Magnolia Sky

Luke Boudreau heads to the Mississippi home of his army buddy, Calvin Abbot, who was killed as he saved Luke's life. By seeking out Calvin's family, Luke hopes to find peace and closure. But instead he meets Calvin's beautiful wife. Original.

Army Ranger Luke Boudreau commanded a secret mission that went horribly awry. The physical wounds he takes away from the experience are inconsequential compared to his guilt for the loss of a fellow soldier - a man who will never be recognized for his bravery because of the covert nature of their operation. When Luke is recovered enough, he travels to Grover, Mississippi to pay his respects to a woman who gave her son to the service of his country. He must do so in a way that doesn't reveal the true circumstances of the man's death. He braces himself for a mother's bitter anger, secretly hoping this encounter will begin to deliver him from his torment. However, what he finds in Grover is far from either recrimination or absolution. He is quickly drawn into a family that desperately needs his help - a younger brother bent on self-destruction and a mother with a secret burden of her own. And most shocking of all, he discovers a beautiful widow he didn't know existed - a woman who tempts him to break his own moral code.

This biographical dictionary of some 3,000 photographers (and workers in related trades), active in a vast area of North America before 1866, is based on extensive research and enhanced by some 240 illustrations, most of which are published here for the first time. The territory covered extends from central Canada through Mexico and includes the United States from the Mississippi River west to, but not including, the Rocky Mountain states. Together, this volume and its predecessor, Pioneer Photographers of the Far West: A Biographical Dictionary, 1840-1865, comprise an exhaustive survey of early photographers in North America and Central America, excluding the eastern United States and eastern Canada. This work is distinguished by the large number of entries, by the appealing narratives that cover both professional and private lives of the subjects, and by the painstaking documentation. It will be an essential reference work for historians, libraries, and museums, as well as for collectors of and dealers in early American photography. In addition to photographers, the book includes photographic printers, retouchers, and colorists, and manufacturers and sellers of photographic apparatus and stock. Because creators of moving panoramas and optical amusements such as dioramas and magic lantern performances often fashioned their works after photographs, the people behind those exhibitions are also discussed.

"As one of the most important, most distinctive and most collectable of 20th century British potteries, Poole is surprisingly little known. Few books have been published about this innovative company and its diverse products, and the most recent, though excellent, has long been out of print. With its hundreds of colour illustrations, and its highly detailed captions and information panels, this new book represents the distillation of years of research by the well-known Poole historian Leslie Hayward, and makes accessible to collectors for the first time the extraordinary range of wares associated with the factory. The story starts with the making of tiles and architectural and garden ceramics by Jesse Carter from the 1870s, and the gradual development of a pottery devoted increasingly to domestic and ornamental wares under the control of his sons Owen and Charles, aided by the designer and artistic potter, James Radly Young. From an early range of decorative lustres there emerged a style of simple, hand-painted patterns that established the Poole name. Initial inspiration came from sources as diverse as Egypt, Greece, the Middle East and South America but, with the revival of the traditional Delftware technique of freehand painting in bright colours onto an opaque white tin-glaze, the characteristic Poole style was born, with its individualistic approach to decoration instantly recognisable through the decades of Poole's history, and in its contemporary products." "With its illustrations of virtually every known Poole product and its full list of factory marks and artists' monograms, this book will be indispensable for collectors, and for anyone interested in the history of 20th century design."--BOOK JACKET.Title Summary field provided by Blackwell North America, Inc. All Rights Reserved

Six years ago tragedy struck and Caroline Rogers had to make tough decisions to sell the family farm and put her life on hold to raise her younger siblings. Now that they're entering adulthood and her long-delayed photography career is taking off, she can almost taste the freedom. Shaken by self-doubt, Dr. Mick Larsen turns his back on his big-city psychiatric practice and settles for the small-town quiet of Redbud Mill, where he can hide his past successes and failures. To Caroline, he shows only a man who wants to put down roots and start a family--good reasons for her to stay away. Then someone starts vandalizing local landmarks she has photographed. Now Caroline must convince a man with little faith in his own abilities that he can help her find the disturbed mind in their midst. But even as she teaches him to trust himself, she must fight the temptation to trust him with her future and her heart.

Journalist Madison Wade decides to move to Philadelphia when one of her articles on violence in the city hits too close to home. Madison and her fourteen-year-old adopted son, Ethan, take refuge in Buckeye, a small town in eastern Tennessee where her father had grown up. Despite the tranquility, Madison and Ethan feel like outsiders. But Gabe Wyatt, the local sheriff, is determined to welcome them to the town. He immediately falls for this beautiful journalist from the city. Madison resists Gabe's advances, but he's persistent and unlike anyone she's ever met before. As a romance develops between them, Madison becomes comfortable in the rural setting, and when Ethan becomes friends with Jordan, a fellow outsider at school, Buckeye begins to feel like home. But a tragic death changes everything for them. When Jordan's father is murdered during a weekend camping trip, Ethan becomes the prime suspect. Gabe's investigation of the murder causes a rift in his relationship with Madison. As small town gossip builds a damaging case against Ethan, Madison races to discover the truth. Heartbroken and lost, she struggles to find anyone who will believe in her and Ethan, despite their past.

Heather is pale and thin, seventeen and pregnant with twins when Patricia Harman begins to care for her. Over the course of the next five seasons Patsy will see Heather through the loss of both babies and their father. She will also care for her longtime patient Nila, pregnant for the eighth time and trying to make a new life without her abusive husband. And Patsy will try to find some comfort to offer Holly, whose teenage daughter struggles with bulimia. She will help Rebba learn to find pleasure in her body and help Kaz transition into a new body. She will do noisy battle with the IRS in the very few moments she has to spare, and wage her own private battle with uterine cancer. Patricia Harman, a nurse-midwife, manages a women's health clinic with her husband, Tom, an ob-gyn, in West Virginia-a practice where patients open their hearts, where they find care and sometimes refuge. Patsy's memoir juxtaposes the tales of these women with her own story of keeping a small medical practice solvent and coping with personal challenges. Her patients range from Appalachian mothers who haven't had the opportunity to attend secondary school to Ph.D.'s on cell phones. They come to Patsy's small, windowless exam room and sit covered only by blue cotton gowns, and their infinitely varied stories are in equal parts heartbreaking and uplifting. The nurse-midwife tells of their lives over the course of a year and a quarter, a time when her outwardly successful practice is in deep financial trouble, when she is coping with malpractice threats, confronting her own serious medical problems, and fearing that her thirty-year marriage may be on the verge of collapse. In the words of Jacqueline Mitchard, this memoir, "utterly true and lyrical as any novel . . . should be a little classic." "The many moving stories of the women that Patricia Harman cares for as a nurse-midwife add up to a remarkable account of a life spent listening, helping, and taking care. Inviting us into her clinic in rural West Virginia, she shows us the joys and sorrows of listening to women's stories and attending to their bodies, and she leads us through the complicated life of a healer who is profoundly shaped by her patients and their journeys." -Perri Klass, author of The Mercy Rule and Treatment Kind and Fair "Nobody writes with more candor and compassion about women's woes and women's triumphs than nurse-midwife Patricia Harman. Her behind-the-exam-room-door memoir is a bittersweet valentine to every woman-young and old-who has ever donned that thin blue cotton gown, to every dedicated healthcare provider, and to every husband-wife medical team. I couldn't put The Blue Cotton Gown down." -Sara Pritchard, author of Crackpots and Lately "This luminescent, ruthlessly authentic, humane, and brilliantly written account of a midwife in rough-hewn Appalachia-a passionate healer plying her art and struggling to live a life of spirit-stands as a model for all of us, doctors and patients alike, of how to offer good care." -Samuel Shem, M.D., author of The House of God, Mount Misery, and The Spirit of the Place "Patricia Harman has opened for us a window, a glimpse into her life as a midwife and the lives of those women who have entered her exam room. And as the touch of her careful and caring hands learned the story of their bodies, into her heart they poured their life stories-stories of joy, of sorrow, those bright with promise, those dimmed with grief and pain." -Sheila Kay Adams, author of My Old True Love "As the mother of seven children and veteran of eight pregnancy losses, I knew when I ran my bath that I would be unable to resist Patricia Harman's memoir of midwifery. What I didn't realize was that it would cause me, a