How Much of These Hills Is Gold

Author: C Pam Zhang
Publisher: Penguin
ISBN: 0525537228
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 288

Book Description
A NEW YORK TIMES NOTABLE BOOK OF THE YEAR A WASHINGTON POST NOTABLE BOOK OF THE YEAR ONE OF BARACK OBAMA'S FAVORITE BOOKS OF THE YEAR ONE OF NPR'S BEST BOOKS OF 2020 LONGLISTED FOR THE 2020 BOOKER PRIZE FINALIST FOR THE 2020 CENTER FOR FICTION FIRST NOVEL PRIZE WINNER OF THE ROSENTHAL FAMILY FOUNDATION AWARD, FROM THE AMERICAN ACADEMY OF ARTS AND LETTERS A NATIONAL BOOK FOUNDATION "5 UNDER 35" HONOREE NATIONAL BESTSELLER “Belongs on a shelf all of its own.” —NPR “Outstanding.” —The Washington Post “Revolutionary . . . A visionary addition to American literature.” —Star Tribune An electric debut novel set against the twilight of the American gold rush, two siblings are on the run in an unforgiving landscape—trying not just to survive but to find a home. Ba dies in the night; Ma is already gone. Newly orphaned children of immigrants, Lucy and Sam are suddenly alone in a land that refutes their existence. Fleeing the threats of their western mining town, they set off to bury their father in the only way that will set them free from their past. Along the way, they encounter giant buffalo bones, tiger paw prints, and the specters of a ravaged landscape as well as family secrets, sibling rivalry, and glimpses of a different kind of future. Both epic and intimate, blending Chinese symbolism and reimagined history with fiercely original language and storytelling, How Much of These Hills Is Gold is a haunting adventure story, an unforgettable sibling story, and the announcement of a stunning new voice in literature. On a broad level, it explores race in an expanding country and the question of where immigrants are allowed to belong. But page by page, it’s about the memories that bind and divide families, and the yearning for home.

The Gold in These Hills

Author: Joanne Bischof
Publisher: Thomas Nelson
ISBN: 0785241361
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 337

Book Description
When mail-order bride Juniper’s husband vanishes, she writes to him—but fears she's waiting for a ghost in a ghost town. A century later, Johnny Sutherland discovers her letters while restoring her abandoned farmhouse. Can her loving words from the distant past change his present? 1902: Upon arriving in Kenworthy, California, mail-order bride Juniper Cohen is met by the pounding of the gold mine, an untamable landscape, and her greatest surprise of all: the kind and charming man who awaits her. But when the mine proves empty of profit, and when Juniper’s husband, John, vanishes, Juniper is left to fend for herself and her young daughter in the dying town that is now her home. Juniper pens letters to her husband but fears she is waiting on a ghost. Perhaps worse, rumors abound claiming the man she loves could be an outlaw. Fighting for survival, she befriends the few people left in Kenworthy and refuses to leave, resolving to be exactly where her husband left her in case he comes home. Surviving in a ghost town requires trusting the kindness of a few remaining souls, including the one who can unlock the mystery of her husband’s disappearance. Present day: Trying to escape the heartache of his failed marriage, Johnny Sutherland throws himself into raising his children and restoring a hundred-year-old abandoned farmhouse in what was once known as Kenworthy in the San Jacinto Mountains. While exploring its secrets he uncovers Juniper’s letters and is moved by the handwritten accounts that bear his name—and as a love story from the past touches his own world, Johnny might discover yet that hope and resilience go hand in hand. With The Gold in These Hills, acclaimed and beloved author Joanne Bischof returns with an absorbing masterpiece of faith, perseverance, and love that changes the course of history. Sweeping, Inspirational fiction with historical and contemporary timelines Stand-alone novel Book length: 93,000 words Includes discussion questions for book clubs and a note from the author

Gold Mountain

Author: Betty G. Yee
Publisher: Lerner + ORM
ISBN: 1728451019
Category : Young Adult Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 234

Book Description
Working on the Transcontinental Railroad promises a fortune—for those who survive. Growing up in 1860s China, Tam Ling Fan has lived a life of comfort. Her father is wealthy enough to provide for his family but unconventional enough to spare Ling Fan from the debilitating foot-binding required of most well-off girls. But Ling Fan’s life is upended when her brother dies of influenza and their father is imprisoned under false accusations. Hoping to earn the money that will secure her father’s release, Ling Fan disguises herself as a boy and takes her brother’s contract to work for the Central Pacific Railroad Company in America. Life on “the Gold Mountain” is grueling and dangerous. To build the railroad that will connect the west coast to the east, Ling Fan and other Chinese laborers lay track and blast tunnels through the treacherous peaks of the Sierra Nevada, facing cave-ins, avalanches, and blizzards—along with hostility from white Americans. When someone threatens to expose Ling Fan’s secret, she must take an even greater risk to save what’s left of her family . . . and to escape the Gold Mountain alive.

Love and Other Thought Experiments

Author: Sophie Ward
Publisher: Vintage
ISBN: 059331431X
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 273

Book Description
This impressive debut novel, longlisted for the 2020 Booker Prize, takes its premise and inspiration from ten of the best-known thought experiments in philosophy—the what-ifs of philosophical investigation—and uses them to talk about love in a wholly unique way. Married couple Rachel and Eliza are considering having a child. Rachel wants one desperately, and Eliza thinks she does, too, but she can't quite seem to wrap her head around the idea. When Rachel wakes up screaming one night and tells Eliza that an ant has crawled into her eye and is stuck there, Eliza initially sees it as a cry for attention. But Rachel is adamant. She knows it sounds crazy—but she also knows it's true. As a scientist, Eliza is skeptical. Suddenly their entire relationship is called into question. What follows is a uniquely imaginative sequence of ten interconnecting episodes—each from a different character's perspective—inspired by some of the best-known thought experiments in philosophy. Together they form a sparkling philosophical tale of love lost and found across the universe.

Belly Up

Author: Rita Bullwinkel
Publisher: Deep Vellum Publishing
ISBN: 0998518441
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 127

Book Description
Belly Up is a story collection that contains ghosts, mediums, a lover obsessed with the sound of harps tuning, teenage girls who believe they are actually plants, gulag prisoners who outsmart a terrible warden, and carnivorous churches. Throughout these grotesque and tender stories, characters question the bodies they've been given and what their bodies require to be sustained.

Calico Palace

Author: Gwen Bristow
Publisher: Open Road Media
ISBN: 1480485101
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 832

Book Description
The New York Times bestseller that brings to life the passionate, adventurous men and women who transformed San Francisco during the California Gold Rush. Kendra comes to San Francisco, a sleepy town of nine hundred people, because her stepfather, an army colonel, is charged with overseeing its defenses during the Mexican War. Marny arrives from Honolulu to set up a gambling hall. Neither expects to be swept up in one of history’s greatest adventures, which begins when tiny flakes of gold are discovered in the California hills. As both young women follow their dreams into the mining camps and back to a rapidly growing San Francisco, they encounter ambitious settlers, sailors, miners, ranchers, and mysterious drifters, men who will offer them love or friendship or will break their hearts. Yet Kendra and Marny’s lives stay centered on the Calico Palace, the little gambling operation in a tent in Shiny Gulch that becomes the most opulent gambling house in California. Thrilling and rich in authentic historical detail, Calico Palace is first-rate historical fiction that informs and entertains.

Fool on the Hill

Author: Matt Ruff
Publisher: Grove/Atlantic, Inc.
ISBN: 0802193625
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 411

Book Description
From the author of Lovecraft Country: Myth and reality collide on a college campus “in a comic fantasy of wonderful energy, invention, and generosity of spirit” (Alison Lurie). Stephen Titus George is a young writer-in-residence at Cornell University in upstate New York. A bestselling author in search of a new story, he sees his life as a modern-day fairy tale starring himself as a would-be knight trying to woo a lovely maiden—or, actually, two: the bewitching Calliope and his guiding light, Aurora Borealis Smith. But he’s not quite in control of the narrative. There’s another writer with even greater influence on campus. The unseen Mr. Sunshine is an eternal, semi-retired deity who’s been fashioning his own story for centuries. He has all his characters in place: dragons, sprites, gnomes, and villains. And now, finally, his hero. As Mr. Sunshine’s world comes to fabulous and violent life, how can Stephen decide his own fate if it’s already being plotted by a god? An epic of life and death, good and evil, love and sorcery, Fool on the Hill lands Matt Ruff happily on the shelf between Tom Robbins and J. R. R. Tolkien for every lover of the “funky and fantastical” (New York magazine). “Inspired . . . rich in flavorful language . . . [a] dazzling tour de force.” —San Francisco Chronicle “The plot comes together like a brilliant clockwork toy.” —Locus

The Archer

Author: Shruti Swamy
Publisher: Algonquin Books
ISBN: 1643752162
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 261

Book Description
“Set in 1970s Bombay, the novel explores art, ambition, gender roles and class with the same shimmering prose of Swamy’s first book, the story collection A House Is a Body.” —San Francisco Chronicle “[A] sublime, boundary-pushing exploration of sexuality, creativity, and love.” —NPR In this transfixing novel, a young woman comes of age in 1960s- and 1970s-era Bombay, a vanished world that is complex and indelibly rendered. Vidya’s childhood is marked by the shattering absence and then the bewildering reappearance of her mother and baby brother at the family home. Restless, observant, and longing for connection with her brilliant and increasingly troubled mother, Vidya navigates the stifling expectations of her life with a vivid imagination until one day she peeks into a classroom where girls are learning kathak, a dazzling, centuries-old dance form that requires the utmost discipline and focus. Her pursuit of artistic transcendence through kathak soon becomes the organizing principle of her life, even as she leaves home for college and falls in complicated love with her best friend. As the uncertain future looms, she must ultimately confront the tensions between romantic love, her art, and the legacy of her own imperfect mother. Lyrical and deeply sensual, with writing as mesmerizing as kathak itself, Shruti Swamy’s The Archer is a bold portrait of a singular woman coming of age as an artist—navigating desire, duty, and the limits of the body. It is also an electrifying and utterly immersive story about the transformative power of art, and the possibilities that love can open when we’re ready.

Outwitting the Devil

Author: Napoleon Hill
Publisher: Sharon Lechter
ISBN:
Category : Self-Help
Languages : en
Pages : 30

Book Description
Originally written in 1938 but never published due to its controversial nature, an insightful guide reveals the seven principles of good that will allow anyone to triumph over the obstacles that must be faced in reaching personal goals.

Gold Rush

Author:
Publisher: South Dakota State Historical Society
ISBN:
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 156

Book Description
Beginning with the earliest prospectors, Gold Rush explores the impact of gold discovery in the Black Hills. While the United States Army struggled to deal with those trepassing on Indian lands, reporters dispatched colorful stories to eastern newspapers and entrepreneurs founded towns, freighted in goods, and developed related enterprises. Gold Rush also photographically retraces a portion of Lieutenant Colonel George A. Custer's 1874 Black Hills Expedition route.