The Magician's Lie

The Magician's Lie
Author: Greer Macallister
Publisher: Sourcebooks, Inc.
Total Pages: 312
Release: 2015-01-13
Genre: Fiction
ISBN: 1402298692

A USA TODAY BESTSELLER! "This is a book in which storylines twist, spiral and come together again in an ending as explosive as a poof of smoke from your chimney...or a top hat."—Oprah.com Master of historical fiction Greer Macallister weaves the tale of a notorious female illusionist who stands accused of her husband's murder—and she has only one night to convince a small-town policeman of her innocence. The Amazing Arden is the most famous female illusionist of the early 20th century, renowned for sawing a man in half on stage. One night in Waterloo, Iowa, with young policeman Virgil Holt in the audience, the magician swaps her trademark saw for a fire ax. Is it a new version of the illusion, or an all-too-real murder? When Arden's husband is found lifeless beneath the stage later that night, the answer seems clear. But when Virgil happens upon the fleeing magician and takes her into custody, she has a very different story to tell. Even handcuffed and alone, Arden is far from powerless-and what she reveals seems unbelievable. Over the course of one eerie night, Virgil must decide whether to turn the illusionist in or set her free... and it will take all he has to see through the smoke and mirrors. Water for Elephants meets The Night Circus in The Magician's Lie, a spellbinding historical adventure of deception, fact, and the surprising number of truths in between. Also by Greer Macallister: Girl in Disguise Woman 99

The Girl with the Louding Voice

The Girl with the Louding Voice
Author: Abi Daré
Publisher: Penguin
Total Pages: 401
Release: 2021-02-23
Genre: Fiction
ISBN: 1524746096

AN INSTANT NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER A READ WITH JENNA TODAY SHOW BOOK CLUB PICK! “Brave, fresh . . . unforgettable.”—The New York Times Book Review “A celebration of girls who dare to dream.”—Imbolo Mbue, author of Behold the Dreamers (Oprah’s Book Club pick) Shortlisted for the Desmond Elliott Prize and recommended by The New York Times, Marie Claire, Vogue, Essence, PopSugar, Daily Mail, Electric Literature, Red, Stylist, Daily Kos, Library Journal, The Everygirl, and Read It Forward! The unforgettable, inspiring story of a teenage girl growing up in a rural Nigerian village who longs to get an education so that she can find her “louding voice” and speak up for herself, The Girl with the Louding Voice is a simultaneously heartbreaking and triumphant tale about the power of fighting for your dreams. Despite the seemingly insurmountable obstacles in her path, Adunni never loses sight of her goal of escaping the life of poverty she was born into so that she can build the future she chooses for herself – and help other girls like her do the same. Her spirited determination to find joy and hope in even the most difficult circumstances imaginable will “break your heart and then put it back together again” (Jenna Bush Hager on The Today Show) even as Adunni shows us how one courageous young girl can inspire us all to reach for our dreams…and maybe even change the world.

A Little Hope

A Little Hope
Author: Ethan Joella
Publisher: Simon and Schuster
Total Pages: 320
Release: 2021-11-16
Genre: Fiction
ISBN: 1982171219

A Read with Jenna Bonus Selection An “immersive…illuminating” (Booklist) and life-affirming novel following the residents of an idyllic Connecticut town over the course of a year, A Little Hope explores the intertwining lives of a dozen neighbors as they confront everyday desires and fears: a lost love, a stalled career, an illness, and a betrayal. Freddie and Greg Tyler seem to have it all: a comfortable home, a beautiful young daughter, a bond that feels unbreakable. But when Greg is diagnosed with a rare and aggressive form of cancer, the sense of certainty they once knew evaporates. Throughout their town, friends and neighbors face the most difficult of life’s challenges and are figuring out how to survive thanks to love, grace, and hope. “A quietly powerful portrait of small-town life…told with wisdom and tenderness” (Mary Beth Keane, author of Ask Again, Yes) A Little Hope is a deeply resonant debut that immerses the reader in a community and celebrates the importance of small moments of connection.

A Feeling for Books

A Feeling for Books
Author: Janice A. Radway
Publisher: Univ of North Carolina Press
Total Pages: 458
Release: 2000-11-09
Genre: Literary Criticism
ISBN: 0807863971

Deftly melding ethnography, cultural history, literary criticism, and autobiographical reflection, A Feeling for Books is at once an engaging study of the Book-of-the-Month Club's influential role as a cultural institution and a profoundly personal meditation about the experience of reading. Janice Radway traces the history of the famous mail-order book club from its controversial founding in 1926 through its evolution into an enterprise uniquely successful in blending commerce and culture. Framing her historical narrative with writing of a more personal sort, Radway reflects on the contemporary role of the Book-of-the-Month Club in American cultural history and in her own life. Her detailed account of the standards and practices employed by the club's in-house editors is also an absorbing story of her interactions with those editors. Examining her experiences as a fourteen-year-old reader of the club's selections and, later, as a professor of literature, she offers a series of rigorously analytical yet deeply personal readings of such beloved novels as Marjorie Morningstar and To Kill a Mockingbird. Rich and rewarding, this book will captivate and delight anyone who is interested in the history of books and in the personal and transformative experience of reading.

There Will Be No Miracles Here

There Will Be No Miracles Here
Author: Casey Gerald
Publisher: Penguin
Total Pages: 384
Release: 2018-10-02
Genre: Biography & Autobiography
ISBN: 0735214212

NAMED A BEST BOOK OF 2018 BY NPR AND THE NEW YORK TIMES A PBS NEWSHOUR-NEW YORK TIMES BOOK CLUB PICK "Somehow Casey Gerald has pulled off the most urgently political, most deeply personal, and most engagingly spiritual statement of our time by just looking outside his window and inside himself. Extraordinary." —Marlon James "Staccato prose and peripatetic storytelling combine the cadences of the Bible with an urgency reminiscent of James Baldwin in this powerfully emotional memoir." —BookPage The testament of a boy and a generation who came of age as the world came apart—a generation searching for a new way to live. Casey Gerald comes to our fractured times as a uniquely visionary witness whose life has spanned seemingly unbridgeable divides. His story begins at the end of the world: Dallas, New Year's Eve 1999, when he gathers with the congregation of his grandfather's black evangelical church to see which of them will be carried off. His beautiful, fragile mother disappears frequently and mysteriously; for a brief idyll, he and his sister live like Boxcar Children on her disability checks. When Casey--following in the footsteps of his father, a gridiron legend who literally broke his back for the team--is recruited to play football at Yale, he enters a world he's never dreamed of, the anteroom to secret societies and success on Wall Street, in Washington, and beyond. But even as he attains the inner sanctums of power, Casey sees how the world crushes those who live at its margins. He sees how the elite perpetuate the salvation stories that keep others from rising. And he sees, most painfully, how his own ascension is part of the scheme. There Will Be No Miracles Here has the arc of a classic rags-to-riches tale, but it stands the American Dream narrative on its head. If to live as we are is destroying us, it asks, what would it mean to truly live? Intense, incantatory, shot through with sly humor and quiet fury, There Will Be No Miracles Hereinspires us to question--even shatter--and reimagine our most cherished myths.

What It Means When a Man Falls from the Sky

What It Means When a Man Falls from the Sky
Author: Lesley Nneka Arimah
Publisher: Penguin
Total Pages: 242
Release: 2017-04-04
Genre: Fiction
ISBN: 0735211043

A PBS NewsHour/New York Times Book Club Pick A NATIONAL BOOK FOUNDATION "5 UNDER 35" HONOREE WINNER OF THE 2017 KIRKUS PRIZE WINNER OF THE NYPL'S YOUNG LIONS FICTION AWARD FINALIST FOR THE NATIONAL BOOK CRITICS CIRCLE LEONARD PRIZE SHORTLISTED FOR THE ASPEN WORDS LITERARY PRIZE A dazzlingly accomplished debut collection explores the ties that bind parents and children, husbands and wives, lovers and friends to one another and to the places they call home. In “Who Will Greet You at Home,” a National Magazine Award finalist for The New Yorker, A woman desperate for a child weaves one out of hair, with unsettling results. In “Wild,” a disastrous night out shifts a teenager and her Nigerian cousin onto uneasy common ground. In "The Future Looks Good," three generations of women are haunted by the ghosts of war, while in "Light," a father struggles to protect and empower the daughter he loves. And in the title story, in a world ravaged by flood and riven by class, experts have discovered how to "fix the equation of a person" - with rippling, unforeseen repercussions. Evocative, playful, subversive, and incredibly human, What It Means When a Man Falls from the Sky heralds the arrival of a prodigious talent with a remarkable career ahead of her.

Margaret Mitchell's Gone With the Wind

Margaret Mitchell's Gone With the Wind
Author: Ellen F. Brown
Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield
Total Pages: 467
Release: 2023-01-02
Genre: Performing Arts
ISBN: 1493059300

Originally published in 2011, Margaret Mitchell's Gone With the Wind: A Bestseller's Odyssey from Atlanta to Hollywood presented the first comprehensive overview of how the iconic novel became an international phenomenon that has managed to sustain the public's interest for more than eighty-five years. Various Mitchell biographies and several compilations of her letters told part of the story, but until 2011, no single source had revealed the full saga. Now updated with two new chapters that bring the saga into 2021, this entertaining account of a literary and pop culture phenomenon tells how Mitchell's book was developed, marketed, distributed, and otherwise groomed for success in the 1930s—and the savvy measures taken since then by the author, her publisher, and her estate to ensure its longevity.

Your Life Has Been Delayed

Your Life Has Been Delayed
Author: Michelle I. Mason
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing USA
Total Pages: 386
Release: 2021-09-07
Genre: Young Adult Fiction
ISBN: 1547604093

How do you move forward when your entire life is stuck in the past? In this captivating YA debut, Michelle I. Mason tells the story of a girl who takes off on a flight and lands...twenty-five years later. After visiting her grandparents in New York City, Jenny Waters is ready for the perfect senior year. She's going to hang out with her best friend Angie, finally kiss her new boyfriend Steve, and convince her parents to let her apply to Columbia so she can become an award-winning journalist. But when her plane lands in St. Louis, Jenny and the other passengers are told their plane vanished into thin air. . . and then reappeared twenty-five years later. Suddenly, it's not 1995 anymore. Everyone in Jenny's life has spent the last twenty-five years mourning her death. Jenny has missed two decades of pop culture, and her high school is practically unrecognizable. Learning about cell phones and social media is difficult enough, but the unexplainable mystery of the flight has also thrust Jenny's entire life into the spotlight-which makes it extra-complicated when Jenny falls for a cute, kind classmate with an unusual connection to her past. Can Jenny figure out a way to move forward, or will she always feel stuck in the past?