Showing results by narrator "Janet Metzger" in All Categories

Four sisters face new beginnings in this heartfelt modern take on Little Women. Amy March is more like her older sister Jo than she'd like to admit. An up-and-coming designer in New York's competitive fashion industry, ambitious Amy is determined to get out of her sisters' shadow and keep her distance from their North Carolina hometown. But when Jo's wedding forces her home, she must face what she really wants...and confront the One Big Mistake that could upend her life and forever change her relationship with Jo.

The first in a series of books, I Somehow Survived is an extraordinary collection of true stories giving testimony to those who survived World War II. Based on interviews with numerous veterans from across the spectrum of wartime experience, the book documents and reflects upon one of the most gruesome times in history. From anti-partisan warfare in the French mountains and atrocities in East Prussia to the experience of a Norwegian concentration camp, the accounts include rarely heard stories from a range of people caught up in the war.

On November 26, 1791, George Washington convened his department secretaries - Alexander Hamilton, Thomas Jefferson, Henry Knox, and Edmund Randolph - for the first cabinet meeting. Why did he wait two and a half years into his presidency to call his cabinet? Because the US Constitution did not create or provide for such a body. Washington was on his own.

Present Day: Julia Baxter’s wedding veil, bequeathed to her great-grandmother by a mysterious woman on a train in the 1930s, has passed through generations of her family as a symbol of a happy marriage. But on the morning of her wedding day, something tells her that even the veil’s good luck isn’t enough to make her marriage last forever. Overwhelmed, she escapes to the Virgin Islands to clear her head.

Most of us look forward to our retirement from full-time work, anticipating more free time and opportunities to play. But the reality of retirement can be hard to adjust to. Unexpected challenges may present themselves, leading us to question who we really are and what we can reasonably expect to accomplish in the remaining years of our lives. We may be confused by our changing relationships with family and friends, which no longer conform to an easy structure.

Defined by borders both physical and conceptual, the Roman city stood apart as a concentration of life and activity that was legally, economically, and ritually divided from its rural surroundings. Death was a key area of control, and tombs were relegated outside city walls from the Republican period through Late Antiquity. Given this separation, an unexpected phenomenon marked the Augustan and early Imperial periods: Roman cities developed suburbs, built-up areas beyond their boundaries, where the living and the dead came together in densely urban environments.

Peregrine Spring, Nancy Cowan’s memoir of her 30 years living intimately with raptors, gives us a new perspective on the relationship between humans and the natural world. Cowan shares her experiences running a world-famous falconry school, and the lessons she’s learned from her birds. From retrieving her falcon from the local police "lock up", to a heartbreaking race to save her young peregrine from attack by a wild hawk, Cowan’s life is a constant, ever-changing adventure.

As far as 12-year-old Frankie Jackson is concerned, mermaids are like Santa Claus and the Easter Bunny—stuff made up by grown-ups so that they can sell movies and toys. At least that’s what Frankie’s dad once told her. But one day, while staying on a houseboat for the summer, Frankie finds herself face-to-face with a mermaid. Convinced that it is a dream, Frankie can’t shake the vision of the blue-haired sea creature. Meanwhile, the town of Sausalito is buzzing with rumors about a wealthy woman who disappeared into the Bay wearing a million-dollar necklace (shaped like a mermaid).

While the idea of not working can be simultaneously wonderful and overwhelming, you can figure out what you want the end of your career and your retirement to look like before you submit your resignation. This book won't help you figure out whether or not you can afford to retire, but it will help you figure out what you'd like to do and who you'd like to be.

A lurid crime scene photo of a beautiful woman arrives on mystery writer Bunny Prescott's doorstep with no return address - and it's not the first time she's seen it. The reemergence of the photo, taken 55 years earlier, sets her on a journey to reconstruct the vicious summer that changed her life. In the summer of 1945, Ceola Bliss is a lonely 12-year-old tomboy, mourning the loss of her brother, Robbie, who was declared missing in the Pacific. One unforgettable August day, Robbie's friend Jay leads Ceola and Bunny to a stretch of woods where he found a dead woman, but when they arrive, the body is gone.

Antebellum New Orleans sat at the heart of America's slave and cotton kingdoms. It was also where yellow fever epidemics killed as many as 150,000 people during the nineteenth century. With little understanding of mosquito-borne viruses, a person's only protection against the scourge was to "get acclimated" by surviving the disease. Repeated epidemics bolstered New Orleans's strict racial hierarchy by introducing another hierarchy, what Kathryn Olivarius terms "immunocapital." Whereas immunity conferred privilege on whites, it relegated enslaved people to the most grueling labor.

Crimes and violations of the law require punishment, and our legal system is set up to punish, but what if the system was recalibrated to also weigh grounds for forgiveness? What if something like bankruptcy - a fresh start for debtors - were available to people convicted of crimes? Martha Minow explores the complicated intersection of the law, justice, and forgiveness, asking whether the law should encourage people to forgive, and when courts, public officials, and specific laws should forgive.

From internationally best-selling author and “rising star of Southern fiction” (Mary Alice Monroe, New York Times best-selling author) Kristy Woodson Harvey comes the third novel in her Peachtree Bluff series, in which a secret threatens the tight-knit bond between a trio of sisters and their mother.

Dolly Parton's success as a performer and pop culture phenomenon has overshadowed her achievements as a songwriter. But she sees herself as a songwriter first, and with good reason. Parton's compositions like "I Will Always Love You" and "Jolene" have become American standards with an impact far beyond country music.

Winner of the Icelandic Literary Prize, A Fist or a Heart is a gripping, artfully interwoven novel of power, secrets, and isolation by one of the most bracing and original voices of the author’s generation.

A Promise Kept explores the circumstances and implications of McGirt v. Oklahoma, likely the most significant Indian law case in well over a hundred years. Combining legal analysis and historical context, this book gives an in-depth, accessible account of how the case unfolded and what it might mean for Oklahomans, the Muscogee (Creek) Nation, and other tribes throughout the United States.

All families have secrets but the facts requiring secrecy change with time. Nowadays a lesbian partnership, a "bastard" son, or a criminal grandfather might be of little or no consequence but could have unraveled a family at an earlier moment in history. Margaret K. Nelson is interested in how families keep secrets from each other and from outsiders when to do otherwise would risk eliciting not only embarrassment or discomfort, but profound shame and, in some cases, danger.

Digital Makeover: How L'Oreal Put People First to Build a Beauty Tech Powerhouse examines L'Oreal's successful people-driven digital transformation. Professors and authors Beatrice Collin and Marie Taillard set out exactly how L'Oreal turned itself into a digital and tech powerhouse by building on its legacy to reimagine relationships inside the company, and with its customers and partners.

Sloane’s world crumbles after receiving the news that her military husband is missing in action. She can barely climb out of bed, much less summon the strength to be the parent her children deserve. Her mother, Ansley, provides a much-needed respite as she puts her personal life on hold to help Sloane and her grandchildren wade through their new grief-stricken lives. But between caring for her own aging mother, her daughters, and her grandchildren, Ansley's private worry is that secrets from her past will come to light.

Boy or girl? Even before a person is born, that’s the first thing everyone wants to know - underscoring just how much value human societies of all types place on gender. In His Brain, Her Brain, we take a closer look at the anatomical, chemical, and functional differences in the brains of men and women - as well as some surprising similarities. For instance, studies of infants find few differences in cognitive skills between boys and girls; but there is no denying that boys love trucks, whereas girls prefer dolls.