THOUGHTS ON THIS 'n THAT

  She did it to my dad, though. They used the silent treatment on each other, she explained, because they didn't want to say something they'd regret. What does she want to say now that she'd regret? Jeannie Vanasco’s mother starts using the silent treatment not long after moving into the renovated apartment within Jeannie’s home. The silences begin at any perceived slight. Her shortest period of silence lasts two weeks. Her longest was six months. As Vanasco guides us through her mother’s childhood, their shared past, and the devastating silence of their present, she paints a layered, complicated portrait of a mother and daughter looking, failing, and—in big and small ways—succeeding in their efforts to understand each other. In the margins of her research, at her kitchen table with her partner, in phone calls to friends, and in delightful hey Google queries, Vanasco explores the loneliness and isolation of silence as punishment, both in her own life and beyond it, and conf...

  THE WOMAN in the GREEN DRESS is an evocative mystery about the 1920 murder of the gambler Joseph Elwell, featuring  New Yorker  writer Morris Markey and Zelda Fitzgerald. At the dawn of the Jazz Age, Morris Markey arrives in New York to become a writer. Having served in France, he needs to be in a place so distracting he cannot hear himself think. New in town, Markey hovers at the edge of the city’s revels, unable to hear the secrets that might give him his first Big Story. Finally one night he spots Joseph Elwell, a man about town known for courting wealthy married women, with a glorious girl in a dress of silver and dollar green. The next morning, Elwell’s housekeeper runs out into the street screaming that Elwell has been shot. Every door and window in the house is locked. Did the ravishing woman kill her paramour? At last, Morris Markey has his story. To penetrate the glittering world of Joseph Elwell, Markey turns to the newly famous Scott and Zelda Fitzgerald...

  Remember the novel  Chocolat   by  Joanne Harris ? Published in 1999, it’s the story of a young single mother named Vianne Rocher, who appears in the little French village of Lansquenet with her six-year-old daughter at the beginning of Lent. She opens a  chocolaterie  opposite the church, much to the chagrin of the local priest. With the magic in her sumptuous chocolates, she gently changes the lives of the folks who come to her shop. The beloved film adaptation,  Chocolat , directed by Lasse Hallström and starring Juliette Binoche, Judi Dench, Lena Olin, Alfred Molina, and Johnny Depp, was nominated for eight BAFTAs and five Oscars.   Now, twenty-five years later, Joanne Harris provides the origin story of Vianne Rocher in the novel,  VIANNE  (PegasusBooks) Readers who have loved and followed Vianne through the four-book  Chocolat  series will discover how she became that magical, miraculo...

  In this new, stylish, twisty thriller, PLEASE DON'T LIE (Thomansandmercer) from #1  New York Times  bestselling author Christina Baker Kline and award-winning author Anne Burt, a young woman heads to the Adirondacks with her new husband for a fresh start—but the past won’t let her go. Two years ago, Hayley Stone lost everything. First, her parents died in a devastating fire. Then, her sister overdosed, leaving Hayley alone and hounded by a media circus that turned her family’s tragedy into tabloid fodder. When her new husband suggests a fresh start in the Adirondacks, the promise of anonymity in an isolated mountain town feels like salvation. But the mountains hold darker secrets than she ever imagined. Her once-loving husband grows distant and volatile. The widow down the road keeps spewing vague accusations. Not even their new friends—a free-spirited couple living on the property—can help Hayley shake the creeping sense that something is off. As winter edges closer, H...

  The Kokoro Clinic for the Soul reopens in this delightful follow-up to the award-winning, bestselling Japanese novel  We'll Prescribe You a Cat. It’s time to revisit the Kokoro Clinic for the Soul. Though it’s a mysteriously located clinic with an uncertain address, it can always be found by those who need it. And the clinic has proven time after time that a prescribed cat has the power to heal the emotional wounds of its patients. This charming sequel introduces a new lovable cast of healing cats, from Kotetsu, a four-month-old Bengal who unleashes his boundless energy by demolishing bed linens and curtains, to tenacious and curious Shasha, who doesn’t let her small size stop her from anything, and the most lovable yet lazy cat Ms. Michiko, who is as soft and comforting as mochi. As characters from one chapter appear as side characters in the next, we follow a young woman who cannot help pushing away the man who loves her, a recently widowed grandfather whose grandson refus...

  Watermelon, Marian Keyes's very first novel, tells the extremely funny and wonderfully touching tale of a woman who thought she had it all - until the day she discovers that it's all gone . . . 'Failed relationships can be described as so much wasted makeup . . .' On the day she gives birth to her first child, Claire Walsh's husband James tells her he's been having an affair and now's the right time to leave her. Right for whom exactly? Exhausted, tearful, and a tiny bit furious, Claire can't think what to do. So she follows the instincts of all self-respecting adults in tricky situations. . . . And runs home to Mum and Dad. But while her parents are sympathetic, Claire's younger sisters are less so. Helen wants to share the new toy (she means baby Kate). While Anna is too busy having out-of-her-head experiences.  So when James slips back into her life, desperate to put things right, Claire doesn't know whether to take a chance on a past she...

Bringing together voices from across Turtle Island, a groundbreaking collection of letters from Indigenous writers, activists, and thinkers—to their ancestors, to future generations, and to themselves. Drawing on the wisdom and personal experience of its esteemed contributors, this first-of-its-kind anthology tackles complex questions of our times to provide a rich tapestry of Indigenous life, past, present, and future. The letters explore the histories that have brought us to this moment, the challenges and crises faced by present-day communities, and the visions that will lead us to a new architecture for thinking about Indigeneity. Taking its structure from the medicine bundle—tobacco, sage, cedar, and sweetgrass—it will stir and empower readers, as well as enrich an essential and ongoing conversation about what reconciliation looks like and what it means to be Indigenous today.                               ...