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The Coven
by Graham Masterton
They say the girls were witches. But Beatrice Scarlet, the apothecary's daughter, is sure they were innocent victims...
London, 1758. Beatrice Scarlet, the apothecary's daughter, has found a position at St. Mary Magdalene's Refuge for fallen women. She enjoys the work and soon forms a close bond with her charges. The refuge is supported by a wealthy tobacco merchant, who regularly offers the girls steady work to aid their rehabilitation. But when seven girls sent to his factory disappear, Beatrice is uneasy. Their would-be benefactor claims they were a coven of witches, beholden only to Satan and his demonic misdeeds. But Beatrice is convinced something much darker than witchcraft is at play...
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The Dark Lake : A Novel
by Sarah Bailey
A beautiful young teacher has been murdered, her body found in the lake, strewn with red roses. Local policewoman Detective Sergeant Gemma Woodstock pushes to be assigned to the case, concealing the fact that she knew the murdered woman in high school years before.
But that's not all Gemma's trying to hide. As the investigation digs deeper into the victim's past, other secrets threaten to come to light, secrets that were supposed to remain buried. The lake holds the key to solving the murder, but it also has the power to drag Gemma down into its dark depths.
An addictive crime thriller, a mesmerising account of one woman's descent into deceit and madness, and a brilliantly rendered stunning debut, The Dark Lake has characters as compelling and mysteries as layered as the best thrillers from Gillian Flynn and Sophie Hannah.
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The First Day: A Novel
by Phil Harrison
Outside an east Belfast mission hall, pastor and family man Samuel Orr meets Anna, a young Beckett scholar. They embark on an intense, passionate affair, their connection fueled by their respective love of Christ and Beckett. When Anna falls pregnant the affair is revealed. The repercussions are slow to emerge but inescapable, and the fallout when it finally comes is shocking, cruel, and violent.
Thirty years later Sam, their son, is in New York, living a steady, guarded life, his childhood and family safely abandoned. But the sins of the fathers are visited often on their children, and the past crashes into his life as violently as in his youth. He is forced to confront the fears he has kept close all these years.
The First Day is the story of an affair and its consequences—on family and on faith. It is an intense, questioning novel of the search to understand our origins and to free ourselves from the burdens of our early years. It's a stunning debut, meditative and compelling, incantatory, at times devastating and always mesmerizing.
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The Last Mrs. Parrish : A Novel
by Liv Constantine
Amber Patterson is fed up. She’s tired of being a nobody: a plain, invisible woman who blends into the background. She deserves more—a life of money and power like the one blond-haired, blue-eyed goddess Daphne Parrish takes for granted.
To everyone in the exclusive town of Bishops Harbor, Connecticut, Daphne—a socialite and philanthropist—and her real-estate mogul husband, Jackson, are a fairy-tale couple. Amber’s envy could eat her alive . . . if she didn't have a plan. Amber uses Daphne’s compassion and caring to insinuate herself into the family’s life—the first step in a meticulous scheme to undermine her. Before long, Amber is Daphne’s closest confidante, traveling to Europe with the Parrishes and their lovely young daughters, and growing closer to Jackson. But a skeleton from her past may undermine everything that Amber has worked towards and smash her well-laid plan to pieces.
With shocking turns and dark secrets that will keep you guessing until the very end, The Last Mrs. Parrish is a fresh, juicy, and utterly addictive thriller from a diabolically imaginative talent.
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Smile : A Novel
by Roddy Doyle
Just moved into a new apartment, alone for the first time in years, Victor Forde goes every evening to Donnelly’s for a pint, a slow one. One evening his drink is interrupted. A man in shorts and a pink shirt comes over and sits down. He seems to know Victor’s name and to remember him from secondary school. His name is Fitzpatrick.
Victor dislikes him on sight, dislikes, too, the memories that Fitzpatrick stirs up of five years being taught by the Christian Brothers. He prompts other memories—of Rachel, his beautiful wife who became a celebrity, and of Victor’s own small claim to fame, as the man who would say the unsayable on the radio. But it’s the memories of school, and of one particular brother, that threaten to destroy Victor's sanity.
With razor-sharp dialogue, humor, and its superb evocation of adolescence, Smile is a bold, haunting novel about the uncertainty of memory and how we contend with the past.
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Start Without Me : A Novel
by Joshua Max Feldman
Adam, former musician and recovering alcoholic, is home for Thanksgiving for the first time in years. Surrounded by his parents and siblings, nieces and nephews—all who have seen him at his worst—he just can’t shake the feeling that no matter how hard he tries, he’ll always be the one who can’t get it right.
Marissa is a flight attendant whose marriage is strained by simmering tensions over race, class, and ambition. Heading to her in-laws for their picture-perfect holiday family dinner, her anxiety is intensified by the knowledge she's pregnant from an impulsive one-night-stand.
In an airport restaurant on Thanksgiving morning, Adam and Marissa meet. Over the course of this day fraught with emotion and expectation, they form an unlikely bond as they reckon with their family ties, their pasts, and the choices that will determine their futures.
Focused on one of the last bastions of classical American idealism, the Thanksgiving family gathering, Start Without Me explores our struggles to know—and to be—our best selves. Hilarious and heartrending, Start Without Me is a thoughtful and entertaining page-turner that will leave its indelible mark on your heart.
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The Art of Stopping Time : Practical Mindfulness For Busy People
by Pedram Shojai
We’re all struggling to find time in our lives, but somehow there’s never enough to go around. We’re too tired to think, too wired to focus, less efficient than we want to be, and guilty about not getting enough time with our loved ones.
We all know that we feel starved for time, but what are we actually doing about it? Precious little. In The Art of Stopping Time, New York Times bestselling author Pedram Shojai guides us towards success with what he calls Time Prosperity—having the time to accomplish what you want in life without feeling compressed, stressed, overburdened, or hurried.
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France is a Feast : The Photographic Journey of Paul and Julia Child
by Alex Prud'homme
Through intimate and compelling photographs taken by her husband Paul Child, a gifted photographer, France is a Feast documents Julia Child's discovery of French cooking and the French way of life.
In 1948, as cultural attaché for the US Information Service in Paris, Paul met Henri Cartier-Bresson, Robert Capa, Brassai, and other leading lights of the photography world. As they traveled through Paris and the French countryside, Paul's evocative photographs and Julia's culinary explorations led to the classic Mastering the Art of French Cooking and Julia’s brilliant and celebrated career in books and on television.
Though Paul was an accomplished photographer (his work is in the collection of the Museum of Modern Art), his photographs remained out of the public eye until the publication of Julia’s memoir, My Life in France, in which several of his images were included. Now, with more than 200 of Paul’s photographs and personal stories recounted by his great-nephew Alex Prud’homme, France is a Feast not only captures this magical period in Paul and Julia’s lives, but also celebrates Paul Child’s own remarkable photographic achievements.
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Rossen to the Rescue : Secrets to Avoiding Scams, Everyday Dangers, and Major Catastrophes
by Jeff Rossen
Do you know where to take shelter in an earthquake? How to bust a lying car mechanic? Save money at the store? You’ll know now.
Every morning, millions of Americans watch Jeff Rossen explain how to solve our most harrowing problems, such as: how to put out a kitchen fire, find bedbugs, avoid rip-offs, and even how to survive a plane crash.
In Rossen to the Rescue, he includes daring experiments, expert advice, and game plans for handling all the wild cards in life—big and small—while sharing personal, and sometimes embarrassing, anecdotes that he couldn’t tell on television. Overflowing with never-before-seen tips and tricks, this book is filled with enough hacks to keep you and your family safe…and it just might save your life.
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A Secret Sisterhood : The Literary Friendships of Jane Austen, Charlotte Bront, George Eliot, and Virginia Woolf
by Emily Midorikawa
Male literary friendships are the stuff of legend; think Byron and Shelley, Fitzgerald and Hemingway. But the world’s best-loved female authors are usually mythologized as solitary eccentrics or isolated geniuses. Coauthors and real-life friends Emily Midorikawa and Emma Claire Sweeney prove this wrong, thanks to their discovery of a wealth of surprising collaborations: the friendship between Jane Austen and one of the family servants, playwright Anne Sharp; the daring feminist author Mary Taylor, who shaped the work of Charlotte Brontë; the transatlantic friendship of the seemingly aloof George Eliot and Harriet Beecher Stowe; and Virginia Woolf and Katherine Mansfield, most often portrayed as bitter foes, but who, in fact, enjoyed a complex friendship fired by an underlying erotic charge.
Through letters and diaries that have never been published before, A Secret Sisterhood resurrects these forgotten stories of female friendships. They were sometimes scandalous and volatile, sometimes supportive and inspiring, but always—until now—tantalizingly consigned to the shadows.
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Signs of Hope : Messages from Subway Therapy
by Matthew Chavez
In the days and weeks after the 2016 presidential election, Matthew Chavez showed up in the subway with stacks of brightly colored sticky notes. "Express yourself," he told passersby. The response was electric. Calling himself "Levee"--one who supports the city's emotional tide--Chavez turned an underground maze into a communal art space known as Subway Therapy.
News and social media feeds around the world filled with images of this ever-changing, ever-growing wall of remembrances, messages of love, and fierce calls to action. And its spirit was catching. Thousands picked up the mantle to create Subway Therapy walls in cities across the country--San Francisco, Oakland, Seattle, Boston, Washington, D.C.--and internationally as well.
Signs of Hope is Chavez's tribute to Subway Therapy, showcasing the most inspired and most inspiring of the thousands of 3 x 3 inch notes. Individually these brave and funny and emotional "posts" bring the personal and momentary into the open. Together, they show us a vision of inclusivity and hope.
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Stand By Your Truth : And Then Run For Your Life!
by Rickey Smiley
Stand-up comic. Single dad. Radio personality. TV star. Prankster. Producer. Community activist. Man of faith.
Visit a church, comedy club, college campus, or barber shop, and you’ll find few people who aren’t familiar with, or fans of, Rickey Smiley. Millions tune in every weekday morning to hear him banter with his radio show crew, hilariously prank call an unsuspecting listener, and perform skits etched by his one-man cast of characters including “Lil’ Darryl,” “Beauford,” and “Joe Willie.”
But in between the rapid-fire jokes, hip-hop beats, and celebrity dish are flashes of how Rickey views the world, from the challenges of raising children, to the importance of education, to the need to always stand in your own truth. After more than two decades in the spotlight, Rickey is finally ready to delve more deeply into the opinions he voices ever-so-briefly on the air, riffing on those issues that his listeners, viewers, and fans find most important. Stand by Your Truth is part memoir, part testimonial, and part life guide, mixing Rickey’s down-home humor with the values he learned from being raised by three generations of elders, steeped in the Baptist church, and being mentored by some of the most celebrated comics in the entertainment industry today.
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