The Year She Left Us

Author : Kathryn Ma
Publisher : Harper Collins
ISBN 13 : 0062273361
Total Pages : 245 pages
Book Rating : 4.69/5 ( download)

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Download or read book The Year She Left Us written by Kathryn Ma and published by Harper Collins. This book was released on 2014-05-13 with total page 245 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Three generations of Chinese-American women in a San Francisco family must confront their past and carve out a future in this extraordinary novel, a “haunting” debut full of “shimmering and unforgettable” characters. (New York Times Book Review) The Kong women are in crisis. A disastrous trip to visit her "home" orphanage in China has plunged eighteen-year-old Ari into a self-destructive spiral. Her adoptive mother, Charlie, a lawyer with a great heart, is desperate to keep her daughter safe. Meanwhile, Charlie must endure the prickly scrutiny of her beautiful, Bryn Mawr educated mother, Gran—who, as the daughter of a cultured Chinese doctor, came to America to survive Mao's Revolution—and her sister, Les, a brilliant judge with a penchant to rule over everyone's lives. As they cope with Ari's journey of discovery and its aftermath, the Kong women will come face to face with the truths of their lives—four powerful intertwining stories of accomplishment, tenacity, secrets, loneliness, and love. Beautifully illuminating the bonds of family and blood, The Year She Left Us explores the promise and pain of adoption, the price of assimilation and achievement, the debt we owe to others, and what we owe ourselves.

Author : Rahna R. Rizzuto
Publisher : HarperCollins Publishers
ISBN 13 : 9780060193706
Total Pages : 0 pages
Book Rating : 4.00/5 ( download)

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Download or read book Why She Left Us written by Rahna R. Rizzuto and published by HarperCollins Publishers. This book was released on 1999 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A haunting novel of uncommon emotional power, Why She Left Us weaves in and out of the personal tragedies and political persecution of three generations of a Japanese American family and exposes the complex, often destructive bonds of love and honor that tie a family together.

Author : Emma Brockes
Publisher : Penguin
ISBN 13 : 1101617853
Total Pages : 320 pages
Book Rating : 4.54/5 ( download)

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Download or read book She Left Me the Gun written by Emma Brockes and published by Penguin. This book was released on 2013-05-16 with total page 320 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "One of those memoirs that remind you why you liked memoirs in the first place... It has the density of a very good novel... As you do with the best writers, you feel lucky to be in Ms. Brockes’s company." --Dwight Garner, The New York Times A chilling work of psychological suspense and forensic memoir, She Left Me the Gun is a tale of true transformation: the story of a young woman who reinvented herself so completely that her previous life seemed simply to vanish, and of a daughter who transcends her mother’s fears and reclaims an abandoned past. “One day I will tell you the story of my life,” promises Emma Brockes’s mother, “and you will be amazed.” Brockes grew up hearing only pieces of her mother’s past—stories of a rustic childhood in South Africa, glimpses of a bohemian youth in London—and yet knew that crucial facts were still in the dark. A mystery to her friends and family, Paula was clearly a strong, self-invented woman; glamorous, no-nonsense, and frequently out of place in their quaint English village. In awe of Paula’s larger-than-life personality, Brockes never asked why her mother emigrated to England or why she never returned to South Africa; never questioned the source of her mother’s strange fears or tremendous strengths. Looking to unearth the truth after Paula’s death, Brockes begins a dangerous journey into the land—and the life—her mother fled from years before. Brockes soon learns that Paula’s father was a drunk megalomaniac who terrorized Paula and her seven half-siblings for years. After finally mustering the courage to take her father to court, Paula is horrified to see the malevolent man vindicated of all charges. As Brockes discovers, this crushing defeat left Paula with a choice: take her own life, or promise herself never to be intimidated or unhappy again. Ultimately she chooses life and happiness by booking one-way passage to London—but not before shooting her father five times, and failing to kill him. Smuggling the fateful gun through English customs would be Paula’s first triumph in her new life. She Left Me the Gun carries Brockes to South Africa to meet her seven aunts and uncles, weighing their stories against her mother’s silences. Brockes learns of the violent pathologies and racial propaganda in which her grandfather was inculcated, sees the mine shafts and train yards where he worked as an itinerant mechanic, and finds in buried government archives the court records proving his murder conviction years before he first married. Brockes also learns of the turncoat stepmother who may have perjured herself to save her husband, dooming Paula and her siblings to the machinations of their hated father. Most of all, She Left Me the Gun reveals how Paula reinvented herself to lead a full, happy life. As she follows her mother’s footsteps back to South Africa, Brockes begins to find the wellsprings of her mother’s strength, the tremendous endurance which allowed Paula to hide secrets from even her closest friends and family. But as the search through cherished letters and buried documents deepens, Brockes realizes with horror that her mother’s great success as a parent was concealing her terrible past—and that unearthing these secrets threatens to undo her mother’s work. A beguiling and unforgettable journey across generations and continents, She Left Me the Gun chronicles Brockes’s efforts to walk the knife-edge between understanding her mother’s unspeakable traumas and embracing the happiness she chose for her daughter.

Author : Tracie Peterson
Publisher : Baker Books
ISBN 13 : 1441203362
Total Pages : 352 pages
Book Rating : 4.66/5 ( download)

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Download or read book What She Left for Me written by Tracie Peterson and published by Baker Books. This book was released on 2005-10-01 with total page 352 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: When Jana returns from a missions trip, she discovers that her pastor husband has left with his secretary...along with their bank account. Humiliated, penniless, pregnant, and very much alone, Jana reluctantly turns to her mother, Eleanor, in desperation. Eleanor is haunted by her own guilt and pain, and the arrival of her daughter only serves as a daily reminder of the memories she has long kept hidden away. Will a delightfully eccentric aunt become a catalyst between these two women? Will they allow God's spirit--and God's people--to bring true healing...and a future filled with love?

Author : Ellen Marie Wiseman
Publisher : Kensington Publishing Corporation
ISBN 13 : 1496730038
Total Pages : 369 pages
Book Rating : 4.39/5 ( download)

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Download or read book What She Left Behind written by Ellen Marie Wiseman and published by Kensington Publishing Corporation. This book was released on 2019-08-27 with total page 369 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Includes discussion questions and an excerpt from The orphan collector.

Author : Claire Amarti
Publisher :
ISBN 13 : 9781737018919
Total Pages : 326 pages
Book Rating : 4.18/5 ( download)

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Download or read book After She Left written by Claire Amarti and published by . This book was released on 2021-11-18 with total page 326 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Abigail Gibson is gone. The morning after Christmas Day, she walks out of her home in the leafy suburbs of Westchester, New York, leaving behind a strange note on the kitchen table... and her ten-year-old son, Sam. When her sister Gillian gets the call, she can barely believe it. Abigail has always been a little, well, unreliable, but she hasn't done anything like this in a decade--not since Sam was born. Now Gillian's left taking care of Sam while she waits for news of Abigail's whereabouts. But things aren't so great in Gillian's home either, where her husband's odd behavior and late-night work schedule is putting their marriage under increasing strain. Meanwhile as Abigail's absence becomes ever more mysterious, Gillian must confront the two questions whose answers will soon upend her world: what was it that made Abigail leave... and is she ever coming back? From the bestselling author of The Silent Daughter and The First Wife's Secret comes this gripping new novel about buried pasts, old secrets, and the risky choices we make for love.

Author : Kerry Kelly
Publisher : Dundurn
ISBN 13 : 1459704290
Total Pages : 240 pages
Book Rating : 4.99/5 ( download)

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Download or read book The Year She Left written by Kerry Kelly and published by Dundurn. This book was released on 2008-10-01 with total page 240 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Is it a happy ending? Define happy. Stuart Lewis, thirty-three, in love and content, wakes up one day to find his fiance has left him. Perpetually underemployed and now homeless, Stuart moves onto his mother’s couch. With few connections and no ambition, Stuart is forced to rethink the choices he has made and the sincerity of the life that has just been shattered. Set against the frigid backdrop of downtown Toronto, The Year She Left casts an eclectic bunch of directionless underachievers and unlikely heroes amid the buzz of late night binges and early corporate bustle. Honest and unapologetic about the often detached nature of urban existence, this is the story of what happened in the year she left.

Author : Emma Brockes
Publisher : Penguin
ISBN 13 : 0143125362
Total Pages : 321 pages
Book Rating : 4.65/5 ( download)

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Download or read book She Left Me the Gun written by Emma Brockes and published by Penguin. This book was released on 2014-06-24 with total page 321 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "One of those memoirs that remind you why you liked memoirs in the first place... It has the density of a very good novel... As you do with the best writers, you feel lucky to be in Ms. Brockes’s company." --Dwight Garner, The New York Times A chilling work of psychological suspense and forensic memoir, She Left Me the Gun is a tale of true transformation: the story of a young woman who reinvented herself so completely that her previous life seemed simply to vanish, and of a daughter who transcends her mother’s fears and reclaims an abandoned past. “One day I will tell you the story of my life,” promises Emma Brockes’s mother, “and you will be amazed.” Brockes grew up hearing only pieces of her mother’s past—stories of a rustic childhood in South Africa, glimpses of a bohemian youth in London—and yet knew that crucial facts were still in the dark. A mystery to her friends and family, Paula was clearly a strong, self-invented woman; glamorous, no-nonsense, and frequently out of place in their quaint English village. In awe of Paula’s larger-than-life personality, Brockes never asked why her mother emigrated to England or why she never returned to South Africa; never questioned the source of her mother’s strange fears or tremendous strengths. Looking to unearth the truth after Paula’s death, Brockes begins a dangerous journey into the land—and the life—her mother fled from years before. Brockes soon learns that Paula’s father was a drunk megalomaniac who terrorized Paula and her seven half-siblings for years. After finally mustering the courage to take her father to court, Paula is horrified to see the malevolent man vindicated of all charges. As Brockes discovers, this crushing defeat left Paula with a choice: take her own life, or promise herself never to be intimidated or unhappy again. Ultimately she chooses life and happiness by booking one-way passage to London—but not before shooting her father five times, and failing to kill him. Smuggling the fateful gun through English customs would be Paula’s first triumph in her new life. She Left Me the Gun carries Brockes to South Africa to meet her seven aunts and uncles, weighing their stories against her mother’s silences. Brockes learns of the violent pathologies and racial propaganda in which her grandfather was inculcated, sees the mine shafts and train yards where he worked as an itinerant mechanic, and finds in buried government archives the court records proving his murder conviction years before he first married. Brockes also learns of the turncoat stepmother who may have perjured herself to save her husband, dooming Paula and her siblings to the machinations of their hated father. Most of all, She Left Me the Gun reveals how Paula reinvented herself to lead a full, happy life. As she follows her mother’s footsteps back to South Africa, Brockes begins to find the wellsprings of her mother’s strength, the tremendous endurance which allowed Paula to hide secrets from even her closest friends and family. But as the search through cherished letters and buried documents deepens, Brockes realizes with horror that her mother’s great success as a parent was concealing her terrible past—and that unearthing these secrets threatens to undo her mother’s work. A beguiling and unforgettable journey across generations and continents, She Left Me the Gun chronicles Brockes’s efforts to walk the knife-edge between understanding her mother’s unspeakable traumas and embracing the happiness she chose for her daughter.

Author : Kathryn Ma
Publisher : Catapult
ISBN 13 : 1640095675
Total Pages : 303 pages
Book Rating : 4.70/5 ( download)

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Download or read book The Chinese Groove written by Kathryn Ma and published by Catapult. This book was released on 2023-01-24 with total page 303 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Longlisted for the Joyce Carol Oates Prize A New York Times Book Review Editors' Choice An Amazon Editors' Pick People, A Best Book of the Year For readers of Less and The Wangs Vs. The World, a buoyant, good-hearted, and sharply written novel about a blithely optimistic immigrant with big dreams, dire prospects, and a fractured extended family in need of his help—even if they don't know it yet Eighteen-year-old Shelley, born into a much-despised branch of the Zheng family in Yunnan Province and living in the shadow of his widowed father’s grief, dreams of bigger things. Buoyed by an exuberant heart and his cousin Deng’s tall tales about the United States, Shelley heads to San Francisco to claim his destiny, confident that any hurdles will be easily overcome by the awesome powers of the “Chinese groove,” a belief in the unspoken bonds between countrymen that transcend time and borders. Upon arrival, Shelley is dismayed to find that his “rich uncle” is in fact his unemployed second cousin once removed and that the grand guest room he’d envisioned is but a scratchy sofa. The indefinite stay he’d planned for? That has a firm two-week expiration date. Even worse, the loving family he hoped would embrace him is in shambles, shattered by a senseless tragedy that has cleaved the family in two. They want nothing to do with this youthful bounder who’s barged into their lives. Ever the optimist, Shelley concocts a plan to resuscitate his American dream by insinuating himself into the family. And, who knows, maybe he’ll even manage to bring them back together in the process.

Author : Gregg Olsen
Publisher : Polis Books
ISBN 13 : 1943818770
Total Pages : 187 pages
Book Rating : 4.78/5 ( download)

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Download or read book The Boy She Left Behind written by Gregg Olsen and published by Polis Books. This book was released on 2017-03-28 with total page 187 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The second novel in Gregg Olsen's riveting and edgy Young Adult Vengeance series brings back Rylee Cassidey and thrusts her into a search that could change her life . . . or end it. Rylee tracks a serial killer in Portland, Oregon doing what she does best — lying, reinventing, and plotting vengeance for the victims of the brutal killer that has college students at Portland State University terrified. At the same time, she grapples with a betrayal so shocking that it sends her reeling, testing her as she’s never been tested before. Is there anyone she can trust?