The Blank Wall


Book Description

A suburban matron, harassed by wartime domestic problems - her husband is overseas - finds herself implicated in the murder of her young daughter's extremely unattractive beau. This novel is about maternal love and about the heroine's relationship with those around her, especially her children and her maid.




Walls Notebook


Book Description

A blank city wall with a fresh coat of paint—is there anything more appealing to doodlers, dreams, and graffiti artists? Walls Notebook invites you to indulge your inner vandal without the risk of jail time. Here are 160 pages of wall photographs for notes, sketches, drawings, and defacement, all packaged in a delightful lay-flat flexi-bind paperback.




Hey, Wall


Book Description

“Verde’s unique style and simple yet increasingly important messages of peace, mindfulness, and community make her stories a must-share...A must-purchase.” —School Library Journal (starred review) “Walls do not just create barriers and divide spaces. They can be canvases for artmaking; opportunities to shape a community.” —The Horn Book “This story of urban renewal sends a welcome double message by Verde: neighbors and neighborhoods are more than the way they look, and ordinary people can band together to transform big things.” —Publishers Weekly A boy takes on a community art project in order to make his neighborhood more beautiful in this empowering and inspiring picture book by Susan Verde, stunningly illustrated by award-winning artist John Parra. One creative boy. One bare, abandoned wall. One BIG idea. There is a wall in Ángel’s neighborhood. Around it, the community bustles with life: music, dancing, laughing. Not the wall. It is bleak. One boy decides to change that. But he can’t do it alone. Told in elegant verse by Susan Verde and vibrantly illustrated by John Parra, this inspiring picture book celebrates the power of art to tell a story and bring a community together.




Linked


Book Description

An unforgettable novel from the New York Times bestseller Gordon Korman Link, Michael, and Dana live in a quiet town. But it's woken up very quickly when someone sneaks into school and vandalizes it with a swastika. Nobody can believe it. How could such a symbol of hate end up in the middle of their school? Who would do such a thing? Because Michael was the first person to see it, he's the first suspect. Because Link is one of the most popular guys in school, everyone's looking to him to figure it out. And because Dana's the only Jewish girl in the whole town, everyone's treating her more like an outsider than ever. The mystery deepens as more swastikas begin to appear. Some students decide to fight back and start a project to bring people together instead of dividing them further. The closer Link, Michael, and Dana get to the truth, the more there is to face-not just the crimes of the present, but the crimes of the past. With Linked, Gordon Korman, the author of the acclaimed novel Restart, poses a mystery for all readers where the who did it? isn't nearly as important as the why?




Simple Shui for Every Day


Book Description

Feng Shui is a practice that prioritizes the energy of our surroundings in specific ways. Under its influence, we attract and hold onto chi that supports our happiness and well-being. Think of it as home improvement-meets-self empowerment! So, what you can expect in the pages ahead? There are 365 prompts. One for every day of the year. However, these aren't specific to the time of year or prescribed in a specific order. All the suggestions are more of a grab-and-go, so have fun! Some are straightforward Feng Shui: do this; don't do that. Some focus on chi (energy) enhancers because all of us deserve an entourage of encouragement. Some spotlight the 5 Chinese Elements - Wood, Fire, Earth, Metal, and Water - and how they influence our behavior and feelings. Some are straight up motivational. Not every day will feel like a "shui" day. These will be the connective tissue to keep you in the game while you take a break. Some talk about clutter. Clutter is resistance, which means you need to clear it for the magic of shui to have any sway! And some are dedicated to space clearing - a form of energetic cleaning. These tips are like a greatest hits' compilation, mindfully gathered from all my studies as well as the clients I've been blessed to work with along their journeys. What we experience in life is often reflected energetically in our surroundings. And when we change what's happening around us in a positive way, we reconfigure what happens in our lives as well - one day at a time!







Cloud and Wallfish


Book Description

"Noah Keller has a pretty normal life until one wild afternoon when his parents pick him up from school and head straight for the airport, telling him on the ride that his name isn't really Noah and he didn't really just turn eleven in March ... As Noah, now 'Jonah Brown,' and his parents head behind the Iron Curtain into East Berlin, the rules and secrets begin to pile up so quickly that he can hardly keep track of the questions bubbling up inside him: who, exactly, is listening--and why?"




The Invention of Solitude


Book Description

'One day there is life . . . and then, suddenly, it happens there is death.' So begins Paul Auster's moving and personal meditation on fatherhood. The first section, 'Portrait of an Invisible Man', reveals Auster's memories and feelings after the death of his father. In 'The Book of Memory' the perspective shifts to Auster's role as a father. The narrator, 'A', contemplates his separation from his son, his dying grandfather and the solitary nature of writing and story-telling.




The Dearly Beloved


Book Description

“This gentle, gorgeously written book may be one of my favorites ever.” —Jenna Bush Hager (A Today show “Read with Jenna” Book Club Selection!) This “moving portrait of love and friendship set against a backdrop of social change” (The New York Times Book Review, Editor’s Choice) traces two married couples whose lives become entangled when the husbands become copastors at a famed New York city congregation in the 1960s. Charles and Lily, James and Nan. They meet in Greenwich Village in 1963 when Charles and James are jointly hired to steward the historic Third Presbyterian Church through turbulent times. Their personal differences however, threaten to tear them apart. Charles is destined to succeed his father as an esteemed professor of history at Harvard, until an unorthodox lecture about faith leads him to ministry. How then, can he fall in love with Lily—fiercely intellectual, elegantly stern—after she tells him with certainty that she will never believe in God? And yet, how can he not? James, the youngest son in a hardscrabble Chicago family, spent much of his youth angry at his alcoholic father and avoiding his anxious mother. Nan grew up in Mississippi, the devout and beloved daughter of a minister and a debutante. James’s escape from his desperate circumstances leads him to Nan and, despite his skepticism of hope in all its forms, her gentle, constant faith changes the course of his life. In The Dearly Beloved, Cara wall reminds us of “the power of the novel in its simplest, richest form: bearing intimate witness to human beings grappling with their faith and falling in love,” (Entertainment Weekly, A-) as we follow these two couples through decades of love and friendship, jealousy and understanding, forgiveness and commitment. Against the backdrop of turbulent changes facing the city and the church’s congregation, Wall offers a poignant meditation on faith and reason, marriage and children, and the ways we find meaning in our lives. The Dearly Beloved is a gorgeous, wise, and provocative novel that is destined to become a classic.




Women Crime Writers: Four Suspense Novels of the 1940s (LOA #268)


Book Description

A landmark collection of four brilliant novels by the female pioneers of crime fiction—women who paved the way for Gillian Flynn, Tana French, and Lisa Scottoline Though women crime and suspense writers dominate today’s bestseller lists, the extraordinary work of their mid-century predecessors is largely unknown. Turning from the mean streets of the hardboiled school, these groundbreaking female novelists found the roots of fear and violence in a quiet suburban neighborhood, on a college campus, or in a comfortable midtown hotel. Their work—influential in its day and still vibrant today—is long overdue for discovery. Edited by The Real Lolita author Sarah Weinman, this collection gathers four classic crime novels from the 1940s: Vera Caspary’s famous career girl mystery, Laura; Helen Eustis’s intricate academic thriller, The Horizontal Man; Dorothy B. Hughes’s terrifyingly intimate portrait of a serial killer, In a Lonely Place; and Elizabeth Sanxay Holding’s The Blank Wall, in which a wartime wife is forced to take extreme measures when her family is threatened. Together, these underappreciated works reveal the vital and unacknowledged lineage of today’s leading crime writers. LIBRARY OF AMERICA is an independent nonprofit cultural organization founded in 1979 to preserve our nation’s literary heritage by publishing, and keeping permanently in print, America’s best and most significant writing. The Library of America series includes more than 300 volumes to date, authoritative editions that average 1,000 pages in length, feature cloth covers, sewn bindings, and ribbon markers, and are printed on premium acid-free paper that will last for centuries.