The breakout novel from award-winning author Joan Thomas, it perfectly balances the dark underside of modern life, love, and family with wit and sharp observation: for fans of Good to A Fault, the works of Carol Shields, of Meg Wolitzer, and Jonathan Franzen. A stunning character-driven novel about the human desire to do the right thing, and the even stronger desire to love and to be seen for who we truly are. Deeply felt, sharply observed, and utterly contemporary. Liz, Aiden, and Sylvie are an urban, urbane, progressive family: Aiden's a therapist who refuses to own a car; Liz is an ambitious professional, a savvy traveler with a flair for decorating; Sylvie is a smart and political 19 year-old, fiercely independent, sensitive to hypocrisy, and crazy in love with her childhood playmate, Noah, a bright young scientist. Things seem to be going according to plan. Then the present and the past collide in a crisis that shatters the complacency of all three. Liz and Sylvie are forced to confront a tragedy from years before, when four children went missing at an artists' retreat. In the long shadow of that event, the family is drawn to a dangerous precipice.

The Opening Sky

Literature & Fiction

Thomas, Joan

Literary

MCCLELLAND STEWART

"Thomas is often compared to Carol Shields, Meg Wolitzer and Jonathan Franzen, but really slips into a category by herself [in The Opening Sky]. . . . [She] takes narrative risks [and] offers no typical solutions. But these risks are the most beautiful: they are the risks worth taking. This is a book worth reading." --Winnipeg Free Press A stunning character-driven novel about the human desire to do the right thing, and the even stronger desire to love and to be seen for who we truly are. Deeply felt, sharply observed, and utterly engaging. Liz, Aiden, and Sylvie are an urban, urbane, progressive family: Aiden's a therapist who refuses to own a car; Liz is an ambitious professional, a savvy traveler with a flair for decorating; Sylvie is a smart and political 19 year-old, fiercely independent, sensitive to hypocrisy, and crazy in love with her childhood playmate, Noah, a bright young scientist. Things seem to be going according to plan. Then the present and the past collide in a crisis that shatters the complacency of all three. Liz and Sylvie are forced to confront a tragedy from years before, when four children went missing at an artists' retreat. In the long shadow of that event, the family is drawn to a dangerous precipice.

Award-winning novelist Joan Thomas blends fact and fiction, passion and science in this stunning novel set in 19th-century Lyme Regis, England — the seaside town that is the setting of both The French Lieutenant's Woman and Jane Austen's Persuasion. More than 40 years before the publication of The Origin of Species, 12-year-old Mary Anning, a cabinet-maker's daughter, found the first intact skeleton of a prehistoric dolphin-like creature, and spent a year chipping it from the soft cliffs near Lyme Regis. This was only the first of many important discoveries made by this incredible woman, perhaps the most important paleontologist of her day. Henry de la Beche was the son of a gentry family, owners of a slave-worked estate in Jamaica where he spent his childhood. As an adolescent back in England, he ran away from military college, and soon found himself living with his elegant, cynical mother in Lyme Regis, where he pursued his passion for drawing and painting the landscapes and fossils of the area. One morning on an expedition to see an extraordinary discovery — a giant fossil — he meets a young woman unlike anyone he has ever met…

Curiosity

United States

Lily Piper and her family live in an ephemeral world, due to collapse any moment when the Lord comes to pluck His faithful from the drought-ravaged Prairie. Lily tries to be ready, but she is restless, not the daughter she feels her mother wants. As she tries to invent herself, she conjures, too, an imagined past for her beloved father in an effort to understand him and the demons he battles. In her teens, Lily is sent to England to care for her Grandmother and further explores the delicious question of who she might become. She falls in love with her adopted cousin, learns to experience life in all its ambiguity, and waits with the rest of England for World War II to start — until the news she has been dreading arrives on the doorstep, and she is called home to face a future she thought she had escaped. Reading by Lightning is a Bildungsroman of great wit and depth. Thomas's prose is wry and intimate, elegant and devastatingly funny. Her engrossing story of Lily Piper tells us something of how we can make sense of a future when the future is something we can hardly imagine.

Reading by Lightning

Contemporary

Goose Lane Editions

Reading by Lightning: The Reader's Guide Edition

Turning Points: Self Renewal at Mid-Life

Health, Fitness & Dieting

Landau, Sol

Psychology & Counseling

New Horizon Pr

In January of 1970, when he was in the hospital following a severe heart attack, the late Ammon Hennacy (1893-1970), one of the principal fathers of the present-day radical movement, made three requests of his second wife, Joan Thomas, should he die:she was to finish with the publishing of the book he had written,The One-Man Revolution in America,she was to scatter his ashes on the graves of the Haymarket martyrs at Waldheim Cemetery in Chicago; and she was to write his biography.The result of her fulfilling her husband's third request is not so much a biography (although it is that, too), but rather an intimate and delightful, albeit at times painful, memoir of an offbeat marriage where the husband was forty-one years older than his wife. The book is, as Ms. Thomas puts its, a "continuation of the fun-thing we had going between us, whatever that means." Well, whatever Ms. Thomas means, the reader will discover along with the "fun-thing" a deep psychological insight into a man who, with complete fearlessness, was dedicated to pacifism and Christian anarchy to the point of laying down his life for his friends without equivocation .

The Years of Grief and Laughter: A "Biography" of Ammon Hennacy

Biographies & Memoirs

Leaders & Notable People

Hennacy Press

Mimi, a Moravian girl living in Bethlehem, Pennsylvania, during WWII, is thrilled to be invited to spend her Easter vacation at her Grandparents' farm and lead the town's parade riding Aunt Lydia's elegant horse, Graceful Lady. But suddenly the parade is canceled. Come along with Mimi and her new friends as she turns a disappointment into a joyous event. learning to ride, and finds a mysterious wooden box. Share Mimi's excitement on Easter morming as she discovers a memorable Sunrise Surprise!

Mimi's Sunrise Surprise

Children's Books

Quality Code Publishing

WINNER OF THE GOVERNOR GENERAL'S LITERARY AWARD FOR FICTION
A GLOBE AND MAIL, CBC BOOKS, APPLE BOOKS, AND NOW TORONTO BEST BOOK OF THE YEAR
In the tradition of The Poisonwood Bible and State of Wonder, a novel set in the rainforest of Ecuador about five women left behind when their missionary husbands are killed. Based on the shocking real-life events 
In 1956, a small group of evangelical Christian missionaries and their families journeyed to the rainforest in Ecuador intending to convert the Waorani, a people who had never had contact with the outside world. The plan was known as Operation Auca. After spending days dropping gifts from an aircraft, the five men in the party rashly entered the “intangible zone.” They were all killed, leaving their wives and children to fend for themselves.
Five Wives is the fictionalized account of the real-life women who were left behind, and their struggles – with grief, with doubt, and with each other – as they continued to pursue their evangelical mission in the face of the explosion of fame that followed their husbands’ deaths. 
Five Wives is a riveting, often wrenching story of evangelism and its legacy, teeming with atmosphere and compelling characters and rich in emotional impact.

Five Wives: A Novel

HarperAvenue

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

Books by Thomas, Joan

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

The Opening Sky

The Opening Sky

Curiosity

Curiosity

Reading by Lightning

Reading by Lightning: The Reader's Guide Edition

Turning Points: Self Renewal at Mid-Life

The Years of Grief and Laughter: A "Biography" of Ammon Hennacy

Mimi's Sunrise Surprise

Five Wives: A Novel