A Toast Before Dying


Book Description

Murder casts a shadow over the soul of Harlem.... When she's not studying for her master's or dropping in on her father's jazz gigs, ex-cop Mali Anderson checks out the scene at Harlem's smoky Half-Moon Bar. She wasn't there for singer-bartender Thea Morris's birthday party, but someone else was--someone who shot Thea to death outside in the alley. Was it her boyfriend, now sitting in jail on suspicion of murder? His sister insists he's innocent--and wants her friend Mali to clear his name. Thea herself is a mystery: a lonely beauty in an apartment too deluxe for a woman living on tip money, with a gamut of lovers from an aspiring actor to an ambitious politician. It will take all Mali's savvy--and sources from street-corner buzz to uptown cocktail chat--to unravel Thea's life and death. And it will take her every survival instinct to catch a killer who will kill again to keep a deadly secret.




Making Toast


Book Description

From O magazine to the New York Times, from authors such as E. L. Doctorow to Ann Beattie, critics and writers across the country have hailed Roger Rosenblatt's Making Toast as an evocative, moving testament to the enduring power of a parent's love and the bonds of family. When Roger's daughter, Amy—a gifted doctor, mother, and wife—collapses and dies from an asymptomatic heart condition at age thirty-eight, Roger and his wife, Ginny, leave their home on the South Shore of Long Island to move in with their son-in-law, Harris, and their three young grandchildren: six-year-old Jessica, four-year-old Sammy, and one-year-old James, known as Bubbies. Long past the years of diapers, homework, and recitals, Roger and Ginny—Boppo and Mimi to the kids—quickly reaccustom themselves to the world of small children: bedtime stories, talking toys, play-dates, nonstop questions, and nonsequential thought. Though reeling from Amy's death, they carry on, reconstructing a family, sustaining one another, and guiding three lively, alert, and tenderhearted children through the pains and confusions of grief. As he marvels at the strength of his son-in-law and the tenacity and skill of his wife, Roger attends each day to "the one household duty I have mastered"—preparing the morning toast perfectly to each child's liking. Luminous, precise, and utterly unsentimental, Making Toast is both a tribute to the singular Amy and a brave exploration of the human capacity to move through and live with grief.




Burnt Toast


Book Description

From America's most beloved comedic actress and the star of Desperate Housewives comes a personal, heartfelt, and often very funny manifesto on life, love, and the lessons we all need to learn -- and unlearn -- on the road to happiness. Teri Hatcher secured her place in America's heart when she stood up to accept her Golden Globe for Best Actress and declared herself a "has-been" on national television. That moment showcased her down-to-earth, self-deprecating style -- and her frank openness about the ups and downs she's experienced in life and work. But what the world might not have seen that night is that Teri's self-acceptance is the hard-won effort of a single mother with all the same struggles most women have to juggle -- life, love, bake sale cookies, and dying cats. Now, in the hope that her foibles and insights might inspire and motivate other women, Teri opens up about the little moments that have sustained her through good times and bad. From the everyday (like the importance of letting your daughter spill her macaroni so she knows it's okay to make mistakes) to the rare (a rendezvous with a humpback whale -- and no, he was not a suitor), the message at the heart of Burnt Toast -- that happiness and success are choices that we owe it to ourselves to make -- is sure to resonate with women everywhere.




Burnt Toast Makes You Sing Good


Book Description

A delicious new memoir from the New York Times bestselling author of The Sharper Your Knife, the Less You Cry A family history peppered with recipes, Burnt Toast Makes You Sing Good offers a humorous and flavorful tale spanning three generations as Kathleen Flinn returns to the mix of food and memoir readers loved in her New York Times bestseller, The Sharper Your Knife, the Less You Cry. Brimming with tasty anecdotes about Uncle Clarence’s divine cornflake-crusted fried chicken, Grandpa Charles’s spicy San Antonio chili, and Grandma Inez’s birthday-only cinnamon rolls, Flinn—think Ruth Reichl topped with a dollop of Julia Child—shows how meals can be memories, and how cooking can be communication. Burnt Toast Makes You Sing Good will inspire readers (and book clubs) to reminisce about their own childhoods—and spend time in their kitchens making new memories of their own.




If I Should Die


Book Description

An ex-cop's habits die hard.... Savvy, streetwise former cop Mali Anderson left the NYPD with a lawsuit and a lot of bitterness. Now she's on her way to a master's in sociology, living with her jazz musician father and mothering her orphaned nephew, Alvin. As Mali walks past the stylish town houses of Harlem's Strivers Row to meet Alvin at his rehearsal with the Uptown Children's Chorus, she hears a child's panicked screams--and witnesses a struggle. Mali thwarts the child's abduction, but as the car roars away, she finds a body in the street. The dead man is her friend Erskin Harding, tour director of the Chorus. The memory of her friend and the peril of her nephew drive Mali to track down the killer. It's a search that will take her from a gossip-filled beauty parlor to a dark, decaying crack house and--as anonymous warnings escalate into violence--could even lead her to her grave.




A Homemade Life


Book Description

- An irresistible story of cooking that goes beyond the kitchen: Molly Wizenberg shares stories of an everyday life and a way of eating that is inspiring, playful, and mindful. From her father's French toast to her husband Brandon's pickles to her chocolate wedding cakes, A Homemade Life is a story about the lessons we can learn in the kitchen: who we are, who we love, and who we want to be.. - Delicious homemade food: The fifty recipes that accompany Molly's writing are an integral part of her story; she connects food to the people who cook and eat it. Full of fresh flavors, these dishes invite novices and experienced cooks alike into the kitchen. . - An established following: The hardcover of A Homemade Life reached the New York Times extended list, and Molly read before standing-room only crowds at bookstores across the country. Wizenberg's blog, Orangette, was named the #1 food blog in the world by the London Times and boasts more than 9,500 hits per day. .




Love, Dishonor, Marry, Die; Cherish, Perish


Book Description

From the incomparable David Rakoff, a poignant, beautiful, witty and wise novel in verse whose scope spans the 20th Century. David Rakoff, who died in 2012 at the age of 47, built a deserved reputation as one of the finest and funniest essayists of our time. This intricately woven novel, written with humour, sympathy and tenderness, proves him the master of an altogether different art form. Love, Dishonor, Marry, Die; Cherish, Perish leaps cities and decades as Rakoff, a Canadian who became an American citizen, sings the song of his adoptive homeland--a country whose freedoms can be intoxicating, or brutal. Here the characters' lives are linked to each other by acts of generosity or cruelty. A critic once called Rakoff "magnificent," a word which perfectly describes this wonderful novel in verse.




Go Ask Alice


Book Description

A teen plunges into a downward spiral of addiction in this classic cautionary tale. January 24th After you’ve had it, there isn't even life without drugs… It started when she was served a soft drink laced with LSD in a dangerous party game. Within months, she was hooked, trapped in a downward spiral that took her from her comfortable home and loving family to the mean streets of an unforgiving city. It was a journey that would rob her of her innocence, her youth—and ultimately her life. Read her diary. Enter her world. You will never forget her. For thirty-five years, the acclaimed, bestselling first-person account of a teenage girl’s harrowing decent into the nightmarish world of drugs has left an indelible mark on generations of teen readers. As powerful—and as timely—today as ever, Go Ask Alice remains the definitive book on the horrors of addiction.




180 Masterpieces You Should Read Before You Die (Vol.2)


Book Description

Invest your time in reading the true masterpieces of world literature, the great works of the greatest masters of their craft, the revolutionary works, the timeless classics and the eternally moving poetry of words and storylines every person should experience in their lifetime: Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde (Robert Louis Stevenson) A Doll's House (Henrik Ibsen) A Tale of Two Cities (Charles Dickens) Dubliners (James Joyce) A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man (James Joyce) War and Peace (Leo Tolstoy) Howards End (E. M. Forster) Le Père Goriot (Honoré de Balzac) Sense and Sensibility (Jane Austen) Anne of Green Gables Series (L. M. Montgomery) The Wind in the Willows (Kenneth Grahame) Gitanjali (Rabindranath Tagore) Diary of a Nobody (Grossmith) The Beautiful and Damned (F. Scott Fitzgerald) Moll Flanders (Daniel Defoe) 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea (Jules Verne) Gulliver's Travels (Jonathan Swift) The Last of the Mohicans (James Fenimore Cooper) Peter and Wendy (J. M. Barrie) The Three Musketeers (Alexandre Dumas) Iliad & Odyssey (Homer) Kama Sutra Dona Perfecta (Benito Pérez Galdós) The Divine Comedy (Dante) The Rise of Silas Lapham (William Dean Howells) The Book of Tea (Kakuzo Okakura) Madame Bovary (Gustave Flaubert) The Hunchback of Notre Dame (Victor Hugo) Red and the Black (Stendhal) Rob Roy (Walter Scott) Barchester Towers (Anthony Trollope) Uncle Tom's Cabin (Harriet Beecher Stowe) Three Men in a Boat (Jerome K. Jerome) Tristram Shandy (Laurence Sterne) Tess of the d'Urbervilles (Thomas Hardy) My Antonia (Willa Cather) The Age of Innocence (Edith Wharton) The Awakening (Kate Chopin) Babbitt (Sinclair Lewis) The Four Just Men (Edgar Wallace) Of Human Bondage (W. Somerset Maugham) The Portrait of a Lady (Henry James) Fathers and Sons (Ivan Turgenev) The Voyage Out (Virginia Woolf) Life is a Dream (Pedro Calderon de la Barca) Faust (Goethe) Thus Spoke Zarathustra (Friedrich Nietzsche) Autobiography (Benjamin Franklin) The Yellow Wallpaper (Charlotte Perkins Gilman)




The Last Dream Before You Die


Book Description

Jack Bone is a detective, and nothing gets in the way of solving a casenot even the recent death of his partner. Still reeling from loss, Bone accepts an assignment in Wolfston, investigating the profitability of Englands last woolen mill. Theres something strange about the staff at the mill, thoughespecially the night shift, who seem to have a lot of secrets. The employees at the Wolfston mill are vampires, and they dont like Bone snooping around. He escapes unscathed, but that isnt the end of his troubles. Bones busy caseload also includes the suspected smuggling of illegal aliens into England in trucks owned by Astra Clothing. Nearby, in Leeds, he encounters the Russian gangsters who are running the show. In a curious twist, he finds safety with the Wolfston vampires, who agree to help him with his case while keeping him safe. Bone is right on the gangsters tail when they produce their own powerful vampire, threatening the lives of Bones close friends and family. Fearing further loss, he vows to bring the Russians to justice before its too late, but how can he fight an immortal foe? This might be Bones last case, but he wont go down without a fight.