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All the Way to Havana
by Margarita EngleSo we purr, cara cara, and we glide, taka taka, and we zoom, zoom, ZOOM! <p><p>Together, a boy and his parents drive to the city of Havana, Cuba, in their old family car. Along the way, they experience the sights and sounds of the streets—neighbors talking, musicians performing, and beautiful, colorful cars putt-putting and bumpety-bumping along. In the end, though, it’s their old car, Cara Cara, that the boy loves best. A joyful celebration of the Cuban people and their resourceful innovation. <p><p>ALSC Notable Book.
All the Ways Home
by Elsie Chapman"In All the Ways Home, Elsie Chapman gracefully explores the complexities of family and loss. The specificity in which Chapman narrates Kaede's journey in Japan is particularly satisfying. An insightful, compassionate, and honest look at a young boy's search for identity and home after the death of his mother."—Veera Hiranandani, author of Newbery Honor novel The Night DiarySometimes, home isn’t where you expect to find it.After losing his mom in a fatal car crash, Kaede Hirano--now living with a grandfather who is more stranger than family--developed anger issues and spent his last year of middle school acting out. Best-friendless and critically in danger repeating the seventh grade, Kaede is given a summer assignment: write an essay about what home means to him, which will be even tougher now that he's on his way to Japan to reconnect with his estranged father and older half-brother. Still, if there's a chance Kaede can finally build a new family from an old one, he's willing to try. But building new relationships isn’t as easy as destroying his old ones, and one last desperate act will change the way Kaede sees everyone--including himself. This is a book about what home means to us—and that there are many different correct answers.
All the Ways the World Can End
by Abby SherAll the Ways the World can End by Abby Sher is at times heart wrenching while at others hilarious. Lenny (short for Eleanor) feels like the world is about to end. Her best friend is moving to San Francisco and her dad is dying. To cope with her stress Lenny is making a list of all the ways the world can end—designer pathogens, blood moon prophecies, alien invasion—and stockpiling supplies in a bunker in the backyard. Then she starts to develop feelings for her dad's very nice young doctor—and she thinks he may have feelings for her too. Spoiler alert: he doesn't. But a more age-appropriate love interest might. In a time of complete uncertainty, one thing's for sure: Lenny's about to see how everything is ending and beginning. All at the same time.
All the Ways to Go
by Jessie JanowitzFrom the author of The Doughnut Fix comes another funny, heartfelt book about overcoming the fear of letting down the people you love and the amazing things that can come from a summer of nothing going your way. Milo Bloom, chess prodigy, has a secret: he doesn't want to play chess anymore. So he blows a major tournament on purpose instead of telling anyone. If no one knows he wants to quit, then no one can be disappointed. The problem is, winning that tournament was a ticket to chess camp, and the loss means his summer plans are shot. Enter Roxie, a girl he's never met, who shows up at his door to tell him he and his mom will be spending the summer at her house…what? Surprise! Before Milo knows what's hit him, he's living at Roxie's house, where creepy cats rule, meat products are banned, and Roxie, who doesn't seem to understand the concept of personal space, won't give him a second alone. But when Milo and Roxie stumble across two people playing a fascinating game they've never seen before, they become determined to learn the ancient game of Go. Between late-night library adventures and creating a Go club at their camp, Milo and Roxie form an unexpected friendship, but none of that matters if Milo can't face his fears and tell his mom how he really feels.
All the Ways You Taught Us: A Memoir Of Ability, Disability, And The Pursuit Of Meaning
by Janet R. GordonAll the Ways You Taught Us chronicles the sixty-year love story between Mort Gordon, a theoretical physicist blinded by retinitis pigmentosa, and Bernice, his wife and reader, who loses mobility from the spina bifida she was born with. After they've died, daughter Janet discovers a cache of love letters full of hope for a successful marriage. <P><P> The couple's ingenuity enables Mort, even as his sight disappears, to design innovative particle accelerators. Working for decades at the Michigan State University Cyclotron Laboratory, Mort helps other scientists see the unseen. Bernice reads physics aloud almost every day. As a child, Janet found her parents completely capable even as she began to understand their difficulties. <P><P> Janet reflects on how the parenting skills of Mort and Bernice help her find meaning―in Jewish culture, in science, in literature, and in American democracy, not just as a child, but as they all grow. Both mother and father insist on deep inquiry into the fundamentals of their world. We follow these influential parents until they can no longer manage daily activities alone. Conflicts and disappointments along the way raise questions about love, forgiveness and the limitations of simple distinctions like "ability" and "disability." The author conducts an examination of what we do for each other and how we gain from the doing―from one generation to the next. She must balance the responsibilities of a daughter with the concerns of a modern working wife and mother. <P><P> This family memoir will appeal to those interested in how a scientist works every day at the edge of discovery, in disability stories, and in Jewish life. It highlights American political perspectives and gender roles through the second half of the 20th century and the early 2000s. Traditional ideas about care, dependence and worth are challenged throughout. We root for this family to succeed.
All the Winters After
by Seré HalversonAlaska doesn't forgive mistakesThat's what Kachemak Winkel's mother used to tell him. A lot of mistakes were made that awful day twenty years ago, when she died in a plane crash with Kache's father and brother--and Kache still feels responsible. He fled Alaska for good, but now his aunt Snag insists on his return. She admits she couldn't bring herself to check on his family's house in the woods--not even once since he's been gone.Kache is sure the cabin has decayed into a pile of logs, but he finds smoke rising from the chimney and a mysterious Russian woman hiding from her own troubled past. Nadia has kept the house exactly the same--a haunting museum of life before the crash. And she's stayed there, afraid and utterly isolated, for ten years.Set in the majestic, dangerous beauty of Alaska, All the Winters After is the story of two bound souls trying to free themselves, searching for family and forgiveness.
All the Winters After
by Seré HalversonAlaska doesn't forgive mistakesThat's what Kachemak Winkel's mother used to tell him. A lot of mistakes were made that awful day twenty years ago, when she died in a plane crash with Kache's father and brother--and Kache still feels responsible. He fled Alaska for good, but now his aunt Snag insists on his return. She admits she couldn't bring herself to check on his family's house in the woods--not even once since he's been gone.Kache is sure the cabin has decayed into a pile of logs, but he finds smoke rising from the chimney and a mysterious Russian woman hiding from her own troubled past. Nadia has kept the house exactly the same--a haunting museum of life before the crash. And she's stayed there, afraid and utterly isolated, for ten years.Set in the majestic, dangerous beauty of Alaska, All the Winters After is the story of two bound souls trying to free themselves, searching for family and forgiveness.
All the Women Inside Me
by Jana ElhassanShortlisted for the International Prize of Arabic FictionSurviving a cold childhood, overshadowed by her parents&’ unhappiness and their distant relationship to her, Sahar expects to escape through marriage when she meets the compelling and charming Sami, who is interested in every detail of her life. But what seemed at first to be his loving interest rapidly becomes controlling and ultimately abusive. Sahar yearns for a way out of her intertwined experiences of loss and loneliness. In All the Women Inside Me, Jana Elhassan presents an intricate psychological portrait of a woman, as well as the complexities of interpersonal relationships. The novel&’s innovative structure allows it to plumb psychological and philosophical depths beyond the specific characters revealing a profound humanity. Sahar&’s father is the lapsed leftist who masks his boredom by busying himself with great causes. Her depressed mother&’s nerves are as delicate as the crystal she keeps immaculately polished in her home. A charlatan sheikh trades in religious magic, making a profit off of people&’s misery. A boyfriend leaves his great love to marry a &“more appropriate&” good girl. Sahar navigates her way through so many relationships, ill-prepared by her parents and unhappy childhood home. Her imagination is what allows her to act out all of the desires she has been denied throughout her whole life, from her childhood to her abusive marriage. But she also finds solace in her best friend, Hala, who has faced her own difficult childhood and adolescence and later a series of destructive relationships. At the same time that this novel is able to capture the intensity of emotions and experiences in women&’s lives, it is not merely a story about the power of imagination to enrich the lives of oppressed women. Elhassan&’s novel is a stark appraisal of how far women are pushed and the length to which women will go to escape a reality that is rotten at the core.
All the Wrong Questions: Also Published as "Who Could That Be at This Hour?" (All the Wrong Questions #1)
by Lemony Snicket SethBefore the Baudelaires became orphans, before he encountered A Series of Unfortunate Events, even before the invention of Netflix, Lemony Snicket was a boy discovering the mysteries of the world. Read the account of it all, in the debut volume of The New York Times bestselling series, available now with an intriguing new title and look.In the first of four volumes, Lemony Snicket recounts the time he spent as a young man in a fading town under the care of a dubious chaperone. Navigating the mysteries of childhood can be difficult, and for Lemony Snicket, the tangled plots that surround him include a missing father, a flooding basement, suspiciously young taxi drivers, a stolen statue, a peculiar librarian, and more information than is necessary about a secret organization.Penned in signature style, All the Wrong Questions: Question 1 (originally published as "Who Could That Be at This Hour?") invites readers to untangle the mysteries that surround young Lemony Snicket.
All These Lives
by Sarah WylieSixteen-year-old Dani is convinced she has nine lives. As a child she twice walked away from situations where she should have died. But Dani's twin, Jena, isn't so lucky. She has cancer and might not even be able to keep her one life. Dani's father is in denial. Her mother is trying to hold it together and prove everything's normal. And Jena is wasting away. To cope, Dani sets out to rid herself of all her extra lives. Maybe they'll be released into the universe and someone who wants to live more than she does will get one. Someone like Jena. But just when Dani finds herself at the breaking point, she's faced with a startling realization. Maybe she doesn't have nine lives after all. Maybe she really only ever had one.
All Things Cease to Appear
by Elizabeth BrundageA dark, riveting, beautifully written book--by "a brilliant novelist," according to Richard Bausch--that combines noir and the gothic in a story about two families entwined in their own unhappiness, with, at its heart, a gruesome and unsolved murder Late one winter afternoon in upstate New York, George Clare comes home to find his wife killed and their three-year-old daughter alone--for how many hours?--in her room across the hall. He had recently, begrudgingly, taken a position at a nearby private college (far too expensive for local kids to attend) teaching art history, and moved his family into a tight-knit, impoverished town that has lately been discovered by wealthy outsiders in search of a rural idyll. George is of course the immediate suspect--the question of his guilt echoing in a story shot through with secrets both personal and professional. While his parents rescue him from suspicion, a persistent cop is stymied at every turn in proving Clare a heartless murderer. And three teenage brothers (orphaned by tragic circumstances) find themselves entangled in this mystery, not least because the Clares had moved into their childhood home, a once-thriving dairy farm. The pall of death is ongoing, and relentless; behind one crime there are others, and more than twenty years will pass before a hard kind of justice is finally served. A rich and complex portrait of a psychopath and a marriage, this is also an astute study of the various taints that can scar very different families, and even an entire community. Elizabeth Brundage is an essential talent who has given us a true modern classic.From the Hardcover edition.
All Things Cease to Appear: A novel
by Elizabeth BrundageA dark, riveting, beautifully written book—by “a brilliant novelist,” according to Richard Bausch—that combines noir and the gothic in a story about two families entwined in their own unhappiness, with, at its heart, a gruesome and unsolved murder Late one winter afternoon in upstate New York, George Clare comes home to find his wife killed and their three-year-old daughter alone—for how many hours?—in her room across the hall. He had recently, begrudgingly, taken a position at a nearby private college (far too expensive for local kids to attend) teaching art history, and moved his family into a tight-knit, impoverished town that has lately been discovered by wealthy outsiders in search of a rural idyll. George is of course the immediate suspect—the question of his guilt echoing in a story shot through with secrets both personal and professional. While his parents rescue him from suspicion, a persistent cop is stymied at every turn in proving Clare a heartless murderer. And three teenage brothers (orphaned by tragic circumstances) find themselves entangled in this mystery, not least because the Clares had moved into their childhood home, a once-thriving dairy farm. The pall of death is ongoing, and relentless; behind one crime there are others, and more than twenty years will pass before a hard kind of justice is finally served. A rich and complex portrait of a psychopath and a marriage, this is also an astute study of the various taints that can scar very different families, and even an entire community. Elizabeth Brundage is an essential talent who has given us a true modern classic.From the Hardcover edition.
All This Could Be Yours
by Jami AttenbergFrom critically acclaimed New York Times best-selling author Jami Attenberg comes a novel of family secrets: think the drama of Big Little Lies set in the heat of a New Orleans summer &“If I know why they are the way they are, then maybe I can learn why I am the way I am,&” says Alex Tuchman of her parents. Now that her father is on his deathbed, Alex—a strong-headed lawyer, devoted mother, and loving sister--feels she can finally unearth the secrets of who Victor is and what he did over the course of his life and career. (A power-hungry real estate developer, he is, by all accounts, a bad man.) She travels to New Orleans to be with her family, but mostly to interrogate her tightlipped mother, Barbra. As Barbra fends off Alex&’s unrelenting questions, she reflects on her tumultuous life with Victor. Meanwhile Gary, Alex&’s brother, is incommunicado, trying to get his movie career off the ground in Los Angeles. And Gary&’s wife, Twyla, is having a nervous breakdown, buying up all the lipstick in drug stores around New Orleans and bursting into crying fits. Dysfunction is at its peak. As each family member grapples with Victor&’s history, they must figure out a way to move forward—with one another, for themselves, and for the sake of their children. ALL THIS COULD BE YOURS is a timely, piercing exploration of what it means to be caught in the web of a toxic man who abused his power; it shows how those webs can tangle a family for generations and what it takes to—maybe, hopefully—break free. With her signature &“sparkling prose&” (Marie Claire) and incisive wit, Jami Attenberg deftly explores one of the most important subjects of our age.
All This Time
by Rachael Lippincott Mikki DaughtryFrom the team behind #1 New York Times bestseller Five Feet Apart comes a gripping new romance that asks: Can you find true love after losing everything? <P><P>Kyle and Kimberly have been the perfect couple all through high school, but when Kimberly breaks up with him on the night of their graduation party, Kyle’s entire world upends—literally. Their car crashes and when he awakes, he has a brain injury. Kimberly is dead. And no one in his life could possibly understand. <P><P>Until Marley. Marley is suffering from her own loss, a loss she thinks was her fault. And when their paths cross, Kyle sees in her all the unspoken things he’s feeling. As Kyle and Marley work to heal each other’s wounds, their feelings for each other grow stronger. But Kyle can’t shake the sense that he’s headed for another crashing moment that will blow up his life as soon as he’s started to put it back together. And he’s right. <P><P><b>A New York Times Bestseller</b>
All Those Wonderful Names: A Potpourri Of People, Places And Things
by J. N. HookEver wonder what the most popular and unpopular baby names are? And how certain people and places got their names? Or are you just looking for guidance in choosing your child&’s name? ALL THOSE WONDERFUL NAMES is an amusing exploration of names, familiar words, phrases, and the stories behind their origins. From the common to the confounding, this book has it all. Hear the true stories behind the naming of tropical storms, cars, fictitious characters, major league baseball teams, and more. Find out the real names of celebrities, such as Elton John, Cher, Rip Torn, Cary Grant, Liberace, and Conway Twitty. Discover counties, towns, and cities with strange names like Difficult, Tennessee; Jiggs, Nevada; Virgin, Utah; and Bosom, Wyoming. Learn unusual names for newborns—and perhaps the origin of your own surname as well.
All Together Different: Upholding the Church's Unity While Honoring Our Individual Identities
by J. Brian Tucker John KoesslerCan we all just get along?E Pluribus Unum: &“Out of many, one.&” This motto is emblazoned on the Great Seal of the United States, but it could be the church&’s model, too. Unfortunately, the daily experience of many Christians and churches feels like the opposite: out of one, many. We are increasingly aware of what makes us different from others, and it is hurting the church and its witness. All Together Different will help readers understand why we find it so difficult &“to just get along.&” Drawing from research on personal and group identity, it equips readers to navigate a culture that often pays lip service to the value of diversity, but struggles to foster constructive dialogue and mutual respect. With clear writing and real-life stories, All Together Different translates social identity theory for pastors, church leaders, and ministry practitioners, exposing it to the light of biblical and theological reflection.
All Together Different: Upholding the Church's Unity While Honoring Our Individual Identities
by J. Brian Tucker John KoesslerCan we all just get along?E Pluribus Unum: &“Out of many, one.&” This motto is emblazoned on the Great Seal of the United States, but it could be the church&’s model, too. Unfortunately, the daily experience of many Christians and churches feels like the opposite: out of one, many. We are increasingly aware of what makes us different from others, and it is hurting the church and its witness. All Together Different will help readers understand why we find it so difficult &“to just get along.&” Drawing from research on personal and group identity, it equips readers to navigate a culture that often pays lip service to the value of diversity, but struggles to foster constructive dialogue and mutual respect. With clear writing and real-life stories, All Together Different translates social identity theory for pastors, church leaders, and ministry practitioners, exposing it to the light of biblical and theological reflection.
All Together Now: A Novel
by Gill HornbyThe small town of Bridgeford is in crisis. Downtown is deserted, businesses are closing, and the idea of civic pride seems old-fashioned to residents rushing through the streets to get somewhere else. Bridgeford seems to have lost its heart.But there is one thing that just might unite the community--music. The local choir, a group generally either ignored or mocked by most of Bridgeford's inhabitants, is preparing for an important contest, and to win it they need new members, and a whole new sound. Enlisting (some may say drafting) singers, who include a mother suffering from empty-nest syndrome, a middle-aged man who has just lost his job and his family, and a nineteen-year-old waitress who dreams of reality-TV stardom, the choir regulars must find--and make--harmony with neighbors they've been happy not to know for years. Can they all learn to work together, save the choir, and maybe even save their town in the process?All Together Now is a poignant and charming novel about community, family, falling in love--and the big rewards of making a small change.
All Together Now: From the million-copy bestselling author
by Monica McInerneyShortlisted for General Fiction Book of the Year in the 2009 Australian Book Industry Awards. A group of friends on an unconventional diet learn some important life lessons, a fashion-challenged grandmother weaves some magic in a dusty charity shop, a grieving young mother takes a healing journey, and a shy woman from a family of high achievers learns to follow her dreams.All Together Now is a collection of McInerney’s short fiction gathered between two covers for the first time. Including several of her earliest magazine short stories, contributions to recent anthologies, her warm and witty novella Odd One Out, and two new stories, this is a book to inspire and delight fans of all ages.Praise for Monica McInerney:'Monica McInerney is at the very top of her game . . . If you've yet to read her books, treat yourselves IMMEDIATELY!' Patricia Scanlan, bestselling author of A Time For Friends'You'll be laughing out loud one minute and crying the next' Cosmopolitan'Heart-warming . . . A lovely read' Hello! Magazine'McInerney is a must-read author for women's fiction fans around the world' Huffington Post'McInerney's bewitching multigenerational saga lavishly and lovingly explores the resiliency and fragility of family bonds' Booklist
The All-Together Quilt
by Lizzy RockwellQuilters and crafters rejoice! This story of a community coming together to make a quilt is a heartwarming celebration of creativity and teamwork.The kids and grown-ups at a community center begin with lots of colorful fabrics and an idea. Then step by step they make that idea a reality. They design, cut, stitch, layer, and quilt. It's the work of many hands, many hours, and many stories. And the result is something warm and wonderful they all can share.Lizzy Rockwell is the artistic director and organizing force behind the Norwalk Community Quilt Project: Peace by Piece, and this book is inspired by all the people who have gathered over the years to teach and learn and to make something beautiful together.
All Waiting Is Long: A Novel
by Barbara J. Taylor"Powerful...Every page is saturated with the 1930s milieu as the sisters navigate the adversities of their reality on a sea rough with the unrealistic expectations of well-intended idealists both religious and secular. As if to highlight those expectations, Taylor periodically interrupts her third-person narrative with Greek chorus-type commentary from the Scranton-based Isabelle Lumley Bible Class, including excerpts from a 1929 sex manual for women. The overall result is a thought-provoking book club discussion cornucopia."--Booklist, Starred review"Set in the 1930s, Taylor's suspenseful and intricate follow-up to Sing in the Morning, Cry at Night tells the story of sisters Violet and Lily Morgan...Taylor delivers startling plot twists and incisive commentary on the social unrest of a coal-mining town during the Great Depression. Covering a six-year span, the novel reveals the consequences of arduous labor and widespread sterilizations that came with the eugenics movement. Among the prostitutes, mobsters, and miners is a web of interconnected lives that come together for a breathtaking ending in Taylor's fine sequel."--Publishers Weekly"A good selection for book clubs, All Waiting Is Long is set in Pennsylvania coal country in the 1930s, a time of tumultuous change and social unrest, including the rise of the eugenics movement. Barbara Taylor's characters--a cast of nuns and prostitutes, mobsters and miners, social activists and church busybodies--reflect the varying pressures and expectations of small-town life with rich, insightful prose and dialogue that rings true to each character's voice. Will the web of lies the two sisters weave around themselves survive? You''ll have to read it yourself to find out. Recommended."--Historical Novel Review"Barbara J. Taylor has created another suspenseful page-turner . . . revealing shocking details of enlightened thinking in the 1930s against the backdrop of political corruption, unions, rampant prostitution, coal mine strikes, and judgmental Christians. But it's Taylor's finely honed characters and plot twists that make All Waiting Is Long an unforgettable novel."--BookMark on WPSU"In this richly populated community, old ties are either torn or tightened, and the characters left behind when the sisters went off are nicely fleshed out...Ms. Taylor writes with total mastery of her craft. Her similes and metaphors are born of a highly developed abstractive sensitivity, and her dialogues are unerringly true to their respective speakers."--BookPleasuresThe latest novel in Akashic's Kaylie Jones Books imprint.All Waiting Is Long tells the stories of the Morgan sisters, a study in contrasts. In 1930, twenty-five-year-old Violet travels with her sixteen-year-old sister Lily from Scranton, Pennsylvania, to the Good Shepherd Infant Asylum in Philadelphia, so Lily can deliver her illegitimate child in secret. In doing so, Violet jeopardizes her engagement to her longtime sweetheart, Stanley Adamski. Meanwhile, Mother Mary Joseph, who runs the Good Shepherd, has no idea the asylum's physician, Dr. Peters, is involved in eugenics and experimenting on the girls with various sterilization techniques.Five years later, Lily and Violet are back home in Scranton, one married, one about to be, each finding her own way in a place where a woman's worth is tied to her virtue. Against the backdrop of the sweeping eugenics movement and rogue coal mine strikes, the Morgan sisters must choose between duty and desire. Either way, they risk losing their marriages and each other.The novel picks up sixteen years after the close of Barbara J. Taylor's debut novel, Sing in the Morning, Cry at Night--a Publishers Weekly Best Summer Book of 2014--and continues her Dickensian exploration of the Morgan
All We Could Have Been
by TE CarterFrom TE Carter, All We Could Have Been is a powerful and heartbreaking look at the assumptions we make about people and how one person’s actions can affect everyone around them. Five years ago, Lexi witnessed something that shattered her very core. To cope, she moves from town to town, desperate to hide the darkest of family secrets. In every location, she assumes a new name and flies under the radar as long as she can before anyone figures out who she is—who she’s related to. Lexie now lives with her aunt, has minimal interaction with her parents, and has no communication with her brother. But the pain is always there.After starting her newest school, all she wants is to just live life. But how can she when the past keeps threatening to drag her back?
All We Ever Wanted Was Everything: A Novel
by Janelle BrownNow available in paperback. In the heat of a west coast summer three very different women, each poised for success, find themselves failing spectacularly. Janice, a devoted mother and housewife who's approaching fifty, is cold-heartedly abandoned by her husband; her elder daughter Margaret, a magazine editor, is driven back home by towering debts; and her teenage daughter Lizzie is humiliated by the boys whose affections she has unquestioningly embraced. At first they hide their downfalls - bankruptcy, addiction, promiscuity - from one another, but as the curtain-twitching world they inhabit begins to intrude, they find their secrets exposed. And in the midst of the manicured lawns and country club whispers, the Miller women cloister themselves in their suburban home and confront first their individual crises, then each other . . . All We Ever Wanted Was Everything is an astonishing portrait of modern-day women trying to stay afloat, of secrets and lies, and of what happens when the world you know comes crashing down.
All We Had
by Annie WeatherwaxThe stunning debut novel from sculptor and painter Annie Weatherwax, a wry and sharply observed portrait of a gritty mother and daughter, living on the edge of poverty, who find an unlikely home amid the quirky residents of small town America.For thirteen-year-old Ruthie Carmichael and her mother, Rita, life has never been stable. The only sure thing is their love for each other. Though Rita works more than one job, the pair teeters on the edge of poverty. When their landlord kicks them out, Rita resorts to her movie-star looks and produces carpet-installer Phil, "an instant boyfriend," who takes them in. Before long, Ruthie convinces her mother to leave and in their battered Ford Escort, they head East in search of a better life. When money runs out and their car breaks down, they find themselves stranded in a small town called Fat River where their luck finally takes a turn. Rita lands a steady job waitressing at Tiny's, the local diner. With enough money to pay their bills, they rent a house and Fat River becomes the first place they call home. Peter Pam, Tiny's transgender waitress and the novel's voice of warmth and reason, becomes Ruthie's closest friend. Arlene, the no-nonsense head waitress, takes Rita under her wing. The townspeople--Hank and Dotty Hanson, the elderly owners of the embattled local hardware store, and even their chatter-mouth neighbor Patti--become Ruthie and Rita's family. Into this quirky utopia comes smooth-talking mortgage broker Vick Ward, who entices Rita with a subprime loan. Why rent when you can own? Almost as soon as Rita buys a house their fortunes change. Faced once again with the prospect of homelessness, Rita reverts to survival mode, and the price she pays to keep them out of poverty changes their lives forever. Accomplished visual artist Annie Weatherwax has written a stunning, heartrending first novel. Ruthie's wry voice and razor sharp observations about American life in the twenty-first century infuse the prose with disarming honesty and humor. All We Had heralds the arrival of a powerful new voice in contemporary fiction.
All We Have Is Now
by Lisa SchroederFrom the author of THE BRIDGE FROM ME TO YOU, a groundbreaking novel about what matters most -- when time is running out.What do you do with your last day on earth?There are 27 hours and fifteen minutes left until an asteroid strikes North America, and, for Emerson and everyone else who didn't leave, the world will end. But Emerson's world already ended when she ran away from home last year. Since then she has lived on the streets, relying on her wits and her friend Vince to help her find places to sleep and food to eat.The city's quieter now that most people are gone, and no one seems to know what to do as the end approaches. But then Emerson and Vince meet Carl, who tells them that he has been granting people's wishes. He gave his car away so a woman could take her son to see the ocean for the first time, and he gives Emerson and Vince all the money he has in his wallet.Suddenly this last day seems full of possibility. Emerson and Vince can grant a lot of wishes in 27 hours -- maybe even their own.