Elizabeth Berg
Author
Language
English
Description
In this stunning novel, beloved bestselling author Elizabeth Berg weaves a beautifully written and richly resonant story of a mother and daughter in emotional transit. Helen Ames-recently widowed, coping with grief, unable to do the work that has always sustained her-is beginning to depend too much on her twenty-seven-year-old daughter Tessa, meddling in her life and offering unsolicited advice. Then Helen is shocked to discover that her mild-mannered...
Author
Series
Language
English
Description
"This beautiful novel tells the love story of young Arthur Moses and Nola, and how a young man grew up to become the wise old man known as Arthur Truluv. Set in the 1950s in the warm community of Mason, Missouri, Arthur is a shy, unathletic teenage boy, in love with the most beautiful girl in his class. He is thrilled when they become friends, but he wants more than friendship. Alas, he learns that Nola has a crush on the wrong Moses--Arthur's older...
Author
Series
Language
English
Description
Selling her home and taking time off from her career as a successful motivational speaker, Cecilia Ross moves into a beautiful old house in St. Paul and bonds with three roommates, including one who would reconnect with a daughter she gave up for adoption, one who would visit her long-absent ex and a professional chef who would find inspiration from other restaurants.
"Cecilia Ross is looking for a change. She has decided to take time off from her...
5) Open house
Author
Accelerated Reader
IL: UG - BL: 3.8 - AR Pts: 9
Language
English
Description
Samantha's husband has left her, and after a spree of overcharging at Tiffany's, she settles down to reconstruct a life for herself and her eleven-year-old son. Her eccentric mother tries to help by fixing her up with dates, but a more pressing problem is money. To meet her mortgage payments, Sam decides to take in boarders. The first is an older woman who offers sage advice and sorely needed comfort; the second, a maladjusted student, is not quite...
Author
Language
English
Description
At the beginning of this powerful novel, we meet Aurore Dupin as she is leaving her estranged husband, a loveless marriage, and her family’s estate in the French countryside to start a new life in Paris. There, she gives herself a new name—George Sand—and pursues her dream of becoming a writer, embracing an unconventional and even scandalous lifestyle. Paris in the nineteenth century comes vividly alive, illuminated by the story of the loves,...
Author
Series
Mason novels volume 2
Language
English
Description
Lucille Howard is getting on in years, but she stays busy. Thanks to the inspiration of her dearly departed friend Arthur Truluv, she has begun to teach baking classes, sharing the secrets to her delicious buttercream yellow cake, the perfect pinwheel cookies, and other sweet essentials. Her classes have become so popular that she's hired Iris, a new resident of Mason, Missouri, as an assistant. Iris doesn't know how to bake but she needs to keep...
Author
Language
English
Description
Returning home for the annual family reunion, Laura Bartone and her brother, Steve, are stunned by their sister, Caroline, and her allegations of shocking behavior on the part of their mother, and are forced to come to terms with the truth and lies within their family, as well as painful cycle of denial, blame, repression, and forgiveness.
Author
Language
English
Description
In this novel about love and trust, hope and belief, Elizabeth Berg invites us to reimagine the events of the classic Christmas story. Mary and Joseph meet, become betrothed, and face an unexpected pregnancy. They endure challenges to their relationship as well as threats to their relationship as well as threats to their lives as they come to terms with the mysterious circumstances surrounding the birth of their child, Jesus. For Mary, the pregnancy...
12) Never change
Author
Language
English
Description
You know people like me. I'm the one who sat in a folding chair out in the hall selling tickets to the prom but never going, the one everybody liked but no one wanted to be with. A self-anointed spinster at fifty-one, Myra Lipinsky has endured the isolation of her middle life by doting on her dog, Frank, and immersing herself in her career as a visiting nurse. Myra considers herself reasonably content, telling herself, It's enough, work and Frank....
Author
Language
English
Description
Ginny Young is on a plane, en route to see her mother, whom she hasn't seen or spoken to for thirty-five years. She thinks back to the summer of 1958, when she and her sister, Sharla, were young girls. At that time,a series of dramatic events--beginning with the arrival of a mysterious and sensual next-door neighbor--divided the family, separating the sisters from their mother. Moving back and forth in time between the girl she once was and the...
14) True to form
Author
Series
Accelerated Reader
IL: UG - BL: 4.7 - AR Pts: 9
Lexile measure
790L
Language
English
Description
Katie Nash, the beloved heroine of Elizabeth Berg's previous novels Durable Goods and Joy School, is thirteen years old in 1961, and she's facing a summer full of conflict. Her father has enlisted her in two care-taking jobs, baby-sitting for the rambunctious Wexler boys and, equally challenging, looking after Mrs. Randolph, her elderly, bedridden neighbor. To make matters worse, Katie has been forcibly inducted into the "loser" Girl Scout troop,...
15) Durable goods
Author
Series
Katie Nash novels volume 1
Accelerated Reader
IL: UG - BL: 3.7 - AR Pts: 5
Lexile measure
620L
Language
English
Description
Following her mother's death, Katie, a young girl living on an army base, waits for Dickie Mack to fall in love with her and struggles to understand her distant, violent father.
Author
Accelerated Reader
IL: UG - BL: 3.9 - AR Pts: 7
Lexile measure
570L
Language
English
Description
The gripping story of a woman dying from cancer. The narrator is Ann Stanley, an unhappily married nurse. All the more reason for her to admire Ruth Thomas who leaves her husband, even though it means leaving her son, too. A bond develops between the two and when Ruth is struck with cancer Ann helps her die, the process described in minute detail.
17) Joy school
Author
Series
Katie Nash novels volume 2
Accelerated Reader
IL: UG - BL: 3.8 - AR Pts: 7
Lexile measure
660L
Language
English
Description
A lonely thirteen-year-old girl moves to Missouri with her distant and occasionally abusive father and falls in love with an older--and married--gasoline station attendant, an affair that teaches her some hard-won lessons
Author
Language
English
Description
"For as long as Elizabeth can remember, she has watched her father trail after her mother, kissing her multiple times a day and holding her hand. She watched her mother smooth the lines in her father's face and pay attention to his every move, even when she was desperate for some time to herself. When her parents began to age, Elizabeth and her siblings are placed in the difficult position of taking over more and more supportive roles and tasks. They...
19) Range of motion
Author
Accelerated Reader
IL: UG - BL: 4.1 - AR Pts: 7
Lexile measure
680L
Language
English
Description
After a freak accident--ice fell on him as he walked in the street--a man lies in a coma in a hospital in St. Paul, Minnesota. Lainey, his wife, is the only one who believes he will recover. She visits him every day, bringing family objects and talking of home, becoming ever more aware of the wonder and richness of daily life.
Author
Language
English
Description
A compelling anthology of short fiction, including eleven never-before-published pieces, explores the lives of women breaking free of the convention that controls their lives, in a collection that includes "Returns and Exchanges," "Over the Hill and Into the Woods," and the title story, about a woman who goes on a happiness binge after ditching Weight Watchers.