Alison Who Went Away

Publisher Description

A teenage girl treks across a dangerous, frozen nation to reunite with her family in this Philip K. Dick Award–winning apocalyptic thriller. Wylodine comes from a world of paranoia and poverty. Her family grows marijuana illegally in order to survive. But now she’s been left behind in Ohio to tend the crop alone. Then spring doesn’t return for the second year in a row, bringing unprecedented, extreme winter. With grow lights stashed in her truck and a pouch of precious seeds, Wil begins a journey to join her family in California. But the icy roads and strangers hidden in the hills are treacherous. Gathering a small group of exiles on her way, she becomes the target of a volatime cult leader. Because she has the most valuable skill in the climate chaos: she can make things grow. Road Out of Winter offers a glimpse into an all-too-possible near future, with a chosen family forged in the face of dystopian collapse. Alison Stine’s acclaimed debut “blends a rural thriller and speculative realism into what could be called dystopian noir” (Library Journal, starred review).

You think your life is nuts? Since I was sixteen, I've spent time on Death Row, tried to sell my baby sister on the black market, been stranded at the altar (repeatedly), lied about my son's paternity, and fought viciously with just about everybody in town. Well, okay, it wasn't really me--it was my character, Sami Brady on Days of Our Lives. But like Sami, I've had my share of struggles. I've been told I was fat, watched fellow actresses starve themselves, been cruelly rejected, and wondered if I would ever date. (Hey, the first time I kissed a boy was in front of a TV camera!) There was even a time when I hated myself. Sound familiar? This is my story. It's an account of my years on daytime's most popular soap, and of my life off-screen--the major ups and downs, the craziness of Hollywood, balancing work and play, looking for love, concerns about weight, peer pressure, and finally learning to accept myself for who I am. I'll tell you fun stories about myself and my co-stars. . .recollections of my most memorable scenes. . .and everything you've always wanted to know about Sami. I think you'll find a lot in these pages that will remind you of all the days of your life. . .and perhaps inspire you to follow your own dreams in the days to come. Alison Sweeney was born in Los Angeles, one of three children of a concert violinist mother and a business investor father. Her acting career began when she was four years old. Throughout her childhood, Alison appeared in numerous television commercials, as well television series including Friends, Simon & Simon, Webster, St. Elsewhere, and Tales from the Darkside. She had starring roles in the films The Price of Life and The End of Innocence. Alison joined the cast of Days of Our Lives as Sami Brady in 1993. In her years on the series, her character has evolved from a troubled teenager to a scheming villainess. In 2002, Alison won a fan-voted Emmy as America's Favorite Villain. She has also won the fan-voted Soap Opera Digest Award four times, and in 2001 was elected by the same publication as one of the Most Beautiful Women in Daytime Television. Soap Opera Weekly named Alison 1999's Breakout Performer of the year, and in Australia, she was voted "Best Bad Girl" in 2000 and 2001 by readers of Inside Soaps magazine. Alison lives in a suburb of Los Angeles with her husband, Dave.

Winner of the Helen and Stan Vine Jewish Book Award and finalist for the Man Booker Prize In Far to Go, one of our most accomplished young writers takes us inside the world of an affluent Jewish family in Prague during the lead-up to Hitler's invasion of Czechoslovakia. In 1939, Pavel and Anneliese Bauer are secular Jews whose lives are turned upside down by the arrival of Hitler. They are unable to leave the country in time to avoid deportation, but they do manage to get their six-year-old son Pepik a place on a Kindertransport. Meanwhile, a fascinating and compelling present-day strand in the story slowly reveals the unexpected fates of each of the Bauers. Through a series of surprising twists, Pick leads us to ask: What does it mean to cling to identity in the face of persecution? And what are the consequences if you attempt to change your identity? Inspired by the harrowing five-year journey Alison Pick's own grandparents embarked upon from their native Czechoslovakia to Canada during the Second World War, Far to Go is an epic historical novel that traces one family's journey through these tumultuous and traumatic events. A layered, beautifully written, moving, and suspenseful story by one of our rising literary stars.

As a child, Alison Weaver's life shone with surface-level perfection—full of nannies, private schools, and ballet lessons. She had all the luxuries of a wealthy Manhattan upbringing, and all the makings of a perfect Upper East Side miss. But her childhood memories were laced with darker undertones: Her father was emotionally absent, unable to engage in problems that couldn't be solved with clean lines and simple plans, and her mother was a beautiful, aloof alcoholic. Neither parent approved of their daughter's outbursts and emotions—and in the midst of her parents' own flaws, Weaver was constantly reminded that she was a mess that needed fixing. By the time she was a teenager, Weaver had found escape in alcohol, marijuana, and late-night abandon. But when her exasperated parents had her shipped away—in handcuffs—to the cultish Cascade School, everything changed. Within the surreal isolation of the school's mountain campus, she left her old self behind, warping into a brainwashed model of Cascade's mottos and ideals. Graduation two years later left her unprepared for the harshness of the real world—and she soon fell back into a mind-numbing wash of drugs. Stum-bling into freefall in New York's East Village in the 1990s, Weaver's life began a downward spiral marked by needles and late-night parties, mingled with fears of HIV and death. Ultimately, faced with the reality of her rapidly escalating self-destruction, Weaver was forced to face her inner darkness head on. Gone to the Crazies proves the age-old adage: You can't come clean until you've hit rock bottom. By turns wry, heartbreaking, and emotionally intense, Alison Weaver's mesmerizing debut fascinates with its vivid depiction of the bonds between family and friends, and the thoughtful exploration of what it means to fight for identity and equilibrium.

Christie travels to run, to forget. She has no place to call home, but desperately wishes she did. Roslyn has never been overseas and fears getting stuck in one place. If she's never left Melbourne, how does she know that's home? A crossing of paths in Berlin, wine, and wifi leads to the two traveling together, and as they travel the two find some things they were looking for, and maybe something they weren't...

A young girl forms an unforgettable friendship with an elderly neighbor while searching for answers about her family's past in this national bestseller and Pulitzer Prize nominee. Eleven-year-old Clara is struggling to find the truth about her missing father and grandfather and her twin sister, dead at birth, but her mother steadfastly refuses to talk about these people who are lost to her daughter. When Clara begins interviewing Georg Kominsky, a lone old man, for a school biography assignment, she finds that he is equally reticent about his own concealed history. Precocious and imaginative, the girl invents version upon version of Mr. Kominsky's past, just as she invents lives for the people missing from her own shadowy past. The journey of discovery that these two oddly matched people embark upon is at the heart of this beautiful story about friendship and communion, about discovering what matters most in life, and about the search to find the missing pieces of ourselves. McGhee's prose glistens with shrewd truth and wild imaginings, creating a novel that will reverberate in the hearts and minds of readers long after the book is finished.

16-year-old Hadley is the only person who can save Archer Morales, a boy she barely knows---but to do so she makes a deal with Death and go back 27 days in time to stop Archer from committing suicide.