Download or read book The Orchardist written by Amanda Coplin and published by Harper Collins. This book was released on 2012-08-21 with total page 370 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: “There are echoes of John Steinbeck in this beautiful and haunting debut novel. . . . Coplin depicts the frontier landscape and the plainspoken characters who inhabit it with dazzling clarity.” — Entertainment Weekly “A stunning debut. . . . Stands on par with Charles Frazier’s COLD MOUNTAIN.” — The Oregonian (Portland) New York Times Bestseller • A Best Book of the Year: Washington Post • Seattle Times • The Oregonian • National Public Radio • Amazon • Kirkus Reviews • Publishers Weekly • The Daily Beast At once intimate and epic, The Orchardist is historical fiction at its best, in the grand literary tradition of William Faulkner, Marilynne Robinson, Michael Ondaatje, Annie Proulx, and Toni Morrison. In her stunningly original and haunting debut novel, Amanda Coplin evokes a powerful sense of place, mixing tenderness and violence as she spins an engrossing tale of a solitary orchardist who provides shelter to two runaway teenage girls in the untamed American West, and the dramatic consequences of his actions. At the turn of the twentieth century, in a rural stretch of the Pacific Northwest, a reclusive orchardist, William Talmadge, tends to apples and apricots as if they were loved ones. A gentle man, he's found solace in the sweetness of the fruit he grows and the quiet, beating heart of the land he cultivates. One day, two teenage girls appear and steal his fruit at the market; they later return to the outskirts of his orchard to see the man who gave them no chase. Feral, scared, and very pregnant, the girls take up on Talmadge's land and indulge in his deep reservoir of compassion. Just as the girls begin to trust him, men arrive in the orchard with guns, and the shattering tragedy that follows will set Talmadge on an irrevocable course not only to save and protect them but also to reconcile the ghosts of his own troubled past. Transcribing America as it once was before railways and roads connected its corners, Coplin weaves a tapestry of solitary souls who come together in the wake of unspeakable cruelty and misfortune. She writes with breathtaking precision and empathy, and crafts an astonishing novel about a man who disrupts the lonely harmony of an ordered life when he opens his heart and lets the world in.

Download or read book Death Is Hard Work written by Khaled Khalifa and published by Macmillan + ORM. This book was released on 2019-02-12 with total page 146 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: National Book Award Finalist: “The poetic and horrific combine in this tale of love and death set in a Syria torn apart by civil war” (Guardian, UK). As elderly Abdel Latif dies peacefully in a hospital bed in Damascus, he relays his final wish to his youngest son Bolbol: to be buried in the family plot in their ancestral village of Anabiya. Though Bolbol is estranged from his siblings, he persuades his older brother Hussein and his sister Fatima to accompany him and the body to Anabiya, which is—after all—only a two-hour drive from Damascus. There’s only one problem: Their country is a war zone. With the landscape of their childhood now a labyrinth of competing armies whose actions are at once arbitrary and lethal, the siblings’ decision to set aside their differences and honor their father’s request quickly balloons from a minor commitment into an epic and life-threatening quest. Syria, however, is no longer a place for heroes, and the decisions the family must make along the way—as they find themselves captured and recaptured, interrogated, imprisoned, and bombed—will prove to have enormous consequences for all of them. One of Syria’s most acclaimed literary voices, Khaled Khalifa was the greatest chronicler of his country’s catastrophic civil war. In Death is Hard Work, he delivers a tale of three ordinary people facing down the stuff of nightmares armed with little more than simple determination. Winner of the Naguib Mahfouz Medal for Literature Finalist for the National Book Award for Translated Literature

Download or read book Nature s Friend written by Lindsey McDivitt and published by Sleeping Bear Press. This book was released on 2018-07-15 with total page 36 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: 2019 Green Earth Book Awards - Long List The art and writing of Gwen Frostic are well known in her home state of Michigan and around the world, but this picture book biography tells the story behind Gwen's famous work. After a debilitating illness as a child, Gwen sought solace in art and nature. She learned to be persistent and independent--never taking no for an answer or letting her disabilities define her. After creating artwork for famous Detroiters and for display at the World's Fair and helping to build WWII bombers, Gwen moved her printmaking business to northern Michigan. She dedicated her work and her life to reminding people of the wonder and beauty in nature.

Download or read book Mr McGinty s Monarchs written by Linda Vander Heyden and published by Sleeping Bear Press. This book was released on 2016-02-01 with total page 36 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Mr. McGinty and his dog Sophie love checking in on the monarch caterpillars and butterflies on their summer walks. But one day Mr. McGinty is shocked to find that all the milkweed in town has been mowed down! And monarch caterpillars, he explains, can't survive without milkweed. Can Mr. McGinty come up with a plan to save the monarchs? This is a tale that is informative, a call to action, and a sweet story time pick.

Download or read book Miss Colfax s Light written by Aimee Bissonette and published by Sleeping Bear Press. This book was released on 2016-03-01 with total page 36 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In 1861, at the age of 37, Harriet Colfax took on the job of lighthouse keeper for the Michigan City lighthouse off Lake Michigan. It was a bold and determined endeavor, especially since there were very few female lighthouse keepers in the country at that time. For 43 years, until the age of 80, Harriet kept her light burning, through storms, harsh winters, and changes in technology. This true story focuses on Harriet's commitment and determination to fulfilling her charge and living life on her own terms. Excerpts from her actual log are included.

Download or read book Lies written by Doireann Ni Ghriofa and published by Dedalus Press. This book was released on 2018-10-15 with total page 100 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Irish poet Doireann Ní Ghríofa's selection from his first three Irish-langauge poetry books, translated into English by the author and published here in dual-language format

Download or read book Dakota written by Kathleen Norris and published by HMH. This book was released on 2001-04-06 with total page 255 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: “A deeply spiritual, deeply moving book” about life on the Great Plains, by the New York Times–bestselling author of The Cloister Walk (The New York Times Book Review). “With humor and lyrical grace,” Kathleen Norris meditates on a place in the American landscape that is at once desolate and sublime, harsh and forgiving, steeped in history and myth (San Francisco Chronicle). A combination of reporting and reflection, Dakota reminds us that wherever we go, we chart our own spiritual geography.

Download or read book The True Confessions of Charlotte Doyle Scholastic Gold written by Avi and published by Scholastic Inc.. This book was released on 2015-10-27 with total page 232 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Avi's treasured Newbery Honor Book now in expanded After Words edition!Thirteen-year-old Charlotte Doyle is excited to return home from her school in England to her family in Rhode Island in the summer of 1832. But when the two families she was supposed to travel with mysteriously cancel their trips, Charlotte finds herself the lone passenger on a long sea voyage with a cruel captain and a mutinous crew. Worse yet, soon after stepping aboard the ship, she becomes enmeshed in a conflict between them! What begins as an eagerly anticipated ocean crossing turns into a harrowing journey, where Charlotte gains a villainous enemy . . . and is put on trial for murder!After Words material includes author Q & A, journal writing tips, and other activities that bring Charlotte's world to life!

Download or read book The Novel written by James Albert Michener and published by Random House (NY). This book was released on 1991 with total page 390 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "A good, old-fashioned, sink-your-teeth-into-it story...Suspenseful." THE PHILADELPHIA INQUIRER James Michener turns the creation and publication of a novel into an extroardinary and exciting experience as he renders believable the intriguing personalities who are the parents to its birth: a writer, editor, critic, and reader are locked in the desperate scenario of life, death, love, and truth. As immediate as today's headlines, as close as the bookshelves, THE NOVEL is a fascinating look into the glamorous world of the writer. Selected by the Book-of-the-Month Club

Download or read book Participant Observer written by Robin Fox and published by Transaction Publishers. This book was released on 2004-01-01 with total page 604 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "Robin Fox has had a fascinating, adventurous and funny life. It would make a great movie."--Peter Cattaneo, director of Academy Award nominee for Best Picture, The Full Monty. "Participant Observer is so well written, so high-table picaresque, so obsessively learned, so slant, so provocative and skitterish. Who is this remarkable third-person writer pirouetting all around me? An important work stylistically and an important account of a chapter in intellectual history."--E. O. Wilson, Sociobiology: The New Synthesis "Participant Observer describes a fascinating intellectual odysseyà. It is both a commentary on a career and, equally, an interpretation of the significant changes in the development of the social sciences during the period. He evokes forceful memories of English university life as it was poised to be transformed from an elite to a mass system of tertiary educationà. It is a celebration of the interconnectedness between thought and action." --Lord Smith of Clifton, former vice-chancellor, The University of Ulster. "A whirlwind ride through the formative years of modern anthropology. Robin Fox has never failed to entertain me."--Desmond Morris, The Naked Ape "Participant Observer, is a romp at blazing speed and with unfailing wit and verve through the great period of anthropology.... [It] is full of brilliant portraits of the great actors of that drama, and indeed of many of the leading figures of the last several decades in politics, show business, the arts and the sciences in general. It represents a worldview that we need now more than ever: one that loves the human race in all its self-ignorance, its tragic contradictions, and its foolish hopes."--Frederick Turner, Genesis: An Epic Poem "Robin Fox writes with great charm, directness and wit. His thinking is always independent and original. The unusual idea of combining a history of anthropology with the anthropologist's personal memoirs opens unexpected emotional and intellectual depths."--Mary Douglas, Purity and Danger "A memoir that deftly blends the nascence of the tectonic shift in the way humans perceive themselves with the way one human sees his own fascinating life. The result is a witty, artfully written autobiography, that is both important in the history of ideas and a joy to read."--William Wright, Lillian Hellman: The Image, The Woman "Robin Fox has written a spirited, poetic, amusing and erudite account of his journey through life and science. As his thoughtful and adventurous narrative unfolds, you come to understand the major twentieth-century ideas and events that have revolutionized the social sciences and are setting the intellectual trends today. It's a grand read: learned and an awful lot of fun."--Helen Fisher, Why We Love "Robin Fox's account of his long, rich life is gracefully crafted, consistently interesting, frequently funny, and all in all a pleasure to read. Since it has been a life of the mind, it is also a lively history of the ideas and events of the mid-to-late twentieth century."--Melvin Konner, The Tangled Wing "Robin Fox, once young rebel, now eminent explainer of social origins, smiter of chicanery and academic pap, is also a literary man, linguist, poet, singer, artist and adventurer. Friend and precept find him loyal. Fools he suffers suffer from him. He wears emblematic names, and you recognize him. Hideous shapes dance with beauty. Fear pursues glory. Buy it, steal it, keep it safe between the cinnamon and the ginger."--Richard de Mille, My Secret Mother: Lorna Moon In the tradition of Levi-Strauss's Tristes Tropiques (crossed with Angela's Ashes) Robin Fox, one of the preeminent anthropologists of our time, takes us on an exuberant personal, intellectual and cultural journey through the 1930s to the 1970s. This is a personal, historical, intellectual journey, one that is

Download or read book Clasp written by Doireann Ní Ghríofa and published by . This book was released on 2015 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Clasp is award-winning Irish poet Doireann N Ghr ofa's first English-language collection of poems. In three sections entitled 'Clasp', 'Cleave' and 'Clench', N Ghr ofa engages in a strikingly physical way with the world of her subject matter. The result is by times what one poem calls 'A History in Hearts', among other things an intimate exploration of love, childbirth and motherhood, and simultaneously a place of separation and anxiety. In one poem set in the boys' home in Letterfrack, a place of undeniable terror, we see how, in the name of religion, "The earth holds small skulls like seeds." The final section of the book comprises a single poem, Seven Views of Cork City, which, swooping in and out of personal history, paints a convincing if sometimes unsettling portrait of the poet's adopted city, and of urban life's ubiquitous restraints on "our dream of speed."

Download or read book It s Complicated written by Danah Boyd and published by Yale University Press. This book was released on 2014-02-25 with total page 296 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Surveys the online social habits of American teens and analyzes the role technology and social media plays in their lives, examining common misconceptions about such topics as identity, privacy, danger, and bullying.

Download or read book Ready to Come About written by Sue Williams and published by Dundurn. This book was released on 2019-05-18 with total page 358 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Three hundred nautical miles from shore, I‘m cold and sick and afraid. I pray for reprieve. I long for solid ground. And I can‘t help but ask myself, What the hell was I thinking? When Sue Williams set sail for the North Atlantic, it wasn’t a mid-life crisis. She had no affinity for the sea. And she didn’t have an adventure-seeking bone in her body. In the wake of a perfect storm of personal events, it suddenly became clear: her sons were adults now; they needed freedom to figure things out for themselves; she had to get out of their way. And it was now or never for her husband, David, to realize his dream to cross an ocean. So she’d go too. Ready to Come About is the story of a mother’s improbable adventure on the high seas and her profound journey within, through which she grew to believe that there is no gift more precious than the liberty to chart one’s own course, and that risk is a good thing ... sometimes, at least.

Download or read book Not Getting Paid to Do What You Love written by Brooke Erin Duffy and published by Yale University Press. This book was released on 2017-06-27 with total page 279 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: An illuminating investigation into a class of enterprising women aspiring to “make it” in the social media economy but often finding only unpaid work Profound transformations in our digital society have brought many enterprising women to social media platforms—from blogs to YouTube to Instagram—in hopes of channeling their talents into fulfilling careers. In this eye-opening book, Brooke Erin Duffy draws much-needed attention to the gap between the handful who find lucrative careers and the rest, whose “passion projects” amount to free work for corporate brands. Drawing on interviews and fieldwork, Duffy offers fascinating insights into the work and lives of fashion bloggers, beauty vloggers, and designers. She connects the activities of these women to larger shifts in unpaid and gendered labor, offering a lens through which to understand, anticipate, and critique broader transformations in the creative economy. At a moment when social media offer the rousing assurance that anyone can “make it”—and stand out among freelancers, temps, and gig workers—Duffy asks us all to consider the stakes of not getting paid to do what you love.

Download or read book Wonderland Avenue written by Danny Sugerman and published by Hachette UK. This book was released on 2020-08-06 with total page 427 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: At the age of thirteen, Danny Sugerman- the already wayward product of Beverley Hills wealth and privilege- went to his first Doors concert. He never looked back. He became Jim Morrison's protégé and- still in his teens- manager of the Doors and then Iggy Pop. He also plunged gleefully into the glamorous underworld of the rock 'n' roll scene, diving headfirst into booze, sex and drugs: every conceivable kind of drug, ever day, in every possible permutation. By the age of twenty-one he had an idyllic home, a beautiful girlfriend, the best car in the world, two kinds of hepatitis, a diseased heart, a $500 a day heroin habit and only a week to live. He lived. This is his tale. Excessive, scandalous, comic, cautionary and horrifying, it chronicles the 60s dream gone to rot and the early life of a Hollywood Wild Child who was just brilliant at being bad.

Download or read book To Star the Dark written by Doireann Ní Ghríofa and published by Dedalus Press. This book was released on 2021-04-07 with total page 70 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Do our passions control us or us them? These poems find themselves asking such questions in hospitals, in cellars, in Parisian parks and American laundromats, inside our screens and beyond them. Poems of blood and birdsong, of rain and desire, of aftermath and ambivalence, each spoken by a voice, which - like the starlings - sings, at once, both past and present. "Looking into the dark sky of history, Doireann Ní Ghríofa calls up an illuminating fire, a night constellated into images of passion and destruction. An astrologer of the body, its endurance and its vulnerability, Ní Ghríofa is a poet of daring skill. Lyrical, searching and enchanted, To Star the Dark is a blazing, brave collection." - Seán Hewitt "Like [Eavan] Boland, Ní Ghríofa constructs a mysterious world for her readers from the matter of ordinary life. The poems of this collection impress upon us that magic and depth can be found in the minutiae of the everyday." - Poetry Ireland Review, on Lies

Download or read book Jonas Hanway s Scurrilous Scandalous Shockingly Sensational Umbrella written by Josh Crute and published by Page Street Kids. This book was released on 2020-05-05 with total page 40 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Sometimes in London it drizzles. Sometimes it mizzles. Other times it pelts and showers and spits. And Jonas Hanway hates getting wet. How can he go about his day as a proper London gentleman when his shoes are soggy, his coat is always collecting puddles, and his wig looks like a wet cat? Fed up with damp and dreary London, Jonas sails far away, to places where the sun always shines. But what he sees when he gets there is.... scandalous! Shocking! Sensational! Perhaps also...quite genius? Now all Jonas has to do is convince the rest of London that they need an umbrella, too. All about the real gentleman who introduced umbrellas to 1750’s London society, this is the perfect story of persistence, problem-solving, and how good ideas hold (off) water.