What if you just trusted the whisper of calling placed on your heart? Kathy Izard was volunteering at Charlotte’s Urban Ministry Center when an unlikely meeting with a homeless man changed the course of her life. She realized that serving at the soup kitchen was feeding her soul, but not actually solving the needs of the homeless population. Rather than brush it off and avoid what she now felt called to take on, she quit her job and took on what seemed like an insurmountable task—building housing for Charlotte’s homeless. Woven together with this uplifting story of social action is Kathy’s personal struggle with faith, forgiveness and fulfillment. In telling her story, Kathy invites you to consider rewriting your own. What’s calling you? As crazy at it seems, it may be crazier not to try. This book will push you to do so much more than you ever thought possible.

An inspirational true story about finding faith in yourself and something bigger. Kathy Izard was a volunteer in a soup kitchen when an unlikely meeting with bestselling author, Denver Moore, changed everything. This working mother quit her job to imagine the unimaginable in her second half of life - build housing for Charlotte's homeless.

This is a book intended for student teachers and others who tell stories to young children. The first three chapters deal with story-telling at home and in school and the best methods of going about choosing. Next, there is a large collection of stories divided into different genres followed by a substantial index.

Hopkinton, NY is a quiet little town in the northeast part of the state, settled by New Englanders and built in the New England style with a village green, white wood frame churches, and large Victorian houses. Life here has generally moved at a leisurely pace; yet Hopkinton’s people have had their dramas – both comedy and tragic - and their stories have been remembered. In 1903, Carlton Sanford had a book published documenting the settling of the town from a wilderness in 1802 through its first hundred years of development and tracing the descendants of the first settlers. Now Dale Burnett has written a folk history of the second hundred years, chronicling the events in the lives of Hopkinton’s people and the town itself through the 20th century. Mr. Burnett has researched each separate district of the township and spoken with at least one person from each area to get its history from someone who lived there. In addition to the facts one would expect – businesses, history of the fire department, town officers - he has taken almost every house along each road in the town and listed the residents through the years, along with any tales that may have been told about them. Based mainly on interviews with older Hopkinton folk, some of whom were alive when Sanford’s book came out, the stories handed down have been preserved as the old people told them. Facts are supported by newspaper articles, deeds and other documents. Included are tales of Hopkinton’s characters, its three or four murders, and its one kidnapping case with still unanswered questions. And, following Mr. Sanford’s example, at the end of The Second Hundred Years are genealogies submitted by Hopkinton families, many of whom can still trace their ancestry to those early settlers.

From the acclaimed author of The Great Believers, an original, mordantly witty novel about the secrets of an old-money family and their turn-of-the-century estate, Laurelfield. Meet the Devohrs: Zee, a Marxist literary scholar who detests her parents’ wealth but nevertheless finds herself living in their carriage house; Gracie, her mother, who claims she can tell your lot in life by looking at your teeth; and Bruce, her step-father, stockpiling supplies for the Y2K apocalypse and perpetually late for his tee time. Then there’s Violet Devohr, Zee’s great-grandmother, who they say took her own life somewhere in the vast house, and whose massive oil portrait still hangs in the dining room. Violet’s portrait was known to terrify the artists who resided at the house from the 1920s to the 1950s, when it served as the Laurelfield Arts Colony—and this is exactly the period Zee’s husband, Doug, is interested in. An out-of-work academic whose only hope of a future position is securing a book deal, Doug is stalled on his biography of the poet Edwin Parfitt, once in residence at the colony. All he needs to get the book back on track—besides some motivation and self-esteem—is access to the colony records, rotting away in the attic for decades. But when Doug begins to poke around where he shouldn’t, he finds Gracie guards the files with a strange ferocity, raising questions about what she might be hiding. The secrets of the hundred-year house would turn everything Doug and Zee think they know about her family on its head—that is, if they were to ever uncover them. In this brilliantly conceived, ambitious, and deeply rewarding novel, Rebecca Makkai unfolds a generational saga in reverse, leading the reader back in time on a literary scavenger hunt as we seek to uncover the truth about these strange people and this mysterious house. With intelligence and humor, a daring narrative approach, and a lovingly satirical voice, Rebecca Makkai has crafted an unforgettable novel about family, fate and the incredible surprises life can offer. For readers of Dodie Smith's I Capture the Castle