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  Children and Fire - A Novel

  Ursula Hegi

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  Though more than fifteen years have passed since Ursula Hegi's Stones from the River captivated critics and readers alike, it retains its popularity, is on academic reading lists, and continues to be adopted by book groups.Also set in Burgdorf, Germany, Hegi's Children and Fire tells the story of a single day that will forever transform the lives of the townspeople. At the core of this remarkable novel is the question of how one teacher-gifted and joyful, passionate and inventive-can become seduced by propaganda during the early months of Hitler's regime and encourage her ten-year-old students to join the "Hitler-Jugend" with its hikes and songs and bonfires. Membership, she believes, will be a step toward better schools, better apprenticeships.How can a woman we admire choose a direction we don't admire? So much has changed for the teacher, Thekla Jansen, and the people of Burgdorf in the year since the parliament building burned. Thekla's lover, Emil Hesping, is sure the Nazis did it to frame the communists. But Thekla believes what she hears on the radio, that the communists set the fire, and she's willing to relinquish some of her freedoms to keep her teaching position. She has always taken her moral courage for granted, but when each silent agreement chips away at that courage, she knows she must reclaim it.Hegi funnels pivotal moments in history through the experiences of individual characters: Thekla's mother, who works as a housekeeper for a Jewish family; her employers, Michel and Ilse Abramowitz; Thekla's mentally ill father; Trudi Montag and her father, Leo Montag; Fräulein Siderova, midwife to the dying; and the students who adore their young teacher. As Hegi writes along that edge where sorrow and bliss meet, she shows us how one society-educated, cultural, compassionate-can slip into a reality that's fabricated by propaganda and controlled by fear, how a surge of national unity can be manipulated into the dehumanization of a perceived enemy and the justification of torture and murder.Gorgeously rendered and emotionally taut, Children and Fire confirms Ursula Hegi's position as one of the most distinguished writers of her generation.

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  All Waiting Is Long - A Novel

  Barbara J. Taylor

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  “Suspenseful . . . startling plot twists and incisive commentary on the social unrest of a coal-mining town during the Great Depression . . . a breathtaking ending.” —Publishers Weekly 
   
  In 1930, twenty-five-year-old Violet travels with her sixteen-year-old sister, Lily, from Scranton, Pennsylvania, to the Good Shepherd Infant Asylum in Philadelphia, so Lily can deliver her illegitimate child in secret. In doing so, Violet jeopardizes her engagement to her sweetheart, Stanley Adamski. Meanwhile, Mother Mary Joseph, who runs the Good Shepherd, has no idea the asylum’s physician is involved in eugenics and experimenting on girls with various sterilization techniques. 
   
  Five years later, Lily and Violet are back in Scranton, one married, one about to be, each finding her own way in a place where a woman’s worth is tied to her virtue. Against the backdrop of the sweeping eugenics movement and rogue coal mine strikes, the Morgan sisters must choose between duty and desire. Either way, they risk losing their marriages and each other. 
   
  The follow-up to Barbara J. Taylor’s debut, Sing in the Morning, Cry at Night—named one of the Best Summer Books of 2014 by Publishers Weekly—All Waiting is Long continues her Dickensian exploration of the Morgan family. 
   
  “Taylor’s characters—a cast of nuns and prostitutes, mobsters and miners, social activists and church busybodies—reflect the varying pressures and expectations of small-town life with rich, insightful prose and dialogue that rings true to each character’s voice. Will the web of lies the two sisters weave around themselves survive? You’ll have to read it yourself to find out. Recommended.” —Historical Novel Review 
   
  “Powerful . . . Every page is saturated with the 1930s milieu as the sisters navigate the adversities of their reality . . . The overall result is a thought-provoking book club discussion cornucopia.” —Booklist (starred review)

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  Notes From Underground

  Fyodor Dostoyevsky

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  "Notes from Underground" (sometimes translated as "Notes from the Underground" or "Letters from the Underworld") is a novella by Fyodor Dostoyevsky, first published in 1864. It is often considered one of the first existentialist novels. The work is divided into two parts: the first is a rambling monologue by an unnamed narrator, often referred to as the "underground man", who is a retired civil servant living in St. Petersburg. This monologue is a bitter critique of utopianism, rational egoism, and utilitarianism. The second part of the novella, titled "Apropos of the Wet Snow", recounts episodes from the narrator's life that exemplify his philosophical arguments.

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  Short Stories About The American...

  Ambrose Bierce, Louisa May...

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  War is always a tragedy. There may be a winner of sorts but always a loser.  The cost in injuries, death, destruction can never be fully recovered even if glossed over by a military or political elite that proclaims otherwise. 
   
  Even further down on the scale of mankind’s self-destructive baseness is Civil War.  One Nation with Two Sides locked in a ferocious fight is inevitably more painful and more despoiling.  Civilians are the bait in the trap.  Two sets of values may be proclaimed and many offer loyalty to one or the other but society also has those who just want the space and time to live, to enjoy their family and friends.  Each to his own. 
   
  In the American Civil War that began in 1861 the War was seemingly fought to end Slavery.  A War for Good.  The result a win for the good guys but a society that still bears fractures from this seminal period.   
   
  The stories in this volume show the true scars that are endured as a riven Nations authors try to explain and reconcile.   
   
  01 - Short Stories About the American Civil War - An Introduction 
  02 - An Occurrence At Owl Creek Bridge by Ambrose Bierce 
  03 - The Brothers by Louisa May Alcott 
  04 - The Namesake by Willa Cather 
  05 - The Affair At Coulter's Creek by Ambrose Bierce 
  06 - The Locket by Kate Chopin 
  07 - The Veteran by Stephen Crane 
  08 - Chickamauga by Ambrose Bierce 
  09 - My Red Cap by Louisa May Alcott 
  10 - Parker Adderson, Philosopher by Ambrose Bierce 
  11 - The Coup de Grace by Ambrose Bierce 
  12 - Christmas Eve in War Times by Edward Payson Roe 
  13 - The Eyes of the Panther by Ambrose Bierce 
  14 - A Man With Two Lives by Ambrose Bierce 
  15 - A Horseman in the Sky by Ambrose Bierce

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  Flight of the Wild Swan

  Melissa Pritchard

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  A majestic novel of Florence Nightingale, whose courage, self-confidence, and resilience transformed nursing and the role of women in medicineSweeping yet intimate, Flight of the Wild Swan tells the story of Florence Nightingale, a brilliant, trailblazing woman whose humanity has been obscured beneath the iconic weight of legend. From adolescence, Nightingale was determined to fulfill her life's calling to serve the sick and suffering. Overcoming Victorian hierarchies, familial expectations, patriarchal resistance, and her own illness, she used her hard-won acclaim as a battlefield nurse to bring the profession out of its shadowy, disreputable status and elevate nursing to a skilled practice and compassionate art.In lush, lyrical detail, Melissa Pritchard reveals Nightingale as a rebel who wouldn't relent—one whose extraordinary life offers a grand lesson in inspired will.

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  Danish Sword - Danelaw Saga Book 4

  Griff Hosker

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  King Æthelred was the worst King of England but, in his second son, Edmund Ironside, was a king in the mould of King Alfred. Prince Cnut has his own problems for his brother refuses to share the crown of Denmark with him. It is Sven Saxon Sword, wielding Oathsword who orchestrates the campaign that brings the Danish fleet to invade England. The oath he made on the sword is now a fetter, tethering him to the fate of Prince Cnut of Denmark.

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