A guide to exploring the outdoors after dark, interpreting the sights, sounds, and smells of night, and understanding the nocturnal behavior of animals and plants.
Setting / LocationGlobal
Story EraModern Era
Protagonist / CoreReading the outdoors at night Lead Character
How do you trust God when tragedy strikes? Kate is having the best summer a sports-loving eleven-year-old could possibly have. Baseball. Tennis. And to top it off, Kate has just started a three-week class where she's discovering a new love: poetry. Then comes the news that tears Kate's world apart. In her close-knit family, Kate has always felt God's love and protection. But how can she trust God now? Do sports or poetry matter when tragedy strikes? In Kate's darkest hour, her mother's faith shines its brightest, helping Kate to see that life is still beautiful and God is still good. Always, no matter what.
"Royal Cutter had finally cracked the starting lineup in the major leagues. As a 32-year-old rookie, Royal came with a long past in the minors, filled with bus rides and squashed dreams. Yet hours before his first game in right field, Royal is traded to Kansas City. The same city where 25 years before, Royal watched the demise of his own father, an up-and-coming major league baseball player. Drugs. Murder. A life sentence. Now Royal has to prove he belongs in the majors, even as the shadows of his father's darkest days surround his every move where he had once been a prince of the city."--Page 4 cover
Alone among the Living recalls the two most trying years of Richard Hoard's long struggle to come to terms with his father's murder. Writing candidly and movingly of that dark period, Hoard tells how he self-destructively acted out his grief, how despair nearly overwhelmed him, and how his spirit finally began to heal. Floyd "Fuzzy" Hoard, the author's father, was the prosecutor in rural Jackson County in the North Georgia hills. A classic small-town hero, he was a courageous public servant, a respected community leader, and a former professional athlete. Floyd Hoard was killed in his own driveway on August 7, 1967, by a car bomb planted by members of a local bootlegging ring. His son, fourteen-year-old "Dickey" Hoard, was the third person to arrive at the scene off the explosion. Knowing in his heart that his father was already dead, Dickey nonetheless tried to resuscitate him. Eventually, five men were convicted of taking part in the murder. Details of the bombing, subsequent investigation, and nationally covered trial are woven into Hoard's memoir, which presents a previously untold perspective on an incident still remembered by many Georgians. . Floyd Hoard was the central figure in Dickey's life, though the son sometimes felt the father's disapproval. As Dickey's anguish over his dead father grew, so did his regret over their differences, which centered on Dickey's seeming lack of direction and commitment. He became desperate for a way to somehow demonstrate a seriousness about life to the man, for a way to secure his "blessing." Dickey's solution was to immerse himself in sports - a pursuit in which his father excelled, but about which he was ambivalent. High school, an insecure, emotional time in any adolescent's life, became intolerable under such self-imposed pressures. Unable to articulate his pain to what he viewed as an indifferent world, Dickey alternately withdrew and then openly rebelled, especially at home. Looking back, Hoard recalls how, with no sense of purpose, he drifted from crisis to crisis - contemplating suicide, attempting to run away from home, bickering with his family, and alienating all but his most steadfast friends. Unwillingly at first, Dickey was drawn back to church, which he rarely attended after his father's death. Almost two years after his father's murder, he had a spiritual awakening and found the strength to accept the loss and make peace with himself. Gritty in its details, and never didactic, Alone among the Living is a heartfelt story of an adolescent's immersion in grief, and of his survival through grace.
Kidnappers have snatched the teenage son of super-star golfer Linda Coldren and her husband, Jack, an aging pro, at the height of the U.S. Open. To help get the boy back, sports agent Myron Bolitar goes charging after clues and suspects from the Main Line mansions to a downtown cheaters' motel--and back in time to a U.S. Open twenty-three years ago, when Jack Coldren should have won, but didn't. Suddenly Myron finds him self surrounded by blue bloods, criminals, and liars. And as one family's darkest secrets explode into murder, Myron finds out just how rough this game can get.In novels that crackle with wit and suspense, Edgar Award winner Harlan Coben has created one of the most fascinating and complex heroes in suspense fiction--Myron Bolitar--a hotheaded, tenderhearted sports agent who grows more and more engaging and unpredictable with each page-turning appearance.From the Paperback edition.
Reading the outdoors at night by Vinson Brown | Literally Just Books
