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The Hatbox Letters
By Beth Powning. 2021
In this beautiful and deeply moving novel, a young widow struggles to come to terms with her solitary life in…
the rambling Victorian house she shared until recently with her husband and children in semi-rural New Brunswick.It is in this house, surrounded by heirloom gardens and the gentle sounds of a river, that Kate Harding, 52, faces her second winter since the untimely death of her husband. Her children, now grown, are living away, and Kate is truly on her own. In her living room are several hatboxes filled with letters and other ghostly ephemera, recently brought by her sister from the attic of their grandparents’ 18th-century Connecticut house. Their sweet mustiness tinges the air and makes Kate dream of her childhood and of her beloved grandparents. She remembers the sense of permanence and refuge that she felt in their apple-scented world, as well as, more recently, with her husband. As she begins to read the hatbox letters, she discovers that what to a child seemed a serene and blissful marriage was in fact founded on a tragic event. As Kate’s eyes clear to the truth of the past, a new tragedy unfolds, and her own house, filled with the shared detritus of marriage and motherhood, becomes the refuge where Kate can connect the strands of her unravelled life.In The Hatbox Letters — which is both sad and exhilarating, touching and illuminating — Beth Powning offers readers an unforgettable story of love, grief and renewal, both past and present, as well as her extraordinary perceptions of the natural world.Excerpt from The Hatbox LettersThe birds rise with a muted thunder, their wings serrate the light. For an instant, a peregrine falcon zigzags through the flock. Then it drops from the belly of the rising bird-cloud. In its talons is a sandpiper, crumpled like a ball of paper. It is hard to decide which drama to observe, the escape of the falcon with its prey or the flock’s display as the birds rush seaward like a single entity, a ballooning flame that rises and falls, expands and implodes, one instant silver and the next black. The flock speeds back towards the beach, passes close to the watchers, makes a dazzling turn, fast as thought. Then, with a diminishing roar, the birds waver, their legs drop, stretch. They touch down. They fluff their feathers, Kate observes, the way humans pull coats up around necks after a shock. Trying to put ourselves back as we were.A home for Mr. Emerson
By Barbara Kerley, Edwin Fotheringham. 2014
Biography of the New England essayist and poet Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803-1882). Recounts his youth as a city boy who…
longed for the open fields and deep woods of the country, and his later life as a man who treasured books, ideas, family, and community. For grades 2-4 and older readers. 2014Falling out of time
By David Grossman. 2014
Walking Man announces to his wife that he is setting out in search of their son, who has died. As…
Walking Man travels, other townspeople join him in search of their own loved ones. They all question whether death is truly the end of a person. Translated from Hebrew. 2014Too much money: a novel
By Dominick Dunne. 2009
Elderly gossip writer Augustus "Gus" Bailey is being sued for millions over a fake story about a politician's missing intern.…
Meanwhile, a billionaire widow is trying to stop the publication of Bailey's tell-all novel concerning the death of her husband. Strong language. 2009How they croaked: the awful ends of the awfully famous
By Georgia Bragg, Kevin O'Malley. 2011
Guide to the deaths of nineteen notable people begins with King Tut, who died of malaria. Also covers King Henry…
VIII, whose corpse exploded; George Washington; Marie Curie, who literally worked to death; and Albert Einstein. Includes facts, oddities, and resources. Some violence. For grades 5-8 and older readers. 2011A spotlight for Harry (A Stepping Stone Book(TM))
By Eric A. Kimmel, Jim Madsen. 2009
Story based on childhood events of Harry Houdini (1874-1926), who became a famous magician and escape artist. Describes Harry and…
his brother Dash learning to walk a tightrope after going to the circus with their family for the first time. For grades 2-4. 2009Gertrude is Gertrude is Gertrude is Gertrude
By Jonah Winter, Calef Brown. 2009
And Gertrude and Alice are Gertrude and Alice. And you are welcome to join them for tea. But beware, for…
there you will find a bear in a chair, just barely scary. And here is a beard with a man attached to it. And then, of course, some words might appear, uninvited , but delighted in spite of their lightbulbs. But, but, but, but - that doesn't make any sense! Yes! In a story inspired by the oh-so-modern groundbreaking writing of Gertrude herself, not a lot makes sense. Even so, the oh-so-popular author Jonah Winter, and the ever-so-popular illustrator Calef Brown, and the most popular poodle of all time, Basket, invite you to enter the whimsical world of Gertrude Stein and Alice B. Toklas. For grades 2-4. 2019Jazz Age Josephine: Dancer, singer--who's that, who? Why, that's MISS Josephine Baker, to you!
By Marjorie Priceman, Jonah Winter. 2012
A tribute to the life of the iconic jazz entertainer depicts her disadvantaged youth in a segregated America, her unique…
performance talents, and the irrepressible sense of style that helped her overcome racial barriers. For grades K-3Dirt road: A Novel
By James Kelman. 2016
The story of a teenage boy, who travels with his father from Scotland to Alabama to visit with relatives after…
the death of his mother and sister, and becomes swept up into the world of zydeco and bluesThe hotel years
By Joseph Roth, Michael Hofmann. 2015
In 64 short essays written between 1919 and 1939, author and journalist Joseph Roth evokes life between the wars in…
his travels through hotels from Germany and Austria to Albania and the Soviet Union. UnratedThe fabulous feud of Gilbert & Sullivan
By Jonah Winter, Richard Egielski. 2009
In the late nineteenth century, Mr. Gilbert and Mr. Sullivan, who write operas together for a theater called Topsy-Turvydom, have…
a falling-out when Mr. Sullivan refuses to write music for another ridiculous story that is like all the others. Caldecott Medalist Richard Egielski teams up with Jonah Winter for a story about how fights sometime make a stronger friendship (and beautiful music to boot!). For grades K-3. 2009The rings of Saturn
By Michael Hulse, W. G. Sebald, Winfried Georg Sebald. 1999
A walking tour of England's southeast coast frames a wide-ranging series of meditations on literature and stories from Britain's imperial…
past. A stay in a Norwich hospital prompts the protagonist to search for naturalist Thomas Browne's skull; a railroad bridge over the river Blyth recalls England's silk trade with China. 1998The complete short novels: Introduction by Richard Pevear (Everyman's Library Classics Series)
By Anton Chekhov, Larissa Volokhonsky, Richard Pevear, Anton Pavlovich Chekhov. 2004
Anton Chekhov, widely hailed as the supreme master of the short story, also wrote five works long enough to be…
called short novels, here brought together in one one volume for the first time, in a new translation by Richard Pevear and Larissa VolokhonskyWeeds in bloom: autobiography of an ordinary man
By Robert Newton Peck. 2007
The author of more than sixty books for young people, including A Day No Pigs Would Die (DB 37104), discusses…
the folks he met--while growing up on a small Vermont farm and later in life--to show, he says, "how plain people can sparkle." For junior and senior high readers. 2005Man of letters: the extraordinary life and times of literary impresario Rupert Hart-Davis
By Philip Ziegler, Philip Zeigler. 2005
Biography of British editor and publisher Rupert Hart-Davis (1907-1999). Relates his upper-class childhood, his initial attempt at a career in…
the theater, and his success in the world of manuscripts that led to a knighthood in 1967. 2004Mummies: the newest, coolest, and creepiest from around the world
By Shelley Tanaka. 2005
Discusses the ways cultures in various climates and time periods have preserved the dead. Describes the process of mummification in…
the Andes mountains and dry deserts of South America, the Egyptian desert, glaciers of Canada and Italy, European peat bogs, Siberian ice, and Chinese sand dunes. For grades 3-6. 2005What a year: A 26 Fairmount Avenue Book (A 26 Fairmount Avenue Book #4)
By Tomie DePaola, Tomie DePaola. 2002
In this continuation of Tomie's childhood memoir On My Way (DB 53114), he celebrates his sixth birthday with a party…
at school. Tomie also tells of other holidays and family adventures that occur before the end of 1940. For grades 2-4. 2002The summer of the great-grandmother
By Madeleine L'Engle. 1984
L'Engle describes her ninety-year-old mother's plunge into senility during her final summer at Crosswicks, the family home. As she recalls…
this fourth four-generation season, L'Engle reviews her parent's rich life and shows how she influenced the entire family. 1974The complete tales of Washington Irving
By Washington Irving, Charles Neider. 1998
Sixty-one short stories by the prolific New Yorker Washington Irving (1783-1859), best known for "Rip Van Winkle" and "The Legend…
of Sleepy Hollow." The volume contains satires, ghost stories, and fables, many of them set in New York City and the Hudson Valley in the early days of Dutch settlement. Introduction by Charles Neider. 1975My century: A Novel (A Helen and Kurt Wolff Bk.)
By Günter Grass, Gunter Grass, Michael Henry Heim. 1999
Günter Grass, the 1999 winner of the Nobel Prize for literature, chronicles his own and Germany's centennium through one hundred…
short stories, one for each year of the twentieth century. For 1989 Grass recalls a parent-teacher association's concern about a schoolteacher's "obsession with the past." 1999