Magic and transformation in the beauty of a Ukrainian village For seven-year-old Angela, happiness is exploring the verdant countryside around her home in western Ukraine. Her imagination carries her into the spirits of passing birds, into the breath of the wind, into the leaves of her springtime garden. Everything changes when, one morning, she spies her mother crying. As she tries to find out what lies behind the sadness, she is drawn on an extraordinary journey into the secrets of her family, and her parent’s fateful choices. Can Angela lead her mother back to happiness before her innocence is destroyed by the shadows of a dark past? Beautiful, poetic and richly sensory, this is a tale that will haunt and lift its readers. "A strange and beautiful novel" - Esther Freud, author of Mr Mac and Me, Hideous Kinky, Peeless Flats "Readers looking for a classic tale of love and loss will be rewarded with an intoxicating world" - Kirkus Reviews "Rich and poetic in detail, it is an often dreamy, oneiric narrative rooted in an exaltation of nature... A lovely novel" - IndieReader "A literary work of art" – Richmond Magazine

In this poetic and haunting tale set in contemporary Appalachia, New York Times bestselling author Ron Rash illuminates lives shaped by violence and a powerful connection to the land. Les, a long-time sheriff just three-weeks from retirement, contends with the ravages of crystal meth and his own duplicity in his small Appalachian town. Becky, a park ranger with a harrowing past, finds solace amid the lyrical beauty of this patch of North Carolina. Enduring the mistakes and tragedies that have indelibly marked them, they are drawn together by a reverence for the natural world. When an irascible elderly local is accused of poisoning a trout stream, Les and Becky are plunged into deep and dangerous waters, forced to navigate currents of disillusionment and betrayal that will force them to question themselves and test their tentative bond—and threaten to carry them over the edge. Echoing the heartbreaking beauty of William Faulkner and the spiritual isolation of Carson McCullers, Above the Waterfall demonstrates once again the prodigious talent of “a gorgeous, brutal writer” (Richard Price) hailed as “one of the great American authors at work today” (Janet Maslin, New York Times).

Heartbreak and transformation in the beauty of a Ukrainian village

A luxurious Second Edition of this modern classic set in western Ukraine, and illustrated by Ukrainian artist Olha Tkachenko. Seven-year-old Angela seeks to lift her mother from her sadness.

She could remember standing in a park near the falls, hypnotized by the sight and sound, and holding her father’s hand as they took a walk that would lead them closer. That’s what everyone wonders when they see Niagara . . . How close will their courage let them get to it? At the turn of the nineteenth century, a retired sixty-two-year-old charm school instructor named Annie Edson Taylor, seeking fame and fortune, decided to do something that no one in the world had ever done before—she would go over Niagara Falls in a wooden barrel. Come meet the Queen of the Falls and witness with your own eyes her daring ride!

Gift from Kansas City Library. This is a story of Jane, poetess and failed wife full of guilt and self-doubt, who has given up hope until redeemed and restored to herself unexpectedly by love.