And Ladies Of The Club

"A great novel that is American to its core...so gently memorable, so bursting with life, that those who abandon themselves to its pages will find it claiming a permanent place close to their hearts." --New York Daily News "A warm, evocative, often hilarious picture of society, culture, politics and family life." --Atlanta Constitution "A warmly human story...never flags from first page to last." --Publishers Weekly A groundbreaking bestseller with two and a half million copies in print, "...And Ladies of the Club" centers on the members of a book club and their struggles to understand themselves, each other, and the tumultuous world they live in. A true classic, it is sure to enchant, enthrall, and intrigue readers for years to come. "It is hard to think of a better place to spend the summer than in AHelen Hooven Santmyer's? world." --Cosmopolitan

It's a long, languorous, country summer in a small Ohio town. After many years spent away as a scholar and writer, Elizabeth Lane has returned to the setting of her most poignant childhood memories, a town steeped in her family's long history. She comes to Sunbury to work on a book but finds she is haunted by one memory in particular. It was 1905, she was eleven and in love with her cousin, Steve, painfully watching his ill-fated romance with the beautiful Damaris. Looking back, Elizabeth discovers a world of feelings that she knows belong more to adulthood than to childhood, and as she sees the tragic, doomed love of Steve and Damaris, she wishes she could be a child forever. Peopled with superbly realized characters, steeped in the golden glow of an era fondly recalled, and marked by the prodigious talent displayed in ". . . And Ladies of the Club", Farewell, Summer is the moving tale of star-crossed love -- innocent and elusive -- and of a young girl's coming of age.

Herbs and Apples, the novel Helen Hooven Santmyer wrote at the height of her youthful creative powers, is the work that many critics have loved even more than . . . And Ladies of the Club. Laced with nostalgia as well as timeless insight into human character, Santmyer's enchanting novel is as contemporary today as the day it was written.

“I wanted to tell the truth about the small town.” Xenia, Ohio: The young among us sometimes rebel in their inexperience, saying “nothing ever happens here.” They say it because they do not know the old houses. If they live long enough they will learn that everything has happened here, and may happen again. The town is Winesburg and Spoon River, it is Highbury and Cranford, it is even Illyria and Elsinore. Little that mankind knows and endures but has been here known and endured: even battles and sieges—Shiloh and Vicksburg, Chickamauga and Chattanooga, and all the others, before and since—have been fought here, in the minds of women who waited and the memories of soldiers who came home again. For all of her 90 years Helen Hooven Santmyer—critically acclaimed author of “...And Ladies of the Club”—has been carrying on a love affair with her hometown of Xenia. Her OHIO TOWN is a microcosm of a century of America. The history, heartache, and hilarity of small-town life...The sights and sounds, like the locomotive whistle, imprinted in our memories...The unsung heroes of Americana: Miss Harper, the rigorous, unforgettable sixth grade teacher; Dr. Will, the unfailingly patient family practitioner; Miss McElwain, the librarian for 50 years. All are celebrated in this award-winning, heart-warming memoir of an America that will live forever in our hearts. First published in 1956, Ohio Town received widespread critical recognition as a stirring, magical blend of history and memoir. “Miss Santmyer writes beautifully”—WASHINGTON POST BOOK WORLD “A new gem in the crown of Ohio’s classics. The theme is the beauty of Midwest America, the closeness of a small town to the countryside and, therefore, to the world, to poetry, and to the enlightened mind.”—TOLEDO BLADE “A lively history pulsating with memories.”—HISTORY NEWS

Small-town America, ghosts, domesticity, and New World-Old World tensions - these combine in Helen Hooven Santmyer's second novel, The Fierce Dispute (1929), which feature a fiercely disputatious southern Ohio matriarch and her adult daughter locked in battle for the very soul of a child, Lucy Anne, from whose viewpoint much of the narrative unfolds. The Fierce Dispute pits Margaret Baird, the proud bearer of the Linley-Hewitt-Baird family history, against Margaret's cosmopolitan and romantic daughter, Hilary. Set in the Xenia, Ohio, family home, the novel's real battleground is Lucy Anne herself, the child mired in conflict because she loves both her mother Hilary and grandmother Margaret.

***THE TOP TEN AUSTRALIAN BESTSELLER*** 'The perfect novel to curl up with on a cosy night in' Hello 'The story of these resilient women is tender and intimate . . . As heartwarming, fulfilling and Australian as a lamb roast and full-bodied shiraz' Australian Women's Weekly LONGLISTED FOR THE INDIE BOOK AWARD FOR DEBUT FICTION 2018 SHORTLISTED FOR THE AUSTRALIAN BOOK INDUSTRY AWARDS 2018: General Fiction Book of the Year and LONGLISTED FOR THE AUSTRALIAN BOOK INDUSTRY AWARDS 2018: Matt Richell Award for New Writer of the Year Books bring them together - but friendship will transform all of their lives. An epic saga of five very different women who come together in the Northern Territory of the 1970s. In 1978 the Northern Territory has begun to self-govern. Cyclone Tracy is a recent memory and telephones not yet a fixture on the cattle stations dominating the rugged outback. Life is hard and people are isolated. But they find ways to connect. Sybil, the matriarch of Fairvale Station, run by her husband, Joe, misses her eldest son, Lachlan. It is up to their second son, Ben, to take his brother's place, while Kate, Sybil's English daughter-in-law, is thousands of miles away from home and finding it difficult to adjust to life at Fairvale. Rita, Sybil's oldest friend, is now living in Alice Springs and working for the Royal Flying Doctor Service. Sallyanne, mother of three, dreams of a life far removed from the dusty town of Katherine where she lives with her difficult husband. And Della, who left Texas for Australia looking for adventure and work on the land, needs some purpose in her life. Sybil comes up with a way to give them all companionship: they all love to read, and she starts a book club. If you loved The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Society, The Little Coffee Shop of Kabul and The Little Paris Bookshop, you will devour this story of five different women united by one need: to overcome the vast distances of Australia's Top End with friendship, tears, laughter, books and love. 'An absolute gem of a novel, with the most evocative sense of place . . . A definite treat for any book club' BETTER READING 'This close-knit Australian saga has rightly earned comparisons to THE THORN BIRDS' iBOOKS EDITOR 'A delightful novel... Sophie Green's beautiful mingling of the book club members' lives down through the years is a testament to her clever storytelling... She provides vivid descriptions of both the triumphs and hardships of life in the outback so readers can empathise with all the joys and heartaches experienced by each one' STARTS AT SIXTY **Includes bonus extract from Sophie's heartwarming new novel Thursdays at Orange Blossom House**

Lushly evocative of Nicaragua, its tumultuous history, and vibrant present, Eleni N. Gage's The Ladies of Managua brings you into the lives of three strong and magnetic women, as they uncover the ramifications of the choices they made in their pasts and begin to understand the ways in which love can shape their futures. When Maria Vazquez returns to Nicaragua for her beloved grandfather's funeral, she brings with her a mysterious package from her grandmother's past—and a secret of her own. And she also carries the burden of her tense relationship with her mother Ninexin, once a storied revolutionary, now a tireless government employee. Between Maria and Ninexin lies a chasm created by the death of Maria's father, who was killed during the revolution when Maria was an infant, leaving her to be raised by her grandmother Isabela as Ninexin worked to build the new Nicaragua. As Ninexin tries to reach her daughter, and Maria wrestles with her expectations for her romance with an older man, Isabela, the mourning widow, is lost in memories of attending boarding school in 1950's New Orleans, where she loved and lost almost sixty years ago. When the three women come together to bid farewell to the man who anchored their family, they are forced to confront their complicated, passionate relationships with each other and with their country—and to reveal the secrets that each of them have worked to conceal.

"A thinly-veiled roman à clef about Studio 54, [which] raised the ire of nightclub owner Steve Rubell, designer Halston, and singer Liza Minnelli, among others."--Wikipedia.