Showing results for "Marilyn" in Literature & Fiction

Jeff Lyons can’t stand Ellen de Luca, the fat girl in his ceramics class. She’s huge, clumsy, can’t throw a pot to save her life, and stares at Jeff all the time. But he’s a "nice guy" and feels terrible when Ellen overhears his hurtful remarks about her. The "crumbs of kindness" he tosses her way soon turn into advice on weight loss, college, clothes, hair...and, to everyone’s surprise, good-looking Jeff actually dumps his pretty girlfriend to be with the fat girl. But as her pounds melt away, Jeff resents the happy, independent young woman he has unleashed.

Augusta Savage was arguably the most influential American artist of the 1930s. A gifted sculptor, Savage was commissioned to create a portrait bust of W.E.B. Du Bois for the New York Public Library. She flourished during the Harlem Renaissance, and became a teacher to an entire generation of African American artists, including Jacob Lawrence, and would go on to be nationally recognized as one of the featured artists at the 1939 World’s Fair. She was the first-ever recorded Black gallerist, and worked to advance equal rights in the arts. And yet popular history has forgotten her name.

Bobbie Jo didn't set out to buy a limping blue roan mare—she wanted a colt she could train to barrel race. But the horse is a fighter, just like Bobbie Jo. Now all she has to do is train the sour old mare that obviously has a past. While she nurses the horse back to health, Bobbie Jo realizes that the horse, now called Blue Moon, may have more history than she first thought. With the help of the enigmatic Cole, she slowly turns the horse into a barrel racer.

Award-winning Great Plains writer Marilyn Coffey recounts her family’s intricate dance with the Teamsters, beginning with her dad’s tiny trucking company spawned on a front porch in 1929, in a David-and-Goliath encounter that spanned decades. In 1956, Tom Coffey knuckled under Jimmy Hoffa’s six-month-long Teamsters strike. He sold his 27-year-old truckline, Coffey’s Transfer Company, rather than sign Hoffa’s contract.