Archives par étiquette : HarperCollins

THE HIDDEN LIFE OF CECILY LARSON d’Ellen Baker

Orphan Train meets Before We Were Yours meets Water for Elephants in this compelling multigenerational novel of survival, love, and the families we make.

THE HIDDEN LIFE OF CECILY LARSON
by Ellen Baker
Mariner Books, February 2024

In 1924, four-year-old Cecily Larson’s mother reluctantly drops her off at an orphanage in Chicago, promising to be back once she’s made enough money to support both Cecily and herself. But she never returns, and shortly after high-spirited Cecily turns seven, she is sold to a traveling circus to perform as the “little sister” to glamorous bareback rider Isabelle DuMonde. With Isabelle and the rest of the circus, Cecily finally feels she’s found the family she craves. But as the years go by, the cracks in her little world begin to show. And when teenage Cecily meets and falls in love with a young roustabout named Lucky, she finds her life thrown onto an entirely unexpected—and dangerous—course.

In 2015, Cecily is now 94 and living a quiet life in Minnesota, with her daughter, granddaughter, and great-grandson. But when her family decides to surprise her with an at-home DNA test, the unexpected results not only bring to light the tragic love story that Cecily has kept hidden for decades but also throw into question everything about the family she’s raised and claimed as her own for nearly seventy years. Cecily and everyone in her life must now decide who they really are and what family—and forgiveness—really mean.

Sweeping through a long period of contemporary history, THE HIDDEN LIFE OF CECILY LARSON is an immersive, compelling, and entertaining family drama centered around one remarkable woman and her determination to survive.

Ellen Baker is the author of Keeping the House and I Gave My Heart to Know This. She has worked as a bookseller and event coordinator at an independent bookstore. Originally from the Upper Midwest, she currently lives in Maine.

RED HELICOPTER —A PARABLE FOR OUR TIMES de James Rhee

A true story of triumph by award-winning business leader, impact investor, and educator James Rhee that will inspire and empower us to transform our lives and our businesses with the simple and yet powerful combination of kindness and math.

RED HELICOPTER —A PARABLE FOR OUR TIMES
lead change with kindness (plus a little math)
by James Rhee
HarperOne, April 2024

In kindergarten, James Rhee received a toy red helicopter in gratitude for a simple act of kindness—the innocent generosity of sharing his lunch. Nearly four decades later, the true meaning and lesson from this memory helped him overcome indescribable hurdles as both a first time CEO and son to a dying father. Combining the radical common sense of a child with the knowledge of an experienced private equity investor and law school graduate, James led one of the most dramatic reinventions in business history. Partnering with Black women across America, James led Ashley Stewart, a twice-bankrupt retailer with no WiFi, from the jaws of liquidation to a transcendent success that inspired a world seeking a different way. And, in the process, he was able to reconcile his own complicated past and see his mom for who she truly was.

Combining the clarity and imagination we had as children with some basic business metrics, Rhee composed a system he calls “Kindness and Math.” It’s a simple solution to the dissatisfaction and worry so many of us feel, an intuitive response to the gnawing uncertainty we face daily as we meander through our lives and struggle to understand why we might feel so out of control in our professional and personal lives. red helicopter—a parable for our times exposes the root cause for these feelings and encourages us to embrace a few key principles to reorient our lives, organizations, and the world to reflect the best in us. In this remarkable book, Rhee provides the tools we can use to:

• Embrace agency by identifying the obstacles quietly holding us back

• Construct a balance sheet of our true assets and liabilities

• Create and measure “goodwill,” the ultimate collective good

• Lead systems transformation with a framework comprised of small, scalable acts

• Drive financial profitability with little to no investment of money

• Unlock the value of difference and the unpredictable

• and more

Rhee’s fresh thinking emerged from an emotional journey in which both the professional and personal intersected and became one. The financial uncertainty, family tragedy, and soul-searching he endured, after the whole world left him and Ashley Stewart for dead, led him to create a simple and scalable solution to the struggles that ail us all. This quiet and powerful ode to humanity is sorely needed in today’s troubled world.

James Rhee is an acclaimed impact investor, founder, CEO, goodwill strategist, thought leader, and educator, who empowers people, brands, and organizations by marrying capital with purpose. He bridges the emotional with the mathematical, and gives permission for us to be human. A long-time private equity investor, James also serves as a founding member of JP Morgan Chase’s Advancing Black Pathways, a charter member of Ashoka’s Entrepreneur-to-Entrepreneur Network, and former Chair of the Innovation Committee of the National Retail Federation. In addition to his private sector endeavors, Rhee teaches at Howard University (where he serves as the Johnson Chair of Entrepreneurship), MIT Sloan School of Management, and Duke School of Law. He lives in Boston, Massachusetts.

BEHIND YOU IS THE SEA de Susan Muaddi Darraj

An exciting debut novel that gives voice to the diverse residents of a Palestinian American community in Baltimore—from young activists in conflict with their traditional parents to the poor who clean for the rich—lives which intersect across divides of class, generation, and religion.

BEHIND YOU IS THE SEA
by Susan Muaddi Darraj
HarperVia, January 2024

Funny and touching, BEHIND YOU IS THE SEA brings us into the homes and lives of three main families—the Baladis, the Salamehs, and the Ammars—Palestinian immigrants who’ve all found a different welcome in America.

Their various fates and struggles cause their community dynamic to sizzle and sometimes explode: The wealthy Ammar family employs young Maysoon Baladi, whose own family struggles financially, to clean up after their spoiled teenagers. Meanwhile, Marcus Salameh confronts his father in an effort to protect his younger sister for “dishonoring” their name. Only a trip to Palestine, where Marcus experiences an unexpected and dramatic transformation, can bridge this seemingly unbridgeable divide between the two generations.

BEHIND YOU IS THE SEA faces stereotypes about Palestinian culture head-on and, shifting perspectives to weave a complex social fabric replete with weddings, funerals, broken hearts, and devastating secrets.

Susan Muaddi Darraj is the author of A Curious Land, a novel in stories which earned an American Book Award and was a finalist for a Palestine Book Award. In 2018, she was named a Ford Fellow by USA Artists. A past winner of the Maryland State Art Council’s Independent Artist Award, she is also the author of Farah Rocks, the first children’s book series to feature a Palestinian-American character. She lives in Baltimore, Maryland, and teaches at Johns Hopkins University.

DRESSING BARBIE de Carol Spencer

A dazzling celebration of the clothes that made America’s favorite doll and the incredible woman behind them, timed to the movie release of Barbie, starring Margot Robbie and Ryan Gosling and directed by Greta Gerwig.

DRESSING BARBIE
A Celebration of the Clothes That Made America’s Favorite Doll and the Incredible Woman Behind Them
by Carol Spencer
Harper, March 2019

If you’ve ever had a Barbie doll, or you know someone who did, chances are that Barbie was dressed in one of the thousands of designs created by Carol Spencer during her unparalleled reign as a Barbie fashion designer spanning more than thirty-five years.

Illustrated with more than 100 full-color photographs, including many never-before-seen images of rare and one-of-a-kind pieces from Spencer’s private archive, Dressing Barbie is a treasure trove of some of the best and most iconic Barbie looks from the early 1960s until the late 1990s. Along with behind-the-scenes stories of how these designs came to be, Spencer reminisces about her thrilling time at Mattel working with legendary figures such as Ruth Handler, Barbie’s creator, and Charlotte Johnson, the original Barbie designer, for a full, inside look into life with the beloved doll. Over the course of her career, Spencer won many accolades. She was the first designer to have her signature on the doll, the first to go on a signing tour, the first to design a limited-edition Barbie for collectors, and the designer of the biggest-selling Barbie of all time. Now, she is the first member of the inner circle to reveal the fashion world of the quintessential California girl as never before.

Carol Spencer worked for several years as a fashion designer and illustrator in the apparel industry before beginning her illustrious career at Mattel as a fashion designer for Barbie in 1963. For thirty-five years, Carol created thousands of designs for the iconic doll and watched as Mattel grew from a small business into a multi-national conglomerate. From seeing Paris fashion shows to running the Hong Kong design group in the 1980s, Carol has been around the world with Barbie. Since retiring in 1998, she has continued to reside in Los Angeles with her impressive personal collection of Barbie dolls.

ON HER OWN de Lihi Lapid

A moving, page-turning story of two families in crisis that melds the clock-ticking tension of Laura Dave’s The Last Thing He Told Me with the “issue-driven” gravity of Jennifer Haigh’s Mercy Street.

ON HER OWN
by Lihi Lapid, translated from the Hebrew by Sondra Silverton
HarperVia, March 2024

Watching her Russian immigrant mother, Irina, struggle to put food on the table, Nina, a beautiful and restless teenager, vows her life will be different. When a strapping older man in a fancy car appears at school one day offering her luxuries her single mother cannot afford, Nina believes he’s her ticket out of her dumpy little town. Ignoring the danger signs and her mother’s constant pleas—which end in exhausting screaming matches—she packs a suitcase and leaves home after one last fight.

Ten days later, a terrified Nina, her dress torn, is hiding in the stairwell of a Tel Aviv apartment after witnessing a murder she cannot talk about. She is discovered by one of the building’s tenants, a confused, lonely old widow who mistakes her for the granddaughter she hasn’t seen for a long while, not since her son moved his family to America. “You’ve come back to me, Dana’le.” Instead of correcting the mistake, the desperate Nina jumps at the chance for a place to hide.

Hiding from her mother and the dangerous man who are both frantically searching for her, Nina settles into the old woman’s apartment. But how long can Nina possibly hide out until the poor woman realizes she’s not who she says she is, or before someone else – her homesick son in America who keeps calling, or the lovely local neighbors who drop by with groceries—catches on?

Set between the eve of Passover and Israel’s Independence Day, On Her Own is a tense and immersive psychological read about two families looking for redemption, the transformative bonds between strangers, and the unexpected places from which love can grow.

Lihi Lapid is a bestselling Israeli author, photojournalist, columnist, and activist. She lives in Tel Aviv with her husband Yair Lapid, the former Prime Minister of Israel, and their two children. This is her third novel.