A Valentine For Sarah

The stunning and provocative coming-of-age memoir about Sarah Valentine's childhood as a white girl in the suburbs of Pittsburgh, and her discovery that her father was a black man. At the age of 27, Sarah Valentine discovered that she was not, in fact, the white girl she had always believed herself to be. She learned the truth of her paternity: that her father was a black man. And she learned the truth about her own identity: mixed race. And so Sarah began the difficult and absorbing journey of changing her identity from white to black. In this memoir, Sarah details the story of the discovery of her identity, how she overcame depression to come to terms with this identity, and, perhaps most importantly, asks: why? Her entire family and community had conspired to maintain her white identity. The supreme discomfort her white family and community felt about addressing issues of race–her race–is a microcosm of race relationships in America. A black woman who lived her formative years identifying as white, Sarah's story is a kind of Rachel Dolezal in reverse, though her "passing" was less intentional than conspiracy. This memoir is an examination of the cost of being black in America, and how one woman threw off the racial identity she'd grown up with, in order to embrace a new one.

Sarah Clancy, raising two children alone after the death of her husband five years before, has a problem. That problem comes in the shape of her rebellious sixteen-year-old daughter, Ruby, who has been skipping school—along with her friend Dylan, who just happens to be the son of the high school principal, Cam Hyde. Cam has his own set of problems: not only does he have to put in long hours to do the right thing by his staff, the parent body, and the students, but he has to mend the rift with his teenage son. Together, Cam and Sarah face not only the challenge of steering their children back on the right path but giving the feelings between them room to grow. Then the kids really start acting out. Whatever happened to a peaceful life?

Can you find real love when you've always got your head in the clouds? Maybell Parish has always been a dreamer and a hopeless romantic. But living in her own world has long been preferable to dealing with the disappointments of real life. So when Maybell inherits a charming house in the Smokies from her Great-Aunt Violet, she seizes the opportunity to make a fresh start. Yet when she arrives, it seems her troubles have only just begun. Not only is the house falling apart around her, but she isn't the only inheritor: she has to share everything with Wesley Koehler, the groundskeeper who's as grouchy as he is gorgeous--and it turns out he has a very different vision for the property's future. Convincing the taciturn Wesley to stop avoiding her and compromise is a task more formidable than the other dying wishes Great-Aunt Violet left behind. But when Maybell uncovers something unexpectedly sweet beneath Wesley's scowls, and as the two slowly begin to let their guard down, they might learn that sometimes the smallest steps outside one's comfort zone can lead to the greatest rewards.

It's possible to be an experimental humanist.

Each animal decides to give their valentine something meaningful to them, with flaps revealing the special gift.

14th February- Valentine's day I'll give you this notebook for showing your Lover how much you love her/him This is a gift for valentine's day

This volume is the first in a trilogy, a fascinating historical biography about the authors great-great-grandmother, Sarah Valentine. Born in 1819 in the deprived East End of London, she led a life filled with heartache and adversity. England was in a deep depression, along with the whole of Europe, brought on by the Napoleonic wars. This was, of course, during the time of Charles Dickens, who would have known the area well. Some of Sarah Valentines experiences mirrored those of Dickenss characters, in that she was taken in by a Fagin of the time and fell into thievery. She was later thrown into the Shoreditch workhouse, where she fell afoul of a number of feral girls, who were quite happy to inflict serious harm to anyone who got in their way. In his in-depth biography, Philip Coates offers remarkable insight into the daily struggles of a real-life, penniless young woman who survived a depraved and dangerous environment. His meticulous research has produced a unique portrait of a family member who was born in a turbulent time in Londons history.