Meinders Community Library Pipestone

I am convinced that at birth the cake is already baked. Nurture is the nuts or frosting, but if you’re a spice cake, you’re a spice cake, and nothing is going to change you into an angel food.
Tall, slender Violet Mathers is growing up in the Great Depression, which could just as well define her state of mind. Abandoned by her mother as a child, mistreated by her father, and teased by her schoolmates (“Hey, Olive Oyl, where’s...

Iris Cooper has been singing ever since she can remember, hitting the high notes like no one else. When she is twelve, her father convinces the owner of a bar in Lake City, Texas, to let her perform, and she stuns the audience. In the ensuing years, never staying anywhere for long, father and daughter move from one dusty town to the next, her passion for music growing every time she takes the mike in another roadhouse. But it is not an easy life for...

The time is 1946 until the present. The town is Elmwood Springs, Missouri, right in the middle of the country, in the midst of the mostly joyous transition from war to peace, aiming toward a dizzingly bright future. Once again, Fannie Flagg gives us a story of richly human characters, the saving graces of the once-maligned middle classes and small-town life, and the daily contest between laughter and tears.

"I was never supposed to be a rock star. I had all my life planned out for me. Play football in college. Go to the NFL. Marry my high school sweetheart and live happily ever after. I broke both our hearts that day I told her I was leaving. I was young. I made the right decision for me, but the wrong decision for us. I've poured my soul into music, but I've never forgotten her. Her smell, her smile. and now I'm going back. After ten years. I hope I...

"There are millions of stories in the city--some magical, some tragic, others terror-filled or triumphant. Jonah Kirk's story is all of those things as he draws readers into his life in the city as a young boy, introducing his indomitable grandfather, also a "piano man;" his single mother, a struggling singer; and the heroes, villains, and everyday saints and sinners who make up the fabric of the metropolis in which they live--and who will change...

"From the #1 New York Times bestselling author of The Wish comes a poignant love story about risking everything for a dream-and whether it's possible to leave the past behind. Colby Mills once felt destined for a musical career, until tragedy grounded his aspirations. Now the head of a small family farm in North Carolina, he spontaneously takes a gig playing at a bar in St. Pete's Beach, Florida, seeking a rare break from his duties at home. But when...

A cultural portrait of the Pulitzer Prize-winning rap superstar documents his coming-of-age as an artist, his genius as a lyricist, and his profound impact on today's racially fraught America. Moore provides a definitive account of Lamar's coming-of-age as an artist, his resurrection of jazz, his profound impact on a racially fraught America, and his emergence as the bona fide King of Rap. Through his confessional poetics, his politically charged...

On the day of an important music competition, talented but painfully introverted and nervous Deirdre Monaghan is helped to perform by the compelling and enigmatic Luke Dillon and finds herself inexorably drawn into the mysteries and dangers of the faerie world.

A candid assessment of the iconic musician's personal and professional life by his first wife traces their long-distance courtship, marriage, and creative partnership as well as the challenges that compromised their romance.