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I Heart Ed Small by Shirley Johnson
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Brownie Points
Jennifer Coburn - 2012
They’re the only interracial family in the neighborhood. Lisa is a snarky sculptor. And 13-year-old Logan is gay.After Logan is repeatedly bullied at school, he finds his niche in an unusual place –his twin sister’s Girl Scout troop. When he tries to join, the organization refuses, so the boy sues for gender discrimination and sets off a firestorm of national media coverage. This only makes matters worse between the Logan and his father, a macho firefighter who is already struggling with his son’s sexual orientation.Adding to the strife is Lisa’s increasing distaste for Junta Moms who wish each other “Namaste” while rigging school elections and stealing each other’s husbands.Join the Taylors on their hilarious journey as they face the fight of their lives and,in the process, discover what it means to be a family.
He Loves Me Not
Christine Kersey - 2011
After all, she's barely met the two men it could be referring to. But as she begins to fall for the man with the striking blue eyes, the disturbing messages increase.Refusing to believe warnings from an anonymous sender, and trusting her own heart, Lily presses forward with her relationship, eventually coming to understand the meaning behind the messages as she fears for her life.He Loves Me Not does not contain any profanity or sexual content.
Gone to Green
Judy Christie - 2009
The paper was an unexpected inheritance from a close colleague, and Lois must keep it for at least a year, bringing a host of challenges, lessons, and blessings into her life.When Lois pulls into Green on New Year’s Day, she expects a charming little town full of smiling people. She quickly realizes her mistake. After settling into a loaned house out on Route 2, she finds herself battling town prejudices and inner doubts and making friends with the most surprising people: troubled teenager Katy, good-looking catfish farmer Chris, wise and feisty Aunt Helen, and a female African-American physician named Kevin.Whether fighting a greedy, deceitful politician or rescuing a dog she fears, Lois notices the headlines in her life have definitely improved. She learns how to provide small-town news in a big-hearted way and realizes that life is full of newsworthy moments. When she encounters racial prejudice and financial corruption, Lois also discovers more about the goodness of real people and the importance of being part of a community.While secretly preparing the paper for a sale, Lois begins to realize that God might indeed have a plan for her life and that perhaps the allure of city life and career ambition are not what she wants after all.
The Sisterhood
Helen Bryan - 2012
Rescued after a hurricane in South America, doomed to a life of poverty with a swallow medal as her only legacy, the orphaned toddler was adopted by an American family and taken to a new life. As a beautiful, intelligent woman of nineteen, she is in love, engaged, and excited about the future — until another traumatic event shatters her dreams. Menina flees to Spain to bury her misery in research for her college thesis about a sixteenth-century artist who signed his works with the image of a swallow — the same image as the one on Menina’s medal. But a mugging strands Menina in a musty, isolated Spanish convent. Exploring her surroundings, she discovers the epic sagas of five orphan girls who were hidden from the Spanish Inquisition and received help escaping to the New World. Is Menina’s medal a link to them, or to her own past? Did coincidence lead her to the convent, or fate? Both love story and historical thriller, The Sisterhood is an emotionally charged ride across continents and centuries.
Eleanor & Park
Rainbow Rowell - 2012
“Bono met his wife in high school,” Park says.“So did Jerry Lee Lewis,” Eleanor answers.“I’m not kidding,” he says.“You should be,” she says, “we’re 16.”“What about Romeo and Juliet?”“Shallow, confused, then dead.”“I love you,” Park says.“Wherefore art thou,” Eleanor answers.“I’m not kidding,” he says.“You should be.”Set over one school year in 1986, Eleanor & Park is the story of two star-crossed misfits – smart enough to know first love almost never lasts, but brave and desperate enough to try.
The Light Through the Leaves
Glendy Vanderah - 2021
But when she returns, Viola is gone. A breaking point in an already fractured marriage, Viola’s abduction causes Ellis to disappear as well—into grief, guilt, and addiction. Convinced she can only do more harm to her family, Ellis leaves her husband and young sons, burying her desperate ache for her children deeper with every step into the mountain wildernesses she treks alone.In a remote area of Washington, a young girl named Raven keeps secrets inside, too. She must never speak to outsiders about how her mother makes miracles spring from the earth, or about her father, whose mysterious presence sometimes frightens her. Raven spends her days learning how to use her rare gifts—and more important, how to hide them. With each lesson comes a warning of what dangers lie in the world beyond her isolated haven. But despite her mother’s cautions, Raven finds herself longing for something more.As Ellis and Raven each confront their powerful longings, their journeys will converge in unexpected and hopeful ways, pulled together by the forces of nature, love, and family.
The Likely Resolutions of Oliver Clock
Jane Riley - 2020
Is there really room for something as unpredictable as love?
Oliver Clock has everything arranged just so. A steady job running the family funeral parlour. A fridge stocked with ready meals. A drawer full of colour-coded socks. A plan (of sorts) to stay trim enough for a standard-sized coffin. And in florist Marie, he’s even found the love of his life—not that she’s aware of it.When a terrible tragedy takes Marie out of his life but leaves him with her private journal, he discovers too late that she secretly loved him back. Faced now with an empty love life, a family funeral business in trouble, a fast-approaching fortieth birthday and a notebook of resolutions he’s never achieved, Oliver resolves to open himself up to love—and all the mess that comes along with it.But, with a habit of burying his feelings, can he learn to embrace his lovability and find the woman who will make him feel whole?
Tempt Me at Midnight
Lauren Royal - 2014
But when the man she's loved since her girlhood returns from a long spell abroad, she quite suddenly finds herself hoping the fine lord her brother has picked for her won't propose. She decides that if he does, she'll quite improperly turn him down—that is, until the man of her hopes and dreams informs her he has no intention of marrying her.The last time Tristan Nesbitt saw Alexandra, he was a common man with no hope of ever wedding the daughter of a marquess. Seven years later, he's now Lord Hawkridge, which should make him eminently suitable for the woman who long ago captured his heart. But a dreadful scandal has tarnished his name in England—a scandal so horrid that marrying Alexandra would ruin not only her flawless reputation but her whole family. For Alexandra's own good, he must fight his relentless desires and stay far away…
The Hazards of Skinny Dipping
Alyssa Rose Ivy - 2013
If you want a book like that, I'd be happy to recommend one, but I don't have that kind of story to tell. Instead my story is about rash decisions and finding out that your dream guy is bad in bed. It's the story of when I finally went skinny dipping, and how my life was never the same again. Oh, and it's also the story of my freshman year of college and realizing Mr. Right might have been there all along.
The Wicked Wager
Anya Wylde - 2012
A plan that should have brought the lovers together and had them married within a month. It was a simple matter of masquerading as the duke’s gardener, compromising the lady, and then having the duke rush them off to Gretna Green.Alas, he underestimates the duke’s intelligence and the tangled situation on the estate—never had he imagined that compromising a lady could be so difficult.His endeavours lead to a comedy of errors, charades, and knotty love affairs. Yet he forges ahead in spite of pesky house guests, a flea bitten mattress, his lovesick best friend, and a blackmailer.Just when things seem to be going well, someone is murdered (very inconvenient), and he happens to be one of the suspects (extremely inconvenient).His simple plan for winning the wager suddenly becomes … a tad complicated.
The Things We Wish Were True
Marybeth Mayhew Whalen - 2016
But behind the white picket fences lies a web of secrets that reach from house to house.Up and down the streets, neighbors quietly bear the weight of their own pasts—until an accident at the community pool upsets the delicate equilibrium. And when tragic circumstances compel a woman to return to Sycamore Glen after years of self-imposed banishment, the tangle of the neighbors’ intertwined lives begins to unravel.During the course of a sweltering summer, long-buried secrets are revealed, and the neighbors learn that it’s impossible to really know those closest to us. But is it impossible to love and forgive them?
The DUFF: Designated Ugly Fat Friend
Kody Keplinger - 2010
She's also way too smart to fall for the charms of man-slut and slimy school hottie Wesley Rush. In fact, Bianca hates him. And when he nicknames her "the Duff," she throws her Coke in his face. But things aren't so great at home right now, and Bianca is desperate for a distraction. She ends up kissing Wesley. Worse, she likes it. Eager for escape, Bianca throws herself into a closeted enemies-with-benefits relationship with him. Until it all goes horribly awry. It turns out Wesley isn't such a bad listener, and his life is pretty screwed up, too. Suddenly Bianca realizes with absolute horror that she’s falling for the guy she thought she hated more than anyone.
A Love by Any Measure
Killian McRae - 2011
An English lord. A love that overcomes all boundaries, but at what cost?Lord August Grayson, English landlord, has secretly, and much to the dismay of his father, held in reverence the object of his first fancy: poor Irish tenant Maeve O'Connor. Returning to the Ireland for the first time since his youth, August discovers that Maeve has grown into a woman of beauty and tenacity. August understands, however, that he could offer Maeve nothing but shame if her pursued her. But when circumstances allow him an opportunity to indulge his fancy, even if only in a limited scope, August finds himself unable to resist the temptation. Maeve,for her part, knows the danger falling for August holds, but finds her heart and her good senses becoming confused the longer she spends in his company. As two hearts become hopelessly entangled, both Maeve and August are forced to question the costs of their love. As consequences of their romance manifest, both struggle with the pain and difficulties their love causes, both for them and for their loved ones.Killian McRae's delve into historical romance will challenge reader's presumptions of the genre. A title garnering controversy due to McRae's preference towards historical truth versus genre-standard "love despite the realities of the day" perspectives, it asks at what cost winning love is justified. "A Love by Any Measure" is an exploration of a romance that strives to overcome divisions of cultural, socio-economic, and religious differences in an era where options for lovers in such situations were limited.
Intrusion
Mary McCluskey - 2016
While Scott throws himself back into his law practice in Los Angeles, Kat is hesitant to rejoin the workplace and instead spends her days shell-shocked and confused, unable to focus.When an unwelcome face from Kat’s past in England emerges—the beautiful and imposing Sarah Cherrington—Kat’s marriage is thrown into a tailspin. Now wealthy beyond anything she could have imagined as a girl, Sarah appears to have everything she could need or want. But Sarah has an agenda and she wants one more thing. Soon Kat and Scott are caught up in her devious games and power plays.Against the backdrops of Southern California and Sussex, in spare and haunting prose, Mary McCluskey propels this domestic drama to its chilling conclusion.
O Little Town
Don Reid - 2008
but there is no peace in Mt. Jefferson.In a small town where everybody seems to know everybody, there are still a few secrets. Three families find they are connected in ways they never suspected: an angry teen, a dying man, a lonely wife, a daughter in trouble . just ordinary people, muddling their way through ordinary challenges. Illness. Marriage. Bad decisions. Friendship. Faith. Forgiveness.Spanning three generations, O Little Town is a tender tale of love and redemption . and a lonely gravesite where roses mysteriously appear every Christmas. It will touch your heart.