The Everlasting

NEW YORK TIMES BEST HISTORICAL FICTION OF 2020 "Only Katy Simpson Smith could have written a novel of such elegance, emotional power, and grace. The Everlasting, a quadruple love story spanning two millennia, is no less than the story of love itself—its frustrations and thrills, its blunders and transcendent glories. Meraviglioso."—Nathaniel Rich, author of King Zeno From a supremely talented author comes this brilliant and inventive literary work of historical fiction, set in Rome in four different centuries, that explores love in all its various incarnations and ponders elemental questions of good and evil, obedience and free will that connect four unforgettable lives . Spanning two thousand years, The Everlasting follows four characters whose struggles resonate across the centuries: an early Christian child martyr; a medieval monk on crypt duty in a church; a Medici princess of Moorish descent; and a contemporary field biologist conducting an illicit affair. Outsiders to a city layered and dense with history, this quartet separated by time grapple with the physicality of bodies, the necessity for sacrifice, and the power of love to sustain and challenge faith. Their small rebellions are witnessed and provoked by an omniscient, time-traveling Satan who, though incorporeal, nonetheless suffers from a heart in search of repair. As their dramas unfold amid the brick, marble, and ghosts of Rome, they each must decide what it means to be good. Twelve-year old Prisca defiles the scrolls of her father’s library. Felix, a holy man, watches his friend’s body decay and is reminded of the first boy he loved passionately. Giulia de’ Medici, a beauty with dark skin and limitless wealth, wants to deliver herself from her unborn child. Tom, an American biologist studying the lives of the smallest creatures, cannot pinpoint when his own marriage began to die. As each of these conflicted people struggles with forces they cannot control, their circumstances raise a profound and timeless question at the heart of faith: What is our duty to each other, and what will God forgive? Moving back through time from today (The Wilderness) to the Renaissance (The City) to the Middle Ages (The Grave) and finally to Rome under Marcus Aurelius (The Paradise), Tom, Guilia, Felix, and Prisca search and suffer for love in the eternal city, made vivid and familiar as they reappear in each century.

Camille must save Orleans in this high-stakes sequel to the instant New York Times bestseller.

Critically acclaimed when it was first published, Natalie Babbitt's Tuck Everlasting has become a much-loved, well-studied modern-day classic. This anniversary edition features an in-depth interview conducted by Betsy Hearne in which Natalie Babbitt takes a look at Tuck Everlasting decades later. Now a major motion film available on streaming, featuring stars Alexis Bledel, Ben Kingsley, and Sissy Spacek! What if you could live forever? Is eternal life a blessing or a curse? That is what young Winnie Foster must decide when she discovers a spring on her family’s property whose waters grant immortality. Members of the Tuck family, having drunk from the spring, tell Winnie of their experiences watching life go by and never growing older. But then Winnie must decide whether or not to keep the Tucks’ secret—and whether or not to join them on their never-ending journey. This title has Common Core connections.

Only Scott can keep the vengeful ghost from completing his unholy ritual. Thirty years ago, Scott's grandfather slaughtered his best friend, then committed suicide. Now the spirit of the murdered man has returned, seeking the ancient volume that can return him to life - forever. Pursued by this savage spirit and accompanied by a strange woman who claims to be immortal, Scott must do the impossible. He must find the book that may have driven his grandfather to murder and destroy it before its secrets can be revealed. His desperate search will take him places few living people have been, including the nightmare known as The House of the Screaming Skulls...

Each morning as the sun brightens the West African sky, mother and child prepare to start their day. They spend it bound together, the child riding on the mother’s back watching their world go past. Pounding millet, drawing water from the well, visiting friends, shopping at the outdoor market—days are shared in perfect step with one another. And even when the child grows big enough to go off and explore their world, the everlasting embrace endures. Illustrated with E.B. Lewis’s stunning watercolors that bring to life the land and people of Mali, Gabrielle Emanuel’s tender story celebrates the universal bond between mother and child.

Our supreme fabulist of the ordinary now turns his attention on a 9-year-old American girl and produces a novel as enchantingly idiosyncratic as any he has written. Nory Winslow wants to be a dentist or a designer of pop-up books. She likes telling stories and inventing dolls. She has nightmares about teeth, which may explain her career choice. She is going to school in England, where she is mocked for her accent and her friendship with an unpopular girl, and she has made it through the year without crying. Nicholson Baker follows Nory as she interacts with her parents and peers, thinks about God and death-watch beetles, and dreams of cows with pointed teeth. In this precocious child he gives us a heroine as canny and as whimsical as Lewis Carroll's Alice and evokes childhood in all its luminous weirdness.

With great pleasure we offer this daily devotional of meditations from the late Rev. Frans Bakker (1919-1965). His devotionals and meditations proved to be comforting and edifying to many of God's people in the Netherlands. Writing in a simple but penetrating style, Bakker emphasized the fullness of Christ for needy sinners. In The Everlasting Word, all of Bakker's published meditations have been translated and compiled with additional selections from his sermons. We trust that the result is a collection filled with great nuggets of spiritual wisdom that you will enjoy. May this devotional be both an encouragement that edifies God's people and an admonition for a life with Christ in the present age.

Ivy should be ecstatic that her formerly-dead boyfriend Tristan is back on earth with her, but the life of a fallen angel is never easy. Tristan has been cast down from heaven and is now trapped in the body of a murderer. With the police hot on his trail, Tristan and Ivy realise that the only way for them to be together is if they can somehow clear Tristan of the murder he didn't commit. But when it becomes clear that there are darker forces at work, Tristan and Ivy discover they are paying a high price for Ivy's miraculous survival of the car crash. There is more at stake than ever before for Tristan and Ivy, and it seems that one of them may not be alive much longer…