Published: April 1993 by Farrar, Straus and Giroux
ISBN: 0374284385
Pages: 249
Setting: Michigan 1970
First published in 1993, The Virgin Suicidesannounced the arrival of a major new American novelist. In a quiet suburb of Detroit, the five Lisbon sisters--beautiful, eccentric, and obsessively watched by the neighborhood boys--commit suicide one by one over the course of a single year. As the boys observe them from afar, transfixed, they piece together the mystery of the family's fatal melancholy, in this hypnotic and unforgettable novel of adolescent love, disquiet, and death. Jeffrey Eugenides evokes the emotions of youth with haunting sensitivity and dark humor and creates a coming-of-age story unlike any of our time. Adapted into a critically acclaimed film by Sofia Coppola,The Virgin Suicidesis a modern classic, a lyrical and timeless tale of sex and suicide that transforms and mythologizes suburban middle-American life.
Following her "New York Times "bestselling "Glimpses of Heaven," Trudy Harris has collected even more true stories of the tender beauty and pain of life's end. Through her own stories and those of medical professionals and hospice workers, Harris brings readers with her on the search for God, forgiveness, faith, repentance, and ultimate acceptance and peace. The perfect gift for someone who has experienced the death of a loved one, "More Glimpses of Heaven" will bring peace and comfort to all who read it.
REVIEW:
Trudy Harris has written another outstanding read to the follow-up of her first book Glimpses of Heaven. If you cherish the first book as much as I do, you will not feel any different about the second. This book has an interesting new twist, she reached out to other medical professionals voicing their stories along with her own. The prose is exemplary without a single flaw. Trudy writes about death in such a special way that it pulls at your emotions yet not negatively. Yes, it is sad that people are dying but, she portrays death in such a beautiful manner it is enlightening to the reader.
Whereas, this is a faith-based book it does not focus on any one religion, it instead tells of all the different ways that God brings an individual into his kingdom and the fact that it is different for every soul. Therefore, as each person is different so is their relationship with the Lord and as they are getting ready to pass on to the next phase of our souls journey a lot of individuals have something that is holding them back from passing and this is when Trudy comes into play by figuring out what will help this dying person let go. Children are so special since they are not afraid of dying, they sometimes are more worried about how their parents will handle their death. There are people who have something that is not quite right in the life they are to leave behind or with their relationship with God and with the help of a hospice professional or Trudy herself they help the sick individual get to the place where they can let go of this world. I must mention that the dying tells us such amazing things about heaven such as what they see or who they see. After you read this book you will no longer be afraid of death plus remember heaven is all around us.
“I will never forsake you or abandon you” (Heb. 13:5)
This is a video from her first book but, I think it applies here also
Reese Everett’s aunt picked a bad time to die. Just weeks after a car accident left Reese’s mother unable to travel, her aunt’s house needs to be emptied and sold, leaving Reese as the only member of the family who can do the job. She typically wouldn’t balk at the opportunity to sift through her aunt’s collection of antiques, but when she arrives in Devil’s Vale, Georgia, she discovers the family house in a state of disrepair she won’t be able to handle alone.
Colton Waters is back in Devil’s Vale – whether he likes it or not. After he loses his acceptance to medical school with no explanation, he’s left with a single job offer…one that will return him to the hometown he’d hoped to escape.
When an errand to help his sister ends in a meeting with Reese neither will easily forget, Colton takes a job as her temporary handyman.
The longer Reese stays in town, the more she realizes the condition of her aunt’s house isn’t the only thing she hadn’t expected when she made the trip to Devil’s Vale. Reese isn’t the only gifted member of the family – her aunt Kate has been practicing the family business…the business Reese has been sworn never to discuss.
After a ghostly visitor arrives one night, Reese and Colton learn Kate wasn’t the only one practicing the darker arts. They begin to uncover secrets that refuse to stay buried.
Here They Lie won the Young Adult Romance Writer’s
2014 award for New Adult fiction.
D’Ann Burrow once told her preschool teacher she wanted to be a witch when she grew up. That simple comment signaled the start of a life-long fondness of things that go bump in the night. As she grew older, she could most often be found with her nose buried in a book, and she was especially fond of the Nancy Drew series as well as anything by Christopher Pike or Stephen King. Occasionally she’d take a trip to the world of the classics where The Scarlet Pimpernel and A Little Princess reigned among her favorites. She’s lost count of the times she’s read Little Women.
Today, D’Ann enjoys the world of Supernatural, stories about guys with fangs, and she’s seldom met a disaster film she hasn’t liked. When she grows up, she’d like to work at the Haunted Mansion. Until then, watching Ghost Hunters will have to count as research.
D’Ann writes about secrets people keep. Even the bravest heroine or a guy with a heart of gold has a few skeletons in the closet they’d rather not share with the world. When those secrets get out, things get interesting.
A Texas native, she knows making great guacamole is an art form. As a theater mom, she’ll happily chat about Broadway musicals by the hour. Molly and Lizzie, the family furry ones, are frequent stars of her Instagram account.
When Nicole Georges was two years old, her family told her that her father was dead. When she was twenty-three, a psychic told her he was alive. Her sister, saddled with guilt, admits that the psychic is right and that the whole family has conspired to keep him a secret. Sent into a tailspin about her identity, Nicole turns to radio talk-show host Dr. Laura Schlessinger for advice.
Packed cover-to-cover with heartfelt and disarming black-and-white illustrations, Calling Dr. Laura tells the story of what happens to you when you are raised in a family of secrets, and what happens to your brain (and heart) when you learn the truth from an unlikely source. Part coming-of-age and part coming-out story, Calling Dr. Laura marks the arrival of an exciting and winning new voice in graphic literature.
REVIEW:
This being a non-fiction graphic novel about the author's life I found a lot in this read that I could relate to and I bet you can too. I think a large group of readers can identify with the dysfunctional family dynamics that Nicole has endured throughout her life. This is a remarkably written no-holds-barred look at the effects physically and mentally a self-centered parent can have directly to a person's childhood and also the long-term effects on their later life. Also therefore how it influences each individual in the family differently. The book is ideally put together going back and forth between Nicole's childhood to her as an adult showing how childhood experiences have tremendous consequences on her adult life and decisions. For example, seeing a loved one in a controlling relationship you then follow in the person's footsteps.
Now there are the graphics to discuss which are not the greatest that I have seen. Unless the person in the drawing had on glasses or blond hair, they all looked alike to me. Nonetheless, the drawings portrayed the story exceptionally along with the book's dialogue. Therefore, complimenting each other well. The author has a great sense of humor. So by telling her memoir in the manner of a graphic novel I think it made the story twice as funny due to the fact that you get not only a laugh out loud blurb but also a hilarious picture that goes along with it. Finally, I would like to mention that though this is technically in the LGBT genre since she is a lesbian this actually is a book for everyone. It is just a part of her coming of age story. There are no sexually suggestive pictures except for a kiss. I would recommend this to anyone who enjoys graphic novels or who likes a good book.
About this author:
Nicole J. Georges is an award-winning writer, and illustrator from Portland, Oregon. Nicole has been publishing the autobiographical comic Invincible Summer since 2000, and has toured the country extensively, including two month-long appearances on Michelle Tea’s Sister Spit: Next Generation. Her work has been featured in many publications, including Tin House, Vanity Fair, and Slate.com.
Her graphic memoir, Calling Dr. Laura, was called “engrossing, lovable, smart and ultimately poignant” by Rachel Maddow, and “disarming and haunting, hip and sweet, all at once” by Alison Bechdel, author of Fun Home. In her spare time, Nicole volunteers with senior citizens in North Portland, chronicling their experiences through comics and writing in a zine called Tell It Like It Tiz’.
I WON a copy of Barbara Ann Wright's new book Thrall!
Like heroes from an ancient tale, Aesa and Maeve plan to raid foreign shores, claiming gold and glory for their homeland. Young and in love, neither considers what will happen if one is chosen to be a warrior and the other is left behind.
On a mist-shrouded island, Aesa meets Ell, a woman enslaved by an insidious curse. Maeve walks the path of dark magic and finds Laret, a woman well acquainted with pain. Together, they must break the magic surrounding Ell, an act that will force them to choose between their dreams, their homes, and the women they love.
Paperback, 240 pages
Expected publication: September 15th, 2015 by Bold Strokes Books
Barbara Ann Wright writes fantasy and science fiction novels and short stories when not adding to her enormous book collection or ranting on her blog. Her short fiction has appeared twice in Crossed Genres Magazine and once made Tangent Online’s recommended reading list. Her first novel, The Pyramid Waltz, was one of Tor.com’s Reviewer’s Choice books of 2012 and was a 2012 Foreword Review Book of the Year Award Finalist as well as a Golden Crown Award finalist. It won the 2013 Rainbow Award for Best Lesbian Fantasy. Her third novel, A Kingdom Lost, won the 2014 Rainbow Award for Best Lesbian Romantic Fantasy. She is a member of Broad Universe and the Outer Alliance and helped create Writer’s Ink in Houston. She is also a member of the Round Rock Writers Guild and the Austin Speed-Writing Challenge.
She is married and has an army of pets. Her writing career can be boiled down to two points: when her mother bought her a typewriter in the sixth grade and when she took second place in the Isaac Asimov Award for Undergraduate Excellence in Science Fiction and Fantasy Writing in 2004. One gave her the means to write and the other gave her the confidence to keep going. Believing in oneself, in her opinion, is the most important thing a person can do.
Take a look at the guts of the tiny and bright Kindle Paperwhite to see how Amazon packed in a well illuminated front-lit screen, a high-capacity battery, and the hardware to run the ebook reader in such a small space.
The harrowing story of five men who were sent into a dark, airless, miles-long tunnel, hundreds of feet below the ocean, to do a nearly impossible job—with deadly results
REVIEW
By reading the blurb I had come to the conclusion that the book was going to be about a team of divers and the tragedy that took place while they were in the tunnel causing two of the divers to perish, but this book is about a lot more than just the divers disaster. None the less, this read takes a close look at the unnecessary deaths of blue-collar workers caused by the almighty dollar that large corporations put before the worker who trusts them with their lives. Even though this was a high-risk job, human beings with families who loved them died due to pure incompetence. I think that laws need to be changed so that in obvious cases like this one, where the individuals whose neglectful actions end in someone's death, should do mandated jail time.
The book begins at the source of the original problem; Boston Harbor has raw sewage dumped into it, causing it to be “the dirtiest harbor in America” or as it was called “The Harbor of Shame”. Therefore, came a solution the second largest state of the art sewage plant would be built so the treated remains would go through the 9.8-mile tunnel under the sea floor and be discharged out into Massachusetts Bay. Well, as the book explains in great detail it was not that simple neither was the content of the book. As I explained above, it starts with the contaminated Boston Harbor and with an astounding explanation of every single fact that did not end until the individuals involved in the tragedy moved on with their lives.
This read is packed full of all types of facts and you will learn an abundance of assorted information from diving, how an underwater tunnel is built, all the different tools used in building the tunnel and used underwater, sandhogs, bag lines, breathable O2 mixtures and the consequences if they are not mixed right, the truth is this list could fill multiple pages. The author did a brilliant job of putting together all the facts about every aspect of what happened, but at times I felt bogged down with all the information. Therefore, the prose is not badly written it feels overwritten also containing an overabundance of facts.
Even though I am partial to non-fiction and enjoy learning new things I am torn by this book. It was not bad yet I did feel overwhelmed by it. I learned so much information that I did not know before, but with this book I found myself checking how much was left to read way too many times. This book is for a specific type of reader, one who thrives on this subject.
Neil Swidey is the author of Trapped Under the Sea: One Engineering Marvel, Five Men, and a Disaster Ten Miles Into the Darkness (Crown: February 2014). He is also author of The Assist, a Boston Globe bestseller that was named one of the best books of the year by The Washington Post, and co-author of the New York Times bestselling Last Lion: The Fall and Rise of Ted Kennedy. A staff writer for The Boston Globe Magazine, Swidey has been a finalist for the National Magazine Award and has twice won the Sigma Delta Chi Award from the Society of Professional Journalists. His work has been featured in The Best American Science Writing, The Best American Crime Writing, and The Best American Political Writing. He lives with his family outside Boston.
How can you begin to live again when you’ve already been forced to…die?
Evangelina Ricci is trapped in a world that’s a never-ending nightmare, a constant ache in which consumes her every breath. Unable to bear the torture any longer, she does the one thing she can to take back control.
Run.
With her best friend Jace in tow, Evangelina attempts to escape her darkened past by leaving for college and diving head first into an aggressive schedule, determined with everything she is to make a name for herself. There’s only one problem—she can’t run away from the demons she struggles with. The demons that’ll forever be there, locked inside, battering her soul. Hiding behind a flawless façade, Evangelina faces her ghosts until her world is turned upside down, invaded by…him.
Blake Turner. Sweet, witty, flirtatious and drop-dead gorgeous, he finds Evangelina at every turn. Scared he’ll uncover the truth she keeps so well guarded, Evangelina tries her best to put on her act, deterring him like she has so many times before—only this guy’s different. He’s relentless. Utterly, absolutely and completely relentless. He sees her and he wants her and won’t stop until she’s his.
Will Evangelina succeed in pushing Blake away? Or will he break down her walls and be the person to make her realize life is worth living?
Publication date: November 2015 Genres: Contemporary, New Adult
A New York workaholic, mommy and wife, Celeste Grande has always been a lover of words. From an early age, poetic words opened her heart, releasing her emotions through pen and paper.
Then she heard the shouting.
These characters were trapped souls in her head, screaming at her for release. Celeste quickly fell in love with the beautiful story she was being told and knew she had to share it with others.
Her first new adult romance novel, Live Me, will be released in 2015.
Such Disappointing Information. How Could We All Help? *ENCOURAGE PEOPLE TO READ *DONATE BOOKS TO SCHOOLS IN NEED *DONATE BOOKS TO HOMELESS SHELTERS *GIVE TIME TO HELP PEOPLELEARN TO READ *GIVE SOMEONE A BOOK EVEN A STRANGER
As A Reader What Are Your Suggestions To Change These Facts?
