Melanie Hazen's Library
Montgomery Central High
| ISBN | Title | Author | Description | Publisher |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 9780807083697 | Kindred | Octavia E. Butler | dana, A Modern Black Woman, Is Celebrating Her Twenty-sixth Birthday With Her New Husband When She Is Snatched Abruptly From Her Home In California And Transported To The Antebellum South. Rufus, The White Son Of A Plantation Owner, Is Drowning, And Dana Has Been Summoned To Save Him. Dana Is Drawn Back Repeatedly Through Time To The Slave Quarters, And Each Time The Stay Grows Longer, More Arduous, And More Dangerous Until It Is Uncertain Whether Or Not Dana's Life Will End, Long Before It Has A Chance To Begin. | Beacon Press |
| 9780679766575 | Krik? Krak! | Danticat, Edwidge | When Haitians tell a story, they say Krik? and the eager listeners answer Krak! In Krik? Krak! In her second novel, Edwidge Danticat establishes herself as the latest heir to that narrative tradition with nine stories that encompass both the cruelties and the high ideals of Haitian life. They tell of women who continue loving behind prison walls and in the face of unfathomable loss; of a people who resist the brutality of their rulers through the powers of imagination. The result is a collection that outrages, saddens, and transports the reader with its sheer beauty. A Haitian-American writer of subtle power and great beauty presents a collection of intimate stories about the raw longings of people for some chance at peace and happiness for themselves and their imprisoned society, about existences contorted by forced separation, and of personal lives shot through with terror. | Vintage |
| 9780156027328 | Life of Pi : a Novel | Harcourt | ||
| 9780486275482 | Medea (Dover Thrift Editions: Plays) | Euripides | One of the most powerful and enduring of Greek tragedies, masterfully portraying the fierce motives driving Medea's pursuit of vengeance for her husband's insult and betrayal. Authoritative Rex Warner translation.Chicago Sun-TimesRudall features a sharp, vivid precision edge...immediate and accessible. | Dover Publications |
| 9780486282725 | Much Ado About Nothing (Dover Thrift Editions: Plays) | William Shakespeare | imaginative, Exuberant Comedy Contrasts 2 Pairs Of Lovers In A Witty And Suspenseful Battle Of The Sexes. Filled With Suspense, Clever Turns Of Plot, Vivacious Displays Of Wit, And Charming Songs. | Dover Publications |
| 9780375701498 | Old School | Wolff, Tobias | The protagonist of Tobias Wolff’s shrewdly—and at times devastatingly—observed first novel is a boy at an elite prep school in 1960. He is an outsider who has learned to mimic the negligent manner of his more privileged classmates. Like many of them, he wants more than anything on earth to become a writer. But to do that he must first learn to tell the truth about himself.The agency of revelation is the school literary contest, whose winner will be awarded an audience with the most legendary writer of his time. As the fever of competition infects the boy and his classmates, fraying alliances, exposing weaknesses, Old School explores the ensuing deceptions and betrayals with an unblinking eye and a bottomless store of empathy. The result is further evidence that Wolff is an authentic American master.The New York TimesEvery reader will be impressed by the former president's expert ear for the undertones and hidden agendas of a political meeting. And clearly someone who spent four years negotiating accords and treaties with the Soviet Union and in the Middle East has no difficulty understanding that a Tory or a rebel may smile and smile and be a villain. —Max Byrd | Vintage |
| 9780061950728 | Orphan Train | Christina Baker Kline | between 1854 And 1929, So-called Orphan Trains Ran Regularly From The Cities Of The East Coast To The Farmlands Of The Midwest, Carrying Thousands Of Abandoned Children Whose Fates Would Be Determined By Pure Luck. Would They Be Adopted By A Kind And Loving Family, Or Would They Face A Childhood And Adoles-cence Of Hard Labor And Servitude?as A Young Irish Immigrant, Vivian Daly Was One Such Child, Sent By Rail From New York City To An Uncertain Future A World Away. Returning East Later In Life, Vivian Leads A Quiet, Peaceful Existence On The Coast Of Maine, The Memories Of Her Upbringing Rendered A Hazy Blur. But In Her Attic, Hidden In Trunks, Are Vestiges Of A Turbulent Past.seventeen-year-old Molly Ayer Knows That A Community-service Position Helping An Elderly Widow Clean Out Her Attic Is The Only Thing Keeping Her Out Of Juvenile Hall. But As Molly Helps Vivian Sort Through Her Keepsakes And Possessions, She Discovers That She And Vivian Aren't As Different As They Appear. A Penobscot Indian Who Has Spent Her Youth In And Out Of Foster Homes, Molly Is Also An Outsider Being Raised By Strangers, And She, Too, Has Unanswered Questions About The Past.moving Between Contemporary Maine And Depression-era Minnesota, orphan Train Is A Powerful Tale Of Upheaval And Resilience, Second Chances, And Unexpected Friendship. | William Morrow |
| 9780486290973 | Othello | Shakespeare, William | Dover Publications | |
| 9781455563920 | Pachinko | Lee, Min Jin | A New Tour De Force From The Bestselling Author Of Free Food For Millionaires, For Readers Of The Kite Runner And Cutting For Stone. Pachinko Follows One Korean Family Through The Generations, Beginning In Early 1900s Korea With Sunja, The Prized Daughter Of A Poor Yet Proud Family, Whose Unplanned Pregnancy Threatens To Shame Them All. Deserted By Her Lover, Sunja Is Saved When A Young Tubercular Minister Offers To Marry And Bring Her To Japan. So Begins A Sweeping Saga Of An Exceptional Family In Exile From Its Homeland And Caught In The Indifferent Arc Of History. Through Desperate Struggles And Hard-won Triumphs, Its Members Are Bound Together By Deep Roots As They Face Enduring Questions Of Faith, Family, And Identity-- | Grand Central Publishing |
| 9780486284736 | Pride And Prejudice (Dover Thrift Editions: Classic Novels) | Jane Austen | Dover Publications | |
| 9781616202415 | Purple Hibiscus: A Novel | Adichie, Chimamanda Ngozi | In the city of Enugu, Nigeria, fifteen-year-old Kambili and her older brother, Jaja, lead a privileged life. Their Papa is a wealthy and respected businessman; they live in a beautiful house; and they attend an exclusive missionary school. But, as Kambili reveals in her tender-voiced account, their home life is anything but harmonious. Her father, a fanatically religious man, has impossible expectations of his children and wife, and severely punishes them if they're less than perfect. Home is silent and suffocating. When Kambili's loving and outspoken Aunty Ifeoma persuades her brother that the children should visit her in Nsukka, Kambili and Jaja take their first trip away from home. Once inside their Aunty Ifeoma's flat, they discover a whole new world. Books cram the shelves, curry and nutmeg permeate the air, and their cousins' laughter rings throughout the house. Jaja learns to garden and work with his hands, and Kambili secretly falls in love with a young charismatic priest. When a military coup threatens to destroy the country and Kambili and Jaja return home changed by their newfound freedom, tension within the family escalates. And Kambili must find the strength to keep her loved ones together after her mother commits a desperate act. | Algonquin Books |
| 9780822956983 | Questions About Angels: Poems (Pitt Poetry) | Collins, Billy | Selected by Edward Hirsh for the National Poetry Series, Questions About Angels , Billy Collins's fourth book of poems, is once again available. Utterly stripped of academic pretense and filled with his trademark man-on-the-street brand of humor, Collins's clear, often brief poems are easy to understand and enjoy. In our exclusive review, Aviya Kushner illuminates the wry wit and inquisitive voice that have earned Billy Collins a place among the most talented poets of his generation.KushnerBilly Collins can pack the house. Funny and laid-back, his clear, often brief poems are easy to understand and enjoy -- which is why his readings are sometimes standing-room-only affairs. Collins may be a college professor and NEA-grant recipient, but he's not above using a disinfectant ad as an epigraph. "Public restrooms give me the willies," reads the epigraph to a poem appropriately titled "The Willies." That man-on-the-street brand of humor, utterly stripped of academic pretense, is trademark Collins. Questions About Angels , a reissue of Collins's fourth volume of poems, offers 70 pages of well-formed, very American verse that -- not surprisingly -- doesn't require a shelf of dictionaries. In fact, just as he laughs at epigraphs, Collins gleefully pokes fun at the very concept of dictionaries. Here, for example, are the opening lines to "The Hunt," which initially offer the flowing, dreamy verse many expect from a poet: Somewhere in the rolling hills and farm country that lie beyond speech Noah Webster and his assistants are moving across the landscape tracking down a new word. Then Collins really gets going, letting his claws dig in. In the next stanza, that trademark humor really shows: It is a small noun about the size of a mouse, one that will seldom be used by anyone, like a synonym for isthmus but they are pursuing the creature zealously Collins could be talking about poetry itself, a form "zealously pursued" but too often "seldom used." Despite the deadpan tone, these are poems that are aware of poetic tradition.Questions About Angels opens with a poem called "American Sonnet," which announces, "We do not speak like Petrarch or wear a hat like Spenser." Collins seems to believe that his particular American landscape and culture require a variation on the standard forms of Western tradition. This country, he seems to say, demands a rethinking of it all. Part of that rethinking is a probe of the whole idea of a "poet." Collins asks the questions his students would love to ask, if they only had the guts. How, he asks, do you know for sure if a poet is contemporary? This, of course, is a twist on the earlier, unspoken-but-understood question of "what makes a sonnet a sonnet, anyway?" addressed in the first poem. Just as he produced an American "sonnet" that rolls off the tongue with the ease of banter, Collins comes up with an American, can-do answer to the "who's a contemporary poet?" question: It is easy to find out if a poet is a contemporary poet and thus avoid the imbroglio of calling him Victorian or worse, Elizabethan, or worse, medieval. If you look him up in The Norton Anthology of English Literature and the year of his birth is followed only by a dash and a small space for the numerals only spirits know, then it is safe to say that he is probably alive Though clothed in simple words and humor, Collins is actually taking a pretty sophisticated jab in these two stanzas, which are the first part of the appropriately titled poem "The Norton Anthology of English Literature." Is a poet worthy simply because he is in the anthology? And do these omnipresent anthologies really define periods and countries? As these stanzas come just a few pages after the Noah Webster reference, Collins may also be pushing his readers to wonder about the anthologizers' research processes. Collins loves to mix poems on history's overachievers with odes to underachievers or family pets who never seemed to have much, if any, ambition. In one of the book's sweeter poems, Collins offers praise of a character named Riley. Here's the last stanza of the very brief poem "The Life of Riley: A Definitive Biography," where yet again, Collins mixes the quotidian and the poetic, letting his linguistic ability peep through the everyman persona at key moments: He never had a job, a family or a sore throat. He never mowed a lawn. Passersby would always stop to remind him whose life it was he was living. He died in a hammock weighing a cloud. In a book that mentions weighing a dog and stripping layers of clothing off as he writes, it makes sense that this poet doesn't flinch from depicting the weighing of a cloud. Like the character who never had a sore throat, Collins writes glitch-free poems that are both a breeze and a blast to read. --Aviya Kushner | University of Pittsburgh Press |
| 9780385333849 | Slaughterhouse-Five: A Novel (Modern Library 100 Best Novels) | Vonnegut, Kurt | Unstuck in time, Billy Pilgrim, Vonnegut's shattered survivor of the Dresden bombing, relives his life over and over again under the gaze of aliens; he comes at last to some understanding of the human comedy. The basis of George Roy's great 1972 film and perhaps the signature student's novel in the 1960's embracing protest and the absurdity of war.The New York Times - Christopher Lehmann-HauptI now, I know (as Kurt Vonnegut used to say when people told him that the Germans attacked first). It sounds crazy. It sounds like a fantastic last-ditch effort to make sense of a lunatic universe. But there is so much more to this book. It is very tough and very funny; it is sad and delightful; and it works. But is also very Vonnegut, which mean you'll either love it, or push it back in the science-fiction corner. | Random House Publishing Group |
| 9780812968064 | Snow Flower And The Secret Fan: A Novel | See, Lisa | in Nineteenth-century China, In A Remote Hunan County, A Girl Named Lily, At The Tender Age Of Seven, Is Paired With A Laotong, “old Same,” In An Emotional Match That Will Last A Lifetime. The Laotong, Snow Flower, Introduces Herself By Sending Lily A Silk Fan On Which She’s Painted A Poem In Nu Shu, A Unique Language That Chinese Women Created In Order To Communicate In Secret, Away From The Influence Of Men. As The Years Pass, Lily And Snow Flower Send Messages On Fans, Compose Stories On Handkerchiefs, Reaching Out Of Isolation To Share Their Hopes, Dreams, And Accomplishments. Together, They Endure The Agony Of Foot-binding, And Reflect Upon Their Arranged Marriages, Shared Loneliness, And The Joys And Tragedies Of Motherhood. The Two Find Solace, Developing A Bond That Keeps Their Spirits Alive. But When A Misunderstanding Arises, Their Deep Friendship Suddenly Threatens To Tear Apart. | Random House Trade Paperbacks |
| 9780062315007 | The Alchemist, 25Th Anniversary: A Fable About Following Your Dream | Coelho, Paulo | A Special 25th Anniversary Edition Of Paulo Coehlo's Extraordinary International Bestselling Phenomenon--the Inspiring Spiritual Tale Of Self-discovery That Has Touched Millions Of Lives Around The World.combing Magic, Mysticism, Wisdom And Wonder, The Alchemist Has Become A Modern Classic, Selling Millions Of Copies Around The World And Transforming The Lives Of Countless Readers Across Generations. Paulo Coelho's Masterpiece Tells The Mystical Story Of Santiago, An Andalusian Shepherd Boy Who Yearns To Travel In Search Of A Worldly Treasure. His Quest Will Lead Him To Riches Far Different--and Far More Satisfying--than He Ever Imagined. Santiago's Journey Teaches Us About The Essential Wisdom Of Listening To Our Hearts, Of Recognizing Opportunity And Learning To Read The Omens Strewn Along Life's Path, And, Most Importantly, To Follow Our Dreams. -- | HarperOne |
| 9780358106401 | The Animals At Lockwood Manor | Healey, Jane | A Debut Novel For Fans Of Sarah Perry And Kate Morton: When A Young Woman Is Tasked With Safeguarding A Natural History Collection As It Is Spirited Out Of London During Wwii, She Discovers Her New Manor Home Is A Place Of Secrets And Terror Instead Of Protection. In August 1939, Thirty-year-old Hetty Cartwright Arrives At Lockwood Manor To Oversee A Natural History Museum Collection, Whose Contents Have Been Taken Out Of London For Safekeeping. She Is Unprepared For The Scale Of Protecting Her Charges From Party Guests, Wild Animals, The Elements, The Tyrannical Major Lockwood And Luftwaffe Bombs. Most Of All, She Is Unprepared For The Beautiful And Haunted Lucy Lockwood. For Lucy, Who Has Spent Much Of Her Life Cloistered At Lockwood Suffering From Bad Nerves, The Arrival Of The Museum Brings With It New Freedoms. But It Also Resurfaces Memories Of Her Late Mother, And Nightmares In Which Lucy Roams Lockwood Hunting For Something She Has Lost. When The Animals Start To Move Of Their Own Accord, And Exhibits Go Missing, They Begin To Wonder What Exactly It Is That They Might Need Protection From. And As The Disasters Mount Up, It Is Not Only Hetty's Future Employment That Is In Danger, But Her Own Sanity Too. There's Something, Or Someone, In The House. Someone Stalking Her Through Its Darkened Corridors... | Mariner Books |
| 9780345457370 | The Bonesetter's Daughter | Amy Tan | set In Contemporary San Francisco And In A Chinese Village Where Peking Man Is Unearthed, The Bonesetter's Daughter Is An Excavation Of The Human Spirit: The Past, Its Deepest Wounds, Its Most Profound Hopes. This Is The Story Of Luling Young, Who Searches For The Name Of Her Mother, The Daughter Of The Famous Bonesetter From The Mouth Of The Mountain. The Story Conjures The Pain Of Broken Dreams, The Power Of Myths, And The Strength Of Love That Enables Us To Recover In Memory What We Have Lost In Grief. Tan Has A Master's Degree In Linguistics From San Jose State University And Worked As A Language Specialist To Programs Serving Children With Developmental Disabilities.glamoura Rich, Fascinating Read. | Ballentine Books |
| 9781400032716 | The Curious Incident Of The Dog In The Night-Time | Haddon, Mark | Christopher John Francis Boone knows all the countries of the world and their capitals and every prime number up to 7,057. He relates well to animals but has no understanding of human emotions. He cannot stand to be touched. Although gifted with a superbly logical brain, Christopher is autistic. Everyday interactions and admonishments have little meaning for him. Routine, order and predictability shelter him from the messy, wider world. Then, at fifteen, Christopher’s carefully constructed world falls apart when he finds his neighbor’s dog, Wellington, impaled on a garden fork, and he is initially blamed for the killing. Christopher decides that he will track down the real killer and turns to his favorite fictional character, the impeccably logical Sherlock Holmes, for inspiration. But the investigation leads him down some unexpected paths and ultimately brings him face to face with the dissolution of his parents’ marriage. As he tries to deal with the crisis within his own family, we are drawn into the workings of Christopher’s mind. And herein lies the key to the brilliance of Mark Haddon’s choice of narrator: The most wrenching of emotional moments are chronicled by a boy who cannot fathom emotion. The effect is dazzling, making for a novel that is deeply funny, poignant, and fascinating in its portrayal of a person whose curse and blessing is a mind that perceives the world literally. The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time is one of the freshest debuts in years: a comedy, a heartbreaker, a mystery story, a novel of exceptional literary merit that is great fun to read. Author Biography: MARK HADDON is a writer and illustrator of numerous award-winning children’s books and television screenplays. As a young man, Haddon worked with autistic individuals. He teaches creative writing for the Arvon Foundation and at Oxford University. He lives in Oxford, England. Despite his overwhelming fear of interacting with people, Christopher, a mathematically-gifted, autistic fifteen-year-old boy, decides to investigate the murder of a neighbor's dog and uncovers secret information about his mother. | Vintage Contemporaries |
| 9781616200152 | The Girl Who Fell From The Sky | Durrow, Heidi W. | Rachel, the daughter of a Danish mother and a black G.I., is the sole survivor of a tragic family incident. With her strict African American grandmother as her new guardian, Rachel moves to a mostly black community, where her light brown skin, blue eyes, and beauty bring a constant stream of mixed attention her way. As she attempts to come to terms with an unfathomable past, she confronts her own identity as a biracial young woman in a world that wants to see her as either black or white.The Barnes & Noble ReviewRachel Morse is 11 years old when her Danish mother leads her and her two siblings to the edge of a Chicago rooftop one hot summer morning. Days later, Rachel wakes from a medically-induced coma to learn that all four of them fell from the roof, and she alone survived. Her father, a black G.I., doesn't claim her and so Rachel is sent to live in Portland with her paternal grandmother. It's there that, despite the blue eyes and golden skin that show she is bi-racial, she learns the world sees her as black. But she's also white and Danish and, in an added layer of identity, the sole survivor of an unspeakable tragedy. That's a lot to navigate but Heidi W. Durrow, using a real-life event as the starting point for her artful and affecting debut novel, The Girl Who Fell From the Sky, deftly handles issues of grief and loss and race and identity. She tells the story of Rachel's family from multiple points of view -- there's Rachel as she faces her new life; Brick, a childhood neighbor who witnessed the tragedy; Rachel's father, in brief and anguished glimpses; and Rachel's mother, writing a diary in her broken English, a series of heartbreaking entries. Durrow sends the story back and forth in time, now digging for answers to what brought the family to that rooftop, now following Rachel as she grows into a teenager and deals with her intelligence and athleticism, her “light-skinned-ed” beauty. With so much drama and melodrama setting the story in motion, The Girl Who Fell From the Sky bears a heavy burden. Durrow, it turns out, has both the smarts and writing chops to bring it to a graceful and thought-provoking landing. --Veronique de Turenne | Algonquin Books |
| 9780553418026 | The Martian | Andy Weir | Six Days Ago, Astronaut Mark Watney Became One Of The First People To Walk On Mars. Now, He's Sure He'll Be The First Person To Die There. After A Dust Storm Nearly Kills Him And Forces His Crew To Evacuate While Thinking Him Dead, Mark Finds Himself Stranded And Completely Alone With No Way To Even Signal Earth That He's Alive--and Even If He Could Get Word Out, His Supplies Would Be Gone Long Before A Rescue Could Arrive. Chances Are, Though, He Won't Have Time To Starve To Death. The Damaged Machinery, Unforgiving Environment, Or Plain-old 'human Error' Are Much More Likely To Kill Him First. But Mark Isn't Ready To Give Up Yet. Drawing On His Ingenuity, His Engineering Skills--and A Relentless, Dogged Refusal To Quit--he Steadfastly Confronts One Seemingly Insurmountable Obstacle After The Next. Will His Resourcefulness Be Enough To Overcome The Impossible Odds Against Him?-- Andy Weir. Originally Self-published, In A Different Form, As An Ebook In 2011--title Page Verso. | Broadway Books |