Anything But Minor

Alice, a flight instructor, has lived a protected life and is eager for new adventures when she moves from her hometown in Ohio to Charleston, South Carolina, and attends her first-ever baseball game. There, she sees local baseball star, Rafe Hembrey, who is sure to be drafted into the big leagues this year. Rafe has no time for romance, he's got scouts to impress, but when Alice comes to town he questions where his focus really lies.

From the moment their romance begins in eighth grade, Winifred and Bernie are individualists. They pride themselves on being different, and have each other for support through the tough years of high school. So when they consider college, they send off for the same catalogs, promising never to separate. But Bernie's mother dies and Bernie more or less drops out of school, becoming an ordinary guy working away in a tire shop, while Winifred goes about as far from New Jersey as a girl can go: the University of California at Santa Barbara. College is a culture shock to Winifred, but her three savvy roommates teach her how to fit in. By the time Bernie catches up with her again, Winifred has become, well . . . ordinary. Can they rediscover their true selves – and true love? Told from alternating viewpoints, with a sense of humor and a deep appreciation of first love, Valerie Hobbs's novel captures an endearing young couple's search for independence and identity.

On the The Scotiabank Giller Prize 2015 Longlist A love story, an adventure story, a fable without a moral, and an ink-black comedy of manners. Lucien (Lucy) Minor is the resident odd duck in the hamlet of Bury. Friendless and loveless, young and aimless, Lucy is a compulsive liar, a sickly weakling in a town famous for begetting brutish giants. Then Lucy accepts employment assisting the majordomo of the remote, foreboding Castle Von Aux. While tending to his new post as undermajordomo, he soon discovers the place harbours many dark secrets, not least of which is the whereabouts of the castle’s master, Baron Von Aux. In the local village, he also encounters thieves, madmen, aristocrats, and Klara, a delicate beauty whose love he must compete for with the exceptionally handsome partisan soldier, Adolphus. Thus begins a tale of polite theft, bitter heartbreak, domestic mystery, and cold-blooded murder. Undermajordomo Minor is a triumphant ink-black comedy of manners by the Governor General’s Award–winning author of The Sisters Brothers. It is an adventure, and a mystery, and a searing portrayal of rural Alpine bad behaviour, but above all it is a love story. And Lucy must be careful, for love is a violent thing.

The Minor Fall is a modern interpretation of an Old Testament saga. Davy Jessie is a young, personal injury trial lawyer working as an associate in a top-drawer law firm in Houston, Texas in 2005. In addition to trying difficult (sometimes impossible to win) cases assigned to him by the firm, Davy also assists Tim Sullivan (one of the named partners in the firm) in prosecuting more serious cases. Sullivan is a flamboyant, fashionable, facile at formulating a memorable turn of phrase, philandering litigator with a long history of trial victories and the material rewards that a contingency fee practice can yield. Davy is enamored with Sullivan and attempts to emulate Sullivan’s professional (and personal) behavior. After Davy wins one of the cases he was not expected to win, Sullivan designates Davy to lead the firm’s efforts in representing a group of landowners in eastern Kentucky whose properties have been contaminated by oil field production. Beth Sheehan, a contract lawyer hired by the firm to help with discovery on the case, travels to Kentucky with Davy where they have a brief affair, Davy returns to find that his wife Michelle is pregnant. The fallout from the affair and the stress of preparing the case send Davy spiraling into depression and emotional paralysis. Along the way down to his moral crisis, Davy contemplates existential questions about the nature of law, the importance of literature, the existence of God, and what (if anything other than single malt Scotch or cold chardonnay) gives meaning to life as he considers losing his wife, leaving the law firm, and abandoning the practice of law.

While challenging the teacher as hero trope, We Got This shows how authentically listening to kids is the closest thing to a superpower that we have. Cornelius identifies tools, attributes, and strategies that can augment our listening.

My name is Amber Reynolds. There are three things you should know about me: 1. I’m in a coma. 2. My husband doesn’t love me anymore. 3. Sometimes I lie. Amber wakes up in a hospital. She can’t move. She can’t speak. She can’t open her eyes. She can hear everyone around her, but they have no idea. Amber doesn’t remember what happened, but she has a suspicion her husband had something to do with it. Alternating between her paralyzed present, the week before her accident, and a series of childhood diaries from twenty years ago, this brilliant psychological thriller asks: Is something really a lie if you believe it's the truth?

An aircraft carrier adrift with a crew the size of a small town. A killer in their midst. And the disgraced Navy SEAL who must track him down . . . The high-octane debut thriller from New York Times bestselling writing team Webb & Mann—combat-decorated Navy SEAL Brandon Webb and award-winning author John David Mann. A BARRY AWARD NOMINEE • “Sensationally good—an instant classic, maybe an instant legend.”—Lee Child The moment Navy SEAL sniper Finn sets foot on the USS Abraham Lincolnto hitch a ride home from the Persian Gulf, it’s clear something is deeply wrong. Leadership is weak. Morale is low. And when crew members start disappearing one by one, what at first seems like a random string of suicides soon reveals something far more sinister: There’s a serial killer on board. Suspicion falls on Finn, the newcomer to the ship. After all, he’s being sent home in disgrace, recalled from the field under the dark cloud of a mission gone horribly wrong. He’s also a lone wolf, haunted by gaps in his memory and the elusive sense that something he missed may have contributed to civilian deaths on his last assignment. Finding the killer offers a chance at redemption . . . if he can stay alive long enough to prove it isn’t him. NAMED ONE OF THE BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR BY PUBLISHERS WEEKLY

This book is inspired by the 2015 Italian Art Society-sponsored conference sessions of the American Association of Italian Studies. Its seven chapters span the art of ancient Etruria to twentieth century Italy, and explore a variety of media, including mirrors, cameos, treasury objects, reliquaries, ceramics, and figurines. Contributors approach the topic of the minor arts from a variety of interdisciplinary perspectives, including reception, use, patronage, gender issues, propaganda, and iconography. The volume thus fills the lacuna in the scholarship of the minor arts, and reveals that the minor arts are unique and worthy of study for their size, preciosity, patronage, audience, function, portability, and material. Ultimately, in revealing the importance of these objects, the book shows that the division between the major and minor arts is no longer valid, and that these objects of the minor arts hold as much significance as those of the major arts.