Odo:The most important feature of Milton Murayama's brilliant All I Asking for Is My Body is the quality of the storytelling. It deserves thorough discussion and criticism among literary professionals and students. The work has a further genius, however, in its evocation of several major topics in modern Hawaiian history, specifically during the 1930s, the decade before United States involvement in World War II. I suggest that Murayama’s novel provides us with valuable insights into the worlds of language, sugar plantation history, and the second-generation Japanese Americans, the nisei. . . . Critic Rob Wilson noted: “Part of the accomplishment of the novel is that the language ranges from the vernacular to the literate and standard, and so reflects the cultural and linguistic diversity of Hawaii.” In the novel, Murayama uses standard English and pidgin. In real life, the narrator Kiyo explains, “we spoke four languages: good English in school, pidgin English among ourselves, good or pidgin Japanese to our parents and the other old folks.” The wonder is that Murayama emerged using any one of the languages well. For most, that experience proved to be an insuperable barrier to good creative writing. . . . All I Asking for Is My Body is the most compelling work done on the Hawaii nisei experience. Murayama understood his theme to be “the Japanese family system vs. individualism, the plantation system vs. individualism. And so the environments of the family and the plantation are inseparable from the theme.” Fortunately for us as readers, however, he understood that the story was the key ingredient; that anything less would simply add to the sociological study of the plantation and the Japanese family in Hawaii.

    Used to tending the sick as they are, nothing could have prepared them for what they confront, first near Gallipoli, then on the Western Front.Yet amid the carnage, Naomi and Sally Durance become the friends they never were at home and find themselves courageous in the face of extreme danger, as well as the hostility they encounter from some on their own side. There is great bravery, humor, and compassion, too, and the inspiring example of the remarkable women they serve alongside. In France, where Naomi nurses in a hospital set up by the eccentric Lady Tarlton while Sally works in a casualty clearing station, each meets an exceptional man: the kind of men for whom they might give up some of their precious independence — if only they all survive.At once vast in scope and extraordinarily intimate, The Daughters of Mars brings World War I to vivid, concrete life from an unusual perspective. A searing and profoundly moving tale, it pays tribute to men and women of extraordinary moral resilience, even in the face of the incomprehensible horrors of modern war.

    On exclusive yachts sailing the Mediterranean, on private jets streaming towards Jamaica, on Yucatán beaches in secluded bays, they gossiped about sex, power, money, love and fame. They never imagined he would betray them so absolutely.In the autumn of 1975, after two decades of intimate friendships, Truman Capote detonated a literary grenade, forever rupturing the elite circle he’d worked so hard to infiltrate. Why did he do it, knowing what he stood to lose? Was it to punish them? To make them pay for their manners, money and celebrated names? Or did he simply refuse to believe that they could ever stop loving him? Whatever the motive, one thing remains indisputable: nine years after achieving wild success with In Cold Blood, Capote committed an act of professional and social suicide with his most lethal of weapons . . . Words.A dazzling debut about the line between gossip and slander, self-creation and self-preservation, Swan Song is the tragic story of the literary icon of his age and the beautiful, wealthy, vulnerable women he called his Swans.‘Writers write. And one can’t be surprised if they write what they know.’

    For her, nothing will be the same again. Decades later, in Edinburgh, Connie sews coded moments of her life into a notebook, as her mother did before her. More than 100 years after his grandmother’s sewing machine was made, Fred discovers a treasure trove of documents.  His family history is laid out before him in a patchwork of unfamiliar handwriting and colourful seams.  He starts to unpick the secrets of four generations, one stitch at a time.

    Poe, The Other Einstein offers us a window into a brilliant, fascinating woman whose light was lost in Einstein's enormous shadow. It is the story of Einstein's wife, a brilliant physicist in her own right, whose contribution to the special theory of relativity is hotly debated and may have been inspired by her own profound and very personal insight.Mitza Maric has always been a little different from other girls. Most twenty-year-olds are wives by now, not studying physics at an elite Zurich university with only male students trying to outdo her clever calculations. But Mitza is smart enough to know that, for her, math is an easier path than marriage. And then fellow student Albert Einstein takes an interest in her, and the world turns sideways. Theirs becomes a partnership of the mind and of the heart, but there might not be room for more than one genius in a marriage.

    In 1987, Miri Ammerman returns to her hometown of Elizabeth, New Jersey, to attend a commemoration of the worst year of her life.Thirty-five years earlier, when Miri was fifteen, and in love for the first time, a succession of airplanes fell from the sky, leaving a community reeling. Against this backdrop of actual events that Blume experienced in the early 1950s, when airline travel was new and exciting and everyone dreamed of going somewhere, Judy Blume imagines and weaves together a haunting story of three generations of families, friends, and strangers, whose lives are profoundly changed by these disasters. She paints a vivid portrait of a particular time and place — Nat King Cole singing “Unforgettable,” Elizabeth Taylor haircuts, young (and not-so-young) love, explosive friendships, A-bomb hysteria, rumors of Communist threat. And a young journalist who makes his name reporting tragedy. Through it all, one generation reminds another that life goes on.In the Unlikely Event is a gripping novel with all the hallmarks of Judy Blume's unparalleled storytelling.

    She is a young black girl growing up in the 1940s in a small, rural town in Virginia. Life is hard and she dreams of better life. She experiences great loss and heartache. She loses friends and family, as well as the love of her life. And still, she remains strong. This emotional and inspiring story has a gritty dialogue. TM Brown's signature writing style is captivating. You will find it difficult to stop reading once you begin...

    Inspired by a true American legend, a Jewish boxer trained by the mafia and FBI fights the rising American Nazi party. During his undercover mission to rid the country of the American Führer, he falls in love with the enemy’s daughter.

    But the people around Inez have made careers out of losing track. Her senator husband wants to forget the failure of his last bid for the presidency. Her husband's handler would like the press to forget that Inez's father is a murderer. And, in 1975, the year in which much of this bitterly funny novel is set, America is doing its best to lose track of its one-time client, the lethally hemorrhaging republic of South Vietnam.As conceived by Joan Didion, these personages and events constitute the terminal fallout of democracy, a fallout that also includes fact-finding junkets, senatorial groupies, the international arms market, and the Orwellian newspeak of the political class. Moving deftly from Honolulu to Jakarta, between romance, farce, and tragedy, Democracy is a tour de force from a writer who can dissect an entire society with a single phrase.

     When Ellen Holton’s father dies, she faces yet another adversity: for her father to forge the business alliance he always wanted, she must marry the son of a Scottish Laird. But arriving at the Highlands she discovers two brothers and, unfortunately, she falls for the wrong one… Alexander Golgow, the youngest of Laird Elairon’s sons, is a man of honor and a true Highland warrior. But the moment he first lays his eyes on his brother’s bride, he feels torn between his duty and his heart. However, trying to escape the luring erotic ropes slowly embracing them is more difficult than they think… When Ellen realizes her father’s death was not an accident, her life changes for the third time. Now she and Alexander must quickly uncover the one behind all misfortunes—the one person who has been pulling the strings right from the very start. *Torn Between Two Highlanders is a steamy Scottish historical romance novel of 80,000 words (around 400 pages). No cheating, no cliffhangers, lots of steam and a happy ending. Get this book for free with Kindle Unlimited!

    It can be found only in the final book of the series that made her a famous writer. But does that book exist?This absorbing novel spans the entire twentieth century, telling the moving story of a mother, her daughter, and two granddaughters, one of whom is the only person alive who knows the whereabouts of Harriet's final book. When a hospitalization brings the family back together, the mystery not only of Harriet's last book, but also of her life, hangs in the balance. Will the truth ever be known, or is Harriet's story gone forever?A multi-generational tale of long-lost love, motherhood, and family secrets, this is Baggott's most sweeping and mesmerizing novel yet.

     One of the last adn largest Spanish settlements was located on what is now the Ute Indian Reservation at Rock Creek. According to Ute legends, the biggest slaughter of white men by Indians didn't occur at the Little Big Horn, but at Rock Creek, where in 1840 nearly one thousand Spaniards were slaughtered by Indians, ending once and for all the era of the Spanish gold seekers. This story is about that last great battle, told through the eyes of Utah's favorite writer of historical fiction, Lee Nelson.

    “Bean” Holladay is twelve and her sister, Liz, is fifteen when their artistic mother, Charlotte, takes off to find herself, leaving her girls enough money to last a month or two. When Bean returns from school one day and sees a police car outside the house, she and Liz decide to take the bus to Virginia, where their widowed Uncle Tinsley lives in the decaying mansion that’s been in Charlotte’s family for generations. An impetuous optimist, Bean soon discovers who her father was, and hears stories about why their mother left Virginia in the first place. Money is tight, and the sisters start babysitting and doing office work for Jerry Maddox, foreman of the mill in town, who bullies his workers, his tenants, his children, and his wife. Liz is whip-smart--an inventor of word games, reader of Edgar Allan Poe, nonconformist, but when school starts in the fall, it’s Bean who easily adjusts, and Liz who becomes increasingly withdrawn. And then something happens to Liz in the car with Maddox.Jeannette Walls has written a deeply moving novel about triumph over adversity and about people who find a way to love each other and the world, despite its flaws and injustices.

    When she arrives at the famed Barbizon Hotel in 1952, secretarial school enrollment in hand, Darby McLaughlin is everything her modeling agency hall mates aren't: plain, self-conscious, homesick, and utterly convinced she doesn't belong—a notion the models do nothing to disabuse. Yet when Darby befriends Esme, a Barbizon maid, she's introduced to an entirely new side of New York City: seedy downtown jazz clubs where the music is as addictive as the heroin that's used there, the startling sounds of bebop, and even the possibility of romance. Over half a century later, the Barbizon's gone condo and most of its long-ago guests are forgotten. But rumors of Darby's involvement in a deadly skirmish with a hotel maid back in 1952 haunt the halls of the building as surely as the melancholy music that floats from the elderly woman's rent-controlled apartment. It's a combination too intoxicating for journalist Rose Lewin, Darby's upstairs neighbor, to resist—not to mention the perfect distraction from her own imploding personal life. Yet as Rose's obsession deepens, the ethics of her investigation become increasingly murky, and neither woman will remain unchanged when the shocking truth is finally revealed.

    The lonely young Appalachian woman joins the historical Pack Horse Library Project of Kentucky and becomes a librarian, riding across slippery creek beds and up treacherous mountains on her faithful mule to deliver books and other reading material to the impoverished hill people of Eastern Kentucky.Along her dangerous route, Cussy, known to the mountain folk as Bluet, confronts those suspicious of her damselfly-blue skin and the government's new book program. She befriends hardscrabble and complex fellow Kentuckians, and is fiercely determined to bring comfort and joy, instill literacy, and give to those who have nothing, a bookly respite, a fleeting retreat to faraway lands.