The Middle Of Everywhere

Fifteen-year-old Noah leaves Montreal to spend a school term with his dad, a teacher in a small Inuit village in northern Quebec, and is quickly immersed in Inuit culture on an exhilarating winter camping trip.

The bestselling author of Reviving Ophelia and Another Country profiles refugees from around the world who emigrate to the United States. In cities and towns all over the country, refugees arrive daily. Lost Boys from Sudan, survivors from Kosovo, families fleeing Afghanistan and Vietnam: they come with nothing but the desire to experience the American dream. Their endurance in the face of tragedy and their ability to hold on to the essential virtues of family, love, and joy are a tonic for Americans who are now facing crises at home. Their stories will make you laugh and weep—and give you a deeper understanding of the wider world in which we live. The Middle of Everywhere moves beyond the headlines, into the hearts and homes of refugees from around the world. Her stories bring to us the complexity of cultures we must come to understand in these times. “Pipher enters the hearts and homes of refugees who now live virtually from coast to coast, chronicling their struggles…. Her work is a plea for others to join her in a campaign of understanding.”—USA Today “Pipher unites refugees, people who have fled some of the most oppressive regimes in the world, with all of us…. [She] is taking this moment to teach us un-American behaviors: Patience, manners, and tolerance.”—Milwaukee Journal Sentinel “Drawing upon anthropology, sociology and psychology, [Pipher] offers a deft, moving portrait of the complexity of American life…Pipher's ambitious undertaking of combining personal stories with global politics is wonderfully realized.”—Publishers Weekly (starred review)

The New York Times's best-selling author of Reviving Ophelia, Mary Pipher connects us with our greater family--the human family. Over the past decade, Mary Pipher has been a great source of wisdom, helping us to better understand our family members. Now she connects us with the newest members of the American family--refugees. In cities all over the country, refugees arrive daily. Lost Boys from Sudan, survivors from Kosovo, families fleeing Afghanistan and Vietnam: they come with nothing but the hope and desire to experience the American dream. Their endurance in the face of tragedy and their ability to hold on to the virtues of family, love, and joy are a lesson for all Americans. Their stories will make you laugh and weep, and give you a deeper understanding of the wider world in which we live. The Middle of Everywhere moves beyond the headlines into the homes of refugees from around the world. Working as a cultural broker, teacher, and therapist, Mary Pipher has once again opened our eyes--and our hearts--to those with whom we share the future.

In the late 1960s, Farmer Bob Scott begins to act strangely, while his son, Gerry, struggles with his parents, his sister, the draft, and the pressures of his generation, in a story told from the perspective of a wise family of cows. A first novel.

The #1 New York Times bestseller! “Witty, wise, and tender. It's a marvel.” —Paula Hawkins, author of The Girl on the Train and A Slow Fire Burning “To say I love this book is an understatement. It’s a deep psychological mystery about the power of motherhood, the intensity of teenage love, and the danger of perfection. It moved me to tears.” —Reese Witherspoon From the bestselling author of Everything I Never Told You and Our Missing Hearts comes a riveting novel that traces the intertwined fates of the picture-perfect Richardson family and the enigmatic mother and daughter who upend their lives. In Shaker Heights, a placid, progressive suburb of Cleveland, everything is planned—from the layout of the winding roads, to the colors of the houses, to the successful lives its residents will go on to lead. And no one embodies this spirit more than Elena Richardson, whose guiding principle is playing by the rules. Enter Mia Warren—an enigmatic artist and single mother—who arrives in this idyllic bubble with her teenaged daughter Pearl, and rents a house from the Richardsons. Soon Mia and Pearl become more than tenants: all four Richardson children are drawn to the mother-daughter pair. But Mia carries with her a mysterious past and a disregard for the status quo that threatens to upend this carefully ordered community. When old family friends of the Richardsons attempt to adopt a Chinese-American baby, a custody battle erupts that dramatically divides the town—and puts Mia and Elena on opposing sides. Suspicious of Mia and her motives, Elena is determined to uncover the secrets in Mia’s past. But her obsession will come at unexpected and devastating costs. Little Fires Everywhere explores the weight of secrets, the nature of art and identity, and the ferocious pull of motherhood—and the danger of believing that following the rules can avert disaster. Named a Best Book of the Year by: People, The Washington Post, Bustle, Esquire, Southern Living, The Daily Beast, GQ, Entertainment Weekly, NPR, Amazon, Barnes & Noble, iBooks, Audible, Goodreads, Library Reads, Book of the Month, Paste, Kirkus Reviews, St. Louis Post-Dispatch, and many more... Perfect for book clubs! Visit celesteng.com for discussion guides and more.

Winner of the Chicago Tribune‘s 2013 Heartland Prize A critically acclaimed history of Chicago at mid-century, featuring many of the incredible personalities that shaped American culture Before air travel overtook trains, nearly every coast-to-coast journey included a stop in Chicago, and this flow of people and commodities made it the crucible for American culture and innovation. In luminous prose, Chicago native Thomas Dyja re-creates the story of the city in its postwar prime and explains its profound impact on modern America—from Chess Records to Playboy, McDonald’s to the University of Chicago. Populated with an incredible cast of characters, including Mahalia Jackson, Muddy Waters, Howlin’ Wolf, Chuck Berry, Sun Ra, Simone de Beauvoir, Nelson Algren, Gwendolyn Brooks, Studs Turkel, and Mayor Richard J. Daley, The Third Coast recalls the prominence of the Windy City in all its grandeur.

A New York Times Book Review Notable Book of 2020 Winner of the Ernest J. Gaines Award for Literary Excellence “A comically dark coming-of-age story about growing up on the South Side of Chicago, but it’s also social commentary at its finest, woven seamlessly into the work . . . Bump’s meditation on belonging and not belonging, where or with whom, how love is a way home no matter where you are, is handled so beautifully that you don’t know he’s hypnotized you until he’s done.” —Tommy Orange, The New York Times Book Review In this alternately witty and heartbreaking debut novel, Gabriel Bump gives us an unforgettable protagonist, Claude McKay Love. Claude isn’t dangerous or brilliant—he’s an average kid coping with abandonment, violence, riots, failed love, and societal pressures as he steers his way past the signposts of youth: childhood friendships, basketball tryouts, first love, first heartbreak, picking a college, moving away from home. Claude just wants a place where he can fit. As a young black man born on the South Side of Chicago, he is raised by his civil rights–era grandmother, who tries to shape him into a principled actor for change; yet when riots consume his neighborhood, he hesitates to take sides, unwilling to let race define his life. He decides to escape Chicago for another place, to go to college, to find a new identity, to leave the pressure cooker of his hometown behind. But as he discovers, he cannot; there is no safe haven for a young black man in this time and place called America. Percolating with fierceness and originality, attuned to the ironies inherent in our twenty-first-century landscape, Everywhere You Don’t Belong marks the arrival of a brilliant young talent.

One man's affliction is another's gift, and Kenny Hopewell's "special gift" is a terrible memory and virtually no sense of direction. Entrusted by a family friend to deliver a plea for help that might keep his hometown mill from closing, Kenny misses his ride and sets out on foot across an isolated rural area between Lake Ontario and the Adirondacks. Along the way he meets and comes to terms with some of the denizens of this lonely landscape—the Casimir family, who survive on the outskirts of the law; Johnny Percy, a Vietnam veteran still defending his family's abandoned homestead; and Gunnar Molshoc, a well-driller and "witcher"—refugees, like him, from the decay of rural America in the 1980s. Meanwhile, several characters at the local college are struggling to define the college's role in the mill fight and to rescue the soul of higher education. John Harlan is an instructor attempting to write a meaningful dissertation that won't threaten his chances at tenure; Ernest Guppy's notion of himself as a political comic is driving his wife off the deep end; and college president Baxter McAdam and his administrative vice president are locked in a withering campaign to force each other out of power. The novel's setting, a fictional county in upstate New York, is like a braided rug: smooth on the top, all knots underneath. Chained to a dying farm economy and losing its youth to greener pastures, it's the sort of place where refugees from Brooklyn might live next to Amish farmers, who might live next to Italian millworkers, who might live next to a bigot whose house was once a stop on the Underground Railroad. Like so many rural American communities, it has the feel of a self-inflicted wound, and as Kenny comes to understand, sometimes you have to feel pain just to know you're still alive.