Her mentor from grad school offers her a chance to write for a prestigious magazine about the Bakken oil boom in North Dakota. Elinor grew up near the Bakken, raised by an overbearing father and a distant Korean mother who met and married when he was stationed overseas. After decades away from home, Elinor returns to a landscape she hardly recognizes, overrun by tens of thousands of newcomers. Surrounded by roughnecks seeking their fortunes in oil and long-time residents worried about their changing community, Elinor experiences a profound sense of alienation and grief. She rages at the unrelenting male gaze, the locals who still see her as a foreigner, and the memories of her family’s estrangement after her mother decided to escape her unhappy marriage, leaving Elinor and her sister behind. The longer she pursues this potentially career-altering assignment, the more her past intertwines with the story she’s trying to tell, revealing disturbing new realities that will forever change her and the way she looks at the world.With spare and graceful prose, O Beautiful presents an immersive portrait of a community rife with tensions and competing interests, and one woman’s attempts to reconcile her anger with her love of a beautiful, but troubled land.

    Talented, troubled, and self-centered, Jane Braithwaite makes her well-meaning upper-middle-class family miserable, enmeshing them in the complicated lives of a homeless family, a poor teenager with no family, and a would-be family foundering on childlessness. When catastrophe finally threatens, all their dilemmas are resolved by the same stunning and unexpected means.All the while, the Braithwaites involve old and new friends in their struggles–a lovesick clergyman, a lonely doctor and his baby-obsessed wife, a libertarian billionaire, a money-loving philosopher, and a hard-bitten but sexy poverty activist. Their social and political clashes provide entertainment both comic and serious.

    It's not like they were close. She hadn't seen him--or her grandmother, the ice queen--in almost 20 years. But when Adella Atwater, the manager of her grandmother's apartment house, called and said Jillian's expenses would be paid if she'd fly in for the burial, a free trip to New Orleans was too intriguing to resist.What Adella didn't tell her was that the apartment house wasn't a house at all and, whatever it was, bore the dead weight of a long and painful history. As soon as Jillian meets the odd assortment of renters and realizes that her grandmother had no idea she was coming, she hatches a plan to escape. But the investigation into her father's death quickly unfolds and Jillian is drawn into the lives of the colorful collection of saints and sinners who pass through Saint Silvanus. She soon discovers there is more at stake than she ever imagined. Who is behind the baffling messages and the strange relics left on the steps? Is it possible that her family is actually cursed? Or is it just this crazy old house that holds them all under its spell?Jillian walks into a web of spiritual and personal danger borne out of her family's broken history, and despite Adella's wiliest efforts, only God himself can orchestrate the undoing of all that is going on at Saint Silvanus.

    At a prominent showroom in downtown Bangalore. A pregnant woman swoons. Glittering crystals disperse. Chaos reigns. Siddhartha, English teacher-turned-conman, pulls off a diamond heist. With unconditional support from his theatre-artiste wife. Abhimanyu, the authoritarian business baron, retaliates. With a policy master stroke that will push Siddhartha into financial jeopardy. And renew Siddhartha’s streak to wreak vengeance. A devious plot unfolds. Involving the royal heirloom belonging to Abhimanyu. Provoked beyond limits, Abhimanyu pulls out all the stops. Even as he confronts the identity conflicts of a hitherto unknown son that has appeared. Stage-managed bank deposits. Orchestrated raid. A hostile alliance. Until he faces a sordid truth revealed by the blue-blooded mother he worships. How does this dynastic drama play out?

    A frenetic journey through contemporary youth culture, Echo of the Boom follows the lives of these four characters as their narratives orbit and intertwine.They wage personal wars, grapple for power, and attempt to understand their roles in the future of society—or their destiny in hastening its destruction.The result is a mesmerizing collection of triumphs and calamities, a chronicle brimming with the language of music, social networking, and video games. Equal parts Gossip Girl and Gravity’s Rainbow, Echo of the Boom is a generation defining novel, a new kind of literature explicitly suited to twenty-first century.

    It isn’t the pain of him not being there—loneliness is manageable. The worst thing is not knowing why.When Justin walks out on Alice on their honeymoon, with no explanation apart from a cryptic note, Alice is left alone and bewildered, her life in pieces.Then she meets Evelyn, a visitor to the gallery where she works. It’s a seemingly chance encounter, but Alice gradually learns that Evelyn has motives, and a heartbreaking story, of her own. And that story has haunting parallels with Alice’s life.As Alice delves into the mystery of why Justin left her, the questions are obvious. But the answers may lie in the most unlikely of places…

    

    Between the troublesome family secrets, old sibling rivalries, and her two teenage grandkids, Annette’s birthday vacation is looking more and more like the perfect storm. Adrift together on the open seas, the Feldmans will each face the truths they’ve been ignoring–and learn that the people they once thought most likely to sink them are actually the ones who help them stay afloat.

    They gunned Brad, dragged him away like a slab of meat, and left Daisy to die in her mother’s arms.Now they have another daughter, Lilly. She’s four and their son, Jack, is eleven. They’re the reason Brad and Lola keep going. But when a bogus tax demand arrives, it triggers a chain of events that forces the Fairweather family to take the law into their own hands, with devastating consequences. As events unfold, they discover their names are on a sinister government list, and their enemy wants to finish what he started, all those years ago.With the dead bodies piling up, Detective LT. Donatello hunts for the vigilante killer the press are calling "a hero," but finds himself caught in a complex web of organized crime, kidnapping and murder, with the evidence pointing to just one person, and that's bad news, for him!Goodreads & Amazon Reader Reviews“A thrilling ride, with three-dimensional characters and a story that will have you racing to the end, where everyone has a secret to tell, including the dead." — Michael Carr – Editor of a dozen New York Times best sellers and another dozen Wall Street Journal, Los Angeles Times International, and Amazon best sellers.“This is a fantastic fast paced story. Tom Secret has woven ‘real-life’ villainous gut wrenching subjects, into a brilliant intricate web. The characters are layered, complex and gritty and Lieutenant Donatello is straight off a movie set. I found him so engaging I can't wait to journey with him again.Excellent twists and turns right to the very end.” P. Mia“Wow, what a ride!!!!I had not read such an action-packed book in months.The book has so many twists and mysteries that sometimes it seems that even the skeletons in the closet have their own skeletons in the closetOf course, there is gore, violence and abominable crimes, so make sure you're not faint-hearted before reading itI'm not a bad guy who likes to give spoilers, and I don't want to ruin your right to discover all the crazy secrets of this book by yourselves, so I'll describe the story in general termsCliffhangers - Every 1-2 chaptersFamily secrets - One, two three.... manyHeart rate while reading is too highDangerous sicko crooks are around every cornerSo, Ladies and Gentlemen, I proudly declare this book a page-turner.” S. Lenkevich“I give This Book a 4.5 rating as this has been a great book compared to the standards of new and rising talents!! The story was beautifully told and kept us in the grips till the very last. I was blown away by the final twist in the very last goddamn line!” Kaushik N.P“Really good thriller: An excellent police psychological thriller. I can recommend it to anyone. I want to read more by this author. Excellent twists.” K. Bracy“I found this book very enjoyable from start to finish. It has everything and keeps you locked in to the story line the whole time…” Heather GR reviewerOne of the best books I have read this year!!This book was excellent....First time I have read this author and am looking forward to his next book. Could not sleep one nite so thought I would read for a bit.....ha ....could not put it down....just kept going totally hooked.” June“Very clever plotting. Very fast moving and good character development. I will recommend to my friends. I am glad I found the book. Bookbub. Thank you.” Amazon.com reviewer

    Since her eccentric father’s untimely death, she is the presumed heir to a long-rumored trove of diaries, paintings, letters, and early novel drafts passed down from the Brontë family - a hidden fortune never revealed to anyone outside of the family, but endlessly speculated about by Brontë scholars and fanatics. Samantha, however, has never seen this alleged estate and for all she knows, it’s just as fictional as Jane Eyre or Wuthering Heights.But everything changes when Samantha enrolls at Oxford University and long lost objects from the past begin rematerializing in her life, beginning with an old novel annotated in her father’s handwriting. With the help of a handsome but inscrutable professor, Samantha plunges into a vast literary mystery and an untold family legacy, one that can only be solved by decoding the clues hidden within the Brontës’ own works

    . . THE LEGEND BEGINS When the Ridgeway family staked their claim on more than 40,000 acres of land in northwest Texas, they knew they had their work cut out for them. Located on a sharp bend of the treacherous Red River, their new home—the Rocking R Ranch—was just a stone’s throw away from Indian territory. It was as lawless and wild as the West itself, crawling with unsavory characters, cattle rustlers, horse thieves, outlaws, robbers, and worse. But still, the Ridgeways were determined to make the Rocking R a success—and a home—for their four remarkable children: Percy, Eli, Abigail, and Rachel. This is their story. Together, the Ridgeways could endure anything. Floods, tornadoes, Commanche raids in the dead of night. But when one of their own is kidnapped . . . that’s when all hell breaks loose. This is their story. The story of the American West.

    After their husbands both pass away within a year of one another, they have no reason to interact. Their connection drops to an awkward phone call on birthdays and an exchange of holiday cards.Until an eccentric uncle of their husbands' leaves a massive cattle ranch to the women's minor children. . . if they work the ranch themselves. A ranch that's located near a small town on the Wasatch front that isn’t too keen on outsiders.They're both going to turn the bequest down, clearly. It’s not like either of them could properly raise their kids or find love again in a backwater province like Birch Creek. But when things at home change dramatically—for both moms—they decide to give it a try. . . just for the summer.What could possibly go wrong in a mere three months? (Or more importantly... what might go right?)Wall Street Journal and USA Today bestselling author Pamela Kelley said, "B. E. Baker takes you right to the heart of the small town that two widowed sisters-in-law land in very unexpectedly. Can they survive the year they need to spend there to keep it? I really enjoyed reading Bridget's romantic women's fiction debut."

    . .'When first-year student Zoë Barry walks into Professor David Connolly's office and tentatively says these words, he is left reeling. But it is the lives of his family - particularly his wife Caroline - which are turned upside down by the arrival of this stranger.A daughter, a sister, a friend . . . an enemy?Though no one knows quite who Zoë is, she is soon entangled in their lives. Yet her stories don't ring true and Caroline is determined to learn if the girl is the unlucky innocent she claims to be or someone with a far darker agenda.A deadly cuckoo in the nest . . .Because by letting Zoë in, David and Caroline aren't just leaving themselves vulnerable. They're risking the most precious thing in the world - the lives of their children . . .

    Longing for the family and security she never had, she allowed herself to be coddled and groomed into Manny's partner-in-crime. Before long, Kit and Manny became infamous for their string of gas station robberies throughout Texas, making a name for themselves as the Texaco Twosome.But as Manny's fatherly demeanor shifts to something darker and more violent, Kit is forced to reconsider their relationship and her own safety. In a flash decision, she leaves Manny at a holdup gone wrong.Thirteen years after her escape, she has made a home for herself and her daughter amongst the pecan trees and muddy creeks of the claustrophobic town of Pecan Hollow. When Manny shows up at her doorstep a new man, fresh out of prison, Kit's profound and twisted attachment to him compels her to let him in. Immediately, Kit's world is transformed and her community is sent into a tailspin.With its rich landscape, indelible characters, and evocative language, Shadows of Pecan Hollow is a hauntingly intimate and distinctly original debut about the strength and vulnerability of womanhood and the complexity of love--both romantic and familial. This penetrating, gritty, and unexpectedly tender novel ensnares the reader in its story of resilience and the bonds that define us.

    The son of a fortune teller, bookish, and an easy target for bullies, Alex hasn't had the easiest childhood.But when he meets curmudgeonly widower Mr. Peterson, he finds an unlikely friend. Someone who teaches him that you only get one shot at life. That you have to make it count.So when, aged seventeen, Alex is stopped at customs with 113 grams of marijuana, an urn full of ashes on the front seat, and an entire nation in uproar, he's fairly sure he's done the right thing ...Introducing a bright young voice destined to charm the world, The Universe Versus Alex Woods is a celebration of curious incidents, astronomy and astrology, the works of Kurt Vonnegut and the unexpected connections that form our world.