Open House


Book Description

BONUS: This edition contains an excerpt from Elizabeth Berg's Once Upon a Time, There Was You. In this superb novel by the beloved author of Talk Before Sleep, The Pull of the Moon, and Until the Real Thing Comes Along, a woman re-creates her life after divorce by opening up her house and her heart. Samantha's husband has left her, and after a spree of overcharging at Tiffany's, she settles down to reconstruct a life for herself and her eleven-year-old son. Her eccentric mother tries to help by fixing her up with dates, but a more pressing problem is money. To meet her mortgage payments, Sam decides to take in boarders. The first is an older woman who offers sage advice and sorely needed comfort; the second, a maladjusted student, is not quite so helpful. A new friend, King, an untraditional man, suggests that Samantha get out, get going, get work. But her real work is this: In order to emerge from grief and the past, she has to learn how to make her own happiness. In order to really see people, she has to look within her heart. And in order to know who she is, she has to remember—and reclaim—the person she used to be, long before she became someone else in an effort to save her marriage. Open House is a love story about what can blossom between a man and a woman, and within a woman herself.




Home Comforts


Book Description

A classic bestselling resource for every household, Home Comforts helps you manage everyday chores, find creative solutions to domestic dilemmas, and enhance the experience of life at home. “Home Comforts is to the house what Joy of Cooking is to food.” —USA TODAY Home Comforts is an engaging and comprehensive book about housekeeping. It is a lively and readable guide for both beginners and experts in all the domestic arts. From keeping surfaces free of germs, watering plants, removing stains, folding a fitted sheet, cleaning china, tuning a piano, lighting a fire, setting the dining room table—this guide covers everything that people might want to do for themselves in their homes. Further topics include: making up a bed with hospital corners, expert recommendations for safe food storage, reading care labels (and sometimes carefully disregarding them), keeping your home free of dust mites and other allergens, this is a practical, good-humored, philosophical guidebook to the art and science of household management.




Ultimate Prizes


Book Description

The third in Susan Howatch's Church of England novels, Ultimate Prizes begins in 1942 with the world at war, as narrator and archdeacon Nevill Aysgarth finds himself falling into a hopeless obsession over Dido Tallent, beautiful celebrity, and finds himself pursuing her through a swamp of guilt and the destruction of his valued moral compass. . . . Praise for Ultimate Prizes “I did not want to put the book down. . . . [Howatch] is a skilled storyteller who makes the reader wonder and care about her people.”—The Washington Post Book World “Thoughtful and thought-provoking . . . Almost every newspaper carries an article or two on the scandalous private life of a public figure. . . . Ultimate Prizes offers a look at both the sacred and profane aspects of religious life as it is lived on the front lines—the story just behind the front page.”—Chicago Tribune “Howatch writes thrillers of the heart and mind. . . . Everything in a Howatch novel cuts close to the bone and is of vital concern. . . . You’ll want to have tea with this wise, witty woman.”—New Woman “Vibrant . . . The author of Glittering Images and Glamorous Powers scores a hat trick with this third novel in her series set amidst the ‘cut-and-thrust battles’ and ‘sheer Machiavellian skulduggery’ of the Church of England.”—Kirkus Reviews




Keeping the House


Book Description

Set in the conformist 1950s and reaching back to span two world wars, Ellen Baker’ s superb novel is the story of a newlywed who falls in love with a grand abandoned house and begins to unravel dark secrets woven through the generations of a family. Like Whitney Otto’s How to Make an American Quilt in its intimate portrayal of women’ s lives, and reminiscent of novels by Elizabeth Berg and Anne Tyler, Keeping the House is a rich tapestry of a novel that introduces a wonderful new fiction writer. When Dolly Magnuson moves to Pine Rapids, Wisconsin, in 1950, she discovers all too soon that making marriage work is harder than it looks in the pages of the Ladies’ Home Journal. Dolly tries to adapt to her new life by keeping the house, supporting her husband’s career, and fretting about dinner menus. She even gives up her dream of flying an airplane, trying instead to fit in at the stuffy Ladies Aid quilting circle. Soon, though, her loneliness and restless imagination are seized by the vacant house on the hill. As Dolly’s life and marriage become increasingly difficult, she begins to lose herself in piecing together the story of three generations of Mickelson men and women: Wilma Mickelson, who came to Pine Rapids as a new bride in 1896 and fell in love with a man who was not her husband; her oldest son, Jack, who fought as a Marine in the trenches of World War I; and Jack’s son, JJ, a troubled veteran of World War II, who returns home to discover Dolly in his grandparents’ house. As the crisis in Dolly’s marriage escalates, she not only escapes into JJ’s stories of his family’s past but finds in them parallels to her own life. As Keeping the House moves back and forth in time, it eloquently explores themes of wartime heroism and passionate love, of the struggles of men’s struggles with fatherhood and war and of women’s conflicts with issues of conformity, identity, forbidden dreams, and love. Beautifully written and atmospheric, Keeping the House illuminates the courage it takes to shape and reshape a life, and the difficulty of ever knowing the truth about another person’s desires. Keeping the House is an unforgettable novel about small-town life and big matters of the heart.




Keep the Doors Open


Book Description

Will You Open Your Heart and Home to Children in Need? As a teenager, Kristin Berry had heard all the horror stories surrounding foster care and adoption—abuse, neglect, rejection, anger, and misunderstandings. But instead of closing her heart, God opened it wide. This is Kristin’s honest, unvarnished story of some of her experiences as a foster parent of twenty-three children over the course of nine years. What she learned is that living in a foster home is like living with a revolving door. You never know who will arrive or who you will have to say goodbye to. Leaving the door open means there will be heartache and pain, but also adventure and unexpected joy. Kristin and her husband, Mike, have been through it all in their unique parenting journey. If you have ever wondered what it’s really like to be a foster parent, this book will help you gain a true understanding of the everyday trials and triumphs these moms and dads face. It will also inspire you to consider opening your door…and to leave it wide open.




Open House


Book Description

"With its high spirits, its love of textures of different kinds of writing . . . [this] is an immensely lively performance." --Robert Hass




Success as a Real Estate Agent For Dummies


Book Description

Make your fortune in the real estate business With home prices jumping nationwide, the real estate market is clearly starting to show stabilization. In the latest edition of Success as a Real Estate Agent For Dummies, expert author Dirk Zeller shows you how to become a top-performing agent. Whether it's lead generation via blogging or social media channels, you'll discover key ways to communicate and prospect in a new online world. Inside, you'll find the latest coverage on being successful selling high-value homes, how to sell short sales to buyers without scaring them off, dealing with residential and commercial real estate, how to use third parties to drive leads and create exposure like Trulia, Realtor.com, and Zillow, and much more. Features tips and tricks for working with buyers Includes must-haves for successful real estate agents Offers tried-and-true tactics and fresh ideas for finding more projects Gives you the skills to close more deals Whether you're looking to rev up your real estate business, deciding whether to specialize in commercial or residential real estate, or just interested in fine-tuning your skills, Success as a Real Estate Agent For Dummies has you covered.




Cases Decided in the Court of Session, Court of Justiciary, and House of Lords


Book Description

Vols. for 1847/48-1872/73 include cases decided in the Teind Court; 1847/48-1858/59 include cases decided in the Court of Exchequer; 1850/51- included cases decided in the House of Lords; 1873/74- include cases decided in the Court of Justiciary.




Open House


Book Description

Transforming older homes into modern, functional, open spaces filled with natural light. Authors Amanda Pays and Corbin Bernsen share ideas for remodeling older homes to create modern, open floor plans while sharing lessons learned along the way. Topics include tricks of seeing through cluttered, dark rooms to imagine an open floor plan and space filled with light; how to manage a renovation budget (ideas on where to shop, items to splurge on, where to save); and designing homes for simple family living. Fans of HGTV and DIY Network home renovation shows will love this sweeping behind-the-scenes perspective on home transformations, written in a personal, intimate style, with humor and honesty. Amanda Pays and Corbin Bernsen have been renovating homes for their family to live in for around thirty years. Some twenty-four houses later, they have a lot to share about remodeling interiors and revamping yardscapes. Pays and Bernsen live Los Angeles.




Open House for Butterflies


Book Description

Continuing a two-year program to bring back twenty-two Maurice Sendak treasures long out of print, our second season of publication highlights one of the most successful author-illustrator pairings of all time. A pioneer of great children's literature, Ruth Krausspublished more than thirty books for children during a career that spanned forty years. Krauss and Sendak collaborated on eight books, and we are delighted to reintroduce four of these gems in brand-new editions, together with a favorite Maurice Sendak picture book.