See the difference, read #1 bestselling author Jane Smiley in Large Print About Large Print All Random House Large Print editions are published in a 16-point typeface Six years after her Pulitzer Prize-winning best-seller, A Thousand Acres, and three years after her witty, acclaimed, and best-selling novel of academe, Moo, Jane Smiley once again demonstrates her extraordinary range and brilliance. Her new novel, set in the 1850s, speaks to us in a splendidly quirky voice--the strong, wry, no-nonsense voice of Lidie Harkness of Quincy, Illinois, a young woman of courage, good sense, and good heart. It carries us into an America so violently torn apart by the question of slavery that it makes our current political battlegrounds seem a peaceable kingdom. Lidie is hard to scare. She is almost shockingly alive--a tall, plain girl who rides and shoots and speaks her mind, and whose straightforward ways paradoxically amount to a kind of glamour. We see her at twenty, making a good marriage--to Thomas Newton, a steady, sweet-tempered Yankee who passes through her hometown on a dangerous mission. He belongs to a group of rashly brave New England abolitionists who dedicate themselves to settling the Kansas Territory with like-minded folk to ensure its entering the Union as a Free State. Lidie packs up and goes with him. And the novel races alongside them into the Territory, into the maelstrom of "Bloody Kansas," where slaveholding Missourians constantly and viciously clash with Free Staters, where wandering youths kill you as soon as look at you--where Lidie becomes even more fervently abolitionist than her husband as the young couple again and again barely escape entrapment in webs of atrocity on both sides of the great question. And when, suddenly, cold-blooded murder invades her own intimate circle, Lidie doesn't falter. She cuts off her hair, disguises herself as a boy, and rides into Missouri in search of the killers--a woman in a fiercely male world, an abolitionist spy in slave territory. On the run, her life threatened, her wits sharpened, she takes on yet another identity--and, in the very midst of her masquerade, discovers herself. Lidie grows increasingly important to us as we follow her travels and adventures on the feverish eve of the War Between the States. With its crackling portrayal of a totally individual and wonderfully articulate woman, its storytelling drive, and its powerful recapturing of an almost forgotten part of the American story, this is Jane Smiley at her enthralling and enriching best. From the Trade Paperback edition.

At 7:45 a.m. on the day before Thanksgiving break, a bomb goes off at Edison High. Nine people die instantly. Fifteen are critically injured. Twenty-two suffer less severe injuries. And one is blinded. Those who survive, struggle to cope with the loss and destruction. All must find new meaning for their lives as a result of something they may never understand. Lurlene McDaniel's signature expertise and finesse in dealing with issues of violence, death, and physical as well as emotional trauma in the lives of teens is immediate and heartrending.

In this potent examination of family and memory, Jon McGregor charts one man's voyage of self-discovery. Like Kazuo Ishiguro's The Remains of the Day, So Many Ways to Begin is rich in the intimate details that shape a life, the subtle strain that defines human relationships, and the personal history that forms identity. David Carter, the novel's protagonist, takes a keen interest in history as a boy. Encouraged by his doting Aunt Julia, he begins collecting the things that tell his story: a birth certificate, school report cards, annotated cinema and train tickets. After finishing school, he finds the perfect job for his lifetime obsession as curator at a local history museum. His professional and romantic lives take shape as his beloved aunt and mentor's unravel. Lost in a fog of senility, Julia lets slip a secret about David's family. Over the course of the next decades, as David and his wife Eleanor live out their lives - struggling through early marriage, professional disappointments, the birth of their daughter, Eleanor's depression, and an affair that ends badly, David attempts to physically piece together his past, finding meaning and connection where he least expects it.

Short storiesWe are all pieces of the puzzle. Parts of the big story of the universe, each with their own little story, their own small life.

The Power of Magnificence links the creation with its creator and is a hard path to take, but worth it. Rebekah finds peace in this path.Rebekah is almost destroyed by the death of her husband Joshua but with help from her spirit guides and a spirit animal she finds new meaning in her life.

Marlowe's about to give up on a completely routine case when he finds himself in the wrong place at the right time to get caught up in a murder that leads to a ring of jewel thieves, another murder, a fortune-teller, a couple more murders, and more corruption than your average graveyard. From the Trade Paperback edition.

Paolo Manfredi is an affirmed paediatric surgeon who lives and works in Paris. Born in Torre dell'Isola, a town not too far from Palermo, after high school he left Sicily, a land then upset by serious upheavals, to pursue his ambitions. After thirty years, he comes back with his wife and his children to celebrate his fiftieth birthday, and to retrace the steps of a brusquely interrupted...Paolo Manfredi is an affirmed paediatric surgeon who lives and works in Paris. Born in Torre dell'Isola, a town not too far from Palermo, after high school he left Sicily, a land then upset by serious upheavals, to pursue his ambitions. After thirty years, he comes back with his wife and his children to celebrate his fiftieth birthday, and to retrace the steps of a brusquely interrupted personal and civil history. He finds a deeply changed world, and walking on the footsteps of his own past, searching for his Sicily, he finds again his old friends, and with them the emotions he denied for a long time, his cut roots, his childhood places, changed yet still deeply intact. In the nostalgic memory of his past life, Paolo learns to look at the events from the point of view of those who stayed and fought so that the identity of a people wouldn’t be lost.

Twelve year old Billy Martin, reared in liberal Stockholm, is sent to live with his eighteen year old brother Bob, who has recently joined an ultra-conservative religious sect in Idaho. Accustomed to getting his own way, Billy’s high spirits collide with the group’s strict regimen, and he quickly discovers the meaning of “Biblical discipline.” A must read for every adolescent, and his parents.Sic Semper Tyrannis is a memoir about a time, not so long past, when men were free, religious values were taken seriously. and parents were allowed to pass on the cultural heritage to their children without governmental interference. As David Selznick remarked concerning the Antebellum South, Look for it only in books, for it is no more than a dream remembered, a Civilization gone with the wind... This fictional account is the story of what might have been, had Christian parents possessed the courage of their convictions. It depicts the use of spanking and other types of physical correction, from the perspective of an adolescent boy. Twelve year old Billy Martin has been suddenly uprooted from the only home he knows, in liberal Stockholm, and sent to live with his eighteen year old brother, Bob, who has recently joined an ultra-conservative religious group in Idaho.Billy, a high-spirited youth, has been allowed to run at loose ends for his entire life, and has never experienced discipline of any kind. He now finds himself in a vastly different world. Bob immediately sets about bringing his kid brother into line, and giving him the “Biblical discipline” that he, and the other sect members, consider essential to proper child rearing. Billy strives to come to grips with the new reality.While the characters are wholly imaginary, the issues they confront are real, and threaten to undermine the very foundations of our civilization. This work does not contain any erotic material, but is a sobering assessment of today’s child rearing practices in the United States and Western Europe.This is the second volume of a more extensive saga, which traces the course of Billy and his friends as they struggle through the years of adolescence, and should be required reading for every adolescent boy, his parents, and all those who seek to influence him.Volume 53 continues the story of twelve year old Billy Martin, reared in liberal Stockholm, is sent to live with his eighteen year old brother Bob, who has recently joined an ultra-conservative religious sect in Idaho. Accustomed to getting his own way, Billy’s high spirits collide with the group’s strict regimen, and he quickly discovers the meaning of “Biblical discipline.”

Crystal hates alcoholics, and how lucky for her she lives with two. Her parents Bruce and Ronnie have been drinking even more ever since they moved to Montana. Crystal is only a fifteen year old girl and she has to take care of her alcoholic parents and her older brother Grant. She does this because she knows it’s the only way to keep herself somewhat sane. She relieves all her pain by poetry, anIt is the autumn of 1864 in Richmond, Virginia. The great and glorious capitol of the Confederacy is surrounded on three sides by Union troops. This time the Yankees are not going away.Thirteen year-old Ryan and eleven year-old Matthew O’Toole, having moved from Boston to Richmond with their father, mother and big sister only a little more than three years earlier, find themselves in a dangerous predicament. As the war rages on around Richmond and it looks as if finally the Union might prevail, some of their southern friends turn against them. The two boys are considered "dirty Yankees" now and their loyalty is suspect. When the two boys help a freeman and his son to escape Richmond, the situation only becomes worse for the O’Toole family until they too must abandon their home and begin a danger-filled flight to the north and freedom.

Dan Robeson takes to the road with a secret he can neither escape nor relinquish. Like this story? There's more like it in the collection "Red Hair Rising," also available on Smashwords!Now a featured story in the new collection of Christian Gothic tales, "Red Hair Rising"! Dan Robeson takes to the road with a secret he can neither escape nor relinquish. First prize winner of The Talent Among Us Volume XII: Visions and Dreams competition. More stories like this in "Red Hair Rising."

Epay Stories are fictional events related to ecommerce such as online auctions. The story German Officer's Sword - Used relates the activities of a man who purchases a used German officer's sword on the epay auction site. As he cleans the sword in preparation for display, he encounters a small bit of darkish red material which he removes and gives to a neighboring policeman for analysis.Epay Stories are fictional events related to ecommerce such as online auctions. The story German Officer's Sword - Used relates the activities of a man who purchases a used German officer's sword on the epay auction site. As he cleans the sword in preparation for display, he encounters a small bit of darkish red material which he removes and gives to a neighboring policeman for analysis. The results are surprising. He proceeds to try to obtain more information without success until a newspaper report links his sword to a now dead sword collector. He contacts the police in the town of the dead man who are agreeable to his assistance in further investigation.

There is a time to move on, a time to let go . . . and a time to fly.“Sara Gruen writes with passionate precision about horses and their humans and the healing power of love.”—Maryanne Stahl, author of Forgive the MoonAnxiety rules Annemarie Zimmer’s days—the fear that her relationship with the man she loves is growing stagnant; the fear that equestrian daughter Eva’s dreams of Olympic glory will carry her far away from her mother . . . and into harm’s way. For five months, Annemarie has struggled to make peace with her past. But if she cannot let go, the personal battles she has won and the heights she has achieved will have all been for naught.It is a time of change at Maple Brook Horse Farm, when loves must be confronted head-on and fears must be saddled and broken. But it is an unanticipated tragedy that will most drastically alter the fragile world of one remarkable family—even as it flings open gates that have long confined them, enabling them all to finally ride headlong and free.

In this feverishly beautiful novel—originally titled If I Forget Thee, Jerusalem by Faulkner, and now published in the authoritative Library of America text—William Faulkner interweaves two narratives, each wholly absorbing in its own right, each subtly illuminating the other. In New Orleans in 1937, a man and a woman embark on a headlong flight into the wilderness of illicit passion, fleeing her husband and the temptations of respectability. In Mississippi ten years earlier, a convict sets forth across a flooded river, risking his own chance at freedom to rescue a pregnant woman. From these separate stories Faulkner composes a symphony of deliverance and damnation, survival and self-sacrifice, a novel in which elemental danger is juxtaposed wiht fatal injuries of the spirit. The Wild Palms is grandly inventive, heart-stopping in its prose, and suffused on every page with the physical presence of the country that Faulkner made his own.

With unparalleled suspense and her trademark explosive twists, #1 New York Times bestselling author Catherine Coulter delves into the terrifying mind of an escaped mental patient obsessed with revenge in this next installment of her riveting FBI series. When he fails to kidnap five-year-old Sean Savich, agents Sherlock and Savich know they’re in his crosshairs and must find him before he continues with his ‘kill’ list. Chief Ty Christie of Willicott, Maryland, witnesses a murder at dawn from the deck of her cottage on Lake Massey. When dragging the lake, not only do the divers find the murder victim, they also discover dozens of bones. Even more shocking is the identification of a unique belt buckle found among the bones. Working together with Chief Christie, Savich and Sherlock soon discover a frightening connection between the bones and the escaped psychopath. Paradox is a chilling mix of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, old secrets that refuse to stay buried, and ruthless greed that keep Savich and Sherlock and Chief Ty Christie working at high speed to uncover the truth before their own bones end up at the bottom on the lake. Don’t miss Paradox, the twenty-second FBI thriller.