Situated along the Connecticut River Valley, Oldham bursts with color every fall, as the leaves on its trees evolve into an unmatched palette of scarlet, orange, purple, yellow, and bronze. For more than three decades, the Gold family has been a central part of Oldham in the fall, its Sugar Maple Inn a destination for “leaf-peepers” from all over the country, and its annual Halloween party a stirring way to punctuate the town’s most active month.But this year, more than just the leaves are changing. With the death of their parents, the Gold siblings, Maria, Maxwell, Deborah, Corrina, and Tyler, have decided to sell the Sugar Maple Inn, and this year’s Halloween party will be the last. As October begins, the Golds contend with the finality that faces them, and the implications it has for a family that has always been so close. For some, it means embracing new challenges and new love. For others, it means taking on unimagined roles. And for others, it means considering the inconceivable. Complicating it all is a series of “hauntings” that touch each of the Gold siblings, a series of benign interventions that will remain a mystery until October draws to a close.Filled with romance, tension, and unforgettable family drama, Leaves is the first in a series of novels about a world and a family that readers will want to make their own.

    A relationship with his father. When Roman’s life gets turned upside down, (thanks, Mom!?), he is forced to leave his pampered Hollywood lifestyle and move into his grandparents’ Midwestern home. Sleeping on a lumpy pullout sofa and starting at a new high school is the worst, but Roman’s life starts to look up when his pink-haired friend, Zuzu, and his crush, a classmate named Claire, introduce him to performance poetry through the high school's Spoken Word Club. While his mom is flying back and forth to L.A., trying to return them to the life they had, Roman becomes part of a diverse group of characters who challenge his rather privileged view of the world. Through Spoken Word, Roman recognizes the hole in his own life he needs to fill and discovers his voice. Spoken Word leads Roman on a journey of new friendships, first love, and finding the dad he never knew. “Spoken” is an uplifting, funny, and heartfelt coming-of-age story that captures how the honesty of performance poetry binds together students from all different walks of life and forever changes Roman’s life.

     Surrounded by unimaginable adverse forces, one strong woman would ultimately lead her entire family to survive. Beautiful Hero is an autobiographical narrative told from a daughter’s perspective. The story centers around Meiyeng, the eponymous Beautiful Hero, and her innate ability to sustain everyone in her family. She shepherded her entire family through starvation, diseases, slavery and massacres in war-torn Cambodia to forge a new life in America. Over two million people—a third of the country’s population—fell victim to a devastating genocide in Cambodia. The rise of the Khmer Rouge posed not merely a single challenge to survival, but rather a series of nightmarish obstacles that required constant circumvention, outmaneuvering, and exceptional fortitude from those few who would survive the regime intact. The story eerily unravels the layers of atrocity and evil unleashed upon the people, providing a clear view of this horrific and violent time of the Cambodian revolution.br>

    Not only did she stand, obliterating doctors initial prognoses, she walked ... directly into the passionate profession of a public high school teacher. Thirteen years after the medical trauma she was not expected to survive, Nika stood inside the glimmering granite capitol building in Austin, honored to receive state House and Senate resolutions as 2007 Texas Secondary Teacher of the Year. Let your heart rise along with the inspirational account of a single mother's faith, her dying daughter's hope, and God's triumphant love.

    She is left a confused child whose father is intent upon erasing any memory of his dead wife. Forced to keep the truth of her mother's existence from her younger brother, Barbara struggles to keep from being crushed under the weight of family secrets as she comes of age and strives to educate herself despite her father's stance against women s education. Veronica's Grave shows the psychological cost of families who keep secrets and the importance of pursuing one's dreams and passions. The memoir, told in the young girl's voice, asks the reader to consider what parents owe their children and how far a child need go to make things right for her family.Ultimately, it's a tale of loss and resilience, showing the power of literature - from Orphan Annie and Prince Valiant to the incomparable Nancy Drew - to offer hope where there is little.

    Enter the mind of one of the seven dwarfs wrestling with his fevered sexual desire for Snow White. In another story, a cash-strapped elderly man in the future is quietly pressured to “retire” by having his brain put in a vat and live out the rest of his day in a virtual reality paradise. “Sex Fantasies at Work” follows an office drone who suspects he’s always at work and his entire home life is merely implanted memories. Read what Charles Yu calls “one of the funniest books I’ve read in years,” what Jack Pendarvis likened to Donald Barthelme by way of E.C. comics, and Joe Randazzo, the editor of The Onion, calls simply “f***ing awesome.”

    Confident. Powerful.” takes the reader on an emotive journey of empowerment through life’s countless triumphs and tribulations. Above all else, it inspires one to tap into their infinite potential so they can overcome any obstacle that appears on their unique path. Through heartfelt storytelling, alliterative diction, and soul-awakening themes, this empathic poetess instills each reader with an unwavering sense of perseverance, courage, and compassion. This uplifting book is more than a mere collection of poetic musings, it serves as a powerful tool of self-love and personal transformation that belongs on every fierce soul’s bookshelf—or better yet, on their nightstand for their daily dose of inspiration each time they rise. The collection offers poems for women and men urging us to stretch and grow to our fullest potential. The empowering prose offers encouraging words with a call to action to harness our self-confidence to achieve the goals we were destined to shatter.

    They are the 1% of the 1%. They have reached seemingly unreachable heights. They may be athletes or entertainers who are household names, or they may be people who have invented life-saving drugs or won a Nobel Prize by making fundamental advances in knowledge. Or they may have changed the world through science or music or business by influencing millions or perhaps billions of lives.They are the people who have succeeded in being able to draw out the best talents they have within themselves and have maximized the physical, mental, and social potential available to them.The Exceptionals is their story, and it provides you with the blueprint to advance yourself from good to great—and from outstanding to elite.

    My girlfriend cheated, I blew out my knee, and probably trashed my chance of going pro. All in one day. Then my jerk professor tells I’m almost on academic probation.Awesome. Now I get to find a tutor. Enter Mallory Fine, quiet, a little intense, and my kind of gorgeous. Who also happens to hate baseball and any guy who plays it. Hello, curiosity. I tell myself this will be nothing more than a tutoring relationship. I’m a liar. I want this girl. How hard can her secrets be to unravel? It might be a challenge, but so is getting back on the ball field and I’m determined to make that happen—no matter the cost.

    and the murder rate is climbing.When Piper Lane’s career and her office romance both die fiery deaths on the same day, she packs up her worldly goods and her French Bulldog, Jasper, and leaves Houston behind, setting sail for safer harbors – the welcoming golden shores of Sunrise Island, to be exact.But Piper, her pessimistic sister, Page, and her overly dramatic niece, Blaire, have no sooner rolled up their sleeves and taken over an old bed and breakfast on the island, than a dead body is discovered on the premises. With her B&B now adjacent to a crime scene, it looks as if Piper’s dream of reviving the business might be done for. Between the haunted house vibe of the ancient Victorian property and the creepy antics of Mrs. Harris, the crazy old lady living in the attic, can things get any worse?Propelled into the middle of the dangerous murder investigation, Piper soon makes it her mission to clear away the clouds of suspicion surrounding her B&B and shine the light of day on long-held secrets that some of the island’s inhabitants would rather keep buried. But the killer is only one step behind her, and if Piper doesn’t think fast, the only thing she’ll be getting to the bottom of is a shallow grave.

    'You could find yourself out of the frying pan and into the fire.' Her past denied and dance championship dreams discarded, Cassie Sleight leaves home. In the seemingly idyllic coastal town of Keimera, she starts a career on the English staff of the local high school. Exposure to Mark Talbut, a man struggling to be modern yet threatened by power shifts in the workplace and in society, causes Cassie to assess her reactions as a teacher and a woman. As she does so, the secrets of her past surface. Will that past continue to choreograph Cassie’s present steps? What sort of woman does she become? ‘In and Out of Step' looks at how the world a person lives in shapes that person for good and for bad. It is a story about friendship and family, belonging, alienation, sexual harassment, and change. The title alludes to the way Cassie Sleight uses dance as a way to interpret life and process her reactions to it.

    Josh Axe, bestselling author of Keto Diet and Eat Dirt, explains how to lose weight, prevent disease, improve your digestion, and renew your youth by taking advantage of dietary collagen.Today, interest in dietary collagen is growing at an astounding rate, and with good reason. The benefits of a collagen-rich diet are remarkable, ranging from better weight control to enhanced digestion, clearer skin, reduced inflammation, and improved immune function. Dietary collagen provides a unique blend of amino acids and other compounds, making it critical for everyone, including infants, young children, the elderly, athletes, pregnant women, new mothers, and adult men and women. Simply put: When we don't get enough of the beneficial compounds found in collagen-rich foods, we experience more injuries, chronic aches and pain, digestive issues, and other symptoms associated with aging. And most people don't get enough. Collagen is the missing ingredient that can help all of us live longer, healthier, more vital lives.In The Collagen Diet, Dr. Axe describes how collagen helps maintain the structure and integrity of almost every part of the body. You'll learn how your skin, hair, nails, bones, disks, joints, ligaments, tendons, arterial walls, and gastrointestinal tract all depend on the consumption of collagen-rich foods. Featuring a twenty-eight-day meal plan, seventy mouthwatering recipes, and specific advice for supporting your body's collagen production with exercise and lifestyle interventions, The Collagen Diet provides everything you need to take advantage of this overlooked cornerstone of modern health.

    Meet… Laura Ann McGehee—Determined to honor her father’s dying request, the young West Virginia woman will do whatever it takes to save the family farm, including using the one remaining financial resource she has—her body. Sophia McQuistion—Thanks to the unusual sacrifice of a woman she has never met, she carries the child she could never conceive. Ian Stewart—In Laura Ann’s time of need, he’s more than just a close friend. He is a source of grace, a man who loves Laura Ann through her many trials. When unusual circumstances place Sophia’s baby in Laura Ann’s care, Laura Ann is now the virgin mother of her own biological son. The media call him “Nobody’s Child.” But somebody wants him badly enough to steal the baby. Weaving together bioethics and faith, Nobody’s Child dramatizes a future that is already upon us with consequences we can no longer avoid.

    Armed with only a reckless wit and sheer bravado, seventeen-year-old Kassia barely scrapes out a life with her older sister in a back-alley of the market district of the Imperial city of Corium. When a stranger shows up at her market stall, offering her work for which she is utterly unqualified, Kassia cautiously takes him on. Very soon however, she finds herself embroiled in a mystery involving a usurped foreign throne and a vengeful nobleman. Most intriguing of all, she discovers a connection with the disappearance of her father three years prior. When Kassia is forced to flee her home, suffering extreme hardship, danger and personal trauma along the way, she feels powerless to control what happens around her. Rewarding revelations concerning the mysteries of her family’s past are tempered by the reality of a future she doesn’t want. In the end, Kassia discovers an unyielding inner strength, and that contrary to her prior beliefs, she is not defined by external things -- she discovers that she is worthy to be loved.

     Casey Lewis led the best Special Operations unit in all of the Confederation until it betrayed her. Taking revenge, she expected to die in a blaze of glory and gunfire but that was not to be. Now she's Chef of the Navy and it's her job to teach, tutor, and investigate each and every kitchen in the fleet. On her own terms. When she accidentally uncovers a plot against not only the battleship she's on but the Confederation as a whole, all hell breaks loose. Bad Casey is back and she's not fooling around this time! ***This book contains bad language, sexual situations, violence, more violence, and a whole lot of innuendo. No actual Chefs were harmed in the making of this book.