In Happiness Falls—Angie Kim’s
follow-up to her critically acclaimed debut, Miracle Creek—the trial-lawyer-turned-crime-writer takes another giant
step towards perfecting what I like to call the “philosophical mystery” novel.
Yes, the engaging plot is a twisting tale about a missing person that had me
guessing and re-guessing what happened from the first to the final pages.
But within
this tightly wound whodunit, Kim poses—and perhaps even approaches answers to—some of life’s biggest questions, including what one might do to become truly
happy.
NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • GOOD MORNING AMERICA BOOK CLUB PICK • When a father goes missing, his family’s desperate search leads them to question everything they know about him and one another in this thrilling page-turner, a deeply moving portrait of a family in crisis from the award-winning author of Miracle Creek.
Belletrist Book Club Pick • Finalist for the New American Voices Award • “This is a story with so many twists and turns I was riveted through the last page.”—Jodi Picoult
One of the Most Anticipated Books of the Season: The New York Times • Los Angeles…
After being transported to
a vivid, foreboding past by Eddie Chuculate’s atmospheric short story “Galveston Bay, 1826,” I was eager to get a hold of the author’s new nonfiction
account of his own coming of age in Oklahoma and the path he took to journalism
and storytelling.
Mainly written at an easy, conversational pace, This Indian Kid: A Native American Memoir
occasionally slips into exquisite lyricism. In all, it is a potent pleasure.
Award-winning author Eddie Chuculate recounts his experience growing up in rural Oklahoma, from boyhood to young manhood, in an evocative and vivid voice.
Scholastic Focus is the premier home of thoroughly researched, beautifully written, and thoughtfully designed works of narrative nonfiction aimed at middle-grade and young adult readers. These books help readers learn about the world in which they live and develop their critical thinking skills so that they may become dynamic citizens who are able to analyze and understand our past, participate in essential discussions about our present, and work to grow and build our future.
Before, when I saw a peanut, I’d think of the circus or a baseball game. But this book taught me how such an unassuming legume became central to Senegal’s experiences of colonialism, forced labor, and war.
For me, this was particularly eye-opening reading—I visited Dakar some years ago, quickly becoming enamored with the place. Yet the connections in this title were still mostly unknown to me.
Balancing an impressive haul of research with her knack for lush, immersive descriptions, Lewis deftly illustrates how slavery and its evils coevolved with peanut production across continents, cultures, and centuries.
Winner, James Beard Foundation Book Award for Reference, History, and Scholarship
A stunning work of popular history-the story of how a crop transformed the history of slavery
Americans consume over 1.5 billion pounds of peanut products every year. But few of us know the peanut's tumultuous history, or its intimate connection to slavery and freedom.
Lyrical and powerful, Slaves for Peanuts deftly weaves together the natural and human history of a crop that transformed the lives of millions. Author Jori Lewis reveals how demand for peanut oil in Europe ensured that slavery in Africa would persist well into the twentieth…
Set in turn-of-the-century Spain
and Bohemian Paris, this gritty historical novel follows the tangled
relationships that emerge when a young Pablo Picasso and the charismatic poet
Carles Casagemas meet Germaine Gargallo— a bold, free-spirited model—after traveling from Barcelona to Montmartre to attend the Exposition
Universelle.
Based on real-life events from Picasso’s early years of painting in
obscurity, the book explores the dramatic turns of his
storiedBlue Period, an intense window in the artist’s long career when
tragedy led him to bring to life some of the era’s most tender, empathetic, and
moving works.
