becomes obsessed with questions that take her far beyond what she knows of her Norwegian village. Through those letters, she enrolls in a kind of correspondence course, covering Socrates to Sartre, with a mysterious philosopher, while receiving letters addressed to another girl. Who is Hilde? And why does her mail keep turning up? To unravel this riddle, Sophie must use the philosophy she is learning—but the truth turns out to be far more complicated than she could have imagined.