Download or read book Mendocino and Other Stories written by Ann Packer and published by Vintage. This book was released on 2008-11-26 with total page 255 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: With humor, wisdom and tenderness, Ann Packer offers ten short stories about women and men--wives and husbands, sisters and brothers, daughters, sons, mothers, fathers, friends, and lovers--who discover that life's greatest surprises may be found in that which is most familiar. In the title story, on the anniversary of their father's suicide a young woman discovers that her brother may have found a "reason for living" in the love of a good woman. In "Nerves," a young man realizes that the wife he is separated from no longer loves him but that it is his own life he misses, not her. The narrator of "My Mother's Yellow Dress" is a gay man remembering his deceased mother and their vital and troubling intimacy. In "Babies"--which was included in the prestigious O. Henry anthology series --a single woman in her mid-thirties finds that everyone, including her best friend at work, is pregnant, and that their joy can only be observed, not shared. In these and six other stories, Ann Packer exhibits an unerring eye for the small ways in which people reveal themselves and for the moments in which lives may be transformed.
Download or read book Mendocino Fire written by Elizabeth Tallent and published by HarperCollins. This book was released on 2015-10-20 with total page 168 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In this collection of richly imagined stories, Elizabeth Tallent, the master of short fiction, delivers a diverse suite of stories about men and women confronting their vulnerabilities in times of transition and challenge. Beginning in the 1980s, Elizabeth Tallent’s work appeared in some of our most prestigious literary publications, including The New Yorker, Esquire, and Harper’s. Marked by its quiet power and emotional nuance, her fiction garnered widespread praise. Now Tallent returns with a new collection of diverse, thematically linked, and deeply powerful stories that confirm her enduring gift for capturing relationships at their moment of transformation: marriages breaking apart, people haunted by memories of old love and reaching haltingly toward new futures. Mendocino Fire explore moments of fracture and fragmentation; it limns the wilderness of our inner psyche and brilliantly evokes the electric tension of deep emotion. In these pages, Tallent explores expectations met and thwarted, and our never-ending quest to avoid being alone. With this breathtaking collection, Elizabeth Tallent cements her rightful place in the literary pantheon beside her contemporaries Lorrie Moore, Ann Beattie, and Louise Erdrich. Visceral and surprising, profound yet elemental, Mendocino Fire is a welcome visit with a wise and familiar friend.
Download or read book Behind the Green Curtain written by Bruce Anderson and published by Createspace Independent Pub. This book was released on 2012-08-01 with total page 320 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Another collection of true crime stories from the pages of the Anderson Valley Advertiser, Mendocino County's newspaper of record.
Download or read book Swim Back to Me written by Ann Packer and published by Vintage. This book was released on 2011-04-05 with total page 248 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: From Ann Packer, author of the New York Times best-selling novels The Dive from Clausen’s Pier and Songs Without Words, a collection of burnished, emotionally searing stories, framed by two unforgettable linked narratives that express the transformation of a single family over the course of a lifetime. A wife struggles to make sense of her husband’s sudden disappearance. A mother mourns her teenage son through the music collection he left behind. A woman shepherds her estranged parents through her brother’s wedding and reflects on the year her family collapsed. A young man comes to grips with the joy—and vulnerability—of fatherhood. And, in the masterly opening novella, two teenagers from very different families forge a sustaining friendship, only to discover the disruptive and unsettling power of sex. Ann Packer is one of our most talented archivists of family life, with its hidden crevasses and unforeseeable perils, and in these stories she explores the moral predicaments that define our social and emotional lives, the frailty of ordinary grace, and the ways in which we are shattered and remade by loss. With Swim Back to Me, she delivers shimmering psychological precision, unfailing intelligence, and page-turning drama: her most enticing work yet.
Download or read book Logging Railroads of Humboldt and Mendocino Counties written by Katy M. Tahja and published by Arcadia Publishing. This book was released on 2013 with total page 130 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Locomotive steam whistles echo no more in the forests of the north California coast. A century ago, Humboldt and Mendocino Counties had more than 40 railroads bringing logs out of the forest to mills at the water's edge. Only one single railroad ever connected to the outside world, and it too is gone. One railroad survives as the Skunk Train in Mendocino County, and it carries tourists today instead of lumber. Redwood and tan oak bark were the two products moved by rail, and very little else was hauled other than lumberjacks and an occasional picnic excursion for loggers' families. Economic depressions and the advent of trucking saw railroads vanish like a puff of steam from the landscape.
Download or read book The Children s Crusade written by Ann Packer and published by Simon and Schuster. This book was released on 2015-04-07 with total page 448 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: From New York Times bestselling, award-winning author Ann Packer, a “tour de force family drama” (Elle) that explores the secrets and desires, the remnant wounds and saving graces of one California family, over the course of five decades. Bill Blair finds the land by accident, three wooded acres in a rustic community south of San Francisco. The year is 1954, long before anyone will call this area Silicon Valley. Struck by a vision of his future family, Bill buys the property and proposes to Penny Greenway, a woman whose yearning attitude toward life appeals to him. In less than a decade they have four children. Yet Penny is a mercurial housewife, overwhelmed and undersatisfied, chafing at the conventions confining her. Years later, the three oldest Blair children, adults now and still living near the family home, are disrupted by the return of the youngest, whose sudden presence sets off a struggle over the family’s future. One by one, they tell their stories, which reveal Packer’s “great compassion for her characters, with their ancient injuries, their blundering desires. The way she tangles their perspectives perfectly, painfully captures the tumult of selves within a family” (MORE Magazine). Reviewers have praised Ann Packer’s “brilliant ear for character” (The New York Times Book Review) and her “naturalist’s vigilance for detail, so that her characters seem observed rather than invented” (The New Yorker). Her talents are on dazzling display in The Children’s Crusade, “an absorbing novel that celebrates family even as it catalogs its damages” (People, Book of the Week). This is a “superb storyteller” (San Francisco Chronicle), Ann Packer’s most deeply affecting book yet, “tragic and utterly engrossing” (O, The Oprah Magazine).
Download or read book Mendocino Sinsemilla written by Ray Reed and published by . This book was released on 1989 with total page 161 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book The Dive From Clausen s Pier written by Ann Packer and published by Vintage. This book was released on 2003-04-08 with total page 434 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: How much do we owe the people we love? Is it a sign of strength or weakness to walk away from someone in need? These questions lie at the heart of Ann Packer’s intimate and emotionally thrilling new novel, which has won its author comparisons with Jane Hamilton and Sue Miller. At the age of twenty-three Carrie Bell has spent her entire life in Wisconsin, with the same best friend and the same dependable, easygoing, high school sweetheart. Now to her dismay she has begun to find this life suffocating and is considering leaving it–and Mike–behind. But when Mike is paralyzed in a diving accident, leaving seems unforgivable and yet more necessary than ever. The Dive from Clausen’s Pier animates this dilemma–and Carrie’s startling response to it–with the narrative assurance, exacting realism, and moral complexity we expect from the very best fiction.
Download or read book Why You Are Here and other stories written by Todd Walton and published by BookLocker.com. This book was released on 2022-04-20 with total page 122 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The fifteen stories in this volume all take place in the lovely town of Mercy on the north coast of California: tales of self-discovery, love, survival, friendship, creativity, and the quest for meaningful ways to spend this precious life. Each story may be read as a stand-alone creation, or the stories may be read as interconnected tales giving the reader an experience akin to reading a novel. Poets, chess masters, bartenders, artists, musicians, purveyors of cannabis, sheriffs, writers, moviemakers, shopkeepers, dogs, gardeners, children, auto mechanics, psychotherapists, and actors populate these stories about facing the ceaseless challenges of being human: the need for love, the sorrow of loss, confusion, doubt, hope, the longing to be seen and heard, and our great desire to belong. Todd Walton is the author of the acclaimed novels and short story collections Inside Moves, Forgotten Impulses, Ruby & Spear, Buddha In A Teacup, Under the Table Books, and Little Movies. His many music CDs include Lounge Act In Heaven, Dream of You, Mystery Inventions, and Ceremonies. His delightful short videos may be watched on YouTube and his blog of stories and memoirs is on his website.
Download or read book My Absolute Darling written by Gabriel Tallent and published by Penguin. This book was released on 2017-08-29 with total page 434 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: INSTANT NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER LA TIMES BOOK PRIZE FINALIST NBCC JOHN LEONARD PRIZE FINALIST ONE OF THE NEW YORK TIMES'S MOST NOTABLE BOOKS OF 2017 ONE OF THE WASHINGTON POST’S MOST NOTABLE BOOKS OF 2017 ONE OF NPR’S ‘GREAT READS’ OF 2017 A USA TODAY BEST BOOK OF THE YEAR AN AMAZON.COM BEST BOOK OF THE YEAR A BUSINESS INSIDER BEST BOOK OF THE YEAR "Impossible to put down." —NPR "A novel that readers will gulp down, gasping.” —The Washington Post "The word 'masterpiece' has been cheapened by too many blurbs, but My Absolute Darling absolutely is one." —Stephen King A brilliant and immersive, all-consuming read about one fourteen-year-old girl's heart-stopping fight for her own soul. Turtle Alveston is a survivor. At fourteen, she roams the woods along the northern California coast. The creeks, tide pools, and rocky islands are her haunts and her hiding grounds, and she is known to wander for miles. But while her physical world is expansive, her personal one is small and treacherous: Turtle has grown up isolated since the death of her mother, in the thrall of her tortured and charismatic father, Martin. Her social existence is confined to the middle school (where she fends off the interest of anyone, student or teacher, who might penetrate her shell) and to her life with her father. Then Turtle meets Jacob, a high-school boy who tells jokes, lives in a big clean house, and looks at Turtle as if she is the sunrise. And for the first time, the larger world begins to come into focus: her life with Martin is neither safe nor sustainable. Motivated by her first experience with real friendship and a teenage crush, Turtle starts to imagine escape, using the very survival skills her father devoted himself to teaching her. What follows is a harrowing story of bravery and redemption. With Turtle's escalating acts of physical and emotional courage, the reader watches, heart in throat, as this teenage girl struggles to become her own hero—and in the process, becomes ours as well. Shot through with striking language in a fierce natural setting, My Absolute Darling is an urgently told, profoundly moving read that marks the debut of an extraordinary new writer.
Download or read book Probation written by Tom Mendicino and published by Kensington Books. This book was released on 2010 with total page 352 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: To clear his arrest record, Andy Nocera must complete one year of therapy without another arrest, which forces him to deal with his repeated failure to live as an openly gay man, and gives him an opportunity to rescue another lost soul. Original.
Download or read book Mendocino Noir written by Bruce Anderson and published by . This book was released on 2009 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: True crime stories from Mendocino County about murder, corruption, arson, and other crimes.
Download or read book Bad Jews and Other Stories written by Gerald Shapiro and published by U of Nebraska Press. This book was released on 2004-01-01 with total page 340 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Bad Jews and Other Stories is a nuanced and comic vision of life, love, and spiritual adventurism among the determinedly secular class of contemporary American Jews. Separated from the character-building hardships endured by their parents and grandparents, unable to find a faith of their own or for that matter to believe in much of anything at all, the characters of Bad Jews and Other Stories wander through the moral landscape of their lives in a loopy version of the Children of Israel?s meandering way home. Along the way they suffer a range of antic, often absurd misadventures. And as often as not they find redemption as well as disaster.
Download or read book Oasis Tales of the Conjuror and other stories written by Todd Walton and published by BookLocker.com, Inc.. This book was released on 2020-11-10 with total page 157 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Todd Walton is the author of the acclaimed novels and short story collections Inside Moves, Forgotten Impulses, Louie & Women, Ruby & Spear, Buddha In A Teacup, Under the Table Books, and Little Movies. His many music CDs include Lounge Act In Heaven, Dream Of You, Mystery Inventions, and Incongroovity. A visionary science fiction novella, Oasis Tales of the Conjuror is a life-affirming response to the question: How will humans survive in the wake of societal and environmental calamity caused by the imbalance between human desires and the earth’s capacity to sustain those desires? Oasis Tales of the Conjuror may be science fiction, but the story may prove to be prophetic in the not-too-distant future. The challenges facing the citizens of the oasis are the same grave challenges facing humans on earth today, challenges we have faced many times before in the grand sweep of human history. The Golden Light is the story of two soldiers, as different from each other as two men can be, thrown together in the aftermath of a terrible battle, their quest for safety and enlightenment creating between them a profound friendship transcendent of their differences. Of Water and Melons is an uplifting family drama set in the hills of North Carolina during America’s Great Depression, a tale of hope and faith about a farmer and his family and their dream of one day being free of fear and want. When Is It Done and Clumsy Booby are two charming short stories starring the same young poet, a humble yet ambitious fellow named Theodore who wants nothing more than to be appreciated for his way with words.
Download or read book Legendary Locals of the Mendonoma Coast written by Tammy Durston and published by Arcadia Publishing. This book was released on 2012 with total page 130 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Sonoma Mendocino coastline, famous for jagged cliffs, timber-filled ridges, and pounding surf, has been home to many people from varying histories and backgrounds. Pomo tribes, renowned for basketmaking, who were the first settlers and descendants, still live in the area. From early pioneers such as George Call, H.A. Richardson, Cyrus Robinson, J.A. Hamilton, and Antonio Stornetta to Pomo spiritual leader Essie Parrish and the founders of Sea Ranch (Al Boeke, and the team of designers and architects Lawrence Halprin, Charles Moore, William Turnbull, Donlyn Lyndon, and Richard Whitaker), the Sonoma Mendocino coast has many legendary locals. This area also has been home to renowned artists, musicians, writers, scientists, educators, and business leaders. Community services are especially vital to rural areas. Dedicated volunteers created Gualala Arts, services for seniors and youth, the Coast Library, theater groups, and restored historic buildings such as the famous Point Arena Lighthouse. These unsung heroes have brought new meaning to this vibrant community.
Download or read book Humboldt written by Emily Brady and published by Scribe Publications. This book was released on 2013-07-29 with total page 273 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In the vein of Susan Orlean’s The Orchid Thief and Deborah Feldman’s Unorthodox, journalist Emily Brady journeys into a secretive subculture — built on marijuana. Outside the United States, the words ‘Humboldt County’ mean little. Inside the United States — the home of the war on drugs — those words might prompt a knowing grin. For many people, the name is infamous, and yet the place and its inhabitants have been nearly impenetrable. Until now. Humboldt is a narrative exploration of this insular community in northern California, which for nearly 40 years has existed primarily on the cultivation and sale of marijuana. It’s a place where business is done with thick wads of cash, and savings are buried in the backyard. In Humboldt County, marijuana supports everything from fire departments to schools. As legalisation looms, the community stands at a crossroads, and its inhabitants are deeply divided — some want to claim their rightful heritage as master growers and have their livelihood legitimised, while others want to continue reaping the inflated profits of the black market. Emily Brady spent a year living with the highly secretive residents of Humboldt County, and her cast of eccentric, intimately drawn characters take us into a fascinating alternate universe. It’s the story of a small town that became dependent on a forbidden plant, and of how everything is changing as marijuana goes mainstream.
Download or read book Secrets of the Oak Woodlands written by Kate Marianchild and published by Heyday Books. This book was released on 2013-08-15 with total page 202 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A Californian may vacation in Yosemite, Big Sur, or Death Valley, but many of us come home to an oak woodland. Yet, while common, oak woodlands are anything but ordinary. In a book rich in illustration and suffused with wonder, author Kate Marianchild combines extensive research and years of personal experience to explore some of the marvelous plants and animals that the oak woodlands nurture. Acorn woodpeckers unite in marriages of up to ten mates and raise their young cooperatively. Ground squirrels roll in rattlesnake skins to hide their scent from hungry snakes. Manzanita's rust-colored, paper-thin bark peels away in time for the summer solstice, exposing sinuous contours that are cool to the touch even on the hottest day. Conveying up-to-the-minute scientific findings with a storyteller's skill, Marianchild introduces us to a host of remarkable creatures in a world close by, a world that "rustles, hums, and sings with the sounds of wild things."
