Following the success of Snow Island (2002), Katherine Towler returns to the fictional New England island with Evening Ferry— the second installment of the multi-generational trilogy about family bonds, unexpected love, and the threat of war.
In the summer of 1965, Rachel returns to Snow Island to care for her injured father and discovers her mother’s diaries hidden in a closet. Reading Phoebe Shattuck’s account of her life as a wife and a mother, Rachel learns the truth about her own family’s history, her mother’s death, and her own aspirations to lead a new life.
In elegant prose and inspired storytelling,
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Told through the eyes of a Midwestern minister nearing the end of his life, Gilead unfolds in the form of a letter. As Reverend Ames writes to his young son, we learn of the family’s legacy, a heritage steeped in abolition, economic hardship, and conflicting views on religion and war as each generation comes of age. The 1950s find John Ames comparing his grandfather, a fiery Union Army chaplain, to his devoutly pacifist father while a gentle turn of events poses the question of racial equality in new terms. Throughout the novel, he recalls a life shaped by love—for his faith,
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In the city of Beirut, five shabby dwellings circle a courtyard with a pomegranate tree weeping blood red fruit. The residents hear screams in the night as a boy is beaten by his father—a punishment for masturbating in his sleep. A crime not worthy of the punishment: the neighbors gossip and decide that he must have tried to rape his sisters. The poems he writes are perhaps an even greater crime to his father, but ultimately a gift to his eldest sister, who narrates their story with a combination of brutal truth and stunning prose.
In this mesmerizing novel,
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In her third novel, bestselling author Cecelia Ahern introduces us to two sisters at odds with each other. Elizabeth’s life is an organized mess. The organized part is all due to her own efforts. The mess is entirely due to her sister, Saoirse, whose personal problems leave Elizabeth scrambling to pick up the pieces. One of these pieces is Saoirse’s six-year-old son, Luke. Luke is quiet and contemplative, until the arrival of a new friend, Ivan, turns him into an outgoing, lively kid. And Elizabeth’s life is about to change in wonderful ways she has only dreamed of.
With all the warmth and wit that fans have come to expect from Cecelia Ahern,
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The author Rudyard Kipling is familiar to most, especially his famed stories that make up The Jungle Book. However, a lesser known fact is that although he was born in India, Rudyard Kipling came to live in Vermont in 1892 with his American wife and set up home in Brattleboro. It was there that he wrote The Jungle Book, inspired by his love for the country of his birth.
Victoria Vinton’s The Jungle Law is a fictional account of the time the Kiplings spent in Vermont. Mixing fact and invention, Vinton parallels Kipling’s story with that of his neighbors’,
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From the massively talented Gish Jen comes a barbed, moving, and stylistically dazzling new novel about the elusive nature of kinship. The Wongs describe themselves as a “half half” family, but the actual fractions are more complicated, given Carnegie’s Chinese heritage, his wife Blondie’s WASP background, and the various ethnic permutations of their adopted and biological children. Things get even more interesting with the arrival of Lanlan, Carnegie’s Mainland Chinese relative who comes courtesy of Carnegie’s mother’s will. Is Lanlan a very good nanny, a heartless climber, or a posthumous gift from a formidable mother who never stopped wanting her son to marry a nice Chinese girl?
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