Download or read book The Reason written by Lacey Sturm and published by Baker Books. This book was released on 2014-09-30 with total page 195 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The day Lacey Sturm planned to kill herself was the day her grandmother forced her to go to church, a place Lacey thought was filled with hypocrites, fakers, and simpletons. The screaming match she had with her grandmother was the reason she went to church. What she found there was the Reason she is alive today. With raw vulnerability, this hard rock princess tells her own story of physical abuse, drug use, suicide attempts, and more--and her ultimate salvation. She asks the hard questions so many young people are asking--Why am I here? Why am I empty? Why should I go on living?--showing readers that beyond the temporary highs and the soul-crushing lows there is a reason they exist and a purpose for their lives. She not only gives readers a peek down the rocky path that led her to become a vocalist in a popular hardcore band, but she shows them that the same God is guiding their steps today.

Download or read book The Tree of Forgetfulness written by Pam Durban and published by LSU Press. This book was released on 2012-10-12 with total page 182 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The author explores southern history and memory in this novel as she describes a largely untold story of a Jim Crow-era triple lynching in Aiken County, South Carolina. Through the interweaving of several characters' voices, she produces a complex narrative in which each section reveals a different facet of the event. She resurrects a troubled past and explores the individual and collective loyalties that led a community to choose silence over justice.

Download or read book The Incrementalists written by Steven Brust and published by Macmillan. This book was released on 2013-09-24 with total page 306 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A sharp, original urban fantasy about a near-immortal secret society's battle to save itself—on the streets of Las Vegas.

Download or read book My Bookstore written by Ronald Rice and published by Black Dog & Leventhal. This book was released on 2017-04-11 with total page 430 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In this enthusiastic, heartfelt, and sometimes humorous ode to bookshops and booksellers, 84 known authors pay tribute to the brick-and-mortar stores they love and often call their second homes. In My Bookstore our greatest authors write about the pleasure, guidance, and support that their favorite bookstores and booksellers have given them over the years. The relationship between a writer and his or her local store and staff can last for years or even decades. Often it's the author's local store that supported him during the early days of his career, that continues to introduce and hand-sell her work to new readers, and that serves as the anchor for the community in which he lives and works. My Bookstore collects the essays, stories, odes and words of gratitude and praise for stores across the country in 81 pieces written by our most beloved authors. It's a joyful, industry-wide celebration of our bricks-and-mortar stores and a clarion call to readers everywhere at a time when the value and importance of these stores should be shouted from the rooftops. Perfectly charming line drawings by Leif Parsons illustrate each storefront and other distinguishing features of the shops.

Download or read book The Return written by Lacey Sturm and published by Baker Books. This book was released on 2018-05-22 with total page 238 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: It's easy to go through days, weeks, even years on autopilot, moving from one activity to another, rarely taking the time to consider what it's all for anyway. Why did God make us? What does he want us to do with the time he has given us? And how can we find out? In her bestselling story-driven style, Christian rocker Lacey Sturm shares with readers the beautiful struggle of learning what one's unique gifts are and pursuing them wholeheartedly. She helps them see each day as a gift from God, find balance in their busy lives, and discover the joy of giving God's gifts back to him by using them to bring him glory. Young people especially will love this openhanded and openhearted take on what to do with their lives, as will those who feel like they've been coasting or heading down the wrong path.

Download or read book The Last Days of Video written by Jeremy Hawkins and published by National Geographic Books. This book was released on 2015-03-17 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Video stores are dying. But most of you don’t care. You’ve got your Netflix and your DVR, so why deal with VHS tapes or scratched DVDs? Why deal with the grumpy guy at the worn-down independent video store? That grumpy guy is Waring Wax, and he’s usually too drunk to worry about his declining business at Star Video, let alone his quickly evolving extinction in popular culture. But everything changes in his small college town when a bright and shiny Blockbuster Video opens nearby: Clearly, this means war. So, Waring enlists the help of his two reluctant employees, charismatic but conflicted Alaura and desperate virgin Jeff, to hatch a series of wild schemes to save their little store. Together, these three misfits try to save Star Video while confronting, among other things, Waring’s self-destructive tendencies, a life training cult, corporate bicycle gangs, and a Hollywood director who constantly sees the ghost of Alfred Hitchcock. The Last Days of Video is a hilarious elegy for a bygone era, a quirky and charming story of redemption for a group of loveable cinema freaks, and a love letter to the art of the movies.

Download or read book Reading My Father written by Alexandra Styron and published by Simon and Schuster. This book was released on 2011 with total page 322 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "Reading My Father" is an intimate, moving, and beautifully written portrait of the novelist William Styron by his daughter, Alexandra.

Download or read book Wisp of a Thing written by Alex Bledsoe and published by Tor Books. This book was released on 2013-06-18 with total page 353 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Wisp of a Thing: a unique contemporary fantasy where magic is hidden in plain sight and age-old rivalries simmer just beneath the surface Alex Bledsoe's The Hum and the Shiver was named one of the Best Fiction Books by Kirkus Reviews. Now Bledsoe returns to the isolated ridges and hollows of the Smoky Mountains to spin an equally enchanting tale of music and fairy magic older than the hills. Touched by a very public tragedy, musician Rob Quillen comes to Needsville, Tennessee, in search of a song that might ease his aching heart. All he knows of the mysterious and reclusive Tufa is what he has read on the Internet. Some people say that when the first white settlers came to the Appalachians centuries ago, they found the Tufa already there. Others hint that Tufa blood brings special gifts. Rob finds both music and mystery in the mountains. Close-lipped locals guard their secrets, even as Rob gets caught up in a subtle power struggle he can't begin to comprehend. A vacationing wife goes missing, raising suspicions of foul play, and a strange feral girl runs wild in the woods, howling in the night like a lost spirit. Soon, Rob realizes that he is part of a greater story among the Tufa, and must break a timeless curse that haunts the town's past. Enter the captivating world of the fae in Alex Bledsoe's Tufa novels The Hum and the Shiver Wisp of a Thing Long Black Curl Chapel of Ease Gather Her Round At the Publisher's request, this title is being sold without Digital Rights Management Software (DRM) applied.

Download or read book The Sum of Trifles written by Julia Ridley Smith and published by University of Georgia Press. This book was released on 2021-11-01 with total page 254 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: When Julia Ridley Smith’s parents died, they left behind a virtual museum of furniture, books, art, and artifacts. Between the contents of their home, the stock from their North Carolina antiques shop, and the ephemera of two lives lived, Smith faced a monumental task. What would she do with her parents’ possessions? Smith’s wise and moving memoir in essays, The Sum of Trifles, peels back the layers of meaning surrounding specific objects her parents owned, from an eighteenth-century miniature to her father’s prosthetics. A vintage hi-fi provides a view of her often tense relationship with her father, whose love of jazz kindled her own artistic impulse. A Japanese screen embodies her mother’s principles of good taste and good manners, while an antebellum quilt prompts Smith to grapple with her family’s slaveholding legacy. Along the way, she turns to literature that illuminates how her inheritance shaped her notions of identity and purpose. The Sum of Trifles offers up dark humor and raw feeling, mixed with an erudite streak. It’s a curious, thoughtful look at how we live in and with our material culture and how we face our losses as we decide what to keep and what to let go.

Download or read book Salt Magic written by Hope Larson and published by Holiday House. This book was released on 2021-10-12 with total page 241 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The epic, Eisner Award-winning graphic novel about a jealous witch, a withering curse, and one girl's journey to save her family-- no matter the cost. Recipient of the Eisner Award for Best Publication for Kids ages 9–12 When Vonceil's older brother, Elber, comes home to their family's Oklahoma farm after serving on the front lines of World War I, things aren't what she expects. His experiences have changed him into a serious and responsible man who doesn't have time for Vonceil anymore. He even marries the girl he had left behind. Then a mysterious and captivating woman shows up at the farm and confronts Elber for leaving her in France. When he refuses to leave his wife, she puts a curse on the family well, turning the entire town's water supply into saltwater. Who is this lady dressed all in white, what has she done to the farm, and what does Vonceil's old uncle Dell know about her? To find out, Vonceil will have to strike out on her own and delve deep into the world of witchcraft, confronting dangerous relatives, shapeshifting animals, a capricious Sugar Witch, and the Lady in White herself--the foreboding Salt Witch. The journey will change Vonceil, but along the way she'll learn a lot about love and what it means to grow up. Hope Larson is the author and illustrator of the Eisner Award nominated All Summer Long and the illustrator of the Eisner Award winning A Wrinkle in Time: The Graphic Novel. Salt Magic is an utterly unique graphic fairy tale complete with striking illustrations by Rebecca Mock. Named to the Little Maverick Graphic Novel Reading List An ALSC Notable Children's Book An ALA Graphic Novel's & Comics Round Table Top Ten Best Graphic Novels for Children Selection A Mighty Girl Best Book of the Year A Booklist Editors' Choice

Download or read book For the Win written by Cory Doctorow and published by HarperCollins UK. This book was released on 2011 with total page 514 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A provocative and exhilarating tale of teen rebellion against global corporations from the New York Times bestselling author of Little Brother. Not far in the future... In the twenty-first century, it's not just capital that's globalized: labour is too. Workers in special economic zones are trapped in lives of poverty with no trade unions to represent their rights. But a group of teenagers from across the world are set to fight this injustice using the most surprising of tools - their online video games. In Industrial South China Matthew and his friends labour day and night as gold-farmers, amassing virtual wealth that's sold on to rich Western players, while in the slums of Mumbai 'General Robotwallah' Mala marshalls her team of online thugs on behalf of the local gang-boss, who in turn works for the game-owners. They're all being exploited, as their friend Wei-Dong, all the way over in LA, knows, but can do little about. Until they begin to realize that their similarities outweigh their differences, and agree to work together to claim their rights to fair working conditions. Under the noses of the ruling elites in China and the rest of Asia, they fight their bosses, the owners of the games and rich speculators, outsmarting them all with their gaming skills. But soon the battle will spill over from the virtual world to the real one, leaving Mala, Matthew and even Wei-Dong fighting not just for their rights, but for their lives...

Download or read book Tallulah the Tooth Fairy CEO written by Tamara Pizzoli and published by Farrar, Straus and Giroux (BYR). This book was released on 2019-07-30 with total page 21 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Hilarious and smart, Tallulah the Tooth Fairy CEO is a modern take on the classic tooth fairy story by Tamara Pizzoli with illustrations by Federico Fabiani that is perfect for powerful little leaders ready to take on the world—one tooth at a time. Meet Tallulah. She’s the Tooth Fairy CEO. Tallulah knows practically everything about being a tooth fairy. How to collect teeth. Dispense money. Train other fairies. And it’s all in the Teeth Titans Incorporated Employee Manual. But when something happens that’s not covered in the manual, what's a fairy to do?

Download or read book Nine Continents written by Xiaolu Guo and published by Grove Press. This book was released on 2017-10-10 with total page 365 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The acclaimed novelist’s award-winning memoir of growing up in a remote Chinese fishing village is “a rich and insightful coming-of-age story” (Kirkus). The acclaimed author of A Concise Chinese-English Dictionary for Lovers and I Am China, Xiaolu Guo grew up an unwanted child in a poor fishing village on the East China Sea. But a Taoist monk made a startling prediction to her grandmother: that Guo would prove herself to be a peasant warrior and grow up to travel the nine continents. In Nine Continents, Guo tells the story of a curious mind coming of age in an inhospitable country, and her determination to seek a life beyond the limits of its borders. From her family’s village to a rapidly changing Beijing, to a life beyond China, Nine Continents presents a fascinating portrait of how the Cultural Revolution shaped families, and how the country’s economic ambitions have given rise to great change. This “moving and often exhilarating” memoir confirms Xiaolu Guo as one of world literature’s most urgent voices (Financial Times, UK).

Download or read book Truth s Ragged Edge written by Philip F. Gura and published by Farrar, Straus and Giroux. This book was released on 2013-04-09 with total page 354 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: From the acclaimed cultural historian Philip F. Gura comes Truth's Ragged Edge, a comprehensive and original history of the American novel's first century. Grounded in Gura's extensive consideration of the diverse range of important early novels, not just those that remain widely read today, this book recovers many long-neglected but influential writers—such as the escaped slave Harriet Jacobs, the free black Philadelphian Frank J. Webb, and the irrepressible John Neal—to paint a complete and authoritative portrait of the era. Gura also gives us the key to understanding what sets the early novel apart, arguing that it is distinguished by its roots in "the fundamental religiosity of American life." Our nation's pioneering novelists, it turns out, wrote less in the service of art than of morality. This history begins with a series of firsts: the very first American novel, William Hill Brown's The Power of Sympathy, published in 1789; the first bestsellers, Susanna Rowson's Charlotte Temple and Hannah Webster Foster's The Coquette, novels that were, like Brown's, cautionary tales of seduction and betrayal; and the first native genre, religious tracts, which were parables intended to instruct the Christian reader. Gura shows that the novel did not leave behind its proselytizing purpose, even as it evolved. We see Catharine Maria Sedgwick in the 1820s conceiving of A New-England Tale as a critique of Puritanism's harsh strictures, as well as novelists pushing secular causes: George Lippard's The Quaker City, from 1844, was a dark warning about growing social inequality. In the next decade certain writers—Hawthorne and Melville most famously—began to depict interiority and doubt, and in doing so nurtured a broader cultural shift, from social concern to individualism, from faith in a distant god to faith in the self. Rich in subplots and detail, Gura's narrative includes enlightening discussions of the technologies that modernized publishing and allowed for the printing of novels on a mass scale, and of the lively cultural journals and literary salons of early nineteenth-century New York and Boston. A book for the reader of history no less than the reader of fiction, Truth's Ragged Edge—the title drawn from a phrase in Melville, about the ambiguity of truth—is an indispensable guide to the fascinating, unexpected origins of the American novel.

Download or read book Magic Like That written by Samara Cole Doyon and published by Lee & Low Books. This book was released on 2021 with total page 32 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: While her mother works magic styling her hair, a young Black girl recalls how her hairstyles can reflect the natural world and show that her hair can be elegant, mischievous, or whimsical.

Download or read book The Returned written by Jason Mott and published by Harlequin. This book was released on 2014-03-25 with total page 235 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The National Book Award–winning author of Hell of a Book shares “a breathtaking novel that navigates emotional minefields with realism and grace” (Kirkus Reviews, starred review). Harold and Lucille Hargrave’s eight-year-old son, Jacob, died tragically in 1966. In their old age they’ve settled comfortably into life without him. . . . Until one day Jacob mysteriously appears on their doorstep—flesh and blood, still eight years old. All over the world people’s loved ones are returning from beyond. No one knows how or why, whether it’s a miracle or a sign of the end. But as chaos erupts around the globe, the newly reunited family finds itself at the center of a community on the brink of collapse, forced to navigate a mysterious new reality. With spare, elegant prose and searing emotional depth, award-winning poet Jason Mott explores timeless questions of faith and morality, love and responsibility. This acclaimed debut novel marked Mott’s arrival as an important new voice in contemporary fiction.

Download or read book Guests on Earth written by Lee Smith and published by Algonquin Books. This book was released on 2013-10-15 with total page 368 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: “Reading Lee Smith ranks among the great pleasures of American fiction . . . Gives evidence again of the grace and insight that distinguish her work.” —Robert Stone, author of Death of the Black-Haired Girl It’s 1936 when orphaned thirteen-year-old Evalina Toussaint is admitted to Highland Hospital, a mental institution in Asheville, North Carolina, known for its innovative treatments for nervous disorders and addictions. Taken under the wing of the hospital’s most notable patient, Zelda Fitzgerald, Evalina witnesses cascading events that lead up to the tragic fire of 1948 that killed nine women in a locked ward, Zelda among them. Author Lee Smith has created, through a seamless blending of fiction and fact, a mesmerizing novel about a world apart--in which art and madness are luminously intertwined.