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- The Christmas star [sound recording] / by VanLiere, Donna,1966-author,narrator.; Macmillan Audio (Firm),publisher.;
- Read by the author.Thirty-two-year-old Amy Denison volunteers at Glory's Place, an after school program where she meets seven-year-old Maddie, a precocious young girl who has spent her childhood in foster care. Unbeknownst to Amy, Maddie is a mini-matchmaker, with her eye on just the right man for Amy at Grandon Elementary School, where she is a student. Amy is hesitant - she's been hurt before, and isn't sure she's ready to lose her heart again - but an unexpected surprise makes her reconsider her lonely lifestyle. As Christmas nears and the town is blanketed in snow and beautiful decorations, Maddie and the charming staff at Glory's Place help Amy to see that romance can be more than heartache and broken promises.
- Subjects: Audiobooks.; Domestic fiction.; Christmas; Volunteers; Girls; Foster children; Mate selection;
- Backstage : stories of a writing life / by Leon, Donna,author.;
- "An engaging collection of stories and essays by the celebrated author of the internationally bestselling Guido Brunetti series, infused with her ever-present and delightful senses of humor and irony. Donna Leon's memoir, Wandering through Life, gave her legions of fans a colorful tour through her life, from childhood in New Jersey to adventures in China and Iran, to her love of Venice and opera. Nowhere, however, did she discuss her writing life. In Backstage, Donna reveals her admiration for, and inspiration from, the great crime novelists Ruth Rendell and Ross Macdonald, examining their approach to storytelling as she dissects her favorite books of theirs. She expresses her love for Charles Dickens's Great Expectations and her appreciation for Sir Walter Scott's generosity of spirit. And she chronicles the amount of research she undertakes to be able to present authentically, through Guido Brunetti and his colleagues, places and characters far from her own experience-from interviewing a diamond dealer in Venice to open up the world of blood diamonds, to meeting, through back channels, a courageous sex worker and women's rights activist to depict accurately the trafficking of women in Italy. By contrast, the idea and opening scene of one of her novels came to her as she was walking through Venice. Venice is central in her memory, whether recounting the semicomic irritation of a noisy elderly neighbor or the origins of the city's Carnevale. Her teaching career yields memorable tales: helping a young Black boy in a Newark, New Jersey, elementary school; instructing young Iranian pilots in English just before the 1979 Iranian Revolution; and taking her students at a Swiss private high school to the famous Frank Zappa concert in Montreux interrupted by fire. Throughout, she is as good a storyteller about herself as she is a chronicler of Guido Brunetti's crime adventures. Readers will be as caught up in her world as she is in his"--
- Subjects: Biographies.; Autobiographies.; Anecdotes.; Personal narratives.; Leon, Donna; Leon, Donna; Detectives in literature.; Women authors; Women teachers; Women;
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