The Crooked Branch

Author: Jeanine Cummins
Publisher: Penguin
ISBN: 0451239245
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 402

Book Description
From the national bestselling author of American Dirt and A Rip in Heaven comes the deeply moving story of two mothers from two very different times. After the birth of her daughter Emma, the usually resilient Majella finds herself feeling isolated and exhausted. Then, at her childhood home in Queens, Majella discovers the diary of her maternal ancestor Ginny—and is shocked to read a story of murder in her family history. With the famine upon her, Ginny Doyle fled from Ireland to America, but not all of her family made it. What happened during those harrowing years, and why does Ginny call herself a killer? Is Majella genetically fated to be a bad mother, despite the fierce tenderness she feels for her baby? Determined to uncover the truth of her heritage and her own identity, Majella sets out to explore Ginny’s past—and discovers surprising truths about her family and ultimately, herself.

The Outside Boy

Author: Jeanine Cummins
Publisher: Penguin
ISBN: 1101429674
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 386

Book Description
A poignant, coming of age novel about an Irish gypsy boy’s childhood in the 1950’s from the national bestselling author of A Rip in Heaven and American Dirt. Ireland, 1959: Young Christopher Hurley is a tinker, a Pavee gypsy, who roams with his father and extended family from town to town, carrying all their worldly possessions in their wagons. Christy carries with him a burden of guilt as well, haunted by the story of his mother’s death in childbirth. The wandering life is the only one Christy has ever known, but when his grandfather dies, everything changes. His father decides to settle briefly, in a town, where Christy and his cousin can receive proper schooling and prepare for their first communions. But still, always, they are treated as outsiders. As Christy struggles to find his way amid the more conventional lives of his new classmates, he starts to question who he is and where he belongs. But then the discovery of an old newspaper photograph, and a long-buried secret from his mother’s mysterious past, changes his life forever....

A Rip in Heaven

Author: Jeanine Cummins
Publisher: Penguin
ISBN: 1440627916
Category : True Crime
Languages : en
Pages : 320

Book Description
The acclaimed author of American Dirt reveals the devastating effects of a shocking tragedy in this landmark true crime book—the first ever to look intimately at the experiences of both the victims and their families. A Rip in Heaven is Jeanine Cummins’ story of a night in April, 1991, when her two cousins Julie and Robin Kerry, and her brother, Tom, were assaulted on the Old Chain of Rocks Bridge, which spans the Mississippi River just outside of St. Louis. When, after a harrowing ordeal, Tom managed to escape the attackers and flag down help, he thought the nightmare would soon be over. He couldn’t have been more wrong. Tom, his sister Jeanine, and their entire family were just at the beginning of a horrific odyssey through the aftermath of a violent crime, a world of shocking betrayal, endless heartbreak, and utter disillusionment. It was a trial by fire from which no family member would emerge unscathed.

The Crooked Branch

Author: Elizabeth Gaskell
Publisher: Createspace Independent Publishing Platform
ISBN: 9781721844050
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 138

Book Description
The Crooked Branch Elizabeth Gaskell Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell née Stevenson (1810-1865), often referred to simply as Mrs. Gaskell, was an English novelist and short story writer during the Victorian era. She is perhaps best known for her biography of Charlotte Brontë. Her novels offer a detailed portrait of the lives of many strata of society, including the very poor, and as such are of interest to social historians as well as lovers of literature. She married William Gaskell, the minister at Cross Street Unitarian Chapel in Manchester. They settled in Manchester, where the industrial surroundings would offer inspiration for her novels. Her first novel, Mary Barton: A Tale of Manchester Life, was published anonymously in 1848. The best known of her remaining novels are Cranford (1853), North and South (1855), and Wives and Daughters (1866). She became popular for her writing, especially her ghost story writing, aided by her friend Charles Dickens, who published her work in his magazine Household Words. Her other works include: The Grey Woman (1865), Lois the Witch (1861) and The Old Nurse's Story (1852). We are delighted to publish this classic book as part of our extensive Classic Library collection. Many of the books in our collection have been out of print for decades, and therefore have not been accessible to the general public. The aim of our publishing program is to facilitate rapid access to this vast reservoir of literature, and our view is that this is a significant literary work, which deserves to be brought back into print after many decades. The contents of the vast majority of titles in the Classic Library have been scanned from the original works. To ensure a high quality product, each title has been meticulously hand curated by our staff. Our philosophy has been guided by a desire to provide the reader with a book that is as close as possible to ownership of the original work. We hope that you will enjoy this wonderful classic work, and that for you it becomes an enriching experience.

A Crooked Kind of Perfect

Author: Linda Urban
Publisher: HarperCollins
ISBN: 0152066691
Category : Juvenile Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 233

Book Description
Ten-year-old Zoe Elias has perfect piano dreams. She can practically feel the keys under her flying fingers; she can hear the audience's applause. All she needs is a baby grand so she can start her lessons, and then she'll be well on her way to Carnegie Hall. But when Dad ventures to the music store and ends up with a wheezy organ instead of a piano, Zoe's dreams hit a sour note. Learning the organ versions of old TV theme songs just isn't the same as mastering Beethoven on the piano. And the organ isn't the only part of Zoe's life in Michigan that's off-kilter, what with Mom constantly at work, Dad afraid to leave the house, and that odd boy, Wheeler Diggs, following her home from school every day. Yet when Zoe enters the annual Perform-O-Rama organ competition, she finds that life is full of surprises—and that perfection may be even better when it's just a little off center. This ebook includes a sample chapter of Hound Dog True.

The Crooked Path to Abolition: Abraham Lincoln and the Antislavery Constitution

Author: James Oakes
Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company
ISBN: 1324005866
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 288

Book Description
Finalist for the 2022 Lincoln Prize An award-winning scholar uncovers the guiding principles of Lincoln’s antislavery strategies. The long and turning path to the abolition of American slavery has often been attributed to the equivocations and inconsistencies of antislavery leaders, including Lincoln himself. But James Oakes’s brilliant history of Lincoln’s antislavery strategies reveals a striking consistency and commitment extending over many years. The linchpin of antislavery for Lincoln was the Constitution of the United States. Lincoln adopted the antislavery view that the Constitution made freedom the rule in the United States, slavery the exception. Where federal power prevailed, so did freedom. Where state power prevailed, that state determined the status of slavery, and the federal government could not interfere. It would take state action to achieve the final abolition of American slavery. With this understanding, Lincoln and his antislavery allies used every tool available to undermine the institution. Wherever the Constitution empowered direct federal action—in the western territories, in the District of Columbia, over the slave trade—they intervened. As a congressman in 1849 Lincoln sponsored a bill to abolish slavery in Washington, DC. He reentered politics in 1854 to oppose what he considered the unconstitutional opening of the territories to slavery by the Kansas–Nebraska Act. He attempted to persuade states to abolish slavery by supporting gradual abolition with compensation for slaveholders and the colonization of free Blacks abroad. President Lincoln took full advantage of the antislavery options opened by the Civil War. Enslaved people who escaped to Union lines were declared free. The Emancipation Proclamation, a military order of the president, undermined slavery across the South. It led to abolition by six slave states, which then joined the coalition to affect what Lincoln called the "King’s cure": state ratification of the constitutional amendment that in 1865 finally abolished slavery.

Three Crooked Kings

Author: Matthew Condon
Publisher: Univ. of Queensland Press
ISBN: 0702269646
Category : True Crime
Languages : en
Pages : 347

Book Description
One of the landmark Australian true-crime books, with a new introduction following the death of disgraced Police Commissioner Terry Lewis. Three Crooked Kings is the shocking true story of Queensland and how a society was shaped by almost half a century of corruption. At its core is Terry Lewis, deposed and jailed former police commissioner. From his entry into the force in 1949, Lewis rose through the ranks, becoming part of the so-called Rat Pack with detectives Glen Hallahan and Tony Murphy under the guiding influence of Commissioner Frank Bischof.The next four decades make for a searing tale of cops and killings, bagmen and blackmail, and sin and sleaze that exposes a police underworld that operated from Queensland to New South Wales. This gripping book examines the final pieces of the puzzle, unearths new evidence on cold cases, and explores the pivotal role that whistleblower Shirley Brifman, prostitute and brothel owner, played until her sudden death.Awarded journalist and novelist Matthew Condon has crafted the definitive account of an era that changed a state and is still reverberating to this day.

Birdsong

Author: Sebastian Faulks
Publisher: Vintage
ISBN: 0307820386
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 498

Book Description
#1 INTERNATIONAL BESTSELLER • A mesmerising story of love and war spanning three generations and the unimaginable gulf between the First World War and the 1990s In this "overpowering and beautiful novel" (The New Yorker), the young Englishman Stephen Wraysford passes through a tempestuous love affair with Isabelle Azaire in France and enters the dark, surreal world beneath the trenches of No Man's Land. Sebastian Faulks creates a world of fiction that is as tragic as A Farewell to Arms and as sensuous as The English Patient, crafted from the ruins of war and the indestructibility of love.

The Crooked Timber Of Humanity

Author: Isaiah Berlin
Publisher: Random House
ISBN: 1446496961
Category : Literary Collections
Languages : en
Pages : 290

Book Description
Isaiah Berlin is regarded by many as one of the greatest historians of ideas of his time. In The Crooked Timber of Humanity, he argues passionately, eloquently, and subtly, that what he calls 'the Great Goods' of human aspiration - liberty, justice, equality - do not cohere and never can. Pluralism and variety of thought are not avoidable compromises, but the glory of civilisation. In an age of increasing ideological fundamentalism and intolerance we need to listen to Isaiah Berlin more carefully than ever before.

Crooked Tree Ranch

Author: RJ Scott
Publisher: Love Lane Books Limited
ISBN: 1785640321
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 259

Book Description
When the cowboy meets the guy from the city, he knows everything will have to change. On the spur of the moment, with his life collapsing around him, Jay Sullivan answers an ad for a business manager with expertise in marketing, on a dude ranch in Montana. With his sister, Ashley, niece, Kirsten, and nephew, Josh, in tow, he moves lock stock and barrels from New York to Montana to start a new life on Crooked Tree Ranch. Foreman and part-owner of the ranch, former-rodeo star Nathaniel 'Nate' Todd has been running the dude ranch, for five years ever since his mentor Marcus Allen became ill. His brothers convince him that he needs to get an expert in to help the business grow. He knows things have to change, but when the new guy turns up, with a troubled family in tow - he just isn't prepared for how much.