Showing results for "The Beans" in Literary Fiction

Sentaro has failed. He has a criminal record, drinks too much, and his dream of becoming a writer is just a distant memory. With only the blossoming of the cherry trees to mark the passing of time, he spends his days in a tiny confectionery shop selling dorayaki, a type of pancake filled with sweet bean paste. Into his life comes Tokue, an elderly woman with disfigured hands and a troubled past. Tokue makes the best sweet bean paste Sentaro has ever tasted. She begins to teach him her craft, but as their friendship flourishes, social pressures become impossible to escape.

“The Bean Trees is the work of a visionary. . . . It leaves you open-mouthed and smiling.” — Los Angeles Times A bestseller that has come to be regarded as an American classic, The Bean Trees is the novel that launched Barbara Kingsolver’s remarkable literary career. It is the charming...

A powerful debut, harmonising Australian-born and immigrant voices, contrasting and connecting their thoughts and struggles. What if moving to a crumbling Australian coastal town meant giving up your only dream? In 1974, Nayeema reluctantly leaves Sydney's inner city to move to Burraboo, a tired coastal town, with her husband, Fawzy. In doing so, Nayeema surrenders her only dream, but once there she falls under the sway of new infatuations.

The Jelly-Bean - one of the stories, which entered in a collection of eleven short stories by F. Scott Fitzgerald Tales of the Jazz Age (1922). This is a Southern story, with the setting laid in the small Lily of Tarleton, Georgia. Fitzgerald wrote that he had "a profound affection for Tarleton, but somehow whenever I write a story about it I receive letters from all over the South denouncing me in no uncertain terms." Written shortly after his first novel was published, the author also collaborated with his wife on certain scenes.

Shanghai, 1912. Violet Minturn is the privileged daughter of the American madam of the city's most exclusive courtesan house. But when the Ching dynasty is overturned, Violet is separated from her mother in a cruel act of chicanery and forced to become a "virgin courtesan." Half-Chinese and half-American, Violet grapples with her place in the worlds of East and West - until she is able to merge her two halves, empowering her to become a shrewd courtesan who excels in the business of seduction and illusion, though she still struggles to understand who she is.

Single mother Harpa has always been a misfit. Her physical description is like no other Icelander: so small she self-deprecatingly refers to herself as a dwarf, so dark-skinned she doubts her genetic link to her parents, so strange she nearly believed the children who mistook her for a mythical creature of the forest. Even as an adult, she struggles to make sense of her place in the world. When she sees how her teenage daughter, Edda, has suffered since a friend’s drug overdose, Harpa has no choice but to tear her away from her friends.

The prim librarian is finally getting her chance to direct Avalon's annual holiday pageant, and she's determined to make it truly spectacular. But it might just require one of those Christmas miracles she's always read about. The problem is her codirector is recovering former child star Eddie Haven, a long-haired, tattooed lump of coal in Maureen's pageant stocking. Eddie can't stand Christmas, but a court order from a judge has landed him right in the middle of the merrymaking.

When Claire Nagy marries Forster Baumsarg, the only son of prominent California citrus ranchers, she knows she's consenting to a life of hard work, long days, and worry-fraught nights. But her love for Forster is so strong, she turns away from her literary education and embraces the life of the ranch, succumbing to its intoxicating rhythms and bounty until her love of the land becomes a part of her.

Marnie MacGraw wants an ordinary life - a husband, kids, and a minivan in the suburbs. Now that she’s marrying the man of her dreams, she’s sure this is the life she’ll get. Then Marnie meets Blix Holliday, her fiancé’s irascible matchmaking great-aunt who’s dying, and everything changes - just as Blix told her it would. When her marriage ends after two miserable weeks, Marnie is understandably shocked.

International lawyer Sophie Bellamy has dedicated her life to helping people in war-torn countries. But when she survives a hostage situation, she remembers what matters most: the children she loves back home. Haunted by regrets, she returns to the idyllic Catskills village of Avalon on the shores of Willow Lake, determined to repair the bonds with her family.

Marika Vecera, an accomplished war reporter, has dedicated her life to helping the world's oppressed and forgotten. When not on one of her dangerous assignments, she lives in Boston, exploring a new relationship with Seb, a psychologist who offers her glimpses of a better world. Returning from a harrowing assignment in Congo, where she was kidnapped by rebel soldiers, Marika learns that a man she has always admired from afar, Pulitzer-winning war correspondent Robert Lewis, has committed suicide.

Baseball hopeful Bo Crutcher is about to get his shot at the majors. That is, until life throws him a curveball. When AJ, the son he's never met, lands on his doorstep, Bo's life becomes a whole new ball game. He needs help - fast. Enter Kimberly van Dorn. Hired to smooth Bo's rough exterior for the media, she expects the kind of shallow pro athlete she's used to handling. But Bo is willing to sacrifice everything for his vulnerable son.

In the midst of a sudden spring snowstorm, an unknown man armed with a gun walks into an elementary school classroom. Outside the school, the town of Broken Branch watches and waits. Officer Meg Barrett holds the responsibility for the town’s children in her hands. As tension mounts with each passing minute, the hidden fears and grudges of the small town are revealed as the people of Broken Branch race to uncover the identity of the stranger who holds their children hostage.

Brother and sister Jerry and Daisy Lou Malone leave behind their provincial Midwestern upbringing to test their mettle in the big, beckoning world of 1920s America. For Jerry, the future lies west, with like-minded pioneer souls keen to play the “land game” as homesteaders on the Great Plains. Daisy, in turn, heads for the lights and luxe life of New York City, hoping to sing her way to stardom.

Minding Ben invites listeners into the private world of one of the anonymous West Indian babysitters who have peopled the lives of so many young urban families for decades. Grace left Trinidad for New York with hopes for a better life and education. As she struggles to adjust to her new life - and to determine just what shape her American Dream will take - Grace finds work as a nanny for the unconscionable Bruckners, a job that pays meager wages for its demanding and humiliating responsibilities.

NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER From the author of The House of Lincoln, an “enthralling” novel that brings “the buried truths of the ill-starred relationship of Mamah Borthwick Cheney and Frank Lloyd Wright to light” (The New York Times Book Review). “Masterful.”—People “A...

Laura, a 40-something journalist with a fertile imagination, tries to escape her mother's influence and shuns all contact with her. She receives a call one morning from a spiritual center where her mother had been a regular. She had not called in four days. As Laura enters her mother’s apartment she finds her lying on the floor, completely famished. In the hospital she is diagnosed with a fatal cancer.