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Literature Companion: Like Water for Chocolate


History World - 2014
    Pedro is her lover, but she continues to long her entire life to marry him. Unfortunately, they are never married because Tita’s mother upholds the family tradition of the youngest daughter not marrying but taking care of her mother until the mother passes away. Tita remains unmarried, taking care of her mother. While cooking, she is able to express what she feels.Magical realism has been very effectively employed by the author to combine the ordinary with the supernatural.Literature Companion: Like Water for ChocolateCopyrightChapter One: IntroductionChapter Two: Plot OverviewChapter Three: CharactersChapter Four: Complete SummaryChapter Five: Critical Analysis

East of Eden


John Steinbeck - 1952
    Set in the rich farmland of California’s Salinas Valley, this sprawling and often brutal novel follows the intertwined destinies of two families—the Trasks and the Hamiltons—whose generations helplessly reenact the fall of Adam and Eve and the poisonous rivalry of Cain and Abel.Adam Trask came to California from the East to farm and raise his family on the new rich land. But the birth of his twins, Cal and Aaron, brings his wife to the brink of madness, and Adam is left alone to raise his boys to manhood. One boy thrives nurtured by the love of all those around him; the other grows up in loneliness enveloped by a mysterious darkness.First published in 1952, East of Eden is the work in which Steinbeck created his most mesmerizing characters and explored his most enduring themes: the mystery of identity, the inexplicability of love, and the murderous consequences of love's absence. A masterpiece of Steinbeck's later years, East of Eden is a powerful and vastly ambitious novel that is at once a family saga and a modern retelling of the Book of Genesis.

Miss Bishop


Bess Streeter Aldrich - 1933
    Her abundant energy and devotion to learning made her a superior student, then a gifted teacher. But her smile concealed more than one youthful tragedy, and tragedy did not stop with youth. A 1941 movie, Cheers for Miss Bishop, was based on the novel.

The Gown of Glory


Agnes Sligh Turnbull - 1952
    Instead he is there for the long haul, bringing up his three children, and doing his best for his small community

The Sheriff's Son


William MacLeod Raine - 1917
    You may find it for free on the web. Purchase of the Kindle edition includes wireless delivery.

The Secret Life of Bees


Sue Monk Kidd - 2001
    When Lily's fierce-hearted black "stand-in mother," Rosaleen, insults three of the deepest racists in town, Lily decides to spring them both free. They escape to Tiburon, South Carolina--a town that holds the secret to her mother's past. Taken in by an eccentric trio of black beekeeping sisters, Lily is introduced to their mesmerizing world of bees and honey, and the Black Madonna. This is a remarkable novel about divine female power, a story women will share and pass on to their daughters for years to come.

Memoirs of a Geisha


Arthur Golden - 1997
    It is a unique and triumphant work of fiction - at once romantic, erotic, suspenseful - and completely unforgettable.

Einstein's Dreams


Alan Lightman - 1992
    As the defiant but sensitive young genius is creating his theory of relativity, a new conception of time, he imagines many possible worlds. In one, time is circular, so that people are fated to repeat triumphs and failures over and over. In another, there is a place where time stands still, visited by lovers and parents clinging to their children. In another, time is a nightingale, sometimes trapped by a bell jar.Now translated into thirty languages, Einstein’s Dreams has inspired playwrights, dancers, musicians, and painters all over the world. In poetic vignettes, it explores the connections between science and art, the process of creativity, and ultimately the fragility of human existence.

Kings Row


Henry Bellamann - 1940
    No printings but KINGDOM HOUSE editions have a biographical and historical illustrated introduction. Contains map, town photographs, and stills and background on the Ronald Reagan film.

The Poisonwood Bible


Barbara Kingsolver - 1998
    They carry with them everything they believe they will need from home, but soon find that all of it -- from garden seeds to Scripture -- is calamitously transformed on African soil. What follows is a suspenseful epic of one family's tragic undoing and remarkable reconstruction over the course of three decades in postcolonial Africa.

A Tree Grows in Brooklyn


Betty Smith - 1943
    The story of young, sensitive, and idealistic Francie Nolan and her bittersweet formative years in the slums of Williamsburg has enchanted and inspired millions of readers for more than sixty years. By turns overwhelming, sublime, heartbreaking, and uplifting, the daily experiences of the unforgettable Nolans are raw with honesty and tenderly threaded with family connectedness -- in a work of literary art that brilliantly captures a unique time and place as well as incredibly rich moments of universal experience.

Angels & Demons


Dan Brown - 2000
    What he discovers is unimaginable: a deadly vendetta against the Catholic Church by a centuries-old underground organization -- the Illuminati. In a desperate race to save the Vatican from a powerful time bomb, Langdon joins forces in Rome with the beautiful and mysterious scientist Vittoria Vetra. Together they embark on a frantic hunt through sealed crypts, dangerous catacombs, and deserted cathedrals, and into the depths of the most secretive vault on earth...the long-forgotten Illuminati lair.(back cover)

Dearly Beloved


Anne Morrow Lindbergh - 1962
    The ceremony is a great moment during which the “gathered together” survey not just this couple, this occasion, but their own lives, hopes, and fears. As the family and guests follow the familiar marriage service, they are stirred to new insights—on love, on marriage, and on all the stages of development involved. For the young and eager bridesmaid and best man, marriage still lies ahead; but for the mothers of the bride and groom, and for friends and relatives, the sight of the young couple and the words of the minister evoke more troubling thoughts and deeper questions. Anne Morrow Lindbergh wisely chose the framework of a wedding as a meditation on togetherness to contrast the questions she contemplated on solitude in her bestselling classic Gift from the Sea. The novel's structure also gave her scope for her reflections—some of them autobiographical—and intuitions about the most crucial of human relationships, reflections she calls “a theme and variations.” This classic book, first published in 1962 and long out of print, illuminates the truths behind marriage, not with easy optimism, but with perception, compassion, candor, and courage.

Ernest Hemingway's the Old Man and the Sea


Laurie E. Rozakis - 1997
    Each volume helps the reader to encounter the original more fully by placing it in historical context, focusing on the important aspects of the text and posing key questions.

When a Man's a Man


Harold Bell Wright - 1916
    . . . Although mostly forgotten or ignored after the middle of the 20th century.