Looking for Lydia


Book Description

"I met this book's co-authors Michael Renegar and Amy Greer in 2016, when assigned a news story about Jamestown's famous ghost named Lydia. What could be less "real news" than a ghost story? Nonetheless, I quickly validated what Michael and Amy knew all along - there is, indeed, a real-life tragedy buried within this famous tale. It just took the final puzzle piece - an ironic twist of fate - to prove it. The first few lines of this work will draw the reader into this captivating mystery and these authors' passionate 30-year research of the Lydia legend. Will giving fact to folklore spoil the story? That's up to the reader to decide. But perhaps connecting the dots, at last, in the quest for truth can bring Jamestown's famous ghost - and her loyal believers - some peace. " Meghann Mollerus, Journalist




Looking for Lydia


Book Description

This book is what the world needs now, from a voice we need to hear. Sally Mann is the fourth of five generations living and ministering in one East End community, with a PhD and five lifetimes of stories. Her experiences will make you laugh, cry and, if you pay attention, help you see how much-needed change can happen...Sally brilliantly connects Biblical characters with contemporary people and shows how these individuals have helped shape over 150 years of her family's ministry in one East London neighbourhood.' Ash BarkerExecutive Director Red Letter Christians UKSally and Dave love their community. They have a jealous passion to see it thrive. They have resilience which comes from long-term commitment; knowing their dreams of what God might do will take more than a few years of committed service, but decades, and perhaps generations, to achieve. They seek deep transformation in the places they serve - bringing structural changes like good education, just governance, and improving the health and well-being of all their neighbours. Alongside this they have built lively, inclusive, Christian congregations. We should listen to their story.Steve ChalkeFounder & Leader Oasis GlobalIn all the window dressing around how to fix the church or make it more connected to our massively disruptive times Looking for Lydia changes the conversation. It turns most of our pretensions on their head as it brings us back to the God who radically meets us in the other. The story in this book is grounded in the practiced life of a community of God's people. I can't recommend it more highly. It's the disruptive Spirit calling us to God's future. Alan J RoxburghJournal of Missional Practice & The Missional Network




The Secret Diary of Lydia Bennet


Book Description

In the tradition of Longbourn, Mr. Darcy's Diary, and Prom and Prejudice... Lydia is the youngest of the five Bennet girls. She's stubborn, never listens, and can't seem to keep her mouth shut--not that she would want to anyway. She's bored with her country life and wishes her older sisters would pay her attention . . . for once! Luckily, the handsome Wickham arrives at Longbourn to sweep her off her feet. Lydia's not going to let him know THAT, of course, especially since he only seems to be interested in friendship. But when they both decide to summer in the fasionable seaside town of Brighton, their paths become entangled again. At the seaside, Lydia also finds exciting new ways of life and a pair of friends who offer her a future she never dreamed of. Lydia finally understands what she really wants. But can she get it? A fresh, funny, and spirited reimagining of Jane Austen's beloved Pride and Prejudice, The Secret Diary of Lydia Bennet brings the voice of the wildest Bennet sister alive and center stage like never before.




Do You Have the Time, Lydia?


Book Description

Lydia is busy with so many projects that she never has time to finish any of them.




Sweet Lamb of Heaven: A Novel


Book Description

Longlisted for the National Book Award for Fiction: Blending domestic thriller and psychological horror, this compelling page-turner follows a mother fleeing her estranged husband. Lydia Millet’s previous work has been shortlisted for the Pulitzer Prize, the National Book Critics Circle Award, and the Los Angeles Times Book Prize. Likewise greeted with rapturous praise, Sweet Lamb of Heaven is a first-person account of a young mother, Anna, fleeing her cold and unfaithful husband, a businessman who’s just launched his first campaign for political office. When Ned chases Anna and their six-year-old daughter from Alaska to Maine, the two go into hiding in a run-down motel on the coast. But the longer they stay, the less the guests in the dingy motel look like typical tourists—and the less Ned resembles a typical candidate. As his pursuit of Anna and their child moves from threatening to criminal, Ned begins to alter his wife’s world in ways she never could have imagined. A double-edged and satisfying story with a strong female protagonist, a thrilling plot, and a creeping sense of the apocalyptic, Sweet Lamb of Heaven builds to a shattering ending with profound implications for its characters—and for all of us.




Can't and Won't


Book Description

A new collection of short stories from the woman Rick Moody has called "the best prose stylist in America" Her stories may be literal one-liners: the entirety of "Bloomington" reads, "Now that I have been here for a little while, I can say with confidence that I have never been here before." Or they may be lengthier investigations of the havoc wreaked by the most mundane disruptions to routine: in "A Small Story About a Small Box of Chocolates," a professor receives a gift of thirty-two small chocolates and is paralyzed by the multitude of options she imagines for their consumption. The stories may appear in the form of letters of complaint; they may be extracted from Flaubert's correspondence; or they may be inspired by the author's own dreams, or the dreams of friends. What does not vary throughout Can't and Won't, Lydia Davis's fifth collection of stories, is the power of her finely honed prose. Davis is sharply observant; she is wry or witty or poignant. Above all, she is refreshing. Davis writes with bracing candor and sly humor about the quotidian, revealing the mysterious, the foreign, the alienating, and the pleasurable within the predictable patterns of daily life.




Essays One


Book Description

A selection of essays on writing and reading by the master short-fiction writer Lydia Davis Lydia Davis is a writer whose originality, influence, and wit are beyond compare. Jonathan Franzen has called her “a magician of self-consciousness,” while Rick Moody hails her as "the best prose stylist in America." And for Claire Messud, “Davis's signal gift is to make us feel alive.” Best known for her masterful short stories and translations, Davis’s gifts extend equally to her nonfiction. In Essays One, Davis has, for the first time, gathered a selection of essays, commentaries, and lectures composed over the past five decades. In this first of two volumes, her subjects range from her earliest influences to her favorite short stories, from John Ashbery’s translation of Rimbaud to Alan Cote’s painting, and from the Shepherd’s Psalm to early tourist photographs. On display is the development and range of one of the sharpest, most capacious minds writing today.




His to Keep


Book Description

Stolen in broad daylight on her way home from school, for Ava Hanlon, the nightmare is only just beginning. So young and achingly naïve, Ava is no match for her depraved new master, Father Mathew Aaron, a well-respected priest, and a man hellbent on consuming her innocence to the very last drop. There is no hope. No light. There is only Callum. A troubled, tormented young man imprisoned in the same room as her. As each day slips by without rescue, all that is left is this fierce, dark entity stirring between them—something far more threatening to her virtue than even Father Aaron’s obsessive game. Something so powerful, it may just make her want to stay for keeps. A dark psychological romance that’s full of twists and turns you won’t see coming.




Saved!!!


Book Description

Little Lydia learns to be the best that she can be as she competes in a variety of sports against very unusual competitors. An inspiring celebration of self-belief, the joy to be had in sport, and the importance of persistence. Little Lydia loves sport. She lives in the outback and is friends with all the animals. When she asks Emu, Kangaroo and Koala to play sport with her, she soon discovers that each of them has a special talent. But does Lydia have a gift for sport too? And if she does, how will she discover it? A funny and triumphant picture book by Lydia Williams, goalkeeper for the Matildas.




The Two Lives of Lydia Bird


Book Description

Two lives. Two loves. One impossible choice. From the #1 New York Times bestselling author of the Reese’s Book Club Pick One Day in December . . . “I read The Two Lives of Lydia Bird in a single sitting. What a beautiful, emotional gift Josie Silver has given us.”—Jodi Picoult Written with Josie Silver’s trademark warmth and wit, The Two Lives of Lydia Bird is a powerful and thrilling love story about the what-ifs that arise at life’s crossroads, and what happens when one woman is given a miraculous chance to answer them. Lydia and Freddie. Freddie and Lydia. They’d been together for more than a decade and Lydia thought their love was indestructible. But she was wrong. On Lydia’s twenty-eighth birthday, Freddie died in a car accident. So now it’s just Lydia, and all she wants is to hide indoors and sob until her eyes fall out. But Lydia knows that Freddie would want her to try to live fully, happily, even without him. So, enlisting the help of his best friend, Jonah, and her sister, Elle, she takes her first tentative steps into the world, open to life—and perhaps even love—again. But then something inexplicable happens that gives her another chance at her old life with Freddie. A life where none of the tragic events of the past few months have happened. Lydia is pulled again and again through the doorway to her past, living two lives, impossibly, at once. But there’s an emotional toll to returning to a world where Freddie, alive, still owns her heart. Because there’s someone in her new life, her real life, who wants her to stay.