Books with author Sharon Powers

Build a candy fantasy! Use ordinary store-bought candy and cookies as the raw material for a brand-new kind of crafting, where castles are made with wafer-cookie walls and race cars have Oreos for wheels. Sharon Bowers provides step-by-step instructions for dozens of whimsical and fun projects that will have you seeing candy in a whole new way. From licorice pirates and centipedes made from Life Savers to marshmallow aliens and candy bento boxes, the sweet possibilities are endless.

Ron Powers' hometown is Hannibal, Missouri, home of Mark Twain, and therefore birthplace of our image of boyhood itself. Powers returns to Hannibal to chronicle the horrific story of two killings, both committed by minors, and the trials that followed. Seamlessly weaving the narrative of the events in Hannibal with the national withering of the very concept of childhood, Powers exposes a fragmented adult society where children are left adrift, transforming isolation into violence.From a Pulitzer Prize-winning author, Tom and Huck Don't Live Here Anymore is a powerful, disturbing, and eye-opening dispatch from the homefront that will take its place alongside the works of Antony Lucas, Robert Coles, and Tracy Kidder.

While Mark Twain remains one of our most quintessentially American writers, the actual boyhood experiences that fueled his most enduring literature remained largely unexplored—until now. Twain's early years were a decidedly un-innocent time, marked by deaths of friends and family and his father's bankruptcy. Twain dealt with those personal tragedies through humor and the tall tale. From the time that a ten-year-old Samuel Clemens lit out on his own and boarded his first Mississippi steamer to his first encounter with a traveling "mesmerizer" (which ignited his lifelong penchant for acting and spectacle), from the brooding sense of guilt and fear of eternal damnation inculcated into him at church to the superstitions and stories of witchcraft he learned from the blacks on his farm, Powers unforgettably shows how Mark Twain was shaped by the distinctly American landscape, culture, and people of Hannibal, Missouri. Jay Parini, the celebrated biographer of Robert Frost, called Dangerous Water "a long-needed evocation of the boyhood of the man who invented boyhood for all time. . . . An immensely shrewd and deeply engaging book, a great gift to all of us who love Twain."

From a Pulitzer Prize-winning author, Tom and Huck Don't Live Here Anymore is a powerful, disturbing, and eye-opening dispatch from the homefront that will take its place alongside the works of Antony Lucas, Robert Coles, and Tracy Kidder.Ron Powers' hometown is Hannibal, Missouri, home of Mark Twain, and therefore birthplace of our image of boyhood itself. Powers returns to Hannibal to chronicle the horrific story of two killings, both committed by minors, and the trials that followed. Seamlessly weaving the narrative of the events in Hannibal with the national withering of the very concept of childhood, Powers exposes a fragmented adult society where children are left adrift, transforming isolation into violence."Powers's storytelling style keeps such good control over the pacing, readers will know they're not headed for a disappointment at the ending." - Publishers Weekly

In Mark Twain, Ron Powers consummates years of research with a tour de force on the life of our culture's founding father. He offers Sam Clemens as he lived, breathed, and wrote. With the assistance of the Mark Twain Project at Berkeley, he has drawn on thousands of letters and notebook entries, many only recently discovered.Sam Clemens left his frontier boyhood in Missouri for a life on the Mississippi during the golden age of steamboats. He skirted the western theater of the Civil War before taking off for an uproarious drunken newspaper career in the Nevada of the Wild West. As his fame as a humorist and lecturer spread around the country, he took the East Coast by storm. He wooed and won his lifelong devoted wife, yet quietly pined for the girl who was his first crush. He became the toast of Europe and a celebrity who toured the globe. His comments on everything he saw, many published here for the first time, are priceless.The man that emerges in Powers's brilliant telling is both the magnetic, acerbic, and hilarious Mark Twain of myth and a devoted friend, husband, and father. Mark Twain left us our greatest voice. Samuel Clemens left us one of our most American of lives.

Ron Powers' hometown is Hannibal, Missouri, home of Mark Twain, and therefore birthplace of our image of boyhood itself. Powers returns to Hannibal to chronicle the horrific story of two killings, both committed by minors, and the trials that followed. Seamlessly weaving the narrative of the events in Hannibal with the national withering of the very concept of childhood, Powers exposes a fragmented adult society where children are left adrift, transforming isolation into violence.From a Pulitzer Prize-winning author, Tom and Huck Don't Live Here Anymore is a powerful, disturbing, and eye-opening dispatch from the homefront that will take its place alongside the works of Antony Lucas, Robert Coles, and Tracy Kidder.

Twain was a distinctly American writer. From age ten when he boarded his first Mississippi steamer to his first encounter with a traveling “mesmerizer” (from which Twain gained a penchant for acting and a flair for spectacle); from the brooding sense of guilt and fear of eternal damnation inculcated into him at church to the superstitions and stories of witchcraft he learned from the Blacks on his farm, Twain was shaped by the people of Hannibal, Missouri and by a distinctly American culture.Interwoven between Twain's childhood experiences are various themes of nature expressed in beautifully written passages that evoke scenes like those of the Mississippi River as it flows through Hannibal and of the mysterious, foreboding cave in which Twain used to play.During his childhood, Mark Twain learned to negotiate the “dangerous waters” of experience and turn trials into humorous stories that shaped the American literary tradition.

While Mark Twain remains one of our most quintessentially American writers, the actual boyhood experiences that fueled his most enduring literature remained largely unexplored—until now. Twain's early years were a decidedly un-innocent time, marked by deaths of friends and family and his father's bankruptcy. Twain dealt with those personal tragedies through humor and the tall tale. From the time that a ten-year-old Samuel Clemens lit out on his own and boarded his first Mississippi steamer to his first encounter with a traveling "mesmerizer" (which ignited his lifelong penchant for acting and spectacle), from the brooding sense of guilt and fear of eternal damnation inculcated into him at church to the superstitions and stories of witchcraft he learned from the blacks on his farm, Powers unforgettably shows how Mark Twain was shaped by the distinctly American landscape, culture, and people of Hannibal, Missouri. Jay Parini, the celebrated biographer of Robert Frost, called Dangerous Water "a long-needed evocation of the boyhood of the man who invented boyhood for all time. . . . An immensely shrewd and deeply engaging book, a great gift to all of us who love Twain."