Download or read book Summer of My Amazing Luck written by Miriam Toews and published by Vintage Canada. This book was released on 2010-01-08 with total page 242 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A Novel by the Governor General’s Literary Award—winning author of A Complicated Kindness Lucy Van Alstyne always thought she’d grow up to become a forest ranger. Instead, at the age of eighteen, she’s found herself with quite a different job title: Single Mother on the Dole. As for the father of her nine-month-old son, Dillinger, well…it could be any of number of guys. At the Have-a-Life housing project–aptly nicknamed Half-a-Life by those who call it home–Lucy meets Lish, a zany and exuberant woman whose idea of fashion is a black beret with a big silver spider brooch stuck on it. Lish is the mother of four daughters, two by a man on welfare himself and twins from a one-week stand with a fire-eating busker who stole her heart–and her wallet. Living on the dole isn’t a walk in the park for Lucy and Lish. Dinner almost always consists of noodles. Transportation means pushing a crappy stroller through the rain. Then there are the condescending welfare agents with their dreaded surprise inspections. And just across the street is Serenity Place, another housing project with which Half-a-Life is engaged in a full-on feud. When the women aren’t busy snitching on each other, they’re spreading rumours–or plotting elaborate acts of revenge. In the middle of a mosquito-infested rainy season, Lish and Lucy decide to escape the craziness of Half-A-Life by taking to the road. In a van held together with coat-hangers and electrical tape and crammed to the hilt with kids and toys, they set off to Colorado in search Lish’s lost love and the father of her twins. Whether they’ll find him is questionable, but the down-and-out adventure helps Lucy realize that this just may be the summer of her amazing luck. Miriam Toews’s debut novel, Summer of My Amazing Luck opens our eyes to a social class rarely captured in fiction. At once hilarious and heartbreaking, it is inhabited by an unforgettable and poignant group of characters. Shortlisted for both the McNally Robinson Book of the Year Award and for the Stephen Leacock Memorial Medal for Humour, it also earned Miriam the John Hirsch Award for the Most Promising Manitoba Writer.
Download or read book A Complicated Kindness written by Miriam Toews and published by Catapult. This book was released on 2019-01-15 with total page 264 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Winner of the Governor General’s Literary Award In this stunning coming-of-age novel, the award-winning author of Women Talking balances grief and hope in the voice of a witty, beleaguered teenager whose family is shattered by fundamentalist Christianity "Half of our family, the better–looking half, is missing," Nomi Nickel tells us at the beginning of A Complicated Kindness. Left alone with her sad, peculiar father, her days are spent piecing together why her mother and sister have disappeared and contemplating her inevitable career at Happy Family Farms, a chicken slaughterhouse on the outskirts of East Village. Not the East Village in New York City where Nomi would prefer to live, but an oppressive town founded by Mennonites on the cold, flat plains of Manitoba, Canada. This darkly funny novel is the world according to the unforgettable Nomi, a bewildered and wry sixteen–year–old trapped in a town governed by fundamentalist religion and in the shattered remains of a family it destroyed. In Nomi's droll, refreshing voice, we're told the story of an eccentric, loving family that falls apart as each member lands on a collision course with the only community any of them have ever known. A work of fierce humor and tragedy by a writer who has taken the American market by storm, this searing, tender, comic testament to family love will break your heart. “Brilliant.” —New York Times Book Review “A darkly funny and provocative novel.” —O, the Oprah Magazine
Download or read book Summer of My Amazing Luck written by Miriam Toews and published by Catapult. This book was released on 2019-04-09 with total page 240 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "[A] memorable portrait of a struggling young person who finds unexpected resilience and peace . . . Hilarious, heartbreaking, and poignant." —Booklist Miriam Toews welcomes her readers to the Have–a–Life housing project (better known as Half–a–Life). The welfare regulations are endless and the rate–fink neighbors won't mind their own business. Lucy Von Alstyne sends fictitious letters to her friend Alicia, pretending to be the father of Alicia's twins. When the two mothers and their five children set off on a journey to find him, facing along the way the complications of living in poverty and raising fatherless children, Lucy discovers this just may be the summer of her amazing luck.
Download or read book Good Luck with That written by Kristan Higgins and published by Penguin. This book was released on 2018-08-07 with total page 481 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: One of Purewow’s “Best Beach Reads of Summer 2018” Winner for Best Book of 2018 of the Fresh Fiction Awards! New York Times bestselling author Kristan Higgins is beloved for her heartfelt novels filled with humor and wisdom. Now, she tackles an issue every woman deals with: body image and self-acceptance. Emerson, Georgia, and Marley have been best friends ever since they met at a weight-loss camp as teens. When Emerson tragically passes away, she leaves one final wish for her best friends: to conquer the fears they still carry as adults. For each of them, that means something different. For Marley, it's coming to terms with the survivor's guilt she's carried around since her twin sister's death, which has left her blind to the real chance for romance in her life. For Georgia, it's about learning to stop trying to live up to her mother's and brother's ridiculous standards, and learning to accept the love her ex-husband has tried to give her. But as Marley and Georgia grow stronger, the real meaning of Emerson's dying wish becomes truly clear: more than anything, she wanted her friends to love themselves. A novel of compassion and insight, Good Luck With That tells the story of two women who learn to embrace themselves just the way they are.
Download or read book Summer of My Amazing Luck written by Chris Craddock and published by . This book was released on 2007 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Summer of My Amazing Luck is the story of Lucy and Lish, two single mothers who live in the Winnipeg housing project Have-a-Life. Lucy says she "didn't grieve properly" when her mother was murdered, and tried to fill her emptiness with sexual encounters instead. When she became pregnant, she couldn't really say who the father of her child was. Now Lucy and her infant son Dill are in Have-a-Life, trying to survive in the welfare system. Her best friend Lish has her own troubles. She pines for Gotcha, the street performer who stole her heart along with her wallet. So Lucy decides to bring Gotcha back in a series of postcards. But maybe Lucy's made it too real. When Lish gets a postcard telling her Gotcha is heading to Denver, she decides they have to find him. They set out in a beat-up old borrowed van, full of toys and kids. With all the humour, compassion, and intelligence of Miriam Toews' novel, this inventive stage adaptation takes audiences on a hilarious and heartbreaking journey as Lucy discovers that this may be the summer when everything changes.
Download or read book Downriver written by Will Hobbs and published by Simon and Schuster. This book was released on 2012-07-10 with total page 203 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Will Hobbs’s classic tale of whitewater adventure is back in print with an exciting new look. No adults, no permit, no river map. After fifteen-year-old Jessie gets sent to Discovery Unlimited, an outdoor education program, she and six companions “borrow” the company’s rafting gear and take off down the Colorado River through the Grand Canyon on their own. Floating beneath sheer red walls, camping on white sand beaches, and exploring caves and waterfalls, Jessie and the others are having the time of their lives—at first. But when they’re pursued by helicopters, they boldly push on into the black-walled inner gorge, the heart of the Grand Canyon, only to encounter huge rapids, bone-chilling rain, injuries, and conflict within the group. What will be the consequences of their reckless adventure? This riveting novel includes an author’s note about his own rafting experiences and has been ranked by the American Library Association as a “100 Best of the Best” for twenty-five years—a testament to the enduring popularity of the action and adventure that await in Downriver.
Download or read book All My Puny Sorrows written by Miriam Toews and published by Bloomsbury Publishing USA. This book was released on 2019-10-15 with total page 330 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: From the bestselling author of Women Talking, a "wrenchingly honest, darkly funny novel" (Entertainment Weekly). Elf and Yoli are sisters. While on the surface Elfrieda's life is enviable (she's a world-renowned pianist, glamorous, wealthy, and happily married) and Yolandi's a mess (she's divorced and broke, with two teenagers growing up too quickly), they are fiercely close-raised in a Mennonite household and sharing the hardship of Elf's desire to end her life. After Elf's latest attempt, Yoli must quickly determine how to keep her family from falling apart while facing a profound question: what do you do for a loved one who truly wants to die? All My Puny Sorrows is a deeply personal story that is as much comedy as it is tragedy, a goodbye grin from the friend who taught you how to live.
Download or read book The Good Luck Of Right Now written by Matthew Quick and published by Harper Collins. This book was released on 2014-02-11 with total page 182 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: For almost four decades, Bartholomew Neil has done nothing but live with his mom. When she begins calling him Richard—for reasons unknown—and then dies, Bartholomew is woefully unprepared.” A clue comes in the form of a “Free Tibet” letter he finds in his mother’s underwear drawer, and so Bartholomew awkwardly starts his new life, writing Richard Gere a series of highly intimate fan letters. Jung’s theory of synchronicity, the mystery of women, the Dalai Lama’s teachings, alien abduction, cat telepathy and the Catholic Church are all explored in depth by Bartholomew’s epistles—but mostly the letters outline one man’s heartbreakingly earnest attempt to assemble a family of his own. A struggling priest, a “girlbrarian,” her foul-mouthed brother and Richard Gere (well, sort of) join the quest. In a rented Ford Focus, they travel to Canada in search of Bartholomew’s biological father and end up finding so much more.
Download or read book The Flying Troutmans written by Miriam Toews and published by Catapult. This book was released on 2019-02-12 with total page 288 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "This saga of bad luck and good company is a wry, scary, heartfelt ode to the traverses we have to make in life when we're at the end of our rope and there's no net below us." —ELLE When Hattie's moody boyfriend dumps her in Paris, she returns home to find that her sister Min is in the psych ward again. Freaked out by the prospect of becoming a surrogate mother to Min's kids, Logan and Thebes, Hattie decides to take them in the family van to find their father, last heard to be running an idiosyncratic art gallery in South Dakota. What ensues is a remarkable journey across America, as aunt and kids—through chaos as diverse as their personalities—discover one another to be both far crazier and far more normal than any of them thought.
Download or read book Swing Low written by Miriam Toews and published by Arcade Publishing. This book was released on 2001 with total page 224 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "One morning Mel Toews put on his coat and hat and walked out of town, prepared to die. A loving husband and father, faithful member of the Mennonite church, and immensely popular school teacher, he was a pillar of his close-knit community. Yet after a lifetime of struggle, he could no longer face the darkness of manic depression. Now his daughter Miriam, an award-winning writer, has given her father a voice for his whole story. In Swing Low, Miriam recounts Mel's life as she imagines he would have told it, right up to the day he took his final walk. Toews takes us deep inside the experience of depression, but she also gives us winsome and hilarious tales of country life: growing up on a farm, courting a wife, becoming a teacher, and rearing a strong, happy family in the midst of private torment." --
Download or read book My Side of the Mountain written by Jean Craighead George and published by Penguin. This book was released on 2001-05-21 with total page 213 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "Should appeal to all rugged individualists who dream of escape to the forest."—The New York Times Book Review Sam Gribley is terribly unhappy living in New York City with his family, so he runs away to the Catskill Mountains to live in the woods—all by himself. With only a penknife, a ball of cord, forty dollars, and some flint and steel, he intends to survive on his own. Sam learns about courage, danger, and independence during his year in the wilderness, a year that changes his life forever. “An extraordinary book . . . It will be read year after year.” —The Horn Book
Download or read book Fight Night written by Miriam Toews and published by Bloomsbury Publishing USA. This book was released on 2021-10-05 with total page 274 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "Move over, Scout Finch! There's a new contender for feistiest girl in fiction, and her name is Swiv." -USA Today, "Best Books of the Year" "Toews is a master of dialogue." -New York Times Book Review, Editors' Choice "A revelation." -Richard Russo NPR Best Books of the Year * Shortlisted for the Scotiabank Giller Prize * Writers' Trust Fiction Prize Finalist * Indie Next Pick * Amazon Editors' Pick * Apple Book of the Month From the bestselling author of Women Talking and All My Puny Sorrows, a compassionate, darkly humorous, and deeply wise novel about three generations of women. “You're a small thing,” Grandma writes, “and you must learn to fight.” Swiv's Grandma, Elvira, has been fighting all her life. From her upbringing in a strict religious community, she has fought those who wanted to take away her joy, her independence, and her spirit. She has fought to make peace with her loved ones when they have chosen to leave her. And now, even as her health fails, Grandma is fighting for her family: for her daughter, partnerless and in the third term of a pregnancy; and for her granddaughter Swiv, a spirited nine-year-old who has been suspended from school. Cramped together in their Toronto home, on the precipice of extraordinary change, Grandma and Swiv undertake a vital new project, setting out to explain their lives in letters they will never send. Alternating between the exuberant, precocious voice of young Swiv and her irrepressible, tenacious Grandma, Fight Night is a love letter to mothers and grandmothers, and to all the women who are still fighting-painfully, ferociously- for a way to live on their own terms.
Download or read book Just Our Luck written by Julia Walton and published by Random House Books for Young Readers. This book was released on 2020-12-29 with total page 274 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: From the author of Words on Bathroom Walls—now a major motion picture—comes a romance in the spirit of Dear Evan Hansen about overcoming anxiety—and about finding love and friendship in unlikely places. ★ "A masterpiece" —Kirkus, starred review "Bad luck follows lies." That was the first rule for life that Leo's Greek grandmother, Yia Yia, gave him before she died. But Leo's anxiety just caused a fight at school, and though he didn't lie, he wasn't exactly honest about how it all went down . . . how he went down. Now Leo's father thinks a self-defense class is exactly what his son needs to "man up." "Leave the Paros family alone." That was Yia Yia's second rule for life. But who does Leo see sitting at the front desk of the local gym? Evey Paros, whose family supposedly cursed Leo's with bad luck. Seeing that Leo is desperate to enroll in anything but self-defense class, Evey cuts him a deal: she'll secretly enroll him in hot yoga instead—for a price. But what could the brilliant, ruthless, forbidden Evey Paros want from Leo? Sharp, honest, and compulsively readable, Just Our Luck is as funny as it is heartwarming. "A feel-good story, with shades of Holes and The Karate Kid" —Bulletin
Download or read book White River Red written by Becky Marietta and published by TouchPoint Press. This book was released on 2021-01-15 with total page 279 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book The Good Luck Charm written by Helena Hunting and published by Forever. This book was released on 2018-08-07 with total page 246 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Treat yourself to an "outrageously sexy" (Entertainment Weekly), "fabulously fun" (Jill Shalvis) second-chance romance from the New York Times bestselling queen of hockey romance! Lilah isn't sure what hurt worse: the day Ethan left her to focus on his hockey career or the day he came back eight years later. He might think they can pick up just where they left off, but she's no longer that same girl and never wants to be again. Ethan wants his glory days back. And that includes having Lilah by his side. With her, he was magic. They were magic. All he has to do is make her see that. Just when Lilah might finally be ready to let Ethan in, though, she finds out their reunion might have nothing to do with love and everything to do with improving his game. But Ethan's already lost her once, and even if it costs him his career, he'll do anything to keep from losing her again. "I couldn't stop turning the pages of this sexy, second-chance romance." -- Amy E. Reichert, author of The Coincidence of Coconut Cake "Hunting sparkles in this well-plotted contemporary." -- Publishers Weekly "If you love rom-coms, don't miss this second-chance romance novel." -- Hello Giggles What readers are saying about The Good Luck Charm... "Sexy rom-com at its finest!" "Helena Hunting is the queen of romantic comedy." "Easily my favorite book Ms. Hunting has written." "My fave read from Helena Hunting yet." "Just as good as the Pucked series." "This was awesome!" "Refreshing, light, swoony, and sexy."
Download or read book A Boy of Good Breeding written by Miriam Toews and published by Faber & Faber. This book was released on 2014-03-06 with total page 223 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Knute is a twenty-four-year-old single mother who returns home to Algren with her daughter to look after her father Tom, who has suffered a heart attack. Meanwhile, Hosea Funk, a friend of Tom's and the mayor of Algren has a lot on his mind. The prime minister has promised to pay a visit to whichever town in Canada has the smallest population. Algren has held this position for some time but recent baby booms and returning families, like Knute, threaten to tip Algren over the magic 1500 . . .
Download or read book Somewhere Between Luck and Trust written by Emilie Richards and published by MIRA. This book was released on 2016-05-01 with total page 311 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: “Intriguing” women’s fiction from a USA Today–bestselling author with “credible, compassionate, and even heartless characters” and an “enticing plot” (New York Journal of Books). Cristy Haviland gave birth behind bars to the child of the man who put her there and might yet destroy her. Now she’s free again, with no idea what to do next. As smart as she is, a learning disability has kept her from learning to read. And that’s the least of her hurdles. Georgia Ferguson, talented educator, receives a mysterious charm bracelet that may lead her to the mother who abandoned her at birth. Does she want to follow the clues? Can she bring herself to reach out for help along the way? Now Cristy and Georgia are standing at a crossroads, a place where unlikely unions can be formed. A place where two very different women might bridge the gap between generations and education, and together make tough choices. They might even, if they dare, find friendship. Praise for One Mountain Away, book 1 of the Goddesses Anonymous series: “Richards creates a heart-wrenching atmosphere that slowly builds to the final pages, and continues to echo after the book is finished.” —Publishers Weekly “Complex characters, compelling emotions and the healing power of forgiveness—what could be better? I loved this book!” —New York Times–bestselling author Sherryl Woods
