Goldenrod

NATIONAL BESTSELLER * NAMED A BEST BOOK OF THE YEAR BY NPR ??“To read Maggie Smith is to embrace the achingly precious beauty of the present moment.” —Time “A captivating collection from a wise, accessible poet.” —People From the award-winning poet and bestselling author of You Could Make This Place Beautiful, Keep Moving, and Good Bones, a stunning poetry collection that celebrates the beauty and messiness of life. With her breakout bestseller Keep Moving, Maggie Smith captured the nation with her “meditations on kindness and hope” (NPR). Now, with Goldenrod, the award-winning poet returns with a powerful collection of poems that look at parenthood, solitude, love, and memory. Pulling objects from everyday life—a hallway mirror, a rock found in her son’s pocket, a field of goldenrods at the side of the road—she reveals the magic of the present moment. Only Maggie Smith could turn an autocorrect mistake into a line of poetry, musing that her phone “doesn’t observe / the high holidays, autocorrecting / shana tova to shaman tobacco, / Rosh Hashanah to rose has hands.”​ Slate called Smith’s “superpower as a writer” her “ability to find the perfect concrete metaphor for inchoate human emotions and explore it with empathy and honesty.” The poems in Goldenrod celebrate the contours of daily life, explore and delight in the space between thought and experience, and remind us that we decide what is beautiful.

When Trina and her father move into an abandoned wreck of a mansion called Goldenrod, Trina thinks her life is finally coming together. She can put down roots at last. Maybe she'll even have a best friend! But the kids at school make fun of her, and it seems like Goldenrod itself is haunted. Then Trina finds Augustine, a tiny porcelain doll left behind when the house was boarded up a century ago. Augustine isn't like other dolls: she talks and talks and talks. Augustine helps Trina realize that Goldenrod is trying to tell her an important secret . . . one that may just change her life.

Welcome back to Jericho, a small town tightly tucked into the Appalachian Mountains of Virginia, where life and love have as many twists and turns as a winding mountain road. Join Syd, Maddie, David, Michael, Henry, Celine, and the irrepressible Roma Jean Freemantle as they band together to navigate the minefields of their ever-changing world in this newest Jericho novel.

This irrepressible first novel appeared in Canada, in 1984, and concerns a perfect golden boy who, when he finishes high school, has it all. He’s handsome and smart, the star of the hockey team, has a beautiful girlfriend, seven sisters and a mother who fawn over him, and three dogs that adore him. He is a strutting peacock, a prima donna whose narcissism knows no bounds. And then, he goes off to college and his downfall. And from his lofty height, when he hits the dirt, his poignant and comic landing makes a very loud noise.

A cookbook of treats from the Great Plains to satisfy every sweet tooth. Based in Lincoln, Nebraska, Goldenrod Pastries is a community bakery with an ambitious and talented baker at the helm. Angela Garbacz learned at her mother’s and grandmothers’ elbows, mixing up cookies and rolling sweet buns. Her training continued in New York City before she returned home and opened her dream shop. From her grandma’s famous peach coffee cake to caramel-covered pecan rolls, lemon meringue pie and frosted brownies to fluffernutter buns and confetti cookies, Garbacz’s pastries come out of the oven perfectly golden and regularly sell out. At her bakery, she creates delicious treats without dairy or gluten, but every recipe in this book can be made with butter and all-purpose flour just as easily as any alternative. With her positive attitude and confident voice, Garbacz makes it easy and fun to bake a perfect dessert that everyone can eat. This beautiful cookbook—the photography, the philosophy, and the desserts!—is an instant classic.