Download or read book Our Hearts Will Burn Us Down written by Anne Valente and published by HarperCollins. This book was released on 2016-10-04 with total page 272 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: One of Refinery29's Best Reads for October One of Plougshares "Most Necessary Books for the End of 2016" The lives of four teenagers are capsized by a shocking school shooting and its aftermath in this powerful debut novel, a coming-of-age story with the haunting power of Station Eleven and the bittersweet poignancy of Everything I Never Told You. As members of the yearbook committee, Nick, Zola, Matt, and Christina are eager to capture all the memorable moments of their junior year at Lewis and Clark High School—the plays and football games, dances and fund-drives, teachers and classes that are the epicenter of their teenage lives. But how do you document a horrific tragedy—a deadly school shooting by a classmate? Struggling to comprehend this cataclysmic event—and propelled by a sense of responsibility to the town, their parents, and their school—these four "lucky" survivors vow to honor the memories of those lost, and also, the memories forgotten in the shadow of violence. But the shooting is only the first inexplicable trauma to rock their small suburban St. Louis town. A series of mysterious house fires have hit the families of the victims one by one, pushing the grieving town to the edge. Nick, the son of the lead detective investigating the events, plunges into the case on his own, scouring the Internet to uncover what could cause a fire with no evident starting point. As their friend pulls farther away, Matt and Christina battle to save damaged relationships, while Zola fights to keep herself together. A story of grief, community, and family, of the search for understanding and normalcy in the wake of devastating loss, Our Hearts Will Burn Us Down explores profound questions about resiliency, memory, and recovery that brilliantly illuminate the deepest recesses of the human heart.
Download or read book The Desert Sky Before Us written by Anne Valente and published by HarperCollins. This book was released on 2019-05-14 with total page 406 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "The Desert Sky Before Us is a marvel. A vital, profound story of the aftermath of loss, and of the terrors and illuminations of love." —R.O. Kwon, author of The Incendiaries From award-winning author Anne Valente comes this poignant and unforgettable literary novel of two estranged sisters—one, a former racecar driver and the other a recently-released prisoner—who embark on a road trip together to complete the scavenger hunt their mother designed for them before her death. When Billie is released from a correctional facility in Decatur, her sister Rhiannon is there to meet her, even though the two haven’t seen each other in months. Painful secrets and numerous unspoken betrayals linger between them—but most agonizing is the sudden passing of their mother, a renowned paleontologist. Rhiannon and Billie must overcome their differences as they set off on a road trip west, following the breadcrumb-trail of their late mother’s scavenger hunt, a sort of second funeral she planned in her final days. The sisters know the trail will end in Utah at the famous Cleveland-Lloyd Quarry, where their mother spent her career researching dinosaur fossils. But the seemingly endless days on the road soon take their toll, forcing Rhiannon and Billie to confront their hostilities and revisit old memories—both good and bad. As they travel across the heart of America, and as a series of plane crashes in the news make their journey all the more urgent, the two sisters begin to rediscover each other and to uncover their late mother’s veiled second life, taking them on an unexpected emotional journey inward—and forcing them to come to terms with their own choices in life.
Download or read book Our Missing Hearts written by Celeste Ng and published by Penguin. This book was released on 2022-10-04 with total page 286 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: An instant New York Times bestseller • A New York Times Notable Book of 2022 • Named a Best Book of 2022 by People, TIME Magazine, The Washington Post, USA Today, NPR, Los Angeles Times, and Oprah Daily, and more • A Reese's Book Club Pick • New York Times Paperback Row Selection From the #1 bestselling author of Little Fires Everywhere, comes the inspiring new novel about a mother’s unshakeable love. “It’s impossible not to be moved.” —Stephen King, The New York Times Book Review “Riveting, tender, and timely.” —People, Book of the Week “Thought-provoking, heart-wrenching . . . I was so invested in the future of this mother and son, and I can’t wait to hear what you think of this deeply suspenseful story!” —Reese Witherspoon (Reese’s Book Club Pick) Twelve-year-old Bird Gardner lives a quiet existence with his loving father, a former linguist who now shelves books in a university library. His mother Margaret, a Chinese American poet, left without a trace when he was nine years old. He doesn’t know what happened to her—only that her books have been banned—and he resents that she cared more about her work than about him. Then one day, Bird receives a mysterious letter containing only a cryptic drawing, and soon he is pulled into a quest to find her. His journey will take him back to the many folktales she poured into his head as a child, through the ranks of an underground network of heroic librarians, and finally to New York City, where he will finally learn the truth about what happened to his mother, and what the future holds for them both. Our Missing Hearts is an old story made new, of the ways supposedly civilized communities can ignore the most searing injustice. It’s about the lessons and legacies we pass on to our children, and the power of art to create change.
Download or read book By Light We Knew Our Names written by Anne Valente and published by . This book was released on 2014 with total page 224 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Thirteen stories exploring the thin borders between wonder and loss and magic and grief
Download or read book Love Like That written by Emma Duffy-Comparone and published by Henry Holt and Company. This book was released on 2021-03-09 with total page 144 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Named a Best New Book of 2021 by Vogue and Refinery29 Named a Most Anticipated Book of 2021 by Lit Hub Named one of "5 Hot Books" by The National Book Review Longlisted for the PEN/Robert W. Bingham Prize for a Debut Short Story Collection "For a friend who needs a reminder that love is weird, humans are complicated, and bad things often get better or at least later become funny stories to tell our friends." —Vanity Fair A sharp, witty book about brilliant, broken women that are just the right amount wrong. Whether diving into complicated relationships or wrestling with family ties, the girls and women who populate this collection—misfits and misanthropes, bickering sisters, responsible daughters, and unhappy wives—don't always find themselves making the best decisions. A woman struggles with a new kind of love triangle when she moves in with a divorced dad. A lonely teenage beach attendant finds uneasy comradeship with her boss. A high school English teacher gets pushed to her limits when a student plagiarizes. Often caught between desire and duty, guilt and resentment, these characters discover what it means to get lost in love, and do what it takes to find themselves again. Utterly singular and wholly unforgettable, Emma Duffy-Comparone's stories manage to be slyly, wickedly funny at even their darkest turns and herald the arrival of an irreverent and dazzling new voice.
Download or read book Potted Meat written by Steven Dunn and published by . This book was released on 2016 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Set in a decaying town in southern West Virginia, Potted Meat follows a young Aftican-American boy into adolescence as he struggles with abusive parents, poverty, alcohol addiction, and racial tensions.
Download or read book Tell Me Who We Were written by Kate McQuade and published by HarperCollins. This book was released on 2019-07-02 with total page 206 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "These are stories of magical lyricism, contemporary in their exploration of the obsessions of girls and young women, mythic in their scope and mystery. Remarkable." -- Joyce Carol Oates Lyrical, intimate, and incisive, Tell Me Who We Were explores the inner worlds of girls and women, the relationships we cherish and betray, and the transformations we undergo in the simple act of living. It begins with a drowning. One day Mr. Arcilla, the romance language teacher at Briarfield, an all-girls boarding school, is found dead at the bottom of Reed Pond. Young and handsome, the object of much fantasy and fascination, he was adored by his students. For Lilith and Romy, Evie and Claire, Nellie and Grace, he was their first love, and their first true loss. In this extraordinary collection, Kate McQuade explores the ripple effect of one transformative moment on six lives, witnessed at a different point in each girl’s future. Throughout these stories, these bright, imaginative, and ambitious girls mature into women, lose touch and call in favors, achieve success and endure betrayal, marry and divorce, have children and struggle with infertility, abandon husbands and remain loyal to the end.
Download or read book The Book of Broken Hearts written by Sarah Ockler and published by Simon and Schuster. This book was released on 2013-05-21 with total page 277 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: When all signs point to heartbreak, can love still be a rule of the road? A “touching father-daughter story” (Kirkus Reviews) from the author of Bittersweet and Twenty Boy Summer. Jude has learned a lot from her older sisters, but the most important thing is this: The Vargas brothers are notorious heartbreakers. She’s seen the tears and disasters that dating a Vargas boy can cause, and she swore an oath—with candles and a contract and everything—to never have anything to do with one. Now Jude is the only sister still living at home, and she’s spending the summer helping her ailing father restore his vintage motorcycle—which means hiring a mechanic to help out. Is it Jude’s fault he happens to be cute? And surprisingly sweet? And a Vargas? Jude tells herself it’s strictly bike business with Emilio. Her sisters will never find out, and Jude can spot those flirty little Vargas tricks a mile away—no way would she fall for them. But Jude’s defenses are crumbling, and if history is destined to repeat itself, she’s speeding toward some serious heartbreak…unless her sisters were wrong? Jude may have taken an oath, but she’s beginning to think that when it comes to love, some promises might be worth breaking.
Download or read book Burn Our Bodies Down written by Rory Power and published by Macmillan Children's Books. This book was released on 2020-07-14 with total page 276 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: From the author of the New York Times bestseller Wilder Girls comes a twisty thriller about a girl whose past has always been a mystery – until she decides to return to her mother's hometown . . . where history has a tendency to repeat itself. Ever since Margot was born, it's been just her and her mother. No answers to Margot's questions. No history to hold on to. Just the two of them, stuck in their run-down apartment, struggling to get along. But that's not enough for Margot. She wants family. She wants a past. And when she finds a photograph pointing her to a town called Phalene, she leaves. But when Margot gets there, it's not what she bargained for. Margot's mother left for a reason. But was it to hide her past? Or was it to protect Margot from what's still there? Burn Our Bodies Down is a devastating and visceral horror-thriller about survival, the environment and family secrets the human condition from YA author Rory Power.
Download or read book Unfurled written by Michelle Bailat-Jones and published by Ig Publishing. This book was released on 2018 with total page 272 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: When Ella's father John dies unexpectedly, she learns that her mother, whom left the family years ago due to mental illness, is still alive.
Download or read book The Sense of an Ending written by Julian Barnes and published by Vintage. This book was released on 2011-10-05 with total page 158 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: BOOKER PRIZE WINNER • NATIONAL BESTSELLER • A novel that follows a middle-aged man as he contends with a past he never much thought about—until his closest childhood friends return with a vengeance: one of them from the grave, another maddeningly present. A novel so compelling that it begs to be read in a single setting, The Sense of an Ending has the psychological and emotional depth and sophistication of Henry James at his best, and is a stunning achievement in Julian Barnes's oeuvre. Tony Webster thought he left his past behind as he built a life for himself, and his career has provided him with a secure retirement and an amicable relationship with his ex-wife and daughter, who now has a family of her own. But when he is presented with a mysterious legacy, he is forced to revise his estimation of his own nature and place in the world.
Download or read book An Elegy for Mathematics written by Anne Valente and published by . This book was released on 2017 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Fiction. This updated 2017 edition includes a new story. A man in search of a golden bead that is rumored to grant immortality. A would-be astronaut's manifesto. An Archivist who can't help but record all of life's statistics. In these thirteen small stories, Anne Valente takes us to worlds both fantastic and familiar, forgotten and foretold, and in tight, layered prose, she strives to unravel all the tangled questions we have about ourselves. From the field guides of anatomy to permutations on desire, these small stories are expansive and encyclopedic, a cataloging of love and loss, an attempt to find a formula for everything that courses through us.
Download or read book Little Fires Everywhere written by Celeste Ng and published by Penguin. This book was released on 2017-09-12 with total page 354 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The #1 New York Times bestseller! “Witty, wise, and tender. It's a marvel.” —Paula Hawkins, author of The Girl on the Train and A Slow Fire Burning “To say I love this book is an understatement. It’s a deep psychological mystery about the power of motherhood, the intensity of teenage love, and the danger of perfection. It moved me to tears.” —Reese Witherspoon From the bestselling author of Everything I Never Told You and Our Missing Hearts comes a riveting novel that traces the intertwined fates of the picture-perfect Richardson family and the enigmatic mother and daughter who upend their lives. In Shaker Heights, a placid, progressive suburb of Cleveland, everything is planned—from the layout of the winding roads, to the colors of the houses, to the successful lives its residents will go on to lead. And no one embodies this spirit more than Elena Richardson, whose guiding principle is playing by the rules. Enter Mia Warren—an enigmatic artist and single mother—who arrives in this idyllic bubble with her teenaged daughter Pearl, and rents a house from the Richardsons. Soon Mia and Pearl become more than tenants: all four Richardson children are drawn to the mother-daughter pair. But Mia carries with her a mysterious past and a disregard for the status quo that threatens to upend this carefully ordered community. When old family friends of the Richardsons attempt to adopt a Chinese-American baby, a custody battle erupts that dramatically divides the town—and puts Mia and Elena on opposing sides. Suspicious of Mia and her motives, Elena is determined to uncover the secrets in Mia’s past. But her obsession will come at unexpected and devastating costs. Little Fires Everywhere explores the weight of secrets, the nature of art and identity, and the ferocious pull of motherhood—and the danger of believing that following the rules can avert disaster. Named a Best Book of the Year by: People, The Washington Post, Bustle, Esquire, Southern Living, The Daily Beast, GQ, Entertainment Weekly, NPR, Amazon, Barnes & Noble, iBooks, Audible, Goodreads, Library Reads, Book of the Month, Paste, Kirkus Reviews, St. Louis Post-Dispatch, and many more... Perfect for book clubs! Visit celesteng.com for discussion guides and more.
Download or read book Down Comes the Night written by Allison Saft and published by Wednesday Books. This book was released on 2021-03-02 with total page 444 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "A YA fantasy classic in the making." - Christine Lynn Herman, author of The Devouring Gray "Fans of Leigh Bardugo’s “Grisha Trilogy” and Marie Rutkoski’s “Winner’s Trilogy” have been waiting for this Darkling-esque romance..." - School Library Journal (Starred Review) New York Times bestselling author Allison Saft’s Down Comes the Night is a snow-drenched romantic fantasy that keeps you racing through the pages long into the night. He saw the darkness in her magic. She saw the magic in his darkness. Wren Southerland’s reckless use of magic has cost her everything: she's been dismissed from the Queen’s Guard and separated from her best friend—the girl she loves. So when a letter arrives from a reclusive lord, asking Wren to come to his estate, Colwick Hall, to cure his servant from a mysterious illness, she seizes her chance to redeem herself. The mansion is crumbling, icy winds haunt the caved-in halls, and her eccentric host forbids her from leaving her room after dark. Worse, Wren’s patient isn’t a servant at all but Hal Cavendish, the infamous Reaper of Vesria and her kingdom’s sworn enemy. Hal also came to Colwick Hall for redemption, but the secrets in the estate may lead to both of their deaths. With sinister forces at work, Wren and Hal realize they’ll have to join together if they have any hope of saving their kingdoms. But as Wren circles closer to the nefarious truth behind Hal’s illness, they realize they have no escape from the monsters within the mansion. All they have is each other, and a startling desire that could be their downfall. Love makes monsters of us all
Download or read book What the Heart Wants written by Audrey Carlan and published by HarperCollins Australia. This book was released on 2020-08-01 with total page 308 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: From the No. 1 bestselling author of the beloved Calendar Girl books comes the first in a witty, wise and emotionally compelling new series, where coming home is just the beginning… ‘Fly free.’ For ten years those words, written on pink parchment paper in her mother’s beautiful handwriting, have been Suda Kaye Ross’s guiding star. Every year on her birthday, Suda Kaye opens another of the letters her mother penned before she passed, heeding the advice inside as she fills her life with experiences. From Italy to Australia, from Rio to Russia, she’s slaked her wanderlust. And then, on her twenty-eighth birthday, she opens the letter that sends her home. Returning to Colorado means confronting everything — and everyone — she left behind, including her cherished sister, Evie, and her first love, Camden Bryant. Suda Kaye and Cam spent four years and one unforgettable night together. Given the way she ran out on him, it’s no surprise that he’s wary, resentful…and engaged to someone else. Evie, hardworking and überresponsible, just wants her sister to put down roots at last. For Evie’s sake, and her own, Suda Kaye is trying to build a new life, all the while wondering whether it’s too late to come back home — or if the most important part of her never really left.
Download or read book Atypical Cells of Undetermined Significance written by Brenna Womer and published by C&r Press. This book was released on 2017-03-15 with total page 54 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Brenna Womer's debut collection Atypical Cells of Undetermined Significance is a book of creative nonfiction, poetry, and hybrid work that begins on an exam-room table and ends at the register of a 7-Eleven. In the pages between, Womer feels and hurts and learns her body and wonders at the world's reactions to it. Her essays and poems exist in the liminal spaces approaching binaries: the childless mother, the loveless lover, the objective neurotic, and the military child whose heart aches for a home it cannot know. In this collection, Womer explores, in all the grit and gore and glory she can own, what it is to be--just one, but still--a woman
Download or read book Heart of the Matter written by Emily Giffin and published by St. Martin's Press. This book was released on 2010-05-11 with total page 382 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "Giffin excels at creating complex characters and stories that ask us to explore what we really want from our lives."--Atlanta Journal-Constitution Tessa Russo is the mother of two young children and the wife of a renowned pediatric surgeon. Despite her own mother's warnings, Tessa has recently given up her career to focus on her family and the pursuit of domestic happiness. From the outside, she seems destined to live a charmed life. Valerie Anderson is an attorney and single mother to six-year-old Charlie--a boy who has never known his father. After too many disappointments, she has given up on romance--and even to some degree, friendships--believing that it is always safer not to expect too much. Although both women live in the same Boston suburb, the two have relatively little in common aside from a fierce love for their children. But one night, a tragic accident causes their lives to converge in ways no one could have imagined. In alternating, pitch-perfect points of view, Emily Giffin's Heart of the Matter creates a moving, luminous story of good people caught in untenable circumstances. Each being tested in ways they never thought possible. Each questioning everything they once believed. And each ultimately discovering what truly matters most.
