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  The Ten Loves of Nishino

  Hiromi Kawakami

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  Bestselling and beloved Japanese author Hiromi Kawakami (The Nakano Thrift Shop) tells the story of an enigmatic man through the voices of ten remarkable women who have loved him.  Each woman has succumbed, even if only for an hour, to that seductive, imprudent, and furtively feline man who drifted so naturally into their lives. Still clinging to the vivid memory of his warm breath and his indecipherable sentences, ten women tell their stories as they attempt to recreate the image of the unfathomable Nishino.  Like a modern Decameron, this humorous, sensual, and touching novel by one of Japan's bestselling and most beloved writers is a powerful and embracing portrait of the human comedy in ten voices. Driven by desires that are at once unique and common, the women in this book are modern, familiar to us, and still mysterious. A little like Nishino himself.

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  Ghostbread

  Sonja Livingston

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  A memoir of growing up poor and hungry in 1970s western New York: “Like an American version of Angela’s Ashes.”—Kathleen Norris, New York Times-bestselling author of The Cloister Walk  When you eat soup every night, thoughts of bread get you through.    One of seven children brought up by a single mother, Sonja Livingston was raised in areas of western New York that remain relatively hidden from the rest of America. From an old farming town to an Indian reservation to a dead-end urban neighborhood, Livingston and her siblings follow their nonconformist mother from one ramshackle house to another on the perpetual search for something better. Along the way, the young Sonja observes the harsh realities her family encounters, as well as small moments of transcendent beauty that somehow keep them going. While struggling to make sense of her world, Livingston perceives the stresses and patterns that keep children—girls in particular—trapped in the cycle of poverty.   Informed by cultural experiences such as Livington’s love for Wonder Woman and Nancy Drew and her experiences with the Girl Scouts and Roman Catholicism, this lyrical memoir firmly eschews sentimentality, offering instead a meditation on what it means to hunger and showing that poverty can strengthen the spirit just as surely as it can grind it down.   “[A]n absolutely astonishing debut…harrowing and hilarious.”—Caroline Leavitt, New York Times-bestselling author of With or Without You   “Livingston reveals the daily challenges poverty-stricken young children face.”—Booklist   “Weaves together a child’s experience of not belonging, the perilous ease of slipping into failure, and the deep love that can flow from even a highly troubled parent.”—Dinty W. Moore, author of The Accidental Buddhist

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  Honus Wagner - A Biography

  Dennis DeValeria, Jeanne Burke...

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  An in-depth biography of one of baseball's greatest legends, the speedy shortstop and power hitter, Honus Wagner, also known as the "the Flying Dutchman"."We think we have made a deal which will materially help us out," Fred Clarke, manager of the National Louisville Colonels, prophetically told the local media in 1897. "After negotiating for some days we have succeeded in securing Hans Wagner...He is a big, heavy German, with very large hands, and is powerful as a bull. He kills the ball." A few years later, the widely read sportswriter Hugh Fullteron would refer to Wagner as "the nearest approach to a baseball machine ever constructed."Honus Wagner is generally acknowledged as the finest shortstop in baseball history. Along with Babe Ruth, Ty Cobb, Christy Mathewson, and Walter Johnson, he was one of the first five players to be elected to the Baseball Hall of Fame. His rare 1909 baseball card--known to collectors as the Holy Grail of American memorabilia--fetched nearly half a million dollars at auction in 1991. His rise paralleled the development of baseball as the national pastime, and his playing skills remain legendary. He was, possibly, the first superstar of American sports.And yet, amazingly, a full-length biography of Honus Wagner had never before appeared. Here, Dennis and Jeanne DeValeria tell the sports hero's whole story. The son of German immigrants, Wagner (1874-1955) grew up in Andrew Carnegie's Pittsburgh, working in coal mines at age twelve. At age thirteen he worked in a steel mill; at twenty-one he was a professional baseball player. Despite his hardscrabble background, he came to be respected by those in the highest reaches of American society: when he became an icon, he would know President Howard Taft and industrialist Henry Ford. And with prestige came wealth: one of the highest-paid players in the game, he was among the first in his hometown to own an automobile. At a time when baseball was a raw, aggressive game played by rugged men, the unflappable Wagner's humble ways enhanced his miraculous performance throughout his twenty-one-year career, including three seasons with the Louisville Colonels and eighteen with the Pittsburgh Pirates. Wagner's gradual emergence from the pack into stardom and popularity is described here in rich detail. But the book also reveals much of Wagner's family and personal life--his minor league career, his values, his failed business ventures during the Depression, his later years--about which, until now, there had been no well known narrative.Neither the "rowdy-ball" ruffian nor the teetotal saint constructed of legend, Wagner is presented here in a complete portrait--one that offers a vivid impression of the era when baseball was America's game and the nation was evolving into the world's industrial leader.

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  Crossing the Tracks

  Drew Hill

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  While dramatic history unfolds from Greensboro to Selma to Memphis, one man makes his own stand for justice and inclusion.SILVER MEDAL: Readers' Favorite Book Awards 2024 – Best Fiction - Social IssuesWINNER: Feathered Quill Book Awards – Reviewer's Choice for 2023WINNER: Pinnacle Book Achievement Award, Fall 2023 – Best Fiction - Social Issues 
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  Crossing the Tracks is set in the railroad yards and union halls of Kansas City during the Civil Rights Movement. It's the surprising story of a white, working class family man confronting racism and bigotry on the railroad, in the neighborhood, and in his church. 
  EVOLVED PUBLISHING PRESENTS the story of one man's, and by extension his entire family's, attempt to do the right thing in the face of overwhelming opposition. 
  “Crossing the Tracks is a true American novel, a work of art that values equality, dignity, and justice for all, arrived at by honest living and hard work to make ends meet... It's a Reviewer's Choice 2023 winner because it is courageous, well-written, and accessible; I have thought of the story and characters long after I finished reading the book.” ~ Feathered Quill, Rebecca Jane Johnson 
  “...reminds us that simple stories about great, moral men are always worth writing about and reading. We can all learn a lot from how this man lived his life and this story is a fitting tribute to an ordinary man with an extraordinary heart.” ~ Readers’ Favorite, Grant Leishman (5 STARS) 
  “...a poignant and thought-provoking read that resonated long after the final page... a compelling narrative of one man’s journey to overcome prejudice and advocate for change.” ~ Readers’ Favorite, K.C. Finn (5 STARS)

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  A Diary from Dixie

  Mary Chesnut

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  This is the original diary of the wife of Confederate General James Chesnut, Jr., who was an aide to President Jefferson Davis. It is a fascinating narrative of all the years of the American Civil War. It focuses on the daily lives and hardships of all who suffered through the war, from ordinary people to the Confederacy's generals and political elite. Mary Chesnut's prose has lost none of its provocative bite through the ages: "I think incompatibility of temper began when it was made plain to us that we get all the opprobrium of slavery while they, with their tariff, get the money there is in it." Nor any of its ironic sense of humor: "We try our soldiers to see if they are hot enough before we enlist them. If, when water is thrown on them they do not sizzle, they won't do; their patriotism is too cool."

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  Mary Cary Frequently Martha

  Kate Langley Bosher

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  "My name is Mary Cary. I live in the Yorkburg Female Orphan Asylum. You may think nothing happens in an Orphan Asylum. It does. The orphans are sure enough children, and real much like the kind that have Mothers and Fathers; and that’s why I am going to write this story." So begins Mary’s diary, which she fills with her various doings and misadventures at the Asylum in Virginia and her sharp observations about life and human nature. She loathes Miss Bray, the head of the Asylum, who is not above telling bald-faced lies to the Board to further her own selfish ends. She loves Miss Katherine, the Asylum’s resident nurse, who has befriended Mary and serves as a gentle role model for the child. As for Martha, she is Mary’s "other self" who speaks out-and sometimes acts out-in spite of Mary’s better nature. When she unexpectedly discovers her family background, Mary writes a letter to her uncle that leads to some surprising results on the way to a happy ending. 
   
  The Chicago Record-Herald of March 12, 1910 stated, "Let’s be glad for books like Mary Cary. It isn’t so much what Mary Cary does, however, as what she is, bless her! that warms the cockles of the chilliest, most snugly corseted heart." (Summary by Jan MacGillivray)

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