Faced with the absence of her brother, who's serving life in San Quentin, and hardened by her own experiences in lock-up, Mel sturggles to adjust to the harsh realities of life on the outside. She quickly discovers that freeedom is relative...she has no money, no prospects, no guidance. Forced to return to her mother's apartment in Marin County and take a job houling portable toilets, Mel finds herself drinking too much and hanging out with her old gang again. Haunted by glimpses of her own harrowing girlhood and of the mysterious circumstances that put her in prison in the first place, she slowly, bravely begins to forge a potential path toward redemption and escape.

    Jonathan Strahan) , which you can listen to [official url]. I love his narration; it’s heart-breaking. I grew up watching Reading Rainbow, so it was pretty awesome to grow up to write words that LeVar Burton read out loud!Reading time: 56:27

    Her next-door neighbor may have been the one to drag her out of the burning building that night, but it doesn’t exonerate him since he caused the fire. Not even when he shows up fourteen years later to help salvage her bakery.Jake Rowan may not have been able to save Emma’s brother from the fire, but at least he was able to save his own brother. By taking the fall and the punishment for him, Jake managed to protect his older brother’s future… but it cost him the girl of his dreams.Now Jake finds himself on Emma’s doorstep once again. Not to save her life this time, but to repair it. And more importantly, her heart, if she’ll let him.

    Harsh winds scour the rocky coastline. The villagers' lives are inseparable from nature and its enchantments.Verlyn Webbe, born with a wing for an arm, unfurls his feathers in defiance of past shame; Plum is snatched by a water bull and dragged to his lair; little Crab Skerry takes his first run through the gorse-maze; Madden sleepwalks through violent storms, haunted by horses and her father's wishes.As the tales of this island community interweave over the course of a generation, their earthy desires, resentments, idle gossip and painful losses create a staggeringly original world. Crackling with echoes of ancient folklore, but entirely, wonderfully, her own, Zoe Gilbert's Folk is a dark, beautiful and intoxicating debut.

    Living and working in Los Angeles, a young African-American woman finds herself torn between loyalty to her race and her commitment to a cause.

    As a member of a secret organization, he travels across the country creating strange works of art that leave communities mystified.He's always been alone; in fact, he prefers it. But when a dying farmer hires him in a last-ditch effort to bring publicity to a small Vermont town, Daniel finds himself at odds with his heart. It isn't long before he gets drawn into a family struggling to stitch itself back together, and the consequences will change his life forever.For readers seeking the warmth of The Readers of Broken Wheel Recommend blended with the creative spark of Rachel Joyce, The Fifteen Wonders of Daniel Green explores the unexplainable bonds of family, the everyday wonder of love, and the strange mysteries life provides that help humanity light up the dark.

    The attraction between them at first sight is immediately electric. When a storm ravages Potter Lake, and they're forced to share close quarters, they can no longer resist each other.But... now what? Evonne is on a mission to prove that she isn't the screwup that was sent home from Spelman College ten years ago. Taj is floundering, trying to tamp down a desire that can't be stifled. The last thing either of them wants is an emotional attachment to a temporary relationship.. but does it have to stay temporary?On a rainy night in Georgia, two hearts meet. They're never the same again. Grab this fun and funny small town Black romance in ebook, paperback (COMING SOON TO AUDIO!).

    Worry for a young girl in the Congo who rides the rapids to earn a crust of bread; and spy on Norse gods battling each other for survival in modern Manhattan. In her first short-story collection since Jigs & Reels, let Joanne Harris ensnare and delight you with the variety and inventiveness of her storytelling.

    At 18, he leaves his family for a home in the forest, learning to live off the land rather than his family's wealth. Elena flees a house of blood and mayhem, taking refuge in a monastery and later in the rustic village of Riviere-aux-Oies. One day, while walking in the woods, Elena hears the melody of a clarinet and comes across Roman, who calls himself Starling and whom Elena later renames Douglas, for the strongest and most spectacular of trees. Later a child named Rose is born. Fade to black. When the story takes up again, Douglas has returned to the forest, Rose is in the village under the care of others, and Elena is gone. From these disparate threads, Christine Eddie tenderly weaves a fable for our time and for all times. As the years pass, the story broadens to capture others in its elegant web - a doctor with a bruised heart, a pharmacist who may be a witch, and a teacher with dark secrets. Together they raise this child with the mysterious heritage, transforming this story into an ode to friendship and family, a sonnet on our relationship with nature, and an elegy to love and passion. The Douglas Notebooks was originally published in French as Les carnets de Douglas. This edition was translated by Sheila Fischman.

    They spend their time telling stories to the unborn baby, trying to pass on the lessons they've learned: tales of circuses and stargazing, selkie fishermen and domestic werewolves, child-eating witches and broken-toothed dragons. But each must keep their storytelling a secret from the other, as they've agreed to only ever tell the plain truth. Ruth tells her stories when Liska is at work, to a background of shrieking seabirds; Liska tells hers when Ruth is asleep, with the lighthouse sweeping its steady beam through the window. As their tales build and grow along with their child, Liska and Ruth realise that the truth lives in their stories, and they cannot hide from one another. A Portable Shelter is a beautifully produced collection of elegant, haunting short stories from one of Britain's most exciting new talents. Each story is accompanied by an illustration by award-winning artist Liz Myhill. Produced with the assistance of the Dr Gavin Wallace Fellowship.

    Hempel, fiercely admired by writers and reviewers, has a sterling reputation that is based on four very short collections of stories, roughly fifteen thousand stunning sentences, written over a period of nearly three decades. These are stories about people who make choices that seem inevitable, whose longings and misgivings evoke eternal human experience. With compassion, wit, and the acutest eye, Hempel observes the marriages, minor disasters, and moments of revelation in an uneasy America. When "Reasons to Live, " Hempel's first collection, was published in 1985, readers encountered a pitch-perfect voice in fiction and an unsettling assessment of the culture. That collection includes "San Francisco," which Alan Cheuse in "The Chicago Tribune" called "arguably the finest short story composed by any living writer." In "At the Gates of the Animal Kingdom, " her second collection, frequently compared to the work of Raymond Carver, Hempel refined and developed her unique grace and style and her unerring instinct for the moment that defines a character. Also included here, in their entirety, are the collections "Tumble Home" and "The Dog of the Marriage." As Rick Moody says of the title novella in Tumble Home, "the leap in mastery, in seriousness, and sheer literary purpose was inspiring to behold.... And yet," he continues, ""The Dog of the Marriage, " the fourth collection, is even better than the other three...a triumph, in fact." "The Collected Stories of Amy Hempel" is the perfect opportunity for readers of contemporary American fiction to catch up to one of its masters. Moody's passionate and illuminating introduction celebrates both the appeal and the importance of Hempel's work.

    But sifting through the overwhelming collection of figurines, outdated appliances and dusty books, she finds something that captures her attention: a yellowed envelope of old photographs. In one, taken almost a century ago, a beautiful woman is seated with a young boy who looks uncannily like Erin's five-year-old autistic son, Will. Intrigued, Erin looks further into her family's history, and discovers parallels to her present day life. The boy in the picture, John Cartwright, was deaf. He and his mother, Amelia, are presumed to have drowned together in Geneva Lake, beside Amelia's family home. Named for the butterflies that flocked to its lush gardens, Monarch Manor still stands, though the once-grand Queen Anne house is now in ruins, slated for demolition. Seeking respite from her own exhausting battle to get the best care for Will, Erin delves even deeper into the past-unearthing a story that is both heartbreaking and surprising.Weaving Erin's and Amelia's narratives together, Maureen Leurck creates an unforgettable and moving novel of sacrifice and hope, and the way love between a parent and child can transform them both.Praise for Maureen Leurck's Cicada Summer"Rich with believable characters and an evocative setting, Leurck's novel is a gem." -Publishers Weekly"Leurck has crafted a perfect summertime story of love, loss, and second chances. . . . Readers of Elin Hilderbrand and Nancy Thayer will enjoy this beach read." -Booklist"A captivating novel about the power of redemption." -Jen Lancaster, New York Times bestselling author

    Homes exposes the heart of an uneasy America in her new collection - exploring our attachments to each other through characters who aren't quite who they hoped to become, though there is no one else they can be.In A Prize for Every Player, a man is nominated to run for president by the customers of a big box store, while he and his family do their weekly shopping. At a conference on genocide(s) in the title story, old friends rediscover themselves and one another - finding spiritual and physical comfort in ancient traditions. And in Hello Everybody and She Got Away, Homes revisits a Los Angeles family obsessed with the surfaces and frightened of what lives below.In the nearly three decades since her seminal debut collection The Safety of Objects, Homes has been celebrated by readers and critics alike as one of our boldest and most original writers, acclaimed for her psychological accuracy and "satire so close to the truth it's terrifying" (Ali Smith). Her first book since the Women's Prize-winning May We Be Forgiven, Days of Awe is a major new addition to her body of visionary, fearless, outrageously funny work.Brother on Sunday --Whose story is it, and why is it always on her mind? --Hello everybody --All is good except for the rain --National cage bird show --Your mother was a fish --Last good time --Be mine --A prize for every player --Omega point --She got away

    In other stories, a young woman battles with the cancers draining her body and her family; menacing undercurrents among a group of teenagers explode in violence on a winter night; a little girl tears through a house like a tornado, driving her babysitter to the brink; and couples feel out the jagged edges of connection, comfort, and cruelty.One of the breakout literary stars of 2020, Brandon Taylor has been hailed by Roxane Gay as "a writer who wields his craft in absolutely unforgettable ways." With Filthy Animals he renews and expands on the promise made in Real Life, training his precise and unsentimental gaze on the tensions among friends and family, lovers and others. Psychologically taut and quietly devastating, Filthy Animals is a tender portrait of the fierce longing for intimacy, the lingering presence of pain, and the desire for love in a world that seems, more often than not, to withhold it.

    In “The Cemetery for Lost Faces,” two orphans translate their grief into taxidermy, artfully arresting the passage of time. The anchoring novella, “The Unfinished World,” unfurls a surprising love story between a free and adventurous young woman and a dashing filmmaker burdened by a mysterious family. Sparks’s stories—populated with sculptors, librarians, astronauts, and warriors—form a veritable cabinet of curiosities. Mythical, bizarre, and deeply moving, The Unfinished World and Other Stories heralds the arrival of a major writer and illuminates the search for a brief encounter with the extraordinary.