Orphan Train: A Novel (Unabridged)

More by Christina Baker Kline

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  Orphan Train: A Novel (Unabridged)

  Christina Baker Kline Orphan Train is a gripping story of friendship and second chances from Christina Baker Kline, author of Bird in Hand and The Way Life Should Be.
  
  Penobscot Indian Molly Ayer is close to "aging out" out of the foster care system. A community-service position helping an elderly woman clean out her home is the only thing keeping Molly out of juvie and worse....
  
  As she helps Vivian sort through her possessions and memories, Molly learns that she and Vivian aren’t as different as they seem to be. A young Irish immigrant orphaned in New York City, Vivian was put on a train to the Midwest with hundreds of other children whose destinies would be determined by luck and chance. Molly discovers that she has the power to help Vivian find answers to mysteries that have haunted her for her entire life - answers that will ultimately free them both.
  
  Rich in detail and epic in scope, Orphan Train is a powerful novel of upheaval and resilience, of unexpected friendship, and of the secrets we carry that keep us from finding out who we are.

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  A Piece of the World: A Novel (Unabridged)

  Christina Baker Kline From the New York Times best-selling author of the smash best seller Orphan Train, a stunning and atmospheric novel of friendship, passion, and art, inspired by Andrew Wyeth's mysterious and iconic painting Christina's World.
  
  "Later he told me that he'd been afraid to show me the painting. He thought I wouldn't like the way he portrayed me: dragging myself across the field, fingers clutching dirt, my legs twisted behind. The arid moonscape of wheatgrass and timothy. That dilapidated house in the distance, looming up like a secret that won't stay hidden."
  
  To Christina Olson, the entire world was her family's remote farm in the small coastal town of Cushing, Maine. Born in the home her family had lived in for generations, and increasingly incapacitated by illness, Christina seemed destined for a small life. Instead, for more than 20 years, she was host to and inspiration for the artist Andrew Wyeth and became the subject of one of the best known American paintings of the 20th century.
  
  As she did in her beloved smash best seller Orphan Train, Christina Baker Kline interweaves fact and fiction in a powerful novel that illuminates a little-known part of America's history. Bringing into focus the flesh-and-blood woman behind the portrait, she vividly imagines the life of a woman with a complicated relationship to her family and her past and a special bond with one of our greatest modern artists.
  
  Told in evocative and lucid prose, A Piece of the World is a story about the burdens and blessings of family history and how artist and muse can come together to forge a new and timeless legacy.

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  The Way Life Should Be: A Novel (Unabridged)

  Christina Baker Kline From the number-one New York Times best-selling author of Orphan Train comes a novel of love, risk, and self-discovery.
  
  Angela can feel the clock ticking. She is single in New York City, stuck in a job she doesn't want and a life that seems to have somehow just happened. She inherited a flair for Italian cooking from her grandmother, but she never seems to have the time for it - these days her oven holds only sweaters. Tacked to her office bulletin board is a photo from a magazine of a tidy cottage on the coast of Maine - a charming reminder of a life that could be hers if she could only muster the courage to go after it.
  
  On a hope and a chance, Angela decides to pack it all up and move to Maine, finding the nudge she needs in the dating profile of a handsome sailor who loves dogs and Italian food. But her new home isn't quite matching up with the fantasy. Far from everything familiar, Angela begins to rebuild her life from the ground up. Working at a local coffeehouse, she begins to discover the pleasures and secrets of her new small-town community and, in the process, realizes there’s really no such thing as the way life should be.

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  Bird in Hand (Unabridged)

  Christina Baker Kline It was an accident. It was dark, it was raining, Alison had only had two drinks. And the other car ran the stop sign. But Alison finds herself trapped under the crushing weight of grief and guilt, feeling increasingly estranged from her husband, Charlie, who has his own burdens.
  He's in a job he doesn't love so that Alison can stay at home with the kids (and why isn't she more grateful for that?); he has a house in the suburbs and a long commute to and from the city. And the only thing he can focus on these days is his secret, sudden affair with Claire, Alison's best friend.
  
  Bold where Alison is reserved, vibrant where Alison is cautious, Claire has just had her first novel published, a thinly veiled retelling of her childhood in North Carolina. But even in the whirlwind of publication, Claire can't stop wondering if she should leave her husband Ben, an ambitious architect who is brilliant, kind, and meticulous. And who wants nothing more than a baby, or two - exactly the kind of life that Charlie and Alison seem to have.
  
  In each of her novels, Christina Baker Kline has explored how people tell the stories of their lives and what those stories reveal about who they are. As they set out on their individual journeys, Alison, Charlie, Claire, and Ben explore the idea - each in his or her own way - that every moment of loss contains within it the possibility of a new life. Alternating through these four intertwined perspectives, Bird in Hand is a searing novel about friendship, love, marriage, loss, and the choices we make that irrevocably alter everything we believe to be true.

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  Sweet Water: A Novel (Unabridged)

  Christina Baker Kline From the number-one New York Times best-selling author of Orphan Train comes a novel about buried secrets and the redemptive power of forgiveness.
  
  Cassie Simon is a struggling artist living in New York City. When she receives a call from a magistrate telling her she has inherited 60 acres of land in Sweetwater, Tennessee, from her grandfather, whom she never knew, she takes it as a sign: it's time for a change. She moves to the small Southern town where her mother, Ellen, grew up - and where she died tragically when Cassie was three.
  
  From the moment she arrives in Sweetwater, Cassie is overwhelmed by the indelible mark her mother's memory left behind. As she delves into the thicket of mystery that surrounds her mother's death, Cassie begins to discover the desperate measures of which the human heart is capable.

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  Orphan Train Girl: The Young Readers' Edition of Orphan Train (Unabridged)

  Christina Baker Kline & Sarah Thompson This young listeners' edition of Christina Baker Kline's New York Times best-selling novel Orphan Train follows a young foster girl who forms an unlikely bond with a 91-year-old woman. Adapted and condensed for a young audience, Orphan Train Girl includes an author's note.
  
  Molly Ayer has been in foster care since she was eight years old. Most of the time, Molly knows it's her attitude that's the problem, but after being shipped from one family to another, she's had her fair share of adults treating her like an inconvenience. So when Molly's forced to help an elderly woman clean out her attic for community service, Molly is wary. Just another adult to treat her like a troublemaker.
  
  But from the very moment they meet, Molly realizes that Vivian, a well-off 91-year-old, isn't like any of the adults she's encountered before. Vivian asks Molly questions about her life and actually listens when Molly responds. Molly soon sees they have more in common than she thought. Vivian was once an orphan, too - an Irish immigrant to New York City who was put on a train to the Midwest with hundreds of other children - and she can understand, better than anyone else, the emotional binds that have been making Molly's life so hard. Together, they not only clear boxes of past mementos from Vivian's attic, but forge a path of friendship, forgiveness, and new beginnings for their future.

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  Desire Lines: A Novel (Unabridged)

  Christina Baker Kline From the number-one New York Times best-selling author of Orphan Train comes a novel about friendship and the memories that haunt us.
  
  On the night of her high school graduation, Kathryn Campbell sits around a bonfire with her four closest friends, including the beautiful but erratic Jennifer. "I'll be fine," Jennifer says as she walks away from the dying embers and toward the darkness of the woods. She never comes back.
  
  Ten years later Kathryn has tried to build a life for herself, with a marriage and a career as a journalist, but she still feels the conspicuous void of Jennifer's disappearance. When her divorce sends her reeling back to the Maine town where she grew up, she finds herself plunged into a sea of memories. With nothing left to lose, she is determined to answer one simple question: What happened to Jennifer Pelletier?

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  Der Zug der Waisen

  Christina Baker Kline Ein vergessenes Kapitel amerikanischer Geschichte, gelebt durch zwei starke Frauen:
  
  New York, 1929: Mit neun Jahren verliert Vivian Daly, Tochter irischer Einwanderer, bei einem Wohnungsbrand ihre gesamte Familie. Gemeinsam mit anderen Waisenkindern wird sie kurzerhand in einen Zug verfrachtet und in den Mittleren Westen geschickt, wo die Kinder auf dem Land ein neues Zuhause finden sollen. Doch nur die wenigsten erwartet ein liebevolles Heim. Stattdessen müssen sie als billige Landarbeiter, Haushaltshilfen oder Näherinnen harte Knochenarbeit leisten.
  
  Auch Vivian stehen schwere Bewährungsproben bevor, bis es ihr nach entbehrungsreichen Jahren endlich gelingt, einen Ort der Geborgenheit zu finden und ihrem Leben eine neue Richtung zu geben. Aber erst Jahrzehnte später vermag sie, durch die überraschende Freundschaft zu einem rebellischen jungen Mädchen, das wie sie seine Eltern verloren hat, das Schweigen zu brechen und wahren Frieden zu finden.