CBS News White House chief correspondent Axelrod chronicles how, when at a crossroads in his life at age 45, his loving--and deceased--father threw him a lifeline. "The elder Axelrod charms and torments his son from the grave; Jim's decision to run a marathon is largely a competitive one, but it becomes something far loftier by the time he crosses the finish line in Central Park." (NPR)
Jennings takes readers on a world tour of geogeeks from the London Map Fair to the bowels of the Library of Congress, from the prepubescent geniuses at the National Geographic Bee to the computer programmers at Google Earth.
The timeless tale of Rapunzel is vividly and magnificently brought to life through Zelinsky's powerful sense of narrative and stunning oil paintings. Winner of a Caldecott Award.
In this darkly comical look at the sinister side of man's relationship with the natural world, Stewart tracks down more than 100 of the worst entomological foes--creatures that infest, infect, and generally wreak havoc on human affairs.
A single mom and her seventeen-year-old daughter learn how to let go in that precarious moment before the latter goes off to college. "Writing so sharp, smart, funny, and "addictive, "it's as if Molly Ivins had given birth to a novelist daughter." (Z.Z. Packe)
Moving from her career as a successful Washington attorney back to her native Tennessee, Jourdan recognizes her father (a rural doctor) to be more heroic and devoted than any politician she'd ever met. With lavish affection, genuine respect, and exuberant humor, Jourdan offers a zestfully compassionate portrait of a poor community rich in the ways of humanity."(Booklist)
The story of Clark Rockefeller is a stranger-than-fiction twist on the classic American success story. The career con man who convincingly passed himself off as Rockefeller was born in a small village in Germany. Over the next thirty years, boldly assuming a series of false identities, he moved up the social ladder through exclusive enclaves on both coasts-culminating in a stunning twelve-year marriage to a rising star businesswoman with a Harvard MBA who believed she'd wed a Rockefeller. "A tailor-made riveting read.... Forget fiction. Pop this jaw-dropper in your beach bag." (USA Today)
Cody Hoyt, while a brilliant cop, is an alcoholic struggling with two months of sobriety when his mentor and AA sponsor Hank Winters is found burned to death in a remote mountain cabin. At first it looks like the suicide of a man who's fallen off the wagon, but Cody knows Hank better than that.
Parker has created a wholly original world from two known facts: (1) Theodosia Burr Alston, daughter of the controversial vice president Aaron Burr, disappeared in 1813 while en route by schooner from South Carolina to New York; and (2) in 1970, two elderly white women and one black man were the last townspeople to leave a small barrier island off the coast of North Carolina. It's a tale of pirates and slaves, treason and treasures, madness and devotion, that takes place on a tiny island battered by storms and cut off from the world.
"A riveting historical novel, set in post-WWII England, about a Polish couple reunited after enduring-and committing-crimes of love and war."
(O, the Oprah Magazine)
Investigative food journalist Barry Estabrook reveals the huge human and environmental cost of the $5 billion fresh tomato industry and the price we pay as a society when we take taste and thought out of our food purchases.
Eight-year-old EllRay Jakes is sick of getting picked on. But every time he tries to defend himself against class bully Jared Matthews, EllRay is the one who winds up in trouble. This humorous and true-to-life story kicks off the EllRay Jakes series which is just right for boys or girls who are beginning to read chapter books.
Southgate tells the story of a family pushed to its limits by addiction over the course of two generations. Josie Henderson loves the water and is fulfilled by her position as the only senior-level black scientist at the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institute. In Cleveland, her brother Tick is coming apart and demands to be heard. Weaving four voices into a beautiful tapestry, Southgate charts the lives of the Hendersons from the parents first charmed meeting to Josie 's realization that the ways of the human heart are incredibly complex.
With characteristic poetry and pluck, Barbara Kingsolver and her family sweep readers along on their journey away from the industrial-food pipeline to a rural life in which they vow to buy only food raised in their own neighborhood, grow it themselves, or learn to live without it. Their good-humored search yields surprising discoveries about turkey sex life and overly zealous zucchini plants. Part memoir, part journalistic investigation, Kingsolver makes a passionate case for putting the kitchen back at the center of family life and diversified farms at the center of the American diet.