Books with author Leda Meredith

Note: if I can give my children nothing else, I would endeavor to make them heirs to hope. From the pen of the author of Concrete Jungle is perhaps his most compassionate and revealing story yet, a novel of overwhelming candor and beauty, where triumph is illuminated through the poetry of tragedy, comedy, bitterness, and hope. In the dying light of the day, the kingdom is forced to realize that life is too short, time is too precious, and the stakes are too high to doubt the crucial caveats that give the last unanswerable word on the poverty of helplessness-a princess forced into a nightmarish journey of despair by the desperation, circumstance and the predatory will of deceitful villains, and by legends conceived in fairytale and flowered in evil. Each character reflects a visual pageantry that speaks through the quiet elegance of an example isolated in the indulgence of possibility. Here is a refreshing story of mythical forests, storybook kingdoms and fascinating lands that stretches the imagination around an unforgettable tale of hope and faith and the audacity to believe in a dream come true.

In the decades following World War II, municipal leaders and ordinary citizens embraced San Francisco’s identity as the “Gateway to the Pacific,” using it to reimagine and rebuild the city. The city became a cosmopolitan center on account of its newfound celebration of its Japanese and other Asian American residents, its economy linked with Asia, and its favorable location for transpacific partnerships. The most conspicuous testament to San Francisco’s postwar transpacific connections is the Japanese Cultural and Trade Center in the city’s redeveloped Japanese-American enclave. Focusing on the development of the Center, Meredith Oda shows how this multilayered story was embedded within a larger story of the changing institutions and ideas that were shaping the city. During these formative decades, Oda argues, San Francisco’s relations with and ideas about Japan were being forged within the intimate, local sites of civic and community life. This shift took many forms, including changes in city leadership, new municipal institutions, and especially transformations in the built environment. Newly friendly relations between Japan and the United States also meant that Japanese Americans found fresh, if highly constrained, job and community prospects just as the city’s African Americans struggled against rising barriers. San Francisco’s story is an inherently local one, but it also a broader story of a city collectively, if not cooperatively, reimagining its place in a global economy.

Fully Staffed begins in 1980 with the story of Spike, aka Mr. Wigs, a beautiful Golden Labrador who melts the hearts of everyone he meets, and breaks the hearts of the ones he leaves behind.As a puppy, he surprises all the vets by surviving a life-threatening disease, and goes on to enjoy a long, happy and healthy life.Several years later we meet Spike, then Jake - both Staffordshire Bull Terriers, but totally different in every way. Spike is the bruiser, while Jake is the social butterfly.This story is about how they came to live with us, their little quirks and the canine capers they got up to along the way. These two wonderful little guys filled our hearts, and our home, with joy and happiness, and completely changed our views about Staffies.Fully Staffed is a heartwarming story filled with tears of laughter and sadness, and sure to be enjoyed by dog lovers everywhere.NOTE: This is the large print edition of Fully Staffed, with a larger font / typeface for easier reading.