Print; Audio CD; E- Title Author Pages Year Summary (via Bibliocommons) NF or F? Notes content
" With its humorous glimpses into life in nineteenth-century, small-town America, this novel has provided unique social commentary that continues to be discussed in classrooms today. Tom Sawyer, a mischievous boy growing up in the fictional Adventures of Tom Sawyer, The Mark Twain 18/1/Y 219 1876 town of St. Petersburg, Missouri, is constantly getting in and out of trouble with his friend Huckleberry Finn. Based on Twain's F New own childhood, this novel not only gives profound insights into American life but also shows how children can develop moral codes based on friendship, loyalty, and respect"-- Provided by publisher.
On an ordinary summer's afternoon, Alice tumbles down a hole and an extraordinary adventure begins. In a strange world with New; 2 nominations Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland Lewis Carroll 15/1/Y 171 1865 even stranger characters, she meets a rabbit with a pocket watch, joins a Mad Hatter's Tea Party, and plays croquet with the F this year Queen! Lost in this fantasy land, Alice finds herself growing more and more curious by the minute.
"Since debuting as the host of Jeopardy! in 1984, Alex Trebek has been something like a family member to millions of television viewers, bringing entertainment and education into their homes five nights a week. Last year, he made the stunning announcement that he had been diagnosed with stage four pancreatic cancer. What followed was an incredible outpouring of love and kindness. Social media was flooded with messages of support, and the Jeopardy! studio received boxes of cards and letters offering guidance, encouragement, and prayers. For over three decades, Trebek had resisted countless appeals to write Answer Is, The Alex Trebek 23/2/Y 290 2020 NF New a book about his life. Yet he was moved so much by all the goodwill, he felt compelled to finally share his story. The book combines illuminating personal anecdotes with Trebek's thoughts on a range of topics, including marriage, parenthood, education, success, spirituality, and philanthropy. The book uses a novel structure inspired by Jeopardy!, with each chapter title in the form of a question, and features dozens of never-before-seen photos that candidly capture Trebek over the years" -- publisher's description.
Despite her own major achievements--she becomes the first licensed female glider pilot in the United States--Anne Morrow Lindbergh is viewed merely as Charles Lindbergh's wife. The fairy-tale life she once longed for will bring heartbreak and Aviator's Wife, The Melanie Benjamin 12/3/Y 402 2013 F hardships, ultimately pushing her to reconcile her need for love and her desire for independence, and to embrace, at last, life's infinite possibilities for change and happiness. In 2014, Theranos founder and CEO Elizabeth Holmes was widely seen as the female Steve Jobs: a brilliant Stanford dropout whose startup "unicorn" promised to revolutionize the medical industry with a machine that would make blood tests Bad Blood John Carreyrou 93/8/Y 339 2018 significantly faster and easier. Backed by investors such as Larry Ellison and Tim Draper, Theranos sold shares in a fundraising NF New round that valued the company at $9 billion, putting Holmes's worth at an estimated $4.7 billion. There was just one problem: the technology didn't work.
Trying to make sense of the horrors of World War II, Death relates the story of Liesel -- a young German girl whose book- Book Thief, The Markus Zusak 46/12/Y 552 2006 F New stealing and story-telling talents help sustain her family and the Jewish man they are hiding, as well as their neighbors.
A story "about family ties and values, friendship and feminism told through the eyes of a young Jewish woman growing up in Boston in the early twentieth century. Addie Baum is The Boston Girl, born in 1900 to immigrant parents who were unprepared for and suspicious of America and its effect on their three daughters. Growing up in the North End, then a teeming Boston Girl, The Anita Diamant 16/4/Y 322 2014 multicultural neighborhood, Addie's intelligence and curiosity take her to a world her parents can't imagine--a world of short F New skirts, movies, celebrity culture, and new opportunities for women. Addie wants to finish high school and dreams of going to college. She wants a career and to find true love. Eighty-five-year-old Addie tells the story of her life to her twenty-two-year-old granddaughter, who has asked her "How did you get to be the woman you are today.""-- Provided by publisher.
Isabel Wilkerson gives us a masterful portrait of an unseen phenomenon in America as she explores, through an immersive, deeply researched narrative and stories about real people, how America today and throughout its history has been shaped by a hidden caste system, a rigid hierarchy of human rankings. Beyond race, class, or other factors, there is a powerful caste system that influences people's lives and behavior and the nation's fate. Linking the caste systems of America, India, and Nazi Germany, Wilkerson explores eight pillars that underlie caste systems across civilizations, including divine will, bloodlines, stigma, and more. Using riveting stories about people--including Martin Luther King, Jr., baseball's Satchel Paige, a single father Caste Isabel Wilkerson 69/9/Y 476 2020 NF New and his toddler son, Wilkerson herself, and many others--she shows the ways that the insidious undertow of caste is experienced every day. She documents how the Nazis studied the racial systems in America to plan their out-cast of the Jews; she discusses why the cruel logic of caste requires that there be a bottom rung for those in the middle to measure themselves against; she writes about the surprising health costs of caste, in depression and life expectancy, and the effects of this hierarchy on our culture and politics. Finally, she points forward to ways America can move beyond the artificial and destructive separations of human divisions, toward hope in our common humanity. -- Provided by publisher.
Choose Poem by your fave poet Each person selects a poem from their favorite poet (or favorite poem is fine), and we read and share together n/a 2nd year nominated "In 1763, the painter Joshua Reynolds proposed to his friend Samuel Johnson that they invite a few friends to join them every Friday at the Turk's Head Tavern in London to dine, drink, and talk until midnight. Eventually the group came to include among its members Edmund Burke, Adam Smith, Edward Gibbon, and James Boswell. It was known simply as "the Club." In this Club, The Leo Damrosch 5/0/Y 473 2019 captivating book, Leo Damrosch brings alive a brilliant, competitive, and eccentric cast of characters. With the friendship of the NF New "odd couple" Samuel Johnson and James Boswell at the heart of his narrative, Damrosch conjures up the precarious, exciting, and often brutal world of late eighteenth-century Britain. This is the story of an extraordinary group of people whose ideas helped to shape their age, and our own"--Dust jacket.
"Orphans Gig and Rye Dolan don't have a penny to their names. The brothers work grueling, odd jobs each day just to secure a meal, and spend nights sleeping wherever they can with other day laborers. Twenty-three-year-old Gig is a passionate union man, fighting for fair pay and calling out the corrupt employers who exploit the working class. Eager to emulate his older brother, Rye follows suit, though he can't quite muster Gig's passion for the cause. But when Rye's turn on the soap box Cold Millions, The Jess Walters 12/2/Y 342 2020 catches the eye of well-known activist and suffragette Elizabeth Gurley, he is swept into the world of labor activism-and dirty F New business. With his brother's life on the line, Rye must evade the barbaric police force, maneuver his way out of the clutches of a wealthy businessman-and figure out for himself what he truly stands for. The Cold Millions is a stunning portrait of class division and familial bonds. In this masterful historical take on the enduring saga of America's economic divide, Jess Walter delivers nothing less than another "literary miracle" (NPR)"-- Provided by publisher.
"Paris, 1940. With the city occupied by the Nazis, three young seamstresses go about their normal lives as best they can. But all three are hiding secrets. War-scarred Mireille is fighting with the Resistance; Claire has been seduced by a German officer; and Vivienne's involvement is something she can't reveal to either of them.Two generations later, Claire's English granddaughter Harriet arrives in Paris, rootless and adrift, desperate to find a connection with her past. Living and working in the same New; 2 nominations Dressmakers Gift, The Fiona Valpy 3/1/N 276 2019 F building on the Rue Cardinale, she learns the truth about her grandmother - and herself - and unravels a family history that is this year darker and more painful than she ever imagined. In wartime, the three seamstresses face impossible choices when their secret activities put them in grave danger. Brought together by loyalty, threatened by betrayal, can they survive history's darkest era without being torn apart?"--Provided by publisher.
Annabelle and Bayard Van Duyvil live a charmed life in New York: he's the scion of an old Knickerbocker family, she grew up in a Tudor house in England, they had a fairytale romance in London, they have three-year-old twins on whom they dote, and he's recreated her family home on the banks of the Hudson and named it Illyria. Yes, there are rumors that she's having an affair with the architect, but rumors are rumors and people will gossip. But then Bayard is found dead with a knife in his chest on the English Wife, The Lauren Willig 10/1/N 376 218 night of their Twelfth Night Ball, Annabelle goes missing, presumed drowned, and the papers go mad. Bay's sister, Janie, forms F New an unlikely alliance with a reporter to try to uncover the truth, convinced that Bay would never have killed his wife, that it must be a third party, but the more she learns about her brother and his wife, the more everything she thought she knew about them starts to unravel. Who were her brother and his wife, really? And why did her brother die with the name George on his lips?
This much-anticipated second collection of stories is signature Ted Chiang, full of revelatory ideas and deeply sympathetic characters. In "The Merchant and the Alchemist's Gate," a portal through time forces a fabric seller in ancient Baghdad to grapple with past mistakes and the temptation of second chances. In the epistolary "Exhalation," an alien scientist makes a shocking discovery with ramifications not just for his own people, but for all of reality. And in "The Lifecycle of Software Exhalation Ted Chiang 15/0/Y 350 2019 Objects," a woman cares for an artificial intelligence over twenty years, elevating a faddish digital pet into what might be a true F New living being. Also included are two brand-new stories: "Omphalos" and "Anxiety Is the Dizziness of Freedom." In this fantastical and elegant collection, Ted Chiang wrestles with the oldest questions on earth--What is the nature of the universe? What does it mean to be human?--and ones that no one else has even imagined. And, each in its own way, the stories prove that complex and thoughtful science fiction can rise to new heights of beauty, meaning, and compassion.
A family saga based in Silicon Valley that follows the Huang family as they come to terms with their patriarch's terminal cancer Family Trust Kathy Wang 22/4/Y 385 2018 F New diagnosis and anticipate the distribution of his highly valuable estate. "A thrilling departure: a short, piercing, deeply moving novel about the death of Shakespeare's 11 year old son Hamnet--a name interchangeable with Hamlet in 15th century Britain--and the years leading up to the production of his great play. England, 1580. A young Latin tutor--penniless, bullied by a violent father--falls in love with an extraordinary, eccentric young woman--a wild creature who walks her family's estate with a falcon on her shoulder and is known throughout the countryside for her unusual gifts as a healer. Agnes understands plants and potions better than she does people, but once she settles with Hamnet Maggie O’Farrell 15/0/Y 305 2020 F New her husband on Henley Street in Stratford she becomes a fiercely protective mother and a steadfast, centrifugal force in the life of her young husband, whose gifts as a writer are just beginning to awaken when his beloved young son succumbs to bubonic plague. A luminous portrait of a marriage, a shattering evocation of a family ravaged by grief and loss, and a hypnotic recreation of the story that inspired one of the greatest masterpieces of all time, Hamnet is mesmerizing, seductive, impossible to put down--a magnificent departure from one of our most gifted novelists"-- Provided by publisher.
The beloved performing artist reflects on her Hollywood career and the creations of three of her most iconic films, Mary Home Work Julie Andrews 26/0/Y 340 2019 NF 6 votes last year Poppins, The sound of music and Victor/Victoria.
When a former colonel of the Iranian Air Force and his family purchase a small California home at auction, they are faced with House of Sand and Fog Andre Dubus 12/1/N 365 2001 F New a great conflict as the former owner and her police officer boyfriend fight to get it back at any cost.
Kaling shares her observations, fears, and opinions about a wide-ranging list of the topics she thinks about the most. From her 5 votes last year; 2nd Is Everyone Hanging Out Without Me Mindy Kaling 11/0/Y 222 2011 favorite types of guys to life in the "The Office" writers' room, her book is full of personal stories and laugh-out-loud NF year being philosophies. nominated
The story of Harrison William Shepherd, a man caught between two worlds -- Mexico and the United States in the 1930s, '40s, Lacuna, The Barbara Kingsolver 14/9/N 507 2009 F 6 votes last year and '50s -- and whose search for identity takes readers to the heart of the twentieth century's most tumultuous events
Manhattan, 1939. New York socialite Caroline Ferriday's biggest problem is resisting the advances of a married actor. Across the Atlantic Kasia Kuzmerick, a Polish Catholic teenager, is affected when Germany declares war on Poland. As tensions rise Caroline's interest in aiding the war effort in France grows; she hears about the dire situation at the Ravensbrück all-female Lilac Girls Martha Hall Kelly 25/5/Y 487 2019 F New concentration camp. Kasia's carefree youth is replaced by a fervor for the Polish resistance movement. Through Ravensbrück-- and the horrific atrocities taking place there told in part by an infamous German surgeon, Herta Oberheuser-- the two women's lives converge in unprecedented ways.
In Shaker Heights, a placid, progressive suburb of Cleveland, everything is planned - from the layout of the winding roads, to the colors of the houses, to the successful lives its residents will go on to lead. And no one embodies this spirit more than Elena Richardson, whose guiding principle is playing by the rules. Enter Mia Warren - an enigmatic artist and single mother - who arrives in this idyllic bubble with her teenaged daughter Pearl, and rents a house from the Richardsons. Soon Mia and Pearl become more than tenants: all four Richardson children are drawn to the mother-daughter pair. But Mia carries with her a Little Fires Everywhere Celeste Ng 72/13/Y 338 2017 mysterious past and a disregard for the status quo that threatens to upend this carefully ordered community. When old family F New friends of the Richardsons attempt to adopt a Chinese-American baby, a custody battle erupts that dramatically divides the town--and puts Mia and Elena on opposing sides. Suspicious of Mia and her motives, Elena is determined to uncover the secrets in Mia's past. But her obsession will come at unexpected and devastating costs. Little Fires Everywhere explores the weight of secrets, the nature of art and identity, and the ferocious pull of motherhood - and the danger of believing that following the rules can avert disaster.
Gabriel Garcia Set on the Caribbean coast of South America, this love story brings together Fermina Daza, her distinguished husband, and a Love in the Time of Cholera 26/5/Y 348 1985 F Marquez man who has secretly loved her for more than fifty years.
Beginning in the 1950s Elena and Lila grow up in Naples, Italy, mirroring two different aspects of their nation. The story begins in the 1950s, in a poor but vibrant neighborhood on the outskirts of Naples. Growing up on these tough streets the two girls learn to rely on each other ahead of anyone or anything else. As they grow, as their paths repeatedly diverge and converge, 6 votes last year; 1 My Brilliant Friend Elena Ferrante 36/2/Y 331 2012 Elena and Lila remain best friends whose respective destinies are reflected and refracted in the other. They are likewise the F nomination this year embodiments of a nation undergoing momentous change. Through the lives of these two women, Ferrante tells the story of a neighborhood, a city, and a country as it is transformed in ways that, in turn, also transform the relationship between her protagonists, the unforgettable Elena and Lila.
In the aftermath of the Civil War, an aging itinerant news reader agrees to transport a young captive of the Kiowa back to her News of the World Paulette Jiles 23/4/Y 2016 F people in this exquisitely rendered, morally complex, multilayered novel of historical fiction.
Nimona is an impulsive young shapeshifter with a knack for villainy. Lord Ballister Blackheart is a villain with a vendetta. As sidekick and supervillain, Nimona and Lord Blackheart are about to wreak some serious havoc. Their mission: prove to the kingdom that Sir Ambrosius Goldenloin and his buddies at the Institution of Law Enforcement and Heroics aren't the heroes 4 votes last year; 2nd Nimona Noelle Stevenson 27/0/Y 266 2015 everyone thinks they are. But as small acts of mischief escalate into a vicious battle, Lord Blackheart realizes that Nimona's year nominated powers are as murky and mysterious as her past. And her unpredictable wild side might be more dangerous than he is willing to admit. Funny, wicked and remorseful, Mrs. Kitteridge is a compelling life force, a red blooded original. When she's not onstage, we look forward to her return..."* And now, indeed, Olive Kitteridge has returned, as indomitable as ever. "It turns out--I just wasn't done with Olive," said Strout. "It was like she kept poking me in the ribs, so I finally said 'Okay, okay...'" Now Olive returns, this time as a person getting older, navigating her next decade as she comes to terms with the changes--sometimes welcome, sometimes not--in her own life. Here is Olive, strangely content in her second marriage, still in an evolving Olive, Again Elizabeth Strout 67/13/Y 289 2019 F 5 votes last year relationship with her son and his family, encountering a cast of memorable characters in the seaside town of Crosby, Maine. Whether it's a young girl coming to terms with the loss of her father, a young woman about to give birth at a baby shower, or a nurse who confesses a secret high school crush, the irascible Olive improbably touches the lives of others. Elizabeth Strout has achieved greatness by brilliantly laying bare the inner lives of ordinary people, by focusing on the small moments of connection which can dislodge lifelong grief and longing, and unite her characters through moments of transcendent grace.
For readers of The Kite Runner and Cutting for Stone. PACHINKO follows one Korean family through the generations, beginning in early 1900s Korea with Sunja, the prized daughter of a poor yet proud family, whose unplanned pregnancy threatens to shame them all. Deserted by her lover, Sunja is saved when a young tubercular minister offers to marry and bring her to Japan. Pachinko Min Jin Lee 68/8/Y 490 2017 F 6 votes last year So begins a sweeping saga of an exceptional family in exile from its homeland and caught in the indifferent arc of history. Through desperate struggles and hard-won triumphs, its members are bound together by deep roots as they face enduring questions of faith, family, and identity.
As enemies plan an unprecedented attack on American soil, Washington is gripped by uncertainty and fear as rumors spread of 2 votes last year; 2nd President is missing, The James Patterson 68/20/Y 513 2018 F a traitor in the cabinet and the president himself comes under suspicion, before he goes missing. year nominated
Red Pony, The John Steinbeck 27/1/E 95 1937 Ownership of a red pony teaches ten-year-old Jody about life and death. F New December 1972. Jean McConville, a mother of ten, was dragged from her Belfast home by masked intruders. Her children never saw her again. Her abduction was one of the most notorious episodes of the vicious conflict known as the Troubles. Everyone in the neighborhood knew the IRA was responsible, but no one would speak of it. In 2003, human bones was Say Nothing Patrick Radden Keefe 40/0/Y 441 2019 NF 5 votes last year discovered on a beach-- McConville. Keefe uses the case as a starting point for the tale of a society wracked by a violent guerrilla war, a war that created a world of passion, betrayal, vengeance, and anguish-- and whose consequences have never been reckoned with.
Lily is haunted by memories–of who she once was, and of a person, long gone, who defined her existence. She has nothing but time now, as she recounts the tale of Snow Flower, and asks the gods for forgiveness. In nineteenth-century China, when wives and daughters were foot-bound and lived in almost total seclusion, the women in one remote Hunan county developed their own secret code for communication: nu shu (“women’s writing”). Some girls were paired with laotongs, “old sames,” in emotional matches that lasted throughout their lives. They painted letters on fans, embroidered messages on handkerchiefs, and composed stories, thereby reaching out of their isolation to share their hopes, dreams, and accomplishments. With the Snow flower and the secret fan Lisa See 30/2/Y 268 2005 arrival of a silk fan on which Snow Flower has composed for Lily a poem of introduction in nu shu, their friendship is sealed and 7 votes last year they become “old sames” at the tender age of seven. As the years pass, through famine and rebellion, they reflect upon their arranged marriages, loneliness, and the joys and tragedies of motherhood. The two find solace, developing a bond that keeps their spirits alive. But when a misunderstanding arises, their lifelong friendship suddenly threatens to tear apart. Snow Flower and the Secret Fan is a brilliantly realistic journey back to an era of Chinese history that is as deeply moving as it is sorrowful. With the period detail and deep resonance of Memoirs of a Geisha, this lyrical and emotionally charged novel delves into one of the most mysterious of human relationships: female friendship.
The current climate of partisan fury is not new, and in The Soul of America, Meacham shows us how what Lincoln called the "better angels of our nature" have won the day. Painting surprising portraits of Presidents, including Abraham Lincoln, Theodore Roosevelt, Ulysses S. Grant, Woodrow Wilson, Franklin D. Roosevelt, Harry S. Truman, Dwight Eisenhower, Lyndon B. Johnson, and others, and illuminating the courage of such influential citizen activists as Martin Luther King, Jr., early suffragettes Alice Paul and Carrie Chapman Catt, civil rights pioneers Rosa Parks and John Lewis, First Lady Eleanor Roosevelt, and Army-McCarthy hearings lawyer Joseph N. Welch, Meacham brings vividly to life turning points in American history. He Soul of America, The John Meacham 19/1/Y 402 2018 NF New writes about the Civil War, Reconstruction, and the birth of the "Lost Cause"; the backlash against immigrants in the First World War and the resurgence of the Klu Klux Klan in the 1920s; the fight for women's rights; the demagoguery of Huey Long and Father Coughlin and the isolationist work of "America First" in the years before World War II; the Communist witch hunts led by Senator Joseph McCarthy; and Lyndon Johnson's crusade to finish the fight against Jim Crow. In each of these dramatic, crucial turning points, the battle to lead the country to look forward rather than back, to assert hope over fear, was joined, even as it is today.
Expanding on her 2011 piece in Orion magazine, a naturalist examines the surprising intelligence, emotions and various Soul of an Octopus, The Montgomery, Sy 15/0/N 261 2015 NF New personalities of octopuses in this new book from the author of The Good Good Pig. --Publisher's description. PBS is doing a series of programming around Ernest Hemingway include online exhibitions and presentations, so we could tie into their programming. ""The quintessential novel of the Lost Generation, The Sun Also Rises is one of Ernest Hemingway's masterpieces and a classic example of his spare but powerful writing style. A poignant look at the disillusionment and angst of the post-World War I generation, the novel introduces two of Hemingway's most unforgettable characters : Jake Barnes and Sun Also Rises, The Ernest Hemingway 50/2/Y 1926 F New Lady Brett Ashley. The story follows the flamboyant Brett and the hapless Jake as they journey from the wild nightlife of 1920s Paris to the brutal bull-fighting rings of Spain with a motley group of expatriates. It is an age of moral bankruptcy, spiritual dissolution, unrealized love, and vanishing illusions. First published in 1926, The Sun Also Rises helped to establish Hemingway as one of the greatest writers of the twentieth century."--P. [4] of cover."
"In April 1942, Lale Sokolov, a Slovakian Jew, is forcibly transported to the concentration camps at Auschwitz-Birkenau. When his captors discover that he speaks several languages, he is put to work as a Tätowierer (the German word for tattooist), tasked with permanently marking his fellow prisoners. Imprisoned for more than two and a half years, Lale witnesses horrific atrocities Tattooist of Auschwitz, The Heather Morris 28/4/Y 312 2018 and barbarism--but also incredible acts of bravery and compassion. Risking his own life, he uses his privileged position to F exchange jewels and money from murdered Jews for food to keep his fellow prisoners alive. One day in July 1942, Lale, prisoner 32407, comforts a trembling young woman waiting in line to have the number 34902 tattooed onto her arm. Her name is Gita, and in that first encounter, Lale vows to somehow survive the camp and marry her"--Publisher.
More than fifteen years after the events of The Handmaid's Tale, the theocratic regime of the Republic of Gilead maintains its grip on power, but there are signs it is beginning to rot from within. At this crucial moment, the lives of three radically different women converge, with potentially explosive results. Two have grown up as part of the first generation to come of age in the Testaments, The Margaret Atwood 71/0/Y 419 2019 F 6 votes last year new order. The testimonies of these two young women are joined by a third voice: a woman who wields power through the ruthless accumulation and deployment of secrets. As Atwood unfolds The Testaments, she opens up the innermost workings of Gilead as each woman is forced to come to terms with who she is, and how far she will go for what she believes.
"The Vignes twin sisters will always be identical. But after growing up together in a small, southern black community and running away at age sixteen, it's not just the shape of their daily lives that is different as adults, it's everything: their families, their communities, their racial identities. Ten years later, one sister lives with her black daughter in the same southern town she once tried to escape. The other secretly passes for white, and her white husband knows nothing of her past. Still, even separated by so many miles and just as many lies, the fates of the twins remain intertwined. What will happen to the next generation, when their own daughters' storylines intersect? Weaving together multiple strands and generations of this family, New; 2 nominations Vanishing Half, The Brit Bennett 72/0/Y 343 2020 F from the Deep South to California, from the 1950s to the 1990s, Brit Bennett produces a story that is at once a riveting, this year emotional family story and a brilliant exploration of the American history of passing. Looking well beyond issues of race, The Vanishing Half considers the lasting influence of the past as it shapes a person's decisions, desires, and expectations, and explores some of the multiple reasons and realms in which people sometimes feel pulled to live as something other than their origins. As with her New York Times-bestselling debut The Mothers, Brit Bennett offers an engrossing page-turner about family and relationships that is immersive and provocative, compassionate and wise"-- Provided by publisher.
"Young Hiram Walker was born into bondage--and lost his mother and all memory of her when he was a child--but he is also gifted with a mysterious power. Hiram almost drowns when he crashes a carriage into a river, but is saved from the depths by a force he doesn't understand, a blue light that lifts him up and lands him a mile away. This strange brush with death forces a new urgency on Hiram's private rebellion. Spurred on by his improvised plantation family, Thena, his chosen mother, a woman of few words and many secrets, and Sophia, a young woman fighting her own war even as she and Hiram fall in love, he Water Dancer, The Ta-Nehasi Coates 50/7/Y 403 2019 becomes determined to escape the only home he's ever known. So begins an unexpected journey into the covert war on F New slavery that takes Hiram from the corrupt grandeur of Virginia's proud plantations to desperate guerrilla cells in the wilderness, from the coffin of the deep South to dangerously utopic movements in the North. Even as he's enlisted in the underground war between slavers and the enslaved, all Hiram wants is to return to the Walker Plantation to free the family he left behind--but to do so, he must first master his magical gift and reconstruct the story of his greatest loss. This is a bracingly original vision of the world of slavery, written with the narrative force of a great adventure. Provided by publisher.
Paulsen and his team of dogs endured snowstorms, frostbite, dogfights, moose attacks, sleeplessness, and hallucinations in the Winterdance Gary Paulsen 5/0/N 256 1994 F New relentless push to go on. Map and color photographs. Sarah M. Broom's memoir tells a hundred years of her family and their relationship to home in a neglected area of one of America's most mythologized cities. This is the story of a mother's struggle against a house's entropy, and that of a prodigal Yellow House, The Sarah M. Broom 12/0/E 376 2019 NF 8 votes last year daughter who left home only to reckon with the pull that home exerts, even after the Yellow House was wiped off the map after Hurricane Katrina.