https://padlet.com/lisa_steel1/ubi0nofiz7o5mlry en-us 2020-05-08 19:01:45 UTC 2020-05-22 11:50:13 UTC hello@padlet.com https://imgglb.padletcdn.com/v13/image?t=g_auto&url=https%3A%2F%2Fpadlet.net%2Ficons%2Fpng%2F1f4da.png lisa_steel1 https://padlet.com/lisa_steel1/ubi0nofiz7o5mlry/wish/560550090 The Whip is inspired by the true story of a woman, Charlotte "Charley" Parkhurst (1812-1879) who lived most of her extraordinary life as a man in the old west.


]]> 2020-05-08 19:01:45 UTC https://padlet.com/lisa_steel1/ubi0nofiz7o5mlry/wish/560550090 lisa_steel1 https://padlet.com/lisa_steel1/ubi0nofiz7o5mlry/wish/560550107 In this unforgettable portrait of human frailty and resilience, Kristin Hannah reveals the indomitable character of the modern American pioneer and the spirit of a vanishing Alaska―a place of incomparable beauty and danger. The Great Alone is a daring, beautiful, stay-up-all-night story about love and loss, the fight for survival, and the wildness that lives in both man and nature.

]]> 2020-05-08 19:01:45 UTC https://padlet.com/lisa_steel1/ubi0nofiz7o5mlry/wish/560550107 lisa_steel1 https://padlet.com/lisa_steel1/ubi0nofiz7o5mlry/wish/560550115 Everyone knows Daisy Jones & The Six, but nobody knows the reason behind their split at the absolute height of their popularity . . . until now.
The making of that legend is chronicled in this riveting and unforgettable novel, written as an oral history of one of the biggest bands of the seventies. Taylor Jenkins Reid is a talented writer who takes her work to a new level with Daisy Jones & The Six, brilliantly capturing a place and time in an utterly distinctive voice.]]> 2020-05-08 19:01:45 UTC https://padlet.com/lisa_steel1/ubi0nofiz7o5mlry/wish/560550115 lisa_steel1 https://padlet.com/lisa_steel1/ubi0nofiz7o5mlry/wish/560559364 At the end of the Second World War, Cyril Conroy combines luck and a single canny investment to begin an enormous real estate empire, propelling his family from poverty to enormous wealth. His first order of business is to buy the Dutch House, a lavish estate in the suburbs outside of Philadelphia. Meant as a surprise for his wife, the house sets in motion the undoing of everyone he loves.]]> 2020-05-08 19:07:10 UTC https://padlet.com/lisa_steel1/ubi0nofiz7o5mlry/wish/560559364 lisa_steel1 https://padlet.com/lisa_steel1/ubi0nofiz7o5mlry/wish/560572556 Fool--the bawdy and outrageous New York Times bestseller from the unstoppable Christopher Moore--is a hilarious new take on William Shakespeare's King Lear...as seen through the eyes of the foolish liege's clownish jester, Pocket. A rousing tale of "gratuitous shagging, murder, spanking, maiming, treason, and heretofore unexplored heights of vulgarity and profanity," Fooljoins Moore's own Lamb, Fluke, The Stupidest Angel, and You Suck!as modern masterworks of satiric wit and sublimely twisted genius, prompting Carl Hiassen to declare Christopher Moore "a very sick man, in the very best sense of the word."]]> 2020-05-08 19:14:13 UTC https://padlet.com/lisa_steel1/ubi0nofiz7o5mlry/wish/560572556 lisa_steel1 https://padlet.com/lisa_steel1/ubi0nofiz7o5mlry/wish/560577177 The birth of Jesus has been well chronicled, as have his glorious teachings, acts, and divine sacrifice after his thirtieth birthday. But no one knows about the early life of the Son of God, the missing years—except Biff, the Messiah's best bud, who has been resurrected to tell the story in the divinely hilarious yet heartfelt work "reminiscent of Vonnegut and Douglas Adams" ]]> 2020-05-08 19:17:08 UTC https://padlet.com/lisa_steel1/ubi0nofiz7o5mlry/wish/560577177 lisa_steel1 https://padlet.com/lisa_steel1/ubi0nofiz7o5mlry/wish/560580719 A fatal accident, a gruesome murder, a drowning, a questionable suicide, and missing chapters from a manuscript are all connected in Magpie Murders by Anthony Horowitz. This murder story within a murder story includes the text of Magpie Murders, the final novel written by fictional author Alan Conway. When Cloverleaf Books Editor Susan Ryeland discovered that the final chapter to this novel was missing she began looking for it only to realize later that she had begun a journey that would change her entire life.]]> 2020-05-08 19:19:22 UTC https://padlet.com/lisa_steel1/ubi0nofiz7o5mlry/wish/560580719 lisa_steel1 https://padlet.com/lisa_steel1/ubi0nofiz7o5mlry/wish/560589198 Peek beneath the surface of an extraordinary small-town opera company, and get to know a fabulous cast of characters: determined fl irts, a lusty singing gaucho, ingenious manipulators, a bipolar ketchup heiress, devious lovers, and some very determined ghosts. Delve into high society in Hankey, PA-a world of simmering seductions, convoluted mysteries and entertaining intrigues. You may laugh out loud. You may cheer for the gang of misfi ts trying to save their opera house from foreclosure by improbably staging a world-class production of Mozart's masterpiece. You may feel a tug at your heartstrings as lonely lovers look for new romance. Gale Martin's new novel, Don Juan in Hankey, PA, will delight readers everywhere.]]> 2020-05-08 19:24:20 UTC https://padlet.com/lisa_steel1/ubi0nofiz7o5mlry/wish/560589198 lisa_steel1 https://padlet.com/lisa_steel1/ubi0nofiz7o5mlry/wish/560593654 También de este lado hay sueños. On this side, too, there are dreams.

Lydia Quixano Pérez lives in the Mexican city of Acapulco. She runs a bookstore. She has a son, Luca, the love of her life, and a wonderful husband who is a journalist. And while there are cracks beginning to show in Acapulco because of the drug cartels, her life is, by and large, fairly comfortable.

Even though she knows they’ll never sell, Lydia stocks some of her all-time favorite books in her store. And then one day a man enters the shop to browse and comes up to the register with a few books he would like to buy—two of them her favorites. Javier is erudite. He is charming. And, unbeknownst to Lydia, he is the jefe of the newest drug cartel that has gruesomely taken over the city. When Lydia’s husband’s tell-all profile of Javier is published, none of their lives will ever be the same.]]> 2020-05-08 19:27:00 UTC https://padlet.com/lisa_steel1/ubi0nofiz7o5mlry/wish/560593654 lisa_steel1 https://padlet.com/lisa_steel1/ubi0nofiz7o5mlry/wish/560608133 A striking and surprising debut novel from an exhilarating new voice, Such a Fun Age is a page-turning and big-hearted story about race and privilege, set around a young black babysitter, her well-intentioned employer, and a surprising connection that threatens to undo them both.]]> 2020-05-08 19:36:04 UTC https://padlet.com/lisa_steel1/ubi0nofiz7o5mlry/wish/560608133 lisa_steel1 https://padlet.com/lisa_steel1/ubi0nofiz7o5mlry/wish/560613439 Under the influence of their charismatic classics professor, a group of clever, eccentric misfits at an elite New England college discover a way of thinking and living that is a world away from the humdrum existence of their contemporaries. But when they go beyond the boundaries of normal morality they slip gradually from obsession to corruption and betrayal, and at last - inexorably - into evil. ]]> 2020-05-08 19:39:17 UTC https://padlet.com/lisa_steel1/ubi0nofiz7o5mlry/wish/560613439 lisa_steel1 https://padlet.com/lisa_steel1/ubi0nofiz7o5mlry/wish/560620580 Smart and juicy, a compulsively readable novel about a previously happy group of friends and parents that is nearly destroyed by their own competitiveness when an exclusive school for gifted children opens in the community  This deliciously sharp novel captures the relentless ambitions and fears that animate parents and their children in modern America, exploring the conflicts between achievement and potential, talent and privilege. ]]> 2020-05-08 19:43:43 UTC https://padlet.com/lisa_steel1/ubi0nofiz7o5mlry/wish/560620580 lisa_steel1 https://padlet.com/lisa_steel1/ubi0nofiz7o5mlry/wish/560624223 A profoundly moving novel about two neighboring families in a suburban town, the bond between their children, a tragedy that reverberates over four decades, the daily intimacies of marriage, and the power of forgiveness.

Francis Gleeson and Brian Stanhope, two rookie cops in the NYPD, live next door to each other outside the city. What happens behind closed doors in both houses—the loneliness of Francis’s wife, Lena, and the instability of Brian’s wife, Anne—sets the stage for the explosive events to come.]]> 2020-05-08 19:46:01 UTC https://padlet.com/lisa_steel1/ubi0nofiz7o5mlry/wish/560624223 lisa_steel1 https://padlet.com/lisa_steel1/ubi0nofiz7o5mlry/wish/560627418 The compulsively readable, behind-the-scenes memoir that takes readers inside the Obama White House, through the eyes of a young staffer learning the ropes, falling in love, and finding her place in the world.]]> 2020-05-08 19:48:01 UTC https://padlet.com/lisa_steel1/ubi0nofiz7o5mlry/wish/560627418 lisa_steel1 https://padlet.com/lisa_steel1/ubi0nofiz7o5mlry/wish/560630779 Set in the days of civilization's collapse, Station Eleven tells the story of a Hollywood star, his would-be savior, and a nomadic group of actors roaming the scattered outposts of the Great Lakes region, risking everything for art and humanity.]]> 2020-05-08 19:50:14 UTC https://padlet.com/lisa_steel1/ubi0nofiz7o5mlry/wish/560630779 lisa_steel1 https://padlet.com/lisa_steel1/ubi0nofiz7o5mlry/wish/560634523 A beautiful scarf, passed down through the generations, connects two women who learn that the weight of the world is made bearable by the love we give away....

]]> 2020-05-08 19:52:24 UTC https://padlet.com/lisa_steel1/ubi0nofiz7o5mlry/wish/560634523 lisa_steel1 https://padlet.com/lisa_steel1/ubi0nofiz7o5mlry/wish/560645411 Offred is a Handmaid in the Republic of Gilead. She may leave the home of the Commander and his wife once a day to walk to food markets whose signs are now pictures instead of words because women are no longer allowed to read. She must lie on her back once a month and pray that the Commander makes her pregnant, because in an age of declining births, Offred and the other Handmaids are valued only if their ovaries are viable. Offred can remember the years before, when she lived and made love with her husband, Luke; when she played with and protected her daughter; when she had a job, money of her own, and access to knowledge. But all of that is gone now . . . ]]> 2020-05-08 19:59:33 UTC https://padlet.com/lisa_steel1/ubi0nofiz7o5mlry/wish/560645411 lisa_steel1 https://padlet.com/lisa_steel1/ubi0nofiz7o5mlry/wish/560647849 Memphis, 1939. Twelve-year-old Rill Foss and her four younger siblings live a magical life aboard their family’s Mississippi River shantyboat. But when their father must rush their mother to the hospital one stormy night, Rill is left in charge—until strangers arrive in force. Wrenched from all that is familiar and thrown into a Tennessee Children’s Home Society orphanage, the Foss children are assured that they will soon be returned to their parents—but they quickly realize the dark truth. At the mercy of the facility’s cruel director, Rill fights to keep her sisters and brother together in a world of danger and uncertainty.]]> 2020-05-08 20:01:08 UTC https://padlet.com/lisa_steel1/ubi0nofiz7o5mlry/wish/560647849 lisa_steel1 https://padlet.com/lisa_steel1/ubi0nofiz7o5mlry/wish/560654422 Vincent, Jules, Sylvie, and Sam are ruthlessly ambitious high-flyers working in the lucrative world of Wall Street finance where deception and intimidation thrive. Getting rich is all that matters, and they'll do anything to reach the top.

When they are ordered to participate in a corporate team-building exercise that requires them to escape from a locked elevator, dark secrets of their team begin to be laid bare.

The biggest mystery to solve in this lethal game: What happened to Sara Hall? Once a young shining star—”now gone but not forgotten”.

This is no longer a game. 
They’re fighting for their lives.]]> 2020-05-08 20:05:19 UTC https://padlet.com/lisa_steel1/ubi0nofiz7o5mlry/wish/560654422 lisa_steel1 https://padlet.com/lisa_steel1/ubi0nofiz7o5mlry/wish/560661790 From the author of the runaway bestseller The Orphan’s Talecomes a remarkable story of friendship and courage centered around three women and a ring of female spies during World War II.]]> 2020-05-08 20:10:01 UTC https://padlet.com/lisa_steel1/ubi0nofiz7o5mlry/wish/560661790 lisa_steel1 https://padlet.com/lisa_steel1/ubi0nofiz7o5mlry/wish/560665826 Before. Miles “Pudge” Halter is done with his safe life at home. His whole life has been one big non-event, and his obsession with famous last words has only made him crave “the Great Perhaps” even more (Francois Rabelais, poet). He heads off to the sometimes crazy and anything-but-boring world of Culver Creek Boarding School, and his life becomes the opposite of safe. Because down the hall is Alaska Young. The gorgeous, clever, funny, sexy, self-destructive, screwed up, and utterly fascinating Alaska Young. She is an event unto herself. She pulls Pudge into her world, launches him into the Great Perhaps, and steals his heart. Then. . . .
After. Nothing is ever the same.]]> 2020-05-08 20:12:44 UTC https://padlet.com/lisa_steel1/ubi0nofiz7o5mlry/wish/560665826 lisa_steel1 https://padlet.com/lisa_steel1/ubi0nofiz7o5mlry/wish/560669305 FRANCE, 1939

In the quiet village of Carriveau, Vianne Mauriac says goodbye to her husband, Antoine, as he heads for the Front. She doesn’t believe that the Nazis will invade France…but invade they do, in droves of marching soldiers, in caravans of trucks and tanks, in planes that fill the skies and drop bombs upon the innocent. When a German captain requisitions Vianne’s home, she and her daughter must live with the enemy or lose everything. Without food or money or hope, as danger escalates all around them, she is forced to make one impossible choice after another to keep her family alive.]]> 2020-05-08 20:15:00 UTC https://padlet.com/lisa_steel1/ubi0nofiz7o5mlry/wish/560669305 lisa_steel1 https://padlet.com/lisa_steel1/ubi0nofiz7o5mlry/wish/560671763 Based on the true story of a forgotten hero, Beneath a Scarlet Skyis the triumphant, epic tale of one young man’s incredible courage and resilience during one of history’s darkest hours.]]> 2020-05-08 20:16:45 UTC https://padlet.com/lisa_steel1/ubi0nofiz7o5mlry/wish/560671763 lisa_steel1 https://padlet.com/lisa_steel1/ubi0nofiz7o5mlry/wish/560736935 Fifteen-year-old Ana Cancion never dreamed of moving to America, the way the girls she grew up with in the Dominican countryside did. But when Juan Ruiz proposes and promises to take her to New York City, she has to say yes. It doesn’t matter that he is twice her age, that there is no love between them. Their marriage is an opportunity for her entire close-knit family to eventually immigrate. So on New Year’s Day, 1965, Ana leaves behind everything she knows and becomes Ana Ruiz, a wife confined to a cold six-floor walk-up in Washington Heights. Lonely and miserable, Ana hatches a reckless plan to escape. But at the bus terminal, she is stopped by Cesar, Juan’s free-spirited younger brother, who convinces her to stay...]]> 2020-05-08 21:03:51 UTC https://padlet.com/lisa_steel1/ubi0nofiz7o5mlry/wish/560736935 lisa_steel1 https://padlet.com/lisa_steel1/ubi0nofiz7o5mlry/wish/560744161 As the Civil Rights movement begins to reach the black enclave of Frenchtown in segregated Tallahassee, Elwood Curtis takes the words of Dr. Martin Luther King to heart: He is "as good as anyone." Abandoned by his parents, but kept on the straight and narrow by his grandmother, Elwood is about to enroll in the local black college. But for a black boy in the Jim Crow South in the early 1960s, one innocent mistake is enough to destroy the future. Elwood is sentenced to a juvenile reformatory called The Nickel Academy, whose mission statement says it provides "physical, intellectual and moral training" so the delinquent boys in their charge can become "honorable and honest men."

In reality, The Nickel Academy is a grotesque chamber of horrors, where the sadistic staff beats and sexually abuses the students, corrupt officials and locals steal food and supplies, and any boy who resists is likely to disappear "out back." Stunned to find himself in such a vicious environment, Elwood tries to hold on to Dr. King's ringing assertion "Throw us in jail and we will still love you." His friend Turner thinks Elwood is worse than naive, that the world is crooked and the only way to survive is to scheme and avoid trouble. ]]> 2020-05-08 21:09:36 UTC https://padlet.com/lisa_steel1/ubi0nofiz7o5mlry/wish/560744161 lisa_steel1 https://padlet.com/lisa_steel1/ubi0nofiz7o5mlry/wish/560746578 A Place for Us unfolds the lives of an Indian-American Muslim family, gathered together in their Californian hometown to celebrate the eldest daughter, Hadia's, wedding - a match of love rather than tradition. It is here, on this momentous day, that Amar, the youngest of the siblings, reunites with his family for the first time in three years. Rafiq and Layla must now contend with the choices and betrayals that lead to their son's estrangement - the reckoning of parents who strove to pass on their cultures and traditions to their children; and of children who in turn struggle to balance authenticity in themselves with loyalty to the home they came from.

]]> 2020-05-08 21:11:30 UTC https://padlet.com/lisa_steel1/ubi0nofiz7o5mlry/wish/560746578 lisa_steel1 https://padlet.com/lisa_steel1/ubi0nofiz7o5mlry/wish/567513688 Yejide and Akin have been married since they met and fell in love at university. Though many expected Akin to take several wives, he and Yejide have always agreed: polygamy is not for them. But four years into their marriage--after consulting fertility doctors and healers, trying strange teas and unlikely cures--Yejide is still not pregnant. She assumes she still has time--until her family arrives on her doorstep with a young woman they introduce as Akin's second wife. Furious, shocked, and livid with jealousy, Yejide knows the only way to save her marriage is to get pregnant, which, finally, she does--but at a cost far greater than she could have dared to imagine. An electrifying novel of enormous emotional power, Stay With Measks how much we can sacrifice for the sake of family.]]> 2020-05-12 13:29:55 UTC https://padlet.com/lisa_steel1/ubi0nofiz7o5mlry/wish/567513688 lisa_steel1 https://padlet.com/lisa_steel1/ubi0nofiz7o5mlry/wish/567524783 In Tokyo, sixteen-year-old Nao has decided there’s only one escape from her aching loneliness and her classmates’ bullying, but before she ends it all, Nao plans to document the life of her great-grandmother, a Buddhist nun who’s lived more than a century. A diary is Nao’s only solace—and will touch lives in a ways she can scarcely imagine.

Across the Pacific, we meet Ruth, a novelist living on a remote island who discovers a collection of artifacts washed ashore in a Hello Kitty lunchbox—possibly debris from the devastating 2011 tsunami. As the mystery of its contents unfolds, Ruth is pulled into the past, into Nao’s drama and her unknown fate, and forward into her own future. ]]> 2020-05-12 13:33:45 UTC https://padlet.com/lisa_steel1/ubi0nofiz7o5mlry/wish/567524783 lisa_steel1 https://padlet.com/lisa_steel1/ubi0nofiz7o5mlry/wish/567533640 In 2014, Theranos founder and CEO Elizabeth Holmes was widely seen as the female Steve Jobs: a brilliant Stanford dropout whose startup "unicorn" promised to revolutionize the medical industry with a machine that would make blood tests significantly faster and easier. Backed by investors such as Larry Ellison and Tim Draper, Theranos sold shares in a fundraising round that valued the company at $9 billion, putting Holmes's worth at an estimated $4.7 billion. There was just one problem: The technology didn't work.

For years, Holmes had been misleading investors, FDA officials, and her own employees. When Carreyrou, working at The Wall Street Journal, got a tip from a former Theranos employee and started asking questions, both Carreyrou and the Journal were threatened with lawsuits. Undaunted, the newspaper ran the first of dozens of Theranos articles in late 2015. By early 2017, the company's value was zero and Holmes faced potential legal action from the government and her investors. Here is the riveting story of the biggest corporate fraud since Enron, a disturbing cautionary tale set amid the bold promises and gold-rush frenzy of Silicon Valley.]]> 2020-05-12 13:36:48 UTC https://padlet.com/lisa_steel1/ubi0nofiz7o5mlry/wish/567533640 lisa_steel1 https://padlet.com/lisa_steel1/ubi0nofiz7o5mlry/wish/567550826 An exquisite memoir about how to live--and love--every day with "death in the room," from poet Nina Riggs, mother of two young sons and the direct descendant of Ralph Waldo Emerson, in the tradition of When Breath Becomes Air.

"We are breathless, but we love the days. They are promises. They are the only way to walk from one night to the other."

Nina Riggs was just thirty-seven years old when initially diagnosed with breast cancer--one small spot. Within a year, the mother of two sons, ages seven and nine, and married sixteen years to her best friend, received the devastating news that her cancer was terminal.

How does one live each day, "unattached to outcome"? How does one approach the moments, big and small, with both love and honesty?

]]> 2020-05-12 13:42:50 UTC https://padlet.com/lisa_steel1/ubi0nofiz7o5mlry/wish/567550826 lisa_steel1 https://padlet.com/lisa_steel1/ubi0nofiz7o5mlry/wish/567562353 An unflinching, darkly funny, and deeply moving story of a boy, his seriously ill mother, and an unexpected monstrous visitor. 

At seven minutes past midnight, thirteen-year-old Conor wakes to find a monster outside his bedroom window. But it isn't the monster Conor's been expecting - he's been expecting the one from his nightmare, the nightmare he's had nearly every night since his mother started her treatments. The monster in his backyard is different. It's ancient. And wild. And it wants something from Conor. Something terrible and dangerous. It wants the truth.

From the final idea of award-winning author Siobhan Dowd - whose premature death from cancer prevented her from writing it herself - Patrick Ness has spun a haunting and darkly funny novel of mischief, loss, and monsters both real and imagined.]]> 2020-05-12 13:46:46 UTC https://padlet.com/lisa_steel1/ubi0nofiz7o5mlry/wish/567562353 lisa_steel1 https://padlet.com/lisa_steel1/ubi0nofiz7o5mlry/wish/567593944 “How do we become who we are in the world? We ask the world to teach us.” In her travels from the Gulf of Mexico to Alaska, Pam Houston explores what ties her to the earth—her 120-acre homestead in the Colorado Rockies most of all. Here, elk calves and bluebirds mark the changing seasons, winter temperatures drop to 35 below, and lightning sparks a 110,000-acre wildfire in a dry summer, threatening her century-old barn and its inhabitants. Alongside her devoted Irish wolfhounds, Houston learns what it means to take responsibility for a piece of land and the creatures on it.

A survivor of parental abuse and neglect, Houston also discovers how the natural world has mothered and healed her. Deep Creekdelivers her most profound meditations yet on how “to live simultaneously inside the wonder and the grief . . . to love the damaged world and do what I can to help it thrive.” ]]> 2020-05-12 13:57:01 UTC https://padlet.com/lisa_steel1/ubi0nofiz7o5mlry/wish/567593944 lisa_steel1 https://padlet.com/lisa_steel1/ubi0nofiz7o5mlry/wish/567601406 As a young reporter for The New York Times, in 1961 Gay Talese published his first book, New York: A Serendipiter's Journey, a series of vignettes and essays that began, "New York is a city of things unnoticed". It is a city with cats sleeping under parked cars, two stone armadillos crawling up St. Patrick's Cathedral, and thousands of ants creeping on top of the Empire State Building.

Attention to detail and observation of the unnoticed is the hallmark of Gay Talese's writing, and The Gay Talese Reader brings together the best of his essays and classic profiles. This collection opens with "New York Is a City of Things Unnoticed" and includes "Silent Season of a Hero" (about Joe DiMaggio), "Ali in Havana" and "Looking for Hemingway" as well as several other favorite pieces. It also features a previously unpublished article on the infamous case of Lorena and John Wayne Bobbitt, and concludes with the autobiographical pieces that are among Talese's finest writings. These works give insight into the progression of a writer at the pinnacle of his craft.]]> 2020-05-12 13:59:28 UTC https://padlet.com/lisa_steel1/ubi0nofiz7o5mlry/wish/567601406 lisa_steel1 https://padlet.com/lisa_steel1/ubi0nofiz7o5mlry/wish/567607157 'Santaland Diaries' contains six of David Sedaris' most profound Christmas stories, from Dinah, the Christmas Whore to Season's Greetings to our Friends and Family.]]> 2020-05-12 14:01:23 UTC https://padlet.com/lisa_steel1/ubi0nofiz7o5mlry/wish/567607157 lisa_steel1 https://padlet.com/lisa_steel1/ubi0nofiz7o5mlry/wish/567610698 For the last twenty years, Melinda Gates has been on a mission. Her goal, as co-chair of the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, has been to find solutions for people with the most urgent needs, wherever they live. Throughout this journey, one thing has become increasingly clear to her: If you want to lift a society up, invest in women.

In this candid and inspiring book, Gates traces her awakening to the link between women's empowerment and the health of societies. She shows some of the tremendous opportunities that exist right now to “turbo-charge" change. And she provides simple and effective ways each one of us can make a difference.]]> 2020-05-12 14:02:36 UTC https://padlet.com/lisa_steel1/ubi0nofiz7o5mlry/wish/567610698 lisa_steel1 https://padlet.com/lisa_steel1/ubi0nofiz7o5mlry/wish/570713065 On the dock of a lake in a tiny town at the corner of Nowhere & Nowhere, he sits counting the seconds until his high school graduation—at which point Arthur M. Flood intends to leave his hick life far behind in the brown Kansas dust. That's the plan. Until . . . up from the lake's muddy depths swims a girl. She's not a mermaid, but she is the one who shakes up Arty's life, makes him mad and mad for her, and helps him find a pathway to his past, his future, and where his heart truly lies.

Teens will recognize their own emotional landscape in this steamy, funny, coming-of-age tale in which the heart tries to hide, only to be utterly exposed by love and lust, lost and found.]]> 2020-05-13 17:10:29 UTC https://padlet.com/lisa_steel1/ubi0nofiz7o5mlry/wish/570713065 lisa_steel1 https://padlet.com/lisa_steel1/ubi0nofiz7o5mlry/wish/570735281 In 1925, Josephine is the proud owner of a thriving farm. As a child, she channeled otherworldly power to free herself from slavery. Now, her new neighbor, a white woman named Charlotte, seeks her company, and an uneasy friendship grows between them. But Charlotte has also sought solace in the Ku Klux Klan, a relationship that jeopardizes Josephine's family.

Nearly one hundred years later, Josephine's descendant, Ava, is a single mother who has just lost her job. She moves in with her white grandmother Martha, a wealthy but lonely woman who pays her grandchild to be her companion. But Martha's behavior soon becomes erratic, then even threatening, and Ava must escape before her story and Josephine's converge.

]]> 2020-05-13 17:18:56 UTC https://padlet.com/lisa_steel1/ubi0nofiz7o5mlry/wish/570735281 lisa_steel1 https://padlet.com/lisa_steel1/ubi0nofiz7o5mlry/wish/570886399 “I am Ana. I was the wife of Jesus.”

Raised in a wealthy family in Sepphoris with ties to the ruler of Galilee, Ana is rebellious and ambitious, a relentless seeker with a brilliant, curious mind and a daring spirit. She yearns for a pursuit worthy of her life, but finds no outlet for her considerable talents. Defying the expectations placed on women, she engages in furtive scholarly pursuits and writes secret narratives about neglected and silenced women. When she meets the eighteen-year-old Jesus, each is drawn to and enriched by the other’s spiritual and philosophical ideas. He becomes a floodgate for her intellect, but also the awakener of her heart.
Grounded in meticulous historical research and written with a reverential approach to Jesus’s life that focuses on his humanity, The Book of Longings is an inspiring account of one woman’s bold struggle to realize the passion and potential inside her, while living in a time, place, and culture devised to silence her.]]> 2020-05-13 18:19:43 UTC https://padlet.com/lisa_steel1/ubi0nofiz7o5mlry/wish/570886399 lisa_steel1 https://padlet.com/lisa_steel1/ubi0nofiz7o5mlry/wish/570929790 The heartrending story of a midcentury American family with twelve children, six of them diagnosed with schizophrenia, that became science's great hope in the quest to understand the disease.

Don and Mimi Galvin seemed to be living the American dream. After World War II, Don's work with the Air Force brought them to Colorado, where their twelve children perfectly spanned the baby boom: the oldest born in 1945, the youngest in 1965. In those years, there was an established script for a family like the Galvins—aspiration, hard work, upward mobility, domestic harmony—and they worked hard to play their parts. But behind the scenes was a different story: psychological breakdown, sudden shocking violence, hidden abuse. By the mid-1970s, six of the ten Galvin boys, one after another, were diagnosed as schizophrenic. How could all this happen to one family?
What took place inside the house on Hidden Valley Road was so extraordinary that the Galvins became one of the first families to be studied by the National Institute of Mental Health.]]> 2020-05-13 18:38:41 UTC https://padlet.com/lisa_steel1/ubi0nofiz7o5mlry/wish/570929790 lisa_steel1 https://padlet.com/lisa_steel1/ubi0nofiz7o5mlry/wish/571004373 Paris between the wars teems with artists, writers, and musicians, a glittering crucible of genius. But amidst the dazzling creativity of the city’s most famous citizens, four regular people are each searching for something they’ve lost.

Camille was the maid of Marcel Proust, and she has a secret: when she was asked to burn her employer’s notebooks, she saved one for herself. Now she is desperate to find it before her betrayal is revealed. Souren, an Armenian refugee, performs puppet shows for children that are nothing like the fairy tales they expect. Lovesick artist Guillaume is down on his luck and running from a debt he cannot repay—but when Gertrude Stein walks into his studio, he wonders if this is the day everything could change. And Jean-Paul is a journalist who tells other people’s stories, because his own is too painful to tell. When the quartet’s paths finally cross in an unforgettable climax, each discovers if they will find what they are looking for.

Told over the course of a single day in 1927, The Paris Hours takes four ordinary people whose stories, told together, are as extraordinary as the glorious city they inhabit.]]> 2020-05-13 19:11:27 UTC https://padlet.com/lisa_steel1/ubi0nofiz7o5mlry/wish/571004373 lisa_steel1 https://padlet.com/lisa_steel1/ubi0nofiz7o5mlry/wish/571050274 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.]]> 2020-05-13 19:32:52 UTC https://padlet.com/lisa_steel1/ubi0nofiz7o5mlry/wish/571050274 lisa_steel1 https://padlet.com/lisa_steel1/ubi0nofiz7o5mlry/wish/571055543 The author of Bird in Hand and The Way Life Should Be delivers her most ambitious and powerful novel to date: a captivating story of two very different women who build an unexpected friendship: a 91-year-old woman with a hidden past as an orphan-train rider and the teenage girl whose own troubled adolescence leads her to seek answers to questions no one has ever thought to ask.

Nearly eighteen, Molly Ayer knows she has one last chance. Just months from "aging out" of the child welfare system, and close to being kicked out of her foster home, a community service position helping an elderly woman clean out her home is the only thing keeping her out of juvie and worse.

Vivian Daly has lived a quiet life on the coast of Maine. But in her attic, hidden in trunks, are vestiges of a turbulent past. As she helps Vivian sort through her possessions and memories, Molly discovers that she and Vivian aren't as different as they seem to be. A young Irish immigrant orphaned in New York City, Vivian was put on a train to the Midwest with hundreds of other children whose destinies would be determined by luck and chance.]]> 2020-05-13 19:35:24 UTC https://padlet.com/lisa_steel1/ubi0nofiz7o5mlry/wish/571055543 lisa_steel1 https://padlet.com/lisa_steel1/ubi0nofiz7o5mlry/wish/571092969 The mega-talented creator of Grey’s Anatomy and Scandal and executive producer of How to Get Away With Murder chronicles how saying YES for one year changed her life―and how it can change yours, too.

With three hit shows on television and three children at home, the uber-talented Shonda Rhimes had lots of good reasons to say NO when an unexpected invitation arrived. Hollywood party? No. Speaking engagement? No. Media appearances? No.

And there was the side benefit of saying No for an introvert like Shonda: nothing new to fear.

Then Shonda’s sister laid down a challenge: just for one year, try to say YES to the unexpected invitations that come your way. Shonda reluctantly agreed―and the result was nothing short of transformative. In Year of Yes, Shonda Rhimes chronicles the powerful impact saying Yes had on every aspect of her life―and how we can all change our lives with one little word. Yes. ]]> 2020-05-13 19:53:13 UTC https://padlet.com/lisa_steel1/ubi0nofiz7o5mlry/wish/571092969 lisa_steel1 https://padlet.com/lisa_steel1/ubi0nofiz7o5mlry/wish/571098502 The compelling, inspiring, and comically sublime New York Times bestseller about one man’s coming-of-age, set during the twilight of apartheid and the tumultuous days of freedom that followed.

Trevor Noah’s unlikely path from apartheid South Africa to the desk of The Daily Show began with a criminal act: his birth. Trevor was born to a white Swiss father and a black Xhosa mother at a time when such a union was punishable by five years in prison. Living proof of his parents’ indiscretion, Trevor was kept mostly indoors for the earliest years of his life, bound by the extreme and often absurd measures his mother took to hide him from a government that could, at any moment, steal him away. Finally liberated by the end of South Africa’s tyrannical white rule, Trevor and his mother set forth on a grand adventure, living openly and freely and embracing the opportunities won by a centuries-long struggle.]]> 2020-05-13 19:55:53 UTC https://padlet.com/lisa_steel1/ubi0nofiz7o5mlry/wish/571098502 lisa_steel1 https://padlet.com/lisa_steel1/ubi0nofiz7o5mlry/wish/571104025 A little more than a century from now, our world has been utterly transformed. After years of slowly overtaking the continent, rising floodwaters have obliterated America’s great coastal cities and then its heartland, leaving nothing but an archipelago of mountaintop colonies surrounded by a deep expanse of open water.

Stubbornly independent Myra and her precocious seven-year-old daughter, Pearl, fish from their small boat, the Bird, visiting dry land only to trade for supplies and information in the few remaining outposts of civilization. For seven years, Myra has grieved the loss of her oldest daughter, Row, who was stolen by her father after a monstrous deluge overtook their home in Nebraska. Then, in a violent confrontation with a stranger, Myra suddenly discovers that Row was last seen in a far-off encampment near the Arctic Circle. Throwing aside her usual caution, Myra and Pearl embark on a perilous voyage into the icy northern seas, hoping against hope that Row will still be there.

On their journey, Myra and Pearl join forces with a larger ship and Myra finds herself bonding with her fellow seekers who hope to build a safe haven together in this dangerous new world. But secrets, lust, and betrayals threaten their dream, and after their fortunes take a shocking—and bloody—turn, Myra can no longer ignore the question of whether saving Row is worth endangering Pearl and her fellow travelers.]]> 2020-05-13 19:58:35 UTC https://padlet.com/lisa_steel1/ubi0nofiz7o5mlry/wish/571104025 lisa_steel1 https://padlet.com/lisa_steel1/ubi0nofiz7o5mlry/wish/571109173 With her daughter to care for and her abuela to help support, high school senior Emoni Santiago has to make the tough decisions, and do what must be done. The one place she can let her responsibilities go is in the kitchen, where she adds a little something magical to everything she cooks, turning her food into straight-up goodness. Still, she knows she doesn’t have enough time for her school’s new culinary arts class, doesn’t have the money for the class’s trip to Spain — and shouldn’t still be dreaming of someday working in a real kitchen. But even with all the rules she has for her life — and all the rules everyone expects her to play by — once Emoni starts cooking, her only real choice is to let her talent break free.]]> 2020-05-13 20:01:05 UTC https://padlet.com/lisa_steel1/ubi0nofiz7o5mlry/wish/571109173 lisa_steel1 https://padlet.com/lisa_steel1/ubi0nofiz7o5mlry/wish/571120464 This is NOT a history book.
This is a book about the here and now.
A book to help us better understand why we are where we are.
A book about race.

The construct of race has always been used to gain and keep power, to create dynamics that separate and silence. This remarkable reimagining of Dr. Ibram X. Kendi's National Book Award-winning Stamped from the Beginning reveals the history of racist ideas in America, and inspires hope for an antiracist future. It takes you on a race journey from then to now, shows you why we feel how we feel, and why the poison of racism lingers. It also proves that while racist ideas have always been easy to fabricate and distribute, they can also be discredited. 

Through a gripping, fast-paced, and energizing narrative written by beloved award-winner Jason Reynolds, this book shines a light on the many insidious forms of racist ideas--and on ways readers can identify and stamp out racist thoughts in their daily lives.]]> 2020-05-13 20:06:34 UTC https://padlet.com/lisa_steel1/ubi0nofiz7o5mlry/wish/571120464 lisa_steel1 https://padlet.com/lisa_steel1/ubi0nofiz7o5mlry/wish/571126446 A coming-of-age story about grief, guilt, and the risks a Filipino-American teenager takes to uncover the truth about his cousin's murder.

Jay Reguero plans to spend the last semester of his senior year playing video games before heading to the University of Michigan in the fall. But when he discovers that his Filipino cousin Jun was murdered as part of President Duterte's war on drugs, and no one in the family wants to talk about what happened, Jay travels to the Philippines to find out the real story.

Hoping to uncover more about Jun and the events that led to his death, Jay is forced to reckon with the many sides of his cousin before he can face the whole horrible truth -- and the part he played in it.]]> 2020-05-13 20:09:36 UTC https://padlet.com/lisa_steel1/ubi0nofiz7o5mlry/wish/571126446 lisa_steel1 https://padlet.com/lisa_steel1/ubi0nofiz7o5mlry/wish/571155989 On the morning of April 29, 1986, a fire alarm sounded in the Los Angeles Public Library. As the moments passed, the patrons and staff who had been cleared out of the building realized this was not the usual fire alarm. As one fireman recounted, “Once that first stack got going, it was ‘Goodbye, Charlie.’” The fire was disastrous: it reached 2000 degrees and burned for more than seven hours. By the time it was extinguished, it had consumed four hundred thousand books and damaged seven hundred thousand more. Investigators descended on the scene, but more than thirty years later, the mystery remains: Did someone purposefully set fire to the library—and if so, who?]]> 2020-05-13 20:24:52 UTC https://padlet.com/lisa_steel1/ubi0nofiz7o5mlry/wish/571155989 lisa_steel1 https://padlet.com/lisa_steel1/ubi0nofiz7o5mlry/wish/571164744 In an American suburb in the early 1980s, students at a highly competitive performing arts high school struggle and thrive in a rarified bubble, ambitiously pursuing music, movement, Shakespeare, and, particularly, their acting classes. When within this striving “Brotherhood of the Arts,” two freshmen, David and Sarah, fall headlong into love, their passion does not go unnoticed—or untoyed with—by anyone, especially not by their charismatic acting teacher, Mr. Kingsley.

The outside world of family life and economic status, of academic pressure and of their future adult lives, fails to penetrate this school’s walls—until it does, in a shocking spiral of events that catapults the action forward in time and flips the premise upside-down. What the reader believes to have happened to David and Sarah and their friends is not entirely true—though it’s not false, either. It takes until the book’s stunning coda for the final piece of the puzzle to fall into place—revealing truths that will resonate long after the final sentence.

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