60 results for "Literature"

The Gift That I Can Give

Kathie Lee Gifford
Kids don't have to wait until they grow up to make the world a better place! This Kathie Lee Gifford book empowers children to find unique ways to make a difference in the lives of those around them. The Gift That I Can Give is a heartwarming story that shows how all children can do something today to make a positive impact on others. From simply being kind to giving a loved one an extra-big hug to cheering for a friend, this story will inspire children with countless ways to show God's love. They'll want to read it again and again. The Gift That I Can Give: highlights big gifts and points them back to God, like the ability to sing, play sports, and dance. encourages quieter gifts as well, like encouragement, empathy, gratitude, kindness, and sharing God's love. is a great bedtime story, grandparent story, or encouraging story to a child who is struggling. Kathie Lee is a trusted voice who feels like a friend for countless people. With her strong faith, enthusiasm, and playful writing, she appeals to young hearts and encourages them with the message that no one is too young or too small to share their gift with others. Additional praise for The Gift That I Can Give: "The pictures are adorable, and the message is so important: teaching kids to be generous with their hearts. I can't wait to read this to my little ones!" --Savannah Guthrie, co-anchor of the Today show and NBC News Chief Legal Correspondent "Kathie Lee has given us all a gift with the beautiful message in this book: to love and embrace your unique self. It's an important lesson for children and a refreshing reminder for the rest of us." --Siri Daly, author and Today food contributor
Thomas Nelson Incorporated 2025-08-12 32 pages

Songs for the brokenhearted: a novel

Tsabari, Ayelet
"1950. Thousands of Yemeni Jews have immigrated to the newly founded Israel in search of a better life. In an overcrowded immigrant camp in Rosh Ha'ayin, Yaqub, a shy young man, happens upon Saida, a beautiful girl singing by the river. In the midst of chaos and uncertainty, they fall in love. But they weren't supposed to; Saida is married and has a child, and a married woman has no place befriending another man. 1995. Thirty-something Zohara, Saida's daughter, has been living in New York City-a city that feels much less complicated than Israel, where she grew up wishing her skin were lighter, her illiterate mother's Yemeni music quieter, and that the father who always favored her was alive. She hasn't looked back since leaving home, rarely in touch with her mother or sister, Lizzie, and missing out on her nephew Yoni's childhood. But when Lizzie calls to tell her their mother has died, she gets on a plane to Israel with no return ticket. Soon Zohara finds herself on an unexpected path that leads to shocking truths about her family-including dangers that lurk for impressionable young men and secrets that force her to question everything she thought she knew about her parents, her heritage, and her own future"--
Random House 2025-09-02 339 pages

Billy and girl

Levy, Deborah
In this brilliant, inventive, tragic farce, Deborah Levy creates the ultimate dysfunctional kids, Billy and his sister Girl. Apparently abandoned years ago by their parents, they now live alone somewhere in England. Girl spends much of her time trying to find their mother, going to strangers' doors and addressing whatever Prozac woman who answers as "Mom." Billy spends his time fantasizing a future in which he will be famous, perhaps in the United States as a movie star, or as a psychiatrist, or as a doctor to blondes with breast enlargements, or as the author of "Billy England's Book of Pain." Together they both support and torture each other, barely able to remember their pasts but intent on forging a future that will bring them happiness and reunite them with the ever-elusive Mom. Billy and Girl are every boy and girl reeling from the pain of their childhoods, forgetting what they need to forget, inventing worlds they think will be better, but usually just prolonging nightmares as they begin to create--or so it seems--alternative personalities that will allow them to survive and conquer and punish. In the end, the reader is as bewildered as Billy and Girl--have they found Mom and a semblance of family, or are they completely out of control and ready to explode?
Dalkey Archive Press 2023 192 pages

When We Were Bad

Mendelson, Charlotte
Critics in Britain are already raving about Charlotte Mendelson’s excoriatingly funny yet deeply humane novel about a glamorous London family that happens to be falling apart. The Rubins are the perfect family. They’re wonderfully happy and very glamorous. The mother, Claudia, is the ultimate Jewish a powerful rabbi known for her charm, brains, and determination. Now this dynastic Jewish family is getting ready to marry off the perfect eldest son. History, community, and even gastronomy unite the guests lucky enough to attend this joyous occasion. But when the groom -- one minute before exchanging vows -- bolts with the wrong woman, the myths that have defined this family take on darker overtones. Mendelson’s astonishing eye for detail, as well as her just-right balance of plot and character, makes the unfolding of this story an uncommon treat. In a marvelously compressed style that also bursts with life, she reveals how all four adult Rubin children, and their parents, struggle with huge secrets, sexual frustration and sexual experimentation, and many betrayals. Charlotte Mendelson opens a window on a realm rarely explored in British the complicated world of English Jewry. But to watch this seemingly blessed family drastically, disastrously fall apart before regaining balance is to understand that their struggles -- like all of ours -- are universal ones.
Harper Perennial 2008 336 pages

I Am My Beloveds

Jonathan Papernick
Ben Seidel wasn't sure how serious they were when he and his wife, Shira, discussed having an open marriage. But when Shira announces that she is going on a date with Liz, any ambiguity evaporates. Suddenly, every day is new terrain for Ben, navigating between keeping things together with Shira and exploring new partners. And when one of those new partners begins to matter to him more than he ever anticipated, he discovers that the complexities of this new life are only just beginning. Bracingly honest, refreshingly sexy, and deeply empathetic, I Am My Beloveds is the work of a superior storyteller, making real a lifestyle that might be as close as your own bedroom door.
Story Plant 2024-01-30 336 pages

Lies and sorcery

Morante, Elsa
Elisa - orphaned as a child, raised by a 'fallen woman', fed by fairy tales - has lived in an outlandish imaginary world for years. When her guardian dies, she feels compelled to confront her family's tortured and dramatic past, weaving the tale of her mother and grandmother through a history of intrigue, treachery, deception and desire. But as her saga of three generations of Sicilian women proceeds, it becomes something else entirely, taking in a whole legacy of oppression and injustice. By turns flamboyant and intense, raging and funny, Lies and Sorcery is a celebration of the female imagination, and the power of storytelling itself. First published in 1948, Elsa Morante's debut novel won the Viareggio Prize and earned her the lasting admiration of generations of writers from Italo Calvino and Natalia Ginzburg to Elena Ferrante. Translated by Jenny McPhee
Penguin Classics 2024 800 pages

Unravelling

Elizabeth Graver
From a small, bogside cabin in rural New England, 38-year-old Aimee Slater unravels the story of her life, attempting to make sense of the tangled thread that leads from her mother's house-a short, unbridgeable distance away-to the world she now inhabits. It is soon after the Civil War; Aimee lives alone, but is graced with visits from two friends, a crippled man and a troubled eleven-year-old girl. She is perpetually caught between the sensual world she so desires and the divine retribution passed down to her by her mother's scorn. How Aimee ultimately creates a life for herself and bridges that distance makes for a moving story of love and loss. Told in a voice of spare New England lyricism, Unravelling is a remarkably haunting account of the power of redemption.
Harcourt Brace 1999 304 pages

What Did We Do Wrong?

Henry Denker
The title is the question father asks himself when he learns his son has hand cuffed himself to the dean to protest censorship and as a consequence been expelled. And when the son appears with a scroungy group of mods beards and a girl from out of nowhere the impact to a parent can be overwhelming. Father reasons that if you can't beat them join them; and accordingly gets his own beads guitar and such and goes the kids one better. He burns his checkbook in front of the bank and threatens to ignite himself on the steps of Lincoln Center. It's enough to make even the younger generation realize a thing or two.
Samuel French, Inc. 2022-09-20 98 pages

Hotel Malta

Edna Shemesh
Hotel Malta is a fascinating tale of love and hope, the story of Ernest and Eva Bloom whose lives were upended by World War II, and of Amotz, their grandson, whose marriage is disintegrating, while expecting the birth of his first child. Compelled by an overpowering urge, Ernest makes an intriguing request of his grandson that returns him to a fraught period in his life, rekindling the memory of three distant, stormy, passionate days in Naples in the 1950s. This request alters not only Ernest Bloom's life but also the lives of others, both close and distant. The book raises many questions: How can three days of bliss be weighed against an entire life, and what is love, after all? How does an author find her place in the lives of her characters? And perhaps the most heartbreaking question of all - is it possible to die of happiness?The author's two previous books, Amstel (shortlisted for the prestigious Sapir Prize, 2008) and The Sand Dunes of Paris, were received with critical acclaim, have been translated into English and were awarded national and international prizes: "Arabesque," from Amstel, won first prize in UNESCO's international Mediterranean Short Story Competition; The Sand Dunes of Paris was awarded the Hebrew Literature Translation Prize by the Israel Ministry of Culture. Hotel Malta was awarded the Hebrew Literature Translation Prize in 2016. Go, Pave the Sea, her most political novel, will be published soon (Autumn 2017).
Independently Published 2017-09-26 498 pages

Amstel

Edna Shemesh
Shortlisted for the prestigious Sapir Prize, winner of UNSECO's international competition for Short Stories from the Mediterranean, Amstel is a haunting collection of stories about family, love and longing. These captivating tales take conventional life and tilt it sideways, delivering a memorable blend of the real and the surreal: A mother invites her reluctant son for cocktails and Amstel beer, then drunkenly reveals a part of her life that would have better remained hidden; a lonely man invites a battered young mother and her son into his empty home and a new hope is born in him; a pregnant woman in Jerusalem and her Palestinian cleaning lady draw closer until the Intifada tests their comradeship; a crazy Moroccan girl who habitually bites the back of her hand until it bleeds, believes she's found love; a woman exits her house momentarily into the night chill, the entrance door slams behind her and she has nowhere to go except to the small campfire Palestinian workers from The West Bank have kindled nearby - these are some of the diverse characters populating the intriguing stories in Amstel.Praise for Amstel:"I discovered a lush, rare literary language in the story 'Amstel.' I read it and was dumbfounded that writers still exist who are capable of creating a sentence worthy of Thomas Mann, filled with detail and sparks and shards of images all flowing together to create a portrait from within and simultaneously observed from a distance...It is a truly classic tale, with no jarring notes...demanding a period of reflection before reading anything."Benny Ziffer, Haaretz Daily
Independently Published 2017-09-27 266 pages

Baby Banana and the Licorice Tree

DEBI. DERRYBERRY
Created by Debi Derryberry, the voice of Jimmy Neutron and many other memorable cartoon characters. Your child will fall in love with Baby Banana. Baby Banana can fly with his yellow peel wings! In this Baby Banana adventure, Baby Banana flies with his Momma Duck and his Daddy Gorilla to get licorice from the Licorice Tree for a treat. Debi invites you and your child to listen to her award-winning preschool music on all platforms!
Amazon Digital Services LLC - Kdp 2022-05-09 32 pages

Bad Connections

Joyce Johnson
The award-winning author of Minor Characters writes with delicious transparency about a love that cannot be harnessed and a woman who refuses to be deceived In the great wave of husband-leaving ushered in by the Sexual Revolution, Molly Held frees herself from her cold, flagrantly unfaithful husband after their final quarrel turns violent. With her five-year-old son, she lights out for an Upper West Side apartment and the new life she hopes to find with Conrad Schwartzberg-the charismatic radical lawyer who has recently become her lover. Having escaped from a desert, she lands in a swamp. While Conrad radiates positive energy, he is unable to tell Molly-or anyone who loves him-the truth. No longer the wronged wife, Molly now finds herself the Other Woman. She is sharing Conrad with Roberta, another refugee from marriage-with Conrad's movements between the two of them disguised by his suspiciously frequent out-of-town engagements. Roberta either knows nothing or prefers to look the other way, but Molly's maddening capacity for double vision takes over her mind. What saves her from herself is her well-developed sense of irony, which never fails her-or the reader. "Ironic, witty and always graceful." -Marilyn French, author of The Women's Room "Johnson . . . reveals a knack for lyric bitterness." -Kirkus Reviews "Another superb novel of feminine risk-taking." -Ann Douglas " Bad Connections] is controlled, smooth, deftly written: it evokes scene and character with admirable sure swiftness. . . . Joyce Johnson's touches are all true." -Harper's Magazine "Joyce Johnson is a writer of wit and perception . . . and she has a keen eye for the irony of modern life." -The New York Times Book Review "Often funny, sometimes cathartically angry, always skillful in rendering the small, excruciating moments that add up to the misery of love gone bad." -The Village Voice "The new literature of the aggrieved woman has produced something here quite memorable, a sad, beautiful casebook of unrequited love, unrequited humanity." -E. L. Doctorow "Painfully perceptive, psychologically accurate." -Judith Rossner "A subtle, witty, rueful tour de force of that strange new territory which all of us now inhabit: modern women's modern lives." -Barbara Probst Solomon Joyce Johnson was born in 1935 in New York City, the setting for all her fiction: Come and Join the Dance, recognized as the first Beat novel by a woman writer, Bad Connections, and In the Night Caf . She is best known for her memoir Minor Characters, which won the National Book Critics Circle Award in 1983 and dealt with coming of age in the 1950s and with her involvement with Jack Kerouac. She has published two other Beat-related books: Door Wide Open: A Beat Love Affair in Letters, and The Voice Is All: The Lonely Victory of Jack Kerouac. She has also written a second memoir, Missing Men, and the nonfiction title What Lisa Knew: The Truths and Lies of the Steinberg Case.
Open Road Integrated Media, Incorporated 2014-06-17 264 pages

Once upon Argentina

Neuman, Andrés
"One day, a young man receives an unexpected letter from his grandmother, kicking off a literary adventure that brings home to him everything he has not seen. Once Upon Argentina relates the lives of the narrator's relatives-- a group of people from all over the world gathered in a land where immigrant traditions merge and thrive. The lives of these relatives intersect, like a set of Matryoshka dolls or a hall of mirrors, as the personal and social stories of twentieth century Argentina converge. Beyond these tales of hardship and triumph, Andres Neuman's novel experiments with the nature of the autobiography, encompassing prenatal memories, expanding the autofiction genre with a new voice and twist. Merging present and past, collective experiences and his own, the narrator explores a genealogy populated by unforgettable characters, offering us the story of the construction of a country, his Argentine childhood, and his early literary discoveries.With extraordinary delicacy and intensity, combining elegy, tragedy, and humor, Andres Neuman reveals a world as real as it is fantastic, as strange as it is our own. Once Upon Argentina is a coming-of-age tale, a political novel, and a love letter to the absent ones."--Publisher's website
Open Letter 2024-08-20 307 pages

Lovely Green Eyes

Lustig, Arnost
“A moving act of absolution . . . . This strong novel about a girl who is debased but never destroyed pushes the reader to a new level of understanding of the things people do—and the things that are done to them.”— Washington Post Book World She has hair of ginger and lovely green eyes, and she has just been transported with her family from Terezín to Auschwitz. In short order, her father commits suicide, and her mother and younger brother are dispatched to the gas chambers, but fifteen-year-old Hanka Kauderzová is still alive. Faced with the choice of certain death in the camp or working in a German military brothel, she chooses a chance at life. Passing for an Aryan, Hanka spends her days in the brothel cold, hungry, fearful, and ashamed. She is sustained only by her loathing of the men who visit her and by a fierce, indomitable will to live. This devastatingly beautiful novel explores and delineates the impossible choices one sometimes has to make in life, when the fabric of the world is rent asunder. Soaring beyond the nightmare, it leaves the reader with a transcendent sense of hope. Skyhorse Publishing, as well as our Arcade, Yucca, and Good Books imprints, are proud to publish a broad range of books for readers interested in fiction—novels, novellas, political and medical thrillers, comedy, satire, historical fiction, romance, erotic and love stories, mystery, classic literature, folklore and mythology, literary classics including Shakespeare, Dumas, Wilde, Cather, and much more. While not every title we publish becomes a New York Times bestseller or a national bestseller, we are committed to books on subjects that are sometimes overlooked and to authors whose work might not otherwise find a home.
Arcade Publishing 2015-09-01 256 pages

Dr. Adriaan

Louis Couperus,Alexander Teixeira De Mattos
"Dr. Adriaan" by Louis Couperus delves into the intricate world of family and domestic life, offering a compelling character study within the framework of psychological fiction. Couperus masterfully explores the complexities of relationships, revealing the subtle tensions and unspoken dramas that simmer beneath the surface of everyday interactions. A timeless exploration of families, this literary work offers a deep dive into the psychological landscape of its characters. Through nuanced prose, Couperus examines the enduring themes of human connection and the subtle yet powerful forces that shape our lives within the family unit. "Dr. Adriaan" remains a resonant and insightful portrayal of the human condition, showcasing the author's skill in capturing the nuances of familial bonds. This meticulously prepared edition preserves the original text for readers to experience Couperus's vision. This work has been selected by scholars as being culturally important, and is part of the knowledge base of civilization as we know it. This work is in the public domain in the United States of America, and possibly other nations. Within the United States, you may freely copy and distribute this work, as no entity (individual or corporate) has a copyright on the body of the work. Scholars believe, and we concur, that this work is important enough to be preserved, reproduced, and made generally available to the public. We appreciate your support of the preservation process, and thank you for being an important part of keeping this knowledge alive and relevant.
Creative Media Partners, LLC 2025-03-29 218 pages

The Romance of a Shop

Levy, Amy
"Amy Levy's The Romance of a Shop (1888) follows the four Lorimer sisters in the wake of their father's death. Penniless and reliant on each other, they decide to open a photography studio at 20B Baker Street, offering the citizens of London quality portraits. It's the 1880s and photography is not only growing in popularity and accessibility, but those with a critical eye are elevating the medium associated with quick and steady cash into a true art form. With more women entering the workforce out of necessity and rebellion, the Lorimer sisters take advantage of newfound independence as they work to survive poverty, the grind and smoke of London, fraught courtships, and melodramatic twists of fate. A novel of sisterhood, love, the female gaze and postmortem photography Levy deftly balances along the thin lines of romance and realism, art and commerce"--
Unnamed Press 2025-10-28 150 pages

Tsing

David Albahari
A beautifully written prose work, Tsing is a multi-layered narrative that combines a wholly fictional novel-within-a-novel with an episodic chronicle of the narrator's present as a traveler to and visiting writer in the United States. Much more than an "ordinary" postmodern text, Tsing is a quiet and moving paean to the narrator's deceased father. Beginning with a series of imagined vignettes involving a father and a daughter, Albahari weaves both real and imagined narrative fragments together with considerable skill. As Albahari's fragments - simple stories about persons approaching each other, spending some time together, and eventually going their separate ways - accumulate, his deft combination of paradox and poetry provides a kaleidoscopic view of memory, love, and loneliness.
Northwestern University Press 1997 99 pages