Graham e Annie sono sposati da quasi trent'anni. Nella loro cerchia di amici e conoscenti, sono considerati una coppia d'oro. Graham è un libraio, un uomo molto socievole con grandi appetiti: curioso, desideroso di compiacere, amante della vita e del cibo, conviviale organizzatore di feste vivaci. Annie, più riservata e introspettiva, è una fotografa. Sta per inaugurare la sua prima mostra in galleria dopo una lunga pausa ed è preoccupata che i migliori anni della sua carriera possano essere ormai passati. Hanno due figli adulti: Sarah, che vive a San Francisco, e Lucas, il figlio che Graham ha avuto dalla sua prima moglie Frieda. Sebbene Frieda, discreta e amorevole, sia una presenza costante nella loro vita, Annie è consapevole di essere il più grande amore del marito. Quando Graham muore improvvisamente, Annie è perduta. Che senso ha andare avanti, si chiede, senza di lui? Poi, mentre è ancora in lutto, scopre un segreto rovinoso, che la farà precipitare nell'oscurità e la costringerà a chiedersi se ha mai conosciuto veramente l'uomo che ha amato: Graham la tradiva, e con una donna che lei conosce. 'Monogamia', seducente romanzo avvolto da un velo di mistero, è un'intelligente fotografia delle relazioni amorose di lunga data e dei segreti che spesso vi si nascondono.

From the best-selling author of While I Was Gone and The Senator’s Wife, a superb new novel about a family and a community tested when an arsonist begins setting fire to the homes of the summer people in a small New England town.

Troubled by the feeling that she belongs nowhere after working in East Africa for fifteen years, Frankie Rowley has come home—home to the small New Hampshire village of Pomeroy and the farmhouse where her family has always summered. On her first night back, a house up the road burns to the ground. Then another house burns, and another, always the houses of the summer people. In a town where people have never bothered to lock their doors, social fault lines are opened, and neighbors begin to regard one another with suspicion. Against this backdrop of menace and fear, Frankie begins a passionate, unexpected affair with the editor of the local paper, a romance that progresses with exquisite tenderness and heat toward its own remarkable risks and revelations.

Suspenseful, sophisticated, rich in psychological nuance and emotional insight, The Arsonist is vintage Sue Miller—a finely wrought novel about belonging and community, about how and where one ought to live, about what it means to lead a fulfilling life. One of our most elegant and engrossing novelists at her inimitable best.


From the Hardcover edition.

From the best-selling author of While I Was Gone and The Senator’s Wife, a superb new novel about a family and a community tested when an arsonist begins setting fire to the homes of the summer people in a small New England town.

Troubled by the feeling that she belongs nowhere after working in East Africa for 15 years, Frankie Rowley has come home—home to the small New Hampshire town of Pomeroy and the farmhouse where her family has always summered. On her first night back, a house up the road burns to the ground. Is it an accident, or arson? Over the weeks that follow, as Frankie comes to recognize her father’s slow failing and her mother’s desperation, another house burns, and then another, always the homes of summer people. These frightening events, and the deep social fault lines that open in the town as a result, are observed and reported on by Bud Jacobs, a former political journalist, who has bought the local paper and moved to Pomeroy in an attempt to find a kind of home himself. As this compelling book unfolds, as Bud and Frankie begin an unexpected, passionate affair, arson upends a trusting small community where people have never before bothered to lock their doors; and Frankie and Bud bring wholly different perspectives to the questions of who truly owns the land, who belongs in the town, and how, or even whether, newcomers can make a real home there.

Suspenseful, sophisticated, rich in psychological nuance and emotional insight, The Arsonist is vintage Sue Miller—a finely wrought novel about belonging and community, about how and where one ought to live, about what it means to lead a fulfilling life. One of our most elegant and engrossing novelists at her inimitable best.

Four unforgettable characters beckon you into this spellbinding new novel from Sue Miller, the author of 2008’s heralded best seller The Senator’s Wife. First among them is Wilhelmina—Billy—Gertz, small as a child, fiercely independent, powerfully committed to her work as a playwright. The story itself centers on The Lake Shore Limited—a play Billy has written about an imagined terrorist bombing of that train as it pulls into Union Station in Chicago, and about a man waiting to hear the fate of his estranged wife, who is traveling on it. Billy had waited in just such a way on 9/11 to hear whether her lover, Gus, was on one of the planes used in the attack.

The novel moves from the snow-filled woods of Vermont to the rainy brick sidewalks of Boston as the lives of the other characters intersect and interweave with Billy’s: Leslie, Gus’s sister, still driven by grief years after her brother’s death; Rafe, the actor who rises to greatness in a performance inspired by a night of incandescent lovemaking; and Sam, a man irresistibly drawn to Billy after he sees the play that so clearly displays the terrible conflicts and ambivalence of her situation.

How Billy has come to create the play out of these emotions, how it is then created anew on the stage, how the performance itself touches and changes the other characters’ lives—these form the thread that binds them all together and drives the novel compulsively forward.

A powerful love story; a mesmerizing tale of entanglements, connections, and inconsolable losses; a marvelous reflection on the meaning of grace and the uses of sorrow, in life and in art: The Lake Shore Limited is Sue Miller at her dazzling best.


From the Hardcover edition.

Down, down, down. Step down below to see the world.

A fantastical journey introduces young readers to subway travel. Five children pay the fare, pass through the gates, and zip through the tunnels of subway stations in ten cities around the globe. The trip around the world underscores how travel and cultural connections create community.

Back matter includes information about the ten stations mentioned: Atlanta, Cairo, Chicago, London, Mexico City, Moscow, New York City, Stockholm, Tokyo, and Washington, D.C.

Autrice di fama mondiale, amata per la sua particolare sensibilità letteraria, Sue Miller torna a parlarci di famiglia, maternità e fedeltà, attraverso l'intenso ritratto di due donne che agli opposti stadi della vita si trovano a dover affrontare problemi paralleli. La giovane Meri si è appena sposata con Nathan, un brillante docente universitario. Una gravidanza inattesa la costringe a riflettere su se stessa, sullo scarto - che col passare del tempo si fa sempre più ampio - fra aspettative e realtà. Delia, la raffinata vicina di casa, è la moglie del senatore di lungo corso Tom Naughton. L'infedeltà cronica di quest'ultimo è un fatto risaputo nei circoli mondani e politici di Washington, ma ogni volta che s'incontrano, i due sembrano vivere un riavvicinamento profondo e sincero. Com'è possibile, di fronte all'ennesima umiliazione, provare ancora una forma d'amore? Fino a che punto un cammino segnato dai compromessi e dalle delusioni può culminare nella grazia e nel perdono?

Hai mai immaginato una vita diversa, priva di vincoli e rimpianti? Sei anni dopo la morte dell'amato fratello Gus, Leslie si ritrova a pensare alle scelte mancate, al corso crudele e imprevedibile del destino. Il tormento per ciò che sarebbe potuto essere e non è stato la consuma. Se Gus non avesse preso quell'aereo l'11 settembre, se suo marito avesse capito l'immensità del suo dolore, se lei avesse percorso strade diverse... La sua unica consolazione è sapere che Gus, prima di morire, aveva trovato il vero amore con Billy. Ma la verità è diversa, frammentata dalle mille sfumature ambigue del sentimento. Quando Leslie assiste a 'Il treno del lago', la nuova pièce scritta da Billy, ne coglie immediatamente tutta l'inquietante portata autobiografica. Quel testo teatrale getta ombre sulla relazione tra lei e Gus, e Leslie non può fare a meno di chiedersi che cosa conosce davvero di quella donna. Nel frattempo, in un complicato gioco di specchi, anche Sam, un amico divorziato, ritrova in quella stessa pièce echi della propria vita, e comincia a essere attratto dall'abisso della bellezza di Billy.

John è il pilastro del mondo di Eva, un compagno devoto e un punto di riferimento per i tre figli. La sua morte improvvisa rompe ogni equilibrio, e spetta a Mark, l'ex marito della donna - dopo aver rovinato il loro matrimonio con la sua impenitente infedeltà - tentare di sanare una ferita che rimetterà in gioco le esistenze di tutti. Ma mentre Mark si riavvicina all'inconsolabile ex moglie per scoprirsi ancora innamorato di lei, ed Emily, la figlia maggiore, si prepara alle sfide di una nuova indipendenza, è la quindicenne Daisy a soffrirne di più. Sola, confusa e alla deriva nelle acque inquiete dell'adolescenza, Daisy scopre l'instabilità che l'attende oltre le pareti domestiche e l'impotenza dell'amore familiare di fronte al suo incolmabile bisogno di conforto e protezione. Ecco allora che nella sua vita irrompe un uomo maturo pronto a darle quello che cerca, e ad attirarla in un pericoloso gioco di seduzione che ha il sapore inebriante di un'iniziazione sessuale. Acuta osservatrice dei rapporti umani e familiari, Sue Miller tratteggia un memorabile affresco della vulnerabilità e del languore dell'adolescenza. I rigogliosi vigneti della California sullo sfondo accompagnano questo sensuale viaggio attraverso la fluidità della vita e le vie impervie del sentimento.

Meri is newly married, pregnant, and standing on the cusp of her life as a wife and mother, recognizing with some terror the gap between reality and expectation. Delia—wife of the two-term liberal senator Tom Naughton—is Meri's new neighbor in the adjacent New England town house. Tom's chronic infidelity has been an open secret in Washington circles, but despite the complexity of their relationship, the bond between them remains strong.

Soon Delia and Meri find themselves leading strangely parallel lives, as they both reckon with the contours and mysteries of marriage: one refined and abraded by years of complicated intimacy, the other barely begun. With precision and a rich vitality, Sue Miller—beloved and bestselling author of While I Was Gone—brings us a highly charged, superlative novel about marriage and forgiveness.

Autrice di fama mondiale, amata per la sua particolare sensibilità letteraria, Sue Miller torna a parlarci di famiglia, maternità e fedeltà, attraverso l'intenso ritratto di due donne che agli opposti stadi della vita si trovano a dover affrontare problemi paralleli. La giovane Meri si è appena sposata con Nathan, un brillante docente universitario. Una gravidanza inattesa la costringe a riflettere su se stessa, sullo scarto - che col passare del tempo si fa sempre più ampio - fra aspettative e realtà. Delia, la raffinata vicina di casa, è la moglie del senatore di lungo corso Tom Naughton. L'infedeltà cronica di quest'ultimo è un fatto risaputo nei circoli mondani e politici di Washington, ma ogni volta che s'incontrano, i due sembrano vivere un riavvicinamento profondo e sincero. Com'è possibile, di fronte all'ennesima umiliazione, provare ancora una forma d'amore? Fino a che punto un cammino segnato dai compromessi e dalle delusioni può culminare nella grazia e nel perdono?

For nearly two decades, since the publication of her iconic first novel, The Good Mother, Sue Miller has distinguished herself as one of our most elegant and widely celebrated chroniclers of family life, with a singular gift for laying bare the interior lives of her characters. In each of her novels, Miller has written with exquisite precision about the experience of grace in daily life–the sudden, epiphanic recognition of the extraordinary amid the ordinary–as well as the sharp and unexpected motions of the human heart away from it, toward an unruly netherworld of upheaval and desire. But never before have Miller's powers been keener or more transfixing than they are in Lost in the Forest, a novel set in the vineyards of Northern California that tells the story of a young girl who, in the wake of a tragic accident, seeks solace in a damaging love affair with a much older man.

Eva, a divorced and happily remarried mother of three, runs a small bookstore in a town north of San Francisco. When her second husband, John, is killed in a car accident, her family's fragile peace is once again overtaken by loss. Emily, the eldest, must grapple with newfound independence and responsibility. Theo, the youngest, can only begin to fathom his father's death. But for Daisy, the middle child, John's absence opens up a world of bewilderment, exposing her at the onset of adolescence to the chaos and instability that hover just beyond the safety of parental love. In her sorrow, Daisy embarks on a harrowing sexual odyssey, a journey that will cast her even farther out onto the harsh promontory of adulthood and lost hope.

With astonishing sensuality and immediacy, Lost in the Forest moves through the most intimate realms of domestic life, from grief and sex to adolescence and marriage. It is a stunning, kaleidoscopic evocation of a family in crisis, written with delicacy and masterful care. For her lifelong fans and those just discovering Sue Miller for the first time, here is a rich and gorgeously layered tale of a family breaking apart and coming back together again: Sue Miller at her inimitable best.


From the Hardcover edition.

Targeting Pronunciation uses an interactive approach and clear explanations to help students communicate effectively in English. It makes pronunciation easy to teach and fun to learn. The text features a diagnostic package for setting individual priorities. Students build independence by improving their ability to self-monitor and self-correct and by completing home assignments for practice beyond the classroom. The Second Edition includes increased coverage of consonants and vowels, enhanced Web activities, additional authentic speech samples, and indexes by chapter and activity type for easy reference.

A NEW YORK TIMES NOTABLE BOOK

In the fall of 1988, Sue Miller found herself caring for her father, James Nichols, once a truly vital man, as he succumbed to Alzheimer's disease. Beginning an intensely personal journey, she recalls the bitter irony of watching this church historian wrestle with his increasingly befuddled notion of time and meaning. She details the struggles with doctors, her own choices, and the attempt to find a caring response to a disease whose special cruelty is to diminish the humanity of those it strikes. In luminous prose, Sue Miller has fashioned a compassionate inventory of two lives, a memoir destined to offer comfort to all sons and daughters struggling to make peace with their fathers and with themselves.

Promiseland is Willow Creek's highly successful children's ministry. Using examples from Promiseland and churches of all sizes around the country, this book provides step by step guidance and creative application exercises to help churches develop a thriving children's ministry---one that strives to be the best hour of every kid's week. Included are Scripture-based principles and practical resources for church staff members and volunteers who agree with the critical role children's ministry plays in a local church.Making Your Children's Ministry the Best Hour of Every Kid's Week, based on twenty-eight years of experience at Willow Creek, explains four ministry foundations: Mission, Vision, Values, and Strategy.Content includes:Detailed answers to questions facing every children's ministry:* What does Jesus expect from children's ministry?* How can we evangelize lost kids and disciple saved kids at the same time, and should we?* How do we engage kids so they don't become bored?* How do we get better at recruiting and leading volunteers?* How can our ministry be a safe place for children?* Six specific ministry values that address the needs of today's children * Practical first steps for ministries that want to get serious about change* Clear indicators of success in children's ministry

Children of Color is the thoroughly revised and expanded edition of the classic and definitive guide to the unique problems and special needs of minority youth experiencing psychological and behavioral problems. This comprehensive book presents crucial information on culturally sensitive and culturally competent assessment and treatment approaches for young African Americans, Asian Americans, Central Americans, Latinos, Native Americans, biracial-bicultural, and other so-called minority youth. This new edition contains a wealth of new statistical data, demographics, and cutting- edge interventions techniques, contributed by an ethnically diverse group of mental health professionals who are experts in their fields.

Recently divorced, Anna Dunlap has two passionate attachments: her daughter, four-year-old Molly, and her lover, Leo, the man who makes her feel beautiful -- and sexual -- for the first time. Swept away by happiness and passion, Anna feels she has everything she's ever wanted.

Then come the shocking charges that would threaten her new love, her new 'family' ... that force her to prove she is a good mother.

1. Soon after Catherine arrives in Vermont, a real estate agent approaches her about showing the house to prospective buyers. The realtor compliments her on the house and adds that she is also enamored of the house's 'story'-'in the family for generations, both your parents living here into their old age, and so forth.' Catherine recoils. 'The truth was I didn't want to think of any of us that way-my grandparents, my mother, me. Or to have our life here used as a selling point-all that pain and sorrow and joy-to make the house itself more appealing. We weren't the house's story, none of us.' Catherine is objecting, in part, to the fact that the story is more complicated than the realtor could possibly know-more complicated than any of them could possibly know, in fact. What does she mean? How is this notion advanced throughout the novel? 2. Miller writes that as Dr. Holbrooke examined nineteen-year-old Georgia he was 'already beginning to think in terms of rescue.' Yet in the same chapter he reflects on the arbitrariness of fate-of death in particular-and of the bewildering weight of his power in relation to both. How do you think Dr. Holbrooke squares his discomfort with his decision to have Georgia sent to the san? How do you think the author views his actions? 3. Catherine speaks of rescue, too in the scene in which she first meets Joe. 'What shall I say of Joe? That I felt rescued by him from something I hadn't been conscious of needing rescue from? That I trusted him? Both were true. I never considered that I might be rescuing him.' How does this differ from Dr. Holbrook's rescue of Georgia? To what extent are all relationships, especially romantic ones, a form of rescue? 4. As young women, both Cath and Georgia felt a deep sense of shame; both of them, early on , came to believe that they were failures. Why? Discuss the parallels in their lives. 5. Shortly after receiving the news that her father is to be remarried, Georgia cuts her hair. Is this transformation an act of empowerment or of self-punishment? 'She unpinned her hair and let it down-your crowning glory her mother had called it-and watched as the long bolts of it slipped and whispered to the floor? What is Georgia rejecting? What is she embracing? 6. In chapter eight, Catherine invites Samuel Eliasson back to her house, and they have a conversation about the past. Eliasson, a historian, says that he views himself as an anthropologist, of sorts; he compares the past to 'another culture, another country.' What does he mean? And how is this notion of the past reflected in the novel as a whole? 7. In this same conversation, Samuel describes his wife's religious devotion as 'the central invisible fact of her life.' He continues, 'You could write her life's story without including it if you didn't know specifically about it, it was simply underneath everything. ' How does this idea of a 'central invisible fact' come into play elsewhere in the novel? What is the central invisible fact of Georgia's life? Of Dr. Holbrooke's? Of Catherine's? What is the central invisible fact of your own? 8. The novel takes its name from the image of a town submerged beneath the surface of a lake. Catherine glimpses this world one day while fishing on the lake with her grandfather: 'I looked down again. It came and went under the moving water, the sense of what was there. There were long moments when I couldn't quite get it, when it seemed I must have imagined it. But then there it was again, sad and mysterious. Grand, somehow. Grand, because it was gone forever but still visible, still imaginable, below us.' Discuss this image in relation to the novel's themes. How has the author woven it into the novel's narrative and the narrative of its individual characters? What is the 'World Below'? 9. Catherine expresses a desire to begin life anew at various points throughout the novel-when she arrives with her young children on her grandparents' doorstep, after seperating from her first husband; when she arrives in Vermont to make a decision about whether to sell the house or stay on; when, as a teengager, she is offered the chance to live with Rue in Paris for a summer. Each of these moments offers her, or seems to offer her, the possibility of inventing a new self. Is this kind of self-invention possible? Discuss the author's views on identity. 10. Discuss the question above in relation to Georgia's life. Look, in particular, at Georgia's thoughts after leaving the san, and at her first conversation with Dr. Holbrooke at her father's wedding. To what extent is it possible for other people to act as a bridge between our past and future selves? 11. In chapter eleven, Georgia and Dr. Holbrooke have a heated argument in which it unfolds that their marriage has been built on a misunderstanding. Can true love ever emerge out of a falsehood, even an accidental one? How does the author shape our perception of their marriage through the course of the book? 12. During Georgia's argument with Dr. Holbrooke it is also revealed that Georgia did not have TB at the time she was sent to the san, and that Dr. Holbrooke misled her about the condition of her lungs. Dr. Holbrooke claims that he was justified in lying to her because her time at the san was beneficial-she rested, she gained strength, she was relieved of the daily burdens of caring for her family. 'But it changed my life!' Georgia cries in response. What is your view of Dr. Holbrooke's decision to have her sent away? Was this an act of mercy, or a misuse of power, or

'Riveting . . . The narrative pacing is masterly, building tension even in the most psychologically subtle passages. . . . While I Was Gone celebrate[s] what is impulsive in human nature.' --CHRISTOPHER LEHMANN-HAUPT The New York Times 'MILLER WEAVES HER THEMES OF SECRECY, BETRAYAL AND FORGIVENESS INTO A NARRATIVE THAT SHINES.' --Time 'FASCINATING . . . A NEW NOVEL OF GREAT INTEGRITY AND POWER . . . Despite having a loving husband, three vivacious daughters, a beautiful home in rural Massachusetts, and satisfaction in her work, Jo Becker's mind is invaded by a persistent restlessness. Then, an old roommate reappears to bring back Jo's memories of her early 20s. . . . Her obsession with that period of her life and with the crime that concluded it eventually estrange Jo from everything she holds dear, causing her to tell lie after lie as she is pulled closer to this man from her past--and to a horrible secret.' --Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel 'MARVELOUS . . . POIGNANT . . . POWERFUL.' --Seattle Times/Post Intelligencer 'A BEAUTIFUL AND FRIGHTENING BOOK . . . MANY READERS WILL FIND IT DIFFICULT TO FORGET. . . . It swoops gracefully between the past and the present, between a woman's complex feelings about her husband and her equally complex fantasies--and fears--about another man. . . . I can think of few contemporary novelists--John Updike and Frederick Buechner are two others--who write so well about the trials of faith.' --The New York Times Book Review 'QUIETLY GRIPPING . . . Jo shines steadily as the flawed and thoroughly modern heroine. As in her 1986 novel, The Good Mother, Miller shows how impulses can fracture the family.' --USA Today

Da poco divorziata, Anna Dunlap deve ricostruirsi una nuova esistenza insieme alla figlia di quattro anni, Molly. L'incontro con Leo, un affascinante artista dalla vita sregolata, significa per lei conoscere finalmente l'intensità della passione, sentirsi bella e sensuale. Anna, con le due persone più importanti della sua vita, crea così un nuovo nido. Ma la sua famiglia, tradizionalista e patriarcale, e l'ex marito Brian vedono la sua indipendenza e la sua relazione come un rischio per la stabilità della piccola Molly. Anna si troverà a scegliere tra l'essere madre e donna innamorata, a combattere per il suo diritto d'amare.