Ruthie Fear: A Novel


Book Description

Winner of the 2021 High Plains Book Award in Fiction and the 2021 Montana Innovation Award In this haunting parable of the American West, a young woman faces the violent past of her remote Montana valley. As a child in Montana’s Bitterroot Valley, Ruthie Fear sees an apparition: a strange, headless creature near a canyon creek. Its presence haunts her throughout her youth. Raised in a trailer by her stubborn, bowhunting father, Ruthie develops a powerful connection with the natural world but struggles to find her place in a society shaped by men. Development, gun violence, and her father’s vendettas threaten her mountain home. As she comes of age, her small community begins to fracture in the face of class tension and encroaching natural disaster, and the creature she saw long ago reappears as a portent of the valley’s final reckoning. An entirely new kind of western and the first novel from one of this generation’s most wildly imaginative writers, Ruthie Fear captures the destruction and rebirth of the modern American West with warmth, urgency, and grandeur. The Technicolor bursts of action that test Ruthie’s commitment to the valley and its people invite us to look closer at our nation’s complicated legacy of manifest destiny, mass shootings, and environmental destruction. Anchored by its unforgettable heroine, Ruthie Fear presents the rural West as a place balanced on a knife-edge, at war with itself, but still unbearably beautiful and full of love.




Fireflies


Book Description

I'm so different now, so different from the naive high school senior full of heart and dreams. Like a firefly whose very being lights up a summer night like a Fourth of July sparkler, my soul's light was at its brightest. Tammy and Charla have been friends since childhood, but lost touch when life took them separate directions. In their time apart, both women have found themselves in situations far beyond their control. Tammy Trovich had been full of dreams, but had sacrificed and forgotten them all. Truth collides with her head-on when she realizes she's been caught like a firefly in a proverbial jar, living a life of have-to and supposed-to, when all the while, freedom was only inches away. Despite many obstacles, Charla Calibrisi thinks she's living her dream as a news anchor, but when her husband's aggressive behavior mirrors her dark past, will she allow the truth she has buried to be excavated, or will she be buried with it? Trapped in a jar with their lights dimming, both women wrestle with their devotion to the sanctity of marriage. To what limit will Tammy and Charla let their lives grow fainter before their light is extinguished-unable to emanate even the faintest glow? Fireflies is Ruthie Lewis's debut novel, a glimpse into the twisted lives of marriage, what it means to be a woman, the lies they believe, and the choices they make.




Come West and See: Stories


Book Description

An NPR Best Book of 2018 "Devastating.…Grows increasingly bizarre and haunting until it’s left an indelible mark." —Janet Maslin, New York Times In an isolated region of Idaho, Montana, and eastern Oregon, an armed occupation of a wildlife refuge escalates into civil war. Against this backdrop, Maxim Loskutoff shatters the myths of the West: a lonesome trapper falls in love with a bear; a newly married woman hatches a plot to murder a tree; and an unemployed millworker joins a militia after returning home. Written with “blade-sharp prose” (Electric Literature), the twelve stories in this debut collection expose the simmering rage and resentments of small-town America “with extraordinary eloquence and compassion” (National Book Review).




Lucky Broken Girl


Book Description

Winner of the 2018 Pura Belpre Award! “A book for anyone mending from childhood wounds.”—Sandra Cisneros, author of The House on Mango Street In this unforgettable multicultural coming-of-age narrative—based on the author’s childhood in the 1960s—a young Cuban-Jewish immigrant girl is adjusting to her new life in New York City when her American dream is suddenly derailed. Ruthie’s plight will intrigue readers, and her powerful story of strength and resilience, full of color, light, and poignancy, will stay with them for a long time. Ruthie Mizrahi and her family recently emigrated from Castro’s Cuba to New York City. Just when she’s finally beginning to gain confidence in her mastery of English—and enjoying her reign as her neighborhood’s hopscotch queen—a horrific car accident leaves her in a body cast and confined her to her bed for a long recovery. As Ruthie’s world shrinks because of her inability to move, her powers of observation and her heart grow larger and she comes to understand how fragile life is, how vulnerable we all are as human beings, and how friends, neighbors, and the power of the arts can sweeten even the worst of times.




Truly


Book Description

NAMED ONE OF THE BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR BY LIBRARY JOURNAL RITA finalist and New York Times bestselling author Ruthie Knox kicks off a steamy series set in the city that never sleeps—alone, at least. May Fredericks hates New York. Which is fair enough, since New York seems to hate her back. After relocating to Manhattan from the Midwest to be with her long-distance boyfriend, NFL quarterback Thor Einarsson, May receives the world’s worst marriage proposal, stabs the jerk with a shrimp fork, and storms off alone—only to get mugged. Now she’s got no phone, no cash, and no friends. How’s a nice girl supposed to get back to safe, sensible Wisconsin? Frankly, Ben Hausman couldn’t care less. Sure, it’s not every day he meets a genuine, down-to-earth woman like May—especially in a dive in the Village—but he’s recovering from an ugly divorce that cost him his restaurant. He wants to be left alone to start over and become a better man. Then again, playing the white knight to May’s sexy damsel in distress would be an excellent place to start—if only he can give her one very good reason to love New York. Praise for Truly “Knox writes such sultry, detailed romance. The sexual tension and the sex itself are very hot. . . . Highly recommend this story.”—Smexy Books “Truly is another Knox classic. Well written, heartwarming, sweet, super sexy with a dash of heartbreak and soul-searching, I devoured this fabulous story. . . . An absolutely fabulous read about two imperfect people . . . I can’t wait to see what Ruthie Knox will come up with next.”—The Brunette Librarian “Knox is rapidly becoming my go-to author for excellent contemporary romance, providing all of the necessary components to a great read: accessible characters, solid plot, well-paced events and a whole lotta steam. And she delivers it all here. . . . Knox is amazingly talented at incorporating emotion with the physical that fairly sizzles with heat. I strongly encourage readers to immediately read this wonderful book.”—Pretty Sassy Cool “Knox is an incredible writer. She has the gift of making ordinary people larger than life. She adds a special blend of humor, creative dialogue, unique characters, and an interesting plot with its own magical flare. . . . These two vastly different people will discover the magic of life, love, and happiness in a new way. . . . They will console each other about their past failures, cheer each other on, and find their chemistry is much more than sexual. . . . I highly recommend this book.”—Smut Book Junkie Book Reviews “Well written and my favorite Ruthie Knox book to date, Truly is a powerful story and an amazing journey of self-discovery with a sexy love story thrown in for good measure!”—Guilty Pleasures Book Reviews “Truly is one of those stories that just got under my skin and into my heart. . . . It’s not just a romance, it’s a story of two people finding a new path at those crossroads in life we all have to face from time to time. And while the romance between Ben and May is hot and intimate, it is their individual discovery of the path into their future that really hit home with me. This was the story that made me a Ruthie Knox fan for life. If you haven’t read it, I wholeheartedly recommend it. The writing is top notch and the story is interesting, fast paced and has very unique characters.”—Red Hot + Blue Reads




Salvation City


Book Description

“A NOVEL FOR LIFE AFTER THE PANDEMIC…Scratches a particular imaginative itch that we are all experiencing at the precipice of a new era." -- The New Yorker From the National Book Award-winning author of The Friend comes a moving and eerily relevant novel that imagines the aftermath of a pandemic virus as seen through the eyes of a thirteen-year-old boy uncertain of his destiny. His family's sole survivor after a flu pandemic has killed large numbers of people worldwide, Cole Vining is lucky to have found refuge with the evangelical Pastor Wyatt and his wife in a small town in southern Indiana. As the world outside has grown increasingly anarchic, Salvation City has been spared much of the devastation, and its residents have renewed their preparations for the Rapture. Grateful for the shelter and love of his foster family (and relieved to have been saved from the horrid, overrun orphanages that have sprung up around the country), Cole begins to form relationships within the larger community. But despite his affection for this place, he struggles with memories of the very different world in which he was reared. Is there room to love both Wyatt and his parents? Are they still his parents if they are no longer there? As others around him grow increasingly fixated on the hope of salvation and the new life to come through the imminent Rapture, Cole begins to conceive of a different future for himself, one in which his own dreams of heroism seem within reach. Written in Sigrid Nunez's deceptively simple style, Salvation City is a story of love, betrayal, and forgiveness, weaving the deeply affecting story of a young boy's transformation with a profound meditation on the meaning of belief and heroism.




Aftertime


Book Description

In a dystopian California, a woman searches for her daughter with the help of an enigmatic outlaw in this “evocative, sensual, harrowing” zombie thriller (Publishers Weekly, starred review). Awakening in a bleak landscape, Cass Dollar vaguely recalls enduring something terrible. With no idea of how many days or weeks have passed, she slowly realizes the horrifying truth: her daughter, Ruthie, has vanished—along with civilization as we know it. Instead of winding through the once-lush hills, the roads today see only cannibalistic Beaters: people turned hungry for human flesh by a government experiment gone wrong. In a broken, barren California, Cass will undergo a dangerous quest to get Ruthie back. Few people trust an outsider—much less one who bears the telltale scars of a Beater attack. But she finds safety with a mysterious stranger, Smoke. And she’ll need him more than ever when his ragged band of survivors learn that she and Ruthie have become the most feared, and desired, weapons in a brave new world . . .




The Sixty-Eight Rooms


Book Description

Almost everybody who has grown up in Chicago knows about the Thorne Rooms. Housed in the Children’s Galleries of the Chicago Art Institute, they are a collection of 68 exquisitely crafted miniature rooms made in the 1930s by Mrs. James Ward Thorne. Each of the 68 rooms is designed in the style of a different historic period, and every detail is perfect, from the knobs on the doors to the candles in the candlesticks. Some might even say, the rooms are magic. Imagine—what if you discovered a key that allowed you to shrink so that you were small enough to sneak inside and explore the rooms’ secrets? What if you discovered that others had done so before you? And that someone had left something important behind? Fans of Chasing Vermeer, The Doll People, and From the Mixed-Up Files of Mrs. Basil E. Frankweiler will be swept up in the magic of this exciting art adventure!




Useful Gifts


Book Description

"These eleven short stories 'all have Ruth Zimmer as the protagonist, the first ten being episodes of her childhood in Manhattan -- interpreting forher deaf-mute parents whose three children have normal hearing and speech....In the last story Ruth, now living on the West Coast, returns to New York...and discovers that {her father} has been hoarding money by denying his wife and children an easier existance." Antioch Rev.




Extinction


Book Description

“Tale of wilderness survival and pursuit, told in lean, propulsive prose, but with a twist...Somer raises disquieting questions about our relationship with nature, and the debt we owe to the beings with whom we share our planet – even, or perhaps especially, when there is no longer any chance of restitution.” —The Guardian In a lonely valley, deep in the mountains, a ranger watches over the last surviving grizzly bear. With the natural world exhausted and in tatters, Ben has dedicated himself to protecting this single fragment of the wild. One night, he hears voices in the valley—poachers, come to hunt his bear. A heart-pounding chase begins, crossing forests and mountainsides, passing centuries of human ruins. Sometimes hunter, sometimes prey—Ben must choose the bear’s fate and his own. Is he willing to lay down his life for a dying breed? Is he willing to kill for it?