A Wall And Three Willows

At sixteen, Alexandra Chenard gave birth to a baby she desperately wanted to keep but was never allowed even to see. Nine years later, she has strong reasons for finding the adopted child, but her search has led from one roadblock to another, and it appears that her father, a powerful U. S. senator, is the reason. One person can help, Alex's beloved grandmother, Rose. But Rose has suddenly died. When Alex travels from her home in France to America to attend the funeral, her life is turned upside down. Finding she must care for her now ill grandfather, Alex is also asked to manage Three Willows, the family estate. No problem . . . until she realizes she must work alongside Shay Colton, the father of her child and the only man Alex has ever loved, but who is now engaged to another and will barely give Alex the time of day. Making everything more difficult is the continual interference of Alex's parents. Fortunately, childhood pal Justin Hathaway shows up, offering Alex friendship . . . and possibly more. Still clinging to the dream of finding her little girl, Alex begins to regain control of her life. But then, a staggering secret comes to light and Alex learns she's been terribly betrayed by nearly everyone she loves. In a single moment, a simple truth has torn her world apart. Or has it? Could a heartbreaking secret also contain a hidden blessing? And if so, will it be enough to bring Alex to a place of forgiveness? Readers of Three Willows will be entertained and touched by a story that crosses generations and weaves family, friendship, romance, and betrayal into an uplifting message of love and the healing power of forgiveness.

In this follow-up novel to the #1 New York Times bestselling Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants series, it's time to discover a new sisterhood. A story of growing up, friendship, and understanding yourself, about three girls enjoying one last summer before high school. summer is a time to grow seeds Polly has an idea that she can't stop thinking about, one that involves changing a few things about herself. She's setting her sights on a more glamorous life, but it's going to take all of her focus. At least that way she won't have to watch her friends moving so far ahead. roots Jo is spending the summer at her family's beach house, working as a busgirl and bonding with the older, cooler girls she'll see at high school come September. She didn't count on a brief fling with a cute boy changing her entire summer. Or feeling embarrassed by her middle school friends. And she didn't count on her family at all. . . leaves Ama is not an outdoorsy girl. She wanted to be at an academic camp, doing research in an air-conditioned library, earning A's. Instead her summer scholarship lands her on a wilderness trip full of flirting teenagers, blisters, impossible hiking trails, and a sad lack of hair products. “Brashares gets her characters’ emotions and interactions just right.” --Publishers Weekly "Like the previous Pants books, this one will travel from girl to girl." --Kirkus Reviews

Missing Persians serves to articulate in elegant, vibrant prose the disparate and displaced narratives of five Persian subjects. Nasrin Rahimieh's complex and nuanced arguments effectively demonstrate the links that her five figures have to a stable Persian identity—complicated by their experiences of travel, exile, conversion, and social change. Rahimieh delineates the captivating histories of "missing" Persians from the sixteenth century to modern times and defines the arbitrary generic boundaries that isolate Persian biographies, autobiographies, travelogues, and social histories. Balancing their documentary and historical value with creative and fictional elements, she reads them as individual engagements with broader questions of Persian identity at different moments of the nation's history. As modes of self-expression, these texts reveal both remnants of traditional Persian literary forms and new styles adopted through translations and readings in European literature and history. Even as it sheds new light on crucial points in cultural self-definition, Missing Persians offers a fresh look at traditional institutions, the role of women, and Persia's turbulent struggle to enter modernity on its own terms.

Acclaimed historian Ross King paints the most nuanced, riveting and humane portrait yet of Claude Monet, arguably the most famous artist of the 20th century. We have all seen—live, in photographs, on postcards—some of Claude Monet's legendary water lily paintings. They are in museums all over the world, and are among the most admired paintings of our time. Yet nobody knows the extraordinarily dramatic story behind their creation. Telling that story is the brilliant historian, Ross King—and in the process, he presents a compelling and original portrait of perhaps the most beloved artist in history. As World War I exploded within hearing distance of his house at Giverny, Monet was facing his own personal crucible. In 1911, his adored wife, Alice, had died, plunging him into deep mourning at age 71. A year later he began going blind. Then, his eldest son, Jean, fell ill and died of syphilis, and his other son was sent to the front to fight for France. Within months, a violent storm destroyed much of the garden that had been his inspiration for some 20 years. At the same time, his reputation was under attack, as a new generation of artists, led by Pablo Picasso and Henri Matisse, were dazzling the art world and expressing disgust with Impressionism. Against all this, fighting his own self-doubt, depression and age, Monet found the wherewithal to construct a massive new studio, 70 feet long and 50 feet high, to accommodate the gigantic canvases that would, he hoped, revive him. Using letters, memoirs and other sources not employed by other biographers, and focusing on this remarkable period in the artist's life, Ross King reveals a more complex, more human, more intimate Claude Monet than has ever been portrayed, and firmly places his water lily project among the greatest achievements in the history of art.

This is a selected, annotated list of some 2,000 books on Asia in English and French currently in print, chosen with the aim of providing a long-term historical perspective for the general reader. The list is presented in four main parts: Asia as a whole; the Islamic world; India, South and Southeast Asia; the Far East. Subdivisions cover such topics as: general and reference works; history, social science, and law; history of literature; literature in translation; religion and ideas; arts, crafts, architecture, and science; and the lands in modern times.