Showing results by narrator "Elsa Lepecki Bean" in All Categories

Goldengrove’s towers and twisted chimneys rose at the very edge of the peaceful Weald, a stone’s throw from the poisonous marshes and merciless waters of Rye Bay. Young Tabby Palethorp had been running wild there, ever since her mother grew too ill to leave her room. I was the perfect choice to give Tabby a good English education: thoroughly respectable and far too plain to tempt her lonely father, Sir Kit, to indiscretion. I knew better than to trust my new employer with the truth about my past. But knowing better couldn’t stop me from yearning for impossible things.

“My life’s done a somersault,” wrote Mário de Andrade in a letter, on the verge of taking a leap. After years of dreaming about Amazonia, and almost fifty years before Bruce Chatwin ventured into one of the most remote regions of South America in In Patagonia, Andrade, the queer mixed-race “pope” of Brazilian modernism and author of the epic novel Macunaíma, finally embarks on a three-month steamboat voyage up the great river and into one of the most dangerous and breathtakingly beautiful corners of the world.

Fifteen-year-old Brynn can’t stop thinking about death. Her intrusive thoughts and severe anxiety leave her feeling helpless—and hopeless. So after her mom interprets one of Brynn’s blog posts as a suicide note, she takes extreme measures, confiscating Brynn’s phone, blocking her Internet access, and banishing her to stay with her father who lives “off the grid” on a houseboat in the Florida mangroves. Isolated from her online friends—her only friends—Brynn resigns herself to a summer of mind-numbing boredom and loneliness… until Skylar appears.

They say it is not the fall that kills you. Maybe for humans this is true. Perhaps one could go on falling forever, and yet live on. I have heard them say you can get used to anything. Among my people, though, it is the fall itself that is the end. It is not, as you might imagine, a literal casting out. God does not throw us down from on high. It is, like many things, a process: One decision on top of another until you realize suddenly that you are too far gone to turn back. It is too late to do anything but go on falling. Or so, at least, it went for me.

Can coming home bring redemption? Or at least a measure of peace? Recently released from prison, Blake Alvares returns to the only place she ever felt safe, the now derelict Maine town in which she harbored as a teen. Determined to conceal her secrets and losses, she soon finds herself dragged into others’ lives when she takes a job on a boat owned by a notorious young lobsterman.

On the soccer field, Magic Mel is in her element. She’s ready to lead her team to victory at the city championship in her new role as captain. Off the field, however, is a totally different story. Mel can’t get a handle on her class presentation, her friend group has completely dissolved, and her ex-friend-current-teammate, Tory, is being the worst. The only place she feels like herself is in her text conversations where she shares her secret poetry with BTtoYouPlease.