Join us on a literary world trip!
Add this book to bookshelf
Grey
Write a new comment Default profile 50px
Grey
Subscribe to read the full book or read the first pages for free!
I want to read the book!
All characters reduced
Songs in Ordinary Time - A Novel - cover

Songs in Ordinary Time - A Novel

Mary McGarry Morris

Publisher: Open Road Media

  • 0
  • 1
  • 0

Summary

This New York Times bestseller of a troubled family in 1960s Vermont is “teeming with incident and characters, often foolish, even nasty, but always alive” (The New Yorker). It is the summer of 1960 in Atkinson, Vermont. With no help from her alcoholic ex-husband, Marie Fermoyle is raising three children on the edge of poverty. Her seventeen-year-old daughter, Alice, is becoming emotionally involved with a local priest in a staunchly Catholic town that disapproves of Marie’s divorce. Alice’s brother Norm is a hotheaded sixteen-year-old, and twelve-year-old Benjy is isolated and full of anxieties, looking with yearning at the Klubocks next door, who seem to live an orderly, peaceful life much unlike his own family’s.   Now, Marie has met a new man: Omar Duvall, who talks about opportunities and riches but so far seems only to sponge off the Fermoyles. A lonely, desperate single mother like Marie is easy prey for con men, but she resists the temptation to doubt him. Young Benjy, though, may eventually reveal a disturbing secret that could shatter all her hopes.   A portrait of a family as well as a town and its secrets, Songs in Ordinary Time is “a gritty, beautifully crafted novel rich in wisdom and suspense” (The Miami Herald). An Oprah’s Book Club selection from an author nominated for the National Book Award and the PEN/Faulkner Award, it is “extraordinary . . . a deeply satisfying story” (USA Today).
Available since: 12/12/2017.
Print length: 732 pages.

Other books that might interest you

  • Army of God - cover

    Army of God

    Dennis Bailey

    • 0
    • 0
    • 0 
    One of the most beloved and enduring stories of all time...One of the most recognizable characters in history...A plot by a rival to kill Noah and his family is thwarted by a beautiful young woman, who joins them as they flee the ancient Biblical city of Eden. A year later, the Lord reveals His plan to destroy the Earth by flood and commands Noah to build an ark. Only the news is met with skepticism and opposition from members of his own family. Eventually, word of the ark reaches Eden, prompting the rival to send an army of 5,000 men to destroy it.However, Noah has an army of his own.Action, adventure, and suspense combine with the Biblical account of Noah's Ark to create a heart-pounding pause-resisting novel that will stay with you long after the flood waters have receded.
    Show book
  • Command - Thomas Kydd Book 7 - cover

    Command - Thomas Kydd Book 7

    Julian Stockwin

    • 0
    • 0
    • 0 
    Thrilled at his first command, a little brig sloop called Teazer; Thomas Kydd must race to bring his ship to battle readiness in order to defend Malta against Barbary corsairs. But his jubilation does not last long - peace is suddenly declared. Instead he sets sail as captain of a convict transport for the penal colony in New South Wales - and challenges that will test both his seamanship and humanity to the limit.A W. F. Howes audio production.
    Show book
  • Zabelle - A Novel - cover

    Zabelle - A Novel

    Nancy Kricorian

    • 0
    • 0
    • 0 
    An Armenian immigrant’s journey from the author of Dreams of Bread and Fire. “Haunting and convincing . . . There’s a fairy-tale quality to the prose” (Joyce Carol Oates, The New Yorker).   Zabelle begins in a suburb of Boston with the quiet death of Zabelle Chahasbanian, an elderly widow and grandmother whose history remains vastly unknown to her family. But as the story shifts back in time to Zabelle’s childhood in the waning days of Ottoman Turkey, where she survives the 1915 Armenian genocide and near starvation in the Syrian desert, an unforgettable character begins to emerge. Zabelle’s journey encompasses years in an Istanbul orphanage, a fortuitous adoption by a rich Armenian family, and an arranged marriage to an Armenian grocer who brings her to America where the often comic interactions and battles she wages are forever colored by shadows from the long-lost world of her past.   “Kricorian is able to transform oral history into her own distinctive, accomplished prose. As in Toni Morrison’s work, the act of simple remembering is not enough; Zabelle, like Morrison’s best work, is a lovely and artful piece.” —Time Out New York
    Show book
  • Collected Public Domain Poems of Wallace Stevens Volume 2 - cover

    Collected Public Domain Poems of...

    Wallace Stevens

    • 0
    • 0
    • 0 
    A collection of Wallace Stevens poems written before 1923.These poems originally appeared in a variety of magazines (Others, Rogue, The Soil, The Modern School, Broom, Contact, The New Republic, The Measure, The Little Review, The Dial, and particularly in Poetry: A Magazine of Verse.) Nearly 70 of the 101 published poems were later collected in Stevens' first published collection of poems, Harmonium.  (Summary by Alan Davis Drake & Ruth Golding)Proof-listening by Winston Tharp, Hanna1990 and Ruth Golding.Volume 1 of this collection may be found at http://librivox.org/the-complete-public-domain-poems-of-wallace-stevens-volume-1-of-2/.
    Show book
  • Kydd - Thomas Kydd Book 1 - cover

    Kydd - Thomas Kydd Book 1

    Julian Stockwin

    • 0
    • 0
    • 0 
    The year is 1793 and Europe is ablaze with war... Thomas Kydd, a young wig-maker from Guildford, is seized by the press gang, to be a part of the crew of the battle ship Royal William. The ship sails immediately and Kydd has to learn the harsh realities of shipboard life fast. Despite all that he goes through, he comes to admire the skills and courage of the seamen - taking up the challenge himself to become a true sailor.A W. F. Howes audio production.
    Show book
  • The Orphans of Mersea House - cover

    The Orphans of Mersea House

    Marty Wingate

    • 0
    • 0
    • 0 
    England, 1957. Olive Kersey’s only love never returned from World War II, and now she’s alone and penniless. Then the last person she ever expected to see again returns to Southwold. Olive’s childhood friend, Margery Paxton, arrives to claim her inheritance: Mersea House, a stately old home she plans to turn into the town’s only lodging. Olive’s life takes a sunny turn when Margery hires her to run the establishment. But Mersea House holds its own mysteries—and its own dangers. First, rumors begin to fly when two enigmatic lodgers move in: Hugh Hodson, manager of the town cinema, and Mrs. Abigail Claypool, a recluse and war widow. And then the completely unexpected happens: Margery is informed she has a new ward, eleven-year-old Juniper Wyckes, the orphaned daughter of Margery’s first love. Mrs. Lucie Pagett, Children’s Officer at the local authority, informs Margery that Juniper was severely stricken with polio as a child and makes clear that she could be taken away if her welfare is in jeopardy. The past is never far behind for the inhabitants of Mersea House, and looming secrets may destroy the friendships they've created.
    Show book