Even though Sewing Annie Coats and her son, Gabriel, have managed to buy their freedom, their lives are still marked by constant struggle and sacrifice. Washington's Georgetown neighborhood, where the Coatses operate a tailor's shop and laundry, is supposed to be a "promised land" for former slaves but is effectively a frontier town, gritty and dangerous, with no laws protecting black people.The remarkable emotional energy with which the Coatses wage their daily battles-as they negotiate with their former owner, as they assist escaped slaves en route to freedom, as they prepare for the encroaching war, and as they strive to love each other enough-is what propels STAND THE STORM and makes the novel's tragic denouement so devastating. Views: 30
A poet at heart, Amy Minato rejects her life of consumption in Chicago to go back to nature—specifically, to a commune in Oregon, where she rediscovers herself. She also cops occasionally to the pretentiousness of her mission, and laughs along with the reader at her attempts to be both environmentally-friendly and sane, considering the fact that she's moved in with a bunch of strangers in a remote locale. Jan Muir, a relative of the great environmentalist John Muir, lends her beautiful black-and-white illustrations to the bookWritten with a grace and clarity of vision reminiscent of Annie Dillard's prose, Siesta Lane is both a practical case study in living green, and the heartwarming story of a modern idealist who dives head-first into the fray and discovers just what it takes to live a year unplugged. This is a must-read for armchair adventurers and a perfect, engaging primer for anyone who wants to stride confidently into the new, environmentally-conscious... Views: 30
Bone on Bone, the next powerful chapter in Pulitzer Prize-winner Julia Keller's beloved Bell Elkins series, sends readers headlong into the thick of a mystery as young as today's headlines -- but as old as the mountains that hold these lives in a tight grip.
How far would you go for someone you love? Would you die? Would you kill? After a three-year prison sentence, Bell Elkins is back in Acker's Gap. And she finds herself in the white-hot center of a complicated and deadly case -- even as she comes to terms with one last, devastating secret of her own.
A prominent local family has fallen victim to the same sickness that infects the whole region: drug addiction. With mother against father, child against parent, and tensions that lead inexorably to tragedy, they are trapped in a grim, hopeless struggle with nowhere to turn.
Bell has lost her job as prosecutor -- but not her affection for her ragtag, hard-luck hometown. Teamed up with former Deputy Jake Oakes, who battles his own demons as he adjusts to life as a paraplegic, and aided by the new prosecutor, Rhonda Lovejoy, Bell tackles a case as poignant as it is perilous, as heartbreaking as it is challenging. Views: 30
Sixteen year-old Alexis Hartman wants nothing more than to smoke pot and play guitar. Getting high and escaping into her music seems the perfect solution when her world is shattered by her sister's death. But when she’s arrested for possession a second time, life couldn’t get any more complicated. Her mother's breakdown is the final straw that forces Lexi to spend the summer on the West Coast with her grandmother, Maddie. When Lexi steps over the line one too many times, she's certain her life is over and that she’s destined for juvenile detention—until Maddie decides that desperate measures are called for. A three week Mediterranean cruise—for seniors.Eighteen year-old Ethan Kaswell, the poster child for good sons, is stranded on the cruise when his father, a famous heart surgeon, is called away. With his own life perfectly mapped out, Ethan finds Lexi’s unpredictability irresistible. Although he’s smart enough... Views: 30
A Pulitzer Prize–winning journalist's groundbreaking account of the crime that shocked New York City—and the world In the early hours of March 13, 1964, twenty-eight-year-old Catherine "Kitty" Genovese was stabbed to death in the middle-class neighborhood of Kew Gardens, Queens. The attack lasted for more than a half hour—enough time for Genovese's assailant to move his car and change hats before returning to rape and kill her just a few steps from her front door. Yet it was not the brutality of the murder that made it international news. It was a chilling detail Police Commissioner Michael Joseph Murphy shared with A. M. Rosenthal of the New York Times: Thirty-eight of Genovese's neighbors witnessed the assault—and none called for help. To Rosenthal, who had recently returned to New York after spending a decade overseas and would become the Times's longest-serving executive editor, that startling... Views: 30
Sherlock Holmes: The Army of Doctor MoreauFollowing the trail of several corpses seemingly killed by wild animals, Holmes
and Watson stumble upon the experiments of Doctor Moreau. Moreau,
through vivisection and crude genetic engineering is creating animal hybrids,
determined to prove the evolutionary theories of Charles Darwin. In his
laboratory, hidden among the opium dens of Rotherhithe, Moreau is building an
army of 'beast men'. Tired of having his work ignored -- or reviled -- by the
British scientific community, Moreau is willing to make the world pay attention
using his creatures as a force to gain control of the government.Sir Arthur Conan Doyle; H. G. Wells Views: 30
Sight Unseen: A Collection of Five Anonymous Novellas Views: 30
London: City of the Dead is a groundbreaking account of London's dealing with death, covering the afterlife, execution, bodysnatching, murder, fatal disease, spiritualism, bizarre deaths and cemeteries. Taking the reader from Roman London to the 'glorious dead' of the First World War, this is the first systematic look at London'd culture of death, with analysis of its customs and superstitions, rituals and representations. The authors of the celebrated London: The Executioner's City weave their way through the streets of London once again, this time combining some of the capital's most curious features, such as London's Necropolis Railway and Brookwood Cemetery, with the culture of death exposed in the works of great writers such as Dickens. The book captures for the first time a side of the city that has always been every bit as fascinating and colourful as other better known aspects of the metropolis. It shows London in all its moods - serious, comic, tragic and heroic - and... Views: 30
