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Haunted castle on Hallows Eve
By Mary Pope Osborne. 2003
After climbing into their magic tree house, Jack and Annie are invited by master magician Merlin to King Arthur's realm…
where invisible beings, giant ravens, and haunted spells have put a duke's castle in an uproar on Halloween night. For grades 2-4. 2003Roll of thunder, hear my cry
By Mildred Taylor, Jerry Pinkney. 1976
Nine-year-old Cassie Logan recalls a turbulent time in Mississippi during the Great Depression--a year of night riders, burnings, and threats.…
She describes her African American family's struggle to survive with their dignity and independence intact. Some strong language. For grades 6-9. Newbery Award. 1976When the Drumming Stops
By Steven Wishnia. 2012
Bass player and rapidly aging punk rocker Underend Vicodini is an unlikely hero. He loves New York City like nobody's…
business but does it still love him despite his lack of affluence and influence? His former band, The Gutter Astronomers, was riding high in the 1980s, releasing albums and touring across the country playing to packed nightclubs filled with eager fans, but the Great Recession finds the band members middle-aged and struggling not to drown in the seas of gentrification and disillusion. When lead singer Mickey gets an offer to reunite the band, he jumps at it. But can the old bandmates overcome their acrimonious break up? Can they get back into it without shredding their lives? Can Underend Vicodini find inner peace and, more importantly, a reasonably priced apartment below 14th Street or in Brooklyn? Steven Wishnia is a New York-based musician and journalist. Born on the Lower East Side, he grew up in Brooklyn, New England, Edinburgh, and Long Island. He has played in numerous bands, including the False Prophets, an eclectic punk group that recorded two albums released by Alternative Tentacles. After the False Prophets broke up in 1987, he earned an MA at New York University's School of Journalism, writing for failing newspapers before working for many years as news editor at High Times. Recipient of two New York City Independent Press Association awards, he currently works as a freelance writer and editor, most often for AlterNet.org and Junior Scholastic, and often performs musically with artist Mac McGill.Being Dead in South Carolina
By Jacob White. 2013
Stories of the modern South, of people who no longer recognize themselves, who have arrived, like the Sunbelt itself, to…
a strange day that seems disconnected from all the old days, the old stories. Yet it's on this day we must always answer for ourselves&emdash;right an overturned car, recover a brother's body, convince a son of our worth and his.Stray Decorum
By George Singleton. 2012
My dog Tapeworm Johnson needed legitimate veterinary attention. It had been two years since she received annual shots. I read…
somewhere that an older dog can overdose on all these vaccinations, and I have found--I share this information with every dog owner I meet--that if you keep your pet away from rabid foxes, raccoons, skunks, bats, and people whose eyes rotate crazy in their sockets, then the chances of your own dog foaming at the mouth diminishes drastically. I also believe that dogs don't need microchips imbedded beneath their shoulder blades if you keep the dog leashed or in the house, or with the truck windows rolled up when you drive around showing the dog farm animals living in pastures. I brought this up to Dr. Page one time, back four years earlier when Tapeworm Johnson was somewhere between eight and nine. Tapeworm showed up at my door one morning, her ribs as visible as anything you'd order down at Clem and Lyda's Barbecue Shack off Scenic Highway 11, her paw pads split open from, I assumed, days traveling from wherever her conscienceless owner dropped her off. Eleven stories, all previously published in journals like The Atlantic, The Oxford American, and The Georgia Review, in which George Singleton brings small-town South Carolina alive. Using everyday situations like a dog needing its annual vaccination and buckets of humorous observations, Singleton pokes and prods his readers into realizing we're all simply restless for a pat on the head.The Care and Feeding of Exotic Pets
By Diana Wagman. 2012
Winnie Parker, mother to an angst-ridden teenage daughter and ex-wife to a successful game show host who left her for…
a twenty-something contestant, begins a normal day in her hum-drum existence by dropping her car off at the repair shop. After accepting what she believes is a ride to pick up her rental car, Winnie realizes too late that she's been kidnapped.What follows is a riveting psychological game of cat and mouse set in the kidnapper's tropically heated house-kept that way for Cookie, a menacing seven-foot long Iguana headquartered in the kitchen. While desperately seeking to escape-which leads to several violent clashes with her increasingly unstable kidnapper-Winnie also tries to understand why she was taken captive. Is her kidnapper merely seeking a ransom or does he have something more sinister in mind? Does he know that Winnie's mother is an Oscar-winning actress? Or did he connect her with Jonathan, her famous ex-husband? When the truth reveals itself, Winnie is not only forced to fight for her life, but must also protect the lives of those she loves from the kidnapper's deranged master plan.An engrossing, darkly humorous, edge-of-your-seat story, The Care and Feeding of Exotic Pets explores the dynamic between kidnapper and kidnapped, bizarre reptile lore, and the absurdity of the celebrity lifestyle.Diana Wagman is the author of the novels Bump, Spontaneous-which won the PEN Center USA Award for Fiction-and Skin Deep. She is also a contributing writer to the Los Angeles Times.Chicago Stories: 40 Dramatic Fictions
By Rob Funderburk, Michael Czyzniejewski. 2012
For everyone who's always wondered what would happen if Roger Ebert had taken Oprah Winfrey to a critics' screening of…
Revenge of The Nerds for their second date..In Chicago Stories: 40 Dramatic Fictions by Michael Czyzniejewski, each story is told in the persona of a famous Chicagoan, from Mrs. O'Leary to Barack Obama.Illustrated by Chicago artist Rob FunderburkRochester Knockings
By Jennifer Grotz, Hubert Haddad. 2015
"Hats off to one of the most inventive writers of French literature. . . . Hubert Haddad concocts a colorful…
novel, funny and inventive, as clever as the Fox sisters themselves."--Jean-François Delapré, Saint Christophe bookstoreThe Fox sisters grew up just outside of Rochester, NY, in a house that had a reputation for being haunted, due in large part to a series of strange "rappings" or "knockings" that plagued its inhabitants. Fed up by whatever was responsible for the knockings, the youngest of the sisters (who was twelve at the time) challenged the ghost and ended up communicating with the spirit of Charles Haynes, who had been murdered in the house and buried in the cellar.Thanks to the enthusiasm of one Isaac Post, the Fox sisters became instantly famous for talking to the dead, launching the Spiritualist Movement in the US. After taking Rochester by storm, the sisters moved to New York where they were the most famous mediums of the time, giving séances for hundreds of people.Then, it all fell apart, and the sisters were exposed as frauds. Nevertheless, even today the Fox sisters are considered to be the founders of Spiritualism, one of the most popular religious movements of the past couple centuries (consider the success of Long Island Medium and the hundreds of thousands who visit Lily Dale every year).Rich in historical detail, Rochester Knockings novelizes the rise and fall of these most infamous of mediums. Hubert Haddad was born in Tunisia, and is the author of dozens of works, including the novels Palestine (winner of the Prix des Cinq Continents de la Francophonie), Tango chinois, and La Condition magique (winner of the Grand Prix du Roman de la Société des Gens de Lettres).The Legend's Daughter
By David Kranes. 2013
A 15 Bytes 2014 Book Award Winner"In this exceptional collection of stories set mostly in Idaho in the deep backwoods…
along river banks and lonely county roads, Kranes' characters are all thrown out of their comfort zones. And so is the reader. Richly drawn and complex, these stories challenge the intellect. Kranes has managed to somehow dam the river of souls these stories possess. They do not lie still, however, between the covers but rather spin in far-reaching whirlpools of genuine humanity and mortality."-15 Bytes"There's something to be said about a writer whose style is easily recognized, whose voice stands out, whose stories are readily identified. What's remarkable about David Kranes's writing and these stories, though, is that each story stands out on its own merit, while every story is well crafted and conceived. Nothing one-dimensional about his people, nothing one dimensional about his prose, either."-ForeWord Reviews"From rainbow trout jumping in the Salmon River to watering holes on the edge of McCall Lake, each of the ten stories in author and playwright David Kranes's The Legend's Daughter transports the reader to the wilderness of Eastern Idaho. While Kranes renders a common setting in each story, the collection is not simply a detailed portrait of Idaho, but an examination of the lives of restless people seeking to escape from their lives and find peace."-ZYZZYVA"The Legend's Daughter is a story collection of real people struggling with identity, with love, with time, rooted in the rugged and indifferent beauty of Idaho where each character finds his or her mirror in water, in stone, in place. David Kranes shows how our tenacious love of life can transform any situation, large or small, into alchemy. We are all living inside these raw and well-drawn pages."-Terry Tempest Williams, author of When Women Were Birds"These Idaho stories are vintage David Kranes. He, more than any other writer, is the one whose work spurs me to reconsider what fiction can do. He uses language like a knife and the worlds in his stories come off the page at me. We haven't seen this Idaho before. I'm thrilled to have these stories, every one of them provocative, riveting, and robust."-Ron Carlson, author of The Signal"In these times of disconnection, David Kranes lassoes us with the delicate tether of his multiple gifts and brings us home . . . a storyteller and an elegant craftsman."-Mary Sojourner"David Kranes has given us ten stories, entirely various, often splendid, sometimes hilarious or heartbreaking."-William Kittredge, author of The Willow FieldGrind
By Mark Maynard. 2012
Convicts round up wild mustangs, a schizophrenic homeless man wins the jackpot and disappears, a truck driver with a child's…
mind spends his last hours in the embrace of a prostitute's photos-disparate and vivid, Mark Maynard's characters intersect in the new wild west of Reno, Nevada."Throughout the volume's eight tenuously linked tales, lives and fortune are lost, and the city of Reno emerges as a locus of shattered souls. Maynard's debut collection bursts with idiosyncratic characters...packs a strong emotional punch...is strangely entertaining."-Publishers Weekly"In Grind, Maynard reveals a world the Nevada tourism board would rather you didn't see...A debut collection of stories that perfectly captures the seediness, desperation and sense of loss permeating the hot desert world of Reno."-Shelf Awareness"Mark Maynard's Reno is so sleazily appealing, so filled with convict cowboys, wild horses, racing pilots, truckers, snow bums, eco-terrorists, tattoo conventions, pawnshops and jackpots that you emerge from reading Grind dazed by this author's empathy for neglected quarters of humanity. You feel gritty all over-and more alive."-Carolyn Cooke, author of Daughters of the Revolution"The characters in these stories are as beautiful and broken as the desert itself. Mark Maynard explores the stony truths of lost lives with an unflinching eye for detail, an insider's sense of the place and its people, and an honest compassion. The heartbreaks here are real, as are the moments of uncommon grace and hard-won redemption."-Kim Barnes, author of In the Kingdom of Men"Mark Maynard's Grind is chock full of men and women who are desperate with want and full of spirit. Pawnbrokers. Truckers. Casino shills. Prison inmates. They're all here, and they're all gloriously alive. This is prime American fiction-tough, generous, and open-eyed."-Alyson Hagy, author of Boleto"Grind is exactly what I like in a locally based book. Plenty of those characters who make a visit to the environs of Reno both an exciting potential and an illicit affair...This is a Northern Nevada book."-D. Brian Burghart, Reno News & ReviewGrowing Up Amish
By Richard Ammon. 1989
Anna and her family live on a farm, but they don't have tractors or electricity. The "old fashioned" clothing of…
men and women, boys and girls doesn't have zippers or buttons. Anna is Amish, and here is the story of what her life is like day to day. Anna and other Amish children attend their own school, they raise farm animals and do farm chores without modern technology. They wear their distinctive clothing every day and attend long church services every other Sunday. Anna's life is a full and satisfying one. She and her family work hard, but they play, too. There are picnics, excursions, a trip to buy a new horse, school parties, and sports like hockey, volleyball, skating, sledding, baseball, and fishing. There are indoor games, books to read, songs to sing, and good food to eat. Along with Anna's story, this book includes recipes, songs, poems, and games so that the reader will better understand and appreciate the Amish--a group of very special people who only accept from the modern world those things that do not interfere with their way of life.Soul Survivor
By Jeanne Glidewell. 2013
Have you ever felt that you've lived a past life?On a sunny Kansas afternoon, six-year-old Skylar Robbins experiences her first…
flashback and claims to have once been Radha Joshi, a young woman who lived in India.As Skylar's nightmares and flashbacks worsen, her child-psychologist and past-life regressonist are convinced Skylar is recalling a genuine former lifetime with a tragic end.Hoping to find relief for their daughter and to patch up their marriage, Zoe and Trey leave everything behind for Bombay.In India, the situation intensifies as the truth about Radha’s disappearance and mysterious death unravels.REVIEWS:"...suspense with intricate plotting, creative flashbacks, a touch of mystery and romance. A memorable read." ~Publishers WeeklyOTHER TITLES by Jeanne Glidewell:THE LEXIE STARR MYSTERIES, in series orderLeave No Stone UnturnedThe Extinguished GuestHauntedWith This RingJust DuckyThe Spirit of the Season (A Holiday Novella)Cozy CampingMarriage and MayhemThe Book of Heaven
By Patricia Storace. 2014
From the author of the classic travel memoir Dinner with Persephone, an accomplished poet, and frequent contributor to The New…
York Review of Books, here is an eagerly anticipated, stunningly original novel of heartrending lyricism about four women, a fierce mythopoeia that invites us to enter into a new and powerful imagination of the sublime: What if "a woman's point of view" were God's? As The Book of Heaven commences, Eve speaks about what is alleged to have happened in the Garden of Eden, a story she hardly recognizes. She tells her version of events, revealing that the constellations we are accustomed to seeing above conceal heavens with which we have yet to contend. In the four parts of the novel--The Book of Souraya, The Book of Savour, The Book of Rain, The Book of Sheba--and their accompanying proverbs, Eve accounts for four new zodiacs and teaches us how to view each and comprehend its centrality to women: a knife, a cauldron for cooking, a paradisiacal garden, lovers embracing. Each book keenly evokes the life of a woman newly freed from the old tales in which she was trapped: a metamorphosis of Sarah, Abraham's wife; a polytheistic cook; Job's wife; and the Queen of Sheba. In The Book of Heaven, Patricia Storace has brilliantly and radically reimagined the worlds of these women, putting them in the foreground of their stories and of the so-called Old Testament itself.From the Hardcover edition.Daddy Played the Blues
By Michael Garland. 2017
*Notable Social Studies Trade Books Selection for Young People 2018* “I was six years old the day we left the…
farm in Mississippi,” remembers Cassie in this richly textured picture book. “Between the boll weevils, the floods, and the landlord, there was no way a family could scratch out a living there anymore.” Packing themselves into an old jalopy—with Daddy, Uncle Vern, and Mama in the front seat and Cassie and her two brothers in the back—they joined the Great Migration from the impoverished Deep South to Chicago, where there was work to be had in the stockyards. Across the kids’ laps lay Daddy’s prized possession, a six-string guitar. Daddy worked hard to put food on the table, but what he really loved was playing the blues. This evocative tale of the African-American odyssey in search of a better life is also a homage to the uniquely American music that developed from African music and American spirituals, work songs, and folk ballads. In the book’s backmatter, Garland relates how he first heard and fell in love with blues music, beginning a lifelong fandom. Portraits and thumbnail biographies of great blues musicians and landmark songs complete this tribute to the great American music and the yearnings that produced it. Fountas & Pinnell Level SPizza's Past
By Devorah Gurwitz. 2019
Discover which civilization made the first pizza. Was it the Egyptians, Babylonians, Greeks, or Romans? Also discover who made the…
first round, flat bread—considered to be the pizza we all eat today!The Hickory Chair
By Lisa Rowe Fraustino. 2001
Cardinal Numbers: An Ohio Counting Book
By Marcia Schonberg. 2002
The author and the illustrator, who collaborated on the popular alphabet book B is for Buckeye, have teamed up again…
for Cardinal Numbers, the companion counting book for the great state of Ohio. This colorful and richly informative pictorial teaches children about numbers and math concepts by using people, places, and things specific to Ohio as examples. As the elementary age students begin to grasp these concepts, they learn more and more about their state in the process. Cardinal Numbers is a wonderful tool for educators, and along with B is for Buckeye, has become supplemental reading for every elementary-school classroom in Ohio.Spitting Image
By Shutta Crum. 2003
Twelve-year-old Jessie K. Bovey has a lot to worry about. She doesn't know who her father is; her old biddy…
of a grandmother keeps interfering in her life; her best friend, Robert, desperately needs new glasses that his family can't afford; and mean Dickie Whitten teases Robert until Jessie has no choice but to punch him out.When some New York City reporters show up in Beulah County to research a story about the War on Poverty, Jessie sees a way to solve one of her problems. She can charge money for showing the reporters around town so they can take pictures of the "local color" and use it to help pay for Robert's glasses. But her plan backfires spectacularly, and Jessie learns some big lessons--and some big secrets as well.A small Kentucky town and its quirky inhabitants are vividly evoked in Shutta Crum's warm, atmospheric coming-of-age story, which handles multiple serious themes with a light touch.I'm Just a Teenage Punchbag: POIGNANT AND FUNNY: A NOVEL FOR A GENERATION OF WOMEN
By Jackie Clune. 2020
'Obligatory reading for all parents of teenagers!' NIGELLA LAWSON'Bloody marvellous. Horribly familiar, funny, touching, sad, brutally honest...clutch this book to…
your stained T-shirt and never let it go.' JO BRAND'Terrific. A remarkable blend of hilarity and heartbreak with a really satisfying plot. Being childless never felt so good.' GRAHAM NORTON'Warm and witty... The competitive mothering, the hell that is other people's children, the fights and accusations of Homeland inquisition all rang deliciously true... a most entertaining read.' KATHY LETTE'Very poignant... A moving read as well as a funny one.' JANE GARVEY 'Honest, hilarious and painful' WOMAN & HOMEWarning!! This novel may lead you to make rash and life-changing decisions!**Probably don't read if you fear you may be ripe for liberation. Or if you sometimes wee when you laugh...First there was Having It All, then there was Bridget Jones' s Diary and I Don't Know How She Does It. Now there is Teenage Punchbag.I'm Just A Teenage Punchbag is a laugh-out-loud, sob-on-the bus journey through the so-called life of a middle-aged woman.Ciara is mother to three ungrateful, entitled teenagers, is married to steady Martin, a man with hairy udders, and is grieving for her mum who now lives in the wardrobe in a cardboard box from the crematorium. She finds solace in her anonymous blog, and in the daily chats she has with her mum's ashes (often the best conversations she has all day.)Despite the menopause, the invisibility of middle age and the daily self-esteem bashings, courtesy of her kids, Ciara manages to navigate the stormy waters of grief and family life - until her mask slips and she is cast out from the family bosom. She embarks on a mission to fulfil her mum's dying wishes to have her remains sprinkled from the top of the Empire State Building, finding company, distraction and - ultimately - herself in the process.If motherhood is a job - who says you can't resign?How to be Nowhere
By Tim MacGabhann. 2020
Life is finally on the right track for reporter and recovering addict Andrew: he is slowly coming to terms with…
the murder of his photographer boyfriend Carlos, pursuing sobriety and building a new home with a new partner. Andrew has almost forgotten about the story that ruined his life - but that story hasn't forgotten about him, and a series of deadly threats forces him into helping the very man whose gang murdered his boyfriend and left him homeless.A literary take on the classic chase movie, HOW TO BE NOWHERE is the sequel to Tim MacGabhann's genre-busting and critically-acclaimed debut CALL HIM MINE, and a blistering thrill-ride deep into the fog of Central America's murky present and tragic future.