Download or read book American Dirt Chapter Sampler written by Jeanine Cummins and published by Flatiron Books. This book was released on 2019-08-02 with total page 36 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Download a free excerpt from Jeanine Cummins's American Dirt! También de este lado hay sueños. On this side too, there are dreams. Already being hailed as "a Grapes of Wrath for our times" and "a new American classic", American Dirt is a rare exploration into the inner hearts of people willing to sacrifice everything for a glimmer of hope. If it’s only a better life you seek, seek it elsewhere...This path is only for people who have no choice, no other option, only violence and misery behind you. And your journey will grow even more treacherous from here. Everything is working against you. —American Dirt Lydia Quixano Perez lives in the Mexican city of Acapulco. She runs a bookstore. She has a son, Luca, the love of her life, and a wonderful husband who is a journalist. And while there are cracks beginning to show in Acapulco because of the drug cartels, her life is, by and large, fairly comfortable. Even though she knows they’ll never sell, Lydia stocks some of her all-time favorite books in her store. And then one day a man enters the shop to browse and comes up to the register with four books he would like to buy—two of them her favorites. Javier is erudite. He is charming. And, unbeknownst to Lydia, he is the jefe of the newest drug cartel that has gruesomely taken over the city. When Lydia’s husband’s tell-all profile of Javier is published, none of their lives will ever be the same. Forced to flee, Lydia and eight-year-old Luca soon find themselves miles and worlds away from their comfortable middle-class existence. Instantly transformed into migrants, Lydia and Luca ride la bestia—trains that make their way north toward the United States, which is the only place Javier’s reach doesn’t extend. As they join the countless people trying to reach el norte, Lydia soon sees that everyone is running from something. But what exactly are they running to? American Dirt will leave readers utterly changed when they finish reading it. It is a page-turner, it is a literary achievement, it is filled with poignancy, drama, and humanity on every page. It is one of the most important books for our times.

Download or read book American Dirt Oprah s Book Club written by Jeanine Cummins and published by Holt Paperbacks. This book was released on 2022-02 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "También de este lado hay sueños. On this side, too, there are dreams. Lydia Quixano Perez lives in the Mexican city of Acapulco. She runs a bookstore. She has a son, Luca, the love of her life, and a wonderful husband who is a journalist. And while there are cracks beginning to show in Acapulco because of the drug cartels, her life is, by and large, fairly comfortable. Even though she knows they'll never sell, Lydia stocks some of her all-time favorite books in her store. And then one day a man enters the shop to browse and comes up to the register with four books he would like to buy--two of them her favorites. Javier is erudite. He is charming. And, unbeknownst to Lydia, he is the jefe of the newest drug cartel that has gruesomely taken over the city. When Lydia's husband's tell-all profile of Javier is published, none of their lives will ever be the same. Forced to flee, Lydia and eight-year-old Luca soon find themselves miles and worlds away from their comfortable middle-class existence. Instantly transformed into migrants, Lydia and Luca ride la bestia--trains that make their way north toward the United States, which is the only place Javier's reach doesn't extend. As they join the countless people trying to reach el norte, Lydia soon sees that everyone is running from something. But what exactly are they running to? American Dirt will leave readers utterly changed when they finish reading it. A page-turner filled with poignancy, drama, and humanity on every page, it is a literary achievement."--

Download or read book The Beast written by Oscar Martinez and published by Verso Books. This book was released on 2014-06-03 with total page 313 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: An Economist and Financial Times “Best Book of the Year” “Harrowing” true stories from two years of immersion reporting on the migrant trail from Chiapas to Arizona—an “honorable successor to enduring works like George Orwell’s The Road to Wigan Pier” (New York Times) One day a few years ago, 300 migrants were kidnapped between the remote desert towns of Altar, Mexico, and Sasabe, Arizona. A local priest got 120 released, many with broken ankles and other marks of abuse, but the rest vanished. Óscar Martínez, a young writer from El Salvador, was in Altar soon after the abduction, and his account of the migrant disappearances is only one of the harrowing stories he garnered from two years spent traveling up and down the migrant trail from Central America and across the US border. More than a quarter of a million Central Americans make this increasingly dangerous journey each year, and each year as many as 20,000 of them are kidnapped. Martínez writes in powerful, unforgettable prose about clinging to the tops of freight trains; finding respite, work and hardship in shelters and brothels; and riding shotgun with the border patrol. Illustrated with stunning full-color photographs, The Beast is the first book to shed light on the harsh new reality of the migrant trail in the age of the narcotraficantes.

Download or read book The Distance Between Us written by Reyna Grande and published by Simon and Schuster. This book was released on 2012-08-28 with total page 384 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In this inspirational and unflinchingly honest memoir, acclaimed author Reyna Grande describes her childhood torn between the United States and Mexico, and shines a light on the experiences, fears, and hopes of those who choose to make the harrowing journey across the border. Reyna Grande vividly brings to life her tumultuous early years in this “compelling...unvarnished, resonant” (BookPage) story of a childhood spent torn between two parents and two countries. As her parents make the dangerous trek across the Mexican border to “El Otro Lado” (The Other Side) in pursuit of the American dream, Reyna and her siblings are forced into the already overburdened household of their stern grandmother. When their mother at last returns, Reyna prepares for her own journey to “El Otro Lado” to live with the man who has haunted her imagination for years, her long-absent father. Funny, heartbreaking, and lyrical, The Distance Between Us poignantly captures the confusion and contradictions of childhood, reminding us that the joys and sorrows we experience are imprinted on the heart forever, calling out to us of those places we first called home. Also available in Spanish as La distancia entre nosotros.

Download or read book Little Bee written by Chris Cleave and published by Simon and Schuster. This book was released on 2010-02-16 with total page 304 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Millions of people have read, discussed, debated, cried, and cheered with Little Bee, a Nigerian refugee girl whose violent and courageous journey​ puts a stunning face on the worldwide refugee crisis​. “Little Bee will blow you away.” —The Washington Post The lives of a sixteen-year-old Nigerian orphan and a well-off British woman collide in this page-turning #1 New York Times bestseller, book club favorite, and “affecting story of human triumph” (The New York Times Book Review) from Chris Cleave, author of Gold and Everyone Brave Is Forgiven. We don’t want to tell you too much about this book. It is a truly special story and we don’t want to spoil it. Nevertheless, you need to know something, so we will just say this: It is extremely funny, but the African beach scene is horrific. The story starts there, but the book doesn’t. And it’s what happens afterward that is most important. Once you have read it, you’ll want to tell everyone about it. When you do, please don’t tell them what happens either. The magic is in how it unfolds.

Download or read book A Rip in Heaven written by Jeanine Cummins and published by Penguin. This book was released on 2004-06-01 with total page 320 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The acclaimed author of American Dirt reveals the devastating effects of a shocking tragedy in this landmark true crime book—the first ever to look intimately at the experiences of both the victims and their families. A Rip in Heaven is Jeanine Cummins’ story of a night in April, 1991, when her two cousins Julie and Robin Kerry, and her brother, Tom, were assaulted on the Old Chain of Rocks Bridge, which spans the Mississippi River just outside of St. Louis. When, after a harrowing ordeal, Tom managed to escape the attackers and flag down help, he thought the nightmare would soon be over. He couldn’t have been more wrong. Tom, his sister Jeanine, and their entire family were just at the beginning of a horrific odyssey through the aftermath of a violent crime, a world of shocking betrayal, endless heartbreak, and utter disillusionment. It was a trial by fire from which no family member would emerge unscathed.

Download or read book By the Lake of Sleeping Children written by Luis Urrea and published by Anchor. This book was released on 2010-11-17 with total page 208 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: By the Lake of Sleeping Children explores the post-NAFTA and Proposition 187 border purgatory of garbage pickers and dump dwellers, gawking tourists,and relief workers, fearsome coyotes and their desperate clientele. In sixteen indelible portraits, Urrea illuminates the horrors and the simple joys of people trapped between the two worlds of Mexico and the United States - and ignored by both. The result is a startling and memorable work of first-person reportage.

Download or read book The Crooked Branch written by Jeanine Cummins and published by Penguin. This book was released on 2013-03-05 with total page 402 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: From the national bestselling author of American Dirt and A Rip in Heaven comes the deeply moving story of two mothers from two very different times. After the birth of her daughter Emma, the usually resilient Majella finds herself feeling isolated and exhausted. Then, at her childhood home in Queens, Majella discovers the diary of her maternal ancestor Ginny—and is shocked to read a story of murder in her family history. With the famine upon her, Ginny Doyle fled from Ireland to America, but not all of her family made it. What happened during those harrowing years, and why does Ginny call herself a killer? Is Majella genetically fated to be a bad mother, despite the fierce tenderness she feels for her baby? Determined to uncover the truth of her heritage and her own identity, Majella sets out to explore Ginny’s past—and discovers surprising truths about her family and ultimately, herself.

Download or read book A Thousand Pieces of You written by Claudia Gray and published by Harper Collins. This book was released on 2014-11-04 with total page 384 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Cloud Atlas meets Orphan Black in this epic dimension-bending trilogy by New York Times bestselling author Claudia Gray about a girl who must chase her father's killer through multiple dimensions. Marguerite Caine's physicist parents are known for their groundbreaking achievements. Their most astonishing invention, called the Firebird, allows users to jump into multiple universes—and promises to revolutionize science forever. But then Marguerite's father is murdered, and the killer—her parent's handsome, enigmatic assistant Paul— escapes into another dimension before the law can touch him. Marguerite refuses to let the man who destroyed her family go free. So she races after Paul through different universes, always leaping into another version of herself. But she also meets alternate versions of the people she knows—including Paul, whose life entangles with hers in increasingly familiar ways. Before long she begins to question Paul's guilt—as well as her own heart. And soon she discovers the truth behind her father's death is far more sinister than she expected. A Thousand Pieces of You explores an amazingly intricate multi-universe where fate is unavoidable, the truth elusive, and love the greatest mystery of all.

Download or read book Solito written by Javier Zamora and published by Hogarth. This book was released on 2022-09-06 with total page 417 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: New York Times Bestseller • Read With Jenna Book Club Pick as seen on Today • Winner of the Los Angeles Times Christopher Isherwood Prize for Autobiography • Winner of the American Library Association Alex Award A young poet tells the inspiring story of his migration from El Salvador to the United States at the age of nine in this “gripping memoir” (NPR) of bravery, hope, and finding family. Finalist for the PEN/John Kenneth Galbraith Award for Nonfiction • One of the New York Public Library’s Ten Best Books of the Year Longlisted for the Andrew Carnegie Medal for Excellence and the PEN/Open Book Award “I read Solito with my heart in my throat and did not burst into tears until the last sentence. What a person, what a writer, what a book.”—Emma Straub “A riveting tale of perseverance and the lengths humans will go to help each other in times of struggle.”—Dave Eggers ONE OF THE BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR: The New York Times Book Review, NPR, The Washington Post, San Francisco Chronicle, Vulture, She Reads, Kirkus Reviews Trip. My parents started using that word about a year ago—“one day, you’ll take a trip to be with us. Like an adventure.” Javier Zamora’s adventure is a three-thousand-mile journey from his small town in El Salvador, through Guatemala and Mexico, and across the U.S. border. He will leave behind his beloved aunt and grandparents to reunite with a mother who left four years ago and a father he barely remembers. Traveling alone amid a group of strangers and a “coyote” hired to lead them to safety, Javier expects his trip to last two short weeks. At nine years old, all Javier can imagine is rushing into his parents’ arms, snuggling in bed between them, and living under the same roof again. He cannot foresee the perilous boat trips, relentless desert treks, pointed guns, arrests and deceptions that await him; nor can he know that those two weeks will expand into two life-altering months alongside fellow migrants who will come to encircle him like an unexpected family. A memoir as gripping as it is moving, Solito provides an immediate and intimate account not only of a treacherous and near-impossible journey, but also of the miraculous kindness and love delivered at the most unexpected moments. Solito is Javier Zamora’s story, but it’s also the story of millions of others who had no choice but to leave home.

Download or read book The Help written by Kathryn Stockett and published by Penguin. This book was released on 2011 with total page 546 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Original publication and copyright date: 2009.

Download or read book Heart You Bully You Punk written by Leah Hager Cohen and published by Penguin. This book was released on 2020-11-10 with total page 258 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A high school girl, her father, and her math teacher: through this unlikely trio, Leah Hager Cohen charts the complexities of the human heart as only she can. Esker (she prefers to go solely by her last name) is a thirty-one-year-old high school teacher at the Prospect School in Brooklyn who, after various heartbreaks and disappointments, has found a quiet resolve in her lonely spinster routine. But when a mysterious fall leaves her star math student injured and housebound until exams, Esker begins tutoring the precocious teenager at home. And soon, much against her will, she begins falling edgily, haltingly in love with the girl's father. Charged with Esker's own irreverence and wit, Heart, You Bully, You Punk sweeps us irresistibly into her profound and wistful struggle to unite the rest of her self with her unruly heart.

Download or read book Paper Wishes written by Lois Sepahban and published by Macmillan + ORM. This book was released on 2016-01-05 with total page 146 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Ten-year-old Manami did not realize how peaceful her family's life on Bainbridge Island was until the day it all changed. It's 1942, after the attack on Pearl Harbor, and Manami and her family are Japanese American, which means that the government says they must leave their home by the sea and join other Japanese Americans at a prison camp in the desert. Manami is sad to go, but even worse is that they are going to have to give her and her grandfather's dog, Yujiin, to a neighbor to take care of. Manami decides to sneak Yujiin under her coat and gets as far as the mainland before she is caught and forced to abandon Yujiin. She and her grandfather are devastated, but Manami clings to the hope that somehow Yujiin will find his way to the camp and make her family whole again. It isn't until she finds a way to let go of her guilt that Manami can reclaim the piece of herself that she left behind and accept all that has happened to her family.

Download or read book The Dirt written by Tommy Lee and published by Harper Collins. This book was released on 2014-07-01 with total page 449 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: NOW A NETFLIX ORIGINAL MOVIE STARRING MACHINE GUN KELLY, DANIEL WEBBER, DOUGLAS BOOTH, AND IWAN RHEON, DIRECTED BY JEFF TREMAINE. Celebrate thirty years of the world's most notorious rock band with the deluxe collectors' edition of The Dirt—the outrageous, legendary, no-holds-barred autobiography of Mötley Crüe. Fans have gotten glimpses into the band's crazy world of backstage scandals, celebrity love affairs, rollercoaster drug addictions, and immortal music in Mötley Crüe books like Tommyland and The Heroin Diaries, but now the full spectrum of sin and success by Tommy Lee, Nikki Sixx, Vince Neil, and Mick Mars is an open book in The Dirt. Even fans already familiar with earlier editions of the bestselling exposé will treasure this gorgeous deluxe edition. Joe Levy at Rolling Stone calls The Dirt "without a doubt . . . the most detailed account of the awesome pleasures and perils of rock & roll stardom I have ever read. It is completely compelling and utterly revolting."

Download or read book Beautiful Country written by Qian Julie Wang and published by Vintage. This book was released on 2022-09-27 with total page 321 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A NEW YORK TIMES BEST SELLER • The moving story of an undocumented child living in poverty in the richest country in the world—an incandescent debut from an astonishing new talent • A TODAY SHOW #READWITHJENNA PICK In Chinese, the word for America, Mei Guo, translates directly to “beautiful country.” Yet when seven-year-old Qian arrives in New York City in 1994 full of curiosity, she is overwhelmed by crushing fear and scarcity. In China, Qian’s parents were professors; in America, her family is “illegal” and it will require all the determination and small joys they can muster to survive. In Chinatown, Qian’s parents labor in sweatshops. Instead of laughing at her jokes, they fight constantly, taking out the stress of their new life on one another. Shunned by her classmates and teachers for her limited English, Qian takes refuge in the library and masters the language through books, coming to think of The Berenstain Bears as her first American friends. And where there is delight to be found, Qian relishes it: her first bite of gloriously greasy pizza, weekly “shopping days,” when Qian finds small treasures in the trash lining Brooklyn’s streets, and a magical Christmas visit to Rockefeller Center—confirmation that the New York City she saw in movies does exist after all. But then Qian’s headstrong Ma Ma collapses, revealing an illness that she has kept secret for months for fear of the cost and scrutiny of a doctor’s visit. As Ba Ba retreats further inward, Qian has little to hold onto beyond his constant refrain: Whatever happens, say that you were born here, that you’ve always lived here. Inhabiting her childhood perspective with exquisite lyric clarity and unforgettable charm and strength, Qian Julie Wang has penned an essential American story about a family fracturing under the weight of invisibility, and a girl coming of age in the shadows, who never stops seeking the light.

Download or read book Girl Woman Other written by Bernardine Evaristo and published by Grove Press. This book was released on 2019-11-05 with total page 415 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: NATIONAL BESTSELLER WINNER OF THE BOOKER PRIZE “A must-read about modern Britain and womanhood . . . An impressive, fierce novel about the lives of black British families, their struggles, pains, laughter, longings and loves . . . Her style is passionate, razor-sharp, brimming with energy and humor. There is never a single moment of dullness in this book and the pace does not allow you to turn away from its momentum.” —Booker Prize Judges Bernardine Evaristo is the winner of the 2019 Booker Prize and the first black woman to receive this highest literary honor in the English language. Girl, Woman, Other is a magnificent portrayal of the intersections of identity and a moving and hopeful story of an interconnected group of Black British women that paints a vivid portrait of the state of contemporary Britain and looks back to the legacy of Britain’s colonial history in Africa and the Caribbean. The twelve central characters of this multi-voiced novel lead vastly different lives: Amma is a newly acclaimed playwright whose work often explores her Black lesbian identity; her old friend Shirley is a teacher, jaded after decades of work in London’s funding-deprived schools; Carole, one of Shirley’s former students, is a successful investment banker; Carole’s mother Bummi works as a cleaner and worries about her daughter’s lack of rootedness despite her obvious achievements. From a nonbinary social media influencer to a 93-year-old woman living on a farm in Northern England, these unforgettable characters also intersect in shared aspects of their identities, from age to race to sexuality to class. Sparklingly witty and filled with emotion, centering voices we often see othered, and written in an innovative fast-moving form that borrows technique from poetry, Girl, Woman, Other is a polyphonic and richly textured social novel that shows a side of Britain we rarely see, one that reminds us of all that connects us to our neighbors, even in times when we are encouraged to be split apart.

Download or read book Beyond the Sea of Ice written by William Sarabande and published by Domain. This book was released on 1987-11-01 with total page 385 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Stunningly visual, extraordinarily detailed, powerfully dramatic, here is the first volume of a remarkable new series . . . The First Americans. When humans first walked the world, when nature ruled the earth and sky, a proud tribe is threatened by a series of natural disasters. A bold young hunter named Torka, who lost his wife and child to a killer mammoth, leads the survivors over the glacial tundra on a desperate eastward odyssey to the save their clan. Through attacks of savage animals and encounters with strangers not unlike themselves, they must brave the hardships of a foreign landscape and learn to live in an exotic new world of mystery and danger. They must travel toward the land where the sun rises for a new day for their clan—and an awesome future for the American.