Book picks similar to
The Metcalfe Family Album: The Unforgettable Saga of an American Family by Sallyann J. Murphey
favorites
epistolary
fiction
general
The Pride of Polly Perkins
Joan Jonker - 1997
As Tommy's stay in hospital turns from weeks into months, Polly's mother, Ada, becomes increasingly anxious as to how she will make ends meet. In an attempt to help out, Polly takes a job as a flowerseller, and when she sells a buttonhole to Charles Denholme, a member of the Liverpool gentry, she sets in motion a chain of events that changes her life forever...
Lilac Girls
Martha Hall Kelly - 2016
But Caroline’s world is forever changed when Hitler’s army invades Poland in September 1939—and then sets its sights on France. An ocean away from Caroline, Kasia Kuzmerick, a Polish teenager, senses her carefree youth disappearing as she is drawn deeper into her role as courier for the underground resistance movement. In a tense atmosphere of watchful eyes and suspecting neighbors, one false move can have dire consequences. For the ambitious young German doctor, Herta Oberheuser, an ad for a government medical position seems her ticket out of a desolate life. Once hired, though, she finds herself trapped in a male-dominated realm of Nazi secrets and power. The lives of these three women are set on a collision course when the unthinkable happens and Kasia is sent to Ravensbrück, the notorious Nazi concentration camp for women. Their stories cross continents—from New York to Paris, Germany, and Poland—as Caroline and Kasia strive to bring justice to those whom history has forgotten.
A Tangled Mercy
Joy Jordan-Lake - 2017
Haunted by unanswered questions and her own uncertain future, she flees to Charleston, South Carolina, the place where her parents met, convinced it holds the key to understanding her fractured family and saving her career in academia. Kate is determined to unearth groundbreaking information on a failed 1822 slave revolt—the subject of her mother’s own research.Nearly two centuries earlier, Tom Russell, a gifted blacksmith and slave, grappled with a terrible choice: arm the uprising spearheaded by members of the fiercely independent African Methodist Episcopal Church or keep his own neck out of the noose and protect the woman he loves.Kate’s attempts to discover what drove her mother’s dangerous obsession with Charleston’s tumultuous history are derailed by a horrific massacre in the very same landmark church. In the unimaginable aftermath, Kate discovers a family she never knew existed as the city unites with a powerful message of hope and forgiveness for the world.
The Property
Rutu Modan - 2013
As they get to know modern Warsaw, Regina is forced to recall difficult things about her past, and Mica begins to wonder if maybe their reasons for coming aren’t a little different than what her grandmother led her to believe.
Mamma's Boarding House
John D. Fitzgerald - 1958
A scarce Fitzgerald title.
Cape Fear Rising
Philip Gerard - 1994
Many of the city's lawyers, businessmen, and other professionals were black, as were all the tradesmen and stevedores. The black community outnumbered the white community by more than two to one. But the white civic leaders, many descended from the antebellum aristocracy, did not consider this progress. They looked around and saw working class white citizens out of jobs. They heard black citizens addressing white neighbors "in the familiar." They hated the fact that local government was run by Republican "Fusionists" sympathetic to the black majority. Rumors began to fly. The newspaper office turned into an arsenal. Secret societies espousing white supremacy were formed. Isolated incidents occurred: a shot was fired through a streetcar bearing white passengers, a black cemetery was desecrated. This incendiary atmosphere was inflamed further by public speeches from an ex-Confederate colonel and a firebrand black preacher. One morning in November, the almost inevitable gunfire began. By the time order was restored, many of the city's most visible black leaders had been literally put on trains and told to leave town, hundreds of black citizens were forced to hide out in the city's cemetery or the nearby swamps to avoid massacre, and dozens of victims lay dead. Based on actual events, Cape Fear Rising tells a story of one city's racial nightmare--a nightmare that was repeated throughout the South at the turn of the century. Although told as fiction, the core of this novel strikes at the heart of racial strife in America.Philip Gerard is the author of five novels and eight books of nonfiction, including Down the Wild Cape Fear: A River Journey Through the Heart of North Carolina and The Patron Saint of Dreams, winner of the 2012 North American Gold Medal in Essay/Creative Nonfiction from The Independent Publisher."[A] complex and convincing . . . story [that] smartly limns the tangled combination of economic, social and visceral elements that led Wilmington to violence . . . " --Publishers Weekly
Monet: Itinerant of Light
Salva Rubio - 2017
From the Salon des Refuses (“Salon of the Rejected”) and many struggling years without recognition, money, and yet a family to raise, all the way to great success, critically and financially, Monet pursued insistently one vision: catching the light in painting, refusing to compromise on this ethereal pursuit. It cost him dearly but he was a beacon for his contemporaries. We discover in this comics biography how he came to this vision as well as his turbulent life pursuing it.
Cold Mountain: The Journey from Book to Film
Anthony Minghella - 2003
Ripley. Coming from Miramax Films in December 2003, Cold Mountain stars Jude Law, Nicole Kidman, Renée Zellweger, Natalie Portman, Giovanni Ribisi and Philip Seymour Hoffman. Directed by Academy Award®-winner Anthony Minghella who also wrote the screenplay, Cold Mountain is based on Charles Frazier's best-selling Civil War novel of the same name and tells the story of Inman (Law), a wounded confederate soldier who is on a perilous journey home to his mountain community, hoping to reunite with his pre-war sweetheart, Ada (Kidman). In his absence, Ada struggles to survive, and revive her father's farm with the help of intrepid young drifter Ruby (Zellweger).The Newmarket Pictorial Moviebook is annotated with illustrations, movie stills, production design sketches keyed to the screenplay, costume designs, sidebars, and commentary from the cast and crew.
West of the Wall
Marcia Preston - 2008
Only an act of faith can reunite them. Trudy Hulst has no idea if her husband survived his attempted escape past the newly constructed Berlin Wall, but she knows too well the consequences of his actions. Now branded the wife of a defector, she faces a life in prison. With no real choice, she is forced to follow, praying she can find a way to claim their child once she’s in West Berlin. Surviving her harrowing break for freedom, Trudy learns the truth about her husband. Left to wander the wall like a ghost, she lives for brief glimpses of her son, stranded behind barbed wire and surrounded by armed soldiers. And Trudy knows she will do anything to get him back.
The Broken Circle: A Memoir of Escaping Afghanistan
Enjeela Ahmadi-Miller - 2019
But after her mother, unsettled by growing political unrest, leaves for medical treatment in India, the civil war intensifies, changing young Enjeela’s life forever. Amid the rumble of invading Soviet tanks, Enjeela and her family are thrust into chaos and fear when it becomes clear that her mother will not be coming home.Thus begins an epic, reckless, and terrifying five-year journey of escape for Enjeela, her siblings, and their father to reconnect with her mother. In navigating the dangers ahead of them, and in looking back at the wilderness of her homeland, Enjeela discovers the spiritual and physical strength to find hope in the most desperate of circumstances.A heart-stopping memoir of a girl shaken by the brutalities of war and empowered by the will to survive, The Broken Circle brilliantly illustrates that family is not defined by the borders of a country but by the bonds of the heart.
The Russians: The Crown and the Crucible / A House Divided / Travail and Triumph / Heirs of the Motherland / The Dawning of Deliverance
Michael R. Phillips - 1991
Compelling characters, fluid, thrilling reading, and a strong sense of history set these books apart in the minds of more than a half million fans who’ve loved them. Join Phillips and Pella again or for the first time as peasant and princess alike face the prospect of their beloved Russia being torn apart. Conflict within and without brews as thoughts of revolution stirs the masses and war looms in the Balkans. The lives of the characters will be forever changed…and so will yours.
Cinnamon and Gunpowder
Eli Brown - 2013
He will be spared, she tells him, as long as he puts exquisite food in front of her every Sunday without fail.To appease the red-haired captain, Wedgwood gets cracking with the meager supplies on board. His first triumph at sea is actual bread, made from a sourdough starter that he leavens in a tin under his shirt throughout a roaring battle, as men are cutlassed all around him. Soon he’s making tea-smoked eel and brewing pineapple-banana cider.But Mabbot—who exerts a curious draw on the chef—is under siege. Hunted by a deadly privateer and plagued by a saboteur hidden on her ship, she pushes her crew past exhaustion in her search for the notorious Brass Fox. As Wedgwood begins to sense a method to Mabbot’s madness, he must rely on the bizarre crewmembers he once feared: Mr. Apples, the fearsome giant who loves to knit; Feng and Bai, martial arts masters sworn to defend their captain; and Joshua, the deaf cabin boy who becomes the son Wedgwood never had.Cinnamon and Gunpowder is a swashbuckling epicure’s adventure simmered over a surprisingly touching love story—with a dash of the strangest, most delightful cookbook never written. Eli Brown has crafted a uniquely entertaining novel full of adventure: the Scheherazade story turned on its head, at sea, with food.
Yellow Rose Trilogy: Every Little Thing About You / A Texas Sky / City Girl
Lori Wick - 2002
Operation Kingfisher (World War Two Historical Saga Novels)
Hilary Green - 2013
Desperate to escape, the two teenagers embark on a perilous journey back to England to the safety of their grandparents.But there are eyes everywhere.Luke and Christine band together with fugitive Allied airmen, thinking they will keep them safe and help them on their treacherous journey.But their new partnership could be putting them in more danger than they realize. Especially when there are hostile forces at work determined to scupper any plans to get the teenagers and airmen safely back to England.With secret operations mounting against the enemy, there is one path which remains unguarded: a risky escape route via the canals.Luke and Christine take refuge on a canal barge and find themselves immersed in the complex Operation Kingfisher.Can two teenagers make it across occupied France in one piece? Or will betrayal put them and the lives of others at great risk?