Sarah Vowell

FAMILY TIESCindy Thompson has always kept her infatuation for her brother-in-law secret. She even moved away to try to forget. But now the widowed father of triplets needs the only family he's got...her. Flynn Mallory doesn't believe in prayers, until Cindy's loving tenderness becomes an answer to his own.PROMISE OF GRACECoping with the physical trauma of a terrible accident is hard for Grace Stanton. When her fiance abandons her as well, Grace begins to turn her back on God. Dr. Noah Brady knows his surgeon's skills can heal her wounds, but can his loving heart restore her faith?

A tour of key historic sites in America where incidents of political violence have occurred reveals lesser-known points of interest pertaining to each and shares information about how history has been shaped by popular culture and tourism.

"While tackling subjects such as identity, politics, religion, art, and history, these autobiographical tales are written with a biting humor, placing Vowell solidly in the tradition of Mark Twain and Dorothy Parker. Vowell searches the streets of Hoboken for traces of the town's favorite son, Frank Sinatra. She goes under cover of heavy makeup in an investigation of goth culture, blasts cannonballs into a hillside on a father-daughter outing, and maps her family's haunted history on a road trip down the Trail of Tears."--BOOK JACKET.

This anthology presents a selection of short works from mainstream and alternative American periodicals published in 2016, including nonfiction, screenplays, television writing, fiction, and alternative comics.

From the New York Times–bestselling author of Assassination Vacation and The Partly Cloudy Patriot, an examination of the Puritans, their covenant communities, their deep-rooted idealism, their political and cultural relevance in today’s world, and their myriad oddities.In The Wordy Shipmates, Sarah Vowell travels once again through America’s past, this time to seventeenth-century New England. From the British Library to the Mohegan Sun casino, from the nation’s first synagogue to a Mayflower waterslide, Vowell studies the Puritan effect and finds their beliefs about church and state more interesting than their buckles-and-corn reputation would suggest.She asks:Was Massachusetts Bay Colony governor John Winthrop a communitarian, Christlike Christian, or conformity’s tyrannical enforcer? Yes! Was Rhode Island’s architect Roger Williams America’s founding freak or the father of the First Amendment? Same difference. How come Henry Vane the Younger, who argued against beheading the English king, was himself beheaded for helping behead said king? Good question. What does it take to get that jezebel Anne Hutchinson to shut up? A hatchet. What was the Puritans’ pet name for the Pope? The Great Whore of Babylon. What is the lesson of the Pequot War? Why, don’t fire one of your military’s embarrassingly few Arabic translators just because he’s gay, of course.As in all Vowell’s bestselling books, this exploration of America’s past is both poignant and entertaining. The Wordy Shipmates is rich with historical fact, humorous insight, and social commentary by one of America’s celebrated voices.

"In The Partly Cloudy Patriot, Sarah Vowell travels through the American past and, in doing so, investigates the dusty bumpy roads of her own life. In this collection of personal stories Vowell ponders a number of curious questions: Why is she happiest when visiting the sites of bloody struggles like Salem or Gettysburg? Why do people always inappropriately compare themselves to Rosa Parks? Why is a bad life in sunny California so much worse than a bad life anywhere else? What is it about the Zen of foul shots? And, in the title piece, why must doubt and internal arguments haunt the sleepless nights of the true patriot?"--BOOK JACKET.

From the bestselling author of Assassination Vacation and The Partly Cloudy Patriot, an insightful and unconventional account of George Washington's trusted officer and friend, that swashbuckling teenage French aristocrat the Marquis de Lafayette.