The First Book of Calamity Leek PDF Download

Author: Paula Lichtarowicz
Publisher: Flatiron Books
ISBN: 1250087910
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 320

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Book Description
"WONDERFULLY STRANGE." --Mark Haddon A beguiling, irresistibly immersive debut novel about sixteen sisters in a walled garden, and what happens to their carefully constructed world when one girl starts asking questions about life outside. Fourteen-year-old Calamity Leek and her sisters spend their days tending white roses and memorizing the lessons in Aunty’s Appendix, a multi-volume compendium of show tunes, beauty regimens, and twisted creation myths. Calamity knows the Appendix front to back, and she is Aunty’s favorite, destined for particular greatness. But when her restless sister Truly Polperro gets too curious about life beyond their Wall of Safekeeping, she cracks Calamity’s world wide open. Calamity needs a new book. And she will have to write it herself. With formidable imagination and brilliant strangeness, Paula Lichtarowicz's The First Book of Calamity Leek draws on fairytales and doublespeak to tell a story both classic and keenly modern. Calamity, fearless and wrenching, leads us to question the stories we ourselves live by.

Author: Paula Lichtarowicz
Publisher: Macmillan
ISBN: 1250087937
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 320

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Book Description
"WONDERFULLY STRANGE." --Mark Haddon "A MASH-UP OF MARGARET ATWOOD AND ROALD DAHL." --Lady Magazine A beguiling, irresistibly immersive debut novel about sixteen sisters in a walled garden, and what happens to their carefully constructed world when one girl starts asking questions about life outside. Fourteen-year-old Calamity Leek and her sisters spend their days tending white roses and memorizing the lessons in Aunty’s Appendix, a multi-volume compendium of show tunes, beauty regimens, and twisted creation myths. Calamity knows the Appendix front to back, and she is Aunty’s favorite, destined for particular greatness. But when her restless sister Truly Polperro gets too curious about life beyond their Wall of Safekeeping, she cracks Calamity’s world wide open. Calamity needs a new book. And she will have to write it herself. With formidable imagination and brilliant strangeness, Paula Lichtarowicz's The First Book of Calamity Leek draws on fairytales and doublespeak to tell a story both classic and keenly modern. Calamity, fearless and wrenching, leads us to question the stories we ourselves live by.

Author: Paula Lichtarowicz
Publisher: Little, Brown
ISBN: 0316461539
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 360

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Book Description
In this "riveting, heartfelt" novel of love and consequences (Heather Morris, New York Times bestselling author of The Tattooist of Auschwitz), a woman dreams of becoming a doctor until World War II leads her instead into an astonishing love—and a fateful choice. Is it possible to fall in love at the edge of life? Lena has lived a long, quiet life on her farm in Wales, alongside her husband and child. But as her end approaches, buried memories begin to return. Of her childhood in Poland, and her passion for science. Of the early days of her marriage, reluctant wife to an army officer. Of the birth of her daughter, whose arrival changed everything. Memories less welcome return, too. Her Polish village, transformed overnight by the Soviets, and the war that doomed her entire family to the frigid work camps of the Siberian tundra. And buried in that blinding snow, amongst the darkness of survival, the most haunting memory of all: that of an extraordinary new love. Exploring motherhood, marriage, consequences, and our incredible human capacity for hope, The Snow Hare is the story of a woman who dares to love and to dream in the face of impossible odds, and of the peace we each must make with our choices, even long after the years have gone by.

Author: Moa Martinson
Publisher: Feminist Press at CUNY
ISBN: 9780935312386
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 228

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Book Description
About this novel, which focuses on two young women early in the 20th century, both victims of sexual abuse, as they struggle to gain for themselves and their children the rights and opportunities usually denied to poor women, Tillie Olsen said, "I love and am ineradicably grateful for this book, this writer, as I have been but to a few dozen others in my lifetime... Images, scenes, relationships, comprehensions portrayed here will never leave us. She is a writer of international stature and significance."

Author: Catherine Chanter
Publisher: Simon and Schuster
ISBN: 1476772789
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 400

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Book Description
Set in a modern-day Britain where water is running out everywhere except at the farm of one seemingly ordinary family whose mysterious good fortune leads to a shocking act of violence, The Well is “extraordinary...a mesmerizing read…combining a gripping mystery, nuanced psychological drama, and striking prose” (Publishers Weekly, starred review). When Ruth Ardingly and her family make that first long drive up from the city in their grime-encrusted car and view The Well, they are enchanted by a jewel of a farm that appears to offer everything they need: an opportunity for Ruth, an escape for her husband, and a home for their grandson. But when the drought begins, everything changes. Surrounded by thirty acres of lush greenery, the farm mysteriously thrives while the world outside crumbles under the longest dry spell in recorded history. No one, including the owners, understands why. But The Well’s unique glory comes at a terrible price. From the envy of their neighbors to the mandates of the government, from the fanaticism of a religious order called the Sisters of the Rose to the everyday difficulties of staying close as husband and wife, grandmother and child—all these forces lead to a shocking crime. Accusations of witchcraft, wrongdoing, and murder envelop the family until their paradise becomes a prison. A beautifully written debut novel that “channels Margaret Atwood and Gillian Flynn, creating a story that’s speculative and suspenseful” (Minneapolis Star Tribune), The Well is an utterly haunting meditation on the fragile nature of our relationships with each other and the places we call home.

Author: Rachel Ingalls
Publisher: New Directions Publishing
ISBN: 081122709X
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 102

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Book Description
Now back in print, Mrs. Caliban is “totally unforgettable” (The New York Times Book Review) and “something of a miracle” (The New Yorker) In the quiet suburbs, while Dorothy is doing chores and waiting for her husband to come home from work, not in the least anticipating romance, she hears a strange radio announcement about a monster who has just escaped from the Institute for Oceanographic Research… Reviewers have compared Rachel Ingalls’s Mrs. Caliban to King Kong, Edgar Allan Poe’s stories, the films of David Lynch, Beauty and the Beast, The Wizard of Oz, E.T., Richard Yates’s domestic realism, B-horror movies, and the fairy tales of Angela Carter—how such a short novel could contain all of these disparate elements is a testament to its startling and singular charm.

Author: Michel Faber
Publisher: Canongate Books
ISBN: 1847678939
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 865

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Book Description
Yearning to escape her life of prostitution in 1870s London, Sugar finds her fate entangled in the complicated family life of patron William, an egotistical perfume magnate.

Author: Paula Lichtarowicz
Publisher: Random House
ISBN: 1473507839
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 432

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Book Description
It doesn’t take much to tip the world into chaos. You don’t even have to mean to do it. You might be an honest family man; a police chief in a small town in Central Vietnam, say, with no desire whatsoever to unleash catastrophe. A man such as Chief Duong, with simple dreams of domestic happiness and future immortality by means of a small statue on a roundabout. But the problem with dreams is it’s often hard to look ahead. To see that borrowing money for your daughter’s marriage to a local bigwig will lead to the kidnap of a footballer from Scunthorpe, the downfall of a global soft drinks empire, incidents of attempted matricide, public murder, re-arranged marriage, hypnotic malpractice, and one unfortunate act of geriatric perversion. And that’s not to mention what happens to the town’s monkeys. Because every action has a consequence. And were she asked Mrs Duong could consult her astrological charts and tell her husband exactly that. But it’s not just the chief who needs telling. There’s roving British blogger, J C Bone, with an illegal marriage contract on his hands, and Global Human Resource Manager, Sherry-Sioux with a celebrity surveillance programme to keep under wraps. There’s a chief superintendent with lucrative investment plans and a physician with trail-blazing psychological ambitions. And then there’s Chief Duong’s freedom-fighting children. You see the biggest problem with chaos is that once it’s unleashed, everyone’s involved. And once everyone’s involved, how on earth is one little police chief ever going to put things right?

Author: Peggy Riley
Publisher: Little, Brown
ISBN: 0316220892
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 320

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Book Description
A mother and her daughters drive for days without sleep until they crash their car in rural Oklahoma. The mother, Amaranth, is desperate to get away from someone she's convinced will follow them wherever they go--her husband. The girls, Amity and Sorrow, can't imagine what the world holds outside their father's polygamous compound. Rescue comes in the unlikely form of Bradley, a farmer grieving the loss of his wife. At first unwelcoming to these strange, prayerful women, Bradley's abiding tolerance gets the best of him, and they become a new kind of family. An unforgettable story of belief and redemption, AMITY & SORROW is about the influence of community and learning to stand on your own.

Author: Jon Bauer
Publisher: Profile Books
ISBN: 1847658113
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 292

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Book Description
You're eight years old. An only child. You love your parents, but you're convinced you're not enough for your mother because she fosters other people's kids. You've learnt to cope, just about, with how this makes you feel -- but then a boy called Robert arrives, and he and your Mum seem to connect in a way you never have. You hate him for it. And her. And one day you do something really bad to teach them both a lesson. At twenty-eight, you return home to face your mother, who is now chronically ill. Despite the intervening years, you haven't forgiven her - or yourself - for what happened. Ultimately, though, it's her forgiveness you crave, even after all this time - because you need to know, finally, that you were enough for her.