Hyacinth Girls


Book Description

A stunning debut about a young teenager on the brink and a parent desperate to find the truth before it's too late. Thirteen year old Callie is accused of bullying at school, but Rebecca knows the gentle girl she's raised must be innocent. After Callie is exonerated, she begins to receive threatening notes from the girl who accused her, and as these notes become desperate, Rebecca feels compelled to intervene. As she tries to save this unbalanced girl, Rebecca remembers her own intense betrayals and best-friendships as a teenager, when her failure to understand those closest to her led to tragedy. She'll do anything to make this story end differently. But Rebecca doesn’t understand what’s happening or who is truly a victim, and now Callie is in terrible danger. This raw and beautiful story about the intensity of adolescent emotions and the complex identity of a teenage girl looks unflinchingly at how cruelty exists in all of us, and how our worst impulses can estrange us from ourselves - or even save us.




Princess Hyacinth


Book Description

Princess Hyacinth is bored and unhappy sitting in her palace every day because, unless she is weighed down by specially-made clothes, she will float away, but her days are made brighter when kite-flying Boy stops to say hello.




Girl in Hyacinth Blue


Book Description

This New York Times bestseller explores the life and many owners of an imaginary Vermeer painting in an “impressive debut collection” of linked stories (Publishers Weekly). A Dutch painting of a young girl survives three and a half centuries of loss, flood, anonymity, theft, secrecy, and even the Holocaust. This is the story of its owners whose lives are influenced by its beauty and mystery. Despite their many troubles and unsatisfied longings, the girl in hyacinth blue has the power to inspire love in all its human variety. This luminous story begins in the present day, when a professor invites a colleague to his home to see a painting that he has kept secret for decades. The professor swears it is a Vermeer—but why has he hidden this important work for so long? The reasons unfold in a series of events that trace the ownership of the painting back to World War II and Amsterdam, and still further back to the moment of the work’s inspiration. As the painting moves through each owner’s hands, what was long hidden quietly surfaces, illuminating poignant moments in multiple lives. Susan Vreeland’s characters remind us, through their love of this mysterious painting, how beauty transforms and why we reach for it, what lasts and what in our lives is singular and unforgettable. “Vreeland’s book is a work of art.” —New York Post




A Drowned Maiden's Hair


Book Description

"People throw the word 'classic' about a lot, but A Drowned Maiden's Hair genuinely deserves to become one." — Wall Street Journal Maud Flynn is known at the orphanage for her impertinence, so when the charming Miss Hyacinth and her sister choose Maud to take home with them, the girl is as baffled as anyone. It seems the sisters need Maud to help stage elaborate séances for bereaved, wealthy patrons. As Maud is drawn deeper into the deception, playing her role as a "secret child," she is torn between her need to please and her growing conscience -- until a shocking betrayal makes clear just how heartless her so-called guardians are. Filled with tantalizing details of turn-of-the-century spiritualism and page-turning suspense, this lively historical novel features a winning heroine whom readers will not soon forget.




Cat on a Hyacinth Hunt


Book Description

Las Vegas feline sleuth Midnight Louie witnesses the appearance of a corpse in the pools around the Oasis Hotel, a dead man with ties to both boyfriends of his redheaded, high-heeled human companion, Temple Barr.




Haldol and Hyacinths


Book Description

With candor and humor, a manic-depressive Iranian-American Muslim woman chronicles her experiences with both clinical and cultural bipolarity. Born to Persian parents at the height of the Islamic Revolution and raised amid a vibrant, loving, and gossipy Iranian diaspora in the American heartland, Melody Moezzi was bound for a bipolar life. At 18, she began battling a severe physical illness, and her community stepped up, filling her hospital rooms with roses, lilies and hyacinths. But when she attempted suicide and was diagnosed with bipolar disorder, there were no flowers. Despite several stays in psychiatric hospitals, bombarded with tranquilizers, mood-stabilizers, and anti-psychotics, she was encouraged to keep her illness a secret—by both her family and an increasingly callous and indifferent medical establishment. Refusing to be ashamed or silenced, Moezzi became an outspoken advocate, determined to fight the stigma surrounding mental illness and reclaim her life along the way. Both an irreverent memoir and a rousing call to action, Haldol and Hyacinths is the moving story of a woman who refused to become a victim. Moezzi reports from the frontlines of an invisible world, as seen through a unique and fascinating cultural lens. A powerful, funny, and moving narrative, Haldol and Hyacinths is a tribute to the healing power of hope and humor.




Girl in Hyacinth Blue


Book Description

This luminous story of an alleged 36th Vermeer painting begins in the present day and traces the ownership back to World War II, Amsterdam, and to the work's inspiration.




The Design of The Waste Land


Book Description

"The Design of "The Waste Land" offers a detailed, comprehensive explanation of T. S. Eliot's enigmatic poem. It relates The Waste Land to earlier and later poems by Eliot, demonstrating that the major poems describe a continuous spiritual odyssey or quest undertaken by the same individual, initiated by the moment of ecstasy in the Hyacinth garden." "Blistein's analysis of Eliot's sources reveals that the protagonist's glimpse of "the heart of light" is equivalent to drinking from the Grail, or communing with God. The incarnate deity momentarily transforms the Hyacinth garden into the likeness of the Edenic paradise. With the inevitable passing of the moment of communion, the protagonist in effect is expelled from the paradisiacal garden as mankind was from Eden. By contrast, the familiar world appears to him a wasteland. The protagonist seeks to drink again from the divine Source and return again to the garden as it was when transfigured by the divine presence. His is a quest for grail and homeland."--BOOK JACKET.




Celebrate Your Magic


Book Description

Nasir is adjusting to his parent's separation. While camping with his mom, he discovers he carries a magic talent, one that runs through his family lineage. Led on an adventure through an enchanted forest, he is initiated as a magician by the animal kingdom. Nasir returns home with an empowering secret. He is fed up with bullies, and he is no longer holding back! Celebrate Your Magic guides readers on a journey to develop self-acceptance, strength, and courage to face all of life's challenges.




The One and Only Marigold


Book Description

Relates the misadventures of Marigold, a monkey, as she shops with her mother for a coat, makes a hobby of "bugging" her best friend, Maxine the hippo, and imaginatively copes with finding the right outfit for the first day of school.