For fans of Anne Lamott, a profoundly moving memoir of rediscovering, reinventing, and reconnecting, as an estranged mother and daughter come together to revive a long-abandoned garden and ultimately their relationship and themselves. Peeling paint, stained floors, vined-over windows, a neglected and wild garden—Tara Austen Weaver can’t get the Seattle real estate listing out of her head. Any sane person would have seen the abandoned property for what it was: a ramshackle half-acre filled with dead grass, blackberry vines, and trouble. But Tara sees potential and promise—not only for the edible bounty the garden could yield for her family, but for the personal renewal she and her mother might reap along the way. So begins Orchard House, a story of rehabilitation and cultivation—of land and soul. Through bleak winters, springs that sputter with rain and cold, golden days of summer, and autumns full of apples, pears, and pumpkins, this evocative memoir recounts the Weavers’ trials and triumphs, detailing what grew and what didn’t, the obstacles overcome and the lessons learned. Inexorably, as mother and daughter tend this wild patch and the fruits of their labor begin to flourish, green shoots of hope emerge from the darkness of their past. For everyone who has ever planted something that they wished would survive—or tried to mend something that seemed forever broken—Orchard House is a tale of healing and growth set in a most unlikely place. Praise for Orchard House “This touching memoir chronicles how the act of transforming a garden together—of ‘planting hope’—helps a mother and daughter reconnect and revive the sense of groundedness that had been lost within their relationship and themselves. . . . [Orchard House] deftly [captures] the love, laughter, trials and tears that make motherhood the joy and job it truly is.”—American Way “Honest and moving . . . [the story of] one woman’s initiation into intensive gardening with her mother, which changed a neglected space into something beautiful and bountiful and shifted their relationship as well.”—Kirkus Reviews “Fascinating, tender, often heartbreaking . . . The perfect gift for a mother or a daughter with an appreciation for the transformative power of gardening.”—HGTV Gardens “A wise exploration of family roots . . . Nurturing a garden is a lovely metaphor for healing a family. . . . [Orchard House] could serve as a handbook for both.”—Shelf Awareness “With buoyant grace and empathic insights, Weaver offers an ardent tribute to both the science of perseverance and the art of letting go.”—Booklist “This is a glorious book—lyrical, honest, compassionate, and wise. It reminds us that gardens and families are messy businesses, but from them we can harvest hope and food and moments of grace.”—Erica Bauermeister, author of The School of Essential Ingredients “Filled with sensuous descriptions, this beguiling story enchants. Gardeners and non-gardeners alike will delight in this lyrical tale of how a garden grows a family.”—Diana Abu-Jaber, author of The Language of Baklava and Birds of Paradise “Orchard House is a glorious and deeply moving story of one family’s redemption. If Anne Lamott and Wendell Berry ever had a literary love child, Tara Austen Weaver might well be her.”—Elissa Altman, author of Poor Man’s Feast

I trace my ancestry back to the Mayflower, writes Andrew S. Dolkart. Not to the legendary ship that brought the Pilgrims to Plymouth, Massachusetts, in 1620, but to the more prosaic tenement on the southeast corner of East Broadway and Clinton Street named the Mayflower, where my father was born in 1914 to Russian-Jewish immigrants. For Dolkart, the experience of being raised in a tenement became a metaphor for the life that was afforded countless thousands of other immigrant children growing up in Lower Manhattan during the past century and more. Dolkart presents for us a precise and informative biography of a typical tenement house in New York City that became, in 1988, the site for the Lower East Side Tenement Museum. Dolkart documents, analyzes, and interprets the architectural and social history of this building at 97 Orchard Street, starting in the 1860s when it was erected, moving on to the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries when the neighborhood started to change, and concluding in the present day as the building is reincarnated as the museum. children, who were part of the transformation of New York City and the fabric of everyday American urban life.

A NATIONAL JEWISH BOOK AWARD FINALIST A Recommended Book From: The New York Times * Good Morning America * Entertainment Weekly * Electric Literature * The New York Post * Alma * The Millions * Book Riot A commanding debut and a poignant coming-of-age story about a devout Jewish high school student whose plunge into the secularized world threatens everything he knows of himself Ari Eden’s life has always been governed by strict rules. In ultra-Orthodox Brooklyn, his days are dedicated to intense study and religious rituals, and adolescence feels profoundly lonely. So when his family announces that they are moving to a glitzy Miami suburb, Ari seizes his unexpected chance for reinvention. Enrolling in an opulent Jewish academy, Ari is stunned by his peers’ dizzying wealth, ambition, and shameless pursuit of life’s pleasures. When the academy’s golden boy, Noah, takes Ari under his wing, Ari finds himself entangled in the school’s most exclusive and wayward group. These friends are magnetic and defiant—especially Evan, the brooding genius of the bunch, still living in the shadow of his mother’s death. Influenced by their charismatic rabbi, the group begins testing their religion in unconventional ways. Soon Ari and his friends are pushing moral boundaries and careening toward a perilous future—one in which the traditions of their faith are repurposed to mysterious, tragic ends. Mesmerizing and playful, heartrending and darkly romantic, The Orchard probes the conflicting forces that determine who we become: the heady relationships of youth, the allure of greatness, the doctrines we inherit, and our concealed desires.

Yochi Brandes is one of the top authors in Israel. The Orchard, her eighth book, is considered the most daring and ambitious of her novels. Critics went so far as to call it a cultural phenomenon after it eclipsed the Fifty Shades of Grey trilogy on the Israeli bestseller lists. The novel depicts the beginnings of modern Judaism and Christianity (in the first and second centuries) and the historical circumstances and tumultuous disputes that accompanied their births. The heroes of that generation (such as Rabbi Eliezer, Rabbi Ishmael, Rabban Gamaliel, Paul of Tarsus, and many others) become flesh and blood in this stunning interweaving of biblical and Talmudic lore into a page-turning read. At the heart of the book is Rabbi Akiva and his complicated relationship with his wife, Rachel, who met him when he was a forty-year-old illiterate shepherd, married him against her fathers wishes, and compelled him to study the Torah until he became the nation of Israels greatest sage. His novel method of interpreting Scripture provides his people with a life-giving elixir, but also gives them a lethal injectionthe Bar Kokhba Revolt (the second rebellion against the Romans), which brought a terrible holocaust upon the nation of Israel that nearly caused its end. The Orchard offers a brilliant narrative solution to the riddle of the Bar Kokhba Revolt by tying the rebellion to one of the most fascinating stories in the Jewish tradition, the story of four sages who entered a metaphysical orchard: one died, one lost his mind, one became a hater of God, and one, Rabbi Akiva, made it out unscathed. Or did he?

Wonderlands of bounty and beauty, orchards offer an abundance of fruit in a wildlife haven full of diversity. A well-managed orchard works with nature to provide maximum harvest for minimal effort. Wade Muggleton has distilled 20 years of orchard know-how into this practical handbook to help you plan, plant and manage your orchard, whatever your garden size or budget. With his expert guidance you can have an orchard on any plot--garden, yard, allotment or smallholding--and both maximise your harvest and minimise your outlay. The book covers: Rootstocks and fruit varieties Planting plans Maintenance strategies Pruning Propagation Eco-friendly pest and disease management Harvesting Storing Preserving the harvest The diversity, history and heritage of apples and other fruit trees is fascinating, and Wade's passion for them is infectious. Let him draw you into a world of apples and pears, walnuts and cobnuts, cherries and plums; of ancient varieties such as quince, medlar and mulberry; and even of juicy apricots, figs and peaches. Imagine having organic fruit all year round from your own little nature haven and use Wade's tried and tested experience to create your perfect orchard.