A moving, vividly told memoir full of heart, drama, and exquisite comic timing, about a boy striving to become a man, and his romance with a bar.
J.R. Moehringer grew up listening for a voice: It was the sound of his missing father, a disc jockey who disappeared before J.R. spoke his first words. As a boy, J.R. would press his ear to a clock radio, straining to hear in that resonant voice the secrets of masculinity, and the keys to his own identity. J.R.’s mother was his world, his anchor, but he needed something else, something he couldn’t name.
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Jane Hamilton, award-winning author of The Book of Ruth and A Map of the World, is back in top form with a richly textured novel about a tragic accident and its effects on two generations of a family.
When Aaron Maciver’s beautiful young wife, Madeline, suffers brain damage in a bike accident, she is left with the intellectual powers of a six-year-old. In the years that follow, Aaron and his second wife care for Madeline with deep tenderness and devotion as they raise two children of their own.
Narrated by Aaron’s son,
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“Christopher Hogwood came home on my lap in a shoebox. He was a creature who would prove in many ways to be more human than I am.” –from The Good Good Pig
A naturalist who spent months at a time living on her own among wild creatures in remote jungles, Sy Montgomery had always felt more comfortable with animals than with people. So she gladly opened her heart to a sick piglet who had been crowded away from nourishing meals by his stronger siblings. Yet Sy had no inkling that this piglet, later named Christopher Hogwood,
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In The Sweet Life, Lynn York catches up with the good people of Swan’s Knob, North Carolina for another poignant, funny, and beautifully realized glimpse of small-town life.
It’s been eight years since Roy Swan successfully won the hand of the piano teacher and resident choir director, Miss Wilma, and their lives have settled into a state of happy predictability. All that changes with the arrival Miss Wilma’s teenage granddaughter and Harper, the girl’s father. When Harper convinces Roy to let him stage a “small” country and bluegrass concert in his pasture, it draws thousands of screaming fans,
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When Martin Grace enters the hip Philadelphia coffee shop Cornelia Brown manages, her life changes forever. Charming and debonair, the spitting image of Cary Grant, Martin sweeps Cornelia off her feet, but, as it turns out, Martin Grace is more the harbinger of change than change itself.
Meanwhile, on the other side of town, eleven-year-old Clare Hobbs must learn to fend for herself after her increasingly unstable mother has a breakdown and disappears. Taking inspiration from famous orphans (Anne Shirley, Sara Crewe, Mary Lennox, and even Harry Potter) Clare musters the courage to seek out her estranged father.
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Ellie thinks she’s marrying into the ideal family but soon realizes that her perfect mother-in-law, Linda, can be a perfect monster. What Linda thinks is generous and affectionate, Ellie sees as manipulative and invasive; from commandeering the wedding to crowding the vacation plans, Ellie can’t escape her mother-in-law’s meddling. To make matters worse, her husband, Dan, offers little support in the escalating struggles between mother- and daughter-in-law. With a nuanced eye for detail and expression, Green reveals not only the frustrations and compromises involved with family life, but also the ever-evolving nature of female friendship. As Ellie navigates through marriage and motherhood,
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