Prodigal Summer

Author: Barbara Kingsolver
Publisher: Faber & Faber
ISBN: 0571246222
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 501

Book Description
WINNER OF THE PULITZER PRIZE FOR FICTION TWICE WINNER OF THE WOMEN'S PRIZE FOR FICTION THE MULTI-MILLION COPY BESTSELLING AUTHOR 'A rich and compulsive read' Guardian From the award-winning and internationally bestselling author of Demon Copperhead, The Lacuna and The Poisonwood Bible. It is summer in the Appalachian mountains and love, desire and attraction are in the air. Nature, too, it seems, is not immune. From her outpost in an isolated mountain cabin, Deanna Wolfe, a reclusive wildlife biologist, watches a den of coyotes that have recently migrated into the region. She is caught off guard by a young hunter who invades her most private spaces and interrupts her self-assured, solitary life. On a farm several miles down the mountain, Lusa Maluf Landowski, a bookish city girl turned farmer's wife, finds herself marooned in a strange place where she must declare or lose her attachment to the land that has become her own. And a few more miles down the road, a pair of elderly feuding neighbours tend their respective farms and wrangle about God, pesticides, and the possibilities of a future neither of them expected. Over the course of one humid summer, these characters find their connections of love to one another and to the surrounding nature with which they share a place. With its strong balance of narrative and drama, Prodigal Summer is stands alongside Demon Copperhead, The Poisonwood Bible and The Lacuna as one of Barbara Kingsolver's finest works.

Pigs in Heaven

Author: Barbara Kingsolver
Publisher: Harper Collins
ISBN: 0061842214
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 370

Book Description
Picking up where her modern classic The Bean Trees left off, Barbara Kingsolver’s bestselling Pigs in Heaven continues the tale of Turtle and Taylor Greer, a Native American girl and her adoptive mother who have settled in Tucson, Arizona, as they both try to overcome their difficult pasts. Taking place three years after The Bean Trees, Taylor is now dating a musician named Jax and has officially adopted Turtle. But when a lawyer for the Cherokee Nation begins to investigate the adoption—their new life together begins to crumble. Depicting the clash between fierce family love and tribal law, poverty and means, abandonment and belonging, Pigs in Heaven is a morally wrenching, gently humorous work of fiction that speaks equally to the head and the heart. This edition includes a P.S. section with additional insights from Barbara Kingsolver, background material, suggestions for further reading, and more.

Animal Dreams

Author: Barbara Kingsolver
Publisher: Harper Collins
ISBN: 0061839949
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 372

Book Description
“An emotional masterpiece . . . A novel in which humor, passion, and superb prose conspire to seize a reader by the heart and by the soul.” —New York Daily News From Barbara Kingsolver, the acclaimed author of Flight Behavior, The Lacuna, The Bean Trees, and other modern classics, Animal Dreams is a passionate and complex novel about love, forgiveness, and one woman’s struggle to find her place in the world "Animals dream about the things they do in the daytime just like people do. If you want sweet dreams, you've got to live a sweet life." So says Loyd Peregrina, a handsome Apache trainman and latter-day philosopher. But when Codi Noline returns to her hometown, Loyd's advice is painfully out of her reach. Dreamless and at the end of her rope, Codi comes back to Grace, Arizona, to confront her past and face her ailing, distant father. What she finds is a town threatened by a silent environmental catastrophe, some startling clues to her own identity, and a man whose view of the world could change the course of her life. Blending flashbacks, dreams, and Native American legends, Animal Dreams is a suspenseful love story and a moving exploration of life's largest commitments. This edition includes a P.S. section with additional insights from Barbara Kingsolver, background material, suggestions for further reading, and more.

Animal, Vegetable, Miracle

Author: Barbara Kingsolver
Publisher: Harper Collins
ISBN: 0061795836
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 403

Book Description
Bestselling author Barbara Kingsolver returns with her first nonfiction narrative that will open your eyes in a hundred new ways to an old truth: You are what you eat. "As the U.S. population made an unprecedented mad dash for the Sun Belt, one carload of us paddled against the tide, heading for the Promised Land where water falls from the sky and green stuff grows all around. We were about to begin the adventure of realigning our lives with our food chain. "Naturally, our first stop was to buy junk food and fossil fuel. . . ." Hang on for the ride: With characteristic poetry and pluck, Barbara Kingsolver and her family sweep readers along on their journey away from the industrial-food pipeline to a rural life in which they vow to buy only food raised in their own neighborhood, grow it themselves, or learn to live without it. Their good-humored search yields surprising discoveries about turkey sex life and overly zealous zucchini plants, en route to a food culture that's better for the neighborhood and also better on the table. Part memoir, part journalistic investigation, Animal, Vegetable, Miracle makes a passionate case for putting the kitchen back at the center of family life and diversified farms at the center of the American diet. "This is the story of a year in which we made every attempt to feed ourselves animals and vegetables whose provenance we really knew . . . and of how our family was changed by our first year of deliberately eating food produced from the same place where we worked, went to school, loved our neighbors, drank the water, and breathed the air." Includes an excerpt from Flight Behavior.

The Prodigal Sun

Author: Sean Williams
Publisher: Open Road Media
ISBN: 1497611563
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 259

Book Description
Morgan Roche, commander in the intelligence arm of the Commonwealth Empires, has been charged with protecting the AI known as The Box on a secret voyage across the galaxy. But en route her ship is ambushed by the Dato Bloc, and she is forced to crash-land on a nearby prison planet. MAROONED ON SCIACCA’S WORLD: Battling deadly inmates and treacherous guards, she fights her way through a hostile environment toward her only hope of escape, the mysterious Adoni Cane at her side. A genetically enhanced warrior with a past not even he can fathom, he could be the savior of the human race, or its downfall--but either way, Morgan Roche won’t survive without him… “THE PRODIGAL SUN is a close-knit personal story told on a galaxy-sized canvas. Filled with action as well as intriguing ideas.” --Kevin J Anderson “With echoes of vintage Jack Williamson and Poul Anderson, as well as Niven, Asimov and Vinge, Williams and Dix proudly continue a vital tradition, proving SF as diverse a field as ever.” --Asimov's “[A] very satisfying classic Golden Age-style yarn…. strongly recommended” --Locus “Space opera of the ambitious, galaxy-spanning sort... fast and furious action.” --New York Review of SF

Unsheltered

Author: Barbara Kingsolver
Publisher: HarperCollins
ISBN: 0062684744
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 570

Book Description
New York Times Bestseller • Named one of the Best Books of the Year by NPR, O: The Oprah Magazine, San Francisco Chronicle, Christian Science Monitor and Newsweek “Kingsolver brilliantly captures both the price of profound change and how it can pave the way not only for future generations, but also for a radiant, unexpected expansion of the heart.” — O: The Oprah Magazine The acclaimed author of The Poisonwood Bible and The Bean Trees, and recipient of numerous literary awards—including the National Humanities Medal, the Dayton Literary Peace Prize, and the Orange Prize—returns with a story about two families, in two centuries, navigating what seems to be the end of the world as they know it. With history as their tantalizing canvas, these characters paint a startlingly relevant portrait of life in precarious times when the foundations of the past have failed to prepare us for the future. How could two hardworking people do everything right in life, a woman asks, and end up destitute? Willa Knox and her husband followed all the rules as responsible parents and professionals, and have nothing to show for it but debts and an inherited brick house that is falling apart. The magazine where Willa worked has folded; the college where her husband had tenure has closed. Their dubious shelter is also the only option for a disabled father-in-law and an exasperating, free-spirited daughter. When the family’s one success story, an Ivy-educated son, is uprooted by tragedy he seems likely to join them, with dark complications of his own. In another time, a troubled husband and public servant asks, How can a man tell the truth, and be reviled for it? A science teacher with a passion for honest investigation, Thatcher Greenwood finds himself under siege: his employer forbids him to speak of the exciting work just published by Charles Darwin. His young bride and social-climbing mother-in-law bristle at the risk of scandal, and dismiss his worries that their elegant house is unsound. In a village ostensibly founded as a benevolent Utopia, Thatcher wants only to honor his duties, but his friendships with a woman scientist and a renegade newspaper editor threaten to draw him into a vendetta with the town’s powerful men. A timely and "utterly captivating" novel (San Francisco Chronicle), Unsheltered interweaves past and present to explore the human capacity for resiliency and compassion in times of great upheaval.

Prodigal Son

Author: Danielle Steel
Publisher: Delacorte Press
ISBN: 080417962X
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 266

Book Description
#1 NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER Twin boys grow up in the same family, in the same town. Dramatically different, they become bitter enemies, even as children. One good, one bad. One leaves his peaceful hometown, but when all else fails, the prodigal son returns, twenty years later. The reunion of brothers, sweet and healing at first, exposes shattering revelations of good and evil. #1 New York Times bestselling author Danielle Steel tells a brilliant, suspenseful story of suspicion, betrayal, and a life-and-death struggle for survival. Which twin is good and which is evil, as the tables turn again and again? PRODIGAL SON In a matter of days, Peter McDowell loses everything he has worked so hard for—his wealth, his property, his livelihood as a star investment banker. And then it gets worse. The stock market crash not only plunges Peter into joblessness, it causes a rift in his marriage that he cannot repair. Stripped of everything, he has only one place to retreat: a lakeside cottage he inherited from his parents, who left most of their modest estate to Peter’s twin. With no other choice, the prodigal son goes home. A beloved small-town doctor, a devoted family man, and a pillar of his community, Michael McDowell serves others without regard to personal gain. Only Peter knows how Michael manipulated their parents when the boys were young, ultimately driving Peter away. At first, he dreads seeing Michael again. But, to his surprise, their reunion is tender and real. Only later, as Peter mulls over his late mother’s journals, does the truth begin to emerge, as realization and panic begin to set in. Who is his twin? Is the façade real, or does something terrifying lie beneath? Imagination or a reality too terrifying to believe? In a race for time, Peter throws caution to the winds to find the truth. What he discovers will change their lives forever, the lives of their children, and an entire town. Powerful, poignant, and filled with complex and layered characters, Prodigal Son is a riveting novel of secrets, salvation, and redemption from master storyteller Danielle Steel. Praise for Prodigal Son “Fraternal twins raised together [turn] out to be very different and very much in conflict. One twin leaves home, but when this prodigal son returns, is he the evil twin, or is his brother? Steel yourself.”—Library Journal “Readers should be prepared for revelations of wickedness on a vast scale.”—Publishers Weekly

The Poisonwood Bible

Author: Barbara Kingsolver
Publisher: Harper Collins
ISBN: 0061804819
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 578

Book Description
New York Times Bestseller • Finalist for the Pulitzer Prize • An Oprah's Book Club Selection “Powerful . . . [Kingsolver] has with infinitely steady hands worked the prickly threads of religion, politics, race, sin and redemption into a thing of terrible beauty.” —Los Angeles Times Book Review The Poisonwood Bible, now celebrating its 25th anniversary, established Barbara Kingsolver as one of the most thoughtful and daring of modern writers. Taking its place alongside the classic works of postcolonial literature, it is a suspenseful epic of one family's tragic undoing and remarkable reconstruction over the course of three decades in Africa. The story is told by the wife and four daughters of Nathan Price, a fierce, evangelical Baptist who takes his family and mission to the Belgian Congo in 1959. They carry with them everything they believe they will need from home, but soon find that all of it—from garden seeds to Scripture—is calamitously transformed on African soil. The novel is set against one of the most dramatic political chronicles of the twentieth century: the Congo's fight for independence from Belgium, the murder of its first elected prime minister, the CIA coup to install his replacement, and the insidious progress of a world economic order that robs the fledgling African nation of its autonomy. Against this backdrop, Orleanna Price reconstructs the story of her evangelist husband's part in the Western assault on Africa, a tale indelibly darkened by her own losses and unanswerable questions about her own culpability. Also narrating the story, by turns, are her four daughters—the teenaged Rachel; adolescent twins Leah and Adah; and Ruth May, a prescient five-year-old. These sharply observant girls, who arrive in the Congo with racial preconceptions forged in 1950s Georgia, will be marked in surprisingly different ways by their father's intractable mission, and by Africa itself. Ultimately each must strike her own separate path to salvation. Their passionately intertwined stories become a compelling exploration of moral risk and personal responsibility.

In Wilderness

Author: Diane Thomas
Publisher: Bantam
ISBN: 0804176965
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 299

Book Description
SELECTED AS ONE OF THE 10 GREAT THRILLERS FOR YOUR BEACH READING LIST BY ENTERTAINMENT WEEKLY For readers of Ron Rash, Thomas H. Cook, and Tim Johnston, In Wilderness is a suspenseful and literary love story hailed by New York Times bestselling author Joshilyn Jackson as “heartbreaking, bold, relentless” and “the work of a true original.” Includes an exclusive conversation between Diane Thomas and Christina Baker Kline Told she is dying of the mysterious illness that plagues her, thirty-eight-year-old Katherine Reid moves to a remote cabin in the southern mountains to live out her last days. But in this peaceful solitude, her life may still be in terrible danger: A damaged young man also lives in the forest, and he watches her every move. Praise for In Wilderness “A harrowing exploration of desire and obsession, In Wilderness sends two people into a physical and psychological wilderness that becomes stranger and more terrifying the deeper they go.”—Christina Baker Kline, #1 New York Times bestselling author of Orphan Train “Not my usual thing, which makes me say it all the louder: I love, love, love this book—the fearless and unflinching story of two extraordinary, vivid people alone in a vast pristine wilderness, told with genuine suspense and a wonderfully empowering ending. In Wilderness is altogether spectacular.”—Lee Child, #1 New York Times bestselling author of Personal “Thomas writes hauntingly of obsession and survival in this dark, unusual love story. . . . As the author moves her characters through the seasons of 1966, 1967, and 1968, she offers a deep and unforgettable look into how tragedy and madness can shape lives. Written from the points of view of two suffering people, the story takes on an almost surreal, lyrical quality. Riveting and raw.”—Publishers Weekly “Explosive . . . The tension continues to grow. . . . Thomas writes with richness, describing the natural world as viscerally as she does the interior lives of these two intense characters. . . . Recommended for readers who also like the raw, honest writing of Amy Bloom or Amanda Coplin.”—Library Journal “Gripping . . . powered by genuine suspense and driven forward by two characters whose lives readers cannot look away from . . . a memorable story of an isolated, beautiful place and of two people trying to make sense of the world they have chosen to live in.”—Booklist “Unforgettable: a mad, haunting, dreamlike story of love, obsession, and wildness . . . Diane Thomas mixes elegant prose with raw emotion.”—William Landay, New York Times bestselling author of Defending Jacob

When You Love a Prodigal

Author: Judy Douglass
Publisher: Baker Books
ISBN: 1493420089
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 240

Book Description
Loving a prodigal is a long and desperate journey, filled with fear, worry, anger, self- recrimination. You wait for the phone call--will it be from jail or the hospital? You plead with your loved one. You search for help. You feel the shame. You cry out to God, "How long, Lord?" Author Judy Douglass knows these lovers of prodigals well. She is one herself and has created a large and growing community with others. When You Love a Prodigal is a collection of 90 essays--90 days of perspective on what God offers to you as you love your prodigal. At the end of each brief essay, response questions will help you process how God intends to use the wilderness journey to mold your spiritual life. You can work through it day by day, or you can read it straight through. Judy has traveled this road with her own prodigal--reading, learning, praying, and seeking God. Over and over he continued to give her wisdom, he sustained her, he covered her with grace, and he filled her with hope. May you, too, be strengthened and filled with hope as together you discover how God will take you through your own valley.