"A rediscovered treasure." — Maureen Corrigan, Washington Post From Betty Smith, author of the beloved classic A Tree Grows in Brooklyn, comes a poignant story of love, marriage, poverty, and hope set in 1920s Brooklyn. Tomorrow Will Be Better tells the story of Margy Shannon, a shy but joyfully optimistic young woman just out of school who lives with her parents and witnesses how a lifetime of hard work, poverty, and pain has worn them down. Her mother's resentment toward being a housewife and her father's inability to express his emotions result in a tense home life where Margy has no voice. Unable to speak up against her overbearing mother, Margy takes refuge in her dreams of a better life. Her goals are simple—to find a husband, have children, and live in a nice home—one where her children will never know the terror of want or the need to hide from quarreling parents. When she meets Frankie Malone, she thinks her dreams might be fulfilled, but a devastating loss rattles her to her core and challenges her life-long optimism. As she struggles to come to terms with the unexpected path her life has taken, Margy must decide whether to accept things as they are or move firmly in the direction of what she truly wants. Rich with the flavor of its Brooklyn background, and filled with the joys and heartbreak of family life, Tomorrow Will Be Better is told with a simplicity, tenderness, and warmhearted humor that only Betty Smith could write.

Smith's "A Tree Grows in Brooklyn" captured the imagination of readers in 1943. In the first published biography of Smith, the real-life stories behind the heroes in her novel are told.

From Betty Smith, author of the beloved American classic A Tree Grows in Brooklyn, comes an unsentimental yet radiant and powerfully uplifting tale of young love and marriage. In 1927, in Brooklyn, New York, Carl Brown and Annie McGairy meet and fall in love. Though only eighteen, Annie travels alone halfway across the country to the Midwestern university where Carl is studying law—and there they marry. But Carl and Annie’s first year together is much more difficult than they anticipated as they find themselves in a faraway place with little money and few friends. With hardship and poverty weighing heavily upon them, they come to realize that their greatest sources of strength, loyalty, and love, will help them make it through. A moving and unforgettable story, Joy in the Morning is “a glad affirmation that love can accomplish the impossible.” (Chicago Tribune)

Liz Smith, once called the nation's favourite fictional grandmother, is a familiar face to all TV and cinema viewers. She is most often recognised for her role of Nana in The Royle Family and has appeared in numerous productions over the years. OUR BETTY is Liz's life story - from her cosseted yet lonely childhood with her beloved grandparents (her mother died giving birth to Liz's stillborn sibling), through the war with the WRENS, marriage and children, divorce and poverty, long years working in dead-end jobs such as in a plastic bag factory, until her heavenly escape of evening acting classes provided the chance for a career. While working at Hamley's one Christmas ('I was one of those tiresome people who stop you and beg you to try samples of this and that'), she received a phone call from a young director who wanted to make an improvised film. His name was Mike Leigh and the film Bleak Moments. From that point, when Liz was 50, her career took off and she has worked with some of the most famous names in the entertainment business. OUR BETTY is, like its author, original, amusing and fascinating on the struggles, hopes and successes endemic of a life in front of the camera.

How are you? If your truest first thoughts in pondering this question are something like “I could be better,” this nature-based lifestyle-change book might help. To be healthy, you must take care of all of you because the total you is made up of your entire self, including your body, mind, spirit, soul—your everything. If one part of you is not up to par in some way or another, it’s impossible for your everything else to be totally healthy. You have tried everything your friends, your doctors, and even the advertisement industry recommended for improving your health. But nothing has worked, except to make you a frustrated person. Close your eyes right now and allow your conscious mind to contemplate your health situation. Be honest. You are not the healthiest that you can or should be. In fact, you are in dire straits according to how you feel and what your medical team says about your health. I know all of this about you because I was you so many years ago. Like you, for years I followed the same type of diet herd that you have been following. And like you, after trying everything, I had no clue about what to try next. However, I found a clue. Over forty years, I lived the importance of and learned to replicate nature’s wisdom on nutrition and movement in my unhealthy lifestyle. Her focus was on naturally changing lifestyles, not on temporary quick fixes. And in the process, she provided me with all types of support to do so. I carefully recorded her step-by-step wisdom and provided the details inside. Ditch your next quick-fix cosmetic diet, and put your trust in nature’s simple but trustworthy lifestyle-change wisdom.

""Winner of the North Carolina Society of Historians Award Jane Hicks Gentry lived her entire life in the remote, mountainous northwest corner of North Carolina and was descended from old Appalachian families in which singing and storytelling were part of everyday life. Gentry took this tradition to heart, and her legacy includes ballads, songs, stories, and riddles. Smith provides a full biography of this vibrant woman and the tradition into which she was born, presenting seventy of Gentry's songs and fifteen of the ""Jack"" tales she learned from her grandfather. When Englishman Cecil Sharp.

The book that changed the consciousness of a country—and the world. Landmark, groundbreaking, classic—these adjectives barely describe the earthshaking and long-lasting effects of Betty Friedan's The Feminine Mystique. This is the book that defined "the problem that has no name," that launched the Second Wave of the feminist movement, and has been awakening women and men with its insights into social relations, which still remain fresh, ever since. A national bestseller, with over 1 million copies sold.

Matt finds it easy to believe that his great-uncle will give him a horse; caring for it after it arrives proves to be the greater challenge.

This New York Times bestselling account of books parachuted to soldiers during WWII is a “cultural history that does much to explain modern America” (USA Today). When America entered World War II in 1941, we faced an enemy that had banned and burned 100 million books. Outraged librarians launched a campaign to send free books to American troops, gathering 20 million hardcover donations. Two years later, the War Department and the publishing industry stepped in with an extraordinary program: 120 million specially printed paperbacks designed for troops to carry in their pockets and rucksacks in every theater of war. These small, lightweight Armed Services Editions were beloved by the troops and are still fondly remembered today. Soldiers read them while waiting to land at Normandy, in hellish trenches in the midst of battles in the Pacific, in field hospitals, and on long bombing flights. This pioneering project not only listed soldiers’ spirits, but also helped rescue The Great Gatsby from obscurity and made Betty Smith, author of A Tree Grows in Brooklyn, into a national icon. “A thoroughly engaging, enlightening, and often uplifting account . . . I was enthralled and moved.” — Tim O’Brien, author of The Things They Carried “Whether or not you’re a book lover, you’ll be moved.” — Entertainment Weekly

SHORTLISTED FOR THE CENTER FOR FICTION FIRST NOVEL PRIZE “Taut, almost unbearable suspense . . . This galvanizing historical portrait of courage, determination, and abiding love mesmerizes and shocks.” —Booklist (starred review) “All I had known for certain when I came around the hen house that first evening in July and saw my husband trudging into the yard after lifetimes spent away from us, a borrowed bag in his hand and the shadow of grief on his face, was that he had to be protected at all costs from knowing what had happened in his absence. I did not believe he could survive it.” When Major Gryffth Hockaday is called to the front lines of the Civil War, his new bride is left to care for her husband’s three-hundred-acre farm and infant son. Placidia, a mere teenager herself living far from her family and completely unprepared to run a farm or raise a child, must endure the darkest days of the war on her own. By the time Major Hockaday returns two years later, Placidia is bound for jail, accused of having borne a child in his absence and murdering it. What really transpired in the two years he was away? Inspired by a true incident, this saga conjures the era with uncanny immediacy. Amid the desperation of wartime, Placidia sees the social order of her Southern homeland unravel as her views on race and family are transformed. A love story, a story of racial divide, and a story of the South as it fell in the war, The Second Mrs. Hockaday reveals how that generation--and the next--began to see their world anew.