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The heart's invisible furies / by Boyne, John,1971-author.;
Cyril Avery is not a real Avery or at least that's what his adoptive parents tell him. And he never will be. But if he isn't a real Avery, then who is he? Born out of wedlock to a teenage girl cast out from her rural Irish community and adopted by a well-to-do if eccentric Dublin couple via the intervention of a hunchbacked Redemptorist nun, Cyril is adrift in the world, anchored only tenuously by his heartfelt friendship with the infinitely more glamourous and dangerous Julian Woodbead. At the mercy of fortune and coincidence, he will spend a lifetime coming to know himself and where he came from - and over his three score years and ten, will struggle to discover an identity, a home, a country and much more.
Subjects: Domestic fiction.; Adoptees; Friendship; Conduct of life;
Available copies: 1 / Total copies: 1
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A billion butterflies : a life in climate and chaos theory / by Shukla, J.,1944-author.;
Includes bibliographical references and index."The amazing true story of the man behind modern weather prediction. Consider a world without weather prediction. How would we know when to evacuate communities ahead of fires or floods, or figure out what to wear tomorrow? Until 40 years ago, we couldn't forecast weather conditions beyond ten days. Renowned climate scientist Dr. Jagadish Shukla is largely to thank for modern weather forecasting. Born in rural India with no electricity, plumbing, or formal schools, he attended classes that were held in a cow shed. Shukla grew up amid turmoil: overwhelming monsoons, devastating droughts, and unpredictable crop yields. His drive brought him to the Indian Institute of Tropical Meteorology, despite little experience. He then followed an unlikely path to MIT and Princeton, and the highest echelons of climate science. His work, which has enabled us to predict weather farther into the future than previously thought possible, allows us to feed more people, save lives, and hold on to hope in a warming world. Paired with his philanthropic endeavors and extreme dedication to the field, Dr. Shukla has been lauded internationally for his achievements, including a shared Nobel Peace Prize with Al Gore for his governmental research on climate change. A Billion Butterflies is a wondrous insider's account of climate science and an unbelievable memoir of his life. Understanding dynamical seasonal prediction will change the way you experience a thunderstorm or interpret a forecast; understanding its origins and the remarkable story of the man who discovered it will change the way you see our world"--
Subjects: Biographies.; Autobiographies.; Personal narratives.; Shukla, J., 1944-; Dynamic meteorology; Meteorologists; Weather forecasting;
Available copies: 1 / Total copies: 1
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Landbridge : life in fragments / by Troeung, Y-Dang,1980-2022,author.;
Includes bibliographical references."In 1980, Y-Dang Troeung and her family were among the last of the 60,000 refugees from Cambodia that then-Prime Minister Pierre Trudeau pledged to relocate to Canada. As the final arrivals, their landing was widely documented in newspapers, with photographs of the PM shaking Y-Dang's father's hand, reaching out to pat baby Y-Dang's head. Forty years later, in her brilliant, astonishing book, Y-Dang returns to this moment, and to many others before and after, to explore the tension between that public narrative of happy "arrival," and the multiple, often hidden truths of what happened to the people in her family. In precise, beautiful prose accompanied by moving black-and-white visuals, Y-Dang weaves back and forth in time to tell stories about her parents and two brothers who lived through the Cambodian genocide, about the lives of her grandparents and extended family, about her own childhood in the refugee camps and in rural Ontario, and eventually about her young son's illness and her own diagnosis with a terminal disease. Through it all, Y-Dang looks with bracing clarity at refugee existence, refusal of gratitude, becoming a scholar, and love."--
Subjects: Biographies.; Autobiographies.; Troeung, Y-Dang, 1980-2022; Troeung, Y-Dang, 1980-2022; Troeung, Y-Dang, 1980-2022.; Refugees; Refugees; Refugees; Cambodian Canadians;
Available copies: 1 / Total copies: 1
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The earthspinner : a novel / by Roy, Anuradha,author.;
"Sara is studying at a prestigious British university and seeks a reprise from her loneliness by practising the traditional craft she learned in India when she was young: pottery. She recalls her childhood, the lost dog, Chinna, who brings a community together, and the life of her revered pottery teacher, Elango, a Hindu who faced prejudice after falling in love with a Muslim woman. Switching with ease between Sara's diary entries and Elango's life a decade earlier, Roy delivers a searing exploration into the fragility of peace. As fortunes change within one explosive day, and religious extremism brings hurt and violence to a rural village, the consequences of daring to dream against the tide are unleashed. Moving its protagonists between India and Britain, The Earthspinner shows the many ways in which the East encounters the West, fanaticism wars tirelessly against reason, and the individual's creative desires struggle against a populace's basic instinct for destruction."--Provided by publisher.
Subjects: Psychological fiction.; Social problem fiction.; Novels.; Creative ability; East Indians; Interfaith dating; Women college students; Women potters; Indigenous pottery;
Available copies: 1 / Total copies: 1
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Agony Hill : a mystery / by Taylor, Sarah Stewart,author.;
"Set in rural Vermont in the volatile 1960s, Agony Hill is the first novel in a new historical series full of vivid New England atmosphere and the deeply drawn characters that are Sarah Stewart Taylor's trademark. In the hot summer of 1965, Bostonian Franklin Warren arrives in Bethany, Vermont, to take a position as a detective with the state police. Warren's new home is on the verge of monumental change; the interstates under construction will bring new people, new opportunities, and new problems to Vermont, and the Cold War and protests against the war in Vietnam have finally reached the dirt roads and rolling pastures of Bethany. Warren has barely unpacked when he's called up to a remote farm on Agony Hill. Former New Yorker and Back-to-the-Lander Hugh Weber seems to have set fire to his barn and himself, with the door barred from the inside, but things aren't adding up for Warren. The people of Bethany-from Weber's enigmatic wife to Warren's neighbor, widow and amateur detective Alice Bellows - clearly have secrets they'd like to keep, but Warren can't tell if the truth about Weber's death is one of them. As he gets to know his new home and grapples with the tragedy that brought him there, Warren is drawn to the people and traditions of small town Vermont, even as he finds darkness amidst the beauty"--
Subjects: Detective and mystery fiction.; Novels.; Country life; Detectives; Fires; Murder; Nineteen sixties; Police, State; Secrecy; Small cities;
Available copies: 1 / Total copies: 1
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The other Dr. Gilmer : two men, a murder, and an unlikely fight for justice / by Gilmer, Benjamin,author.;
Includes bibliographical references."A rural physician learns that a former doctor at his clinic committed a shocking crime, leading him to uncover an undiagnosed mental health crisis in our broken prison system--a powerful true story expanding on one of the most popular This American Life episodes of all time. When family physician Dr. Benjamin Gilmer began working at the Cane Creek clinic in rural North Carolina, he was following in the footsteps of a man with the same last name. His predecessor, Dr. Vince Gilmer, was beloved by his patients and community--right up until the shocking moment when he strangled his ailing father and then returned to the clinic for a regular day of work after the murder. He'd been in prison for nearly a decade by the time Benjamin arrived, but Vince's patients would still tell Benjamin they couldn't believe the other Dr. Gilmer was capable of such violence. The more Benjamin looked into Vince's case, the more he knew that something was wrong. Vince knew, too. He complained from the time he was arrested of his "SSRI brain," referring to withdrawal from his anti-depressant medication. When Benjamin visited Vince in prison, he met a man who was obviously fighting his own mind, constantly twitching and veering off into nonsensical tangents. Enlisting This American Life journalist Sarah Koenig, Benjamin resolved to get Vince the help he needed. But time and again, the pair would come up against a prison system that cared little about the mental health of its inmates--despite an estimated one third of them suffering from an untreated mental illness. In The Other Dr. Gilmer, Dr. Benjamin Gilmer tells of how a caring man was overcome by a perfect storm of rare health conditions, leading to an unimaginable crime. Rather than get treatment, Vince Gilmer was sentenced to life in prison--a life made all the worse by his untrustworthy brain and prison and government officials who dismissed his situation. A large percentage of imprisoned Americans are suffering from mental illness when they commit their crimes and continue to suffer, untreated, in prison. In a country with the highest incarceration rates in the world, Dr. Benjamin Gilmer argues that some crimes need to be healed rather than punished"--
Subjects: Clemency; Mentally ill offenders;
Available copies: 1 / Total copies: 1
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The vanishing sky : a novel / by Binder, L. Annette,1967-author.;
"In 1945, as the war in Germany nears its violent end, the Huber family is not yet free of its dangers or its insidious demands. Etta, a mother from a small, rural town, has two sons serving their home country: her elder, Max, on the Eastern front, and her younger, Georg, at a school for Hitler Youth. When Max returns from the front, Etta quickly realizes that something is not right-he is thin, almost ghostly, and behaving very strangely. Etta strives to protect him from the Nazi rule, even as her husband, Josef, becomes more nationalistic and impervious to Max's condition. Meanwhile, miles away, her younger son Georg has taken his fate into his own hands, deserting his young class of battle-bound soldiers to set off on a long and perilous journey home. The Vanishing Sky is a World War II novel as seen through a German lens, a story of the irreparable damage of war on the home front, and one family's participation-involuntary, unseen, or direct-in a dangerous regime. Drawing inspiration from her own father's time in the Hitler Youth, L. Annette Binder has crafted a spellbinding novel about the daring choices we make for country and for family"--
Subjects: Historical fiction.; World War, 1939-1945; Families; Soldiers; Students; Nazis; Post-traumatic stress disorder; Choice (Psychology);
Available copies: 1 / Total copies: 1
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Anywhere you run : a novel / by Morris, Wanda M.(Wanda Michelle),1959-author.;
It's 1964 and Violet Richards is in more trouble than she's ever been in her life. It was an act of self-defense against her white rapist, Huxley Broadus. But with the color of Violet's skin, there is no way she can escape Jim Crow justice, not in Jackson, Mississippi. Before anyone can find Huxley's body or finger Violet as the killer, she decides to run. With the help of her white beau, Dewey Leonard, a lovesick boy intent on marrying her up North, they make it to Birmingham before she sneaks away and catches a Greyhound bus bound for Washington, D.C. But desperation has her winding up in the small rural town of Chillicothe, Georgia. Back in Jackson, Marigold, Violet's older sister, has dreams of attending law school. But she is in a different kind of trouble: she's pregnant and unmarried. Working for the Mississippi Summer Project, Marigold has been trying to use her smarts to further the cause of the Black vote. But after the Project's lawyer, and her baby's father, abandons her and news of Huxley's murder brings the police to her door, Marigold sees no choice but to marry another man and leave Jackson behind. After a quick marriage, they move to Ohio seeking the promise of a better life and no more segregation. Two sisters on the run, one from the law, the other from social shame. What they don't realize is that there's a man hot on their trail. This man has his own brand of dark secrets and a disturbing motive for finding the sisters that is unknown to everyone but him.
Subjects: Thrillers (Fiction); Historical fiction.; Novels.; African American women; African Americans; African Americans; Fugitives from justice; Secrecy; Sisters; Unmarried mothers; Unplanned pregnancy;
Available copies: 1 / Total copies: 1
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The sirens : a novel / by Hart, Emilia,author.;
"A spellbinding novel about sisters separated by centuries, but bound together by the sea, from the author of the runaway New York Times bestseller Weyward 2019: Lucy awakens from a dream to find her hands around her ex-lover's throat. Horrified, she flees to her older sister's house on the Australian coast, hoping she can help explain the strangely vivid nightmare that preceded the attack-but Jess is nowhere to be found. As Lucy awaits her return, the rumors surrounding Jess's strange small town start to emerge. Numerous men have gone missing at sea, spread over decades. A tiny baby was found hidden in a cave. And sailors tell of hearing women's voices on the waves. Desperate for answers, Lucy finds and begins to read her sister's adolescent diary. 1999: Jess is a lonely sixteen-year-old in a rural town in the middle of the continent. Diagnosed with a rare allergy to water, she has always felt different, until her young, charming art teacher takes an interest in her drawings, seeing a power and maturity in them-and in her-that no one else has. 1800: Twin sisters Mary and Eliza have been torn from their loving father in Ireland and forced onto a convict ship bound for Australia. For their entire lives, they've feared the ocean, as their mother tragically drowned when they were just girls. Yet as the boat bears them further and further from all they know, they begin to notice changes in their bodies that they can't explain, and they feel the sea beginning to call to them ... A breathtaking tale of female resilience and the bonds of sisterhood across time and space, The Sirens captures the power of dreams, and the mystery and magic of the sea"--
Subjects: Magic realist fiction.; Novels.; Convict ships; Family secrets; Nightmares; Sisters; Visions; Women; Women;
Available copies: 0 / Total copies: 2
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Hell put to shame : the 1921 Murder Farm massacre and the horror of America's second slavery / by Swift, Earl,1958-author.;
Includes bibliographical references and index.On a Sunday morning in the spring of 1921, a small boy made a grim discovery as he played on a riverbank in the cotton country of rural Georgia: the bodies of two drowned men, bound together with wire and chain and weighted with a hundred-pound sack of rocks. Within days a third body turned up in another nearby river, and in the weeks that followed, eight others. And with them a deeper horror: all eleven had been kept in virtual slavery before their deaths. In fact, as America was shocked to learn, the dead were among thousands of Black men enslaved throughout the South in conditions nearly as dire as those before the Civil War. Hell Put to Shame tells the forgotten story of that mass killing and of the revelations about peonage, or debt slavery, that it placed before a public self-satisfied that involuntary servitude had ended at Appomattox more than fifty years before. By turns police procedural, courtroom drama, and political exposé, Hell Put to Shame also reintroduces readers to three Americans who spearheaded the prosecution of John S. Williams, the wealthy plantation owner behind the murders, at a time when white people rarely faced punishment for violence against their Black neighbors. The remarkable polymath James Weldon Johnson, newly appointed the first Black leader of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, marshaled the organization into a full-on war against peonage. Johnson's lieutenant, Walter F. White, a light-skinned, fair-haired, blue-eyed Black man, conducted undercover work at the scene of lynchings and other Jim Crow atrocities, helping to throw a light on such violence and to hasten its end. And Georgia governor Hugh M. Dorsey won the statehouse as a hero of white supremacists -- then redeemed himself in spectacular fashion with the "Murder Farm" affair. The result is a story that remains fresh and relevant a century later, as the nation continues to wrestle with seemingly intractable challenges in matters of race and justice. And the 1921 case at its heart argues that the forces that so roil society today have been with us for generations.
Subjects: Case studies.; Manning, Clyde.; Williams, John S.; African Americans; Murder; Peonage; Plantation workers; Trials (Murder);
Available copies: 1 / Total copies: 1
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