Notes from the Porch: Tiny True Stories to Make You Feel Better about the World

Thomas Christopher Greene

Rootstock Publishing

For poet Mary Elizabeth Winn, the most profound issues revolved around relationships, and her poems reflect the impact these had on her life, as well as how she impacted others. Wave of the Day: Collected Poems describes childhood, family, children, places lived in and traveled to with an abiding love for nature, relationships, and a faith that can both question and guide throughout a long life. Quiet and soft-spoken, these poems reveal a reflective and deep-thinking woman. We are privileged to enter Mary Elizabeth Winn’s now distant yet still timely world of childhood, womanhood, and her surprising life as faithful friend and lover.

Wave of the Day: Collected Poems

Literature & Fiction

Winn, Mary Elizabeth

Poetry

Charles Zachariah Goldberg left Bialystok in 1906 at the age of 20 in the aftermath of a deadly pogrom in Bialystok, then a part of Czarist Russia. Published later in life, living in Connecticut, these are his remembrances and stories about growing up in Bialystok, tales of the dreadful, and of the humorous, of family life, and of his journey to America. He writes in a voice all his own, familiar, plainspoken, direct and honest. Originally written in Yiddish for publications in the New York City area in the 1930s and 1940s, Charles Zachariah Goldberg stories capture both the immediacy of his experiences and the tales told him by others.

Tales of Bialystok: A Jewish Journey from Czarist Russia to America

History

Goldberg, Charles Zachariah

World

After a high school student is found dead at the bottom of a rock ledge on the outskirts of Montpelier, Vermont, the community confronts its conflicting beliefs and values and the truths below the surface. The book explores hate speech and free speech, cyberbullying and privacy, religious and sexual freedom, and a community's many faces of love and loss. The novel is imbued with a deep respect for the law, as well as for the passionate and irrational human beings who live within, and sometimes beyond, its constraints.

Uncivil Liberties

Lambek, Bernie

Literary

What happened in Vermont when the anti-Communist fear known as the "Red Scare" swept the country? Quite a bit, as it turns out. Rick Winston explores some forgotten history as we see how a small, rural "rock-ribbed Republican" state with a historically libertarian streak handled the hysteria of the time. Far from the klieg lights of Washington D.C., Hollywood, and New York City, the Green Mountain state challenged the national narrative with its own fascinating stories. Here are nine of the most gripping dramas played out in Vermont during "scoundrel time," including a high-profile academic firing, controversies involving left-leaning summer residents, courageous newspaper editors who spoke out against McCarthy's tactics, and a conservative senator who helped take down Joseph McCarthy. Now, as our country again experiences a political atmosphere charged with intolerance, condemnation, and widespread falsehoods, this book could not be more timely.

Red Scare in the Green Mountains: The McCarthy Era in Vermont 1946-1960

Winston, Rick

Americas

In this startling, disturbing, and compelling memoir, Tuvia Feldman takes you from the hustling streets of New York City to the peaceful hills of Vermont and the clamor of Tijuana. Tuvia begins his tale on Manhattan's Lower East Side, where he lives with his addicted artist mother and two sisters after having been abandoned and abused by his wealthy father. "Adopted" by an inner-city black family, Tuvia finds love and kindness while also receiving tutoring in the intricacies and dangers of the drug trade. Veering between outrage and tenderness, Tuvia recalls his story in the uncompromising language of the street and in a voice that is at once cynical and innocent, harsh and lyrical. As Tuvia struggles to find a place and love in a world he hates-and a reason to go on living-the reader gets to decide what to make of this extraordinary, but perhaps also all-too-common, life.

Fly With A Murder of Crows

Tuvia Feldman

J.C. Myers' spirited first novel, Junkyard at No Town, captures rural Vermont's land, language, and culture in outrageous and vernacular-rich dialogue, combined with crazy and splendid plot twists and descriptions. You'll find yourself breathless, sometimes wide-eyed, and sometimes laughing, as you follow young Jules' initiation, fresh out of college in the early 80s, seeking a life far from his Westchester upbringing. He buys a junkyard in the rural Vermont village of Iraton--right on the edge of No Town.
Deep-rooted mysteries link incongruous neighbors and illicit livelihoods, impossible loves and unlikely devotions and violent characters -- a house burns, water mysteriously flows and disappears, and people, too, change course, ignite, vanish or die. Readers will long remember the wild, haunting comedy of Jules, Butchy Guyette, Maddy and Byron Peas, Lutheria Tupper, Copeland DeMassey and Aunt Martha, whose intertwined and braided tales reveal Junkyard at No Town's vulnerable secrets, its sins and its virtues - and our own.

Junkyard at No Town

Myers, J C.

Humor & Satire

Luke is an American kid, in a place he doesn't understand.
In this multicultural thriller, a teenager who's passionate about rock and reggae music angrily blames his parents' divorce on his dad's obsession with finishing a book about a lost ancient civilization in a dangerous part of Asia. But Luke's father has him over Christmas vacation, and desperately wants his son to understand -- so he brings Luke to Peshawar, an age-old crossroads city in Pakistan's Northwest Frontier. To punish his dad, Luke refuses to visit the ruins or learn anything about the project ... and instead he is drawn into the strange, intriguing Old City, where a violent new extremism is on the rise. Luke is dazzled by the beautiful Danisha -- but if they're ever seen together, she could be killed. He's recruited by a group of jihadis -- but he also bonds with Yusuf, an Afghan refugee who knows what could happen. Then there are the musicians Luke befriends, and a mysterious Sufi teacher who opens his eyes. Set in 1984 at a pivotal time and place in history, Street of Storytellers is about three families across two cultures. It's about an ancient true story the world has almost forgotten. And it's about learning to think for yourself -- even if that puts your life at risk.
This is Doug Wilhelm's 17th book. His acclaimed novel The Revealers has been the focus of reading-and-discussion projects in over 1,000 American schools.

Street of Storytellers

Teen & Young Adult

Wilhelm, Doug

The daughter of a missionary doctor, Claire Malcolm Lintilhac was born in China, became a nurse there, and lived and worked through China's whole momentous first half of the 20th century. Opening a unique window into the making of the world's newest yet oldest superpower, China in Another Time -- with over 160 photos and drawings -- is Claire's own story.
A remarkable true story that opens a window on the dramatic decades that made today's China. Born in China's interior as the daughter of a Canadian medical missionary, Claire Malcolm Lintilhac learned fluent Chinese, became a traveling nurse and lived through the whole momentous first half of China's 20th century. After her family barely escaped the bloody Boxer Rebellion of 1900, Claire witnessed firsthand the years of civil war that followed China's short-lived Nationalist Revolution of 1911. In the 1930s -- as Claire cared for patients both Western and Chinese, fell in love and started a family -- she survived Japan's two horrific attacks on Shanghai, and her British husband Lin was interned by the Japanese in a Shanghai camp during World War II. In 1949 Claire watched as China's greatest city fell to the Communist Party, and in 1950 she, Lin and their son Philip finally left the country they loved. Illustrated with over 160 photos and drawings, China in Another Time is Claire's vividly personal account of China's struggle to become its own modern nation, from the last imperial dynasty to the advent of Communist rule. With an introduction by eminent China scholar Nicholas Clifford, professor emeritus at Middlebury College.

China In Another Time: A Personal Story

Biographies & Memoirs

Lintilhac, Claire Malcolm

Community & Culture

A wonderful introduction to the string family of instruments that shows young readers the power of music and of caring relationships.Come meet The Violin Family: Basil, the Bass; Celia, the Violoncello; "Bizzy", the Viola; and Val and Violet, the Violins Together, they love to play music and then share a pancake breakfast, complete with local Vermont maple syrup--mm-mmmm This picture book for children is an introduction to the family of stringed instruments with a delightful pairing of fact and fiction. In meeting The Violin Family, readers have the opportunity to learn about the anatomy as well as the personality of each of the strings.One day while the family is practicing their music, Violet falls and has to visit the luthier to be repaired. Will her sound come back so that her family can continue to play together as a quintet?

The Violin Family

Children's Books

Perley, Melissa

Arts, Music & Photography

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