Books with author Elizabeth Wiley

Michelle has a great idea! She's going to put on a show and sell tickets to raise money for a local charity. All of her friends are ready to help out, and Michelle is geared up to write the show, direct it -- and star in it.But Stephanie has another idea. Her friend Peace just appeared on TV. The girl is a real star! If Stephanie can get her to be in the show, it will be tremendous!There's just one problem. When Peace agrees to perform, Stephanie takes over. She changes all Michelle's plans -- and makes Peace the star of the show. Can two sisters learn to live together? Or will the show not go on?

“Fat girls have fewer choices in life. This is painful but true. You’ll never be the center of attention; never the belle of the ball. No one gives fat girls the benefit of the doubt. Skinny, pretty girls get the best of everything. We get whatever’s left.” So warns the mother of Wilma “Sunnie” Sundstrom, a bright, precious, overweight 13-year-old whose lifelong dream is to meet her idol Johnny Carson, and appear as a guest on The Tonight Show. The year is 1978, and Sunnie a straight-A student and aspiring filmmaker deals with constant teasing from her eighth-grade classmates by dreaming of Hollywood accolades and writing a screenplay, “Girl on the Lam,” which she is certain will star teen sensations Kristy McNichol and Robby Benson. Sunnie lives in suburban Milwaukee with her banker father, her stay-at-home mother, her sullen older sister, Ingrid, and her brilliant younger brother, Max. Sunnie’s closest friend and confidante is Grannie Lassen who encourages Sunnie’s show-biz dreams. Grannie’s own tap-dancing ambitions were cut short by the untimely death of Grannie’s younger sister, Wilma. A devastating loss plunges Sunnie into despair and her family packs her off to an all-girls summer “fat-camp” in Northern Minnesota, where her days revolve around skimpy meals, calisthenics, and humiliating daily public weigh-ins on the camp’s livestock scale. Love enters Sunnie’s life in the form of a dashing boy from the Pentecostal Bible camp across the lake. When his late night canoe visits suddenly and mysteriously cease, Sunnie and her friend Cherise take matters into their own hands, with nearly tragic results. Rather than return home in shame, Sunnie takes a desperate leap of faith and embarks on a cross-country journey. Challenged more deeply than she ever expected, she discovers the unorthodox ways that dreams really can come true.

"Think of the sky!" Delia gave Momma's hands a shake. "Think of the sky in Ethiopia! What will it be like to fly in Africa?"This New York Times bestseller is a story of survival, subterfuge, espionage and identity.Rhoda and Delia are American stunt pilots who perform daring aerobatics to appreciative audiences. But while the sight of two girls wingwalking – one white, one black – is a welcome novelty in some parts of the USA, it’s an anathema in others. Rhoda and Delia dream of living in a world where neither gender nor ethnicity determines their life. When Delia is killed in a tragic accident, Rhoda is determined to make that dream come true. She moves to Ethiopia with her daughter, Em, and Delia’s son, Teo.Em and Teo have adapted to scratching a living in a strange land, and feel at home here; but their parents’ legacy of flight and the ability to pilot a plane places them in an elite circle of people watched carefully by the Ethiopian emperor, Haile Selassie, who dreams of creating an air force for his fledgling nation. As Italy prepares for its invasion of Ethiopia, Em and Teo find themselves inextricably entangled in the crisis — and they are called on to help.Elizabeth Wein is a leading voice in young adult historical fiction. Her novel Rose Under Fire was nominated for the Carnegie Medal and shortlisted for the Costa Award 2014.Fans of The Book Thief and Carmen Reid's Cross My Heart will love this.Look out for Elizabeth's other books Code Name Verity and Rose Under Fire.Elizabeth Wein was born in New York, and grew up in England, Jamaica and Pennsylvania. She is married with two children and now lives in Perth, Scotland.Elizabeth is a member of the Ninety-Nines, the International Organization of Women Pilots. She was awarded the Scottish Aero Club's Watson Cup for best student pilot in 2003 and it was her love of flying that partly inspired the idea for her bestselling, award-winning novel Code Name Verity.

Pity the lady's maid who found the body -- poor Emily, wife of the Marquis of Polbrook, had been strangled in the night. The last thing Emily's brother-in-law, Lord Francis Fanshawe, expects to find so soon after the crime is an adept investigator already settled comfortably in the Polbrook family circle. Ottilia Draycott, the Dowager Lady Polbrook's young new companion, is intelligent, resourceful, and observant -- and the family's only hope.

With unprecedented access to newly discovered sources, Donna M. Lucey illuminates the lives of four extraordinary women painted by the iconic high-society portraitist John Singer Sargent. With uncanny clairvoyance, Sargent's portraits hint at the mysteries, passions, and tragedies that unfolded in his subjects' lives. Sequestered in a fantasy-land castle in the remote Rocky Mountains, Elsie Palmer carried on a labyrinthine love life; Elizabeth Chanler stepped into a maze of infidelity with her best friend's husband; as the veiled image of Sally Fairchild?beautiful, commanding, and poison-tongued?emerged on Sargent's canvas, the power of his artistry lured her sister Lucia into an ill-fated life in art; shrewd, iron-willed Isabella Stewart Gardner collected both art and young men. Born to unimaginable wealth, these women lived on an operatic scale, and their letters and diaries create a rich depiction of the Gilded Age and the acclaimed but secretive painter whose canvases defined the era.