My Father’s Glass Eye is Jeannie’s struggle to honour her father, her larger-than-life hero, but also the man who named her after his daughter from a previous marriage, a daughter who died. After his funeral, Jeannie spends the next decade in escalating mania, in and out of hospitals - increasingly obsessed with the other Jeanne. Obsession turns to investigation as she plumbs her childhood awareness of her dead half-sibling and hunts for clues into the mysterious circumstances of her death. It becomes a puzzle she she must solve to better understand herself and her father. Jeannie pulls us into her unravelling with such intimacy that her insanity becomes palpable, even logical. A brilliant exploration of the human psyche, My Father’s Glass Eye deepens our definitions of love, sanity, grief, and recovery.

Quiet misfit Rose doesn't expect to fall in love with the sleepy beach town of Leonora. Nor does she expect to become fast friends with beautiful, vivacious Pearl Kelly, organizer of the high school float at the annual Harvest Festival parade. It's better not to get too attached when Rose and her father live on the road, driving their caravan from one place to the next whenever her dad gets itchy feet. But Rose can't resist the mysterious charms of the town or the popular girl, try as she might. Pearl convinces Rose to visit Edie Baker, once a renowned dressmaker, now a rumored witch. Together Rose and Edie hand-stitch an unforgettable dress of midnight blue for Rose to wear at the Harvest Festival—a dress that will have long-lasting consequences on life in Leonora, a dress that will seal the fate of one of the girls. Karen Foxlee's breathtaking novel weaves friendship, magic, and a murder mystery into something moving, real, and distinctly original.

A sensational collection of stories of the American experience from the Depression to the aftermath of 9/11, by one of the most gifted American writers of the twentieth century and the author of the acclaimed Rabbit series. John Updike mingles narratives of Pennsylvania with stories of New England suburbia and of foreign travel: “Personal Archaeology” considers life as a sequence of half-buried layers, and “The Full Glass” distills a lifetime’s happiness into one brimming moment of an old man’s bedtime routine. High-school class reunions, in “The Walk with Elizanne” and “The Road Home,” restore their hero to youth’s commonwealth where, as the narrator of the title story confides, “the self I value is stored, however infrequently I check on its condition.” Exotic locales encountered in the journeys of adulthood include Morocco, Florida, Spain, Italy, and India. The territory of childhood, with its fundamental, formative mysteries, is explored in “The Guardians,” “The Laughter of the Gods,” and “Kinderszenen.” Love’s fumblings among the bourgeoisie yield the tart comedy of “Free,” “Delicate Wives,” “The Apparition,” and “Outage.”

The Glass Ocean is a story of becoming. Flamehaired, six-foot-two in stocking feet, newly orphaned Carlotta Dell'oro recounts the lives of her parents - solitary glassmaker Leonardo Dell'oro and beautiful, unreachable Clotilde Girard - and discovers in their loves and losses, their omissions and obsessions, the circumstances of her abandonment and the weight of her inheritance. With a master artisan's patience and exquisite craft, debut novelist Lori Baker has created a gemlike Victorian world, a place where mistakes of the past reappear in the future, art can destroy, and family is not to be trusted.

"The author has imbued this book with magic charms, making it an adventuresome voyage through a sometimes entertaining, sometimes alarming, always fascinating, unfamiliar lost world, almost too fantastic to be real, and peopled with as many interesting characters as Alice in Wonderland." ~ Bob Anthony, author of Novus Mirabilis "This book was born from the stories my father told me and my adventure of growing up in a freer time. I realized from a young age how fortunate I had been to have exposure to such a varied experience and I wanted my children to know these people when my dad and I were gone. Cast your memory back and enjoy." ~ Janet Clarkson

Ken Harvey has recently completed a memoir ("A Passionate Engagement") about the same-sex battle in the United States that The Boston Sunday Globe hailed as "MOVING" and "POWERFUL." His collection of stories, "If You Were With Me Everything Would Be All Right," was the winner of the "Violet Quill Award" for best new gay fiction. It was also listed as "a book if note" by the Lambda Literary Review and was a #3 bestseller on the insideout.com book club. The book has been translated into Italian. Ken lives in Boston and Toronto.

Drawing on examples from art, media, fashion, history and memoir, cultural critic Rosemarie Garland-Thomson tackles a basic human interaction which has remained curiously unexplored, the human stare. In the first book of its kind, Garland-Thomson defines staring, explores the factors that motivate it, and considers the targets and the effects of the stare. While borrowing from psychology and biology to help explain why the impulse to stare is so powerful, she also enlarges and complicates these formulations with examples from the realm of imaginative culture. Featuring over forty illustrations, Staring captures the stimulating combination of symbolic, material and emotional factors that make staring so irresistible while endeavoring to shift the usual response to staring, shame, into an engaged self-consideration. Elegant and provocative, this unique study advances new ways of thinking about visuality and the body that will appeal to readers who are interested in the overlap between the humanities and human behaviors.

On January 2, 1972, Mark Arax's childhood came to a sudden, explosive end when his father was shot to death at his nightclub in Fresno, California. It was one of the most sensational murders in California's heartland, and it was never solved. Mark, only fifteen years old at the time, was left with a legacy of questions: Were the rumors about his father true? Had he led a double life? Was he killed because of his dealings with the underworld? Mark Arax, an award-winning journalist at the Los Angeles Times, now writes a searing, intensely personal account of his twenty-two-year search for answers about his father's life and death, and his own identity. As the oldest child, Mark was thrust into the role of patriarch. His quest for answers began in high school, when he sought out his father's father, an Armenian immigrant. His grandfather opened a window into an old country world full of promise and heartbreak -- and four generations of eccentric family members. Two decades later, Mark uprooted his wife and baby and returned to Fresno under an assumed name to try and determine who killed his father and why. Fearing for his own life, he discovers his father was murdered just before he was going to make a startling disclosure. More than a true-life murder mystery, more than an exploration of family and culture, In My Father's Name is the poignant story of one man's remarkable journey as he uncovers long-hidden secrets about his father, his family, his heritage, and the town he once called home.

My parents grew up in a time that most of us only read about in history books. They saw history made many times. Their generation created the advantages that we take for granted today. Like us they, too, had to rely on the Lord Jesus for strength, courage, and pure grit to get through the dangers they faced each day. They still managed to raise five healthy children, all of whom are capable productive members of society. There was a great variety of experiences throughout their lives and through these have been able to learn and grow as part of the Australian community. These lessons have been passed on to not only their children but to the many people that they have come into contact with throughout their days in ministry, farming, and community service as well. They unselfishly offered me this project. I am pleased to be able to share some of their lessons with the whole wide world through this book. As I presented each article, I was made aware that there was an extra blessing that I could claim. I have added these at the end of each contribution. We, their children, have been very blessed to have had such wonderful parents as our role models in life. My prayer is that this book may bring some insight into what life was like in times past. May it also help us all to be grateful for the determination that their generation had to give us the advantages we have today!

Discover the heart-warming and uplifting story of a Glasgow tenement urchin finding her way against adversity Born during the Second World War in Glasgow, Christine Fraser was her mother's eighth child. Growing up with her siblings in a tiny flat, learning to avoid her hardworking, hard-drinking one-eyed father, making a menace of herself in the streets along with the other urchins, Christine lived an impoverished life but never once cared. Until she was struck down by a terrible illness. Suddenly, her wild days of childhood were over. A long spell in hospital completely changed her life. Now she found herself dependent on others for so many of her needs. And on top of that, her mother and father have died. Yet Christine was always resourceful and never once looked down. She knew that always there, if you looked hard enough, was some blue up above the chimneys . . . Readers are captivated by Blue Above the Chimneys 'Keeps you enthralled from the first to the last chapter' 5***** Reader Review 'Christine wrote with so much passion that you could envisage each and every scene' 5***** Reader Review 'A joyous read' 5***** Reader Review