Please Look Up At Me

Kate loves to look at her tablet. Mama feels concerned. Children today seem to prefer looking at screens more than enjoying the outdoors and free play with one another. Every place they go, Kate seems to be looking down at her screen. Even at school, Kate uses a device. At first, Kate feels that Mama is overreacting. But, after some personal reflection and deeper thinking, Kate connects the dots and finds understanding in Mama's plea.

The Wheatsheaf Inn, with its black-beamed frontage, peg-tiled roof and riot of hollyhocks, had stood bathed in the golden sunlight of Kent for four centuries. And the Ovendens had owned it for over a hundred years. To divide the Wheatsheaf from the Ovendens was unthinkable - though it wasn't easy keeping a small inn going in the village of Shepham miles from anywhere. Down at Faversham Station, waiting for the Hop-pickers' Special, laughing in the August sunshine with her friend Pippin, was Beth Ovenden, the landlord's daughter. The black-haired, dark-eyed, fiery belle of the village was just eighteen years old, with her life before her, carefree and heartfree. Until the steam engine arrived - bringing with it Richard Lyle, a handsome, daredevil student barrister - and changed Beth's life for ever. Until that moment, Beth's only passion had been the Wheatsheaf. But now Richard, with his dancing eyes and sophisticated London ways, seduced the naïve young girl, only to betray her, leaving her the bittersweet memory of his lovemaking - and the legacy of his child. As Beth struggled to come to terms with his desertion, she found herself in a desperate battle to save her pub from the grasp of the local brewery owner, who would stop at nothing to wrest it from her control ...

An Instant New York Times Bestseller! Winner of the Coretta Scott King - John Steptoe for New Talent Author Award Filled with mystery and an intriguingly rich magic system, Tracy Deonn’s YA contemporary fantasy reinvents the King Arthur legend and “braids together Southern folk traditions and Black Girl Magic into a searing modern tale of grief, power, and self-discovery” (Dhonielle Clayton, New York Times bestselling author of The Belles). After her mother dies in an accident, sixteen-year-old Bree Matthews wants nothing to do with her family memories or childhood home. A residential program for bright high schoolers at UNC–Chapel Hill seems like the perfect escape—until Bree witnesses a magical attack her very first night on campus. A flying demon feeding on human energies. A secret society of so called “Legendborn” students that hunt the creatures down. And a mysterious teenage mage who calls himself a “Merlin” and who attempts—and fails—to wipe Bree’s memory of everything she saw. The mage’s failure unlocks Bree’s own unique magic and a buried memory with a hidden connection: the night her mother died, another Merlin was at the hospital. Now that Bree knows there’s more to her mother’s death than what’s on the police report, she’ll do whatever it takes to find out the truth, even if that means infiltrating the Legendborn as one of their initiates. She recruits Nick, a self-exiled Legendborn with his own grudge against the group, and their reluctant partnership pulls them deeper into the society’s secrets—and closer to each other. But when the Legendborn reveal themselves as the descendants of King Arthur’s knights and explain that a magical war is coming, Bree has to decide how far she’ll go for the truth and whether she should use her magic to take the society down—or join the fight.

He really wanted to give it to her. He really wanted to spend the rest of his life with her.Zheng Fei arched her back as her two hands tightly gripped the ring. She really wanted to know why Gu Yu gave her this ring. Did he feel that he had neglected her so he wanted to give her a peace of mind?In the end, she even deprived him of the opportunity to give her the ring. "

*A Wall Street Journal Top 10 Best Book of the Year* From John Edgar Wideman, a modern “master of language” (The New York Times Book Review), comes a stunning story collection that spans a range of topics from Michael Jordan to Emmett Till, from childhood memories to the final day in a prison cell. In Look For Me and I’ll Be Gone, his sixth collection of stories, John Edgar Wideman imbues with energy and life the concerns that have consistently infused his fiction and nonfiction. How does it feel to grow up in America, a nation that—despite knowing better, despite its own laws, despite experiencing for hundreds of years the deadly perils and heartbreak of racial division—encourages (sometimes unwittingly, but often on purpose) its citizens to see themselves as colored or white, as inferior or superior. Never content merely to tell a story, Wideman seeks once again to create language that delivers passages like jazz solos, and virtuosic manipulations of time to entangle past and present. The story “Separation” begins with a boy afraid to stand alone beside his grandfather’s coffin, then wends its way back and forth from Pittsburgh to ancient Sumer. “Atlanta Murders” starts with two chickens crossing a road and becomes a dark riff, contemplating “Evidence of Things Not Seen,” James Baldwin’s report on the 1979–1981 child murders in Atlanta, Georgia. Comprised of fictions of the highest caliber and relevancy by a writer whose imagination and intellect “prove his continued vitality...with vigor and soul” (Entertainment Weekly), Look For Me and I’ll Be Gone will entrance and surprise committed Wideman fans and newcomers alike.

Todd is a southern novel about family love, faith and endurance. In 1943, ten year old Todd Jansan lives with his family on a North Carolina tobacco farm. The Jansan's neighbor, Horace Hammond is a cruel man who punishes his children by holding them over a well. The Jansans have to deal with his cruelty and with the mystery surrounding Todd's uncle who is off at war.

1942. The Jewish Ghetto in Amsterdam. When Jozef and Trudi’s father dies in a concentration camp after being falsely arrested in 1941 as a saboteur, their mother goes into hiding, putting them in a children’s home for their safety. But when a decision is taken by the Nazis to kill all Jews including children, they are destined for deportation to a concentration camp and almost certain death. Their 22-year-old cousin, a nurse working in the Jewish hospital, decides to rescue them. Can Hetty save her cousins from the dangers and threats that face them all? Don’t Look for Me is based on a true story of love, loss, escape, and survival. It’s the story of a rebellious and determined young woman and her young cousin in the Nazi occupied Netherlands during WW2. Three quarters of the Jews living in the Netherlands in 1940 were killed during WW2. This is a story of survival against the odds.