Recommendations based on "On Father"

Imbued on every page with Frank McCourt's astounding humor and compassion. This is a glorious book that bears all the marks of a classic."When I look back on my childhood I wonder how I managed to survive at all. It was, of course, a miserable the happy childhood is hardly worth your while. Worse than the ordinary miserable childhood is the miserable Irish childhood, and worse yet is the miserable Irish Catholic childhood."So begins the Pulitzer Prize winning memoir of Frank McCourt, born in Depression-era Brooklyn to recent Irish immigrants and raised in the slums of Limerick, Ireland. Frank's mother, Angela, has no money to feed the children since Frank's father, Malachy, rarely works, and when he does he drinks his wages. Yet Malachy—exasperating, irresponsible and beguiling—does nurture in Frank an appetite for the one thing he can a story. Frank lives for his father's tales of Cuchulain, who saved Ireland, and of the Angel on the Seventh Step, who brings his mother babies.Perhaps it is story that accounts for Frank's survival. Wearing rags for diapers, begging a pig's head for Christmas dinner and gathering coal from the roadside to light a fire, Frank endures poverty, near-starvation and the casual cruelty of relatives and neighbors—yet lives to tell his tale with eloquence, exuberance and remarkable forgiveness.Angela's Ashes, imbued on every page with Frank McCourt's astounding humor and compassion, is a glorious book that bears all the marks of a classic.

Once by Morris Gleitzman is the story of a young Jewish boy who is determined to escape the orphanage he lives in to save his Jewish parents from the Nazis in the occupied Poland of the Second World War.Everybody deserves to have something good in their life. At least Once.Once I escaped from an orphanage to find Mum and Dad.Once I saved a girl called Zelda from a burning house.Once I made a Nazi with a toothache laugh.My name is Felix. This is my story.Once is the first in a series of children's novels about Felix, a Jewish orphan caught in the middle of the Holocaust, from Australian author Morris Gleitzman - author of Bumface and Boy Overboard. The next books in the series Then, Now and After are also available from Puffin.

With his stunning debut novel, She's Come Undone, Wally Lamb won the adulation of critics and readers with his mesmerizing tale of one woman's painful yet triumphant journey of self-discovery. Now, this brilliantly talented writer returns with I Know This Much Is True, a heartbreaking and poignant multigenerational saga of the reproductive bonds of destruction and the powerful force of forgiveness. A masterpiece that breathtakingly tells a story of alienation and connection, power and abuse, devastation and renewal--this novel is a contemporary retelling of an ancient Hindu myth. A proud king must confront his demons to achieve salvation. Change yourself, the myth instructs, and you will inhabit a renovated world.

Born into the beautiful bedlam of downtown New York in the eighties, iO Tillett Wright came of age at the intersection of punk, poverty, heroin, and art. This was a world of self-invented characters, glamorous superstars, and strung-out sufferers, ground zero of drag and performance art. Still, no personality was more vibrant and formidable than iO’s mother’s. Rhonna, a showgirl and young widow, was a mercurial, erratic glamazon. She was iO’s fiercest defender and only authority in a world with few boundaries and even fewer indicators of normal life. At the center of Darling Days is the remarkable relationship between a fiery kid and a domineering ma—a bond defined by freedom and control, excess and sacrifice; by heartbreaking deprivation, agonizing rupture, and, ultimately, forgiveness.Darling Days is also a provocative examination of culture and identity, of the instincts that shape us and the norms that deform us, and of the courage and resilience it takes to listen closely to your deepest self. When a group of boys refuse to let six-year-old, female-born iO play ball, iO instantly adopts a new persona, becoming a boy named Ricky—a choice iO’s parents support and celebrate. It is the start of a profound exploration of gender and identity through the tenderest years, and the beginning of a life invented and reinvented at every step. Alternating between the harrowing and the hilarious, Darling Days is the candid, tough, and stirring memoir of a young person in search of an authentic self as family and home life devolve into chaos.

Four chronically homeless people–Amelia One Sky, Timber, Double Dick and Digger–seek refuge in a warm movie theatre when a severe Arctic Front descends on the city. During what is supposed to be a one-time event, this temporary refuge transfixes them. They fall in love with this new world, and once the weather clears, continue their trips to the cinema. On one of these outings they meet Granite, a jaded and lonely journalist who has turned his back on writing “the same story over and over again” in favour of the escapist qualities of film, and an unlikely friendship is struck. A found cigarette package (contents: some unsmoked cigarettes, three $20 bills, and a lottery ticket) changes the fortune of this struggling set. The ragged company discovers they have won $13.5 million, but none of them can claim the money for lack proper identification. Enlisting the help of Granite, their lives, and fortunes, become forever changed. Ragged Companyis a journey into both the future and the past. Richard Wagamese deftly explores the nature of the comforts these friends find in their ideas of “home,” as he reconnects them to their histories.

Rusty Returns To His Beloved Hills, Never To Leave AgainRusty Comes Home Is The Fifth And Final Volume In Puffin'S Complete Collection Of Ruskin Bond'S Ever-Popular Rusty Stories. A Lonely And Sensitive Boy Who Lost His Father Early, Rusty Spent His Childhood In Boarding Schools And With Relatives In Dehra. While Still A Teenager, He Ran Away From His Foster Home And Had Myriad Adventures Before Landing Up In London With The Ambition Of Becoming A Writer. This Book Chronicles Rusty'S Exploits After His Return From London, As He Explores Delhi, Dehra And The Small, Dusty Town Of Shahganj Before Settling Down In Mussoorie, Making His Living As A Writer, And Revelling In The Hills That Have Always Fascinated Him.Rusty Comes Home Contains Some Captivating Stories About Rusty'S Friends And Fleeting Acquaintances, About Human Nature And The Supernatural. Among His Friends In Shahganj Are Ketan, A Victim Of The Partition And Prone To Paralytic Fits; Madhu, A Child Whose Life Is Tragically Cut Short, But Not Before She Leaves An Indelible Impression On Rusty; And Suresh, A Disabled Child With Whom Rusty Strikes Up A Close Bond. In Dehra He Meets Up With His Genial Uncle Bill, Who Makes It His Habit To Poison People With Arsenic; The Incredible Jimmy, A Jinn Who Can Extend His Arms At Will To Infinite Lengths; And Miss Pettibone, The Oldest Resident Of Dehra, Who Enthralls Him With Riveting Stories From The Town'S Past. Then There Is The Unnamed Basket-Selling Girl He Meets By Chance On The Deoli Railway Platform And Can Never Forget; And Binya, A Young And Vivacious Widow, Who Floats Into His Life On The Strains Of A Song.Full Of Charming And Idiosyncratic Characters, These Stories Of Love, Loss And Adventure Will Appeal To Young Readers Of All Ages.

ONE REMARKABLE WOMAN OVER 30 YEARS OF FOSTERING CARER TO MORE THAN 150 CHILDREN Tayo arrives at Cathy's with only the clothes he stands up in. He has been brought to her by the police, but he is calm, polite, and very well-spoken, and not at all like the children she normally fosters. The social worker gives Cathy the forms which should contain Tayo's history, but apart from his name and age, it is blank. Tayo has no past. Tayo is an 'invisible' child, kidnapped from his loving father in Nigeria and brought illegally to the UK by his drink and drugs dependent prostitute mother, where he is put to work in a sweatshop in Central London. When he sustains an injury and is no longer earning, he is cast out. When Cathy takes Tayo to school he points out a dozen different addresses where he has stayed in the last six months, often being left alone. Tayo lies, and manipulates situations to his own advantage and Cathy has to be continually on guard. Tayo's social worker searches all computer databases but there is no record of Tayo - he has only attended school for three terms and has never seen a doctor. He and his mother have been evading the authorities by living 'underground'. With his mother recently released from prison, Tayo is desperate to live with his father in Nigeria, but no one can track him down or even prove that he exists.

Raising four strong-willed younger siblings after her mother's death and her father's imprisonment, seventeen-year-old Lanie Freeman never knows what new adventure will roll into view--such as her brother's wild idea to turn the family's old truck into a traveling store.The Freeman Rolling Emporium could provide the financial security Lanie and her family so desperately need, or it could tear them apart. Yet it's only a prelude to other changes. Author Brent Hayden's arrival in Fairhope breathes fresh life into Lanie's dream of becoming a writer. And then the hammer descends ...Lanie's father is diagnosed with cancer, and the faith and unity of her family are stretched to the limit. And on top of this shattering news, a crisis is about to strike that will rock the whole town of Fairhope--and shatter Lanie's dreams of love.The Miracle continues the story of a young woman's valiant struggle to uphold her faith, her family, and her dreams during the height of the Great Depression.

Born in a prison and removed from his drug-dependent mother, rejection is all that 7-year-old Alex knows.