Helen Plum Library

An old man reminisces about his first love, a young runaway who taught him more about life than anyone had before or since

“An extraordinary debut, a deeply lovely novel that evokes with uncommon deftness the terrible, heartbreaking beauty that is life in wartime. Like the glorious ghosts of the paintings in the Hermitage that lie at the heart of the story, Dean’s exquisite prose shimmers with a haunting glow, illuminating us to the notion that art itself is perhaps our most necessary nourishment. A superbly graceful novel.”  — Chang-Rae

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This new deluxe eBook edition of Snow Flower and the Secret Fan features more than fifty additional pages of exclusive, author-approved annotations throughout the text to enrich your reading experience. You can access the eBook annotations with a simple click or tap on your eReader via the convenient links. Access them as you read the novel or as supplemental material after finishing the entire story. There is also Random House Reader’s...

The stories of four Chinese women and their American-born daughters are unraveled through a series of vignettes that reveal the lives of the four older women and the tragedies they endured before coming to America. The memories of the past are then linked to the present day to illuminate the sometimes difficult relationships between the mothers and daughters

An old man lies dying. Propped up in his living room and surrounded by his children and grandchildren, George Washington Crosby drifts in and out of consciousness, back to the wonder and pain of his impoverished childhood in Maine. As the clock repairer's time winds down, his memories intertwine with those of his father, an epileptic, itinerant peddler and his grandfather, a Methodist preacher beset by madness. At once heartbreaking and life affirming,...

Approaching what she believes will be the most interesting period of her life, nearly sixty-year-old curmudgeon Marie Sharp eschews the trend-oriented activities of her peers in order to enjoy her relationship with a new grandchild and a new gentleman friend

"In the black-owned-and-operated Kirkwood Hospital, Joseph 'Ziggy' Johnson reflects on his life. From the Great Depression through the post-World War II years, Ziggy had been the pulse of Detroit's famous Black Bottom. A celebrated gossip columnist for the city's African-American newspaper, the Michigan Chronicle, he was also the emcee of one of the hottest night clubs, where he rubbed elbows with the legendary black artists of the era. In his hospital...

If you had to pick five people to sum up your life, who would they be? If you were to raise a glass to each of them, what would you say? And what would you learn about yourself, when all is said? At the bar of a grand hotel in a small Irish town sits 84-year-old Maurice Hannigan. He's alone, as usual, though tonight is anything but. Pull up a stool and charge your glass, because Maurice is finally ready to tell his story. Over the course of this evening,...