Family Memories

Sammie McCoy is a girl with a plan: graduate at the top of her class and get out of her small town as soon as possible. Nothing will stand in her way - not even the rare genetic disorder the doctors say will slowly steal her memories and then her health. So the memory book is born: a journal written to Sammie's future self, so she can remember everything, from where she stashed her study guides to just how great it feels to have a best friend again.

The warmth of the Christmas season is condensed into this single collection that will rekindle your Christmas memories. Who doesn't remember Christmas at Grandma's? The living room aglow with family and friends, the kitchen like a factory of sweet aromas, the relatives everywhere! Donald Davis captures the spirit of Christmas as seen through the eyes of a child in these stories: "Christmas in Sulpher Springs", "The Children's Christmas Party", "The Year My Brother Almost Died", and "The Red Scooters."

It’s 1967, and for young Richard it’s a time of heartbreak and turmoil. Over the span of a few months, his brother, Mark, is killed in Vietnam; his father loses his job and moves the family from California to his grandmother’s abandoned home in Utah; and his parents make the painful decision to separate. With uncertainty rattling every corner of his life, Richard does his best to remain strong—but when he’s run down by bullies at his new school, he meets Mr. Foster, an elderly neighbor who chases off the bullies and invites Richard in for a cup of cocoa.

Lee Smith is one of today's most critically acclaimed authors writing about contemporary life in the South. In Family Linen, with a remarkable economy of description and dialogue, Smith sketches eccentric, yet familiar characters moving through a family drama that resonates with both tension and humor.

Late Christmas Eve, the Harper family’s car crashed on a desolate stretch outside Black Lake. Sixteen-year-old Alice was found injured by the side of the road—alone. It was as if her parents and younger sister, Ella, had simply disappeared. One year later, Alice is still dealing with nightmares and unanswered questions when she and her friends find Ella’s bloodstained backpack in the basement of an abandoned home.

In 1953, a 27-year-old factory worker named Henry Molaison - who suffered from severe epilepsy - received a radical new version of the then-common lobotomy, targeting the most mysterious structures in the brain. The operation failed to eliminate Henry’s seizures, but it did have an unintended effect: Henry was left profoundly amnesic, unable to create long-term memories. Over the next 60 years, Patient H.M., as Henry was known, became the most studied individual in the history of neuroscience, a human guinea pig who would teach us much of what we know about memory today.

Throughout the seasons, a family enjoys their backyard tree until it needs to be cut down. The family plants a sapling in its place.

With nothing but time on her hands, retired nurse Rose Lanyon finds herself drawn to the garden that had once been her husband’s pride and joy.

It may have started as a means of honouring her husband’s memory, but her little Cornish garden soon becomes so much more – a place where the lost and lonely can find solace, the forgotten can be remembered, and second chances take bloom. Because, as long as new life is growing, there will always be hope and new memories to make.

1916: Betty O’Fogarty is proud and clever. Spurred on by Betty's belief in her husband Seamus’s talent as a violin-maker and her desire to escape rural life, the couple elopes to Dublin. As Dublin is plunged into chaos as the Easter Rebellion of 1916, Betty gives birth to her first child to the sound of gunfire and shelling. A hundred years later, secrets churn their way to the surface, and Betty’s grandchildren and great-grandchildren uncover both Betty’s ruthlessness and her unique brand of heroism.

Autumn brings its own haunting beauty to the sun-soaked beaches and dunes on Isle of Palms, where Olivia “Lovie” Rutledge lives in her beloved Primrose Cottage with her daughter, Cara. Looking back as summer fades, Lovie can remember many island summers, but especially one. . . .In 1974, America was changing, but Charleston remained eternally the same. Lovie had always done what was expected — marrying the son of a historic Charleston family, Stratton Rutledge, and turning over her fortune and fate to his control. But one thing she steadfastly refuses to relinquish: her family’s old seaside cottage. The precious summers spent on the barrier island are Lovie’s refuge. Here, she can escape with her children from the social expectations of her traditional Southern mother, and her overbearing husband’s ambition and philandering. Here, she indulges her lifelong vocation as a “Turtle Lady,” tending the loggerhead sea turtles that lay their eggs in the warm night sand and then slip back into the sea. This summer, however, is different. Visiting biologist Russell Bennett arrives on the island to research the loggerheads. What begins as a shared passion for the turtles changes to a love far more passionate and profound than Lovie has ever known — but one that forces her to face the most agonizing decision of her life.For Charleston’s elite, divorce is an unforgivable scandal, and Stratton’s influence is far-reaching. If Lovie dares to dream beyond a summer affair, she risks losing everything: her reputation, her wealth, even her precious children.Beach House Memories — a poignant and emotional tale of a strong, passionate woman torn between duty and desire, between the traditions of the old South and the social changes sweeping America — will capture your heart. For Lovie, it is an empowering journey of seasons of self-discovery. Until this autumn, this time of changing tides, of holding on and letting go. . . .“This luminous tale — set in the South Carolina Lowcountry that we both love so deeply — was hard to put down. Fans of The Beach House will at last discover what happened during the summer of 1974. But readers new to Mary Alice Monroe need not worry, for this emotional story of love and loss stands alone.” — New York Times bestselling author Dorothea Benton Frank

In 365 Ways to Love Your Child, Julie encourages moms, dads, and anyone who works with children to show kids every day with simple but meaningful gestures and activities how very much they are loved. Join Julie in expressing tangible acts of love to show your kids they are valued by their parents and, most especially, by God.

Learning that her friend and English partner Amelia Freeman has died in a tragic accident during spring break, a devastated Mary Anne is unable to overcome her sorrow and decides to do something special to remember her friend.

Eager to retell the narrative of her own family and her coming-of-age, Patti Davis casts aside misperceptions that defined her in the past. Far from being the enfant terrible, Dear Mom and Dad reveals young Patti as a sensitive child, who was not able to be the public person her family demanded. Davis casts an empathetic yet honest eye on her parents—on her father, the eternal lifeguard, who saved seventy-seven people, yet failed to create a coherent AIDS policy, and her mother, who never escaped her own tortured youth.

Daydreamer Nora has inherited all of her grandmother's worldly belongings. Nora dreads seeing her beloved grandmother's possessions go, but she's determined that item by item, memory by memory, she will find the perfect new owners. When she opens The Memory Shop in the front of her grandmother's house, the community is gradually drawn inside, and Nora begins transforming the lives of those around her through the objects she pairs them with.

When Vicky Cruz wakes up in the Lakeview Hospital Mental Disorders ward, she knows one thing: She can't even commit suicide right. But for once, a mistake works out well for her, as she meets Mona, the live wire; Gabriel, the saint; E. M., always angry; and Dr. Desai, a quiet force. With stories and honesty, kindness and hard work, they push her to reconsider her life before Lakeview and offer her an acceptance she's never had.

On the night their mother drowns, sisters Marnie and Diana Maitland discover there is more than one kind of death. There is the death of innocence, of love, and of hope. Each sister harbors a secret about that night--secrets that will erode their lives as they grow into adulthood.

If you're listening to this, you may have a loved one suffering from dementia, and you're looking for hope. The disease has already taken so much, and though you're determined to fight, you're weary. Keeping Love Alive as Memories Fade will renew your strength. With guidance from professionals and stories of committed caregivers, you'll learn how others have braved the road ahead and how you can, too. Using the five love languages and other creative ideas, you can discover, like many others, the resilient power of love.

Imagine finding a glimmer of good news in a diagnosis of Alzheimer's. And imagine how that would change the outlook of the five million Americans who suffer from Alzheimer's disease and other dementias, not to mention their families, loved ones, and caretakers. A neurologist who's been specializing in dementia and memory loss for more than 20 years, Dr. Gayatri Devi rewrites the story of Alzheimer's by defining it as a spectrum disorder - like autism, Alzheimer's is a disease that affects different people differently.

Laura Wilson is back in Blueberry Beach, dealing with a mysterious illness that has depleted her energy and left her listless and unable to enjoy life. She's working part time in her grandfather's shop when a mysterious stranger rents the small apartment above theirs. He's strong, athletic, handsome, and full of life and energy. They couldn't be farther apart physically, but they bond as they each take on more responsibility as her grandfather's health declines. Will they decide providing precious memories to the hundreds of customers in the old shop is enough to build a future on?

1876. Among the filth and depravity of Covent Garden's flower markets, orphaned Irish sisters Flora and Rosie Flynn sell posies of violets and watercress to survive. It is a pitiful existence, made bearable only by each other's presence. When they become separated, the decision of a desperate woman sets their lives on very different paths.