Catalog Search Results
1) Swamplandia!
Author
Pub. Date
2011
Language
English
Appears on list
Description
This novel takes us to the swamps of the Florida Everglades, and introduces us to Ava Bigtree, an unforgettable young heroine. The Bigtree alligator wrestling dynasty is in decline, and Swamplandia!, their island home and gator wrestling theme park, formerly no. 1 in the region, is swiftly being encroached upon by a fearsome and sophisticated competitor called the World of Darkness. Ava's mother, the park's indomitable headliner, has just died; her...
Author
Language
English
Appears on these lists
Description
"In 1949 four Chinese women, recent immigrants to San Francisco, begin meeting to eat dim sum, play mahjong, and talk. United in shared unspeakable loss and hope, they call themselves the Joy Luck Club. With wit and sensitivity, Amy Tan's debut novel--now widely regarded as a modern classic--examines the sometimes painful, often tender, and always deep connection between these four women and their American-born daughters."--Publisher's description....
Author
Series
Language
English
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Description
"A beautiful edition of the groundbreaking classic novel, with a new introduction by award-winning writer Susan Choi. "Without question one of the two or three finest novels of the twentieth century. Woolf comments on the most pressing dramas of our human predicament: war, mortality, family, love." -Rick Moody, bestselling author of The Ice Storm. The enduring power of this iconic classic flows from the brilliance of its narrative technique and the...
Author
Series
Dave Robicheaux novels volume 11
Language
English
Appears on list
Description
Dave's search for his mother's killers leads him to the darker places in his past, and solving this case teaches him what it means to be his mother's son.
5) Housekeeping
Author
Language
English
Description
"A modern classic, Marilynne Robinson's Housekeeping is the story of Ruth and her younger sister, Lucille, who grow up haphazardly, first under the care of their competent grandmother, then of two comically bumbling great-aunts, and finally of Sylvie, the eccentric and remote sister of their dead mother. The family house is in the small town of Fingerbone on a glacial lake in the Far West, the same lake where their grandfather died in a spectacular...
Author
Language
English
Formats
Description
In a riveting new thriller from America's Queen of Suspense, a young woman is ensnared into returning to a place she had wanted to leave behind forever -- her childhood home. There, at the age of ten, Liza Barton had shot her mother, trying desperately to protect her from her estranged step-father, Ted Cartwright. Despite his claim that the shooting was a deliberate act, the Juvenile Court ruled the death an accident. Many people, however, agreed...
Author
Language
English
Description
Cassandra Edwards is a graduate student at Berkeley: gay, brilliant, nerve-racked, miserable. At the beginning of this novel, she drives back to her family ranch in the foothills of the Sierras to attend the wedding of her identical twin, Judith, to a nice young doctor from Connecticut. Cassandra, however, is hell-bent on sabotaging the wedding.
Dorothy Baker’s entrancing tragicomic novella follows an unpredictable course of events...
Dorothy Baker’s entrancing tragicomic novella follows an unpredictable course of events...
Author
Language
English
Description
"In a delightful new romantic comedy from Elinor Lipman, one woman's trash becomes another woman's treasure, with deliriously entertaining results. Daphne Maritch doesn't quite know what to make of the heavily annotated high school yearbook she inherits from her mother, who held this relic dear. Too dear.The late June Winter Maritch was the teacher to whom the class of '69 had dedicated its yearbook, and in turn she went on to attend every reunion,...
Author
Series
Modern library paperbacks volume P14
Language
English
Description
In this semi-autobiographical coming-of-age novel, thirteen-year-old Joel Knox, after losing his mother, is sent from New Orleans to live with the father who abandoned him at birth. But when Joel arrives at Skully's Landing, the decaying mansion in rural Alabama, his father is nowhere to be found. Instead, Joel meets his morose stepmother, Amy, eccentric cousin Randolph, and a defiant little girl named Idabel, who soon offers Joel the love and approval...
Author
Series
Book of Lost Things volume 1
Language
English
Description
Mourning the loss of his mother, David finds comfort in the books she left behind. But soon the make-believe world of the books melds with David's reality, and the figments of his imagination become startlingly real.
Author
Language
English
Description
"A heartrending new novel from the Pulitzer Prize-winning and #1 New York Times best-selling author of The Overstory. "Richard Powers, whose novels combine the wonders of science with the marvels of art, astonishes us in different ways with each new book." -Heller McAlpin, NPR Books. The astrobiologist Theo Byrne searches for life throughout the cosmos while single-handedly raising his unusual nine-year-old, Robin, following the death of his wife....
12) The ghost writer
Author
Language
English
Formats
Description
What evil lies within a family's secret history? Timid, solitary librarian Gerard Freeman lives for just two things: his elusive pen pal, Alice, and a story he found hidden in his mother's drawer years ago. Written by his great-grandmother Viola, it hints at his mother's role in a sinister crime. And as he discovers more of Viola's chilling tales, he realizes that they might hold the key to finding Alice and unveiling his family's mystery. But upon...
13) Other birds
Author
Language
English
Description
"Down a narrow alley in the small coastal town of Mallow Island, South Carolina, lies a stunning cobblestone building comprised of five apartments. It's called The Dellawisp and it is named after the tiny turquoise birds who inhabit the building, alongside the human tenants, and imbue it with an air of magical secrecy. When Zoey Hennessey comes to claim her deceased mother's apartment at The Dellawisp, she meets her quirky, enigmatic neighbors, including...
Author
Language
English
Formats
Description
Margaret Maron is The New York Times best-selling author of the acclaimed Deborah Knott series of southern mysteries, including the novels Uncommon Clay and Slow Dollar. She has won the Edgar, Anthony, Agatha, Macavity, and American Mystery Awards. In a rare departure from the Knott series, Maron ratchets up the suspense in the dark and captivating stand-alone mystery, Last Lessons of Summer. Amy Stedman is the young heiress of a prosperous children's...
Author
Language
English
Description
"Ten months after her mother's death, the narrator of The Hero of This Book takes a trip to London. The city was a favorite of her mother's, and as the narrator wanders the streets, she finds herself reflecting on her mother's life and their relationship. Thoughts of the past meld with questions of the future: Back in New England, the family home is now up for sale, its considerable contents already winnowed. The narrator, a writer, recalls all that...
Author
Language
English
Appears on list
Description
"Gorgeously tactile and sweeping in historical and socio-political scope, Pushcart Prize-winner Madhuri Vijay's The Far Field follows a complicated flaneuse across the Indian subcontinent as she reckons with her past, her desires, and the tumultuous present. In the wake of her mother's death, Kalyani, a privileged and restless young woman from Bangalore, sets out for a remote Himalayan village in the troubled northern region of Kashmir. Certain that...
17) Rabbit cake
Author
Language
English
Description
Twelve-year-old Elvis Babbitt has a head for the facts: she knows science proves yellow is the happiest color, she knows a healthy male giraffe weighs about 3,000 pounds, and she knows that the naked mole rat is the longest living rodent. She knows she should plan to grieve her mother, who has recently drowned while sleepwalking, for exactly eighteen months. But there are things Elvis doesn't yet know--like how to keep her sister Lizzie from poisoning...
18) The perfect girl
Author
Language
English
Description
Zoe Maisey is a seventeen-year-old musical prodigy with a genius IQ. Three years ago, she was involved in a tragic incident that left three classmates deads. She served her time and now her mother, Maria, has resolved to keep that devastating fact tucked far away from their new beginning, hiding the past even from her new husband and demanding that Zoe do the same. Tonight Zoe is giving a recital that Maria has been planning for months. It needs to...
Author
Series
Christmas hope series volume 7
Language
English
Description
Gretchen Daniels has moved into an apartment with her two children to be closer to her mother. Melissa McCray, a young woman with few possessions and little personality, moves in next door. Then a message for Melissa brings the two women together in the shabby apartment of Melissa's dead mother. They find little worth saving except for a few photos and an unfinished note that sets Melissa on a path of forgiveness, hope, and redemption.
Author
Series
Language
English
Description
1629. A newly orphaned young girl named Mayken is bound for the Dutch East Indies on the Batavia, one of the greatest ships of the Dutch Golden Age. Curious and mischievous, Mayken spends the long journey going on misadventures above and below the deck, searching for a mythical monster. But the true monsters might be closer than she thinks. 1989. A lonely boy named Gil is sent to live off the coast of Western Australia among the seasonal fishing...
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