Two boyhood experiences inspired my fascination with the Civil War: a family trip to Gettysburg and purchasing original photographs of soldiers at flea markets. Captivated by the old photos, I became an avid collector of Civil War-era portrait photography. Curiosity about identified individuals in my collection led me on a lifelong journey to tell their stories. In 2001, I started a column,Faces of War,in theCivil War News.Since then, I’ve profiled hundreds of participants in the column, and in six books. In 2013, I became the fourth editor and publisher of Military Images, a quarterly journal that showcases, interprets, and preserves Civil War photography.
The bonds of comradeship formed by volunteer soldiers during the Civil War lasted a lifetime for those who survived its bloody campaigns. Most regiments held annual reunions, during which the veterans rekindled friendships and remembered their service. Many collected reminiscences in book form, and these regimental histories are treasure troves of personal accounts. One of the most outstanding of this genre is theHistory of the Twelfth Regiment, a narrative of the men and officers who served in the 12th New Hampshire Infantry. Author Asa Bartlett, a beloved officer, humanizes the service of these Granite State volunteers.
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The premise of this book intrigued me, especially since I have not read many books about the identity of one of the characters in Mad Honey. (I'm being careful not to include a spoiler.) When I learned that Jodi co-wrote the book so she could make sure she got the representation of authentic voices correct, I was really impressed. The seamless back and forth between the characters is unbelievable, and the subject matter caused me to think hard about my preconceived ideas and what it would be like to walk in the shoes of the characters in the book.
NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • “Alternatingly heart-pounding and heartbreaking. This collaboration between two best-selling authors seamlessly weaves together Olivia and Lily’s journeys, creating a provocative exploration of the strength that love and acceptance require.”—The Washington Post
GOOD MORNING AMERICA BOOK CLUB PICK • PEOPLE’S BOOK OF THE WEEK • ONE OF THE BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR: PopSugar
Olivia McAfee knows what it feels like to start over. Her picture-perfect life—living in Boston, married to a brilliant cardiothoracic surgeon, raising their beautiful son, Asher—was upended when her husband revealed a darker side. She never imagined that she would end up…
I'm a huge self-proclaimed history dork. I love reading real stories of how God uses the ones that no one would expect in extraordinary ways. I love hearing how God turns horrible situations around. Even in my own manuscripts, from a historical fiction perspective, I love to immerse it in such truth that you think, “That couldn’t really happen... Could it?” I have an ongoing phrase in ministry and life that you need to take “The poo you walk through and let God turn it into fertilizer.” These book recommendations definitely do that. Bad things do happen. They don’t come from God but through Him we can overcome them.
This is one of my favorite books as a young child and has continued to be one of my favorite books. Based on a true story, it is about the capture of a young girl on the brink of love and womanhood. Her fight, spunk, and ability to sew are truly what help her and her family escape. I have always loved this book. I love it for its humanity and truth. I love it for its ability to take the reader and see that even in the worst circumstances, one can still find themselves and learn how to overcome.
From a Newbery Medal–winning author, an “exciting novel” about a colonial girl’s experience during the French and Indian War (Saturday Review).
In the year 1754, the stillness of Charlestown, New Hampshire, is shattered by the terrifying cries of an Indian raid. Young Miriam Willard, on a day that had promised new happiness, finds herself instead a captive on a forest trail, caught up in the ebb and flow of the French and Indian War.
It is a harrowing march north. Miriam can only force herself to the next stopping place, the next small portion of food, the next icy stream…
Corey Mesler has been published in numerous anthologies and journals including Poetry, Gargoyle, Five Points, Good Poems American Places, and New Stories from the South. He has published over 25 books of fiction and poetry.His newest novel, The Diminishment of Charlie Cain, is from Livingston Press. He also wrote the screenplay for We Go On, which won The Memphis Film Prize in 2017. With his wife he runs Burke’s Book Store (est. 1875) in Memphis. I have a fondness for novels written by writers who are primarily poets. These five books are my favorites in that contracted genre.
Quit Monks or Die! is something else indeed. It’s a mystery novel and a good one. It is set, yes! in academia, where a scientist and a graduate assistant are both found murdered. The scientist was working on an experiment involving monkeys. Does that have to do with why he was killed? Its cracker-jack plot, which involves animal rights, is complex but lucidly and expertly laid out. It's not just who done it, but what was done? This is not Kumin’s only novel but I believe it’s her only mystery.
Set in a small town that houses little more than a research lab and an engineering school, the body of the lab's director is found in a pit used for maternal deprivation experiments with monkeys. A few days later, a graduate student is found murdered as well. Are these deaths connected? And who's responsible for these murders? Written by one of America's greatest poets, this mystery is a scathing social commentary with a criminal twist.
Maxine Kumin is the author of poetry, novels, short stories, essays and a number of children's books. She has received several awards, including the Pulitzer…
I've been writing and providing pastor care for more than thirty years now. Since turning sixty, I have noticed that aging well is not a given. Many people seem to grow increasingly bitter, resentful, and hard. If we want to become more empathetic, grateful, and loving, we have to keep growing and do our spiritual and relational work. We also need trustworthy guides to help us find our way. I hope to be a wise, compassionate guide for my readers.
Kenison wrote this book when she was in her forties, after
she nudged her husband to sell their long-time family house and move to rural
New Hampshire with their two teenage sons. The book gives voice to being
uprooted, letting go of the familiar, and the profound transitions of mid-life.
Kenison writes beautifully of the stirrings and longings that prompt us to see
our lives from a new vantage point, ultimately allowing us to move on with
grace and grit.
The Gift of an Ordinary Day is an intimate memoir of a family in transition-boys becoming teenagers, careers ending and new ones opening up, an attempt to find a deeper sense of place and a slower pace, in a small New England town. It is a story of mid-life longings and discoveries, of lessons learned in the search for home and a new sense of purpose, and the bittersweet intensity of life with teenagers - holding on, letting go. Poised on the threshold between family life as she's always known it and her older son's departure for college, Kenison is…
I am the mother of six and a voracious journaler. I am also a novelist. Though I’ve found that the facts of family adventures are often more fascinating than fiction. I bring in-the-moment observations as well as decade-seasoned insights to the world of family life. I also love reading about other families with all their quirks and joys.
I highly recommend this book to every parent. It is filled with gentle, practical wisdom in the setting of a frontier family. The father takes the time to teach through everyday experience and vivid analogies. We use his analogy of the “character house” all the time in our family. The mother has her own quiet strength, which the author shows more in the following books of the series. The book is also filled with the high energy and pranks of children, and the adventures of growing up on a ranch. A lovely true story, though be warned, you will cry at the end.
Ralph Moody was eight years old in 1906 when his family moved from New Hampshire to a Colorado ranch. Through his eyes we experience the pleasures and perils of ranching there early in the twentieth century. Auctions and roundups, family picnics, irrigation wars, tornadoes and wind storms give authentic color to Little Britches. So do adventures, wonderfully told, that equip Ralph to take his father's place when it becomes necessary. Little Britches was the literary debut of Ralph Moody, who wrote about the adventures of his family in eight glorious books, all available as Bison Books. Purchase the audio edition.
Although I’ve written over 50 books, the ones that have had the greatest impact are the novels that have been turned into movies. Through my books and the films based on them, I’ve had the privilege of sharing thought-provoking, life-changing stories with millions of people around the world. As a blind person, myself, I realize the absurdity of writing books I can’t read that are turned into movies I can’t watch, but a powerful story delivers life-changing lessons and endures forever.
Among the 50 books I have written, eight of them have been turned into movies with a ninth currently in pre-production. For this reason, even as a blind person myself, whenever I read a novel—or in my case, listen to the audiobook—I see the story unfolding in my mind as a movie. Never have I read any novel that is more screen-worthy thanThe Twelfth Angel. In this story, Og Mandino teaches us that we all have talent, value, and worth. Even the most insignificant among us can create an impactful change in those around them and the world. You will feel that kind of impact as you meet The Twelfth Angel.
"A very special story about life and love and courage." MERLIN OLSEN, SPORTSCASTER John Harding had a high-powered career, a loving wife, and a beautiful son. He's lost it all and has returned to his home town of Boland, New Hampshire, teetering on the brink of suicide. But an old friend asks John to manage his old Little League team, the Angels. Reluctantly, he agrees, and meets a hopeless player who bears a striking resemblance to his dead son--and through their extroardinary relationship, John finds the wisdom in living that he thought had slipped beyond his grasp forever.... AN ALTERNATE…
As a practicing clinical psychologist, teacher of psychotherapy theory and technique, and author (Barbarians at the PTA, Madmen on the Couch, Money Talks) who writes about the psychopathology of daily life for various online and print publications, I am a participant in/observer of mom culture. I love a juicy mother-child story.
Florin will make you ache for a mother’s love. She writes masterfully about her female character’s experience at a remotely insular and male-dominated elite college campus.
A coming of age and loss of innocence story, the novel is beautifully realized and thoroughly relatable–even if we didn’t attend this particular cold and icy campus, we’ve had moments of questioning our choices and have stumbled along the path before figuring it all out.
An incisive, deeply resonant debut novel about a nonconsensual sexual encounter that propels one woman’s final semester at an elite New England college into controversy and chaos―and into an ill-advised affair with a married professor.
It’s 1998 and Isabel Rosen, the only daughter of a Lower East Side appetizing store owner, has one semester left at Wilder College, a prestigious school in New Hampshire. Desperate to shed her working-class roots and still mourning the death of her mother four years earlier, Isabel has always felt like an outsider at Wilder but now, in her final semester, she believes she has…
Here’s the best way to describe this book: utterly
heartbreaking and yet simply beautiful. Some reviews call it depressing, but I
don’t see it that way. Maybe I just love sad books?
There’s something about
being gutted by such rich storytelling, in this case about a family navigating
the ups and downs of life, following a tragic accident involving one of their
own. I don’t know if I’ve ever read a story that so resonated with the female
experience in marriage and parenthood. It will make you smile, it will make you
cry, and it will stay with you long after reading.
In her most ambitious novel to date, New York Times bestselling author Joyce Maynard returns to the themes that are the hallmarks of her most acclaimed work in a mesmerizing story of a family-from the hopeful early days of young marriage to parenthood, divorce, and the costly aftermath that ripples through all their lives
Eleanor and Cam meet at a crafts fair in Vermont in the early 1970s. She's an artist and writer, he makes wooden bowls. Within four years they are parents to three children, two daughters and a red-headed son who fills his pockets with rocks, plays the…
I’m a creative director in Vermont with a few favorite things: laughter, standard poodles, and happy endings—in life and in fiction. Romance fiction abounds with young heroines and happy endings. But I prefer reading about mature women like myself, women who have experienced their share of disappointments yet face life’s challenges with courage and humor. I like the elements of both genres in one juicy book. After much-frustrated searching, I gave up and wrote the story I wanted to read. My wise, middle-aged heroine still has lots to learn about grief and joy, and learns many of those lessons with men—in bed.
A teenage girl in Maine steals a dictionary at the mall and is sentenced to do community service in her small town’s library. The middle-aged head librarian there has exiled herself from a divorce accompanied by public scandal. A much younger New York City stockbroker who had piles of money turns up in town after losing everything in the 2008 crash. He believes his aunt’s savings booklet from a bank long subsumed by another—he just needs to figure out which one—will put him back on his feet. I love how gently this novel reveals these damaged characters’ foibles and hopes. They seem to have nothing in common, yet they heal each other. And there is (spoiler alert) a sexy little romance between the librarian and the stockbroker.
From journalist and author Sue Halpern comes a wry, observant look at contemporary life and its refugees. Halpern’s novel is an unforgettable tale of family...the kind you come from and the kind you create.
People are drawn to libraries for all kinds of reasons. Most come for the books themselves, of course; some come to borrow companionship. For head librarian Kit, the public library in Riverton, New Hampshire, offers what she craves most: peace. Here, no one expects Kit to talk about the calamitous events that catapulted her out of what she thought was a settled, suburban life. She can…
