Sandcastles, Tall Ships and Vanities


Book Description

Sandcastles, Tall Ships, and Vanities is a fictional family love story intermingled with factual American and British history. Amanda Worsham is born during the War of 1812, in Charleston, South Carolina, to a wealthy British family involved with sailing vessels and worldwide shipping. "Sandcastles" is analogous to the ill-fated Southern plantation system, in that it exists when slavery exists, and is destined to vanish when slavery ends-just as the proverbial sandcastle disappears before the oncoming tide. "Tall Ships" alludes to the family's shipping business utilizing "windjammers," or beautiful tall sailing vessels for global sea trade. "Vanities" are whimsical yet powerful emotions. And to relegate another to slavery is vanity in its extreme (a self-evident truth). And unabashedly, it is a Christian, pro-life, anti-prostitution, and anti-slavery descriptive novel filled with human frailty and anguish. This story "is a handful," so to speak, dealing with family standards, love, sexuality, homosexuality, destructive prostitution (the so-called "white slavery" curse), plus the learning an altogether-fabulous wealth management stratagem. As she begins her marriage to longtime beau, Timothy Caldwell, Amanda assumes the Worsham family's New York-, Boston-, and Charleston-based overseas shipping business (an endeavor with tall ships and part of the fledgling clandestine military industrial complex). She witnesses the end of the Revolutionary War, the beginning of the American Civil War, and she helps shape a dynasty you'll long remember.




Cobble Hill


Book Description

The #1 New York Times bestselling author of the Gossip Girl series brings her sharp-eyed and irresistible wit to this “quirky novel of lovable misfits” (Publishers Weekly) chronicling a year in the lives of four families in an upscale Brooklyn neighborhood as they seek purpose and community—until one unforgettable night at a raucous neighborhood party knocks them to their senses. Welcome to Cobble Hill. In this eclectic Brooklyn neighborhood, private storms brew amongst four married couples and their children. There’s ex-groupie Mandy, so underwhelmed by motherhood and her current physical state that she fakes a debilitating disease to get the attention of her skateboarding, ex-boyband member husband Stuart. There’s the unconventional new school nurse, Peaches, on whom Stuart has an unrequited crush, and her disappointing husband Greg, who wears noise-cancelling headphones—everywhere. A few blocks away, Roy, a well-known, newly transplanted British novelist, has lost the thread of his next novel and his marriage to indefatigable Wendy. Around the corner, Tupper, the nervous, introverted industrial designer with a warehouse full of prosthetic limbs struggles to pin down his elusive artist wife Elizabeth. Throw in two hormonal teenagers, a ten-year-old pyromaniac, a drug dealer pretending to be a doctor, and a lot of hidden cameras, and you’ve got a combustible mix of egos, desires, and secrets bubbling in brownstone Brooklyn. “Breezy, witty, and compulsively fun to read” (Kirkus Reviews), Cobble Hill is highly entertaining portrait of contemporary family life and the colorful characters who call Brooklyn home.




Leaves of Grass


Book Description




Bad Monkey


Book Description

Coming as an Apple Original series from Ted Lasso Executive Producer Bill Lawrence and starring Vince Vaughn • A wickedly funny novel from the New York Times bestselling author of Squeeze Me in which the greedy, the corrupt, and the degraders of what’s left of pristine Florida—now, of the Bahamas as well—get their comeuppance. “[A] comedic marvel … [Hiaasen] hasn’t written a novel this funny since Skinny Dip.”—The New York Times Andrew Yancy—late of the Miami Police and soon-to-be-late of the Monroe County sheriff’s office—has a human arm in his freezer. There’s a logical (Hiaasenian) explanation for that, but not for how and why it parted from its shadowy owner. Yancy thinks the boating-accident/shark-luncheon explanation is full of holes, and if he can prove murder, the sheriff might rescue him from his grisly Health Inspector gig (it’s not called the roach patrol for nothing). But first—this being Hiaasen country—Yancy must negotiate an obstacle course of wildly unpredictable events with a crew of even more wildly unpredictable characters, including his just-ex lover, a hot-blooded fugitive from Kansas; the twitchy widow of the frozen arm; two avariciously optimistic real-estate speculators; the Bahamian voodoo witch known as the Dragon Queen, whose suitors are blinded unto death by her peculiar charms; Yancy’s new true love, a kinky coroner; and the eponymous bad monkey, who with hilarious aplomb earns his place among Carl Hiaasen’s greatest characters.




Where I'm from


Book Description

"In the Fall of 2010 I gave an assignment in my Appalachian Literature class at Berea College, telling my students to write their own version of "Where I'm From" poem based on the writing prompt and poem by George Ella Lyon, one of the preeminent Appalachian poets. I was so impressed by the results of the assignment that I felt the poems needed to be preserved in a bound document. Thus, this little book. These students completely captured the complexities of this region and their poems contain all the joys and sorrows of living in Appalachia. I am proud that they were my students and I am very proud that together we produced this record of contemporary Appalachian Life" -- Silas House




The Four Loves


Book Description

The revered author's classic work that examines the four types of human love: affection, friendship, erotic love, and the love of God.? In this work Lewis examines four varieties of love, as approached from the Greek language: storge, the most basic form; philia, the rarest and perhaps most insightful; eros, passionate love; and agape, the love of God, the greatest and least selfish. ?Throughout this compassionate and reasoned study, he encourages readers to open themselves to all forms of love—the key to understanding that brings us closer to God.? "There is no safe investment. To love at all is to be vulnerable . . . draw nearer to God, not be trying to avoid the sufferings inherent in all loves, but by accepting them and offering them to Him; throwing away all defensive armor. If our hearts need to be broken, and if He chooses this as the way in which they should break, so be it."? In Four Loves, C. S. Lewis explores love to help you · Strengthen your interpersonal relationships · Understand the different between needed pleasures and appreciation pleasures and need-love and gift-love · Care for the people in your life, avoid pitfalls, and improve your relationship God The Four Loves holds a mirror to our current society and leaves no doubt that our modern understanding of love is heavily misunderstood.




Corcoran Gallery of Art


Book Description

This authoritative catalogue of the Corcoran Gallery of Art's renowned collection of pre-1945 American paintings will greatly enhance scholarly and public understanding of one of the finest and most important collections of historic American art in the world. Composed of more than 600 objects dating from 1740 to 1945.




Steel My Soldiers' Hearts


Book Description

The commanding officer of an infantry battalion in Vietnam in 1969 recounts how he took over a demoralized unit of ordinary draftees and turned it into an elite fighting force, and describes its accomplishments.




My Father, Marconi


Book Description

The daughter of Guglielmo Marconi draws upon her father's personal journals and letters as well as from scientific and historical records to chronicle the life and profession of the internationally known inventor.




River's End


Book Description

A seductively suspenseful novel by the author of "The Reef". Traumatized by the events surrounding the breakup of her parents' marriage years ago, a young woman seeks to confront her past and know the truth about the infamous night in her life that has become a part of Hollywood history.