Folio


Book Description




The Wonky Donkey


Book Description

Kids will love this cumulative and hysterical read-aloud that features a free downloadable song "I was walking down the road and I saw... a donkey, Hee Haw And he only had three legs He was a wonky donkey." Children will be in fits of laughter with this perfect read-aloud tale of an endearing donkey. By the book's final page, readers end up with a spunky hanky-panky cranky stinky-dinky lanky honky-tonky winky wonky donkey Download the free song at www.scholastic.com/wonkydonkey.




The Firebird


Book Description

From the New York Times bestselling author of The Winter Sea and The Vanished Days When a woman brings a small wooden carving into the art dealership, claiming it once belonged to a Russian Empress, Nicola Marter’s boss believes it is worthless. But Nicola has an unwanted, if rare, psychic gift. Holding 'The Firebird' in her hands, she knows this woman is telling the truth. Compelled to uncover its true history, Nicola must put her own past behind her. She contacts an old flame who can access the past in a way no one else can. Together they can find the real story of 'The Firebird'… Following history from Scotland, to Belgium and to St Petersburg, The Firebird is a sweeping story of love, sacrifice, courage and redemption. A journey that spans centuries and lifetimes to connect the past with the future. Praise for Susanna Kearsley ‘Sometimes an author catches lightning in a bottle, and Susanna Kearsley has done just that’ New York Journal of Books ‘A deeply engaging romance and a compelling historical novel’ Bernard Cornwell, author of The Last Kingdom ‘Kearsley is nothing less than a magician weaving together the past and the present in yet another marvellous, genre-bending, romantic, mysterious and utterly unputdownable novel’ M J Rose, author of Seduction ‘Will stay with you long after you put it down. Her deft touch with historical intrigue is matched only by her delivery of a contemporary heroine who is as unique as she is memorable’ Deanna Raybourn, author of The Dark Enquiry ‘Fascinating, immersive and twisty – twists not only of plot, but of character and time’ Diana Gabaldon, author of the Outlander series




Blue Shadows Farm


Book Description

Fans of Jerry Apps will delight in his latest novel, Blue Shadows Farm, which follows the intriguing family story of three generations on a Wisconsin farm. Silas Starkweather, a Civil War veteran, is drawn to Wisconsin and homesteads 160 acres in Ames County, where he is known as the mysterious farmer forever digging holes. After years of hardship and toil, however, Silas develops a commitment to farming his land and respect for his new community. When Silas’s son Abe inherits Blue Shadows Farm he chooses to keep the land out of reluctant necessity, distilling and distributing “purified corn water” throughout Prohibition and the Great Depression in order to stay solvent. Abe’s daughter, Emma, willingly takes over the farm after her mother’s death. Emma’s love for this place inspires her to open the farm to school-children and families who share her respect for it. As she considers selling the land, Emma is confronted with a difficult question—who, through thick and thin, will care for Blue Shadows Farm as her family has done for over a century? In the midst of a controversy that disrupts the entire community, Emma looks into her family’s past to help her make crucial decisions about the future of its land. Through the story of the Starkweather family’s changing fortunes, and each generation’s very different relationship with the farm and the land, Blue Shadows Farm is in some ways the narrative of all farmers and the increasingly difficult challenges they face as committed stewards of the land. Finalist, General Fiction, Midwest Book Awards




The Bookshop, The Gate of Angels, The Blue Flower


Book Description

Penelope Fitzgerald, who died in 2000, emerged late in life as one of the most remarkable English writers of the last century. She began her writing career in 1975 at the age of fifty-nine, and over the next two decades she published three biographies, nine novels, and a collection of short stories. Now three of her acclaimed novels are gathered here in one volume. The Bookshop is a postwar tragicomedy of manners, set in an isolated seaside town where an enterprising woman opens a bookstore only to find it beset by poltergeists, weather, and hostile townsfolk. The Gate of Angels is an Edwardian romance within a novel of ideas: a young doctor devoted to science and to his all-male Cambridge college finds his life and views disrupted by a nurse named Daisy. The Blue Flower, which won the National Book Critics Circle Award, revitalizes historical drama through the story of Novalis, an eighteenth-century German romantic poet and visionary genius, and his unlikely love affair with a simple child-woman. These three novels all display Fitzgerald’s characteristic wit, intellectual breadth, and narrative brilliance, applied to an array of traditional forms into which she breathed new life.




My Mother's House and Sido


Book Description

In My Mother's House and Sido, Colette plays fictional variations on the themes of childhood, family, and, above all, her mother. Vividly alive, fond of cities, music, theater, and books, Sido devoted herself to her village, Saint-Saveur; to her garden, with its inhabitants and its animals; and, especially, to her children, particularly her youngest, whom she called Minet-Chéri. Unlike Gigi and Chéri, which focus largely on sexual love and its repercussions, My Mother's House and Sido center on the compelling figure of a powerful, nurturing woman in late-nineteenth-century rural France, conveying the impact she had on her community and on her daughter—who grew up to be a great writer.




The American Bookseller


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Dancing on Broken Glass


Book Description

A powerfully written novel offering an intimate look at a beautiful marriage and how bipolar disorder and cancer affect it, Dancing on Broken Glass by Ka Hancock perfectly illustrates the enduring power of love. Lucy Houston and Mickey Chandler probably shouldn’t have fallen in love, let alone gotten married. They’re both plagued with faulty genes—he has bipolar disorder, and she has a ravaging family history of breast cancer. But when their paths cross on the night of Lucy’s twenty-first birthday, sparks fly, and there’s no denying their chemistry. Cautious every step of the way, they are determined to make their relationship work—and they put it all in writing. Mickey promises to take his medication. Lucy promises not to blame him for what is beyond his control. He promises honesty. She promises patience. Like any marriage, they have good days and bad days—and some very bad days. In dealing with their unique challenges, they make the heartbreaking decision not to have children. But when Lucy shows up for a routine physical just shy of their eleventh anniversary, she gets an impossible surprise that changes everything. Everything. Suddenly, all their rules are thrown out the window, and the two of them must redefine what love really is. An unvarnished portrait of a marriage that is both ordinary and extraordinary, Dancing on Broken Glass takes readers on an unforgettable journey of the heart.