Duck Pond Epiphany

Duck Pond Epiphany PDF Author: Tracey Barnes Priestley
Publisher: Simon and Schuster
ISBN: 1938314255
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 182

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Book Description
Though educated as a painter, fifty-three-year-old Lee MacPhearson has lived her life coloring inside of the lines. The quintessential working mother of four, Lee has been the proper faculty wife—an ill-fitting role at best—while somehow managing to nurture her passion project, Mad Dog Gallery, into one of the Pacific Northwest’s most notable galleries. The casualty in all of this has been Lee’s marriage—and her sense of self. Having just delivered her last child to college, Lee is overwhelmed by her empty nest, and she’s left wondering what happened to the woman she once was. But she’s also giddy: finally, the opportunity to decide what she alone wants. Her estranged husband Brian, however, knows exactly what he wants: Lee and the life they once shared. He launches his campaign to reconcile before Lee even sets foot into her newly empty farmhouse, his apologies well-rehearsed. Ultimately, however, Barb Yakamura, Lee’s best friend and the brilliant and irreverent Artistic Director of the Oregon Shakespeare Festival, is the one who truly overflows with ideas about what Lee should do—including one that leads Lee, Brian, and the entire MacPhearson family to an ending they never expected.

Duck Pond Epiphany

Duck Pond Epiphany PDF Author: Tracey Barnes Priestley
Publisher: Simon and Schuster
ISBN: 1938314255
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 182

Get Book Here

Book Description
Though educated as a painter, fifty-three-year-old Lee MacPhearson has lived her life coloring inside of the lines. The quintessential working mother of four, Lee has been the proper faculty wife—an ill-fitting role at best—while somehow managing to nurture her passion project, Mad Dog Gallery, into one of the Pacific Northwest’s most notable galleries. The casualty in all of this has been Lee’s marriage—and her sense of self. Having just delivered her last child to college, Lee is overwhelmed by her empty nest, and she’s left wondering what happened to the woman she once was. But she’s also giddy: finally, the opportunity to decide what she alone wants. Her estranged husband Brian, however, knows exactly what he wants: Lee and the life they once shared. He launches his campaign to reconcile before Lee even sets foot into her newly empty farmhouse, his apologies well-rehearsed. Ultimately, however, Barb Yakamura, Lee’s best friend and the brilliant and irreverent Artistic Director of the Oregon Shakespeare Festival, is the one who truly overflows with ideas about what Lee should do—including one that leads Lee, Brian, and the entire MacPhearson family to an ending they never expected.

This Way Up

This Way Up PDF Author: Patti Clark
Publisher: Simon and Schuster
ISBN: 1631520296
Category : Self-Help
Languages : en
Pages : 307

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Book Description
International Excellence Body, Mind, Spirit Book Awards Winner: Self-help Women spend so much of life nurturing and giving to others that when they find themselves alone—because of an empty nest, the end of a marriage, or the death of a partner—they often struggle with feeling purposeless. This Way Up: Seven Tools for Unleashing Your Creative Self and Transforming Your Life provides a step-by-step way out of this sense of loss and into a life filled with enthusiasm, creativity, and joy. This story of healing centers on the essential wisdom of introspection and on the importance of following one’s dreams. Join the protagonist, Katya, a widow whose two sons have recently left home, as she learns seven tools for uncovering her best self: visualization, heart-centered goal setting, positive focus, meditation on love; meditation on forgiveness, gratitude, and taking action on inspiration. Katya’s experience highlights these insights in an easily digestible, highly relatable format that readers can systematically apply to their own circumstances as they work through This Way Up’s twelve weeks’ worth of day-by-day journaling exercises, thought-provoking questions, and reader support. For any woman who yearns to lead a fuller life but doesn’t know how to begin, this book is an ideal starting point.

Hard Cider

Hard Cider PDF Author: Barbara Stark-Nemon
Publisher: Simon and Schuster
ISBN: 1631524763
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 248

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Book Description
Abbie Rose Stone’s acquired wisdom runs deep, and so do her scars. She has successfully navigated the shoals of a long marriage, infertility, challenging children, and a career. Now it’s her turn to realize her dream: producing hard apple cider along the northern shores of Lake Michigan that she loves. She manages to resist new versions of the old pull of family dynamics that threaten to derail her plan—but nothing can protect her from the shock a lovely young stranger delivers when she exposes a long-held secret. In the wake of this revelation, Abbie must overcome circumstances that severely test her self-determination, her loyalties, and her understanding of what constitutes true family.

Flip-Flops After Fifty

Flip-Flops After Fifty PDF Author: Cindy Eastman
Publisher: Simon and Schuster
ISBN: 1938314697
Category : Humor
Languages : en
Pages : 165

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Book Description
Who hasn’t experienced life’s painful jabs—especially those of us who have rounded the corner into middle age? Emotional family events, stress from lousy jobs, the bittersweet feelings when the kids leave home, body image issues, and turning the big 5-0 . . . it’s all covered here in Cindy Eastman’s collection of personal and insightful essays. In Flip-Flops After Fifty, Eastman tackles the sublime and the ridiculous, the sacred and the profane, with her own brand of easy humor. From her 30th high school reunion to her daughter’s wedding to running away to a cabin in Maine to figure out what she wants to do with her life, Eastman braves the ups and downs of midlife, and she comes out of it changed—for the better. At turns wry, hilarious, and poignant, Flip-Flops After Fifty will amuse and enlighten readers, even as it inspires them to think more deeply about the topics that affect us all.

Things Unsaid

Things Unsaid PDF Author: Diana Y. Paul
Publisher: Simon and Schuster
ISBN: 1631528130
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 279

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Book Description
AWARDS: Bookclub Favorite Winner of New Adult Fiction—Beverly Hills Book Awards Winner of the SILVER Medal for Best Fiction in Drama from Readers' Favorite Finalist USA Best Books Awards in Literary Fiction and in New Fiction “Under its skin, it is a lively, accessible meditation on redemption and the transformative value of good intention and deed.” ―Rebecca Coffey, author of Hysterical: Anna Freud's Story “An outstanding book that is not only deeply honest, heartbreaking, and hopeful, but also brilliant, poignant, and original. It captures what is at the heart of all of us and showcases that life is what we make it. Brilliant, just brilliant! 5 stars.” ―Emily Lewis, Mrs. Mommy Booknerd’s Book Reviews Inspired by a true story about mothers, daughters, and impossible choices—Jules Foster, a child psychologist, upon hearing news of her estranged, narcissistic mother’s terminal diagnosis, chooses to care for her mother over her own daughter, only to find out she has been betrayed all along. Things Unsaid asks us to consider what children owe their aging parents and siblings. Jules Foster is summoned to the local police station to retrieve her elderly parents, after her father has sideswiped a parked automobile. Her parents now rely heavily on her financial support, and Jules finds herself sacrificing her daughter Zoe's dreams for going to college in order to continue bankrolling them. Her husband, Mike, is forced to take sides. Joanne, her divorced younger sister, and Andrew, her brother, refuse to send their parents so much as a Christmas present. Now that their parents are incapable of caring for themselves, Jules, Andrew, and Joanne must decide where to draw the line between obligation and their own families. Throughout Things Unsaid, Jules, Zoe, and Andrew are forced repeatedly to evaluate their personal priorities and avoid repeated misfirings of the heart. As they make impossible choices, they pull back the curtain to reveal deeply buried family secrets. A powerful and courageous tale of family dysfunction and senior citizens, this bold and poignant debut novel presents deep insights into the messy and inevitably complicated world of family relationships, and shows how one woman is able to survive with her sanity and spirit intact.

Life and Other Shortcomings

Life and Other Shortcomings PDF Author: Corie Adjmi
Publisher: Simon and Schuster
ISBN: 1631527142
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 154

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Book Description
Life and Other Shortcomings is a collection of linked short stories that takes the reader from New Orleans to New York City to Madrid, and from 1970 to the present day. The women in these twelve stories make a number of different choices: some work, others don’t; some stay married, some get divorced; others never marry at all. Through each character’s intimate journey, specific truths are revealed about what it means to be a woman—in relationship with another person, in a particular culture and era—and how these conditions ultimately affect her relationship with herself. The stories as a whole depict patriarchy, showing what still might be, but certainly what was, for some women in this country before the #MeToo movement. Both a cautionary tale and a captivating window into women’s lives, Life and Other Shortcomings is required reading for anyone interested in an honest, incisive, and compelling portrayal of the female experience.

Love Is a Rebellious Bird

Love Is a Rebellious Bird PDF Author: Elayne Klasson
Publisher: Simon and Schuster
ISBN: 1631526057
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 350

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Book Description
Who is it we love and why do we love these people? Toward the end of her life, Judith asks these questions, trying to understand why she chose Elliot Pine to love. Why, for sixty years, did she persist in loving someone who never gave as much as he was given? In her quest for understanding, she writes her story to this exceptional man. Meeting as children in Chicago, they move to opposite coasts. Elliot embarks on a remarkable legal career in Washington and New York while Judith raises her children alone in California, after tragedy. Coming together again and again throughout their lives, their love is never equal, Elliot defining the terms of the relationship. Judith examines the role of Beauty in love, for Elliot's face and form were beautiful. She considers the role of Consolation, how they supported one another in devastating times. Insanity, Magic, Deceit, Sensory Fulfillment, and, finally, Being Seen—Judith looks at these many aspects of her love. Her feelings for this man cost her, impinged on every other relationship in her life: friends, her two husbands, even her three children. After sixty years, however, it all changes. Judith makes one more profound sacrifice, finally achieving a sort of long-awaited happiness in her love.

The Book of Old Ladies

The Book of Old Ladies PDF Author: Ruth O. Saxton
Publisher: Simon and Schuster
ISBN: 1631527983
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 288

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Book Description
This is a book that champions older women’s stories and challenges the limiting outcomes we seem to hold for them. The Book of Old Ladies introduces readers to thirty stories featuring fictional “women of a certain age” who increasingly become their truest selves. Their stories will entertain and provide insight into the stories we tell ourselves about the limits and opportunities of aging. A celebration of women who push back against the limiting stereotypes regarding older women’s possibility, The Book of Old Ladies is a book lover’s guide to approaching old age and dealing with its losses while still embracing beauty, creativity, connection, and wonder.

Shelter Us

Shelter Us PDF Author: Laura Nicole Diamond
Publisher: Simon and Schuster
ISBN: 1631529714
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 296

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Book Description
Gorgeously written and deeply felt, this heartrending, ultimately hopeful narrative about motherhood, loss, and the meaning of life becomes a true page-turner. Lawyer turned stay-at-home-mom Sarah Shaw is struggling to be present for her two young sons and law professor husband, three years after the death of their infant daughter. Then one day, walking in L.A., Sarah’s heart catches at the sight of a young homeless mother and toddler, and saving them becomes her secret, obsessive mission. When tragedy threatens them, Sarah discovers she is capable of deceptions and transgressions she never imagined. Her lies unleash a downward spiral that will threaten her marriage, family, and her sanity. Shelter Us speaks to the quiet joys and anxieties of parenthood, and illuminates the shadowy space between unconditional love and fear of unbearable loss.

What is Found, What is Lost

What is Found, What is Lost PDF Author: Anne Leigh Parrish
Publisher: Simon and Schuster
ISBN: 1938314964
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 315

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Book Description
Freddie was raised on faith. It’s in her blood. Yet when she loses her husband of many years, she can’t quite bring herself to seek solace from the Almighty, and enters a state of quiet contemplation, instead. Her solitude quickly ends when she meets a man roaming her neighborhood in search of his run-away wife, and later, when her daughter returns home to escape another unwise romance. Soon after, Freddie’s sister, Holly, visits and their thoughts turn to their wretched childhood at the hands of their neglectful and pious mother. Also present is their grandmother, Anna, known only through photographs and letters, who seems so different – strong, yet remote. Freddie feels she and Anna are connected, not just through blood, but through the raising of difficult daughters. This kinship makes Freddie see that she has been shaped by forces she doesn’t directly experience, which reminds her about the true basis of faith. With all that to hand, Freddie faces a family crisis that forces her to confront the same questions she’s asked all her life: What does it mean to believe in God? And does God even care?