But the real challenge is the cowboy who's guiding her to it.

    Accessible language and carefully controlled vocabulary build students' reading confidence. Introductions at the beginning of each story, illustrations throughout, and glossaries help build comprehension. Before, during, and after reading activities included in the back of each book strengthen student comprehension. Audio versions of selected titles provide great models of intonation and pronunciation of difficult words.

    Once half of a perfect marriage—still suffering from a terrible loss—Emily hardly knows her workaholic husband, Doug, anymore, and is drawn instead to what is offered by a new neighbor. A dedicated teacher who loves her job, Kay is confused and troubled by husband John's unfamiliar demands. And Celeste, long-divorced and ecstatic with freedom, sees her electric new life dimmed when her child is endangered.As the three friends struggle to navigate this uncharted territory, they find themselves redefining their dreams, desires, and what it means—to each of them—to be a woman. But before they can bring about change, they must learn the hardest lesson of all: how to love themselves.

    Now three of her finest, most memorable works have been brought together for the first time in an outstanding collection that shines with the luminescent storytelling that has earned the author international renown.THE LILAC BUSFeaturing two novellas, "The Lilac Bus" and "Dublin 4," this national bestseller showcases Binchy's talents at their finest. In "The Lilac Bus, " Binchy masterfully and poignantly interweaves the lives and fates of eight very different individuals who travel from Dublin to the Irish country town of Rathdoon every Friday night in a lilac-colored minibus. In "Dublin 4," a quartet of stories vividly portrays the quiet desperation and everyday heroism of ordinary people living ordinary lives in contemporary Ireland.FIREFLY SUMMERWhen American millionaire Patrick O'Neill comes to Mountfern in the fateful summer of 1962 to convert a dilapidated manor house into a luxury hotel, his intrusion turns life in the small Irish village upside down. The ensuing conflict between new money and old traditions, which strains families and friendships to the breaking point, is brilliantly explored in this truly unforgettable family drama that will live in your heart long after the last page is turned.SILVER WEDDINGGuilty secrets from the past and plaguing fears in the present surface when sons and daughters, sisters and brothers, and friends and lovers reunite to celebrate Desmond and Deirdre Doyle's twenty-fifth wedding anniversary. Among the difficulties the Doyles must come to terms with: the daughter struggling to become a nun, the son who prefers the dreary farm in Ireland to life in London, and the enviable successes of their best man and bridesmaid.

    With original studies of much-debated texts, it provides new perspectives in recent cultural history and theory concerning medicine and diet in the 1790SH1820 period. Morton shows how food in the social and literary text provided complex and ambivalent ways of signaling ideological preferences. It will appeal to all those interested in the body, ecology and social and anthropological approaches to Romantic literature.