Sue Monk Kidd’s ravishing debut novel has stolen the hearts of reviewers and readers alike with its strong, assured voice. Set in South Carolina in 1964, The Secret Life of Bees tells the story of Lily Owens, whose life has been shaped around the blurred memory of the afternoon her mother was killed. When Lily’s fierce-hearted “stand-in mother,” Rosaleen, insults three of the town’s fiercest racists, Lily decides they should both escape to Tiburon, South Carolina—a town that holds the secret to her mother’s past. There they are taken in by an eccentric trio of black beekeeping sisters who introduce Lily to a mesmerizing world of bees,
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At twelve, Lucy Marie McGowan already knows she’ll be a psychologist when she grows up. And her quirky and conflicted family provides plenty of opportunity for her to practice her calling. Now Lucy, her “profoundly gifted” twin brother, Milo, her commitment-phobic mother, and her New Age grandmother are leaving Chicago for Timber Falls, Wisconsin, to care for her dying grandfather—a complex and difficult man whose failure as a husband and father still painfully echoes down through the years.
Lucy believes her time in the rural town where the McGowan story began will provide a key piece to the puzzle of her family’s broken past,
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With the same trademark compassion and erudition he brought to The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat, Oliver Sacks explores the place music occupies in the brain and how it affects the human condition. In Musicophilia, he shows us a variety of what he calls “musical misalignments.” Among them: a man struck by lightning who suddenly desires to become a pianist at the age of forty-two; an entire group of children with Williams syndrome, who are hypermusical from birth; people with “amusia,” to whom a symphony sounds like the clattering of pots and pans;
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Author of the number one bestseller The World Is Flat and one of America’s most respected columnists, Pulitzer Prize–winning journalist Thomas L. Friedman has transformed the way we see the world, and he has transformed the way we talk about the most important issues of our time. With Hot, Flat, and Crowded, Friedman is poised to spark his most powerful conversations yet, taking on the interlinked woes of skyrocketing fuel costs, diminishing natural resources, and a planet that seems unable to sustain us in the future. But Friedman is no naysayer. On the contrary: he is optimistic that the twenty-first century can become a time of extraordi nary achievement—from tackling the energy crisis to lifting scores of the earth’s inhabitants from poverty.
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Charmaine Ryan knows only poverty and pain growing up. In the wake of a horrifying tragedy, she seeks a new life, and fate leads her into the private world of the wealthy Duvoisin clan. At first, it seems as if nothing terrible could touch this seemingly charmed family. But an ill wind blows through the halls and chambers of the Duvoisins’ sprawling island retreat, carrying betrayal, deceit, and ominous peril.
Quickly, Charmaine is caught up in the secrets and mystique swirling around the enigmatic family. At the center are shipping tycoon Frederic Duvoisin and his youthful wife,
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Can a recipe change your life? A quest for an authentic dish reveals a mythic love story and age-old culinary secrets. James Beard Award–winning author Laura Schenone undertakes a quest to retrieve her great-grandmother’s ravioli recipe, reuniting with relatives as she goes.
In lyrical prose and delicious recipes, Schenone takes the reader on an unforgettable journey from the grit of New Jersey’s industrial wastelands and the fast-paced disposable culture of its suburbs to the dramatically beautiful coast of Liguria—the family’s homeland—with its pesto, smoked chestnuts, torte, and, most beloved of all, ravioli, the food of celebration and happiness.
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