The last thing she could have imagined was becoming friends with Emma Mullet, a reclusive Amish woman.Emma is fighting personal battles of her own and feels estranged from her small Amish community. The secrets that have kept her isolated from her own community serve to unite her in an unlikely friendship with Delilah.Sparrow, Delilah’s eldest daughter, knows she is responsible for the death of her little brother. When tensions at home become unbearable, she seeks solace at Emma’s house, becoming the surrogate daughter Emma has always wanted. Sparrow, however, is hiding secrets of her own, secrets that could sever all ties to her safe refuge.Life for these three gets harder when church and social issues confront them, causing rifts within Sinking Creek’s three distinct communities: whites, blacks, and Amish. When their carefully protected secrets come to light, there seems to be little hope for friendship, restoration, or even forgiveness. But when the unthinkable happens, Delilah and Emma find themselves looking into the mirror of their own self-deceptions and are forced to make a choice that will set the way of their future.

    Stephen D. Krashen, PhD, is an advocate for free voluntary reading in schools and has published many journal articles on the subject. Free Voluntary Reading: Power 2010 collects the last ten years of his extensive work and reconsiders all aspects of this important debate in light of the latest findings.The book provides an accessible examination of topics, such as free voluntary reading's value in language and literary acquisition domestically and worldwide, recent developments in support of free voluntary reading, whether rewards-based programs benefit the development of lifelong reading, the value of phonics in reading instruction, and trends in literacy in the United States.

    Presidency is about to be revealed."There are stories no one knows. Hidden stories. I love those stories. And since I work in the National Archives, I find those stories for a living."Beecher White, a young archivist, spends his days working with the most important documents of the U.S. government. He has always been the keeper of other people's stories, never a part of the story himself . . . Until now.When Clementine Kaye, Beecher's first childhood crush, shows up at the National Archives asking for his help tracking down her long-lost father, Beecher tries to impress her by showing her the secret vault where the President of the United States privately reviews classified documents. After they accidentally happen upon a priceless artifact—a two-hundred-year-old dictionary that once belonged to George Washington—hidden underneath a desk chair, Beecher and Clementine find themselves suddenly entangled in a web of deception, conspiracy, and murder.Soon a man is dead and Beecher is on the run as he races to learn the truth behind this mysterious national treasure. His search will lead him to discover a coded and ingenious puzzle that conceals a disturbing secret from the founding of our nation. It is a secret, Beecher soon discovers, that some believe is worth killing for.

    By offering strategic collaborations and efforts to develop and sustain nontraditional audiences, this book will directly impact the stability and future of America’s cultural and artistic landscape. Donna Walker-Kuhne has spent the last 20 years developing and refining these principles with such success as both the Broadway and national touring productions of Bring in ’Da Noise, Bring in ’Da Funk, as well as transforming the audiences at one of the U.S.’s most important and visible arts institutions, New York’s Public Theater. This book is a practical and inspirational guide on ways to invite, engage and partner with culturally diverse communities, and how to enfranchise those communities into the fabric of arts and culture in the United States.Donna Walker-Kuhne is the president of Walker International Communications Group. From 1993 to 2002, she served as the marketing director for the Public Theater in New York, where she originated a range of audience-development activities for children, students and adults throughout New York City. Ms. Walker-Kuhne is an Adjunct Professor in marketing the arts at Fordham University, Brooklyn College and New York University. She was formerly marketing director for Dance Theatre of Harlem. Ms. Walker-Kuhne has given numerous workshops and presentations for arts groups throughout the U.S., including the Arts and Business Council, League of American Theaters and Producers, the Department of Cultural Affairs, and the National Endowment for Arts to name a few. She has been nominated for the Ford Foundation’s 2001 Leadership for a Changing World Fellowship.

    Perhaps this is why I have not left yet. Perhaps I have no choice but to follow the story to its end.Compulsively readable and stylistically stunning, Black Dog Summer begins with a murder, a farmstead massacre, in the South African bush. Thirty-eight-year-old Sally is but one of the victims. Her life brutally cut short, she narrates from her vantage point in the afterlife and watches as her sister, Adele, her brother-in-law and unrequited love Liam, her niece Bryony, and her teenage daughter, Gigi, begin to make sense of the tragedy.A suspenseful drama focusing on marriage and fidelity, sisterhood, and the fractious bond between mothers and daughters, Black Dog Summer asks: In the wake of tragedy, where does all that dark energy linger? The youngest characters, Bryony and Gigi, cousins who are now brought together after Sally’s murder, are forced into sharing a bedroom. Bryony becomes confused and frightened by the violent energy stirred up and awakened by the massacre, while Gigi is unable to see beyond her deep grief and guilt. But they are not the only ones aware of the lurking darkness. Next door lives Lesedi, a reluctant witchdoctor who hides her mystical connection with the dead behind the façade of their affluent Johannesburg suburb.As Gigi finally begins to emerge from her grief, the fragile healing process is derailed when she receives some shattering news, and in a mistaken effort to protect her cousin, puts Bryony’s life in imminent danger. Now Sally must find a way to prevent her daughter from making a mistake that could destroy the lives of all who are left behind.Gorgeously written, with a pace that will leave readers breathless, Black Dog Summer introduces a brilliant new voice in fiction.

    In the process of finding work, Jack meets Hank Pittman, a middle-aged man who lives in a dilapidated school bus at the harbor. A friendship ensues, and Hank becomes the caring father Jack lacks at home despite the fact Hank is hiding his own secrets as he tries to escape his past. After Jack meets Mrs. Mary Jane Dawson, he starts working as her gardener, but trouble brews in the form of gossip and lies that threaten Jack’s relationships with Hank and Mrs. Dawson, as well as Bones’ life. After initially ignoring the gossip, Jack finds he must face the lies and discovers that love carries with it a responsibility to others. When Hank is accused of a crime he didn’t commit, Jack must find a way to convince a jury of the truth, a difficult task when even his own parents refuse to believe him. FLOATING TWIGS is a legal thriller wrapped in a unique coming-of-age tale

    His five happy years with his lover Russell haven't fundamentally challenged Desmond's conviction that, at best, true love is "an acute form of tolerance." He's sexually restless, and looking forward to his four-month teaching stint in Boston as an attempt to regain some of his own identity and try to complete the biography he's been writing. Jane Cody, a Boston public television producer, is similarly disenchanted with her marriage to a clumsy, kindly professor of English. Lately, Jane has been meeting her ex-husband Dale for drinks and coffee, although she's well aware that he's a jerk. With so much going wrong in her life, it strikes Jane that she and Desmond could collaborate on a series of documentaries, salvaging both of their foundering work lives. A page-turner, not by virtue of its plot, but because of Stephen McCauley's utterly engaging narrative voice, True Enough reprises some of the themes of his earlier novel, The Object of My Affection. It also has the virtues of a good Woody Allen film: Great comic lines and brilliant social observation among a small circle of successful friends. And like so much of Allen's work, the subject is married love: Fidelity and betrayal in their many guises. A funny, well-developed novel with surprising emotional depth. --Regina Marler

    W. Edwards Deming, a household name in Japan, became the prime catalyst behind the incredible success of Japanese industry. In fact, since 1951, the Deming Prize has been the most coveted and prestigious award among Japanese corporations, similar to the Malcolm Baldrige Award for quality in business in the United States. Today, Deming is finally becoming a household name in his own country. The lessons he has to teach American business are more urgent than ever. Just how different is the Deming Management Method? Compare just a few of the many differences in beliefs between conventional organizations and Deming organizations: Standard Company * Quality is expensive * Defects are caused by workers * Buy at lowest cost * Fear and reward are proper ways to motivate * Play one supplier off against another Deming Company * Quality leads to lower costs * Most defects are caused by the system * Buy from vendors committed to quality * Fear leads to disaster * Work with suppliers

    student happens upon Damien, a dog being used in laboratory research on her campus, she has no way of knowing how drastically her life- and her beliefs- will be changed. Without meaning to, she slowly becomes drawn into the dog's fate and is soon torn between the love and respect she has come to feel for Damien and the sense of loyalty and obligation she feels for the medical profession as well as her father and grandfather, both cardiac surgeons.With an uncanny ability to write convincingly about life from the point of view of a canine, Diane Jessup tells an extraordinary story of friendship and loyalty. Few writers have ever shown the world of man's closest friend as clearly and movingly. For anyone who has ever loved a dog this is a must read.

    But not the braves. Or the slaves. Or the disenfranchised women. So the history of Wilson's generation omitted a significant proportion of the population in favor of a perspective that was predominantly white, male and Protestant. That flaw would become a fissure and eventually a schism. A new history arose which, written in part by radicals and liberals, had little use for the noble and the heroic, and that rankled many who wanted a celebratory rather than a critical history. To this combustible mixture of elements was added the flame of public debate. History in the 1990s was a minefield of competing passions, political views and prejudices. It was dangerous ground, and, at the end of the decade, four of the nation's most respected and popular historians were almost destroyed by it: Michael Bellesiles, Doris Kearns Goodwin, Stephen Ambrose and Joseph Ellis. This is their story, set against the wider narrative of the writing of America's history. It may be, as Flaubert put it, that "Our ignorance of history makes us libel our own times." To which he could have added: falsify, plagiarize and politicize, because that's the other story of America's history.

    You may not survive the visit.

    She alone has stayed in the cove while everyone else couldn't wait to get away. Alice Keller comes instantly, because her mansion in the Hamptons and her husband's infidelity is smothering her. Not only that, but Kristen has always been like a mother to her, and she wants to support her.Eloise Hall comes quickly too, because she's not teaching at the university this summer, and she might as well visit her mother—and the house she secretly bought years ago. Her first night on the island, she runs into an old high school crush, and a flame ignites that hasn't been there before.But Kelli Thompson and AJ Proctor are more resistant, and as Robin, Alice, and Eloise uncover secret after secret in the books, journals, and files in Joel's office, Robin becomes more determined to reunite them all. When Kelli and AJ finally arrive in the cove, the women are embroiled in secrets the lighthouse has hidden for decades. Robin tries to hold them all together, but she too breaks down and admits that her perfect-on-the-outside life isn't so perfect. As they work together to find the truth, they learn to let go of what doesn't matter and cling to what does: faith, family, and most of all, friendship.

    Throughout these pages, she catalogs her encounters with local eccentrics as well as the questions that plague her, such as, "What is the standard length of eyebrow hairs?" Whether she's helping someone scan his face onto an online dating site or explaining why the library doesn't have any dragon autobiographies, Sheridan's bizarre tales prove that she's truly seen it all.Stacked high with hundreds of strange-but-true stories, I Work at a Public Library celebrates librarians and the unforgettable patrons that roam the stacks every day.

     A crisp tang of citrus that is at once poignant and familiar, sharpening the senses and opening the mind to possibilities once known and long forgotten...  Claire “Neely” Davis is no ordinary pastry chef. Her flavor combinations aren’t just a product of a well-honed palate: she can “taste” people’s emotions, sensing the ingredients that will touch her customers’ souls. Her gift has never failed her—until she meets a free-spirited bride-to-be and her overbearing society mother. The two are unable to agree on a single wedding detail, and their bickering leaves Neely’s intuition frustratingly silent—right when she needs it most.   Between trying to navigate a divorce, explore a new relationship, and handle the reappearance of her long-absent father, Neely is struggling to make sense of her own conflicting emotions, much less those of her hard-to-please bride. But as she embarks on a flavorful quest to craft the perfect wedding celebration, she’ll uncover a family history that sheds light on both the missing ingredients and her own problems—and illustrates how the sweet and sour in life often combine to make the most delicious memories...

    Hoping to explore the “real ground of literature,” she reads her way through a somewhat randomly chosen shelf of fiction, from LEQ to LES.The shelf has everything Rose could wish for—a classic she has not read, a remarkable variety of authors, and a range of literary styles. The early nineteenth-century Russian classic A Hero of Our Time by Mikhail Lermontov is spine by spine with The Phantom of the Opera by Gaston Leroux. Stories of French Canadian farmers sit beside those about aristocratic Austrians. California detective novels abut a picaresque novel from the seventeenth century. There are several novels by a wonderful, funny, contemporary novelist who has turned to raising dogs because of the tepid response to her work.In The Shelf, Rose investigates the books on her shelf with exuberance, candor, and wit while pondering the many questions her experiment raises and measuring her discoveries against her own inner shelf—those texts that accompany us through life. “Fairly sure that no one in the history of the world has read exactly this series of novels,” she sustains a sense of excitement as she creates a refreshingly original and generous portrait of the literary enterprise.