Missing Notes, Hidden Talents, and Other Stories


Book Description

Love and mystery have a way of intertwining in unexpected ways in life. In Donald Averills short story collection, he traces a journey through the lives of vibrant characters driven by love who suddenly find themselves in the midst of intriguing situations. In Missing Notes, a music department graduate student finds an intriguing composition in an old notebook and begins a search for the author. When she and another student look for a missing notebook, they find themselves implicated in a murder investigation. The Canoe sees retired mathematician and widower Samuel Kelly recalling past experiences involving his family canoe after seeing a canoe for sale. Following the sale of the canoe, Sam and a former girlfriend rekindle an old relationship and get involved in a holdup. In Hidden Talents, Clay Coleman, a young physician, misses a turn and arrives at a secluded farm house where he is attacked. Suffering from amnesia, he works his way along Interstate 84 helping people with medical problemswhile his wife searches desperately for him. A seven-year-old boy who thinks he is just living a normal life in 1949 soon realizes that the only way to find out any answers about his grandpas past is to ask good questions in The Pumpkin Tree. Missing Notes, Hidden Talents, and Other Stories shares four charming stories with important messages about perseverance, courage, and, most importantly, love.




The Lighthouse Fire


Book Description

The Lighthouse Fire is a sequel to the Lighthouse Library and is another adventure of ten-year-old Rocky Linfield. It was October of 1952 when ten-year-old Millie Harris moved in with the Linfield family, who ran the lighthouse in Crafton, Maine. Millies stay was to be temporary while her parents delivered a yacht to the Bahamas. Millie was told by an FBI agent, her half-sister, that her parents had been kidnapped, but no ransom demands had been made. A second yacht with CIA agents aboard was being sent to the Bahamas to investigate. Millie felt it was her duty to help, but she could not do it alone. She recruited Rocky to join her, and they became stowaways on the yacht. When they got to the islands, the youngsters discovered the reason for the kidnapping and received help from Pinky, a native Bahamian who worked for the United States Navy during World War II by watching for Nazi submarines. Suffering attacks with a grenade, flares, a scouting knife, and Rockys slingshot, the kidnappers paid for their crimes.




Wolves’ Hollow Murders


Book Description

Wolves Hollow has been in turmoil since the late nineteenth century. This two-part novel visits the Idaho town in both the 1860s and in 2013. Following the Civil War, young Levi Collins decides to find his fortune. With his Union Army buddies, he travels the Oregon Trail in search of gold. Along the way, they come upon unforeseen danger that begins with a rescued dog. Levi and his wagon train encounter Indians, and Levi is injured. He even finds the time to fall in love, all on his search for treasure in the hills. In the year 2013, descendants of the original settlers still reside in Wolves Hollowand now theyve got a heinous murder on their hands. Rhonda Summers is the sheriff, but everyone calls her Rif. With the unexpected help of a carpenter and newspaper reporter, Rif uses modern methods to hunt down a killer. What began as one murder, however, soon becomes a series, perpetrated by several different killers. Even if they catch one criminal, can they be sure theyve stopped them all?




House of Leaves


Book Description

“A novelistic mosaic that simultaneously reads like a thriller and like a strange, dreamlike excursion into the subconscious.” —The New York Times Years ago, when House of Leaves was first being passed around, it was nothing more than a badly bundled heap of paper, parts of which would occasionally surface on the Internet. No one could have anticipated the small but devoted following this terrifying story would soon command. Starting with an odd assortment of marginalized youth -- musicians, tattoo artists, programmers, strippers, environmentalists, and adrenaline junkies -- the book eventually made its way into the hands of older generations, who not only found themselves in those strangely arranged pages but also discovered a way back into the lives of their estranged children. Now this astonishing novel is made available in book form, complete with the original colored words, vertical footnotes, and second and third appendices. The story remains unchanged, focusing on a young family that moves into a small home on Ash Tree Lane where they discover something is terribly wrong: their house is bigger on the inside than it is on the outside. Of course, neither Pulitzer Prize-winning photojournalist Will Navidson nor his companion Karen Green was prepared to face the consequences of that impossibility, until the day their two little children wandered off and their voices eerily began to return another story -- of creature darkness, of an ever-growing abyss behind a closet door, and of that unholy growl which soon enough would tear through their walls and consume all their dreams.




Hidden Talents


Book Description

Thirteen-year-old Martin, a new student at an alternative school for misfits and problem students, falls in with a group of boys with psychic powers and discovers something surprising about himself.




The Talented Miss Highsmith


Book Description

A biography of the novelist who created Tom Ripley that is “both dazzling and definitive . . . as original as its contemptible, miserable, irresistible subject” (Los Angeles Times). A New York Times Notable Book * A Lambda Literary Award Winner * An Edgar Award Nominee * An Agatha Award Nominee * A Publishers Weekly Pick of the Week Patricia Highsmith, one of the great writers of twentieth-century American fiction, had a life as darkly compelling as that of her famed “hero-criminal,” the talented Tom Ripley. Joan Schenkar maps out this richly bizarre life from her birth in Texas to Hitchcock’s filming of her first novel, Strangers on a Train, to her long, strange self-exile in Europe. We see her as a secret writer for the comics, a brilliant creator of disturbing fictions, and an erotic predator with dozens of women (and a few good men) on her love list. The Talented Miss Highsmith is the first literary biography with access to Highsmith’s whole story: her closest friends, her oeuvre, her archives. It’s a compulsive page-turner unlike any other, a book worthy of Highsmith herself. “Schenkar’s writing is witty, sharp and light-handed, a considerable achievement given the immense detail.” —Jeanette Winterson, The New York Times Book Review “This is no ordinary biography . . . The Talented Miss Highsmith breaks much ground in connecting Highsmith’s diabolical tales with the real women who prompted her strongest passions.” —Janet Maslin, The New York Times “Captures the writer in all her sullen, sinister, ambivalent glory.” —Tina Jordan, Entertainment Weekly







Missing Notes, Hidden Talents, and Other Stories by Donald F. Averill


Book Description

Love and mystery have a way of intertwining in unexpected ways in life. In Donald Averill's short story collection, he traces a journey through the lives of vibrant characters driven by love who suddenly find themselves in the midst of unusual situations. In "Missing Notes," a music department graduate student finds an intriguing composition in an old notebook and begins a search for the author. When she and another student look for a missing notebook, they find themselves implicated in a murder investigation. "The Canoe" sees retired mathematician and widower Samuel Kelly recalling past experiences involving his family canoe after seeing a canoe for sale. Following the sale of the canoe, Sam and a former girlfriend rekindle an old relationship and get involved in a holdup. In "Hidden Talents," Clay Coleman, a young physician, misses a turn and arrives at a secluded farm house where he is attacked. Suffering from amnesia, he works his way along Interstate 84 helping people with medical problems--while his wife searches desperately for him. A seven-year-old boy who thinks he is just living a normal life in 1949 soon realizes that the only way to find out any answers about his grandpa's past is to ask good questions in "The Pumpkin Tree." Missing Notes, Hidden Talents, and Other Stories shares four charming stories with important messages about perseverance, courage, and, most importantly, love.




Teaching Kids to Spell For Dummies


Book Description

Filled with enjoyable spelling activities and exercises The fun and easy way? to help your K-5th grader become an A+ speller If you want to make spelling easier for your child or boost spelling skills and confidence, you've come to the right place. Veteran reading specialist Tracey Wood gives you tips, games, exercises, word lists, and memory aids to help your child build solid spelling know-how. Her techniques are fun, fast, and effective, and best of all, they're not boring! Discover how to * Mix spelling practice with reading and writing * Spell short and long vowel words * Make spelling easier with word families * Gain insight into "sight" words * Break spelling into syllable chunks




Literary News


Book Description