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What do you do when your world ends? At 28 years old, Krista Schlyer sold almost everything she owned and packed the rest of it in a station wagon bound for the American wild. Her two best friends joined her - one a grumpy, grieving introvert, the other a feisty dog - and together they sought out every national park, historic site, forest, and wilderness they could get to before their money ran out or their minds gave in.
Born into rural poverty, Gabrielle Chanel and her siblings are sent to an orphanage after their mother's death. The sisters nurture Gabrielle's exceptional sewing skills, a talent that will propel the willful young woman into a life far removed from the drudgery of her childhood.
Written by Naoki Higashida, a very smart, very self-aware, and very charming thirteen-year-old boy with autism, The Reason I Jumpis a one-of-a-kind memoir that demonstrates how an autistic mind thinks, feels, perceives, and responds in ways few of us can imagine. Parents and family members who never thought they could get inside the head of their autistic loved one at last have a way to break through to the curious, subtle, and complex life within.
In the tradition of the New York Times best-seller The Blind Side, The Invisible Thread tells of the unlikely friendship between a busy executive and a disadvantage young boy, and how both of their lives changed forever
Despite access to the greatest healthcare in the world, US citizens are not immune to medical horror stories. Such was the experience of Ken Dickson, a beloved husband and father and respected engineer with no history of mental illness. What should have been an ordinary surgical procedure changed that, propelling him into a high security psychiatric ward where psychiatrists branded him a danger to himself and others.
1914. For Paul, with love. Jewish silversmith Johann Blumenthal engraved those words on his most exquisite creation, a singing filigree bird inside a tiny ornamented box. He crafted this treasure for his young son before leaving to fight in a terrible war to honor his beloved country - a country that would soon turn against his own family. A half century later, Londoner Lilian Morrison inherits the box after the death of her parents. Though the silver is tarnished and dented, this much-loved treasure is also a link to an astonishing past.
What do you do when your world ends? At 28 years old, Krista Schlyer sold almost everything she owned and packed the rest of it in a station wagon bound for the American wild. Her two best friends joined her - one a grumpy, grieving introvert, the other a feisty dog - and together they sought out every national park, historic site, forest, and wilderness they could get to before their money ran out or their minds gave in.
Born into rural poverty, Gabrielle Chanel and her siblings are sent to an orphanage after their mother's death. The sisters nurture Gabrielle's exceptional sewing skills, a talent that will propel the willful young woman into a life far removed from the drudgery of her childhood.
Written by Naoki Higashida, a very smart, very self-aware, and very charming thirteen-year-old boy with autism, The Reason I Jumpis a one-of-a-kind memoir that demonstrates how an autistic mind thinks, feels, perceives, and responds in ways few of us can imagine. Parents and family members who never thought they could get inside the head of their autistic loved one at last have a way to break through to the curious, subtle, and complex life within.
In the tradition of the New York Times best-seller The Blind Side, The Invisible Thread tells of the unlikely friendship between a busy executive and a disadvantage young boy, and how both of their lives changed forever
Despite access to the greatest healthcare in the world, US citizens are not immune to medical horror stories. Such was the experience of Ken Dickson, a beloved husband and father and respected engineer with no history of mental illness. What should have been an ordinary surgical procedure changed that, propelling him into a high security psychiatric ward where psychiatrists branded him a danger to himself and others.
1914. For Paul, with love. Jewish silversmith Johann Blumenthal engraved those words on his most exquisite creation, a singing filigree bird inside a tiny ornamented box. He crafted this treasure for his young son before leaving to fight in a terrible war to honor his beloved country - a country that would soon turn against his own family. A half century later, Londoner Lilian Morrison inherits the box after the death of her parents. Though the silver is tarnished and dented, this much-loved treasure is also a link to an astonishing past.
In Savannah, Georgia, one woman holds all the secrets. When she dies of a possible voodoo curse, the secrets start coming out. The ghosts are upset. And for the Temple family women, everything is about to change forever.
Denver, 1962. Kitty Miller has come to terms with her unconventional single life. She loves the bookshop she runs with her best friend, Frieda, and enjoys complete control over her day-to-day existence. She can come and go as she pleases, answering to no one. There was a man once, a doctor named Kevin, but it didn't quite work out the way Kitty had hoped.
Hoping to make a clean break from a fractured marriage, Agatha Christie boards the Orient Express in disguise. But unlike her famous detective Hercule Poirot, she can't neatly unravel the mysteries she encounters on this fateful journey. Her cabinmate Katharine Keeling's first marriage ended in tragedy, propelling her toward a second relationship mired in deceit. Nancy Nelson - newly married but carrying another man's child - is desperate to conceal the pregnancy and teeters on the brink of utter despair.
When Hetheridge saves the outspoken, impetuous young detective from getting the sack, siding with her against Scotland Yard's powerful male hierarchy, his cold, elegantly balanced world spins out of control. Summoned to London's fashionable Belgravia to investigate the brutal murder of a financier, Hetheridge must catch the killer while coping with his growing attraction to Kate, the reappearance of an old flame, and the secret that emerges from his own past.
When an American tourist is murdered with a scone in Gemma Rose's quaint English tearoom, she suddenly finds herself apron-deep in a mystery involving long-buried secrets from Oxford's past. Armed with her insider knowledge of the university and with the help of four nosy old ladies from her local Cotswolds village (not to mention a cheeky little tabby cat named Muesli), Gemma sets out to solve the mystery - all while dealing with her matchmaking mother and the return of her old college love, Devlin O'Connor, now a dashing CID detective.
Hannah Cooper's daughter is leaving for college soon. The change is bittersweet. A single mother since the age of eighteen, Hannah isn't eager to confront the pain of being alone, but she's determined not to let her own hang-ups keep Ellen from the future she deserves. As Ellen's high school graduation approaches, Hannah decides it's time to return to her roots in Cooper's Hollow along Virginia's beautiful and rustic Cub Creek.
In 1945, Elsie Schmidt is a naive teenager, as eager for her first sip of champagne as she is for her first kiss. She and her family have been protected from the worst of the terror and desperation overtaking her country by a high-ranking Nazi who wishes to marry her. So when an escaped Jewish boy arrives on Elsie’s doorstep in the dead of night on Christmas Eve, Elsie understands that opening the door would put all she loves in danger.
Summer, 1926. Ernest Hemingway and his wife, Hadley, take refuge from the blazing heat of Paris in a villa in the south of France. They swim and play bridge, and drink gin with abandon. But wherever they go they are accompanied by the glamorous and irrepressible Fife. Fife is Hadley's best friend. She is also Ernest's lover. Hadley is the first Mrs. Hemingway, but neither she nor Fife will be the last. Each Mrs. Hemingway thought their love would last forever; each one was wrong.
Maya's shocked to discover it's not the heaven she imagined; in fact, a life of adventure begins the moment you die. In order to regain complete awareness and reunite with loved ones, all souls must review their previous lives. Maya plunges warily into her turbulent pasts as a sociopathic High Priest in ancient Egypt; an Irish boy enslaved by Vikings; and a doctor's wife forced to make an ethical stand in plague-ridden England. All the while, Maya yearns to be with those she cares about most, and worries that she hasn't learned all of heaven's most vital lessons.
Stewing in an Australian prison, Jasper Dean reflects on his relationship with his dead father and recounts the many zany adventures they shared together.
"Heartless" Cordelia Bering refuses every marriage offer she receives. Yet men still try to win her, drawn by her sharp wit and intoxicating green eyes. But Cordelia knows a marriage could reveal her deepest secret and truly endanger her life. Besides, she hasn't met a man worth considering, until... Sebastien Thorne, a spy in the service of the Crown. One of the elite agents in the group known as the Zodiac, he comes to London determined to solve a mystery with roots on the Continent.
Young Peony is sold into a rich Chinese household as a bondmaid - an awkward role in which she is more a servant, but less a daughter. As she grows into a lovely, provocative young woman, Peony falls in love with the family's only son. However, tradition forbids them to wed. How she resolves her love for him and her devotion to her adoptive family unfolds in this profound tale, based on true events in China over a century ago.
The true scents of Provence? Lavender, thyme, and septic tank.
There are hundreds of interesting things you can do in a bath, but washing dishes is not one of them, nor is it what writer Jean Gill had in mind when she swapped her Welsh Valley for a French one.
Keen to move out of the elephant's stomach, that stew of gray mists called weather in Wales, she offered her swimming certificate to a bemused Provençale estate agent and bought a house with good stars and its own spring water. Or, rather, as it turns out, a neighbor's spring water that is the only supply to the kitchen, which, according to the nice men from the Water Board, is emptying its dirty water directly and illegally onto the main road.... And there's worse....
But how can you resist a village called Dieulefit - "God created it" - the village "where everyone belongs"?
Discover the real Provence in good company.
Jean Gill's audio book How Blue is my Valley is a book I would recommend to those who almost constantly want a smile on their face while listening to it. Jean puts her experiences in moving to the Provence and comparing it a.o. with Wales in such a humorous way, that you can almost see - sometimes even feel and smell - all that is happening (and not).
Jan Cramer is the perfect narrator for this book! It's as though the author herself is reading the book, the way Jan narrates the book.
It is an audio book I will definitely listen to again!
2 of 2 people found this review helpful
a huge amount of facts thrown together (with an overload of picodon information and unexplained french words) does not a story make. you do get a smile here or there but it's like listening to someone read from an encyclopedia of local french history and law. didn't like this one. I'll stick to Peter Mayle much more entertaining.