Tom Stechschulte
1) The road
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America is a barren landscape of smoldering ashes, devoid of life except for those people still struggling to scratch out some type of existence. Amidst the destruction, a father and his young son walk, always toward the coast, but with no real understanding that circumstances will improve once they arrive. Still they persevere, and their relationship comes to represent goodness in a world that is utterly devastated.
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The time is our own, when rustlers have given way to drug-runners and small towns have become free-fire zones. One day, a good old boy named Llewellyn Moss finds a pickup truck surrounded by a bodyguard of dead men. A load of heroin and two million dollars in cash are still in the back. When Moss takes the money, he sets off a chain reaction of catastrophic violence that not even the law--in the person of aging, disillusioned Sheriff Bell--can contain....
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Twenty-nine-year-old Vanessa Cole is a wild, stunningly beautiful heiress, the adopted only child of a highly regarded New York brain surgeon and his socialite wife. Twice married, Vanessa has been scandalously linked to any number of rich and famous men. But on the night of July 4, 1936, at her parents' country home in a remote Adirondack Mountain enclave known as The Reserve, two events coincide to permanently alter the course of Vanessa's callow...
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Living in rural Virginia, ten-year-old Jess and Leslie become special friends as they create a magical secret world that they call Terabithia. But when a tragic accident causes Leslie's death during a storm, Jess is forced to face life alone.
"This Newbery Medal-winning novel by bestselling-author Katherine Paterson has been a modern classic about friendship and loss for forty years. Jess Aarons has been practicing all summer so he can be the fastest...
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"People who love dogs often talk about a 'lifetime' dog. I'd heard the phrase a dozen times before I came to recognize its significance. Lifetime dogs are dogs we love in especially powerful, sometimes inexplicable ways." Author Katz tells the story of his lifetime dog, Orson: a beautiful border collie--intense, smart, crazy, and unforgettable. From the moment Katz and Orson meet, their relationship is deep, stormy, and loving. Two years old, Katz's...
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Thanksgiving has come and gone, and hunting season is in full swing on the Vineyard. J.W. Jackson-retired cop, dedicated fisherman, and passionate cook-is more or less holed up with his wife, Zee, and their two spunky kids for the winter. Still, the world has a way of intruding. When J.W.'s old Vietnam buddy, Joe Begay, asks to be met on Cape Cod and smuggled back to the island, J.W. knows something's not right. Soon, the facts begin to emerge: A...
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A classic work of American literature that has not stopped changing minds and lives since it burst onto the literary scene, The Things They Carried is a ground-breaking meditation on war, memory, imagination, and the redemptive power of storytelling.
The Things They Carried depicts the men of Alpha Company: Jimmy Cross, Henry Dobbins, Rat Kiley, Mitchell Sanders, Norman Bowker, Kiowa, and the character Tim O'Brien, who has
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""In the most suspenseful installment of the New York Times bestselling Body Farm series to date, forensic anthropologist Dr. Bill Brockton investigates a bizarre murder--and confronts a deadly enemy he thought he'd put behind bars for good. Forensic anthropologist Bill Brockton has spent twenty-five years solving brutal murders--but none so bizarre and merciless as his latest case: A ravaged set of skeletal remains is found chained to a tree on a...
11) Ava's man
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The author chronicles the life of his grandfather, whom he never met but came to know through his grandmother and mother, describing this larger-than-life southern man's work ethic during the Great Depression, his love for his family, and his zest for life at all times.
12) Clay's Quilt
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On a bone-chilling New Year's Day, when all the mountain roads are slick with ice, Clay's mother, Anneth, insists on leaving her husband. She packs her things, and with three-year-old Clay in tow, they inch their way toward her hometown along the treacherous mountain roads.
That journey ends in the death of Clay's mother. It's a day that comes to haunt her only son, who's left without a family and a history. This is the story of how Clay Sizemore,...
13) In the fall
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An interracial relationship between a Union soldier from Vermont and a runaway slave at the end of the Civil War initiates a haunting family legacy of war, racism, and secrets that follows three generations from the end of the Civil War to the Great Depression.
14) Plainsong
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English
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Ambitious, but never seeming so, Kent Haruf reveals a whole community as he interweaves the stories of a pregnant high school girl, a lonely teacher, a pair of boys abandoned by their mother, and a couple of crusty bachelor farmers. From simple elements, Haruf achieves a novel of wisdom and grace--a narrative that builds in strength and feeling until, as in a choral chant, the voices in the book surround, transport, and lift the reader off the ground....
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Beep! Beep! Beep! Meet Blue. A muddy country road is no match for this little pick up -- that is, until he gets stuck while pushing a dump truck out of the muck. Luckily, Blue has made a pack of farm animal friends along his route. And they're willing to do whatever it takes to get their pal back on the road. Filled with truck sounds and animals noises, here is a rollicking homage to the power of friendship and the rewards of helping others.
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In his prime, Edward Bloom was an extraordinary man. He could outrun anybody. He never missed a day of school. He saved lives and tamed giants. He was an inspired salesman-a visionary, in fact-and a beneficent real estate magnate who once bought a whole town just to make sure it would never change. Animals loved him. People loved him. Women loved him (and he loved them back). And he knew more jokes than any man alive. Or at least that's what he's...
19) Carnal innocence
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Violinist Caroline Waverly has traveled to her grandmother's house to try and sort out her life and recover from a broken heart, and when she meets and falls inlove with Tucker Longstreet, she thinks her life may be turning around, but when four women are brutally murdered and Tucker is the only suspect, Caroline must decide whether to trust her heart or her head.