From Flannery O'Connor and Rona Jaffe Award winner Lori Ostlund, a deeply moving and beautiful debut novel about a man who leaves his longtime partner in New Mexico for a new life in San Francisco, launching him on a tragicomic road trip and deep into the mysteries of his own Midwestern childhood.Sensitive, big-hearted and achingly self-conscious, forty-year-old Aaron Englund long ago escaped the confines of his Midwestern hometown, but he still feels like an outcast. After twenty years under the Pygmalion-like direction of his partner Walter, Aaron at last decides it is time to stop letting life happen to him and take control of his own fate. But soon after establishing himself in San Francisco-where�he alternates between shoddy garage apartment and the absurdly ramshackle ESL school where he teaches-Aaron sees that real freedom will not come until he has made peace with his memories of Morton, Minnesota: a cramped town whose four hundred souls form a constellation of Aaron's childhood heartbreaks and hopes.After Aarons father dies in the town parade, it was the larger than life misfits of his childhood-a sardonic, wheel-chair bound dwarf named Clarence, a generous, obese baker Bernice, a kindly aunt preoccupied with dreams of The Rapture-who helped Aaron find his place in a provincial world hostile to difference. But Aaron's sense of rejection runs deep: when Aaron was seventeen, Dolores-Aaron's loving yet selfish enigmatic mother-vanished one night with the town pastor. Aaron hasn't� heard from Delores in more than twenty years, but when a shambolic PI named Bill offers a key to closure, Aaron must confront his own role in his troubled past and rethink his place in a world of unpredictable, life-changing forces.Lori Ostlund's debut novel is an openhearted contemplation of how we grow up and move on, how we can turn our deepest wounds into our greatest strengths. Written with homespun charm and unceasing vitality, After the Parade is a glorious new anthem for the outsider.

Product Description: FOR USE IN SCHOOLS AND LIBRARIES ONLY. EllRay Jakes finally grows up (a little) by playing basketball in this ninth book in the series. There's a new game in town--basketball! Or in Ellray's case, pre -basketball. Coach Havens has all the third graders dribbling, passing, and shooting, and he's quick to compliment EllRay's skills...read more

Miss Mackle is getting married! But she didn’t invite any of her students to the wedding. The kids don’t understand it: a wedding is a time for families to be together, and they are Miss Mackle’s Room 3B family—which is especially important because her father is in the military overseas, and he won’t be home for the wedding. So Harry comes up with a plan to sneak his pals into the wedding ceremony and hide in the back. It seems like the kids are going to make a horrible mess of their teacher’s wedding . . . until they find a way to save the day for all involved.

Product Description: FOR USE IN SCHOOLS AND LIBRARIES ONLY. When Harry and his friends get left out of their teacher's wedding, they invite themselves! The long-awaited day is finally here: Miss Mackle is getting married! The only problem is that she didn't invite any of her Room 3B students to the wedding...read more

Excerpt from Chapter 1: “A tall, slim girl, "half-past sixteen," with serious gray eyes and hair which her friends called auburn, had sat down on the broad red sandstone doorstep of a Prince Edward Island farmhouse one ripe afternoon in August, firmly resolved to construe so many lines of Virgil. But an August afternoon, with blue hazes scarfing the harvest slopes, little winds whispering elfishly in the poplars, and a dancing splendor of red poppies outflaming against the dark coppice of young firs in a corner of the cherry orchard, was fitter for dreams than dead languages. The Virgil soon slipped unheeded to the ground, and Anne, her chin propped on her clasped hands, and her eyes on the splendid mass of fluffy clouds that were heaping up just over Mr. J. A. Harrison's house like a great white mountain, was far away in a delicious world where a certain schoolteacher was doing a wonderful work, shaping the destinies of future statesmen, and inspiring youthful minds and hearts with high and lofty ambitions.”

Excerpt from Chapter 1: “A tall, slim girl, "half-past sixteen," with serious gray eyes and hair which her friends called auburn, had sat down on the broad red sandstone doorstep of a Prince Edward Island farmhouse one ripe afternoon in August, firmly resolved to construe so many lines of Virgil. But an August afternoon, with blue hazes scarfing the harvest slopes, little winds whispering elfishly in the poplars, and a dancing splendor of red poppies outflaming against the dark coppice of young firs in a corner of the cherry orchard, was fitter for dreams than dead languages. The Virgil soon slipped unheeded to the ground, and Anne, her chin propped on her clasped hands, and her eyes on the splendid mass of fluffy clouds that were heaping up just over Mr. J. A. Harrison's house like a great white mountain, was far away in a delicious world where a certain schoolteacher was doing a wonderful work, shaping the destinies of future statesmen, and inspiring youthful minds and hearts with high and lofty ambitions.”

Purchase one of 1st World Library's Classic Books and help support our free internet library of downloadable eBooks. Visit us online at www.1stWorldLibrary.ORG - - A tall, slim girl, "half-past sixteen," with serious gray eyes and hair which her friends called auburn, had sat down on the broad red sandstone doorstep of a Prince Edward Island farmhouse one ripe afternoon in August, firmly resolved to construe so many lines of Virgil. But an August afternoon, with blue hazes scarfing the harvest slopes, little winds whispering elfishly in the poplars, and a dancing slendor of red poppies outflaming against the dark coppice of young firs in a corner of the cherry orchard, was fitter for dreams than dead languages. The Virgil soon slipped unheeded to the ground, and Anne, her chin propped on her clasped hands, and her eyes on the splendid mass of fluffy clouds that were heaping up just over Mr. J. A. Harrison's house like a great white mountain, was far away in a delicious world where a certain school-teacher was doing a wonderful work, shaping the destinies of future statesmen, and inspiring youthful minds and hearts with high and lofty ambitions.

Excerpt from Chapter 1: “A tall, slim girl, "half-past sixteen," with serious gray eyes and hair which her friends called auburn, had sat down on the broad red sandstone doorstep of a Prince Edward Island farmhouse one ripe afternoon in August, firmly resolved to construe so many lines of Virgil. But an August afternoon, with blue hazes scarfing the harvest slopes, little winds whispering elfishly in the poplars, and a dancing splendor of red poppies outflaming against the dark coppice of young firs in a corner of the cherry orchard, was fitter for dreams than dead languages. The Virgil soon slipped unheeded to the ground, and Anne, her chin propped on her clasped hands, and her eyes on the splendid mass of fluffy clouds that were heaping up just over Mr. J. A. Harrison's house like a great white mountain, was far away in a delicious world where a certain schoolteacher was doing a wonderful work, shaping the destinies of future statesmen, and inspiring youthful minds and hearts with high and lofty ambitions.”

Excerpt from Chapter 1: “A tall, slim girl, "half-past sixteen," with serious gray eyes and hair which her friends called auburn, had sat down on the broad red sandstone doorstep of a Prince Edward Island farmhouse one ripe afternoon in August, firmly resolved to construe so many lines of Virgil. But an August afternoon, with blue hazes scarfing the harvest slopes, little winds whispering elfishly in the poplars, and a dancing splendor of red poppies outflaming against the dark coppice of young firs in a corner of the cherry orchard, was fitter for dreams than dead languages. The Virgil soon slipped unheeded to the ground, and Anne, her chin propped on her clasped hands, and her eyes on the splendid mass of fluffy clouds that were heaping up just over Mr. J. A. Harrison's house like a great white mountain, was far away in a delicious world where a certain schoolteacher was doing a wonderful work, shaping the destinies of future statesmen, and inspiring youthful minds and hearts with high and lofty ambitions.”

Product Description: A schoolteacher enters a war of shadows to save his daughter from the 3rd Reich David Ashby spent the last war killing Germans, and the years after falling in love with one. By the time Hitler comes to power, David has a half-German daughter, Karen, whom he loves more than life itself...read more

Product Description: "Steady pacing paired with well-timed foreshadowing and fully realized characters make this one compelling from the beginning. Fans of Donna Tartt's The Secret History (1992), Erin Kelly's The Poison Tree (2011), and Tana French's The Likeness (2008) will likely enjoy the new perspective Haynes' conversational style offers to similar material...read more

Product Description: America’s #1 radio talk-show host and multi-million-copy #1 New York Times bestselling author presents an audiobook for young readers with a history teacher who travels back in time to have adventures with exceptional Americans...read more