His beautifully narrated, heartbreaking nonfiction account of two black boys struggling to grow up in a Chicago public housing complex spent eight weeks on The New York Times bestseller list, was a made-for-television movie starring and produced by Oprah Winfrey, won many distinguished awards, and sparked a continuing national debate on the lives of inner-city children.In The Other Side of the River, his eagerly awaited new book, Kotlowitz takes us to southern Michigan. Here, separated by the St. Joseph River, are two towns, St. Joseph and Benton Harbor. Geographically close, they are worlds apart, a living metaphor for America's racial divisions: St. Joseph is a prosperous lakeshore community and ninety-five percent white, while Benton Harbor is impoverished and ninety-two percent black. When the body of a black teenaged boy from Benton Harbor is found in the river, unhealed wounds and suspicions between the two towns' populations surface as well. The investigation into the young man's death becomes, inevitably, a screen on which each town projects their resentments and fears.The Other Side of the River sensitively portrays the lives and hopes of the towns' citizens as they wrestle with this mystery--and reveals the attitudes and misperceptions that undermine race relations throughout America. In this gripping and ultimately profound book, Alex Kotlowitz proves why he is one of this country's foremost writers on the ever explosive issue of race.From the Hardcover edition.

    Together they forge an unlikely friendship, but their nascent hopes for a brighter future are tested when they are chosen for a once-in-a-lifetime honor: taking part in the creation of Princess Elizabeth’s wedding gown.Toronto, 2016: More than half a century later, Heather Mackenzie seeks to unravel the mystery of a set of embroidered flowers, a legacy from her late grandmother. How did her beloved Nan, a woman who never spoke of her old life in Britain, come to possess the priceless embroideries that so closely resemble the motifs on the stunning gown worn by Queen Elizabeth II at her wedding almost seventy years before? And what was her Nan’s connection to the celebrated textile artist and holocaust survivor Miriam Dassin?With The Gown, Jennifer Robson takes us inside the workrooms where one of the most famous wedding gowns in history was created. Balancing behind-the-scenes details with a sweeping portrait of a society left reeling by the calamitous costs of victory, she introduces readers to three unforgettable heroines, their points of view alternating and intersecting throughout its pages, whose lives are woven together by the pain of survival, the bonds of friendship, and the redemptive power of love.

    But when she loses her job after a botched investigation, she suddenly finds herself with nothing but time.At her great-aunt's 150-year-old farmhouse, Elizabeth uncovers a series of mysterious items, locked doors, and hidden graves. As she searches for answers to the riddles around her, the remarkable stories of two women who lived in this very house emerge as testaments to love, resilience, and courage in the face of war, racism, and misunderstanding. And as Elizabeth soon discovers, the past is never as past as we might like to think.Debut novelist Erin Bartels takes readers on an emotional journey through time--from the volatile streets of 1960s Detroit to the Underground Railroad during the Civil War--to uncover the past, confront the seeds of hatred, and discover where love goes to hide.

    She learns that her beloved father died a couple of days earlier and that he left her his estate. She learns also that it was his wish that she marry Andrew McAllister, the good-looking younger son from a neighbouring plantation. Unwilling to commit to a wedding for which she doesn’t feel ready, Charlotte pleads with Dan Fitzgerald, the assistant manager of Sundar, to teach her how to run the plantation while she gets to know Andrew. Although reluctant as he knew that a woman would never be accepted as manager by the local merchants and workers, Dan agrees. Charlotte’s chaperone on the journey from England, Ada Eastman, who during the long voyage, has become a friend, has journeyed to Darjeeling to marry Harry Banning, the owner of a neighbouring tea garden. When Ada marries Harry, she’s determined to be a loyal and faithful wife. And to be a good friend to Charlotte. And nothing, but nothing, was going to stand in the way of that.

    One secret. Will they be able to keep it under wraps?It was a stormy evening in 1920s London. When newly qualified almoner, Alice, stepped into the home of Charlotte, a terrified teenager who had just given birth out of wedlock, she did not expect to make a pact that would change her life forever. Thrown into secrecy after an unexpected turn, Alice was determined to keep bewildered Charlotte and her newborn baby safe. But when a threatening note appeared, she realised that Charlotte may need more protection than she first thought. But from who?Based on extensive research into the archive material held at the London Metropolitan Archives, and enriched with lively social history and excerpts from newspaper articles, LETTERS FROM ALICE is a gripping and deeply moving tale, which brings the colourful world of 1920s London to life. Full of grit, mystery and hope, it will have readers enthralled from the very first page.

    She has depicted in this story the importance of relationships and love in human’s life. It is the internal peace and affection of our relationships which keeps us going all the way. Whenever there is any kind of distress in these relationships, we cannot keep ourselves composed and result is a compete turmoil. It is because, human, whether a man or a women, is a social entity who can never ever live on his own, in isolation. This story is truly a debut psychological suspenseful narrative that will everlastingly transform the way you look and imagine the life of other people. It is an interwoven and complex thriller having variable themes of domestic violence, abuse and drug addiction. This story of slow disintegration of a woman's life after her husband left her for a new mistress. The breakup further worsened her drinking problem which made her lose her job. Now the girl, Rachel Watson, is reduced to commuting everyday on the train to and from London as she pretends to her friends and family that she still has a job. In order to escape the melancholy, she drinks to forget what had happened. Rachel created a fantasy involving a couple living in of the houses along the railroad track. She gave them names and imagines they have a perfect life. She envy's that it should had been her and her husband. All of a sudden things she never expected happened, and turned her world upside down. Read more to find out. You Will Also Get.. Key Analysis Character Analysis Detailed Plot Author's Information Bonus Information So Much More! Available on PC, Mac, Kindle, Tablets, Iphones & Androids ©2015 All Rights Reserved

    When his father for the first time finally tells the story of the horrific disaster he has carried with him so long, it leads the two men to reconsider each other.Meanwhile, Noah's own struggle to make a life with an absent father has found its real reward in his relationship with his sagacious wife, Natalie, whose complications with infertility issues have marked her husband's life in ways he only fully realizes as the reconciliation with his father takes shape.Peter Geye has delivered an archetypal story of a father and son, of the tug and pull of family bonds, of Norwegian immigrant culture, of dramatic shipwrecks and the business and adventure of Great Lakes shipping in a setting that simply casts a spell over the characters as well as the reader.

     What happens when a white girl flirts with the color lines and crosses the border into gang territory, where the bullets are in part real and the rules cannot be broken? JLove tells this incredible story inspired by her own remarkable life. Amber, a fearless white girl, has a passion for rap lyrics and an addiction to graffiti, but her journey begins when she becomes immersed in the power and grind of gang life after holding a gun to an innocent man's head during a robbery. That White Girl is a sharp and candid coming-of-age story, with hip-hop as its backdrop, that explores a young woman's struggles and triumphs as she crosses boundaries, discovers her own limits, and finds a new way to express herself in a world divided into black and white.

    1921. Yacobo Levi, an intellectual dreamer, works in the family bookshop. Angelo Ghione, a contadino, makes good wine by singing to the grapes. Lifetime best friends, their Jewish and Catholic families live side by side amidst a backdrop of village communal life, Etruscan tales and the growth of Benito Mussolini. Born on the same day, their children grow up and fall in love. When the 1938 racial laws are passed, the love between Bella and Rico thrives amidst and perhaps because of the fear and uncertainty. When Angelo discovers their liaison he suggests they marry but life is complicated and tensions simmer beneath the surface of love and friendship. When war is declared on the day of Bella's wedding to Michele a fellow Jew, the peaceful village they live in is torn apart, and the Levis find themselves displaced and fighting for their lives. Will life ever be the same again?The Tears of Monterini is a story of love and betrayal, loyalty and friendship. Inspired by true events in Tuscany and Emilia-Romagna, this beautifully written debut will appeal to readers interested in history, Italy, romance, family dynamics and conflict.

    In setting up his household he took Tobias Lear, his celebrated secretary, and nine slaves, including Ona Judge, about which little has been written. As he grew accustomed to Northern ways, there was one change he couldn’t get his arms around: Pennsylvania law required enslaved people be set free after six months of residency in the state. Rather than comply, Washington decided to circumvent the law. Every six months he sent the slaves back down south just as the clock was about to expire.Though Ona Judge lived a life of relative comfort, the few pleasantries she was afforded were nothing compared to freedom, a glimpse of which she encountered first-hand in Philadelphia. So, when the opportunity presented itself one clear and pleasant spring day in Philadelphia, Judge left everything she knew to escape to New England. Yet freedom would not come without its costs.At just twenty-two-years-old, Ona became the subject of an intense manhunt led by George Washington, who used his political and personal contacts to recapture his property.Impeccably researched, historian Erica Armstrong Dunbar weaves a powerful tale and offers fascinating new scholarship on how one young woman risked it all to gain freedom from the famous founding father.

    The setting is Words, Wisconsin, an anonymous town of only a few hundred people. But under its sleepy surface, life rages. Cora and Graham guard their dairy farm, and family, from the wicked schemes of their milk co-op. Lifelong paraplegic Olivia suddenly starts to walk, only to find herself crippled by her fury toward her sister and caretaker, Violet. Recently retired Rusty finds a cougar living in his haymow, dredging up haunting childhood memories. Winifred becomes pastor of the Friends church and stumbles on enlightenment in a very unlikely place. And Julia Montgomery, both private and gregarious, instigates a series of events that threatens the town's solitude and doggedly suspicious ways. Driftless finds the author's powers undiminished in this unforgettable story that evokes a small-town America previously unmapped, and the damaged denizens who must make their way through it.

    The first book followed a few of the black converts who knew Joseph Smith personally, including Elijah Abel, who received the priesthood with Smith's knowledge and approval, and Jane Manning James, who lived as a family member in the Smith home. The second novel picks up their story for the Mormon trek west to the Salt Lake Valley under Brigham Young's leadership, and also chronicles the Civil War and the growing emigrations to California. The novel succeeds not only in opening a door on the early black Mormon experience; it also places that experience within the larger context of national race relations. Readers will get refresher courses on Dred Scott, Civil War politics, slave auctions, lynch mobs, blackface minstrelsy and more. One of the Mormon authors (Gray) is African-American, and his own ancestors figure in the novels. The story seems driven more by the historical record than by the need for a smooth plot, as evidenced by the detailed historical notes at the end of every chapter. Although these may distract readers seeking easy escapist fiction, they lend the novel weight and credibility. Given how little is known of early black converts to Mormonism and of their experiences living in Utah, this trilogy is a treasure. It is a badly needed history lesson coated with a layer of imagination a combination that has proved enormously popular in the works of Gerald Lund.

    Don't miss this gripping memoir.Foreign correspondent Neely Tucker and his wife, Vita, arrived in Zimbabwe in 1997. After witnessing firsthand the devastating consequences of AIDS on the population, especially the children, the couple started volunteering at an orphanage that was desperately underfunded and short-staffed. One afternoon, a critically ill infant was brought to the orphanage from a village outside the city. She’d been left to die in a field on the day she was born, abandoned in the tall brown grass that covers the highlands of Zimbabwe in the dry season. After a near-death hospital stay, and under strict doctor’s orders, the ailing child was entrusted to the care of Tucker and Vita. Within weeks Chipo, the girl-child whose name means gift, would come to mean everything to them.Still an active correspondent, Tucker crisscrossed the continent, filing stories about the uprisings in the Congo, the civil war in Sierra Leone, and the postgenocidal conflict in Rwanda. He witnessed heartbreaking scenes of devastation and violence, steeling him further to take a personal role in helping anywhere he could. At home in Harare, Vita was nursing Chipo back to health. Soon she and Tucker decided to alter their lives forever—they would adopt Chipo. That decision challenged an unspoken social norm—that foreigners should never adopt Zimbabwean children.Raised in rural Mississippi in the sixties and seventies, Tucker was familiar with the mores associated with and dictated by race. His wife, a savvy black woman whose father escaped the Jim Crow South for a new life in the industrial North, would not be deterred in her resolve to welcome Chipo into their loving family.As if their situation wasn’t tenuous enough, Zimbabwe President Robert Mugabe was stirring up national fervor against foreigners, especially journalists, abroad and at home. At its peak, his antagonizing branded all foreign journalists personae non grata. For Tucker, the only full-time American correspondent in Zimbabwe, the declaration was a direct threat to his life and his wife’s safety, and an ultimatum to their decision to adopt the child who had already become their only daughter.Against a background of war, terrorism, disease, and unbearable uncertainty about the future, Chipo’s story emerges as an inspiring testament to the miracles that love—and dogged determination—can sometimes achieve. Gripping, heartbreaking, and triumphant, this family memoir will resonate throughout the ages.

    It will leave you breathless." --Walter Isaacson, author of Leonardo da Vinci, Steve Jobs, and other bestselling biographies.The Great Michigan Read for 2013-14. A Washington Post Best Book, 2009. A 2010 Michigan Notable Book.Beth Luxenberg was an only child, or so her son Steve believed. But secrets have a way of working free of their keepers, as this true story reveals. Approaching her 80th birthday, Steve's mother told a doctor that she had a disabled sister, without saying that she had always pretended that she was an only child. When Steve learned of his mother's slip, he was mystified. If his mom had a sibling, why had her existence been resolutely concealed for decades? Following the trail took Steve to Depression-era Detroit and tsarist Russia, the Holocaust in Ukraine and the Philippine war zone. Fascinating human interest; a real-life whodunit.Beautifully complex, raw and revealing.” -- Kirkus Reviews (starred review)A wise, affecting new memoir of family secrets and posthumous absolution. . . a poignant investigative exercise, full of empathy and sorrowful truth." -- The Washington Post