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The Bad Break : A Riley Ellison Mystery by Jill Orr Obituary-obsessed Riley Ellison’s life is going pretty well at the moment. She has an exciting new career as a reporter, a hot new boyfriend, and is even learning to co-exist with her ex and his “practically perfect in every way” baby mama in their small town of Tuttle Corner. But all of that changes when Riley’s former co-worker Tabitha finds her soon to be father-in-law dead and Riley is asked to write his obituary. And when the police discover Tabitha’s fiancé’s knife sticking out of his father’s chest, Riley finds herself with a murder investigation to cover as well. With her quirky mentor Holman out on leave and mounting pressure from her editor, the mayor, and a bridezilla facing the possibility of a conjugal visit honeymoon, Riley is desperate to prove that she can handle the increasing demands of her new job. Despite warnings from those closest to her, Riley blurs the line between reporter and investigator. Will Riley’s rookie mistakes lead to more than just her byline ending up on the obituary page?
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Set in golden age Hollywood and the burgeoning days of Las Vegas, The Magnificent Esme Wells is a dazzling, bittersweet story of family, love, and deception. The irrepressible daughter of a Mafia gofer and a Busby Berkeley showgirl, Esme Wells comes of age amid racetracks and casinos, mobsters and starlets, on her way to becoming the first burlesque artist on the Las Vegas Strip. Spending her days where no child should, Esme wanders the Hollywood Park racetrack trailing her gambling-obsessed father and the MGM sound stages following her too-beautiful chorus-girl mother, both of them bit players in the big, jostling worlds of mobsters and movie moguls of late 1930s Los Angeles. When her father moves to Las Vegas just after the war—to help Bugsy Siegel open his famous Flamingo Hotel—Esme goes with him and catches the attention of one of the new Strip’s most powerful men. Narrated by the twenty-something Esme, the story moves between pre–WWII Hollywood and postwar Las Vegas - a golden age when gangsters and movie moguls were often indistinguishable in their scramble for power. Her voice - sharp, observant, with a quiet, mordant wit -chronicles the rise and fall and further fall of Esme's complicated parents and her own painful reckoning with love and life. A coming-of-age story with a tinge of noir, The Magnificent Esme Wells portrays the promises and perils of the American dream and its dreamers.
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Other People's Houses : A Novel by Abbi Waxman A hilarious and poignant new novel about four families, their neighborhood carpool, and the affair that changes everything. At any given moment in other people's houses, you can find...repressed hopes and dreams...moments of unexpected joy...someone making love on the floor to a man who is most definitely not her husband... *record scratch* As the longtime local carpool mom, Frances Bloom is sometimes an unwilling witness to her neighbors' private lives. She knows her cousin is hiding her desire for another baby from her spouse, Bill Horton's wife is mysteriously missing, and now this... After the shock of seeing Anne Porter in all her extramarital glory, Frances vows to stay in her own lane. But that's a notion easier said than done when Anne's husband throws her out a couple of days later. The repercussions of the affair reverberate through the four carpool families--and Frances finds herself navigating a moral minefield that could make or break a marriage.
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When eccentric novelist Robert Eady abruptly vanishes, he leaves behind his wife, Leah, their daughters and - hidden in an unexpected spot - plane tickets to Paris.
Hoping to uncover clues - and her husband - Leah sets off for France with her girls. Upon their arrival, she discovers an unfinished manuscript, one Robert had been writing without her knowledge . . . and that he had set in Paris. The Eady women follow the path of the manuscript to a small, floundering English-language bookstore whose weary proprietor is eager to sell. The whole store? Today? Yes, but Leah's biggest surprise comes when she hears herself accepting the offer on the spot.
As the family settles into their new Parisian life, they can't help but trace the literary paths of some beloved Parisian classics, including Madeline and The Red Balloon, hoping more clues arise. But a series of startling discoveries forces Leah to consider that she may not be ready for what solving this mystery might do to her family--and the Paris she thought she knew.
At once haunting and charming, Paris by the Book follows one woman's journey as her story is rewritten, exploring the power of family and the magic that hides within the pages of a book.
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Rob Coates feels like he’s won the lottery of life. There is Anna, his incredible wife, their London town house and, most precious of all, Jack, their son, who makes every day an extraordinary adventure. But when a devastating illness befalls his family, Rob’s world begins to unravel. Suddenly finding himself alone, Rob seeks solace in photographing the skyscrapers and clifftops he and his son Jack used to visit. And just when it seems that all hope is lost, Rob embarks on the most unforgettable of journeys to find his way back to life, and forgiveness.
We Own the Sky is a tender, heartrending, but ultimately life-affirming novel that will resonate deeply with anyone who has suffered loss or experienced great love. With stunning eloquence and acumen, Luke Allnutt has penned a soaring debut and a true testament to the power of love, showing how even the most thoroughly broken heart can learn to beat again.
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Traumatized by professional and personal issues, South African Police Inspector Albertus Beeslaar left Johannesburg's tough city policing and a broken relationship for a backwater post on the edge of the Kalahari Desert. The slower pace suits him, but the rookies he's in charge of training resent his brusque manner and old-school ways. As Beeslaar struggles to connect with the local residents, citizens and cops alike, the violent attacks of a brutally efficient crime syndicate shatter his dream of rural peace.
After the murder of a beautiful and eccentric artist and her four-year-old adopted daughter at their isolated farmhouse, angry white farmers point to her enigmatic Bushman farm manager as a key suspect. Wary of a convenient solution to the crime, caught up in the racial tensions of the community, Beeslaar finds that violence crosses all boundaries. As a political correspondent and journalist, author Karin Brynard witnessed the release of Nelson Mandela and the subsequent political movement that ended apartheid. Translated from the Afrikaans, Weeping Waters marks Karin Brynard's debut novel in English and the beginning of a great new series of South African crime fiction.
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As the frequency and intensity of catastrophic events continue to surge, organizations provide guidelines for how to pack a "Go-Kit" in case of emergency. The Five Gifts is like an emergency 'Go-Kit' for the mind, packed with information and insight that can minimize and prevent long-term psycho-spiritual damage from a traumatic event. It's a field guide for the heart and soul to guide you through to cycles of damage and recovery that can be useful before, during, and after a tragic loss, trauma, or disaster. Although you can never be fully prepared for a shocking, traumatic event, this book will provide information, ideas, insight and tools to build the emotional stamina and clarity needed to cope with acute stress responses and emotional aftershocks. If you are open to receiving the gifts of Humility, Patience, Empathy, Forgiveness, and Growth, The Five Gifts will lead you safely through disaster and traumatic minefields.
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People have been living in small spaces for centuries, for reasons of practicality, mobility, flexibility, or personal choice. More recently, tiny homes have become the answer for many who need somewhere affordable to live, and who possess the creativity and energy to make something different. A small home can be relatively cheap to build or convert, and gives its owner choices, reflecting the way they want to live and their concern for the impact they have on the environment. Tiny homes can also be stunningly beautiful and imaginative. They ask their owners to be discerning about what belongings they have—what is necessary and what is beautiful. The choices are individual and can be seen as part of a movement away from money and property-slavery to a more simple and connected way of living. Inspiring Tiny Homes brings together a collection of some of the most incredible small homes, from containers in the city to cabins in the countryside. A traditional Mongolian yurt provides off-grid living for its owners; a portable cabin offers a chic, flexible space. There is a reclusive shack set in woodland, a converted mountainside bothy (Scottish for "small hut or cottage") and a log cabin pod near the coast. What all the owners have in common is dedication to living well on a smaller footprint.
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The Man Who Caught the Storm : The Life of Legendary Tornado Chaser Tim Samaras by Brantley HargroveAt the turn of the twenty-first century, the tornado was one of the last true mysteries of the modern world. It was a monster that ravaged the American heartland a thousand times each year, yet science’s every effort to divine its inner workings had ended in failure. Researchers all but gave up, until the arrival of an outsider.
In a field of PhDs, Tim Samaras didn’t attend a day of college. He chased storms with brilliant tools of his own invention and pushed closer to the tornado than anyone else ever dared. When he achieved what meteorologists had deemed impossible, it was as if he had snatched the fire of the gods. Yet even as he transformed the field, Samaras kept on pushing. As his ambitions grew, so did the risks. And when he finally met his match—in a faceoff against the largest tornado ever recorded—it upended everything he thought he knew.
Brantley Hargrove delivers a masterful tale, chronicling the life of Tim Samaras in all its triumph and tragedy. He takes readers inside the thrill of the chase, the captivating science of tornadoes, and the remarkable character of a man who walked the line between life and death in pursuit of knowledge. Following the tradition of Into Thin Air and The Perfect Storm, Hargrove’s debut offers an unforgettable exploration of obsession and the extremes of the natural world.
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Leadership is hard. Convincing others—and yourself—that you possess the answers and are capable of world-affecting change requires confidence, insight, and sheer bravado. Minority Leader is the handbook for outsiders, written with the awareness of the experiences and challenges that hinder anyone outside the traditional white male power structure —women, people of color, members of the LGBTQ community, and millennials ready to make a difference. In Minority Leader, Stacey Abrams argues that knowing your own passion is the key to success, and knowing what you want to fight for is as critical as knowing how to turn thought into action. Stacey uses her experience and hard-won insights to break down how ambition, fear, money, and failure function in leadership, while offering personal stories that illuminate practical strategies. Including exercises to help you hone your skills and realize your aspirations, Stacy discusses what she has learned over the course of her impressive career: that differences in race, gender, and class are surmountable. With direction and dedication, being in the minority actually provides unique and vital strength, which we can employ to rise to the top and make real change.
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With its deeply personal and seamless blend of memoir, cultural history, literary criticism, and reportage, The Recovering turns our understanding of the traditional addiction narrative on its head, demonstrating that the story of recovery can be every bit as electrifying as the train wreck itself. Leslie Jamison deftly excavates the stories we tell about addiction--both her own and others'--and examines what we want these stories to do and what happens when they fail us. All the while, she offers a fascinating look at the larger history of the recovery movement, and at the complicated bearing that race and class have on our understanding of who is criminal and who is ill.
At the heart of the book is Jamison's ongoing conversation with literary and artistic geniuses whose lives and works were shaped by alcoholism and substance dependence. Through its unvarnished relation of Jamison's own ordeals, The Recovering is also about a different kind of dependency: the way our desires can make us all, as she puts it, "broken spigots of need." It's about the particular loneliness of the human experience - the craving for love that both devours us and shapes who we are. For her striking language and piercing observations, Jamison has been compared to such iconic writers as Joan Didion and Susan Sontag, yet her utterly singular voice also offers something new. With enormous empathy and wisdom, Jamison has given us nothing less than the story of addiction and recovery in America writ large, a definitive and revelatory account that will resonate for years to come.
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We have a worldwide trash epidemic. The average American disposes of 4.4 pounds of garbage per day, and our landfills hold 254 million tons of waste. What if there were a simple—and fun—way for you to make a difference? What if you could take charge of your own waste, reduce your carbon footprint, and make an individual impact on an already fragile environment? A zero waste lifestyle is the answer—and Shia Su is living it. Every single piece of unrecyclable garbage Shia has produced in one year fits into a mason jar—and if it seems overwhelming, it isn’t! In Zero Waste, Shia demystifies and simplifies the zero waste lifestyle for the beginner, sharing practical advice, quick solutions, and tips and tricks that will make trash-free living fun and meaningful. Learn how to: - Build your own zero waste kit
- Prepare real food—the lazy way
- Make your own DIY household cleaners and toiletries
- Be zero waste even in the bathroom!
- And more!
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