It's a quiet book, about a child spending time with a grandmother on an island. It's told in separate scenes that give a sense of nostalgia and deep love. There isn't a wasted word in it. It's more like poetry than prose.
In The Summer Book Tove Jansson distills the essence of the summer—its sunlight and storms—into twenty-two crystalline vignettes. This brief novel tells the story of Sophia, a six-year-old girl awakening to existence, and Sophia’s grandmother, nearing the end of hers, as they spend the summer on a tiny unspoiled island in the Gulf of Finland. The grandmother is unsentimental and wise, if a little cranky; Sophia is impetuous and volatile, but she tends to her grandmother with the care of a new parent. Together they amble over coastline and forest in easy companionship, build boats from bark, create a miniature…
This book seemed completely honest to me. We have an extraordinary woman who fights for an education and a job in a time and place where women weren't afforded such things. But she is not a perfect character -- I certainly wouldn't have wanted to be one of her children. Still, she is mighty and I admired her bravery.
At the start of this remarkable story of recovery, healing, and redemption, Ginger Gaffney answers a call to help retrain the troubled horses at an alternative prison ranch in New Mexico, a facility run entirely by the prisoners. The horses are scavenging through the dumpsters, kicking and running down the residents when they bring the trash out after meals. One horse is severely injured.
The horses and residents arrive at the ranch broken in one way or many: the horses are defensive and terrified, while the residents, some battling drug and alcohol addictions, are emotionally and physically shattered. With…
I don't know if I've read a Sue Grafton book before -- I don't remember. but she is an author that people say they cannot put down. I read this book in order to see why. Her main character is highly flawed, but interesting and reliable and I couldn't help rooting for her. Other characters that seem odd in one way or another often emerge as heroic in their own ways. And characters that seem attractive sometimes turn out to be total messes. There's constant danger -- and it grows to the point where I couldn't put down the book. It's a plot-driven book -- which is not generally what I go for -- but it has enough honesty about human nature that it grabbed me.
It is now nine weeks since Dr Dowan Purcell vanished without trace. The sixty nine year old doctor had said goodnight to his colleagues at the pacific Meadows nursing home, had climbed into his car and driven away - never to be seen again.
His embittered first wife Fiona is convinced he is still alive. His second wife, Crystal - a former stripper forty years his junior - is just as sure he is dead. Enter private investigator Kinsey Millhone, hired by Fiona to find out just what has happened to the man they loved.
In 1940, when Simona is eight and her sister, Carolina, is five, their father becomes the cook to the Italian ambassador to Japan, and the family leaves Italy for Tokyo. The girls learn perfect Japanese, make friends, and begin to love life in their new home. But soon Japan is engaged in a world war. In 1943, when all Italians in Japan are confined to internment camps as enemy aliens, Papà and the girls are forced to part, and Simona and Carolina embark on a dramatic journey. Anyone who aids them could be arrested for treason. All the sisters have is each other: their wits, courage, and resilience, and the hope that they will find people who see them not as the enemy, but simply as children trying to survive.
