Search:

Results 531 to 540 of 2,320 | « previous |

The school for good mothers : a novel / by Chan, Jessamine,author.;
"Set in near-future America, The School for Good Mothers introduces readers to a government-run reform program where bad mothers are retrained using robot doll children with artificial intelligence. Protagonist Frida Liu, a 39-year-old Chinese-American single mother in Philadelphia, loses custody of her 18-month-old daughter, Harriet, after she leaves Harriet home alone for two hours on one very bad day. To regain custody, Frida must spend a year at a newly-created institution, where she practices parenting with bad mothers from all over the county. There, she learns to love an uncannily life-like toddler girl doll in order to demonstrate her maternal instincts and prove to her family court judge that she deserves a second chance. Frida is an outsider in every way: better educated, more affluent, and the only Asian. The mothers, whose transgressions range from benign to horrific, are under constant surveillance. If they don't pass all the school's tests, their parental rights will be terminated. Inspired by dystopian classics such as 1984, Never Let Me Go, and The Handmaid's Tale, the novel eviscerates the dominant American parenting culture, while highlighting the tragedy of state-sponsored family separation. Is there one right way to mother? Can a bad mother ever be redeemed? With warmth, heart, and dark humor, the novel tells a timeless story of a mother fighting to win back her child, and her struggle to hold onto her integrity while being indoctrinated"--
Subjects: Dystopian fiction.; Chinese American women; Motherhood; Single mothers;
Available copies: 1 / Total copies: 1
unAPI

The city of stardust / by Summers, Georgia,author.;
"For centuries, the Everlys have seen their best and brightest disappear, taken as punishment for a crime no one remembers, for a purpose no one understands. Their tormentor, a woman named Penelope, never ages, never grows sick--and never forgives a debt. Violet Everly was a child when her mother left on a stormy night, determined to break the curse. When Marianne never returns, Penelope issues an ultimatum: Violet has ten years to find her mother, or she will take her place. Violet is the last of the Everly line, the last to suffer. Unless she can break the curse first. Her hunt leads her into a seductive magical underworld of power-hungry scholars, fickle gods and monsters bent on revenge. And into the path of Penelope's quiet assistant, Aleksander, who she knows cannot be trusted--and yet to whom she finds herself undeniably drawn. With her time running out, Violet will travel the edges of the world to find Marianne and the key to the city of stardust, where the Everly story began."--
Subjects: Fantasy fiction.; Novels.; Blessing and cursing; Civilization, Subterranean; Families; Man-woman relationships; Magic; Missing persons; Monsters;
Available copies: 1 / Total copies: 1
unAPI

A sorceress comes to call / by Kingfisher, T.,author.;
"Cordelia knows her mother is ... unusual. Their house doesn't have any doors between rooms-there are no secrets in this house-and her mother doesn't allow Cordelia to have a single friend. Unless you count Falada, her mother's beautiful white horse. The only time Cordelia feels truly free is on her daily rides with him. But more than simple eccentricity sets her mother apart. Other mothers don't force their daughters to be silent and motionless for hours, sometimes days, on end. Other mothers aren't evil sorcerers. When her mother unexpectedly moves them into the manor home of a wealthy older Squire and his kind but keen-eyed sister, Hester, Cordelia knows this welcoming pair are to be her mother's next victims. But Cordelia feels at home for the very first time among these people, and as her mother's plans darken, she must decide how to face the woman who raised her to save the people who have become like family."--
Subjects: Fantasy fiction.; Novels.; Families; Good and evil; Magic; Mothers and daughters; Wizards; Women;
Available copies: 1 / Total copies: 1
unAPI

The mother-in-law / by Hepworth, Sally,author.;
"A twisty, compelling new novel about one woman's complicated relationship with her mother-in-law that ends in death. From the moment Lucy met her husband's mother, Diana, she was kept at arm's length. Diana was exquisitely polite, and properly friendly, but Lucy knew that she was not what Diana envisioned. But who could fault Diana? She was a pillar of the community, an advocate for social justice who helped female refugees assimilate to their new country. Diana was happily married to Tom, and lived in wedded bliss for decades. Lucy wanted so much to please her new mother-in-law. That was five years ago. Now, Diana has been found dead, a suicide note near her body. Diana claims that she no longer wanted to live because of a battle with cancer. But the autopsy finds no cancer. The autopsy does find traces of poison and suffocation. Who could possibly want Diana dead? Why was her will changed at the eleventh hour to disinherit both of her adult children and their spouses? With Lucy's secrets getting deeper and her relationship with her mother-in-law growing more complex as the pages turn, this new novel from Sally Hepworth is sure to add to her growing legion of fans."--
Subjects: Thrillers (Fiction); Domestic fiction.; Psychological fiction.; Mothers-in-law; Family secrets;
Available copies: 0 / Total copies: 1
unAPI

Wait softly brother : a novel / by Kuitenbrouwer, Kathryn,1965-author.;
"From lost siblings to the horrors of war to tales of selkie wives, Wait Softly Brother is filled with questions about memory, reality and the truths hidden in family lore. After twenty years of looping frustrations Kathryn walks out of her marriage and washes up in her childhood home determined to write her way to a new life. There she is put to work by her aging parents sorting generations of memories and mementos as biblical rains fall steadily and the house is slowly cut off from the rest of the world. Lured away from the story she is determined to write - that of her stillborn brother, Wulf - by her mother's gift of crumbling letters, Kathryn instead begins to piece together the strange tale of an earlier ancestor, Russell Boyt, who fought as a substitute soldier in the American Civil War. As the water rises, and more truths come to the surface, the two stories begin to mingle in unexpected and beautiful ways. In this elegantly written novel Kuitenbrouwer deftly unravels the stories we are told to believe by society and shows the reader how to weave new tales of hope and possibility."--
Subjects: Autobiographical fiction.; Historical fiction.; Novels.; Archives; Brothers; Families; Genealogy; Women authors;
Available copies: 1 / Total copies: 1
unAPI

The quiet side of passion / by McCall Smith, Alexander,1948-author.;
"As the mother of two small children, Isabel finds herself at the nursery school gate enlarging her circle of friends to include other parents. There she meets Patricia, a musician living in Edinburgh, the mother of a small classmate called Basil Phelps. Patricia takes to Isabel and tries to bring Isabel into her social circle. Isabel is vaguely disquieted by this--there is something about Patricia that she does not quite like, but, with her usual attention to moral obligation, she does her best to be civil and supportive--after all, Patricia is a single mother struggling to get by. Or so one might think; in fact, Patricia seems to live in comfort in a fairly expensive part of town. Isabel hears from her husband, Jamie, that this child is allegedly the unacknowledged son of a well-known Edinburgh organist, Basil Phelps (sr.). Isabel and Jamie are invited to a weekend house-party in a small border town south of Edinburgh. Quite by chance, she happens to see Patricia going into an antique shop there with a man. Isabel does not think much more about that, but shortly afterwards she sees them coming out and she gets a better view of the man's face. He has a strikingly freckled complexion--as does the small boy, Basil (jr.). The organist--the alleged father--has a very different complexion. Jamie discourages Isabel from pursuing the matter, but her sense of justice is pricked, and she decides to look into the matter further. Isabel intervenes in the lives of Patricia and the purported father and comes close to overstepping her own boundaries, as she uncovers a scheme of fake antiquities and illicit trafficking in cultural objects. And she learns about her own misconceptions when her niece strikes up a relationship with a tattoo artist. Isabel is not in favour of tattoos, or of those who execute them, but her assumptions are misguided, and she discovers that the tattoo artist has very fine qualities. (They become friendly, and he even offers to give her a free tattoo--a passage from Plato would do nicely, he says.) In this twelfth full-length installment of Isabel's story, McCall Smith gives his readers what we want--time inside the mind of one of fiction's most richly developed women detectives, a visit to Edinburgh, and a twisting and tangled mystery about what responsibility humans owe to each other."--
Subjects: Detective and mystery fiction.; Dalhousie, Isabel (Fictitious character); Women philosophers;
Available copies: 1 / Total copies: 2
unAPI

A harmless lie : a novel / by Blædel, Sara,author.; Kline, Mark,1952-translator.; translation of:Blædel, Sara.Pigen under træet.English.;
Detective Louise Rick is on a beach in Thailand when the panicked call from her father comes through. Louise′s beloved brother, Mikkel, has attempted suicide. His wife, Trine, left him days earlier, walking out the door one day with no warning and leaving Mikkel devastated. Louise rushes home to Osted, the small, insular Danish town where she grew up and where Mikkel still lives. But the more Louise learns about Trine--a devoted wife and the mother of two young children--and her state of mind in the days before she left Mikkel, the more Louise begins to wonder whether Trine really meant to leave him. Or whether something much darker may have taken place. As the local police begin to suspect that Mikkel may have had a hand in Trine's disappearance, Louise struggles to clear his name but is forced to confront some hard truths: Small towns always hide secrets. The past always comes back to haunt you. And lies are never harmless.
Subjects: Thrillers (Fiction); Novels.; Rick, Louise; Detectives; Missing persons; Policewomen; Secrecy; Small cities;
Available copies: 1 / Total copies: 1
unAPI

Chorus : a novel / by Kauffman, Rebecca,author.;
"The seven Shaw siblings have long been haunted by two early and profoundly consequential events. Told in turn back and forth over time, from the early twentieth century through the 1950s, each sibling relays their own version of the memories that surround both their mother's mysterious death and the circumstances leading up to and beyond one sister's scandalous teenage pregnancy. As they move into adulthood, the siblings assume various new roles: caretaker to their aging father, addict, enabler, academic, decorated veteran, widow, and mothers and fathers to the next generation. A family knot of entanglement, each sibling encounters divorce, drama, and death, while haunted by a mother who was never truly there. Through this lens, they all seek to not only understand how her death shaped their family, but also to illuminate the insoluble nature of the many familial experiences we all encounter-the concept of home, the tenacity that is a family's love, and the unexpected ways through which healing can occur. Chorus is a hopeful story of family, of loss and recovery, of complicated relationships forged between brothers and sisters as they move through life together, and the unlikely forces that first drive them away and then ultimately back home"--
Subjects: Domestic fiction.; Historical fiction.; Brothers and sisters; Families; Mothers;
Available copies: 1 / Total copies: 1
unAPI

A daughter's return / by Cox, Josephine,author.; Middleton, Gilly,author.;
Florence Stanville is a woman with a past. When she moves to Guisethorpe on the east coast of England, the townsfolk are intrigued by the glamorous and mysterious stranger, with her flame-red hair and abrupt manners. Florence doesn't care about the gossips - she's drawn to the peaceful seaside town by the pull of her childhood, when she lived for a brief but happy time with her beloved late mother. The riddle of those days remains and now Florence can only snatch at half-remembered memories and shadowy figures in her dreams. As Florence is reluctantly drawn into the lives of her new neighbours, the layers of her own life are revealed, though it's clear not everyone wishes her well. Far from finding peace, Florence has found instead turmoil and secrets. Can she put the pieces of her past together, or will it remain a closed book forever?
Subjects: Domestic fiction.; Homecoming; Neighbors; Family secrets; Small cities;
Available copies: 2 / Total copies: 2
unAPI

The daughters of Ys [graphic novel] / by Anderson, M. T.,author.; Rioux, Jo-Anne,illustrator.;
"Ys, city of wealth and wonder, has a history of dark secrets. Queen Malgven used magic to raise the great walls that keep Ys safe from the tumultuous sea. But after the queen's inexplicable death, her daughters drift apart. Rozenn, the heir to the throne, spends her time on the moors communing with wild animals, while Dahut, the youngest, enjoys the splendors of royal life and is eager to take part in palace intrigue. When Rozenn and Dahut's bond is irrevocably changed, the fate of Ys is sealed, exposing the monsters that lurk in plain view. M. T. Anderson and Jo Rioux reimagine this classic Breton folktale of love, loss, and rebirth, revealing the secrets that lie beneath the surface."--Amazon.
Subjects: Young adult fiction.; Graphic novels.; Daughters; Sisters; Inheritance and succession; Mothers; Kings and rulers; Magic; Secrecy; Jealousy; Monsters;
Available copies: 1 / Total copies: 1
unAPI

Results 531 to 540 of 2,320 | « previous |