From Sharon Creech, the Newbery Medal winning author of Walk Two Moons, comes a heartwarming adventure about finding family, and a home, when you least expect it.
Ruby Holler is a Carnegie Medal-winning novel, and with its quirky protagonists and exciting journey, captures the imaginations of readers of all ages.
Brother and sister Dallas and Florida are the “trouble twins.” In their short thirteen years, they’ve passed through countless foster homes, only to return to their dreary orphanage, Boxton Creek Home.
Run by the Trepids, a greedy and strict couple, Boxton Creek seems impossible to escape. When Mr. Trepid informs the twins that they’ll be helping old Tiller and Sairy Morey go on separate adventures, Dallas and Florida are suspicious.
As the twins adjust to the natural beauty of the outdoors, help the Tillers prepare for their adventures, and foil a robbery, their ultimate search for freedom leads them home to Ruby Holler. Views: 1 185
It all began one snowy night . . .
When snow drives Miss Rebecca Foster's carriage off the road, she is forced to take shelter at an inn, where she meets the impossible Joshua Kelling. Their chance encounter has repercussions neither of them could foresee, but Rebecca has no intention of marrying Josh just to protect her reputation. Through a whirl of balls and skating parties they spar, but it is only when his life is in danger that she knows her own heart, and at last comes to understand his. Views: 1 181
When Molly Wells showed up at Jake Coulter's ranch, she had nothing but some extra clothes, a stolen horse, and a fear of her ex-husband that threatened to rule her life. She'd heard Jake was a real-life horse whisperer-and perhaps the only man alive who could help the beautiful stallion that her ex-husband had so bitterly abused. But she had no idea that Jake's talents would work their magic on her, with the same power to gain her trust, give her strength, and whisper away her deepest fears. Views: 1 176
IS THIS CONTEST BEILDING UP TO A BIG LETDOWN?While vacationing at a lake, Nancy, Bess, and George have their eyes on first prize in the annual sand castle contest. They use special colored sand and carefully build the castle to look like the ones they researched at the library. If the girls win, they'll get their picture in the local paper and all the ice cream they can eat.
But before judging begins, someone wrecks the girls' castle and writes a mean message in the sand. Nancy and her friends will have to dig deep to get back into the contest before it's too late! Views: 1 176
From one of the great novelists of our day, a vital, brilliant new book of essays, speeches and articles essential for our times.
Step Across This Line showcases the other side of one of fiction’s most astonishing conjurors. On display is Salman Rushdie’s incisive, thoughtful and generous mind, in prose that is as entertaining as it is topical. The world is here, captured in pieces on a dazzling array of subjects: from New York’s Amadou Diallo case to the Wizard of Oz, from U2 to fifty years of Indian writing, from a tribute to Angela Carter to the struggle to film Midnight’s Children. The title essay was originally delivered at Yale as the 2002 Tanner lecture on human values, and examines the changing meaning of frontiers in the modern world -- moral and metaphorical frontiers as well as physical ones.
The collection chronicles Rushdie’s intellectual journeys, but it is also an intimate invitation into his life: he explores his relationship to India through a moving diary of his first visit there in over a decade, “A Dream of Glorious Return.” Step Across This Line also includes “Messages From the Plague Years,” a historic set of letters, articles and reflections on life under the fatwa. Gathered together for the first time, this is Rushdie’s humane, intelligent and angry response to a grotesque threat, aimed not just at him but at free expression itself.
Step Across This Line, Salman Rushdie’s first collection of non-fiction in a decade, has the same energy, imagination and erudition as his astounding novels -- along with some very strong opinions.
From the Hardcover edition. Views: 1 175
Stranded on Marduk with his Royal Marine protectors, spoiled prince Roger MacClintock experiences a change in attitude during a long journey back to civilization across a sea filled with dangerous monsters and well-armed enemies. Views: 1 175
From the National Book Award-winning author of The Corrections, a collection of essays that reveal him to be one of our sharpest, toughest, and most entertaining social critics
While the essays in this collection range in subject matter from the sex-advice industry to the way a supermax prison works, each one wrestles with the essential themes of Franzen's writing: the erosion of civil life and private dignity; and the hidden persistence of loneliness in postmodern, imperial America. Reprinted here for the first time is Franzen's controversial l996 investigation of the fate of the American novel in what became known as "the Harper's essay," as well as his award-winning narrative of his father's struggle with Alzheimer's disease, and a rueful account of his brief tenure as an Oprah Winfrey author. Views: 1 173
Maggie has always been the white sheep of the Walsh family.Unlike her comically dysfunctional sisters,Rachel(heroine of Rachel's Holiday) and Claire (heroine of Watermelon), she married a decent man who adored her and found herself a solid career. Where Rachel was reckless and Claire dramatic, Maggie settled early for safety. Or so she believed until she discovers that her husband is having an affair and her boss is going to fire her. Suddenly, her perfectly organized life has become a perfect mess.
Devastated, she decides the only thing to do is to run for the shelter of her best friend, Emily, who lives in Los Angeles. There, with the help of sunshine and long days at the beach, she will lick her wounds and decide where life will take her next.But from the moment she lands in the City of Angels, things are not quite what she expected. Overnight, she's mixing with movie stars,even pitching film scripts to studios.Most unexpectedly of all,she finds that just because her marriage is over,it doesn't mean her life is. In the end neither the City of Angels nor Maggie Walsh will ever be the same again. Views: 1 171
Twenty thousand years into the future, an experiment in quantum physics has had a catastrophic result, creating an enormous, rapidly expanding vacuum that devours everything it comes in contact with. Now humans must confront this deadly expansion. Tchicaya, aboard a starship trawling the border of the vacuum, has allied himself with the Yielders-- those determined to study the vacuum while allowing it to grow unchecked. But when his fiery first love, Mariama, reenters his life on the side of the Preservationists-- those working to halt and destroy the vacuum-- Tchicaya finds himself struggling with an inner turmoil he has known since childhood.
However, in the center of the vacuum, something is developing that neither Tchicaya and the Yielders nor Mariama and the Preservationists could ever have imagined possible: life. Views: 1 171
Meet Andrew "Ender" Wiggin, the unforgettable boy-hero of *Ender's Game*--winner of the Hugo Award and the Nebula Award for Best Novel--and enter his Universe through this collection of stories.
"The Polish Boy" is John Paul Wiggin, the future father of Ender. In the years between the first two Bugger Wars, the Hegemony is desperate to recruit brilliant military commanders to repel the alien invasion. They may have found their man--or boy--in John Paul Wiggin....
In "Teacher's Pest"-a novella written especially for this collection--a brilliant but arrogant John Paul Wiggin, now a university student, matches wits with an equally brilliant graduate student.
"The Investment Counselor" is set after the end of the Bugger Wars. Banished from Earth and slandered as a mass murderer, twenty-year-old Andrew Wiggin wanders incognito from planet to planet as a fugitive--until a blackmailing tax inspector compromises his identity and threatens to expose Ender the Xeoncide.
Also reprinted here is the original award-winning novella, "Ender's Game," which first appeared in 1977. Views: 1 170
A man is found wandering the desert outside Las Vegas. The cards in his wallet identify him as Samson Greene, a Columbia University English professor last seen leaving campus eight days ago. Thirty-six years old, with a wife, Anna, and a dog, Frank. But Samson doesn't even recognize his own name, and by the time Anna has made her away across the country to pick him up, doctors have discovered a cherry-sized tumor in his brain; its removal eradicates the last twenty-four years of Samson's memories.
Samson and Anna return to New York together, where Samson struggles to connect with the woman he knows he is supposed to love, with his career, with his home, with his life. He remembers his mother, his childhood in California, the basic shape and processes of the world, but everything else remains blank. In the meantime, Anna sees the same husband she has always seen, but every day has to steel herself against the notion that the man she loves is the Samson who remembers the last quarter century, the Samson who has been shaped by the history of their lives together.
Into these daily lives fraught with a peculiarly intimate tension comes a charismatic scientist who invites Samson to take part in a groundbreaking, experimental project involving the transfer of memories from one mind to another-all it requires is a trip back to the Nevada desert. It doesn't take much to lure Samson away from his profound loneliness in the City-where he is stuck between missing the past life that surrounds him and yearning to enjoy the fresh start he's been given-though Anna is never far from his thoughts as he embarks on the adventure that could mean the end of the old Samson Greene.
In Samson, Nicole Krauss creates an ordinary man who his facing a searingly new world with gritty poignancy and purely instinctual empathy. Reminiscent of early DeLillo, but with the emotional sensitivity of a budding Cheever, Krauss's sharp, intelligent storytelling effortlessly peels away the layers of quotidian circumstances to reveal the subtle joys and woes of simple survival. From the Hardcover edition. Views: 1 170
The pursuit begins....Darren Shan, the Vampire Prince, leaves Vampire Mountain on a life or death mission. As part of an elite force, Darren searches the world for the Vampaneze Lord. But the road ahead is long and dangerous-and lined with the bodies of the damned. Views: 1 168
Jon Bennett and Erin McCoy are two of the shrewdest strategists on Wall Street and close friends of the president of the United States. Their secret project: a billion-dollar oil deal off the coast of Tel Aviv and Gaza that could form the basis of a historic peace treaty and bring enormous wealth to every Israeli and Palestinian. But nothing has prepared Jon or Erin for the terror that lies ahead.
•Terrorists hijack a jet plane and fly a kamikaze mission into an American city.
•Israeli commandos foil a nuclear attack, but find evidence that the next targets could be Washington and New York.
•And suddenly the United States finds itself in a war in the Middle East over terrorism and weapons of mass destruction that will forever change the course of human history. Views: 1 165
Who are the followers of the Sith? Devoted to the study of the dark side of the Force, they live an underground existence . . . but their threat is growing. Although they do not have Sith power, they are on a constant search for it. Nothing--not even the Jedi--will get in their way.
Dr. Lundi is the leader of the Sith followers. As he gets closer to attaining a Sith Holocron, he comes face-to-face with Qui-Gon Jinn and his apprentice Obi-Wan.
Ten years later, when the Sith followers reappear, Obi-Wan and his own apprentice, Anakin Skywalker, must rely on Lundi to help them. But he is to be feared, not trusted.
The Sith are on the rise. The Jedi must stop them. Views: 1 165
One long-ago Christmas, Earl Gibson lost the two things most precious to him: his wife and daughter. Angry and heartbroken, he ended up living on the streets and abandoned any belief he'd once had in God.
Ten years later Big Earl meets Gideon, a seven-year-old leukemia patient who believes with all her heart that "Christmas means never having to ask God how much he loves us." Gideon is determined to reach this lonely and hurting man who hates Christmas--and he is just as determined to rebuff her. It will take a miracle for Earl to come to understand the true meaning of Christmas. But if he can accept what Gideon wants to give him, he might find that he can return the favor with a precious gift of his own.
In GIDEON'S GIFT, Karen Kingsbury reminds us that Christmas is still a time of miraculous possibilities if only we reach out to those around us. Views: 1 164
