Book picks similar to
The Union of Smokers by Paddy Scott
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The Doorstep Child
Annie Murray - 2017
. . Evie spent her early years left outside on the step. With a drunk for a father and a neglectful mother, all little Evie has ever craved is a safe home and a normal existence. Her young eyes had seen so much but this never tainted her spirit. If it wasn't for her best friend Gary, and friendly dog called Whisky - Evie might never have made it to the sixteenth birthday.At sixteen she meets Ken, a sweet brown-eyed boy, not much older than she is. Perhaps her fortunes have changed? But no sooner does she give over her heart, she is betrayed, not for the first time in her young life... Will Evie ever find the love and warmth she's always craved?
Angel City
Patrick D. Smith - 1978
What they find instead is a nightmare in a migrant labor camp, where they become the indentured servants of a soulless crew chief and his mindless henchmen. Vacillating between hope and despair, Jared must stay alert—and alive—to rescue his own family and the prisoners around him from a life of continued degradation. In the year before he wrote Angel City, Patrick Smith did what he called “physical research,” disguising himself and joining migrant crews as they picked whatever vegetable was in season. He mentally recorded the events he encountered and wrote the novel is just a few weeks. His reason for writing Angel City? “The first step toward eliminating injustice is to expose it,” he said. Angel City was made into a TV movie in 1980.
Villa Normandie
Kevin Doherty
The Normandy coastal village of Caillons is under German occupation, its villagers struggling to survive. With her husband forced into compulsory service for the German Reich, Jeanne Dupré, mother of two adolescent daughters, risks everything to lead the local Resistance cell.Life becomes even more dangerous with the arrival of British agent Daniel Benedict. He needs Jeanne's help to complete his mission, vital to Operation Overlord, the D-Day landings. But Jeanne is suspicious that they are not fighting for the same outcome. Their joint foe is Jürgen Graf, a Nazi oberleutnant set on wiping out the local Resistance. Aware that a spy is at large, Graf is on a ruthless mission to hunt Benedict down. With the help of a network of Catholic priests, Benedict penetrates the heart of the Nazis’ defences against Allied invasion, the Atlantic Wall. As the lives of Jeanne and Benedict become increasingly intertwined can they stay true to themselves? Will they have to sacrifice all in their fight for freedom..? ‘Villa Normandie’ is a moving historical novel, presenting an accurate picture of life under Nazi occupation. It is thoroughly detailed, meticulously researched and vividly authentic - depicting the turbulent world of the French resistance and the struggle of the French people for freedom.
A Mother's Song: A Story of the Orphan Train
Cleo A. Lampos - 2013
Pregnant with their third child, Deirdre works as a washerwoman at the hotel's laundry. If Sean works at all, he drinks his paycheck at the pub. When he is killed in an accident at work, Deirdre is devastated. She gives birth to another son, but cannot work at the laundry. The oldest son lives on the street as a newsie. Rather than let Ava Rose and her baby brother starve to death with her, she signs for them to be put on an orphan train. This orphan train takes these youngsters to Nebraska to Claudine, who has suffered multiple miscarriages. Will the adoption provide the safety and opportunity that Deirdre hopes? This researched story of two mothers and the child who loves both is heart wrenching.It is a poignant tale of hope and courage against unfathomable odds for a better life free from prejudice and poverty.
Knight of Rome Part I
Malcolm Davies - 2019
No nation can stand against his legions but even the Empire has its limits. The brooding forests across the Rhine hold warriors who will not submit and the Suevi are the mightiest of them. With only their hatred of each other in common, the Romans and the Germans cross the river to raid and slaughter but neither of them has the force to take the other’s territory and hold it. This does not prevent them trying. Otto of the Suevi, son of the Chieftain and war counsellor Badurad, lives freely among the woods and glades on the far side of the river, hoping to live the same life as his father and become a respected warrior in his turn but that is not to be. He visits a wise woman with his father and her shocking, prophetic vision of his future sets him on a different path than he could never have imagined. Fate is not to be defied so Otto accepts what she has told him as absolute truth and lets it guide him through blood and fire to his personal destiny far from his own people.
For Tucker
David Johnson - 2012
So this edition is currently unavailable. You can find this story in a newer edition combined into one story. Look for a Tucker's Way edition that includes this (about 350 pages).Our heroine returns in book two to face new crises.Her daughter, Maisy, decides to try and extort money from the father of her daughter, April. Maisy miscalculates how he will react to her demands. When she threatens a paternity suit against him, he murders Maisy and unwittingly disposes of her body in the same area that Tucker disposed of her murdered father over thirty years ago.Tucker’s limited life skills are put to the test as she experiences grief for the very first time and tries to help her grandchildren deal with the death of their mother. The only friend Tucker has ever had, Ella, reaches out to comfort Tucker in her grief.While Tucker is searching through Maisy's effects, she finds an envelope with the words "For Tucker" on the outside. Inside she finds a letter naming the fathers of Maisy’s children.But the murderer seems to have an airtight alibi.
Love Us Both (A Calendar of Love Novel Book 5)
Lexy Parker - 2019
Start over. Easy words for everyone else, but not me. My wife died on my operating table, and moving on just isn’t going to happen. Not until I decided to go back to the small town where I grew up. My boy and I needed different scenery to try to reboot life. And we did. Until one day, a beautiful woman walked into my office and everything changed. She was from one of the oldest families in Tennessee and needed my help. With the way she made me and my son feel, I was more than happy to offer it. Love wasn’t supposed to show up again, and certainly not this soon. But it did. It has. I just hope she knows that she has to love us both. Forever.
The Reckoning: Book One: The Anointed Angel Comes
Jeffrey Pierce - 2020
Demons rise and take possession of the slain. They hunt humanity, like an army of serial killers, exacting retribution for mankind's sins. A disparate group of survivors--soldiers and civilians from all the warring nations--bands together and tries to find sanctuary, while their pasts come to life and force them to face the reckoning for their sins.
The Red Chesterfield
Wayne Arthurson - 2019
While investigating a suspicious yard sale, M discovers a red chesterfield sitting in a ditch. Looking closer, M finds a running shoe-and a severed foot. Now M is involved in a murder investigation. Meanwhile, older brother K's work for a new political party begins to seem suspicious, while younger brother J navigates the complicated world of young-adulthood, and boss Rhonda demands more and more attention, M must navigate a world of Russian gangsters and neglected wives, biker gangs and suspicious coincidences. On top of everything else, M is determined to track down the owner of that red chesterfield and make sure they get a ticket. The Red Chesterfield is a delightful, unusual novel that upends the tropes and traditions of crime fiction while asking how far one person is willing to go to solve a crime, be it murder or the abandonment of a piece of furniture.
Good Citizens Need Not Fear: Stories
Maria Reva - 2020
So begins Reva's "darkly hilarious" (Anthony Doerr) intertwined narratives, nine stories that span the chaotic years leading up to and immediately following the fall of the Soviet Union. But even as the benighted denizens of 1933 Ivansk Street weather the official neglect of the increasingly powerless authorities, they devise ingenious ways to survive.In "Bone Music," an agoraphobic recluse survives by selling contraband LPs, mapping the vinyl grooves of illegal Western records into stolen X-ray film. A delusional secret service agent in "Letter of Apology" becomes convinced he's being covertly recruited to guard Lenin's tomb, just as his parents, not seen since he was a small child, supposedly were. Weaving the narratives together is the unforgettable, chameleon-like Zaya: a cleft-lipped orphan in "Little Rabbit," a beauty-pageant crasher in "Miss USSR," a sadist-for-hire to the Eastern Bloc's newly minted oligarchs in "Homecoming."
Appalachian Tales
Deanna Edens - 2019
Struggling to make a life for herself and her younger brother she is determined to forge her own way. When a mining disaster tragically strikes her hometown, her life, and heart, is changed forever. Appalachian Tales is a charming and engaging tale, filled with amusing yarns about marriage, illustrations of courage and an unsolved mystery. It's the story of two women who meet in 1982, elderly Nadia telling her stories to Dee, a young college student living in Charleston, West Virginia. The tales she tells encompasses tragic events, such as the Benwood Mine Disaster, bigotry, and the disappearance of the Sodder children. It is also a portrait of a life that was packed full of history, love, heartbreak, acts of kindness, bravery, joy and strange events that spans across decades. You will find yourself wishing to call on the fine folks of the Appalachians, grab a frosty glass of sweet tea, settle into a rocking chair, and discover why West Virginia is wild and yet splendidly wonderful.
Trouble at the Redstone (Leisure Western)
John D. Nesbitt - 2008
Will Dryden followed the trail of a missing man to the Redstone Ranch, where he will have to find the truth about three other murdered men.
Men I'm Not Married To
Dorothy Parker - 1922
Originally published as a companion book fellow with Algonquin Round Table member Franklin P. Adams' Women I'm Not Married to. The two books have since frequently been published in a single volume.
A Scattering Of Daisies
Susan Sallis - 1984
Will Rising had dragged himself from humble beginnings to his own small tailoring business in Gloucester - and on the way he'd fallen violently in love with Florence, refined, delicate, and wanting something better for her children. March was the eldest girl, the least loved, the plain, unattractive one who, as the family grew, became more and more the household drudge. But March, a strange, intelligent, unhappy child, had inherited some of her mother's dreams. March Rising was determined to break out of the round of poverty and hard work, to find wealth, and love, and happiness.
The Rag Tree: A Novel of Ireland
D.P. Costello - 2009
Costello's spellbinding novel, The Rag Tree, breathes dark, vivid life into Ireland's passionate legends. Crisp and sharp-witted, Costello's tale probes a modern Ireland torn between letting go of time-honored dreams and embracing the promises of a prosperous New Ireland. Even as they struggle against one another, the Irish Special Branch, the British Army, Scotland Yard, and the I.R.A. find themselves forced to ally against a common foe: The Rag Man. Mattie Joe Treacy is the Rag Man. Engrossed in a desperate quest to find his missing father, Mattie Joe is cursed-by the playboy's life of drink and carousing, by his family's staunch adherence to Ireland's old folk ways, and by a family curse hurled at his clan generations ago. The Curse of the O'Neills, invoked by an angry cleric against Mattie Joe's great-grandfather, declares that, "the eldest son will not survive the father." No Treacy son has since outlived his father, and Mattie Joe is next in line to die. Or is he?