Anna S Love Letters

Anna's Love Letters

An exploration of the importance of bees in our world is offered through the author's lyrical observations to his young sons, often with analogies between the insects and children, and always beautifully presented with unconditional love for them both.

"Before my grandmother, there was Anna." So begins the true story of a family secret, a trunkful of hidden letters, and a love story buried away for almost a century. In 1894 Roy and Anna graduated from high school and begin writing hundreds of love letters to each other until 1898, when Anna died, suddenly and tragically. Roy was devastated. Even after he married, he grieved every year on the anniversary of Anna's death. The letters lay hidden for decades, until his granddaughter brought them out of the shadows. Who was Anna - the woman Roy loved so deeply that he mourned her even after his 63-year marriage to someone else? This is Anna and Roy's story - a snapshot in time in the waning days of the Gilded Age; a love story for the ages. In Anna's words: "We will write as often as we must, for we are never going to be tired of each other, if we live a thousand years."

Anna had everything figured out – she was about to start senior year with her best friend, she had a great weekend job and her huge work crush looked as if it might finally be going somewhere... Until her dad decides to send her 4383 miles away to Paris. On her own. But despite not speaking a word of French, Anna finds herself making new friends, including Étienne St. Clair, the smart, beautiful boy from the floor above. But he's taken – and Anna might be too. Will a year of romantic near-misses end with the French kiss she's been waiting for?

Anna, a young Swiss beauty, and Boris, a Russian refugee twice her age, become captivated with each other after a brief first encounter. Over Anna's parents' objections and despite strict travel restrictions imposed on foreigners by the Swiss authorities, their love survives and deepens through an extensive correspondence lasting nearly two years. Both haunted by pasts they are determined to overcome, Anna and Boris explore the nature of their love, debate their plans for the future, and contend with the thorny differences that threaten to pull them apart. These extraordinary love letters are much more than mere expressions of affection. They cover a world of subjects-art, music, literature, philosophy, religion, ethics, politics-and even how to lose weight. Anything is up for discussion between Boris and Anna if it relates to their development as a couple or as independent human beings. This book offers a detailed portrait of two disparate, fascinating individuals during a volatile time in their lives, a period that coincides with the last months of World War II and the beginning of reconstruction in Europe. Translated and edited by Boris and Anna's daughter Vera Kochanowsky, this volume includes extensive explanatory material, photographs, and a moving afterword, "Grandmother's Gift."

This young adult fantasy debut about love, found family, and healing is “a fantastical ode to the Golden City’s postpunk era,” told through the eyes of a Mexican-American girl (Entertainment Weekly). “Complex and beautiful, blending folklore, San Franciscan history, the music scene, vampires, magic . . . hard to put down.” —School Library Journal Seventeen-year-old Xochi is alone in San Francisco, running from her painful past: the mother who abandoned her, the man who betrayed her. Then one day, she meets Pallas, a precocious twelve-year-old who lives with her rockstar family in one of the city’s storybook Victorians. Xochi accepts a position as Pallas’s live-in governess and quickly finds her place in the girl’s tight-knit household, which operates on a free-love philosophy and easy warmth despite the band’s growing fame. But on the night of the Vernal Equinox, as a concert afterparty rages in the house below, Xochi and Pallas perform a riot-grrrl ritual in good fun, accidentally summoning a pair of ancient beings bound to avenge the wrongs of Xochi’s past. She would do anything to preserve her new life, but with the creatures determined to exact vengeance on those who’ve hurt her, no one is safe—not the family Xochi’s chosen, nor the one she left behind.