Download or read book The Ladies of Garrison Gardens written by Louise Shaffer and published by . This book was released on 2006-08-29 with total page 354 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Small-town secrets, star-crossed lovers, and the power of the past to determine the future come together to prove that behind every great fortune there is a great crime.
Download or read book Family Acts written by Louise Shaffer and published by Ballantine Books. This book was released on 2008-12-10 with total page 338 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Louise Shaffer follows her beloved novels The Three Miss Margarets and The Ladies of Garrison Gardens with an unforgettable tale of poignancy, wit, and high drama. Katie Harder and Randa Jennings live on opposite coasts, have never met, and have almost nothing in common–except that they’re both named after Shakespearean characters. Everything Katie has ever done or possessed–her New York City co-op, her career as a writer for a daytime drama–was given to her by her late mother, in her day a flamboyant soap opera queen. Randa, on the other hand, has escaped the trappings of a difficult past and forged a life as a single mom, juggling her work as a Hollywood business manager with the needs of her precocious eleven-year-old daughter. Life takes an unpredictable turn for these two strangers when they jointly inherit the century-old Venable Opera House, a stately but run-down theater in small-town Georgia. Puzzled at this peculiar legacy, Katie and Randa are at first eager to unload their white elephant. But as they spend more time in the old theater, they come to realize that a rich heritage is at stake. A line of strong women–starting with Juliet Venable in the late nineteenth century–has been responsible for keeping the grand old place up and running. In the face of huge obstacles, including a dying theater culture and their own personal struggles, these singular women have gone to drastic measures to keep the opera house in the family–including burying a devastating family secret that could destroy the carefully cultivated Venable legend forever. Now, as a local contractor seeks to tear down the landmark, Katie and Randa must decide not only if they want to unravel their mysterious connection to the theater and maintain its tradition but if they have what it takes to keep the Venable family legacy alive. A sprawling page-turner about maintaining family honor and lifelong dreams, Family Acts is Louise Shaffer’s most powerful and assured novel to date.
Download or read book Those Garrison Women written by Louise Shaffer and published by Bantam. This book was released on 2005 with total page 322 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The many fans of the three Miss Margarets will be delighted to be reunited with Miss Li'l Bit, Maggie and Peggy, along with Laurel Selene McCready, the wild child from the wrong side of the tracks the formidable trio took under their collective wing. But the spotlight this time is firmly on Laurel. She has just become the wealthiest person in Charles Valley and she is not happy. Along with Li'l Bit and Maggie, she's mourning the loss of their beloved Peggy, whose decision to leave the entire Garrison fortune to Laurel, the daughter she never had, has caused the biggest uproar in town since the three Miss Margarets turned it upside down. Meanwhile, the Garrison family lawyer is trying to strong-arm Laurel into signing over power of attorney so he can continue to rip off the people who work for the town's biggest employer, Garrison Gardens. As Laurel struggles to make the right decision and to make peace with her own past, she discovers that the mansion is still haunted by the legend of its original owner, the legendary Myrtis Garrison. When she stumbles across a mysterious page of sheet music and a child's dress, Laurel begins to unravel the truth about this enigmatic woman, and her own path suddenly becomes clear. Culminating in an unforgettable sleight-of-hand that reminds us that behind every great fortune there is a great crime, THOSE GARRISON WOMEN is as entertaining and addictive as its predecessor.
Download or read book The Three Miss Margarets written by Louise Shaffer and published by Ballantine Books. This book was released on 2004-08-03 with total page 333 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Three Miss Margarets is an irresistible, page-turning exploration of the past and the myriad ways it exerts a hold on the present. “Rich, funny . . . Fans of Fannie Flagg and Adriana Trigiani, take note. Shaffer has created a little piece of heaven.”—The Philadelphia Inquirer Miss Peggy, Dr. Maggie, and Miss Li’l Bit, friends and confidantes for nearly a lifetime, find it funny and bewildering that they have become icons in Charles Valley, Georgia. Little does the rest of the town know that beneath the irreproachable façades of its three doyennes lies an explosive decades-old secret that is about to be revealed. Thirty-odd years ago the three Miss Margarets did something extraordinary, clandestine, and very illegal. Although they are haunted by the night that changed their lives, they believe that their crime was simply a matter of righting an egregious wrong. But when a stranger’s arrival in town and a tragic death open the floodgate of memory, their loyalty, friendship, and honor are tested in ways they could never have imagined—particularly when they have to contend with Laurel Selene, a young woman who has spent her life nursing an alcoholic mother and a huge grudge. Now Laurel is on the verge of discovering what happened the night the three Miss Margarets swore their oath of secrecy. Once she knows, will she reveal the truth about the three women she was raised to despise? Or will she face her own troubled history and put the dark legacy they all share behind them?
Download or read book Kissing Babies at the Piggly Wiggly written by Robert Dalby and published by Penguin. This book was released on 2007-08-02 with total page 288 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: “The charmingly eccentric and infinitely lovable characters from Waltzing at the Piggly Wiggly are back” (Louise Shaffer, author of The Ladies of Garrison Gardens) In Second Creek, Mississippi, Hale Dunbar is taking on the solidly entrenched mayor in the upcoming election. Hale may not have much political experience, but he has something better: he's being backed by the Nitwitts—the town's most influential and enjoyably eccentric posse of widows. As the campaign unfolds, everyone is about to discover what's more important than coming in first—close friends, second chances, and true love. And of course, a good slogan.
Download or read book Looking for a Love Story written by Louise Shaffer and published by Ballantine Books. This book was released on 2010 with total page 321 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Shaffer's warm, wonderfully inspiring novel follows a woman who has lost her way but just might discover who she's meant to be.
Download or read book That Time of Year written by Garrison Keillor and published by Simon and Schuster. This book was released on 2020-12-01 with total page 398 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: With the warmth and humor we've come to know, the creator and host of A Prairie Home Companion shares his own remarkable story. In That Time of Year, Garrison Keillor looks back on his life and recounts how a Brethren boy with writerly ambitions grew up in a small town on the Mississippi in the 1950s and, seeing three good friends die young, turned to comedy and radio. Through a series of unreasonable lucky breaks, he founded A Prairie Home Companion and put himself in line for a good life, including mistakes, regrets, and a few medical adventures. PHC lasted forty-two years, 1,557 shows, and enjoyed the freedom to do as it pleased for three or four million listeners every Saturday at 5 p.m. Central. He got to sing with Emmylou Harris and Renée Fleming and once sang two songs to the U.S. Supreme Court. He played a private eye and a cowboy, gave the news from his hometown, Lake Wobegon, and met Somali cabdrivers who’d learned English from listening to the show. He wrote bestselling novels, won a Grammy and a National Humanities Medal, and made a movie with Robert Altman with an alarming amount of improvisation. He says, “I was unemployable and managed to invent work for myself that I loved all my life, and on top of that I married well. That’s the secret, work and love. And I chose the right ancestors, impoverished Scots and Yorkshire farmers, good workers. I’m heading for eighty, and I still get up to write before dawn every day.”
Download or read book Serendipity written by Louise Shaffer and published by Ballantine Books. This book was released on 2009-03-24 with total page 353 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Louise Shaffer brings to life three generations of Italian American women in this stunning novel of surprises, secrets, and serendipity. A child of theatrical royalty, Carrie Manning is having a hard time getting her own act together. Thirty-seven, aimless, and having just buried a famous mother she never understood, she is desperate to uncover her family’s mysterious past in the hopes that it will help her understand herself. Carrie’s search reveals the fascinating life stories of her estranged grandmother Lu, a glamorous Broadway star whose dreams came with a price; her great grandmother Mifalda, who gave up everything to come to America as a sixteen-year-old Italian bride; and her father, Bobby, the charismatic Broadway genius who wrote some of Lu’s greatest musicals and died tragically young. At the heart of Carrie’s discoveries lies the reason for her mother’s complicated life, and a dark secret that has been buried for thirty years.
Download or read book The Keillor Reader written by Garrison Keillor and published by Penguin. This book was released on 2014-05-01 with total page 400 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Stories, essays, poems, and personal reminiscences from the sage of Lake Wobegon When, at thirteen, he caught on as a sportswriter for the Anoka Herald, Garrison Keillor set out to become a professional writer, and so he has done—a storyteller, sometime comedian, essayist, newspaper columnist, screenwriter, poet. Now a single volume brings together the full range of his work: monologues from A Prairie Home Companion, stories from The New Yorker and The Atlantic, excerpts from novels, newspaper columns. With an extensive introduction and headnotes, photographs, and memorabilia, The Keillor Reader also presents pieces never before published, including the essays “Cheerfulness” and “What We Have Learned So Far.” Keillor is the founder and host of A Prairie Home Companion, celebrating its fortieth anniversary in 2014. He is the author of nineteen books of fiction and humor, the editor of the Good Poems collections, and a member of the American Academy of Arts and Letters.
Download or read book The Lake Wobegon Virus written by Garrison Keillor and published by Simon and Schuster. This book was released on 2020-09-08 with total page 191 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Bestselling author and humorist Garrison Keillor returns to one of America's most beloved mythical towns, beset by a contagion of alarming candor. A mysterious virus has infiltrated the good people of Lake Wobegon, transmitted via unpasteurized cheese made by a Norwegian bachelor farmer, the effect of which is episodic loss of social inhibition. Mayor Alice, Father Wilmer, Pastor Liz, the Bunsens and Krebsbachs, formerly taciturn elders, burst into political rants, inappropriate confessions, and rhapsodic proclamations, while their teenagers watch in amazement. Meanwhile, a wealthy outsider is buying up farmland for a Keep America Truckin’ motorway and amusement park, estimated to draw 2.2 million visitors a year. Clint Bunsen and Elena the hometown epidemiologist to the rescue, with a Fourth of July Living Flag and sweet corn feast for a finale. In his newest Lake Wobegon novel, Garrison Keillor takes us back to the small prairie town where for so long American readers and listeners have found laughter as well as the wry airing of our foibles and most familiar desires and fears—a town where, as we know, "all the women are strong, all the men are good-looking, and all the children are above average."
Download or read book Women s Fiction written by Rebecca Vnuk and published by Bloomsbury Publishing USA. This book was released on 2013-09-17 with total page 252 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Offering a fresh perspective on women's fiction for a broad reading audience—fans as well as librarians—this book defines and maps the genre, and describes hundreds of relevant titles. Women's Fiction: A Guide to Popular Reading Interests celebrates the books in this broad genre—titles that explore the lives of female protagonists, with a focus on their relationships with family, friends, and lovers. After a brief introductory history and a chapter that defines the characteristics of women's fiction, the author showcases annotations and suggestions of approximately 300 titles by more than 100 authors. She explains how women's fiction differs from romance fiction, enabling readers to appreciate this rich body of literature that encompasses titles as diverse as Meg Cabot's lighthearted chick lit to the more serious novels of Elizabeth Berg and Maeve Binchy. The book identifies some of the most popular and enduring women's fiction authors and titles, and provides invaluable reading lists and readalike suggestions that will be appreciated by both librarians and general readers.
Download or read book Daughter of the Forest written by Juliet Marillier and published by Macmillan. This book was released on 2010-04-01 with total page 384 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Daughter of the Forest is a testimony to an incredible author's talent, a first novel and the beginning of a trilogy like no other: a mixture of history and fantasy, myth and magic, legend and love. Lord Colum of Sevenwaters is blessed with six sons: Liam, a natural leader; Diarmid, with his passion for adventure; twins Cormack and Conor, each with a different calling; rebellious Finbar, grown old before his time by his gift of the Sight; and the young, compassionate Padriac. But it is Sorcha, the seventh child and only daughter, who alone is destined to defend her family and protect her land from the Britons and the clan known as Northwoods. For her father has been bewitched, and her brothers bound by a spell that only Sorcha can lift. To reclaim the lives of her brothers, Sorcha leaves the only safe place she has ever known, and embarks on a journey filled with pain, loss, and terror. When she is kidnapped by enemy forces and taken to a foreign land, it seems that there will be no way for her to break the spell that condemns all that she loves. But magic knows no boundaries, and Sorcha will have to choose between the life she has always known and a love that comes only once. Juliet Marillier is a rare talent, a writer who can imbue her characters and her story with such warmth, such heart, that no reader can come away from her work untouched. At the Publisher's request, this title is being sold without Digital Rights Management Software (DRM) applied.
Download or read book A Book of Golden Deeds written by Charlotte Mary Yonge and published by ReadHowYouWant.com. This book was released on 1927 with total page 276 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book The Assassination of Margaret Thatcher written by Hilary Mantel and published by Henry Holt and Company. This book was released on 2014-09-30 with total page 142 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The New York Times bestselling collection, from the Man Booker prize-winner for Wolf Hall and Bring Up the Bodies, that has been called "scintillating" (New York Times Books Review), "breathtaking" (NPR), "exquisite" (The Chicago Tribune) and "otherworldly" (Washington Post). "A new Hilary Mantel book is an Event with a ‘capital ‘E.'"—NPR "A book of her short stories is like a little sweet treat."—USA Today (4 stars) "[Mantel is at] the top of her game."—Salon "Genius."—The Seattle Times One of the most accomplished, acclaimed, and garlanded writers, Hilary Mantel delivers a brilliant collection of contemporary stories In The Assassination of Margaret Thatcher, Hilary Mantel's trademark gifts of penetrating characterization, unsparing eye, and rascally intelligence are once again fully on display. Stories of dislocation and family fracture, of whimsical infidelities and sudden deaths with sinister causes, brilliantly unsettle the reader in that unmistakably Mantel way. Cutting to the core of human experience, Mantel brutally and acutely writes about marriage, class, family, and sex. Unpredictable, diverse, and sometimes shocking, The Assassination of Margaret Thatcher displays a magnificent writer at the peak of her powers.
Download or read book Becoming Josephine written by Heather Webb and published by Penguin. This book was released on 2013-12-31 with total page 320 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A sweeping historical debut about the Creole socialite who transformed herself into an empress Readers are fascinated with the wives of famous men. In Becoming Josephine, debut novelist Heather Webb follows Rose Tascher as she sails from her Martinique plantation to Paris, eager to enjoy an elegant life at the royal court. Once there, however, Rose’s aristocratic soldier-husband dashes her dreams by abandoning her amid the tumult of the French Revolution. After narrowly escaping death, Rose reinvents herself as Josephine, a beautiful socialite wooed by an awkward suitor—Napoleon Bonaparte. “A debut as bewitching as its protagonist.” —Erika Robuck, author of Hemingway’s Girl and Call Me Zelda “Vivid and passionate.” —Susan Spann, author of The Shinobi Mysteries From the Trade Paperback edition.
Download or read book The Nutrition Desk Reference written by Robert H. Garrison and published by Keats Publishing. This book was released on 1990 with total page 324 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The indispensable resource book, now expanded in a new third edition, with new information on antioxidants and much more.
Download or read book Where Women Create written by Jo Packham and published by Lark Books (NC). This book was released on 2010 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Where Women Create brand--including the first book and a national magazine--has proven hugely popular, and this inspiring volume builds on that success. It's a backstage pass to the insights, muses, and artistic practices of some of today's most notable creative women.
