Bookmark the Blog


THE HOUSEHOLD GUIDE TO DYING

Now that popular household advice columnist Delia Bennet is dying from cancer, she’s compiled the ultimate to-do list: plan her daughter’s future wedding, fill the freezer with her family’s favorite meals- perhaps even do some matchmaking for her husband. But just as Delia comes to terms with the impossibility of ever tying every loose thread together in her too-short time, an unexpected visitor helps her believe in her life’s worth in a way no list ever could…

read more

MISS YOU MOST OF ALL

Few things are as lasting as the bond between sisters. In her poignant debut, Elizabeth Bass explores the lengths one cobbled-together family will go to for each other, and the power of a connection that never fades…

Sassy Spinster Farm is a place to find solace. At least, that’s what it’s become since Rue Anderson and her sister Laura transformed their childhood Texas homestead into a successful tourist destination. It’s where guests flock to get their hands dirty and taste food fresh from the garden. And it’s where Rue is raising her pre-teen daughter on her own—while trying to keep her outspoken sister in check.

read more

GREEN WITCH

In her spellbinding new novel, Alice Hoffman shows us how loss and grief can be transformed into action, love, and hope.  It is the tale of Green, who must learn to open herself to others in a post-disaster world.  To do so, she must collect the stories of a number of “witches” and continue to write her own.

Ages: 12 and up
Grades: 7 and up

read more

BETWEEN FRIENDS

Her fiction is “beautifully told,” says Lorna Landvik; Jacquelyn Mitchard calls it “good and true and real.” Now Kristy Kiernan presents her latest and most emotionally provocative novel in Between Friends.

There was a time when Ali Gutierrez would have been forced to give up her dreams of motherhood. But thanks to modern reproductive technology—and the gift of her best friend’s eggs—Ali is now the mother of fourteen-year-old Letty.

Now, yearning for a second child, Ali asks her best friend’s permission to use another of the frozen embryos that have been stored away,

read more

LEGEND OF A SUICIDE

In Legend of a Suicide, his heartbreaking semi-autobiographical debut story-collection, David Vann relates the story of a young man trying to come to terms with the guilt and pain of his father’s suicide. The wild outback of the author’s native Alaska acts as the ideal backdrop for this collage of six stories—a novella and five shorts—and mirrors the author’s own psychological wilderness. From “an important new voice in American literature” (Robert Olen Butler, Pulitzer Prize-winning author of A Good Scent from a Strange Mountain) comes an unforgettable exploration of the tragic gaps between one boy and his father.

read more

NIGHT NAVIGATION

Night Navigation opens on a freezing-rain night in upstate New York: the kindling gone, the fire in the woodstove out. Del’s thirty-seven-year-old manic-depressive son needs a ride, but she’s afraid to make the long drive north to the only detox that has a bed.

Through the four seasons, Night Navigation takes us into the deranged, darkly humorous world of the addict–from break-your-arm dealers, to boot-camp rehabs, to Rumi-quoting NA sponsors. Al-Anon tells Del to “let go”; NAMI tells her to “hang on.” Mark cannot find a way to live in this world. Del cannot stop trying to rescue him.

read more