Agnes's Broken Dreams


Book Description

It has been thirty years since Agnes last visited the country of her birth and upbringing. While it is at the request of her aging, narcissistic mother, she has her own reasons for making the journey to Australia from her home on Mallorca. Something has blighted her life since childhood. Something has cast such a long shadow over her existence that her ability to grasp at life fully, to appreciate her own sense of self-worth, to attain any semblance of happiness, to trust without reservation, has been damaged. Those whom she chooses, and who choose her, seem to want only to exploit her. Having undergone a long period of psychotherapy, Agnes can now return to re-experience the places that featured in her youth in the hope that burning questions will be answered, haunting mysteries solved, and buried memories let out into the light… This is the vibrant, heartening, and often amusing tale of a buoyant and irrepressible woman whose natural energy and determination continue to drive her forward. Having reached middle age, she is determined to grapple with - and heal - the ills that have beset her.




Agnes at the End of the World


Book Description

The Handmaid's Tale meets Wilder Girls in this genre-defying novel about a girl who escapes a terrifying cult only to discover that the world Outside has succumbed to a viral apocalypse. Agnes loves her home of Red Creek—its quiet, sunny mornings, its dusty roads, and its God. There, she cares tirelessly for her younger siblings and follows the town's strict laws. What she doesn't know is that Red Creek is a cult, controlled by a madman who calls himself a prophet. Then Agnes meets Danny, an Outsider boy, and begins to question what is and isn't a sin. Her younger brother, Ezekiel, will die without the insulin she barters for once a month, even though medicine is considered outlawed. Is she a sinner for saving him? Is her sister, Beth, a sinner for dreaming of the world beyond Red Creek? As the Prophet grows more dangerous, Agnes realizes she must escape with Ezekiel and leave everyone else, including Beth, behind. But it isn't safe Outside, either: A viral pandemic is burning through the population at a terrifying rate. As Agnes ventures forth, a mysterious connection grows between her and the Virus. But in a world where faith, miracles, and cruelty have long been indistinguishable, will Agnes be able to choose between saving her family and saving the world?




The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian (National Book Award Winner)


Book Description

A New York Times bestseller—over one million copies sold! A National Book Award winner A Boston Globe-Horn Book Award winner Bestselling author Sherman Alexie tells the story of Junior, a budding cartoonist growing up on the Spokane Indian Reservation. Determined to take his future into his own hands, Junior leaves his troubled school on the rez to attend an all-white farm town high school where the only other Indian is the school mascot. Heartbreaking, funny, and beautifully written, The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian, which is based on the author's own experiences, coupled with poignant drawings by Ellen Forney that reflect the character's art, chronicles the contemporary adolescence of one Native American boy as he attempts to break away from the life he was destined to live. With a forward by Markus Zusak, interviews with Sherman Alexie and Ellen Forney, and black-and-white interior art throughout, this edition is perfect for fans and collectors alike.




The Record Keeper


Book Description

"The Record Keeper is empathy through fiction." - Actor, Comedian and Film Producer Wayne Brady on The Record Keeper which he plans to bring to the Silver Screen. The Record Keeper is a visceral and thrilling near-future dystopia examining past and present race relations. After World War III, Earth is in ruins, and the final armies have come to a reluctant truce. Everyone must obey the law--in every way--or risk shattering the fragile peace and endangering the entire human race. Arika Cobane is on the threshold of taking her place of privilege as a member of the Kongo elite after ten grueling years of training. But everything changes when a new student arrives speaking dangerous words of treason: What does peace matter if innocent lives are lost to maintain it? As Arika is exposed to new beliefs, she realizes that the laws she has dedicated herself to uphold are the root of her people's misery. If Arika is to liberate her people, she must unearth her fierce heart and discover the true meaning of freedom: finding the courage to live--or die--without fear.




Agnes Grey


Book Description

As the daughter of a modest minister, Agnes Grey has low prospects in life. After her father loses most of the family’s savings, Agnes is determined to help out and takes a position as governess for a wealthy family. Being a governess turns out to be more challenging than she could have predicted as she has to manage spoiled children and petty parents, while dependent on their approval for her livelihood. Agnes Grey is the first novel by Anne Brontë, published in 1847, and today considered an everlasting classic. Like the famous Jane Eyre, by Anne’s sister Emily Brontë, it deals with the precarious position of the governess and how the young women taking on that role were treated. It is a poignant and insightful novel that explores rigid class structures and the challenges it poses to women. ANNE BRONTË [1820-1849] was an English poet and novelist. She was the youngest of the three Brontë authors, her older sisters being Emily and Charlotte. Anne died young, probably from tuberculosis, having published the novels Agnes Grey and The Tenant of Wildfell Hall, the latter hailed today as one of the first feminist novels.




Saving Agnes


Book Description

The acclaimed winner of the Whitbread First Novel Award, by the author of The Country Life Chronically confused, terminally middle class, hopelessly romantic, Agnes Day lives with her two best friends in the London suburbs and works at an obscure trade magazine. Life and love seem to go on without her. But she gives a convincing performance that everything is alright--that is, until she learns that her roommates and her boyfriend are keeping secrets from her, and that her boss is quitting and leaving her in charge. In great despair, she decides to make it her business to set things straight. Rachel Cusk explores the business of growing up and moving on with a deftly comic, surprisingly moving touch, confirming her reputation as one of England's smartest and most entertaining young writers.




The Healing Gifts of the Spirit


Book Description

This practical guide to spiritual healing blends insightful spiritual reflection and the wisdom of hard-won experience in a reliable and inspiring handbook for developing our innate capacity for richer living and richer giving through the healing gifts of the Spirit. Many years ago, Agnes Sanford was cured of acute depression by a minister who believed in the healing power of prayer. Subsequently, she herself became very active and successful in healing others of mental and physical ailments by drawing upon the same resources for inner well-being. In The Healing Gifts of the Spirit, she shares the simple, practicable ways of self-help she discovered, and gives step-by-step advice on how to help others. She discusses not only her own cure but also the gift of healing in general and its growing recognition in the contemporary church. She devotes a chapter to the gift of miracles, and another -- especially interesting -- to the gift of tongues. Her exploration of these topics is richly inspiring, offering readers one of the most detailed, informative discussions of the nature, dynamics, and potential rewards of these unique manifestations of God's presence. At the same time, she demonstrates how anyone can draw upon this healing power for good in the world. As evidence of how these gifts can -- and do -- reveal themselves, the author cites many examples from observation and personal encounters with the healing power of the Spirit.




The Business of Reading


Book Description

In The Business of Reading, Julian Lovelock charts the development of the English novel over the past hundred years. Smuggling in titles from Scotland, Ireland and the Caribbean, he focuses on twenty texts written since the end of the First World War, some well-known but others less so, placing them in their historical context. Novelists represented range from D.H. Lawrence, E.M. Forster and Virginia Woolf, through Graham Greene, Kingsley Amis and Iris Murdoch, to such contemporary writers as Ian McEwan, Maggie O'Farrell and Graham Swift. Written in a lucid style that reflects his expertise and enthusiasm, Lovelock's innovative selection, perceptive analysis and lightness of touch will appeal to the general reader, the book club member and the student. He argues that our response as readers is an important part of the creative process, and while he mainly avoids the critical '-isms' that have characterised recent academic debate, he introduces such concepts as intertextuality, metafiction and the role of the often unreliable narrator, showing how an appreciation of the way the language of fiction works can only add to our understanding and enjoyment.




Agnes's Jacket


Book Description

In a Victorian-era German asylum, seamstress Agnes Richter painstakingly stitched a mysterious autobiographical text into every inch of the jacket she created from her institutional uniform. Despite every attempt to silence them, hundreds of other psychiatric patients have managed to get their stories out, or to publish them on their own. Today, in a vibrant network of peer-advocacy groups all over the world, those with firsthand experience of emotional distress are working together to unravel the mysteries of madness and to help one another recover. Agnes’s Jacket tells their story, focusing especially on the Hearing Voices Network (HVN), an international collaboration of professionals, people with lived experience, and their families and friends who have been working to develop an alternative approach to coping with voices, visions, and other extreme states that is empowering and useful and does not start from the assumption that such people have a chronic illness. A vast gulf exists between the way medicine explains psychiatric conditions and the experiences of those who suffer. Hornstein’s work helps us to bridge that gulf, guiding us through the inner lives of those diagnosed with schizophrenia, bipolar illness, depression, and paranoia, and emerging with nothing less than a new model for understanding one another and ourselves.




A Dream of Death


Book Description

This atmospheric debut mystery “is a Scottish delight that will keep you on your toes” with its riveting blend of real history, island legend, and unforgettable characters (Carlene O’Connor, USA Today–bestselling author of the Irish Village mysteries). On a remote island in Scotland, an American antiques dealer a brutal killing staged to recreate a centuries-old unsolved murder. Autumn has come and gone on Scotland’s Isle of Glenroth, and the islanders gather for the Tartan Ball, the annual end-of-tourist-season gala. Spirits are high until an unexpected turn of events takes the floor. A recently published novel about island history has brought hordes of tourists to the small Hebridean resort community. On the guest list is American antiques dealer Kate Hamilton. Kate returns reluctantly to the island where her husband died, determined to repair her relationship with his sister, proprietor of the island’s luxe country house hotel, famous for its connection with Bonnie Prince Charlie. Kate has hardly unpacked when the next morning a body is found, murdered in a reenactment of an infamous unsolved murder described in the novel—and the only clue to the killer’s identity lies in a curiously embellished antique casket. The Scottish police discount the historical connection, but when a much-loved local handyman is arrested, Kate teams up with a vacationing detective inspector from Suffolk, England, to unmask a killer determined to rewrite island history—and Kate’s future.