Download or read book Taking the Reins An Ellen Ned Book written by Jane Smiley and published by Knopf Books for Young Readers. This book was released on 2020-03-10 with total page 210 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A young rider encounters well-known horses and new friends in the final installment of the Ellen & Ned trilogy by Pulitzer Prize winner Jane Smiley. Ellen's family has moved to a new town...but some things, like her love for horses, remain the same. Ellen is now the proud owner of her own horse, Tater. She's learning new skills and challenging herself as a rider...but she still can't stop thinking about Ned, the feisty former racehorse she sees on the ranch during her lessons. In the meantime, Ellen's making new friends and encountering old ones. Most exciting of all is Da, a boy from a riding family who is possessed of a spirit of mischief and daring and knows his own mind. Ellen still has a lot to learn...about horses, friendship, and herself. And will she ever be able to get Ned off her mind?

Download or read book Taking the Reins An Ellen Ned Book written by Jane Smiley and published by Knopf Books for Young Readers. This book was released on 2020-03-10 with total page 210 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A young rider encounters well-known horses and new friends in the final installment of the Ellen & Ned trilogy by Pulitzer Prize winner Jane Smiley. Ellen's family has moved to a new town...but some things, like her love for horses, remain the same. Ellen is now the proud owner of her own horse, Tater. She's learning new skills and challenging herself as a rider...but she still can't stop thinking about Ned, the feisty former racehorse she sees on the ranch during her lessons. In the meantime, Ellen's making new friends and encountering old ones. Most exciting of all is Da, a boy from a riding family who is possessed of a spirit of mischief and daring and knows his own mind. Ellen still has a lot to learn...about horses, friendship, and herself. And will she ever be able to get Ned off her mind?

Download or read book Saddles Secrets An Ellen Ned Book written by Jane Smiley and published by Knopf Books for Young Readers. This book was released on 2019-03-05 with total page 210 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A young rider gets to know a new pony, adjusts to a new sibling, and learns a lot about secrets in this charming follow-up to Pulitzer Prize winner Jane Smiley's Riding Lessons. Ellen can't stop thinking about the racehorse Ned--and the secret she shares with him. There seem to be a lot of secrets in Ellen's life these days. Secrets between friends. Secrets within families. Secrets that are all her own. And secrets her parents are keeping from her that could change everything about her life. One thing that's not a secret is how much Ellen wants to jump--to feel herself on a horse as it soars through the air, smooth and fast. The horse she's riding these days is Hot Potato--a pony she can trust, a pony she can practice jumping with. But he can't possibly be as interesting as Ned, can he? And will her parents' secret take her away from the stable forever?

Download or read book Taking the Reins an Ellen Ned Book written by Jane Smiley and published by Yearling Books. This book was released on 2021-03-09 with total page 208 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A young rider encounters well-known horses and new friends in the final installment of the Ellen & Ned trilogy by Pulitzer Prize winner Jane Smiley. Ellen's family has moved to a new town...but some things, like her love for horses, remain the same. Ellen is now the proud owner of her own horse, Tater. She's learning new skills and challenging herself as a rider...but she still can't stop thinking about Ned, the feisty former racehorse she sees on the ranch during her lessons. In the meantime, Ellen's making new friends and encountering old ones. Most exciting of all is Da, a boy from a riding family who is possessed of a spirit of mischief and daring and knows his own mind. Ellen still has a lot to learn...about horses, friendship, and herself. And will she ever be able to get Ned off her mind?

Download or read book Riding Lessons An Ellen Ned Book written by Jane Smiley and published by Knopf Books for Young Readers. This book was released on 2018-03-06 with total page 192 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The first book in a new horse trilogy from Pulitzer Prize winner Jane Smiley starring a feisty young rider. Eleven-year-old Ellen is a spunky—and occasionally misbehaving—young riding student. Her teacher Abby Lovitt (who readers might recognize from The Georges and the Jewels) is a high school student who introduces her to jumping, dressage techniques, and most importantly, Ned. Ned is a colt who used to be a racehorse, until he hurt his leg and moved to Abby’s ranch. Ellen and Ned seem to understand each other, and their companionship is immediate. But Ellen is only allowed to go to riding lessons when she behaves at school. And with all that’s going on, from learning that she’s adopted to finding out her parents are adopting a new baby, it’s harder than ever for Ellen to pay attention and behave in class and at home. Will Ellen be able to spend more time on the ranch with Ned? And will her parents ever let her have a horse of her own?

Download or read book Perestroika in Paris written by Jane Smiley and published by Anchor. This book was released on 2020-12-01 with total page 289 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: NATIONAL BESTSELLER • From the Pulitzer Prize-winning and best-selling author: a captivating, brilliantly imaginative story of three extraordinary animals—and a young boy—whose lives intersect in Paris in this "feel-good escape” (The New York Times). Paras, short for "Perestroika," is a spirited racehorse at a racetrack west of Paris. One afternoon at dusk, she finds the door of her stall open and—she's a curious filly—wanders all the way to the City of Light. She's dazzled and often mystified by the sights, sounds, and smells around her, but she isn't afraid. Soon she meets an elegant dog, a German shorthaired pointer named Frida, who knows how to get by without attracting the attention of suspicious Parisians. Paras and Frida coexist for a time in the city's lush green spaces, nourished by Frida's strategic trips to the vegetable market. They keep company with two irrepressible ducks and an opinionated raven. But then Paras meets a human boy, Etienne, and discovers a new, otherworldly part of Paris: the ivy-walled house where the boy and his nearly-one-hundred-year-old great-grandmother live in seclusion. As the cold weather nears, the unlikeliest of friendships bloom. But how long can a runaway horse stay undiscovered in Paris? How long can a boy keep her hidden and all to himself? Jane Smiley's beguiling new novel is itself an adventure that celebrates curiosity, ingenuity, and the desire of all creatures for true love and freedom.

Download or read book A Dangerous Business written by Jane Smiley and published by Vintage. This book was released on 2023-11-07 with total page 225 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: From the Pulitzer Prize-winning, best-selling author of A Thousand Acres: An amazing “mash-up of a Western, a serial-killer mystery and a feminist-inflected tale of life in a bordello” (The Washington Post). In 1850s Gold Rush California two young prostitutes, best friends Eliza and Jean, attempt to find their way in a lawless town on the fringes of the Wild West—a bewitching combination of beauty and danger—as what will become the Civil War looms on the horizon. “Everyone knows that this is a dangerous business, but between you and me, being a woman is a dangerous business, and don’t let anyone tell you otherwise..." Monterey, 1851. Ever since her husband was killed in a bar fight, Eliza Ripple has been working in a brothel. It seems like a better life, at least at first. The madam, Mrs. Parks, is kind, the men are (relatively) well behaved, and Eliza has attained what few women have: financial security. But when the dead bodies of young women start appearing outside of town, a darkness descends that she can't resist confronting. Side by side with her friend Jean, and inspired by her reading, especially by Edgar Allan Poe’s detective Dupin, Eliza pieces together an array of clues to try to catch the killer, all the while juggling clients who begin to seem more and more suspicious. Eliza and Jean are determined not just to survive, but to find their way in a lawless town on the fringes of the Wild West—a bewitching combination of beauty and danger—as what will become the Civil War looms on the horizon. As Mrs. Parks says, "Everyone knows that this is a dangerous business, but between you and me, being a woman is a dangerous business, and don’t let anyone tell you otherwise ..."

Download or read book Horse Heaven written by Jane Smiley and published by Alfred A. Knopf. This book was released on 2000 with total page 888 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "It's not true," says a character in Jane Smiley's funny, passionate, and brilliant new novel of horse racing, "that anything can happen at the racetrack," but many astonishing and affecting things do -- and in Horse Heaven, we find them woven into a marvelous tapestry of joy and love, chicanery, folly, greed, and derring-do. Haunting, exquisite Rosalind Maybrick, wife of a billionaire owner, one day can't quite decide what it is she wants, and discovers too late that her whole life is transformed . . . Twenty-year-old Tiffany Morse, stuck in her job at Wal-Mart, prays, "Please make something happen here . . . This time, I mean it," and something does . . . Farley, a good trainer in a bad slump; Buddy, a ruthless trainer who can't seem to lose even though he knows that his personal salvation depends upon it; Roberto, an apprentice jockey who has "the hands" but is growing too big for his dream career with every passing day; Leo the gambler and his earnest son, Jesse, who understands everything about his father's "system" except why it doesn't work; Elizabeth, the sixty-two-year-old theorist of sex and animal communication, and her best friend, Joy, the mare manager at the ranch at the center of the universe--all are woven together by the horses that pass among them: two colts and two fillies who begin with the promise of talent and breeding, and now might or might not achieve stardom. There are the geldings -- Justa Bob, the plain brown horse who always wins by a nose, a lovable claimer who passes from owner to owner on a heart-wrenching journey down from the winner's circle; and the beautiful Mr. T., raced in France and rescued in Texas, who is discovered to have some unusualand amazing talents. And then there is the Jack Russell terrier, Eileen, a dog with real convictions -- and the will to implement them. The strange, compelling, sparkling, and mysterious universe of horse racing that has fascinated generations of punters and robber barons, horse-lovers and wits, has never before been depicted with such verve and originality, such tenderness, such clarity, and, above all, such sheer exuberance.

Download or read book The Terrible Thing That Happened to Barnaby Brocket written by John Boyne and published by Penguin Group. This book was released on 2013-01-08 with total page 203 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A tale of acceptance from the bestselling author of The Boy in the Striped Pajamas. Barnaby Brocket is an ordinary eight-year-old boy in most ways, but he was born different in one important way: he floats. Unlike everyone else, Barnaby does not obey the law of gravity. His parents, who have a fear of being noticed, want desperately for Barnaby to be normal, but he can't help who he is. And when the unthinkable happens, Barnaby finds himself on a journey that takes him all over the world. Drifting from Brazil to New York, from Canada to Ireland, and even to space, the floating boy meets all sorts of different people--and discovers who he really is along the way. This whimsical novel will delight middle-graders, while readers of all ages will find themselves questioning what it means to be "normal."

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 True Blue written by Jane Smiley and published by Yearling. This book was released on 2012-08-07 with total page 306 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: True Blue is a beauty, a dappled gray, and when Abby gets to take him to her family's ranch, she can hardly believe her luck. The horse needs a home: his owner—a woman brand new to the riding stable—was tragically killed in a car crash and no one has claimed him. Daddy is wary, as always. But Abby is smitten. True Blue is a sweetheart, and whenever Abby calls out, "Blue, Blue, how are you?" he whinnies back. But sometimes True Blue seems . . . spooked. He paces, and always seems to be looking for something. Or someone. Filled with riding scenes and horse details, this newest middle-grade novel from a Pulitzer Prize winner offers a mysterious and suspenseful almost-ghost story.

Download or read book Early Warning written by Jane Smiley and published by Anchor. This book was released on 2015-04-28 with total page 497 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: From the Pulitzer Prize-winner: the second installment, following Some Luck, of her widely acclaimed, best-selling American trilogy, which brings the journey of a remarkable family with roots in the Iowa heartland into mid-century America Early Warning opens in 1953 with the Langdon family at a crossroads. Their stalwart patriarch, Walter, who with his wife, Rosanna, sustained their farm for three decades, has suddenly died, leaving their five children, now adults, looking to the future. Only one will remain in Iowa to work the land, while the others scatter to Washington, D.C., California, and everywhere in between. As the country moves out of post–World War II optimism through the darker landscape of the Cold War and the social and sexual revolutions of the 1960s and ’70s, and then into the unprecedented wealth—for some—of the early 1980s, the Langdon children each follow a different path in a rapidly changing world. And they now have children of their own: twin boys who are best friends and vicious rivals; a girl whose rebellious spirit takes her to the notorious Peoples Temple in San Francisco; and a golden boy who drops out of college to fight in Vietnam—leaving behind a secret legacy that will send shock waves through the Langdon family into the next generation. Capturing a transformative period through richly drawn characters we come to know and care deeply for, Early Warning continues Smiley’s extraordinary epic trilogy, a gorgeously told saga that began with Some Luck and will span a century in America. But it also stands entirely on its own as an engrossing story of the challenges—and rewards—of family and home, even in the most turbulent of times, all while showcasing a beloved writer at the height of her considerable powers.

Download or read book Private Life written by Jane Smiley and published by Faber & Faber. This book was released on 2010-05-06 with total page 491 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Margaret Mayfield is nearly an old maid at twenty-seven when she marries Captain Andrew Jackson Jefferson Early. He's the most famous man their Missouri town has ever produced: a naval officer and an astronomer-a genius who, according to the local paper, has changed the universe. Margaret's mother calls the match "a piece of luck." Yet Andrew confounds Margaret's expectations from the moment their train leaves for his naval base in San Francisco, and soon she realizes that his devotion to science leaves little room for anything, or anyone, else. She stands by him through tragedies both personal and those they share with the nation. But as World War II approaches, Andrew's obsessions take a darker turn, forcing Margaret to reconsider the life she'd so carefully constructed.

Download or read book Moo written by Jane Smiley and published by Anchor. This book was released on 2011-08-24 with total page 434 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: NATIONAL BESTSELLER • From the Pulitzer Prize-winning author of A Thousand Acres comes “an uproariously funny and at the same time hauntingly melancholy portrait of a college community in the Midwest" (The New York Times). In this darkly satirical send-up of academia and the Midwest, we are introduced to Moo University, a distinguished institution devoted to the study of agriculture. Amid cow pastures and waving fields of grain, Moo’s campus churns with devious plots, mischievous intrigue, lusty liaisons, and academic one-upmanship, Chairman X of the Horticulture Department harbors a secret fantasy to kill the dean; Mrs. Walker, the provost's right hand and campus information queen, knows where all the bodies are buried; Timothy Monahan, associate professor of English, advocates eavesdropping for his creative writing assignments; and Bob Carlson, a sophomore, feeds and maintains his only friend: a hog named Earl Butz. Wonderfully written and masterfully plotted, Moo gives us a wickedly funny slice of life.

Download or read book Horse Crazy written by Bonnie Bryant and published by Delacorte Press. This book was released on 2012-09-26 with total page 144 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Carole Hanson and Stevie Lake have been best friends ever since they met at Pine Hollow Stables. So when Lisa Atwood joins their ridinggroup, the girls aren't sure she's got what it takes. Lisa may be the smartest student in the classroom, but she's got a lot to learn when it comes to horses. . . .

Download or read book Ordinary Love and Good Will written by Jane Smiley and published by Anchor. This book was released on 2007-10-09 with total page 210 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: From the Pulitzer Prize-winning author of A Thousand Acres—and “one of her generation’s most eloquent chroniclers of ordinary familial love” (The New York Times)—comes two exquisite twin novellas that chronicle the difficult choices that reshape the lives of two very different families. In Ordinary Love, Smiley focuses on a woman’s infidelity and the lasting, indelible effects it leaves on her children long after her departure. Good Will portrays a father who realizes how his son has been affected by his decision to lead a counterculture life and move his family to a farm. As both stories unfold, Smiley gracefully raises the questions that confront all families with the characteristic style and insight that has marked all of her work.

Download or read book The Georges and the Jewels written by Jane Smiley and published by Knopf Books for Young Readers. This book was released on 2009 with total page 232 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Seventh-grader Abby Lovitt grows up on her family's California horse ranch in the 1960s, learning to train the horses her father sells and trying to reconcile her strict religious upbringing with her own ideas about life.