Download or read book The Little Giant of Aberdeen County written by Tiffany Baker and published by Hachette+ORM. This book was released on 2008-09-10 with total page 259 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: When Truly Plaice's mother was pregnant, the town of Aberdeen joined together in betting how recordbreakingly huge the baby boy would ultimately be. The girl who proved to be Truly paid the price of her enormity; her father blamed her for her mother's death in childbirth, and was totally ill equipped to raise either this giant child or her polar opposite sister Serena Jane, the epitome of femine perfection. When he, too, relinquished his increasingly tenuous grip on life, Truly and Serena Jane are separated--Serena Jane to live a life of privilege as the future May Queen and Truly to live on the outskirts of town on the farm of the town sadsack, the subject of constant abuse and humiliation at the hands of her peers. Serena Jane's beauty proves to be her greatest blessing and her biggest curse, for it makes her the obsession of classmate Bob Bob Morgan, the youngest in a line of Robert Morgans who have been doctors in Aberdeen for generations. Though they have long been the pillars of the community, the earliest Robert Morgan married the town witch, Tabitha Dyerson, and the location of her fabled shadow book--containing mysterious secrets for healing and darker powers--has been the subject of town gossip ever since. Bob Bob Morgan, one of Truly's biggest tormentors, does the unthinkable to claim the prize of Serena Jane, and changes the destiny of all Aberdeen from there on. When Serena Jane flees town and a loveless marriage to Bob Bob, it is Truly who must become the woman of a house that she did not choose and mother to her eight-year-old nephew Bobbie. Truly's brother-in-law is relentless and brutal; he criticizes her physique and the limitations of her health as a result, and degrades her more than any one human could bear. It is only when Truly finds her calling--the ability to heal illness with herbs and naturopathic techniques--hidden within the folds of Robert Morgan's family quilt, that she begins to regain control over her life and herself. Unearthed family secrets, however, will lead to the kind of betrayal that eventually break the Morgan family apart forever, but Truly's reckoning with her own demons allows for both an uprooting of Aberdeen County, and the possibility of love in unexpected places.

Download or read book Mercy Snow written by Tiffany Baker and published by Grand Central Publishing. This book was released on 2015-01-27 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "Strength and quiet beauty mark Baker's writing . . . Mercy Snow provides an authentic universe of damaged souls and a fantastical heroine."--Anita Shreve, Washington Post In the tiny town of Titan Falls, New Hampshire, the paper mill dictates a quiet, steady rhythm of life. But one day a tragic bus accident sets two families on a course toward destruction, irrevocably altering the lives of everyone in their wake. June McAllister is the wife of the local mill owner and undisputed first lady in town. But the Snow family, a group of itinerant ne'er-do-wells who live on a decrepit and cursed property, have brought her--and the town--nothing but grief. June will do anything to cover up a dark secret she discovers after the crash, one that threatens to upend her picture-perfect life, even if it means driving the Snow family out of town. But she has never gone up against a force as fierce as the young Mercy Snow. Mercy is determined to protect her rebellious brother, whom the town blames for the accident, despite his innocence. And she has a secret of her own. When an old skeleton is discovered not far from the crash, it beckons Mercy to solve a mystery buried deep within the town's past.

Download or read book Things We Didn t Say written by Kristina Riggle and published by Harper Collins. This book was released on 2011-06-28 with total page 354 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: “Things We Didn’t Say is impossible to put down, and even harder to let go of.” —Julie Buxbaum, author of The Opposite of Love Kristina Riggle’s star continues to rise. Tiffany Baker, the New York Times bestselling author of The Little Giant of Aberdeen County, says that Riggle, “writes women’s fiction with soul.” In her novel Things We Didn’t Say, the acclaimed author of Real Life & Liars and The Life You’ve Imagined (an Indie Next Notable Book) explores the messiness of life’s love stories, especially those involving teenage almost-stepchildren, a unreliable ex-wife, and the words no parent ever wants to hear: “Your child is missing.” A poignant, honest, and unforgettable novel that fans of Katrina Kittle and Elin Hildenbrand will take into their hearts, Things We Didn’t Say is exactly the sort of well-written, complex relationships story that women love to read, discuss, and share with their friends.

Download or read book The Gravity of Birds written by Tracy Guzeman and published by Simon and Schuster. This book was released on 2013-08-06 with total page 320 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A debut novel already destined to be a book club favorite. “With its deft interweaving of psychological complexity and riveting narrative momentum, with its gorgeous prose and poetic justice, The Gravity of Birds is about sibling rivalry, tragedies, and resurrections. And it’s irresistibly exquisite” (San Francisco Chronicle). Forty-four years after the brilliant young painter, Thomas Bayber, first meets Alice and Natalie Kessler, Bayber unveils a never-before-seen work, Kessler Sisters—a provocative painting depicting the young Thomas, Alice, and Natalie. Bayber asks Dennis Finch, an art history professor, and Stephen Jameson, an eccentric young art authenticator, to sell the painting. But their task becomes more complicated when the artist requires that they first locate Alice and Natalie, who seem to have disappeared. Told in alternating chapters that weave revelations about the sisters’ past with clues Finch and Jameson discover in the present, this story sets three characters on a collision course with their histories, showing how families tear themselves apart and then try to bind themselves together again, not always creating the same fabric. The Gravity of Birds “combines the drama of warring sisters, the mystery of a missing painting, and the sorrow of lost love into a haunting elegy that will…leave you breathless” (Tiffany Baker, author of The Little Giant of Aberdeen County).

Download or read book A Good Hard Look written by Ann Napolitano and published by Penguin. This book was released on 2011-07-07 with total page 343 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: From the New York Times bestselling author of Hello Beautiful and Dear Edward, a novel set in Flannery O'Connor's hometown of Milledgeville, and a tragedy that forever alters the town and the author herself "A wholly believable world shaped by duty, small pleasures, and fateful choices."—O, The Oprah Magazine Forced by illness to leave behind a successful life in New York, literary icon Flannery O'Connor has returned to her family farm in the small town of Milledgeville, Georgia. With her health and time both limited, all she wants is to be left alone to write. But Flannery's plans are soon upended by Melvin Whiteson, a banker from Manhattan who has recently married the town belle. Melvin is at loose ends with his new life; though he has every opportunity, he's not sure where to begin. Flannery knows exactly what she wants, but is running out of time. Through their unusual and clandestine friendship, both will come to reflect on the decisions they have made and the paths they have chosen. Literary history and fiction gracefully intersect in this emotionally charged novel of small town Southern life, which asks us all to consider how we can live our lives to the fullest.

Download or read book South of Superior written by Ellen Airgood and published by Penguin. This book was released on 2011-06-09 with total page 298 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A novel full of heart, in which love, friendship, and charity teach a young woman to live a bigger life. When Madeline Stone walks away from Chicago and moves five hundred miles north to the coast of Lake Superior, in Michigan's Upper Peninsula, she isn't prepared for how much her life will change. Charged with caring for an aging family friend, Madeline finds herself in the middle of beautiful nowhere with Gladys and Arbutus, two octogenarian sisters-one sharp and stubborn, the other sweeter than sunshine. As Madeline begins to experience the ways of the small, tight-knit town, she is drawn into the lives and dramas of its residents. It's a place where times are tough and debts run deep, but friendship, community, and compassion run deeper. As the story hurtles along-featuring a lost child, a dashed love, a car accident, a wedding, a fire, and a romantic reunion-Gladys, Arbutus, and the rest of the town teach Madeline more about life, love, and goodwill than she's learned in a lifetime. A heartwarming novel, South of Superior explores the deep reward in caring for others, and shows how one who is poor in pocket can be rich in so many other ways, and how little it often takes to make someone happy.

Download or read book She s Come Undone written by Wally Lamb and published by Simon and Schuster. This book was released on 2012-12-11 with total page 517 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Meet Dolores Price. She's thirteen, wise-mouthed but wounded. Beached like a whale in front of her bedroom TV, she spends the next few years nourishing herself with the chocolate, crisps and Pepsi her anxious mother supplies. When she finally rolls into young womanhood at 257 pounds, Dolores is no stronger and life is no kinder. But this time she's determined to rise to the occasion and give herself one more chance before really going belly up. In his extraordinary coming-of-age odyssey, Wally Lamb invites us to hitch an incredible ride on a journey of love, pain, and renewal with the most heartbreakingly comical heroine to come along in years. At once a fragile girl and a hard-edged cynic, so tough to love yet so inimitably loveable, Dolores is as poignantly real as our own imperfections.

Download or read book The Little Giant of Aberdeen County written by Tiffany Baker and published by . This book was released on 2014-07-02 with total page 186 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "A spellbindingly woven tale about a girl who grows physically and emotionally beyond her small town's wildest expectations"--Provided by publisher.

Download or read book Tea Time for the Traditionally Built written by Alexander McCall Smith and published by Anchor. This book was released on 2009-04-21 with total page 225 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Fans around the world adore the bestselling No. 1 Ladies’ Detective Agency series and its proprietor, Precious Ramotswe, Botswana’s premier lady detective. In this charming series, Mma Ramotswe—with help from her loyal associate, Grace Makutsi—navigates her cases and her personal life with wisdom, good humor, and the occasional cup of tea. In this installment in the endlessly entertaining series, Precious Ramotswe faces problems both personal and professional. The first is the potential demise of an old friend, her tiny white van. Recently, it has developed a rather troubling knock, but she dare not consult the estimable Mr. J.L.B. Matekoni for fear he may condemn the vehicle. Meanwhile, her talented assistant Mma Makutsi is plagued by the reappearance of her nemesis, Violet Sephotho, who has taken a job at the Double Comfort Furniture store whose proprietor is none other than Phuti Radiphuti, Mma Makutsi’s fiancé. Finally, the No. 1 Ladies’ Detective Agency has been hired to explain the unexpected losing streak of a local football club, the Kalahari Swoopers. But with Mma Ramotswe on the case, it seems certain that everything will be resolved satisfactorily.

Download or read book The Weight of Feathers written by Anna-Marie McLemore and published by Macmillan. This book was released on 2015-09-15 with total page 319 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Lace Paloma and Cluck Corbeau, from feuding families of traveling performers, fall in love.

Download or read book The Shoebox Bible written by Alan Bradley and published by Doubleday Canada. This book was released on 2014-11-04 with total page 143 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: On a cold, dark winter day during the Second World War, a young Alan Bradley found hidden beneath a floorboard in his mother’s bedroom closet a well-worn cardboard shoebox. At the time, he could make little sense of the ragtag things he found inside: cigarette packages, soup can labels, handbills, calendars, paper bags, pie boxes—any scrap of paper upon which his mother could copy out, in her old-fashioned handwriting, what seemed to be no more than unrelated snippets of Scripture. He only knew that the box, which he would later come to think of as the Shoebox Bible, had something to do with the fact that his father had run away from home. Many years would pass, and his mother would be on her deathbed before he would once again hold this treasure in his hands. And only then would he put together the pieces of the puzzle, and learn the complete truth. Beautifully and lovingly told, The Shoebox Bible is a wonderful memoir of a precocious family who manage to live and love despite the absence of their father. Interspersed with heartbreaking quotations from the Old and New Testaments, this sad, funny, and above all inspiring story will appeal to readers who fell in love with such inspirational books as Tuesdays with Morrie and Mister God, This Is Anna.

Download or read book The Peculiar Miracles of Antoinette Martin written by Stephanie Knipper and published by Algonquin Books. This book was released on 2017-08-15 with total page 353 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In the spirit of Vanessa Diffenbaugh’s The Language of Flowers--and with a touch of the magical--The Peculiar Miracles of Antoinette Martin is a spellbinding debut about a wondrously gifted child and the family that she helps to heal. Sisters Rose and Lily Martin were inseparable when growing up on their family’s Kentucky flower farm yet became distant as adults when Lily found herself unable to deal with the demands of Rose’s unusual daughter. But when Rose becomes ill, Lily is forced to return to the farm and to confront the fears that had driven her away. Rose’s daughter, ten-year-old Antoinette, has a form of autism that requires constant care and attention. She has never spoken a word, but she has a powerful gift that others would give anything to harness--she can heal with her touch. She brings wilted flowers back to life, makes a neighbor’s tremors disappear, and even changes the course of nature on the flower farm. Antoinette’s gift, though, comes at a price, since each healing puts her own life in jeopardy. As Rose--the center of her daughter’s life--struggles with her own failing health and Lily confronts her anguished past, the sisters, and the men who love them, come to realize the sacrifices that must be made to keep this very special child safe. Written with great heart and a deep understanding of what it feels like to be different, The Peculiar Miracles of Antoinette Martin is a novel about what it means to be family and about the lengths to which people will go to protect the ones they love. “This is the kind of book that invites you home, sits you down at the kitchen table, and feeds you something delicious and homemade. You will want to stay in this world where new relationships bloom out of broken ones, sisters find one another again, and miracles really do occur.” —Tiffany Baker

Download or read book A Week at the Airport written by Alain De Botton and published by Emblem Editions. This book was released on 2010-09-21 with total page 113 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The bestselling author of The Architecture of Happiness and The Art of Travel spends a week at an airport in a wittily intriguing meditation on the "non-place" that he believes is the centre of our civilization. In the summer of 2009, Alain de Botton was invited by the owners of Heathrow airport to become their first ever writer-in-residence. Given unprecedented, unrestricted access to wander around one of the world's busiest airports, he met travellers from all over the globe, and spoke with everyone from baggage handlers to pilots, and senior executives to the airport chaplain. Based on these conversations he has produced this extraordinary meditation on the nature of travel, work, relationships, and our daily lives. Working with the renowned documentary photographer Richard Baker, he explores the magical and the mundane, and the interactions of travellers and workers all over this familiar but mysterious "non-place," which by definition we are eager to leave. Taking the reader through departures, "air-side," and the arrivals hall, de Botton shows with his usual combination of wit and wisdom that spending time in an airport can be more revealing than we might think.

Download or read book Faith Bass Darling s Last Garage Sale written by Lynda Rutledge and published by Penguin. This book was released on 2012-04-26 with total page 278 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: SOON TO BE CLAIRE DARLING—A MAJOR MOTION PICTURE STARRING CATHERINE DENEUVE! When a wealthy woman decides to sell all of her worldly possessions, she unearths the secrets of her family’s past in this charming debut. On the last day of the millennium, sassy Faith Bass Darling, the richest old lady in Bass, Texas, decides to have a garage sale. With help from a couple of neighborhood boys, Faith lugs her priceless Louis XV elephant clock, countless Tiffany lamps, and everything else in her nineteenth-century mansion out onto her long, sloping lawn. Why is a recluse of twenty years suddenly selling off her dearest possessions? Because God told her to. As the townspeople grab up five generations of heirlooms, everyone drawn to the sale—including Faith’s long-lost daughter—finds that the antiques not only hold family secrets but also inspire some of life’s most important questions: Do our possessions possess us? What are we without our memories? Is there life after death or second chances here on earth? And is Faith really selling that Tiffany lamp for $1? READERS GUIDE INCLUDED

Download or read book The Life You ve Imagined written by Kristina Riggle and published by Harper Collins. This book was released on 2010-08-17 with total page 356 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: “A richly woven story laced with unforgettable characters….A beautiful book.” —Therese Walsh, author of The Last Will of Moira Leahy “The Life You’ve Imagined is a terrific novel about love and loss, letting go and holding on. A book to share with family and friends—I loved it.” —Melissa Senate, author of The Secret of Joy From Kristina Riggle, author of the brilliant debut Real Life & Liars, comes The Life You’ve Imagined, an astonishing new novel about love, loss, life, and hope. It’s the story of four former high school friends who are forced to examine what happened to their high school dreams which are now at odds with their grown-up reality.

Download or read book Fragile written by Lisa Unger and published by Crown. This book was released on 2010-08-03 with total page 338 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A thrilling novel from New York Times bestselling author Lisa Unger about the hunt for a missing girl and one community’s intricate yet fragile bonds. “[A] nail-biting nuanced whodunit.”—People Everybody knows everybody in The Hollows, a quaint, charming town outside of New York City. It’s a place where neighbors keep an eye on one another’s kids, where people say hello in the grocery store, and where high school cliques and antics are never quite forgotten. As a child, Maggie found living under the microscope of small-town life stifling. But as a wife and mother, she has happily returned to The Hollows’s insular embrace. As a psychologist, her knowledge of family histories provides powerful insights into her patients’ lives. So when the girlfriend of her teenage son, Rick, disappears, Maggie’s intuitive gift proves useful to the case—and also dangerous. Eerie parallels soon emerge between Charlene’s disappearance and the abduction of another local girl that shook the community years ago when Maggie was a teenager. The investigation has her husband, Jones, the lead detective on the case, acting strangely. Rick, already a brooding teenager, becomes even more withdrawn. In a town where the past is always present, nobody is above suspicion, not even a son in the eyes of his father. As she tries to reassure him that Rick embodies his father in all of the important ways, Maggie realizes this might be exactly what Jones fears most. Determined to uncover the truth, Maggie pursues her own leads into Charlene’s disappearance and exposes a long-buried town secret—one that could destroy everything she holds dear.

Download or read book Unspeakable written by Susan Burch and published by Univ of North Carolina Press. This book was released on 2007-11-19 with total page 315 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Junius Wilson (1908-2001) spent seventy-six years at a state mental hospital in Goldsboro, North Carolina, including six in the criminal ward. He had never been declared insane by a medical professional or found guilty of any criminal charge. But he was deaf and black in the Jim Crow South. Unspeakable is the story of his life. Using legal records, institutional files, and extensive oral history interviews--some conducted in sign language--Susan Burch and Hannah Joyner piece together the story of a deaf man accused in 1925 of attempted rape, found insane at a lunacy hearing, committed to the criminal ward of the State Hospital for the Colored Insane, castrated, forced to labor for the institution, and held at the hospital for more than seven decades. Junius Wilson's life was shaped by some of the major developments of twentieth-century America: Jim Crow segregation, the civil rights movement, deinstitutionalization, the rise of professional social work, and the emergence of the deaf and disability rights movements. In addition to offering a bottom-up history of life in a segregated mental institution, Burch and Joyner's work also enriches the traditional interpretation of Jim Crow by highlighting the complicated intersections of race and disability as well as of community and language. This moving study expands the boundaries of what biography can and should be. There is much to learn and remember about Junius Wilson--and the countless others who have lived unspeakable histories.