The Sweetness of Water (Oprah's Book Club)

Author: Nathan Harris
Publisher: Back Bay Books
ISBN: 9780316461245
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 368

Book Description
AN INSTANT NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER / AN OPRAH'S BOOK CLUB PICK ONE OF PRESIDENT OBAMA'S FAVORITE BOOKS OF 2021 Winner of the Ernest J. Gaines Award for Literary Excellence Longlisted for the Man Booker Prize Longlisted for the 2022 Carnegie Medal for Excellence Longlisted for the Center for Fiction First Novel Prize In the spirit of The Known World and The Underground Railroad, "a miraculous debut" (Washington Post) and "a towering achievement of imagination" (CBS This Morning)about the unlikely bond between two freedmen who are brothers and the Georgia farmer whose alliance will alter their lives, and his, forever--from "a storyteller with bountiful insight and assurance" (Kirkus) A Best Book of the Year: Oprah Daily, NPR, Washington Post, Time, Boston Globe, Smithsonian, Chicago Public Library, BookBrowse, and the Oregonian A New York Times Book Review Editors' Choice A July Indie Next Pick In the waning days of the Civil War, brothers Prentiss and Landry--freed by the Emancipation Proclamation--seek refuge on the homestead of George Walker and his wife, Isabelle. The Walkers, wracked by the loss of their only son to the war, hire the brothers to work their farm, hoping through an unexpected friendship to stanch their grief. Prentiss and Landry, meanwhile, plan to save money for the journey north and a chance to reunite with their mother, who was sold away when they were boys. Parallel to their story runs a forbidden romance between two Confederate soldiers. The young men, recently returned from the war to the town of Old Ox, hold their trysts in the woods. But when their secret is discovered, the resulting chaos, including a murder, unleashes convulsive repercussions on the entire community. In the aftermath of so much turmoil, it is Isabelle who emerges as an unlikely leader, proffering a healing vision for the land and for the newly free citizens of Old Ox. With candor and sympathy, debut novelist Nathan Harris creates an unforgettable cast of characters, depicting Georgia in the violent crucible of Reconstruction. Equal parts beauty and terror, as gripping as it is moving, The Sweetness of Water is an epic whose grandeur locates humanity and love amid the most harrowing circumstances.

Deeper Water

Author: Robert Whitlow
Publisher: Thomas Nelson
ISBN: 141856608X
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 401

Book Description
The Tides of Truth novels follow one lawyer's passionate pursuit of truth in matters of life and the law. In the murky waters of Savannah's shoreline, a young law student is under fire as she tries her first case at a prominent and established law firm. A complex mix of betrayal and deception quickly weaves its way through the case and her life, as she uncovers dark and confusing secrets about the man she's defending--and the senior partners of the firm. How deep will the conspiracy run? Will she have to abandon her true self to fulfill a higher calling? And how far will she have to go to discover the truth behind a tragic cold case?

Sweet Salt Air

Author: Barbara Delinsky
Publisher: St. Martin's Press
ISBN: 1250020387
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 460

Book Description
On Quinnipeague, hearts open under the summer stars and secrets float in the Sweet Salt Air... Charlotte and Nicole were once the best of friends, spending summers together in Nicole's coastal island house off of Maine. But many years, and many secrets, have kept the women apart. A successful travel writer, single Charlotte lives on the road, while Nicole, a food blogger, keeps house in Philadelphia with her surgeon-husband, Julian. When Nicole is commissioned to write a book about island food, she invites her old friend Charlotte back to Quinnipeague, for a final summer, to help. Outgoing and passionate, Charlotte has a gift for talking to people and making friends, and Nicole could use her expertise for interviews with locals. Missing a genuine connection, Charlotte agrees. But what both women don't know is that they are each holding something back that may change their lives forever. For Nicole, what comes to light could destroy her marriage, but it could also save her husband. For Charlotte, the truth could cost her Nicole's friendship, but could also free her to love again. And her chance may lie with a reclusive local man, with a heart to soothe and troubles of his own. Bestselling author and master storyteller Barbara Delinsky invites you come away to Quinnipeague...

The Worth of Water

Author: Gary White
Publisher: Penguin
ISBN: 0593189973
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 241

Book Description
From the founders of nonprofits Water.org & WaterEquity Gary White and Matt Damon, the incredible true story of two unlikely allies on a mission to end the global water crisis for good On any given morning, you might wake up and shower with water, make your coffee with water, flush your toilet with water—and think nothing of it. But around the world, more than three-quarters of a billion people can’t do any of that—because they have no clean water source near their homes. And 1.7 billion don’t have access to a toilet. This crisis affects a third of the people on the planet. It keeps kids out of school and women out of work. It traps people in extreme poverty. It spreads disease. It’s also solvable. That conviction is what brought together movie actor Matt Damon and water expert and engineer Gary White. They spent years getting the answer wrong, then halfway right, then almost right. Over time, they and their organization, Water.org, have found an approach that works. Working with partners across East Africa, Latin America, South Asia, and Southeast Asia, they’ve helped over 40 million people access water and/or sanitation. In The Worth of Water, Gary and Matt take us along on the journey—telling stories as they uncover insights, try out new ideas, and travel between the communities they serve and the halls of power where decisions get made. With humor and humility, they illuminate the challenges of launching a brand-new model with extremely high stakes: better health and greater prosperity for people allover the world. The Worth of Water invites us to become a part of this effort—to match hope with resources, to empower families and communities, and to end the global water crisis for good. All the authors’ proceeds from the sale of this book will be donated to Water.org.

Sweetness in the Belly

Author: Camilla Gibb
Publisher: Penguin
ISBN: 1101118296
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 302

Book Description
Soon to be a major motion picture starring Dakota Fanning Like Brick Lane and The Kite Runner, Camilla Gibb’s widely praised new novel is a poignant and intensely atmospheric look beyond the stereotypes of Islam. After her hippie British parents are murdered, Lilly is raised at a Sufi shrine in Morocco. As a young woman she goes on pilgrimage to Harar, Ethiopia, where she teaches Qur’an to children and falls in love with an idealistic doctor. But even swathed in a traditional headscarf, Lilly can’t escape being marked as a foreigner. Forced to flee Ethiopia for England, she must once again confront the riddle of who she is and where she belongs.

Sweet Days of Discipline

Author: Fleur Jaeggy
Publisher: New Directions Publishing
ISBN: 0811229041
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 83

Book Description
On the heels of I Am the Brother of XX and These Possible Lives, here is Jaeggy's fabulously witchy first book in English, with a new Peter Mendelsund cover A novel about obsessive love and madness set in postwar Switzerland, Fleur Jaeggy’s eerily beautiful novel begins innocently enough: “At fourteen I was a boarder in a school in the Appenzell.” But there is nothing innocent here. With the off-handed remorselessness of a young Eve, the narrator describes her potentially lethal designs to win the affections of Fréderique, the apparently perfect new girl. In Tim Parks’ consummate translation (with its “spare, haunting quality of a prose poem,” TLS), Sweet Days of Discipline is a peerless, terrifying, and gorgeous work.

Into the Water

Author: Paula Hawkins
Publisher: Penguin
ISBN: 0735211213
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 400

Book Description
#1 NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER GOODREADS CHOICE AWARD WINNER FOR MYSTERY/THRILLER An addictive novel of psychological suspense from the author of #1 New York Times bestseller and global phenomenon The Girl on the Train and A Slow Fire Burning. “Hawkins is at the forefront of a group of female authors . . who have reinvigorated the literary suspense novel by tapping a rich vein of psychological menace and social unease… there’s a certain solace to a dark escape, in the promise of submerged truths coming to light.” —Vogue A single mother turns up dead at the bottom of the river that runs through town. Earlier in the summer, a vulnerable teenage girl met the same fate. They are not the first women lost to these dark waters, but their deaths disturb the river and its history, dredging up secrets long submerged. Left behind is a lonely fifteen-year-old girl. Parentless and friendless, she now finds herself in the care of her mother's sister, a fearful stranger who has been dragged back to the place she deliberately ran from—a place to which she vowed she'd never return. With the same propulsive writing and acute understanding of human instincts that captivated millions of readers around the world in her explosive debut thriller, The Girl on the Train, Paula Hawkins delivers an urgent, twisting, deeply satisfying read that hinges on the deceptiveness of emotion and memory, as well as the devastating ways that the past can reach a long arm into the present. Beware a calm surface—you never know what lies beneath.

Sweet Mountain Water

Author: Frank Mauldin
Publisher: Oak Savanna Publishing
ISBN: 9780974866802
Category : Santiam River Watershed (Or.)
Languages : en
Pages : 292

Book Description

The Color of Water

Author: James McBride
Publisher: Penguin
ISBN: 159448192X
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 337

Book Description
From the bestselling author of Deacon King Kong and the National Book Award-winning The Good Lord Bird: The modern classic that spent more than two years on The New York Times bestseller list and that Oprah.com calls one of the best memoirs of a generation. Who is Ruth McBride Jordan? A self-declared "light-skinned" woman evasive about her ethnicity, yet steadfast in her love for her twelve black children. James McBride, journalist, musician, and son, explores his mother's past, as well as his own upbringing and heritage, in a poignant and powerful debut, The Color Of Water: A Black Man's Tribute to His White Mother. The son of a black minister and a woman who would not admit she was white, James McBride grew up in "orchestrated chaos" with his eleven siblings in the poor, all-black projects of Red Hook, Brooklyn. "Mommy," a fiercely protective woman with "dark eyes full of pep and fire," herded her brood to Manhattan's free cultural events, sent them off on buses to the best (and mainly Jewish) schools, demanded good grades, and commanded respect. As a young man, McBride saw his mother as a source of embarrassment, worry, and confusion—and reached thirty before he began to discover the truth about her early life and long-buried pain. In The Color of Water, McBride retraces his mother's footsteps and, through her searing and spirited voice, recreates her remarkable story. The daughter of a failed itinerant Orthodox rabbi, she was born Rachel Shilsky (actually Ruchel Dwara Zylska) in Poland on April 1, 1921. Fleeing pogroms, her family emigrated to America and ultimately settled in Suffolk, Virginia, a small town where anti-Semitism and racial tensions ran high. With candor and immediacy, Ruth describes her parents' loveless marriage; her fragile, handicapped mother; her cruel, sexually-abusive father; and the rest of the family and life she abandoned. At seventeen, after fleeing Virginia and settling in New York City, Ruth married a black minister and founded the all- black New Brown Memorial Baptist Church in her Red Hook living room. "God is the color of water," Ruth McBride taught her children, firmly convinced that life's blessings and life's values transcend race. Twice widowed, and continually confronting overwhelming adversity and racism, Ruth's determination, drive and discipline saw her dozen children through college—and most through graduate school. At age 65, she herself received a degree in social work from Temple University. Interspersed throughout his mother's compelling narrative, McBride shares candid recollections of his own experiences as a mixed-race child of poverty, his flirtations with drugs and violence, and his eventual self- realization and professional success. The Color of Water touches readers of all colors as a vivid portrait of growing up, a haunting meditation on race and identity, and a lyrical valentine to a mother from her son.

Lucky's

Author: Andrew Pippos
Publisher: Picador Australia
ISBN: 1760983705
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 316

Book Description
Lucky's is a story of family. A story about migration. It is also about a man called Lucky. His restaurant chain. A fire that changed everything. A New Yorker article which might save a career. The mystery of a missing father. An impostor who got the girl. An unthinkable tragedy. A roll of the dice. And a story of love - lost, sought and won again (at last). Following a trail of cause and effect that spans decades, this unforgettable epic tells a story about lives bound together by the pursuit of love, family, and new beginnings. WINNER OF THE READINGS PRIZE FOR NEW AUSTRALIAN FICTION 2021 SHORTLISTED FOR THE MUD LITERARY PRIZE 2021 SHORTLISTED FOR ABIA MATT RICHELL NEW WRITER OF THE YEAR 2021 SHORTLISTED FOR THE MILES FRANKLIN LITERARY AWARD 2021 SHORTLISTED FOR THE PRIME MINISTER'S LITERARY AWARDS FOR FICTION 2021 HIGHLY COMMENDED FOR 2021 ARA HISTORIAL NOVEL PRIZE Praise for Lucky's 'Andrew Pippos has written an unforgettable epic with Australian humour and Greek tragedian turns on every page. Such skill and heart and love pulses through this debut!' - Alice Pung 'A sweeping, sprawling family epic of heartbreak, hope, and redemption. This is the debut of a born storyteller.' - Liam Pieper 'Affecting, authentic and tender' - Rebecca Starford 'A gorgeous novel of wonderful characters, Lucky's is the real deal and I didn't want it to stop. I was so caught up in the casual charm of this book that I kept being sideswiped by the excellent turns of its plot, and the wise, sometimes disturbing things it has to say about fate, luck and family over the sweep of decades.' - Ronnie Scott 'From the first pages of this debut novel, it is clear that we are in the hands of a wise, perceptive, and highly-skilled storyteller. Pippos brilliantly distills multiple stories to those pure moments of love, despair, passion and folly that make up the essence of a life, and his fierce and fragile characters will remain in your heart long after the final page. The writing is fresh and fairly crackles with energy. Lucky's is one of the best Australian novels I've read in years!' - Emily Bitto 'Crisp and evocative' - Rick Morton 'A mouthwatering tale that encapsulates family drama, true crime and Greek tragedy - with pathos-filled characters that pop' - Guardian 'A hugely entertaining, tender, rollicking yarn. Part immigration story, part love story, part adventure, it's a multi-layered original Australian story.' - Sydney Morning Herald 'Lucky's is a bold novel, both backwards- and forwards-looking, a strong start to a career, and a timely reminder that an individual's life story can be quietly vast.' - The Australian 'Pippos writes towards myth while grounding his book in deeply human themes. Lucky's is concerned with the stories we tell ourselves and the chasm between fact and fiction, the space where happiness may lie.' - Australian Book Review 'This is a novel that I'd like everyone to read...Lucky's is a beautiful reminder that lives can be reinvented, that the bad things will eventually give way to the good ones, and that the change we seek could be right around the corner.' - Kill Your Darlings 'One of the most impressive and appealing Australian debuts novels of 2020 - or, frankly, any year, and you can scratch the adjective "debut" from that description too.' - Readings 'From reading this magnificent debut, it's clear that Andrew Pippos will go down as one of the finest Australian storytellers of his generation ... Pippos dictates the conventions of our humanity perfectly, giving to us the definition of a Greek tragedy interpersed within what is sure to become an Australian classic.' - Glam Adelaide 'Grand, evocative and generous storytelling mark out Lucky's as one of the most rewarding Australian debuts of 2020 ... A wild and sprawling story is rendered with precision and depth. Every page is a reward for the reader.' - Booktopia