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From the critically acclaimed author of The Hummingbird and The Curiosity comes a dazzling novel of World War II—a shimmering tale of courage, determination, optimism and the resilience of the human spirit, set in a small village in Normandy on the eve of D-Day On June 5, 1944, as dawn rises over a small town on France’s Normandy coast, Emmanuelle is baking the bread that has sustained her fellow villagers in the dark days since the Germans invaded her country. Only twenty-two, Emma learned to bake at the side of a master, Ezra Kuchen. Apprenticed to Ezra at thirteen, Emma watched with shame and anger as her mentor was forced to wear the six-pointed yellow star on his clothing. She was powerless to help when Ezra was pulled from his shop at gunpoint, the first of many villagers stolen away and never seen again. In the years that her sleepy coastal village has suffered under the enemy, Emma has silently, stealthily fought back. Each day, she receives an extra ration of flour to bake a dozen baguettes for the occupying troops. And each day, she mixes that precious flour with ground straw to create enough dough for two extra loaves—contraband bread she shares with the hungry villagers. Under the watchful eyes of armed soldiers, she builds a clandestine network of barter and trade that she and the villagers use to thwart their occupiers. But her gift to the village is more than these few crusty loaves. Emma gives the people a taste of hope—the faith that one day the Allies will arrive to save them. Stephen P. Kiernan paints a brilliant and vivid tableau of humanity during one of the most harrowing points of modern history.

A tale beautifully, wisely, and masterfully told.” — Paula McLain, author of The Paris Wife and Circling the Sun From the multiple-award-winning, critically acclaimed author of The Hummingbird and The Curiosity comes a dazzling novel of World War II—a shimmering tale of courage, determination, optimism, and the resilience of the human spirit, set in a small Normandy village on the eve of D-Day. On June 5, 1944, as dawn rises over a small town on the Normandy coast of France, Emmanuelle is making the bread that has sustained her fellow villagers in the dark days since the Germans invaded her country. Only twenty-two, Emma learned to bake at the side of a master, Ezra Kuchen, the village baker since before she was born. Apprenticed to Ezra at thirteen, Emma watched with shame and anger as her kind mentor was forced to wear the six-pointed yellow star on his clothing. She was likewise powerless to help when they pulled Ezra from his shop at gunpoint, the first of many villagers stolen away and never seen again. In the years that her sleepy coastal village has suffered under the enemy, Emma has silently, stealthily fought back. Each day, she receives an extra ration of flour to bake a dozen baguettes for the occupying troops. And each day, she mixes that precious flour with ground straw to create enough dough for two extra loaves—contraband bread she shares with the hungry villagers. Under the cold, watchful eyes of armed soldiers, she builds a clandestine network of barter and trade that she and the villagers use to thwart their occupiers. But her gift to the village is more than these few crusty loaves. Emma gives the people a taste of hope—the faith that one day the Allies will arrive to save them.

From the critically acclaimed author of The Baker’s Secret and The Curiosity comes a novel of conscience, love and redemption Graduating from Harvard at the height of World War II, brilliant mathematician Charlie Fish is assigned to the Manhattan Project. Working with some of the age’s greatest scientific minds, including J. Robert Oppenheimer, Enrico Fermi and Leo Szilard, Charlie is assigned the task of designing and building the detonator of the atomic bomb. As he performs the work Charlie suffers a crisis of conscience, which his wife, Brenda—unaware of the true nature of Charlie’s top-secret task—mistakes for self-doubt. She urges him to set aside his qualms and continue. But once the bombs strike Hiroshima and Nagasaki and Brenda realizes the truth, the feelings of culpability devastate them both. At the war’s end, Charlie receives a scholarship to pursue a Ph.D. in physics at Stanford—an opportunity he and Brenda hope will allow them a fresh start. But the past proves inescapable. Haunted by guilt, Charlie and Brenda know that they must do something to make amends for the evil they helped to bring into the world. Based on the real life of Charles B. Fisk, Universe of Two combines riveting historical drama with a poignant love story. Stephen Kiernan has conjured a remarkable account of two people struggling to heal their consciences and find peace in a world forever changed.

From the author of the acclaimed debut novel The Curiosity comes an emotionally resonant tale about a woman who must take care of two wounded men—one, her soldier-husband, just home from the war in Iraq; the other, a dying World War II scholar-historian who harbours a long-buried secret. At once a tantalizing wartime mystery and a moving tale of living, loving and dying, The Hummingbird is the thrilling, heart-wrenching new adventure from Stephen P. Kiernan. Deborah Porter is a registered nurse and hospice worker, the caregiver of last resort for the cantankerous Barcley Reed, a dying history professor who lives on Oregon’s picturesque Lake Oswego. Deborah is surprised to find that her newest charge’s books have all been removed from the library at Portland State University, where he taught for many years. When she asks him why, he reveals that his career was derailed by a long-ago academic scandal but is reluctant to say more. Deborah herself is in a vulnerable place: her husband, Michael, a soldier just back from his third tour of duty in Iraq, has returned home a changed man. For the first time, Deborah, a woman whose life mission is to minister to those who are hurting, is at a loss to help the person who is most precious to her. When Reed learns of Deborah's despair, he makes a decision to reveal to her the provocative historical research at the root of his professional downfall—the little-known story of a Japanese air attack on the US mainland during the Second World War and its aftermath. For, the professor feels, somewhere in that story lies a lesson that can help Deborah save her marriage. It might be “a work of genius, a story that the world must be told,” he tells her, or “the bizarre product of an old man’s deluded fictions.” His only condition: she must tell him, at the story’s conclusion, whether or not she believes it is true. What follows is a grand adventure that asks “what if?” and that may have the power to heal lives. PRAISE FOR THE CURIOSITY "One of the most assured debuts in years, a book that will stop your heart and start it again.” —JUSTIN CRONIN, BESTSELLING AUTHOR OF THE PASSAGE

The Curiosity, Stephen Kiernan’s debut novel, is a gripping, poignant, and thoroughly original thriller that raises disturbing questions about the very nature of life and humanity—man as a scientific subject, as a tabloid plaything, as a living being, as a curiosity.… Dr. Kate Philo and her scientific exploration team make a breathtaking discovery in the Arctic: the body of a man buried deep in the ice. Remarkably, the frozen man is brought back to the lab and successfully reanimated. As the man begins to regain his memories, the team learns that he was—is—a judge, Jeremiah Rice, and the last thing he remembers is falling overboard into the Arctic Ocean in 1906. Thrown together by circumstances beyond their control, Kate and Jeremiah grow closer. But the clock is ticking and Jeremiah’s new life is slipping away...and all too soon, Kate must decide how far she is willing to go to protect the man she has come to love.

"This country is fairly crowded with doctors, families, and patients—all possessed of good intentions—failing to achieve the simple goal of allowing people to die with dignity and grace." In the 1970s, most Americans died swiftly and brutally: of heart attacks, strokes, cancer, or in accidents. But in the past three decades, medical advances have extended our lives and changed the way we die. In Last Rights, Stephen Kiernan reveals the disconnect between how patients want to live the end of life—pain free, functioning mentally and physically, surrounded by family and friends—and how the medical system continues to treat the dying—with extreme interventions, at immense cost, and with little regard to pain, human comforts, or even the stated wishes of patients and families. Backed with surveys, interviews, and intimate portraits of people from all walks of life, from the dying and their families to the doctors and nurses who care for them, this book will be for our time what Elizabeth Kubler-Ross's books were for a previous generation.

In this New York Times bestseller, two women in different eras face similar life-altering decisions, the politics of exclusion, the terrible choices we face in wartime, and the redemptive power of love. 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 on Christmas Eve, Elsie understands that opening the door would put all she loves in danger. Sixty years later, in El Paso, Texas, Reba Adams is trying to file a feel-good Christmas piece for the local magazine, and she sits down with the owner of Elsie's German Bakery for what she expects will be an easy interview. But Reba finds herself returning to the bakery again and again, anxious to find the heart of the story—a story that resonates with her own turbulent past. For Elsie, Reba’s questions are a stinging reminder of that last bleak year of World War II. As the two women's lives become intertwined, both are forced to confront the uncomfortable truths of the past and seek out the courage to forgive.

A major new work, a hybrid of history, journalism, and memoir, about the modern Freedom of Information Act – FOIA – and the horrifying, decades-old government misdeeds that it is unable to demystify, from one of America's most celebrated writers Eight years ago, while investigating the possibility that the United States had used biological weapons in the Korean War, Nicholson Baker requested a series of Air Force documents from the early 1950s under the provisions of the Freedom of Information Act. Years went by, and he got no response. Rather than wait forever, Baker set out to keep a personal journal of what it feels like to try to write about major historical events in a world of pervasive redactions, witheld records, and glacially slow governmental responses. The result is one of the most original and daring works of nonfiction in recent memory, a singular and mesmerizing narrative that tunnels into the history of some of the darkest and most shameful plans and projects of the CIA, the Air Force, and the presidencies of Harry Truman and Dwight Eisenhower. In his lucid and unassuming style, Baker assembles what he learns, piece by piece, about Project Baseless, a crash Pentagon program begun in the early fifties that aimed to achieve "an Air Force-wide combat capability in biological and chemical warfare at the earliest possible date." Along the way, he unearths stories of balloons carrying crop disease, leaflet bombs filled with feathers, suicidal scientists, leaky centrifuges, paranoid political-warfare tacticians, insane experiments on animals and humans, weaponized ticks, ferocious propaganda battles with China, and cover and deception plans meant to trick the Kremlin into ramping up its germ-warfare program. At the same time, Baker tells the stories of the heroic journalists and lawyers who have devoted their energies to wresting documentary evidence from goverment repositories, and he shares anecdotes from his daily life in Maine feeding his dogs and watching the morning light gather on the horizon. The result is an astonishing and utterly disarming story about waiting, bureaucracy, the horrors of war, and, above all, the cruel secrets that the United States government seems determined to keep forever from its citizens.

For more than twenty years, George Greenstein owned and operated a Long Island bakery that produced all sorts of baked goods, from all sorts of ethnic traditions—focaccia and Irish soda bread, Bavarian pumpernickel and naan—including many from his own culture, such as Jewish corn bread, challah, and bagels. His bakery was one of those neighborhood treasures where every weekday evening commuters picked up brown paper bags filled with a dozen Vienna rolls straight from the oven, and every weekend morning lines extended out the door for hours.In this James Beard Award-winning cookbook, Greenstein reveals 125 recipes for the yeasted and quick breads that have been handed down through his family by three generations of bakers—the breads that made his bakery so well-loved for so many years. And now that most neighborhood bakeries like Greenstein's are long since closed, this classic collection serves not only to teach bakers everywhere how to make those delicious, classic breads, but it also preserves authentic versions of the included Jewish recipes for all to enjoy.With the same helpful features that made this a cherished cookbook upon its original publication—separate instructions for mixing each recipe by hand, food processor, and stand mixer; tips for baking a week's worth of bread in as few as two hours; invaluable baker's secrets; and a very approachable style throughout—this revised edition also includes twelve new recipes to satisfy both old fans and new. So bring the spirit of that great old bakery back to life right in your very own kitchen, filling every room of your house with the wonderful aroma of freshly baked bread. And rest assured you'll bake with ease and success every time, thanks to George and his long-learned, very happily shared SECRETS OF A JEWISH BAKER.

A bread manifesto and signature recipes from Poilâne, the internationally famous bakery that "revolutionized" bread in America --Alice Waters

A provocative, inspiring account of our neglected American ideals and the people who are living them today--and restoring our nation's dream Patriotism has become a loaded word: one that is wielded against people with whom we might disagree, or whose cultural origins don't match our own. But our founding fathers--Washington, Jefferson, Adams, and others--saw patriotism as a dynamic force: an act of service, in an evolving nation that defined its purpose by offering all people a better way of life. In Authentic Patriotism, author and award-winning journalist Stephen P. Kiernan explores the original ideals that have been lost in our current climate, where war and economic turmoil have eroded our sense of civic obligation. Kiernan describes "a nation adrift," out of touch with its origins--and then introduces a range of inspiring people who have revived our national purpose by taking action: - The out-of-work college graduate who led an economic and environmental renewal of her blighted home community. - The retired executive who pioneered a revolutionary concept in health care for people without insurance. - The minister who created a legendary choir, with the goal of uniting children of different races, genders, and classes in one voice. - The family who donated their daughter's heart, so that another might live. These and other "New Americans" are profiled in a book that offers hope, ideas, examples, and practical resources for readers who want to renew the American spirit.

Bee is an orphan in the poor kingdom of Aradyn, and when she is caught stealing a bun from a bakery, the lonely baker offers to take her on as an apprentice--but when she meets Princess Anika, and the evil mage Joris who is her "guardian" she embarks on a journey to save Anika, and restore the kingdom its rightful ruler.

A Times Literary Supplement Book of the Year “Richly evocative and entertaining.”—Guardian “An essential book for anyone who wants to Polari bona!”—Attitude “Exuberant, richly detailed. . . . A delightful read.”—Tatler Polari is a language that was used chiefly by gay men in the first half of the twentieth century. It offered its speakers a degree of public camouflage and a means of identification. Its colorful roots are varied—from Cant to Lingua Franca to dancers’ slang—and in the mid-1960s it was thrust into the limelight by the characters Julian and Sandy, voiced by Hugh Paddick and Kenneth Williams, on the BBC radio show Round the Horne (“Oh hello Mr Horne, how bona to vada your dolly old eek!”). Paul Baker recounts the story of Polari with skill, humor, and tenderness. He traces its historical origins and describes its linguistic nuts and bolts, explores the ways and the environments in which it was spoken, explains the reasons for its decline, and tells of its unlikely reemergence in the twenty-first century. With a cast of drag queens and sailors, Dilly boys and macho clones, Fabulosa! is an essential document of recent history—a fascinating and fantastically readable account of this funny, filthy, and ingenious language.

Melliandra, forced into a betrothal with a sinister prince, flees Castle Harvell with Jack, a kitchen apprentice with an uncontrolled power to work miracles. The Book of Words is a new fantasy adventure series featuring lethal conspiracies.

Attention bread lovers!In the first of his famous books about Provence, Peter Mayle shared with us news of a bakery in the town of Cavaillon where the baking and appreciation of breads “had been elevated to the status of a minor religion.” Its name: Chez Auzet.Now, several hundred visits later, Mayle has joined forces with Gerard Auzet, the proprietor of this most glorious of Provençal bakeries, to tell us about breadmaking at its finest.Mayle takes us into the baking room to witness the birth of a loaf. We see the master at work–slapping, rolling, squeezing, folding, and twisting dough as he sculpts it into fougasses, bâtards, and boules. Auzet then gives us precise, beautifully illustrated instructions for making sixteen kinds of bread, from the classic baguette to loaves made with such ingredients as bacon, apricots, hazelnuts, garlic, and green and black olives. There are tips galore, the tricks of the trade are revealed, and along the way Mayle relates the delightful history of four generations of Auzet bakers. One of Provence’s oldest and most delicious pleasures is now available at a kitchen near you, thanks to this charming guide. Read, bake, and enjoy. From the Hardcover edition.

“Jeffrey Ford is one of the few writers who uses wonder instead of ink in his pen.” – Jonathan Carroll A bold and intriguing fabulist novel that reimagines two of the most legendary characters in American literature—Captain Ahab and Ishmael of Herman Melville’s Moby-Dick—from the critically acclaimed Edgar and World Fantasy award-winning author of The Girl in the Glass and The Shadow Year. At the end of a long journey, Captain Ahab returns to the mainland to confront the true author of the novel Moby-Dick, his former shipmate, Ishmael. For Ahab was not pulled into the ocean’s depths by a harpoon line, and the greatly exaggerated rumors of his untimely death have caused him grievous harm—after hearing about Ahab’s demise, his wife and child left Nantucket for New York, and now Ahab is on a desperate quest to find them. Ahab’s pursuit leads him to The Gorgon’s Mirror, the sensationalist tabloid newspaper that employed Ishmael as a copy editor while he wrote the harrowing story of the ill-fated Pequod. In the penny press’s office, Ahab meets George Harrow, who makes a deal with the captain: the newspaperman will help Ahab navigate the city in exchange for the exclusive story of his salvation from the mouth of the great white whale. But their investigation—like Ahab’s own story—will take unexpected, dangerous, and ultimately tragic turns. Told with wisdom, suspense, a modicum of dry humor and horror, and a vigorous stretching of the truth, Ahab’s Return charts an inventive and intriguing voyage involving one of the most memorable characters in classic literature, and pays homage to one of the greatest novels ever written.

The region of Alsace, France, 1942.Some things are to die for: Evangeline Pfeiffer has a stolen secret. There are those who would kill her to get it back. Ever since the German invasion, Evangeline Pfeiffer has worked at the bakery in the small French town of Turckheim. Each morning, together with Alain her brother, she helps make the bread and pastries for Joseph, the baker. It is a life of routine and order.But there is disaster waiting just round the corner and when Alain is arrested by the Gestapo for aiding the resistance, her quiet existence is shattered. Unwittingly, she becomes an accomplice in the murder of Nazi agent Ludwig Kraus and finds herself thrown together with the killer, a Polish spy code named Kasha. She's on the wanted list, her only hope is an escape to Spain. Taking the baker's van she and Kasha drive south. She has burnt her bridges - there is no going back. She is on the run - but the spy running with her might not be all he seems; Evangeline is suspicious; maybe he has another agenda - one that will not include her.Behind them as they twist and turn across Occupied France, their pursuers are closing in: the Gestapo, the German spy catchers (Sicherheitsdienst) and, most terrifying of all, the ruthless French secret police, La Carlingue. If they catch her she knows she will have little chance of survival: she will be raped, tortured and executed.In the city of Dijon Kasha is captured. On her own with her chances of escape fading she continues her flight south; all the while the net tightening around her. Arriving in the southern city of Lyon she makes contact with a resistance cell but she is unsure if she can trust them - everywhere there are informers. Then something happens - she meets Grainger, a British SOE agent - he could be the game changer. If she can persuade him to help her, this could be her ticket out. But Grainger is reluctant, he has his own mission, he can't afford passengers - nevertheless she's sticking to him. She's not about to let go...

Joy the Baker Cookbook includes everything from "Man Bait" Apple Crisp to Single Lady Pancakes to Peanut Butter Birthday Cake. Joy's philosophy is that everyone loves dessert; most people are just looking for an excuse to eat cake for breakfast.

Presents a collection of baked bread recipes; outlines key baking techniques; and offers complementary information on ingredients, equipment, and baking chemistry.

For fans of My Dark Vanessa, Netflix's Unbelievable, Sally Rooney, and Susan Choi, an important novel about modern love, consent, and toxic inheritance from a brilliant new voice. A Belletrist Book Pick "[A] masterful, incisive debut... reminiscent of Donna Tartt or Edward St. Aubyn."--USA Today(four out of four stars) When Kate Quaile meets Max Rippon the first week of university, so begins a life-changing friendship. Over the next four years, the two become inseparable. But knowing Max means knowing his family: the wealthy Rippons, all generosity, social ease, and quiet repression. Until one evening at a summer party at their home, Kate's life is shattered in a bedroom while the music plays on downstairs. And she is forced to make a choice: to speak up or stay silent. Incisively exploring the effects of trauma on the mind and body of a young woman, What Red Was is piercing novel of power, privilege, and consent from a fearless new voice.