Navigate Your Stars

Jesmyn Ward

CD

For Tulane University’s 2018 commencement, Jesmyn Ward, delivered a stirring speech about the value of hard work and the importance of respect for oneself and others. Speaking about the challenges she and her family overcame, Ward inspired everyone in the audience with her meditation on tenacity in the face of hardship. Now, Ward’s moving words will inspire listeners as they prepare for the next chapter in their lives, whether, like Ward, they are the first in their families to graduate from college or are preceded by generations, or whether they are embarking on a different kind of journey later in life.

Creative Care
Anne Basting

CD

MacArthur Genius Grant recipient Anne Basting lays the groundwork for a widespread transformation in our approach to elderly care and uses compelling, touching stories to inspire and guide us all–family, friends, and health professionals–in new and satisfying ways.

If It Bleeds
Steven King
CD

Abstract: “In ‘If It Bleeds’, King gives listeners four brilliant new stories sure to prove as iconic as their predecessors. Once again, King’s remarkable range is on full display. In the title story, fan favorite Holly Gibney (from the Bill Hodges trilogy and ‘The Outsider’) must face her fears and possibly another outsider — this time on her own. In ‘Mr. Harrigan’s Phone,’ an intergenerational friendship has a disturbing afterlife. ‘The Life of Chuck’ explores, beautifully, how each of us contains multitudes. And in ‘Rat,’ a struggling writer must contend with the darker side of ambition”– Provided by publisher.

The Mirror and the Light

Hillary Mantel

CD

“”If you cannot speak truth at a beheading, when can you speak it?” England, May 1536. Anne Boleyn is dead, decapitated in the space of a heartbeat by a hired French executioner. As her remains are bundled into oblivion, Thomas Cromwell breakfasts with the victors. The blacksmith’s son from Putney emerges from the spring’s bloodbath to continue his climb to power and wealth, while his formidable master, Henry VIII, settles to short-lived happiness with his third queen before Jane dies giving birth to the male heir he most craves. Cromwell is a man with only his wits to rely on; he has no great family to back him, no private army. Despite rebellion at home, traitors plotting abroad and the threat of invasion testing Henry’s regime to the breaking point, Cromwell’s robust imagination sees a new country in the mirror of the future. But can a nation, or a person, shed the past like a skin? Do the dead continually unbury themselves? What will you do, the Spanish ambassador asks Cromwell, when the king turns on you, as sooner or later he turns on everyone close to him?”