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Bits and pieces : my mother, my brother, and me / by Goldberg, Whoopi,1955-author.;
If it weren't for Emma Johnson, Caryn Johnson would have never become Whoopi Goldberg. Emma gave her children the loving care and wisdom they needed to succeed in life, always encouraging them to be true to themselves. When Whoopi lost her mother in 2010 -- and then her older brother, Clyde, five years later -- she felt deeply alone; the only people who truly knew her were gone. Emma raised her children not just to survive, but to thrive. In this intimate and heartfelt memoir, Whoopi shares many of the deeply personal stories of their lives together for the first time. Growing up in the projects in New York City, there were trips to Coney Island, the Ice Capades, and museums, and every Christmas was a magical experience. To this day, she doesn't know how her mother was able to give them such an enriching childhood, despite the struggles they faced -- and it wasn't until she was well into adulthood that Whoopi learned just how traumatic some of those struggles were. Fans of personal memoirs such as Finding Me by Viola Davis and In Pieces by Sally Field will be touched by Bits and Pieces: a moving tribute from a daughter to her mother, and a beautiful portrait of three people who loved each other deeply. Whoopi writes, "Not everybody gets to walk this earth with folks who let you be exactly who you are and who give you the confidence to become exactly who you want to be. So, I thought I'd share mine with you."
Subjects: Biographies.; Personal narratives.; Goldberg, Whoopi, 1955-; Goldberg, Whoopi, 1955-; Goldberg, Whoopi, 1955-; Johnson, Clyde, 1949-2015.; Johnson, Emma, 1931-2010.; African American actors; African American entertainers;
Available copies: 1 / Total copies: 1
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Other Worlds Stories [electronic resource] : by Alexis, Andre.aut; CloudLibrary;
The award-winning author of Fifteen Dogs conjures up worlds – real, invented, uncanny – in this ingenious, electrifying collection. A Trinidadian Obeah man finds himself reborn, a hundred years after his death, in the body of a Canadian child. A writer takes up a seasonal job as the caretaker of a set of mysterious large sacks hanging from the rafters of the houses in a small town. A woman starts a relationship with the famous artist who painted portraits of her mother. The contents of a sealed envelope upend a woman’s understanding about a tragic crime she committed at the age of six. In this dazzling collection of stories, André Alexis draws fresh connections between worlds: the ones we occupy, the ones we imagine, and the ones that preceded our own. He introduces us to characters during moments of profound puzzlement, and transports us from 19th century Trinidad and Tobago to small-town Ontario, from Amherst, Massachusetts to contemporary Toronto. These captivating stories reveal flashes of reckoning, defeat, despair, alienation, and understanding, all the while playfully using a multitude of literary genres, including gothic horror and isekai, and referencing works from greats like Jane Austen, Jonathan Swift, Yasunari Kawabata, Witold Gombrowicz, and Tomasso Landolfi. Masterfully crafted, blending poignant philosophical inquiry and wry humour tinged with the absurd, here are worlds refracted and reflected back to us with pristine clarity and stunning emotional resonance as only André Alexis can.
Subjects: Electronic books.; Literary; Mashups; Short Stories (single author);
© 2025., McClelland & Stewart,
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Ants among elephants : an untouchable family and the making of modern India / by Gidla, Sujatha,1963-;
"The stunning true story of an untouchable family who become teachers, and one, a poet and revolutionary. Like one in six people in India, Sujatha Gidla was born an untouchable. While most untouchables are illiterate, her family was educated by Canadian missionaries in the 1930s, making it possible for Gidla to attend elite schools and move to America at the age of twenty-six. It was only then that she saw how extraordinary--and yet how typical--her family history truly was. Her mother, Manjula, and uncles Satyam and Carey were born in the last days of British colonial rule. They grew up in a world marked by poverty and injustice, but also full of possibility. In the slums where they lived, everyone had a political side, and rallies, agitations, and arrests were commonplace. The Independence movement promised freedom. Yet for untouchables and other poor and working people, little changed. Satyam, the eldest, switched allegiance to the Communist Party. Gidla recounts his incredible life--how he became a famous poet, student, labor organizer, and founder of a left-wing guerrilla movement. And Gidla charts her mother's battles with caste and women's oppression. Page by page, Gidla takes us into a complicated, close-knit family as they desperately strive for a decent life and a more just society. A moving portrait of love, hardship, and struggle, Ants Among Elephants is also that rare thing: a personal history of modern India told from the bottom up"--Provided by publisher.LSC
Subjects: Gidla, Sujatha, 1963-; Gidla, Sujatha, 1963-; Dalits; Families; Teachers; Poets, Indic; Revolutionaries; Caste;
Available copies: 1 / Total copies: 1
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Damnation Spring : a novel / by Davidson, Ash,author.;
"For generations, Rich Gundersen's family has chopped a livelihood out of the redwood forest along California's rugged coast. Now Rich and his wife, Colleen, are raising their own young son near Damnation Grove, a swath of ancient redwoods on which Rich's employer, Sanderson Timber Co., plans to make a killing. In 1977, with most of the forest cleared or protected, a grove like Damnation--and beyond it 24-7 Ridge--is a logger's dream. But logging is dangerous work, and Rich wants better for his son, Chub. So when the opportunity arises to buy 24-7 Ridge--costing them all the savings they've squirreled away for their growing family--he grabs it, unbeknownst to Colleen. Because the reality is their family isn't growing; Colleen has lost several pregnancies. And she isn't alone. As a midwife, Colleen has seen the suffering of other women with her own eyes. For decades, the herbicides that the logging company uses were considered harmless. But what if these miscarriages aren't isolated strokes of bad luck? As mudslides take out clear-cut hillsides and salmon vanish from creeks, Colleen's search for answers threatens to unravel not just Rich's plans for the 24-7, but their marriage too, dividing a town that lives and dies on timber along the way. In prose as clear as a spring-fed creek, this intimate, compassionate portrait of a community clinging to a vanishing way of life amid the perils of environmental degradation is an essential novel for our time."--Jacket flap.
Subjects: Ecofiction.; Historical fiction.; Families; Miscarriage; Loggers; Forests and forestry; Logging; Environmental degradation;
Available copies: 1 / Total copies: 1
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Life and times of Augustine Tataneuck : an Inuk hero in Rupert's Land, 1800-1834 / by Fossett, Renee,author.;
Includes bibliographical references and index.One of the few biographies of an Inuk man from the 19th Century-- separated from his family, community, and language-- finding his place in history. Augustine Tataneuck was an Inuk man born near the beginning of the 19th century on the northwestern coast of Hudson Bay. Between 1812 and 1834, his family sent him to Churchill, Manitoba, to live and work among strangers, where he could escape the harsh Arctic climate and earn a living in the burgeoning fur trade. He was perhaps the first Inuk man employed by the Hudson's Bay Company as a labourer, and he also worked as an interpreter on John Franklin's two overland expeditions in search of the northwest passage. Tataneuck's life was shaped by the inescapable, harsh environments he lived within, and he was an important, but not widely recognized, player in the struggle for the possession of northwest North America waged by Britain, Russia, and the United States. He left no diaries or letters. Using the Hudson's Bay Company's journals and historical archives, historian Renee Fossett has pieced together a compelling biography of Augustine and the historical times he lived through: climate disasters, lethal disease episodes, and political upheavals on an international scale. While The Life and Times of Augustine Tataneuck is a captivating portrait of an Inuk man who lived an extraordinary life, it also is an arresting, unique glimpse into the North as it was in the 19th century and into the lives of trappers, translators, and labourers who are seldom written about and often absent in the historical record.
Subjects: Biographies.; Tataneuck, Augustine.; Fur traders; Fur traders; Inuit;
Available copies: 1 / Total copies: 1
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The whispering house / by Brooks, Elizabeth,1979-author.;
"Simmering and mysterious, The Whispering House trades in secrets: of a son haunted by his family's unsettling past, and a young woman uncovering the truth about her sister's last days. On a warm summer's day by the English seaside, twenty-three-year-old Freya spies a pale, pillared house: Byrne Hall. Before she can think twice, she's stepped inside to an ornate foyer featuring a striking portrait that evokes her late sister, Stella, whose untimely fall from a cliff years before still haunts Freya and her father. When an inexplicable longing leads her back to Byrne Hall several weeks later, she meets Cory, a handsome and enigmatic young artist who remains in the house to care for his ailing mother. Though she plans to stay for just a few days, Freya finds herself extending her stay longer and longer, driven to remain not just by Byrne Hall itself, but this strange mother-and-son pair who inhabit it. Freya's decision to linger in this mysterious, centuries-old house sets off an unexpected chain of events that will lead her to question who she is, and what really happened to Stella. As the days stretch on, a kind of shadow communication with her late sister begins as Freya explores the estate, and the relationships that Stella formed there. In prose as lush and atmospheric as Byrne Hall itself, Elizabeth Brooks weaves a simmering, propulsive tale in The Whispering House of art, sisterhood, and all-consuming love: the ways it can lead us towards tenderness, nostalgia, and longing, as well as shocking acts of violence"--
Subjects: Historical fiction.; Sisters; Secrecy; Suicide;
Available copies: 1 / Total copies: 1
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The elephant of Belfast : a novel / by Walsh, S. Kirk,author.;
"The Elephant of Belfast chronicles a seven-month period of time when the Germans unexpectedly bombed Belfast, Northern Ireland, also known as the Belfast Blitz. Through the lens of the Bellevue Zoo and one of its zookeepers, twenty-year-old Hettie Quin, the novel animates how the war irrevocably impacted-and shaped the lives of Belfast's citizens in broad and intimate ways. In October 1940, Hettie meets Violet, a three-year-old Asian elephant arriving at the Belfast docks from Ceylon. Soon, she becomes Violet's dedicated zookeeper at the Bellevue Zoo. At the same time, Hettie continues to experience the grief related to the recent loss of her beloved older sister, Anna, and the abandonment of her father, Thomas, who left her mother, Rose. On April 15th , 1941, Belfast is attacked for five hours, with 674 bombs falling, and almost a thousand civilians being killed. During the bombings and its aftermath, Hettie does all that she can to save her elephant, and survive the destruction and escalating sectarian unrest of the city. Even though Hettie is still only twenty years old by the novel's end, she's aged at least a decade, her life and perspective transforming in tragic and unexpected ways. Taken altogether, The Elephant of Belfast reflects a complicated portrait of loss, grief, love, and resilience, and how the zoo and the city of Belfast suffered during these catastrophic attacks. At the narrative's heart is a changing relationship between a young woman and an elephant: At first, it seems that Hettie saves Violet, but in the end, Violet saves her"--
Subjects: Historical fiction.; Elephants; Grief; Human-animal relationships;
Available copies: 1 / Total copies: 1
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That summer / by Willig, Lauren.;
"2009: When Julia Conley hears that she has inherited a house outside London from an unknown great-aunt, she assumes it's a joke. She hasn't been back to England since the car crash that killed her mother when she was six, an event she remembers only in her nightmares. But when she arrives at Herne Hill to sort through the house--with the help of her cousin Natasha and sexy antiques dealer Nicholas--bits of memory start coming back. And then she discovers a pre-Raphaelite painting, hidden behind the false back of an old wardrobe, and a window onto the house's shrouded history begins to open ... 1849: Imogen Grantham has spent nearly a decade trapped in a loveless marriage to a much older man, Arthur. The one bright spot in her life is her step-daughter, Evie, a high-spirited sixteen year old who is the closest thing to a child Imogen hopes to have. But everything changes when three young painters come to see Arthur's collection of medieval artifacts, including Gavin Thorne, a quiet man with the unsettling ability to read Imogen better than anyone ever has. When Arthur hires Gavin to paint her portrait, none of them can guess what the hands of fate have set in motion.From modern-day England to the early days of the Preraphaelite movement, Lauren Willig's That Summer takes readers on an un-put-downable journey through a mysterious old house, a hidden love affair, and one woman's search for the truth about her past--and herself"--Provided by publisher.
Subjects: Historical fiction.; Love stories.; Antique dealers; Inheritance and succession;
Available copies: 1 / Total copies: 1
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Hello stranger [sound recording] / by Center, Katherine,author.; Murin, Patti,narrator.;
Read by Patti Murin."Sadie Montogmery has had good breaks and bad breaks in her life, but as a struggling artist, all she needs is one lucky break. Things seem to be going her way when she lands one of the coveted finalist spots in a portrait competition. It happens to coincide with a surgery she needs to have. Minor, they say. Less than a week in the hospital they say. Nothing about you will change, they say. Upon recovery, it begins to dawn on Sadie that she can see everything around her, but she can no longer see faces. Temporary, they say. Lots of people deal with this, they say. As she struggles to cope-and hang onto her artistic dreams-she finds solace in her fourteen-year-old dog, Peanut. Thankfully, she can still see animal faces. When Peanut gets sick, she rushes him to the emergency vet nearby. That's when she meets veterinarian Dr. Addison. And she's pleasantly surprised when he asks her on a date. But she doesn't want anyone to know about her face blindness. Least of all Joe, her obnoxious neighbor who always wears a bowling jacket and seems to know everyone in the building. He's always there at the most embarrassing but convenient times, and soon, they develop a sort of friendship. But could it be something more? As Sadie tries to save her career, confront her haunting past, and handle falling in love with two different guys she realizes that happiness can be found in the places-and people- you least expect"--
Subjects: Romance fiction.; Audiobooks.; Novels.; Life change events; Man-woman relationships; Self-realization in women; Women artists;
Available copies: 1 / Total copies: 1
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Brotherless night : a novel / by Ganeshananthan, V. V.,author.;
"Jaffna, 1981. Sixteen-year-old Sashi wants to become a doctor. But over the next decade, as a vicious civil war subsumes Sri Lanka, her dream takes a different path as she watches those around her, including her four beloved brothers, swept up in violent political ideologies and their consequences. She must ask herself: is it possible for anyone to move through life without doing harm. Sashi begins working as a medic at a field hospital for the militant Tamil Tigers, who, following years of state discrimination and violence, are fighting for a separate homeland for Sri Lanka's Tamil minority. But after the Tigers murder one of her teachers, and the arrival of Indian peacekeepers brings further atrocities, she turns to one of her professors, a feminist and dissident who invites her to join in a dangerous, secret project of documenting human rights violations as a mode of civil resistance to war. In gorgeous, fearless writing, Ganeshananthan captures furious mothers marching to demand news of their disappeared sons; a young student attending the hunger strike of an equally young militant; and a feminist reading group that tries to side with community and justice over any single political belief. Set during the early years of Sri Lanka's thirty-year civil war, and based on over a decade of research, Brotherless night explores the blurred lines between formal participation in conflict and civilian life. This is a heartrending portrait of one woman's moral journey, and a testament to both the enduring impact of war and the bonds of home"--
Subjects: Historical fiction.; War fiction.; Novels.; Civil disobedience; Human rights; Women;
Available copies: 1 / Total copies: 1
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Results 571 to 580 of 770 | « previous |