The Whole Town's Talking

The Whole Town's Talking
Author: Fannie Flagg
Publisher:
Total Pages: 418
Release: 2016
Genre: Fiction
ISBN: 140006595X

Elmwood Springs, Missouri, is a small town like any other, but something strange is happening out at the cemetery. 'Still Meadows, ' as it's called, is anything but still. Tells a surprising story of life, afterlife, and the mysterious goings-on of ordinary people"--Amazon.com.

Can't Wait to Get to Heaven

Can't Wait to Get to Heaven
Author: Fannie Flagg
Publisher: Random House
Total Pages: 332
Release: 2006-11-28
Genre: Fiction
ISBN: 1588366197

Combining southern warmth with unabashed emotion and side-splitting hilarity, Fannie Flagg takes readers back to Elmwood Springs, Missouri, where the most unlikely and surprising experiences of a high-spirited octogenarian inspire a town to ponder the age-old question: Why are we here? Life is the strangest thing. One minute, Mrs. Elner Shimfissle is up in her tree, picking figs, and the next thing she knows, she is off on an adventure she never dreamed of, running into people she never in a million years expected to meet. Meanwhile, back home, Elner’s nervous, high-strung niece Norma faints and winds up in bed with a cold rag on her head; Elner’s neighbor Verbena rushes immediately to the Bible; her truck driver friend, Luther Griggs, runs his eighteen-wheeler into a ditch–and the entire town is thrown for a loop and left wondering, “What is life all about, anyway?” Except for Tot Whooten, who owns Tot’s Tell It Like It Is Beauty Shop. Her main concern is that the end of the world might come before she can collect her social security. In this comedy-mystery, those near and dear to Elner discover something wonderful: Heaven is actually right here, right now, with people you love, neighbors you help, friendships you keep. Can’t Wait to Get to Heaven is proof once more that Fannie Flagg “was put on this earth to write” (Southern Living), spinning tales as sweet and refreshing as iced tea on a summer day, with a little extra kick thrown in.

Paper Towns

Paper Towns
Author: John Green
Publisher: A&C Black
Total Pages: 321
Release: 2013
Genre: Juvenile Fiction
ISBN: 140884818X

Quentin Jacobson has spent a lifetime loving Margo Roth Spiegelman from afar. So when she cracks open a window and climbs into his life - dressed like a ninja and summoning him for an ingenious campaign of revenge - he follows. After their all-nighter ends, Q arrives at school to discover that Margo has disappeared.

Welcome to the World, Baby Girl!

Welcome to the World, Baby Girl!
Author: Fannie Flagg
Publisher: Ballantine Books
Total Pages: 512
Release: 2011-06-22
Genre: Fiction
ISBN: 0307790959

A funny, serious, and compelling novel by Fannie Flagg, author of the beloved Fried Green Tomatoes at the Whistle Stop Cafe (and prize-winning co-writer of the classic movie). “[This] tale of tough, eccentric, endearing women who first endure and then prevail. . . . will make you laugh out loud—and shed a few tears. . . . Welcome to the World, Baby Girl! is another rattling success.”—Richmond Times-Dispatch Once again, Flagg's humor and respect and affection for her characters shine forth. Many inhabit small-town or suburban America. But this time, her heroine is urban: a brainy, beautiful, and ambitious rising star of 1970s television. Dena Nordstrom, pride of the network, is a woman whose future is full of promise, her present rich with complications, and her past marked by mystery. Among the colorful cast of characters are: Sookie, of Selma, Alabama, Dena's exuberant college roommate, who is everything that Dena is not; she is thrilled by Dena's success and will do everything short of signing autographs for her; Sookie's a mom, a wife, and a Kappa forever Dena's cousins, the Warrens, and her aunt Elner, of Elmwood Springs, Missouri, endearing, loyal, talkative, ditsy, and, in their way, wise Neighbor Dorothy, whose spirit hovers over them all through the radio show that she broadcast from her home in the 1940s Sidney Capello, pioneer of modern sleaze journalism and privateer of privacy, and Ira Wallace, his partner in tabloid television Several doctors, all of them taken with—and almost taken in by-Dena There are others, captivated by a woman who tries to go home again, not knowing where home or love lie.

Our Towns

Our Towns
Author: James Fallows
Publisher: Vintage
Total Pages: 440
Release: 2018-05-08
Genre: Travel
ISBN: 1101871857

NATIONAL BESTSELLER • "James and Deborah Fallows have always moved to where history is being made.... They have an excellent sense of where world-shaping events are taking place at any moment" —The New York Times • The basis for the HBO documentary streaming on HBO Max For five years, James and Deborah Fallows have travelled across America in a single-engine prop airplane. Visiting dozens of towns, the America they saw is acutely conscious of its problems—from economic dislocation to the opioid scourge—but it is also crafting solutions, with a practical-minded determination at dramatic odds with the bitter paralysis of national politics. At times of dysfunction on a national level, reform possibilities have often arisen from the local level. The Fallowses describe America in the middle of one of these creative waves. Their view of the country is as complex and contradictory as America itself, but it also reflects the energy, the generosity and compassion, the dreams, and the determination of many who are in the midst of making things better. Our Towns is the story of their journey—and an account of a country busy remaking itself.

The Phantom Tollbooth

The Phantom Tollbooth
Author: Norton Juster
Publisher: Yearling
Total Pages: 274
Release: 1988-10-12
Genre: Juvenile Fiction
ISBN: 0394820371

With almost 5 million copies sold 60 years after its original publication, generations of readers have now journeyed with Milo to the Lands Beyond in this beloved classic. Enriched by Jules Feiffer’s splendid illustrations, the wit, wisdom, and wordplay of Norton Juster’s offbeat fantasy are as beguiling as ever. “Comes up bright and new every time I read it . . . it will continue to charm and delight for a very long time yet. And teach us some wisdom, too.” --Phillip Pullman For Milo, everything’s a bore. When a tollbooth mysteriously appears in his room, he drives through only because he’s got nothing better to do. But on the other side, things seem different. Milo visits the Island of Conclusions (you get there by jumping), learns about time from a ticking watchdog named Tock, and even embarks on a quest to rescue Rhyme and Reason. Somewhere along the way, Milo realizes something astonishing. Life is far from dull. In fact, it’s exciting beyond his wildest dreams!

Company Town

Company Town
Author: Madeline Ashby
Publisher: Macmillan
Total Pages: 288
Release: 2016-05-17
Genre: Fiction
ISBN: 1466889853

2017 Winner of the Sunburst Award Society's Copper Cylinder Adult Award 2017 Canada Reads Finalist 2017 Locus Award Finalist for Science Fiction Novel Category 2017 Sunburst Award Finalist for Adult Fiction 2017 Aurora Awards Finalist for Best Novell Madeline Ashby's Company Town is a brilliant, twisted mystery, as one woman must evaluate saving the people of a town that can't be saved, or saving herself. "Elegant, cruel, and brutally perfect, Company Town is a prize of a novel." —Mira Grant, New York Times Bestselling and Hugo-Award nominated author of the Newsflesh series New Arcadia is a city-sized oil rig off the coast of the Canadian Maritimes, now owned by one very wealthy, powerful, byzantine family: Lynch Ltd. Hwa is of the few people in her community (which constitutes the whole rig) to forgo bio-engineered enhancements. As such, she's the last truly organic person left on the rig—making her doubly an outsider, as well as a neglected daughter and bodyguard extraordinaire. Still, her expertise in the arts of self-defense and her record as a fighter mean that her services are yet in high demand. When the youngest Lynch needs training and protection, the family turns to Hwa. But can even she protect against increasingly intense death threats seemingly coming from another timeline? Meanwhile, a series of interconnected murders threatens the city's stability and heightens the unease of a rig turning over. All signs point to a nearly invisible serial killer, but all of the murders seem to lead right back to Hwa's front door. Company Town has never been the safest place to be—but now, the danger is personal. At the Publisher's request, this title is being sold without Digital Rights Management Software (DRM) applied.

The Knife of Never Letting Go

The Knife of Never Letting Go
Author: Patrick Ness
Publisher: Candlewick Press
Total Pages: 510
Release: 2010-10-18
Genre: Young Adult Fiction
ISBN: 0763652164

A dystopian thriller follows a boy and girl on the run from a town where all thoughts can be heard – and the passage to manhood embodies a horrible secret. Todd Hewitt is the only boy in a town of men. Ever since the settlers were infected with the Noise germ, Todd can hear everything the men think, and they hear everything he thinks. Todd is just a month away from becoming a man, but in the midst of the cacophony, he knows that the town is hiding something from him -- something so awful Todd is forced to flee with only his dog, whose simple, loyal voice he hears too. With hostile men from the town in pursuit, the two stumble upon a strange and eerily silent creature: a girl. Who is she? Why wasn't she killed by the germ like all the females on New World? Propelled by Todd's gritty narration, readers are in for a white-knuckle journey in which a boy on the cusp of manhood must unlearn everything he knows in order to figure out who he truly is.

Talk of the Town

Talk of the Town
Author: Lisa Wingate
Publisher: Baker Books
Total Pages: 354
Release: 2018-09-19
Genre: Fiction
ISBN: 1493418912

New York Times bestselling author Lisa Wingate captures the heart and faith of small-town America in Talk of the Town. Daily, Texas, has never really been known for much until Amber Anderson becomes a finalist on a television singing show. The producers want to stage a surprise concert for one of the final episodes--only everyone in town seems to know the secret. And paparazzi are arriving. And word from Hollywood is that Amber has disappeared with a bad-boy actor. Can anything go right in this tumbleweed town? Widow Imagene Doll loves her town, but without her beloved husband, life seems lonely--and a bit dull. At least until that fancy-dressed television producer pulls into town, looking terrified and glamorous all at once. Soon life's not the least bit boring as the town finds itself at the center of a media maelstrom . . . with a young girl's future on the line.

One Billion Americans

One Billion Americans
Author: Matthew Yglesias
Publisher: Penguin Group
Total Pages: 289
Release: 2024-05-14
Genre: Political Science
ISBN: 0593853881

NATIONAL BESTSELLER What would actually make America great: more people. If the most challenging crisis in living memory has shown us anything, it’s that America has lost the will and the means to lead. We can’t compete with the huge population clusters of the global marketplace by keeping our population static or letting it diminish, or with our crumbling transit and unaffordable housing. The winner in the future world is going to have more—more ideas, more ambition, more utilization of resources, more people. Exactly how many Americans do we need to win? According to Matthew Yglesias, one billion. From one of our foremost policy writers, One Billion Americans is the provocative yet logical argument that if we aren’t moving forward, we’re losing. Vox founder Yglesias invites us to think bigger, while taking the problems of decline seriously. What really contributes to national prosperity should not be controversial: supporting parents and children, welcoming immigrants and their contributions, and exploring creative policies that support growth—like more housing, better transportation, improved education, revitalized welfare, and climate change mitigation. Drawing on examples and solutions from around the world, Yglesias shows not only that we can do this, but why we must. Making the case for massive population growth with analytic rigor and imagination, One Billion Americans issues a radical but undeniable challenge: Why not do it all, and stay on top forever?