The Importance Of Wings

An Israeli immigrant's journey to become a "real" American. With their mother caring for relatives in Israel and their father driving a cab all hours of the day, Roxanne and her sister, Gayle, spend a lot of time watching television reruns of Little House on the Prairie, The Brady Bunch, and Wonder Woman—perfect examples of perfect Americans. Roxanne is desperate to be like them. When Liat, a fellow Israeli, moves into the "Cursed House" next door, things begin to change and Roxanne realizes that maybe real life isn’t like TV—maybe it’s even better. The novel is set on Staten Island, New York, in the early 1980’s.

An Israeli immigrant's journey to become a "real" American. With their mother caring for relatives in Israel and their father driving a cab all hours of the day, Roxanne and her sister, Gayle, spend a lot of time watching television reruns of Little House on the Prairie, The Brady Bunch, and Wonder Woman—perfect examples of perfect Americans. Roxanne is desperate to be like them. When Liat, a fellow Israeli, moves into the "Cursed House" next door, things begin to change and Roxanne realizes that maybe real life isn’t like TV—maybe it’s even better. The novel is set on Staten Island, New York, in the early 1980’s.

The newest Oprah’s Book Club 2.0 selection: this special eBook edition of The Invention of Wings by Sue Monk Kidd features exclusive content, including Oprah’s personal notes highlighted within the text, and a reading group guide. Writing at the height of her narrative and imaginative gifts, Sue Monk Kidd presents a masterpiece of hope, daring, the quest for freedom, and the desire to have a voice in the world. Hetty “Handful” Grimke, an urban slave in early nineteenth century Charleston, yearns for life beyond the suffocating walls that enclose her within the wealthy Grimke household. The Grimke’s daughter, Sarah, has known from an early age she is meant to do something large in the world, but she is hemmed in by the limits imposed on women. Kidd’s sweeping novel is set in motion on Sarah’s eleventh birthday, when she is given ownership of ten year old Handful, who is to be her handmaid. We follow their remarkable journeys over the next thirty five years, as both strive for a life of their own, dramatically shaping each other’s destinies and forming a complex relationship marked by guilt, defiance, estrangement and the uneasy ways of love. As the stories build to a riveting climax, Handful will endure loss and sorrow, finding courage and a sense of self in the process. Sarah will experience crushed hopes, betrayal, unrequited love, and ostracism before leaving Charleston to find her place alongside her fearless younger sister, Angelina, as one of the early pioneers in the abolition and women’s rights movements. Inspired by the historical figure of Sarah Grimke, Kidd goes beyond the record to flesh out the rich interior lives of all of her characters, both real and invented, including Handful’s cunning mother, Charlotte, who courts danger in her search for something better. This exquisitely written novel is a triumph of storytelling that looks with unswerving eyes at a devastating wound in American history, through women whose struggles for liberation, empowerment, and expression will leave no reader unmoved. Please note there is another digital edition available without Oprah’s notes. Go to Oprah.com/bookclub for more OBC 2.0 content

Finalist for 2020 National Book Critics Circle Award in Fiction Longlisted for the 2020 National Book Award for Fiction Finalist for the 2021 Aspen Words Literary Prize Mingling the earthy with the otherworldly, these ten stories chronicle ineffable events in ordinary lives. In Kenan’s fictional territory of Tims Creek, North Carolina, an old man rages in his nursing home, a parson beats up an adulterer, a rich man is haunted by a hog, and an elderly woman turns unwitting miracle worker. A retired plumber travels to Manhattan, where Billy Idol sweeps him into his entourage. An architect who lost his famous lover to AIDS reconnects with a high-school fling. Howard Hughes seeks out the woman who once cooked him butter beans. Shot through with humor and seasoned by inventiveness and maturity, Kenan riffs on appetites of all kinds, on the eerie persistence of history, and on unstoppable lovers and unexpected salvations. If I Had Two Wings is a rich chorus of voices and visions, dreams and prophecies, marked by physicality and spirit. Kenan’s prose is nothing short of wondrous.

It's Tunde's twelfth birthday and he's in for a surprise . . . he sprouts wings! Along with his friends, Tunde must save the world. Readers will adore Lenny Henry's first middle grade book, The Boy with Wings, that's packed with captivating illustrations by Keenon Ferrell. Plus, it includes an exclusive comic book adventure illustrated by Mark Buckingham! An ordinary kid is about to become an EXTRAORDINARY hero! Wings? Check. A super-cool, super-secret past? Check. An impossible mission to save the world from a fur-ocious enemy? Check. When Tunde sprouts wings and learns he’s all that stands between Earth and total destruction, suddenly school is the least of his problems. Luckily, his rag-tag group of pals have got his back, and with his new powers, Tunde is ready to fly in the face of danger. So what if he can’t even stand up to the school bully? He’s the boy with wings – this is his destiny. No pressure then. . . This illustrated book also includes an exclusive comic in the back!

The fifth thrilling urban fantasy in the “engrossingly fun” (Entertainment Weekly) Maker's Song series following the adventures of FBI agent Heather Wallace and the mysterious, seductive vampire Dante. TORN BETWEEN THREE WORLDS—A DANGER TO THEM ALL. Even as Dante Baptiste’s identity as both True Blood and Fallen ripples throughout New Orleans, his powers are expanding in surprising, devastating directions. Kidnapped, drugged, and lost to his brutal past, the vampire wavers between sanity and breakdown at the hands of his torturers. Forsaking the FBI she once loved, Heather Wallace has likewise fallen into malevolent hands. As she struggles to reunite with Dante, men of hate and government evil will try to keep them apart. Even as their teammates frantically search for the pair, dark forces continue to gather against the young vampire—and the fates of mortals, nightkind, and the Fallen rest on him regaining control of his shattered psyche before he becomes the terrible, omnipotent Great Destroyer.

In this sweeping, allusive novel, the celebrated poet, dervish, and oral storytellerTawhida Tanya Evanson comes to terms with what it means to stand on one's own two feet inan uncertain world. The acclaimed Antiguan-Canadian artist traces a global journeyfrom Vancouver to the United States, Caribbean, Paris, and Morocco as arelationship with her lover and travel partner disintegrates and she finds herself ona path toward personal discovery and spiritual fulfillment that leads her deep intothe North African landscape.

There is a common but often unspoken arrogance on the part of outside observers that folk science and traditional knowledge—the type developed by Native communities and tribal groups—is inferior to the “formal science” practiced by Westerners. In this lucidly written and humanistic account of the O’odham tribes of Arizona and Northwest Mexico, ethnobiologist Amadeo M. Rea exposes the limitations of this assumption by exploring the rich ornithology that these tribes have generated about the birds that are native to their region. He shows how these peoples’ observational knowledge provides insights into the behaviors, mating habits, migratory patterns, and distribution of local bird species, and he uncovers the various ways that this knowledge is incorporated into the communities’ traditions and esoteric belief systems. Drawing on more than four decades of field and textual research along with hundreds of interviews with tribe members, Rea identifies how birds are incorporated, both symbolically and practically, into Piman legends, songs, art, religion, and ceremonies. Through highly detailed descriptions and accounts loaded with Native voice, this book is the definitive study of folk ornithology. It also provides valuable data for scholars of linguistics and North American Native studies, and it makes a significant contribution to our understanding of how humans make sense of their world. It will be of interest to historians of science, anthropologists, and scholars of indigenous cultures and folk taxonomy.