Carole Hanson is used to being the best junior rider at Pine Hollow, but a new girl has started taking lessons there, and she's good. In fact, she's younger than Carole, and she's a better rider. Carole is surprised to find herself feeling jealous. Then she realizes that this new rider may excel in the saddle, but on the ground she's got a lot to work out, and the best person to help her is Carole. Can Carole overcome her jealousy and forge a new friendship? Views: 11
At age eighty, Tony Taylor journeys from Sydney, Australia, to British Columbia to fish the Cowichan River with his eight-year-old grandson, Ned. The trip is an opportunity for Tony to return to a landscape that has had a profound effect on his life and his way of thinking, and to share this place with his grandson. As Tony teaches Ned the patient art of fly-fishing, a lifetime of memories, thoughts, and stories unspool in peaceful reflections by the water's edge. Fishing the River of Time is an elegant meditation on nature, life, and family, written with warmth and wisdom. It inspires self-reflection and an appreciation of the natural world and the fundamentals of our human experience. It is destined to become a classic work of simple living in the mold of Henry David Thoreau's Walden. Views: 11
A hint of Recovery Road, a sample of Nick and Norah's Infinite Playlist, and a cut of Juno. A Really Awesome Mess is a laugh-out-loud, gut-wrenching/heart-warming story of two teenagers struggling to find love and themselves. Two teenagers. Two very bumpy roads taken that lead to Heartland Academy. Justin was just having fun, but when his dad walked in on him with a girl in a very compromising position, Justin's summer took a quick turn for the worse. His parents' divorce put Justin on rocky mental ground, and after a handful of Tylenol lands him in the hospital, he has really hit rock bottom.Emmy never felt like part of her family. She was adopted from China. Her parents and sister tower over her and look like they came out of a Ralph Lauren catalog-- and Emmy definitely doesn't. After a scandalous photo of Emmy leads to vicious rumors around school, she threatens the boy who started it all on Facebook.Justin and Emmy arrive at... Views: 11
Nancy Herkness invites listeners back to Sanctuary, West Virginia, in Book Three of the award-winning Whisper Horse series.
Fleeing professional scandal and a broken engagement, veterinarian Hannah Linden abandons Chicago for the mountain town of Sanctuary, West Virginia, hoping to put her troubles with men and the media behind her. But when she encounters world-famous chef Adam Bosch, she finds herself increasingly drawn to the charming but darkly complex man and his troubled teenage son, Matt. Adam, a recovering alcoholic, fears he can never be a worthy father to the surly, distant boy he has just come to know, and enlists Hannah's help in his struggle to connect with his son.
Hoping to coax Matt out of his shell, Hannah introduces the boy to an ailing brown pony who has the power to change his view of the world. But can the determined little whisper horse prove to Hannah, Adam, and Matt that they were meant to be a family? Views: 11
Four years ago Erin’s life changed drastically. Her drug-addicted brother killed her parents, and her marriage disintegrated. Her husband, Matt, an FBI agent, had done his duty when he’d arrested Stuart, but she’d been too caught up in her own grief to allow him to help her move through the shadows of pain.Now Matt is back, but it isn’t to attempt reconciliation. Her brother has escaped from Attica, and Erin is his next target. Matt will stop Stuart by any means necessary. But Stuart is a desperate man, and desperate men will do anything to get what they want.Thrown together by treacherous circumstances, Matt and Erin fight a battle to stay alive and possibly figure out how to put the pieces of their destroyed lives back together again. Views: 11
Scobie Malone is leaving the Homicide and Serial Offenders Unit of the Sydney police, and his last investigation could be his most bizarre. When a housemaid is found dead in a dotcom millionaire's penthouse, Scobie suspects a kidnap that's gone wrong. But never in his wildest dreams could he imagine just how wrong. The kidnappers' plan to grab a millionaire's girlfriend has instead netted them a millionaire. Worse, the dotcom bubble has burst, leaving the millionaire in debt to the YaKuza and high on their hit list. The trial leads Scobie to renew the acquaintance of some old adversaries... Views: 11
In this incandescent novel, a family’s superpowers bestow not instant salvation but the miracle of accepting who they are.“Okay, tell me which you want,” Alek asks his cousin at the outset of What the Family Needed. “To be able to fly or to be invisible.” And soon Giordana, a teenager suffering the bitter fallout of her parents’ divorce, finds that she can, at will, become as invisible as she feels. Later, Alek’s mother, newly adrift in the disturbing awareness that all is not well with her younger son, can suddenly swim with Olympic endurance. Over three decades, in fact, each member of this gorgeously imagined extended family discovers, at a moment of crisis, that he or she possesses a supernatural power.But instead of crimes to fight and villains to vanquish, they confront inner demons, and their extraordinary abilities prove not to be magic weapons so much as expressions of their fears and longings as they struggle to come to terms with who they are and what fate deals them. As the years pass, their lives intersect and overlap in surprising and poignant ways, and they discover that the real magic lies not in their superpowers but in the very human and miraculous way they are able to accept, protect, and love one another.Review"Remarkable ... at once magical and very normal, a wishful fantasy about the strength it can take to love one's family members well." A –Entertainment Weekly“Brilliant, unexpected, wide-ranging and deeply moving, the story of one family's extraordinary—and sometimes otherworldly— negotiation of the very real hazards of life.” –Maile Meloy, author of Both Ways Is the Only Way I Want It“Steven Amsterdam is a superhero and his power is to create stunningly crafted, heartbreaking stories that are as fun as they are brilliant. In this story of a ‘super family,’ the greatest ability on display is Amsterdam's own control of story, which outshines the fantastic by being even more so.” –Mat Johnson, author of Pym"There are moments when the writing's simplicity soars becomes its own kind of superpower… the book soars." –Publishers Weekly“Pulses with hope… It's a tantalizing novel, one that’s both sharp and touching, and Steven Amsterdam is fast becoming one of our most interesting writers.” –The Canberra Times "A wonderful novel: imaginative, intelligent, empathetic. It's like a cross between The Corrections and The Slap, except without any of the gloom or rage and with the addition of something that may or may not be either a form of magic realism or simply that old staple of the literary art, metaphor.” –Sydney Morning Herald "Surreal and fantastic… [Amsterdam] develops his own kind of reality that has more than a tinge of fantasy." –KirkusPRAISE FOR *THINGS WE DIDN'T SEE COMING*“Breathtakingly strange… the kind of book that can inspire us to think differently about the world and entertain us at the same time.” –Washington Post “Feels like a genuine discovery… Timely and unexpectedly moving.” –The Daily Beast “Brilliant… Thoughtful, intelligent, savvy… full of horror and hope and compels you to think.” –Raleigh News & Observer“Don’t read this book in bed unless you want to stay up past your bedtime thrilled by the discovery of a new writer… [A] stunning read.” –The MillionsAbout the AuthorSteven Amsterdam is the author of Things We Didn’t See Coming, which was longlisted for the Guardian First Book Award and won The Age Book of the Year Award, among other honors. A native New Yorker and a nurse, he lives in Melbourne, Australia. Views: 11
RetailStill stinging from his recent election loss, former president Theodore Roosevelt sought refuge in the Brazilian jungles in early 1914 on an expedition to trace the last unmapped Amazonian river system, the Rio da Dúvida or The River of Doubt.Co-commanded by famed Brazilian explorer Colonel Candido Rondon and staffed with Roosevelt’s 24-year-old son Kermit, naturalist George Cherrie, and more than a dozen local porters and laborers, the Roosevelt-Rondon Scientific Expedition was plagued by disaster from its very onset—incompetent planning and inadequate outfitting would result in near mutiny, hunger, death, and even cold-blooded murder. But Roosevelt meets an odd stranger along his ill-fated journey, who tells an astonishing tale that could challenge the very core of modern Natural History. Weakened by illness and starvation, Teddy Roosevelt is caught in a web of unfathomable danger, the results of which would alter his life and the lives of his companions forever. Views: 11
Happily married to the Reverend Simon Norwood, with a small daughter and another baby on the way, Fiona Norwood's happiness should be complete. But Fiona has a secret in her past, and a part of her can never forget the baby girl she gave birth to when she was seventeen years old, the child she held for only a few moments before being forced to give her up for adoption.Meanwhile, Debbie Hargreaves has known ever since she was a little girl that she was adopted. Her parents, Vera and Stanley, are kind and loving and she has a happy home life. Despite that, once she reaches her teenage years, Debbie determines to find out about her birth mother and, if possible, to go and look for her. But is the past sometimes best left alone? Debbie's search will awaken powerful, long-buried emotions – and life for Debbie, Fiona, their friends and relatives will never be quite the same again. Views: 11
Music critic Claire Abby is a single mom dreading her daughter's departure for college and worried that turning forty will leave her career running on fumes. She's floored when she lands a Rolling Stone cover story on 80s Britich rock legend Christopher Penman. She spent her teenage years fantasizing he was her boyfriend. In person, Christopher is everything Claire feared he'd be--charming, witty and unwilling to address the rumors he's dodged for a decade. Still, she contains her adolescent fantasies and manages to earn his trust, unearthing the truth and the devastating secret behind it. His blockbuster story is her first priority when she returns home, a nearly impossible task when Christopher starts calling and flirting. She knows she should maintain a professional distance. She knows she should focus on the story. She knows it would be best to simply walk away. But how can she say "no" to the man she could never forget? Views: 11
