Cosette

Literature & Fiction

Kalpakian, Laura

Contemporary

Harpercollins

Celia Henry owns the most famous bed-and-breakfast in the whole Northwest. At Henry's House on Isadora Island, Celia has created a faux-family homestead, a testament to tradition. Personally, however, Celia's unconventional love life has kept Isadora Island entertained for a generation.
Married only once and widowed at twenty-two, Celia has spent a lifetime preaching (and practicing) Unfettered Love, preferring unions free of matrimony, free of the ties that bind -- and can just as easily strangle. Despite all the domestic upheaval, she has acquired a large extended family of children, stepchildren, partners, and ex-partners. Generous and spirited, but notoriously stubborn, Celia nonetheless draws people into her arms and her home.
When, much to Celia's dismay, her daughter Bethie announces her engagement, Celia reluctantly agrees to throw a lavish celebration. To this party she must invite everyone in her whole overextended family: her steps and exes, their current partners and starchy in-laws, as well as a host of island eccentrics. As the big day approaches, Celia senses impending disaster. But nothing prepares her for the fallout when the nuclear family explodes and she must reconstruct the past in order to transform the future.

Steps and Exes

Written by an authority on Victor Hugo's classic novel, this sequel chronicles the life of Cosette, the adopted daughter of Jean Valjean, and her romance with Marius Pontmercy, while revolution continues to envelop France. 100,000 first printing. $100,000 ad/promo.

Cosette: The Sequel to Les Miserables

HUGO,VICTOR

United States

A preppy young woman, Emily Shaw, arrives in California to take up her first job as a social worker and is handed Joyce Jackson and her "problem family". Joyce appears to be a whacky character, whose house is one big shrine to Elvis Presley and who is hated by the welfare administrators.

Graceland

Constable and Company Ltd.

Dark Continent and Other Stories

A rich collection of short stories about love and loss in an anthology that includes "The Battle of Manila" and "A Christmas Cordial"

Literary

Penguin??Books

The Memoir Club

Six women, each with her own misgivings, take a university Extension night class in Writing Your Memoir, looking only for a little bibliotherapy. The following semester, they meet privately; the memoir class becomes the Memoir Club. In coming to terms with their losses, with their own guilt - in writing to break through that stubborn, opaque barrier to the past - they forge a new present. And a new future. Their teacher, the enigmatic Penny Taylor, steps in at the right moment and steps out before her students can thank her. In the beginning, grief-stricken Dr. Caryn Henley only goes to the class at the insistence of her longtime friend, Nell, a woman so loyal that behind her back people call her "the St. Bernard." Rusty Meadows wants to write a memoir for a daughter she gave up at birth. Mrs. Francine Hellman wants her memoir to laud her late husband, the scientist Dr. Marcus Hellman, only to find he had a past unknown to her. The elderly, unconventional Sarah Jane Perkins writes to come to terms with the cruelties her rigid mother inflicted on her artistic, bootlegging father. And Korean-born Jill McDougall comes to the memoir class to find out who she is, and why she's living in a warehouse with a man who loves ice cream. These students of the memoir achieve what they set out to do, but discover what they never expected. Then an act of violence alters their lives forever.

St.Martin's Press

"In a memoir, the author and the narrator have an uneasy relationship. What does the reader know of the author? That the author lived to tell the tale. What does the reader know of the narrator? That the tale needed to be told." Six women, each with her own misgivings, take a university extension night class in Writing Your Memoir, looking only for a little bibliotherapy. The following semester, they meet privately at the gracious home of one of the participants. The memoir class becomes the memoir club. In coming to terms with their losses, with their own guilt-in writing to break through that stubborn, opaque barrier to the past-they forge a new present. And a new future. The teacher, the enigmatic Penny Taylor, steps in at the right moment and steps out before her students can thank her. In the beginning, grief-stricken Dr. Caryn Henley only goes to the class at the insistence of her longtime friend and colleague, Nell, a woman so loyal that behind her back people call her the St. Bernard. Rusty Meadows wants to write a memoir for her daughter she gave up at birth. Mrs. Francine Hellman wants her memoir to laud her late husband, the scientist Dr. Marcus Hellman, only to find he had a past unknown to her. The elderly, unconventional Sarah Jane Perkins writes to come to terms with the cruelties her rigid mother inflicted on her artistic, bootlegging father. And Korean born Jill McDougall comes to the memoir class to find out who she is, and why she's living in a warehouse with a man who loves ice cream. These students of the memoir achieve what they set out to do, but discover what they never expected. Along the way, the disparate women come together, reveal themselves to each other and support each other. As they render their pasts in memoirs, they forge a new present and a new future.

St. Martin's: Griffin

American Cookery: A Novel

Animated as a family reunion, intimate as a lovers' picnic, American Cookery serves up tradition and innovation in a family novel based on the joy of cooking. The story is complete with twenty-seven recipes from the life and tumultuous times of Eden Douglass. Eden was born in 1920 into a contentious California tribe, and the ingredients of her life include her grandmother's reserve, her aunt's instinct for action, and her mother's foggy warmth. Seasoned with spicy herbs, and a few bitter ones, simmered and stirred over time, these instincts shape her destiny. Two strong-willed women--her grandmother Ruth Douglass and her aunt Afton Lance--struggle to pull Eden from the comfy sloth of her parents' home. Her ill-matched parents drift toward financial collapse, and her father, pursuing phantom wealth, takes the family to an Idaho mining town. He finds fulfillment in Idaho, but Eden's mother breaks down, and Eden must shoulder the household drudgery, burdens not in keeping with her aspirations to be a journalist. Eden's adventurous spirit takes her far from her faith and family. She falls in love in wartime London and rides a motorcycle across war-torn Belgium. After the war, still reeling from a devastating loss, Eden returns to Southern California and is hired by a newspaper, only to confront insidious opposition, yet find an unexpected ally. Then, in 1952, fate puts Eden Douglass in the path of a runaway horse at Greenwater Movie Ranch, where they're filing a B-movie Western. She falls flat on her face, and Matt March lifts her from the dust. Charming and charismatic, with good looks, cowboy boots, and appetite for life, and his VistaVision of the Western, Matt ignites Eden's passion. Three months later, they elope to Mexico. In these exuberant California boom years, Eden nourishes Matt's dreams, even though they are sauced with secrets and larded with debt. He tests Eden's strengths and his children's love. A big-cast book, American Cookery fulfills the wide embrace of its title. The novel chronicles the stories behind family recipes and the lives that touch Eden's--lives of horse thieves, ranchers, railroad men, developers, dreamers, migrants, immigrants, natives, Latter-Day Saints, sinners, silent-film stars, sidekicks, and stunt people. The good, the bad, the ugly and the beautiful emerge in these pages as American Cookery serves up the whole gorgeous banquet of life.

American Cookery bursts with the joy of cooking and the spice of life—a feast of friendship and family. High-spirited Eden Douglass is born into a contentious California clan full of headstrong women who vie for her loyalty. The Douglass women are known to borrow trouble as well as time and money. As a child, Eden’s hungers are satisfied with merely having enough to eat. As an adult, her appetite for adventure leads her to serve on the European Front, to elope to Mexico with a charismatic film maker, and become a producer in the golden age of television. Eden’s life is seasoned with a rich cast of lively characters. All have stories. Some have legends. Each chapter is followed by a recipe. Readers can share and savor Emotional Cornbread, Book Club Gingerbread, Parti-Colored Salsa, Figs Napoleon, Stella’s Sauce and Ginny Doyle’s Cowgirl Chili. American Cookery celebrates those women and men whose cooking forges connection across time and miles and through generations. Animated as a family reunion, intimate as a lover's picnic, American Cookery is a novel to relish and share, satisfying stories in many flavors, and one woman’s journey through tumultuous times. Praise for American Cookery “A prize-winning Seattle writer cooks up a tasty feast of a tenth novel…this fine fictional tale is complemented by tempting recipes.” --Seattle Post-Intelligencer “Food provides the structure on which Kalpakian builds this novel of a twentieth-century woman’s life…a satisfying read.” --Booklist Praise for Kalpakian “Kalpakian is generous, gritty, sexy, full of lyrical musings, and funny as all get-out.” --The New Yorker “Whatever happened to old-fashioned stories, with fleshed-out characters, well-crafted plots, strong themes, and palpable atmosphere? Laura Kalpakian, for one, is still writing them.” --Wall Street Journal “Kalpakian creates inspiring, thought-provoking, even bewitching characters.” --Baltimore Sun Laura Kalpakian has received a grant from the National Endowment of the Arts, a Pushcart Prize, the Pacific Northwest Booksellers Association Award, and the PEN/West Award for Best Short Fiction. American Cookery is her tenth novel.

Cookbooks, Food & Wine

Steps and Exes: A Novel of Family

HarpPeren

See the best price to sell, buy, or rent books by Kalpakian, Laura. BookScouter helps to compare book prices from 25+ online bookstores and 30+ buyback vendors with a single search.

Books by Kalpakian, Laura

See the best price to sell, buy, or rent books by Kalpakian, Laura. BookScouter helps to compare book prices from 25+ online bookstores and 30+ buyback vendors with a single search.

Cosette

Steps and Exes

Cosette: The Sequel to Les Miserables

Graceland

Dark Continent and Other Stories

The Memoir Club

The Memoir Club

American Cookery: A Novel

American Cookery: A Novel

Steps and Exes: A Novel of Family