Seamus’s Short Story


Book Description

Seamus is short, and from where he is standing, the world appears to be made for tall people. Seamus would give anything to be taller! One day, while playing dress-up in his mother’s closet, he finds a way to reach new heights. With his mother’s high-heeled shoes on, Seamus can suddenly reach everything that was once too high: the top-floor elevator button, the chocolate milk in the fridge, the TV remote and that horrid picture of him as a baby. But when Seamus encounters problems that can’t be solved from a great height, he has to admit that sometimes being small just isn’t so bad. Acclaimed picture book author Heather Hartt-Sussman brings a light touch to this nuanced story about acceptance, resourcefulness and love, complemented by the humor and beauty in Milan Pavlović’s colorful paintings of Seamus’s world — where there are times to be tall and times to be small. Correlates to the Common Core State Standards in English Language Arts: CCSS.ELA-LITERACY.RL.K.6 With prompting and support, name the author and illustrator of a story and define the role of each in telling the story. CCSS.ELA-LITERACY.RL.K.7 With prompting and support, describe the relationship between illustrations and the story in which they appear (e.g., what moment in a story an illustration depicts). CCSS.ELA-LITERACY.RL.2.3 Describe how characters in a story respond to major events and challenges. CCSS.ELA-LITERACY.RL.4.2 Determine a theme of a story, drama, or poem from details in the text; summarize the text.




Bad Policy


Book Description

Seamus McCree is in hot water. Again. It’s the first “IRA six pack” since the 1970s and The Troubles in Northern Ireland. In this second book in the Seamus McCree series, he returns home to discover his house has become a crime scene. The murder victim posed in his basement is an acquaintance who endured the six pack: bullets to his ankles, knees, and elbows. Forced to prove his innocence, Seamus uncovers a twisted trail that leads back to his Boston roots. He’s stunned to learn the truth about his father’s death and the resulting divorce of Boston’s Irish mafia and the Provisional IRA. The more Seamus digs for the truth, the more his life unravels. As the body count climbs, all trails lead back to him, forcing Seamus underground to smoke out who is framing him — and why — before he becomes the next victim. A protagonist in the tradition of Robert B. Parker, John Sandford, and William Kent Krueger, Seamus is a good guy willing to pay a price to bring justice to the world. Download your copy and join Seamus in his quest to learn the truth and protect his family. The Seamus McCree Series Reading Order Ant Farm Bad Policy Cabin Fever Doubtful Relations Empty Promises False Bottom Furthermore (a novella) Low Tide at Tybee (a novella)




Into No Man's Land


Book Description

An eighteen-year-old Marine records in his journal his experiences in Vietnam during the siege of Khe Sanh, 1967-1968. Includes a history of Vietnam, war timeline, glossary, and related military information.




The Irish Short Story at the Turn of the Twenty-First Century


Book Description

In the mid-1990s, Ireland was experiencing the "best of times". The Celtic Tiger seemed to instil in the national consciousness that poverty was a problem of the past. The impressive economic performance ensured that the Republic occupied one of the top positions among the world’s economic powers. During the boom, dissident voices continuously criticised what they considered to be a mirage, identifying the precariousness of its structures and foretelling its eventual crash. The 2008 recession proved them right. Throughout this time, the Irish contemporary short story expressed distrust. Enabled by its capacity to reflect change with immediacy and dexterity, the short story saw through the smokescreen created by the Celtic Tiger discourse of well-being. It reinterpreted and captured the worst and the best of the country and became a bridge connecting tradition and modernity. The major objective of this book is to analyse the interactions between fiction and reality during this period in Ireland by studying the short stories written by old and emergent voices published between the birth of the Celtic Tiger in 1995 up to its immediate aftermath in 2013.




The Bad Apple


Book Description

“It’s easy to get drawn into this fast-paced, funny, and entertaining adventure” (Publishers Weekly) about a school where making trouble is highly encouraged. Twelve-year-old Seamus Hinkle is a good kid with a perfect school record—until the day of the unfortunate apple incident. Seamus is immediately shipped off to a detention facility—only to discover that Kilter Academy is actually a school to mold future Troublemakers, where demerits are awarded as a prize for bad behavior and each student is tasked to pull various pranks on their teachers in order to excel. Initially determined to avoid any more mishaps, Seamus nonetheless inadvertently emerges as a uniquely skilled troublemaker. Together with new friends Lemon and Elinor, he rises to the top of his class while beginning to discover that Kilter Academy has some major secrets and surprises in store….




Door into the Dark


Book Description

Door into the Dark, Seamus Heaney's second collection of poems, first appeared in 1969. Already his widely celebrated gifts of precision, thoughtfulness, and musicality were everywhere apparent.




The End of Country


Book Description

“A rare, honest, beautiful, and, yes, sometimes heartbreaking examination of the echoes of water-powered natural gas drilling—or fracking—in the human community . . . vivid, personal and emotional.”—Minneapolis Star Tribune Susquehanna County, in the remote northeastern corner of Pennsylvania, is a community of stoic, low-income dairy farmers and homesteaders seeking haven from suburban sprawl—and the site of the Marcellus Shale, a natural gas deposit worth more than one trillion dollars. In The End of Country, journalist and area native Seamus McGraw opens a window on the battle for control of this land, revealing a conflict that pits petrodollar billionaires and the forces of corporate America against a band of locals determined to extract their fair share of the windfall—but not at the cost of their values or their way of life. Rich with a sense of place and populated by unforgettable personalities, McGraw tells a tale of greed, hubris, and envy, but also of hope, family, and the land that binds them all together. “To tell a great story, you need a great story. Seamus McGraw . . . has lived a great story. . . . [He] is just one of its many characters—very real characters—caught up in a very human story in which they must make tough, life-altering decisions for themselves, their community, and ultimately their country.”—Allentown Morning Call “Compelling . . . The End of Country is like a phone call from a close friend or relative living smack-dab in the middle of the Pennsylvania gas rush. . . . Anyone with even a passing interest in the [fracking debate should] read it.”—Harrisburg Patriot-News “This cautionary tale should be required reading for all those tempted by the calling cards of easy money and precarious peace of mind.”—Tom Brokaw “A page-turner . . . McGraw brings us to the front lines of the U.S. energy revolution to deliver an honest and humbling account that could hardly possess greater relevance.”—The Humanist




The Burial at Thebes


Book Description

Sophocles' play, first staged in the fifth century B.C., stands as a timely exploration of the conflict between those who affirm the individual's human rights and those who must protect the state's security. During the War of the Seven Against Thebes, Antigone, the daughter of Oedipus, learns that her brothers have killed each other, having been forced onto opposing sides of the battle. When Creon, king of Thebes, grants burial of one but not the "treacherous" other, Antigone defies his order, believing it her duty to bury all of her close kin. Enraged, Creon condemns her to death, and his soldiers wall her up in a tomb. While Creon eventually agrees to Antigone's release, it is too late: She takes her own life, initiating a tragic repetition of events in her family's history. In this outstanding new translation, commissioned by Ireland's renowned Abbey Theatre to commemorate its centenary, Seamus Heaney exposes the darkness and the humanity in Sophocles' masterpiece, and inks it with his own modern and masterly touch.




Ann and Seamus


Book Description

Seventeen-year-old Ann Harvey is one of the great unsung heroes of maritime history. In 1828, off the Newfoundland fishing village of Isle aux Morts, Ann Harvey, her father and younger brother, came upon the wreck of the Despatch, an Irish immigrant ship originally destined for Quebec City. In thick fog and fierce wind it had run aground. Ann's courage and strength at the oars of the rescue boat were largely responsible for saving more than 160 dirt-poor passengers stranded amid the raging storm, left "like seabirds clinging to the rocks." Ann's courageous feat along the isolated south coast of Newfoundland has been all but forgotten. Ann and Seamus brings the remarkable story of Ann Harvey to today's readers. In a poetic and powerful retelling, Kevin Major portrays the shy young woman thrust into extraordinary circumstances. It is the story of dramatic rescue, but it is also the story of dreams and fate, of a hard life and young love. For also at its center is Seamus, a young Irishman who had set sail with hopes of a new life in America. Ann and Seamus is historical fiction that sweeps across ages and nationalities. In rich yet accessible narrative verse, it draws the reader into the drama of sea rescue without losing the tender and impetuous voices of youth at the core of the story.




A Horse Named Sorrow


Book Description

"When troubled twenty-one-year-old Seamus Blake meets the enigmatic Jimmy (just arrived in San Francisco by bicycle from his hometown in Buffalo, New York), he feels his life may finally be taking off. But the ensuing romance proves short-lived as Jimmy dies of an AIDS-related illness. The grieving Seamus is obliged to keep a promise: "Take me back the way I came," Jimmy had asked. And so Seamus sets out by bicycle on a picaresque journey with the ashes, hoping to bring them back to Buffalo. He meets truck drivers, waitresses, Native Americans, college kids, farmers, ranchers, and Marines--each one giving him a new perspective on his own life and on Jimmy's death. When he falls in man whose mother has also recently died, Seamus's grief and his story become universal and redemptive. Award-winning novelist Trebor Healey depicts San Francisco in the 1980s and '90s in poetic prose that is both ribald and poignant, and a crossing into the American West that is dreamy, mythic, mystifying."--Publisher's description.