Broken China

The acclaimed author of "When Kambia Elaine Flew in from Neptune" now delivers the story of one girl's excruciating struggle to beat the odds. Williams imbues this narrative with an unshakable sense of hope that transcends China's bleak reality.

In life, one either chooses to rise above temptation or fall into a black pit of despair and oblivion. In "Pieces of Broken China," his first collection of short stories, author Dean Blanchard introduces a group of compelling characters who march on an unforgettable journey through the heartrending emotions that accompany a dysfunctional life." A father struggles to tell his long-lost daughter that he is not a predatory sexual molester. A promise ring becomes the symbol of a boy s love for a girl he thought he knew. A son stands by his dying mother, and in return, she helps him to make peace with his adopted father. A mother attempts to help her daughter deal with an emotionally crippled Vietnam vet, who happens to also be her father. A wife senses her husband s sexual preference long before he does, but one evening, he must face his sexuality after an encounter with a gay man in a straight bar. "Pieces of Broken China" chronicles one man s painful past as he searches for his identity and is forced to deal with a label that will shadow him for the rest of his life. * * * * * * * * * * * Pieces of Broken China are not only the title of Blanchard's collection of short stories it is an apt metaphor for the lives of the characters and the author of this semi-autobiographical piece. Life begins as a piece of china---glowing in its virginal newness, beautiful in form, functional in design, and fragile in substance.Pieces of Broken China are the stories of the broken and scattered pieces of that china plate and the author's struggle to gather all the broken fragments and to glue them back into place. With fingers bloodied from handling the shards of pottery the pieces are found over time and reassembled like a jigsaw puzzle. The completed puzzle doesn't look like the picture on the outside of the box. It's not just the web of cracks, the smudge of glue or the smeared blood stains---some of the pieces were never found leaving holes that are filled in by our imagination as we connect the dots that are the lives of the characters. As advertised Blanchard's piece is written in raw honesty marinated in mixture of angst, anxiety and self-torment. The raw dough of manuscript rises with the sprinkling of humor and the needing of experienced hands. Reading Pieces of Broken China is like hearing the soul wrenching confession of your dearest friend where tears flow freely over broken hearts and finally warmed by the long hug of understanding and acceptance. The only thing lacking in this first effort by Blanchard is...more. I look forward to reading more of Blanchard's works. Beth FairchildKu-Che: The Way of BeingISBN 9781301378814

Theodosia Browning serves tea and solves crimes in Charleston, a city steeped in tradition and treachery in the latest Tea Shop Mystery from New York Times bestselling author Laura Childs. It is Sunday afternoon, and Theodosia and Drayton are catering a formal tea at a hot-air balloon rally. The view aloft is not only stunning, they are also surrounded by a dozen other colorful hot-air balloons. But as the sky turns gray and the clouds start to boil up, a strange object zooms out of nowhere. It is a drone, and it appears to be buzzing around the balloons, checking them out. As Theodosia and Drayton watch, the drone, hovering like some angry, mechanized insect, deliberately crashes into the balloon next to them. An enormous, fiery explosion erupts, and everyone watches in horror as the balloon plummets to the earth, killing all three of its passengers. Sirens scream, first responders arrive, and Theodosia is interviewed by the police. During the interview she learns that one of the downed occupants was Don Kingsley, the CEO of a local software company, SyncSoft. Not only do the police suspect Kingsley as the primary target, they learn that he possessed a rare Revolutionary War Union Jack flag that several people were rabidly bidding on. Intrigued, Theodosia begins her own investigation. Was it the CEO's soon-to-be ex-wife, who is restoring an enormous mansion at no expense? The CEO's personal assistant, who also functioned as curator of his prized collection of Americana? Two rival antiques' dealers known for dirty dealing? Or was the killer the fiancée of one of Theodosia's dear friends, who turns out to be an employee—and whistle-blower—at SyncSoft? INCLUDES DELICIOUS RECIPES AND TEA TIME TIPS!

This true story demonstrates God's faithfulness to an Amish couple. Simon's refusal to submit to the Amish rules stresses his marriage. The bishops demand that Susan, his wife, must obey the rules she promised to keep and to shun her rebel husband. Who was she to obey, God or man? Together they become a perfect team to set their family free from the bondage of "religion." The story is told by their daughter, Naomi, born to them after they leave this close-knit community. These heartbreaking and joyous stories are life-changing and proclaim the mighty truth that God continues to care for and work in the lives of the simple, the wounded, and the brokenhearted. Naomi shares how she came to see the rich, deep, powerful beauty and value in the "silent years" of her mother's life, who courageously lived a broken life for the sake of her divine inheritance, hidden in her earthly inheritance, a basket full of broken dishes.

In life, one either chooses to rise above temptation or fall into a black pit of despair and oblivion. In Pieces of Broken China, his first collection of short stories, author Dean Blanchard introduces a group of compelling characters who march on an unforgettable journey through the heartrending emotions that accompany a dysfunctional life. A father struggles to tell his long-lost daughter that he is not a predatory sexual molester. A promise ring becomes the symbol of a boy’s love for a girl he thought he knew. A son stands by his dying mother, and in return, she helps him to make peace with his adopted father. A mother attempts to help her daughter deal with an emotionally crippled Vietnam vet, who happens to also be her father. A wife senses her husband’s sexual preference long before he does, but one evening, he must face his sexuality after an encounter with a gay man in a straight bar. Pieces of Broken China chronicles one man’s painful past as he searches for his identity and is forced to deal with a label that will shadow him for the rest of his life. * * * * * * * * * * * Pieces of Broken China are not only the title of Blanchard's collection of short stories it is an apt metaphor for the lives of the characters and the author of this semi-autobiographical piece. Life begins as a piece of china---glowing in its virginal newness, beautiful in form, functional in design, and fragile in substance.Pieces of Broken China are the stories of the broken and scattered pieces of that china plate and the author's struggle to gather all the broken fragments and to glue them back into place. With fingers bloodied from handling the shards of pottery the pieces are found over time and reassembled like a jigsaw puzzle. The completed puzzle doesn't look like the picture on the outside of the box. It's not just the web of cracks, the smudge of glue or the smeared blood stains---some of the pieces were never found leaving holes that are filled in by our imagination as we connect the dots that are the lives of the characters. As advertised Blanchard's piece is written in raw honesty marinated in mixture of angst, anxiety and self-torment. The raw dough of manuscript rises with the sprinkling of humor and the needing of experienced hands. Reading Pieces of Broken China is like hearing the soul wrenching confession of your dearest friend where tears flow freely over broken hearts and finally warmed by the long hug of understanding and acceptance. The only thing lacking in this first effort by Blanchard is...more. I look forward to reading more of Blanchard's works. Beth FairchildKu-Che: The Way of BeingISBN 9781301378814

The numerous studies of Maxine Hong Kingston's touchstone work The Woman Warrior fail to take into account the stories in China Men, which were largely written together with those in The Woman Warrior but later published separately. Although Hong Kingston's decision to separate the male and female narratives enabled readers to see the strength of the resulting feminist point of view in The Woman Warrior, the author has steadily maintained that to understand the book fully it was necessary to read its male companion text. Maureen Sabine's ambitious study of The Woman Warrior and China Men aims to bring these divided texts back together with a close reading that looks for the textual traces of the father in The Woman Warrior and shows how the daughter narrator tracks down his history in China Men. She considers theories of intertextuality that open up the possibility of a dynamic interplay between the two books and suggests that the Hong family women and men may be struggling for dialogue with each other even when they appear textually silent or apart.

An anthropologist and Sinologist, Stephen W. Mosher, lived and worked in rural China in late 1979 and early 1980. His shocking revelations about conditions there have earned him the condemnation of the Beijing (Peking) government, which denounces him as a "foreign spy."

Broken Wings tells the story of Butterfly, who is kidnapped and taken to a remote mountain village devoid of young women. There, she is imprisoned and, later, raped in the cave home of the wifeless farmer who has bought her. Butterfly's fading hopes of escape are described in her own voice, revealing the struggles of a spirited young woman.