Other books that might interest you

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  Grand - A Grandparent's Wisdom...

  Charles Johnson

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  National Book Award winner and MacArthur Genius Fellow Charles Johnson reflects on the joys of being a grandparent in this warm, inspiring collection of wisdom and life lessons—the ideal gift for any new parent or grandparentAn award-winning novelist, philosopher, essayist, screenwriter, professor and cartoonist, Charles Johnson has held numerous impressive titles over the course of his incomparable career. Now, for the first time, with his trademark wisdom and philosophical generosity, he turns his attention to his most important role yet: grandparent.In Grand, Johnson shares stories from his life with his six-year-old grandson, Emery, weaving in advice and life lessons that stand the test of time. “Looking at the problems I see in the world around me,” Johnson writes, “I realize that there are so many things I want to say to him about the goodness and beauty that life offers. What are the perennial truths that I can impart to Emery that might make his journey through life easier or more rewarding?” Johnson shares these truths and more, offering profound meditations on family, race, freedom and creativity.Joyful, lucid and deeply comforting, Grand is Johnson at his most accessible and profound, an indispensable compendium for new grandparents and growing grandchildren alike, from one of America’s most revered thinkers.

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  Just Send Me Word - A True Story...

  Orlando Figes

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  "I went to get the letters for our friends, and couldn't help but feel a little envious, I didn't expect anything for myself. And suddenly-there was my name, and, as if it was alive, your handwriting."In 1946, after five years as a prisoner-first as a Soviet POW in Nazi concentration camps, then as a deportee (falsely accused of treason) in the Arctic Gulag-twenty-nine-year-old Lev Mishchenko unexpectedly received a letter from Sveta, the sweetheart he had hardly dared hope was still alive. Amazingly, over the next eight years the lovers managed to exchange more than 1,500 messages, and even to smuggle Sveta herself into the camp for secret meetings. Their recently discovered correspondence is the only known real-time record of life in Stalin's Gulag, unmediated and uncensored.Orlando Figes, author of Natasha's Dance, draws on Lev and Sveta's letters as well as KGB archives and recent interviews to brilliantly reconstruct the broader world in which their story unfolded. With the powerful narrative drive of a novel, Just Send Me Word reveals a passion and endurance that triumphed over the tragic forces of history.

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  Mary Ball Washington: The Mother...

  Sara Agnes Rice Pryor

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  The mothers of famous men survive only in their sons. This is a rule almost as invariable as a law of nature. Whatever the aspirations and energies of the mother, memorable achievement is not for her. No memoir has been written in this country of the women who bore, fostered, and trained our great men. What do we know of the mother of Daniel Webster, or John Adams, or Patrick Henry, or Andrew Jackson, or of the mothers of our Revolutionary generals? This book is dedicated to Mary Ball Washington, the second wife of Augustine Washington, a planter in Virginia and the mother of George Washington, the first President of the United States.
  Contents:
  Mary Washington's English Ancestry
  The Ball Family in Virginia    
  Coat Armor and the Right to bear it    
  Traditions of Mary Ball's Early Life    
  Revelations of an Old Will    
  Mary Ball's Childhood    
  Good Times in Old Virginia    
  Mary Ball's Guardian and her Girlhood    
  Young Men and Maidens of the Old Dominion    
  The Toast of the Gallants of her Day    
  Her Marriage and Early Life    
  Birthplace of George Washington    
  The Cherry Tree and Little Hatchet    
  The Young Widow and her Family    
  Betty Washington, and Weddings in Old Virginia    
  Defeat in War: Success in Love    
  In and Around Fredericksburg    
  Social Characteristics, Manners, and Customs    
  A True Portrait of Mary Washington    
  Noon in the Golden Age    
  Dinners, Dress, Dances, Horse-races    
  The Little Cloud    
  The Storm    
  Mary Washington in the Hour of Peril    
  Old Revolutionary Letters    
  The Battle-ground    
  France in the Revolution    
  "On with the Dance, let Joy be unconfined"    
  Lafayette and our French Allies    
  In Camp and at Mount Vernon    
  Mrs. Adams at the Court of St. James    
  The First Winter at Mount Vernon
  The President and his Last Visit to his Mother       
  Mary Washington's Will; her Illness and Death
  Tributes of her Countrymen

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  We Come with This Place

  Debra Dank

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  We Come with This Place is a remarkable book, as rich, varied and surprising as the vast landscape in which it is set. Debra Dank has created an extraordinary mosaic of vivid episodes that move about in time and place to tell an unforgettable story of country and people. There is great pain in these pages, and anger at injustice, but also great love, in marriage and in family, and for the land. Dank faces head on the ingrained racism, born of brutal practice and harsh legislation, that lies always under the skin of Australia, the racism that calls a little Aboriginal girl names and beats and rapes and disenfranchises the generations before hers. She describes sudden terrible violence, between races and sometimes at home. But overwhelmingly this is a book about strong, beloved parents and grandparents, guiding and teaching their children and grandchildren what country means, about joyful gatherings and the pleasures of eating food provided by the place that nourishes them, both spiritually and physically.Dank calibrates human emotions with honesty and insight, and there is plenty of dry, down-to-earth humour. You can feel and smell and see the puffs of dust under moving feet, the ever-present burning heat, the bright exuberance of a night-time campfire, the emerald flash of a flock of budgerigars, the journeying wind, the harshness of a station shanty, the welcome scent of fresh water. We Come with This Place is deeply personal, a profound tribute to family and the Gudanji Country to which Debra Dank belongs, but it is much more than that. Here is Australia as it has been for countless generations, land and people in effortless balance, and Australia as it became, but also Australia as it could and should be.

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  Rewriting My Happily Ever After...

  Ranjani Rao

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  Once I leave my husband’s house, am I still a wife? 
  What happens when the fairy tale marriage falls apart? 
  Ranjani flies out of Mumbai as a young, starry-eyed bride anticipating an American-style Bollywood-version of her very own happily-ever-after. By thirty, she has a Ph.D., a green card and a daughter. The marriage is rocky but Ranjani is secure in being somebody’s daughter, sister, wife, mother. 
  When the family returns to India, her family situation deteriorates further. When she finally walks out after sixteen years of marriage, Ranjani has to answer the dreaded questions:What will people say?What about my child?How will I live alone? 
  Despite her education, work history and experience of living abroad, Ranjani has no idea what lies on the road ahead for her, for her daughter and for their place in society. 
  While renting a house, paying the bills and figuring out her new life, Ranjani has to overcome private fears, public scrutiny and unexpected loss as she embraces her identity as a single parent. 
  If you are.. 
  ★ Considering 
  ★ Going through or 
  ★ Are finding your way after a divorce in a culture that is not supportive… 
  This book is for you. 
  It is possible to walk the path you have been assigned with gratitude and forgiveness, courage and grace, humility and confidence, without falling apart. 
  Rewriting My Happily Ever After is an evocative, honest account of the aftermath of divorce in an unsupportive culture. This uplifting memoir of grace and courage shows how to build resilience and find happiness by being true to yourself. 
  Listen to this audiobook and rewrite YOUR happily ever after.

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  The Battle of Life

  Charles Dickens

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  The Battle of Life: A Love Story is a novella by Charles Dickens, 1st published in 1846. It's the 4th of his five "Christmas Books", coming after The Cricket on the Hearth, followed by The Haunted Man & the Ghost's Bargain. 
  The setting is an English village that stands on the site of a historic battle. Some characters refer to the battle as a metaphor for the struggles of life, hence the title. 
  Battle is the only one of the five Christmas Books that has no supernatural or explicitly religious elements. (One scene takes place at Christmas time, but it isn't the final scene.) The story bears some resemblance to The Cricket on the Hearth in two aspects: it has a non-urban setting & it's resolved with a romantic twist. It's even less of a social novel than is Cricket. As is typical with Dickens, the ending is a happy one. 
  It's one of Dickens' lesser-known works & has never attained any high level of popularity, a trait it shares among the Christmas Books with The Haunted Man.

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