![]() ![]() The titular courtship begins when widower and father of seven Ancil Drayton starts calling on Hattie. ![]() Hattie’s and Reed’s relationship at the novel’s outset is almost sibling-like. ![]() He sharecrops the land with the intention of purchasing the farm once he has the money saved. The other main character, Reed Tyler, who is five years Hattie’s junior, has worked the farm since he was eight years old. The titular character, Hattie Colfax, is a plain-looking, twenty-nine-year-old “spinster” and owner of a small cotton farm in a rural county whose economic viability is dependent upon cotton. The physical description of the county seat recalls Osceola ( Mississippi C ounty ), but this is not specified. The county where the story takes place is also depicted as being significantly north of Helena (Phillips County). Although no exact location is named in the book, the most likely setting for the novel is northeastern Arkansas based on references to the New Madrid earthquakes, descriptions of the topography, mentions of crops raised ( cotton and the new crop, rice, whose introduction to the area is a subplot of the novel), and proximity to the Mississippi River. The time frame is established by a reference in the book to the New Madrid earthquakes (1811–1812) having occurred 100 years prior. The novel is set in Arkansas around 1911. Courting Miss Hattie is a 1992 romance novel by award-winning author Pamela Morsi. ![]()
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![]() It’s only when they arrive in the US, does she realise how little English she actually does understand. This is exciting and terrifying in equal measure for Jude, but she is essential in their travel as she speaks English. ![]() Jude’s mother has a baby on the way, and it is decided they will move to America while things are unstable in their beloved Syria. They march and protest, and the unrest around them grows. ![]() All Jude wants is to carry on in peace and as they always have, but there is no stopping her brother and his university friends. He talks of democracy and against the Syrian president, claiming he is oppressing their people. Now that her big brother is older, he is losing his smile and becoming much more serious. They laugh at this, and then watch the movies all over again.īut times are changing. She thinks she looks a little like Julia Roberts, at least her wide mouth does. Jude and Fatima’s favourite thing to do is watch American movies. ![]() They are a close knit family living in a city in Syria. She loves chatting and laughing with her best friend Fatima and singing with her big brother too, but she is always being told to quieten down by her parents. ![]() ![]() ![]() Within seconds, she collapses and Matthew learns that his father really is his biological parent, and that his mother was expecting another child until the potion caused her to miscarry. He manages to buy the item while Brother Zachariah is not watching and gives it to his mother. ![]() Matthew has recently begun to doubt that his father is his biological parent, and is searching for a potion that would force her to tell the truth. Shadow Markets are where Downworlders (faeries, vampires, werewolves, and the like) gather to buy and sell, so Brother Zachariah is surprised when encounters a young Shadowhunter named Matthew Fairchild. He became a Silent Brother, a race of immortals that provides various services, including tending the sick, wounded, and dead. He was a Shadowhunter named Jem Carstairs until he almost died due to an involuntary addiction to a drug called yin fen. The novel opens in 1901 with a story titled “Cast Long Shadows.” Brother Zachariah, a member of the Silent Brothers, spending time in a Shadow Market. Simon and Schuster Children's Publishing, New York, New York, 2019. The following version of the book was used to create this study guide: Clare, Cassandra, et al. ![]() ![]() ![]() But when a wealthy local widow kills herself and the following day her fiancé, Roger Ackroyd, is stabbed to death in his study, the intelligent, mustachioed detective is asked to find the truth about the murder. The world-renowned Belgian private detective Hercule Poirot has retired to the sleepy village of King’s Abbot. ![]() Voted by the British Crime Writers’ Association as the "Best Crime Novel of all Time," this updated edition of the classic Hercule Poirot mystery features a Book Club Study Guide that dissects the surprising twist, and a selection of shareable quotes from the novel.Ĭelebrated for its astounding ending, this is the book that made Agatha Christie famous. It is the third novel to feature Hercule Poirot as the lead detective. ![]() The Murder of Roger Ackroyd is a work of detective fiction by British writer Agatha Christie, first published in June 1926 in the United Kingdom. ![]() ![]() ![]() It was a format I hated in ‘The Dark’ and I just felt the six hours of this audio book were going feel like they dragged on for sixty. Upon starting it, I inwardly groaned at the fact that the ‘short scene featuring the death of everyone involved followed by a main character reacting to each scene later on’ filled me with dread. ![]() I had heard great things about this book, and the series in general so, when I saw it for sale as part of the Audible Daily Deal I leapt at the chance to buy. Purchase: Audible UK, Audible US, Amazon UK, Amazon US War is declared on the public enemy number one. Evacuation seems the only solution in the face of a growing panic and mounting death toll. The attacks are swift and sure, escape is impossible. Women, children, old and young, none are safe from the deadly menace. ![]() Book One in Herbert’s classic “rats” series. ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() It has everything that makes her books such a joy: intriguing clues, plenty of suspects all with strong motives, lots of red herrings and misdirection, and, of course, the hugely entertaining interplay between Poirot and Hastings. ![]() This is a rather typical Agatha Christie story – typically brilliant, that is. Poirot is already suspicious that this murderer is working to an alphabetical plan a suspicion that is confirmed when the third letter speaks of Churston. Some weeks pass before Poirot receives a second letter, this time warning of a murder to take place in Bexhill and, sure enough, a body turns up on the due date, along with another copy of the ABC. Poirot and Hastings head to Andover, and soon find that Mrs Ascher's drunken husband had every reason to want her dead, and would surely be arrested for the crime were it not for the strange coincidence of the letter. When the day comes, so does news of a murder – Alice Ascher, the owner of a small newsagents, has been found dead, with a copy of the ABC railway guide lying beside her body. After they've done a bit of catching up, Poirot shows Hastings a bizarre letter he has received, warning that a crime will be committed on a certain date in Andover. When Captain Hastings comes back on a trip to London from his new home in the Argentine, he hastens round to visit his old friend, Hercule Poirot. ![]() ![]() ![]() And I love a good bit of dystopian fiction, especially with a Western motif. It turns out to be a risk too far by Ty's parents: they're abducted as they're making the deal.Ĭan Ty and Gemma find his parents? Or those responsible for the massacre on the township? To do so, they'll need to join up with the notorious Seablite Gang, avoid Captain Revas of the Seaguard and risk their lives against both desperate villains and sea monsters. After all, what do they have to lose? Their floating townships have seen their rations cut in half by the Topsider assembly and the colonists won't let them fish in the Benthic Territory. This is a controversial decision on their part as the Surfs - short for surfeits - are known to be dangerous. Ty's underwater colonist parents are planning to sell their crops to a Surf township. But before they can begin to unravel the mystery, another crisis takes centre stage. ![]() Ty and Gemma discover a township chained and sunk on the ocean floor, every one of its hundreds of residents murdered. Our favourite Dark Lifer and his Topsider friend are set for another post-apocalyptic adventure in this follow-up to Dark Life. ![]() ![]()
![]() It’s about alienation, of waking up powerful but not knowing why, of being in danger for reasons you can’t remember that shouldn’t matter. Shori’s story is not about her appearance. ![]() TBH, I think both of those takes are getting it wrong. ![]() I’ve had some awkward conversations about this book focused on either pedophilia or hypersexualization of Black girls. Butler wrote diverse communities well, and this book is no exception.Īll in all, this sounds like a good story, right?īut what if I tell you that despite being 53 and not human, Shori resembles a 10-year-old Black girl? Some of the best scenes in the book are the little life vignettes that Shori shares with her young human harem. Of course, she is a vampire, which means she has to build a community of human blood donors who are sexually and emotionally connected to her. Shori is the only one left, and her life depends on relearning her people’s ways and figuring out who wants her dead, and why. Someone has been trying to kill her and her family, and they’ve nearly succeeded. Instead of an impossibly sexy and immoral huntress, our title vampire is Shori, a compassionate 53-year-old vampire with amnesia trying to solve a mystery. ![]() ![]() The book is about vampires, but stays pretty far away from the usual cliches. If they’re lucky, it’s just one book or part of a book.įledgling has been called Butler’s vampire novel, and that’s not wrong. Every author has something in their catalog that gives readers of the future the ick. ![]() ![]() ![]() What’s really fun is that each time we’ve reread this book the story changes a little. On one rereading of this book my son started shouting at the pictures on the page saying, “Oh no! The dog popped her ball!” My son then wanted to read it himself and he “reread” it to me several times. We’ve looked through this wordless picture book about a dozen times in the past day followed by various reenactments of the story. However, on Daisy’s next visit to the park she is greeted with a new ball by her friend. One day, Daisy and her human go to the park where her precious ball is accidentally popped by her friend. She plays with it all the time and even naps with it. My son cannot seem to get enough of this book. It’s a deceptively simple book that lends itself to lots of imaginative play. If you haven’t checked this book out, please do. The illustrations are beautiful and (clearly) skillfully done. There’s a really great reason it received the Caldecott - it’s excellent. ![]() |