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A Painting Called Sylvia by Michael J. Vaughn
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Voyager: (Outlander, Book 3) by Diana Gabaldon | Summary & Analysis
Book*Sense - 2015
Following both immediately upon the end of and twenty years after the previous volume, Dragonfly in Amber, the novel reiterates the series’ time-travel premise as its protagonist, Claire Beauchamp Randall Fraser, travels through time and back and forth across the Atlantic Ocean in the eighteenth and twentieth centuries. Britain’s empire-building is explored more thoroughly in the novel, and the seeds for much of the later events in the series are sown in the gripping and substantial read. Jamie finds himself labeled as a criminal and forced, after incarceration, to operate under a series of assumed identities. Claire resolves her life in the twentieth century and returns to her husband’s side after a twenty-year separation. Once together again, the two become embroiled not in the better-known historical particulars but in a complex family drama that takes them throughout Scotland and the West Indies before leaving them on the shores of what would become the United States. This companion to Voyager also includes the following: • Book Review • Story Setting Analysis • Story elements you may have missed as we decipher Gabaldon’s novel • Clear, concise description and analysis of personalities • Summary of the text, with some analytical comments interspersed • Thought Provoking /or Discussion Questions for both Readers & Book Clubs • Discussion & Analysis of Themes, Symbols… • And Much More! This Analysis fills the gap, making you understand more while enhancing your reading experience.
Hit List
Nick Harlow - 2016
And only organized crime can do it. When a gambler tries to pay a bookie with food stamps, the Mafia realizes the liberal entitlement society has gone too far. With half the country on some sort of government assistance, disposable income is disappearing. And without disposable income, the Mob will soon be out of business. Enough. Three New Jersey Mafia families decide to band together to take control of the country. To do so they must get 12 flaming liberals who are destroying the country with a progressive agenda “out of the way.” A “hit list” that will lead to the ultimate target, the President. But this is the new Mob, using brains and technology instead of bullets. And they have a not-so-secret weapon: a United States Senator who happens to be a blood relative. And blood is thicker than politics.
The Mermaid's Lament: Shay Greene, Dangerous Deities, book one
Alexes Razevich - 2019
Shay Greene’s specialty is rescue and recovery, and she’s damn good at it. When the country’s wealthiest woman hires her to find a stolen pearl necklace known as The Mermaid’s Lament, Shay is plunged into a world of jealous goddesses, their half-human demigod offspring, and long-standing feuds. Petty rivalries have a nasty way of escalating in that world. The dangerous lengths the goddesses go to one-up each other leave Shay wondering if the goddesses are completely sane. Even the demigods have more power than she is used to dealing with. Shay doesn’t have much time to learn how to beat them. If she doesn’t recover the Mermaid’s Lament by the looming deadline, it will cost her everything she loves.
All That Was Lost
Alison May - 2018
Fifty years later she is Patrice Leigh, a nationally celebrated medium. But cracks are forming in the carefully constructed barriers that keep her real history at bay.Leo is the journalist hired to write Patrice's biography. Struggling to reconcile the demands of his family, his grief for his lost son, and his need to understand his own background, Leo becomes more and more frustrated at Patrice's refusal to open up.Because behind closed doors, Patrice is hiding more than one secret. And it seems that now, her past is finally catching up with her.May thrills in this English familial mystery, adding enticing plot layers as intricate and divisive as the themes she introduces.'Intriguing with a cast of complex characters that keep you fascinated, this is a page-turner and surprisingly tender' Katie FForde'A resonant, emotional story about grief, loss and love with a complex, tragic heroine--a fake psychic reaching the end of her career. Although it's about death, this story is never depressing, and ultimately it's about recovery and healing' Julie Cohen'A beautiful and compelling story that delves into what is real, what we are willing to believe and the power of grief' Liz Fenwick'"All That is Lost" is a bold, beautiful thought-provoking novel, that sensitively confronts difficult themes' Rowan Coleman'It is a triumph. What Alison May has produced is an intimate and affecting study of loss, grief and identity that is just wonderful.' Linda's Book Bag'What an interesting and unique book... a fascinating, at times heart-wrenching, look at secrets, the cost of keeping them hidden, and whether hiding them requires lies.' Fireflies and Free Kicks
Snowday: A festive feel good romantic comedy (The Riverside Series Book 1)
B.R. Maycock - 2018
Eloise is too busy juggling the chaos of three kids, an ever present ex-husband and a demanding boss to even remember the last time dating crossed her mind. But as soft snow falls silently all around, romance twinkles with the flakes. After being single for so long, Eloise suddenly has a lot of choices. Too many choices. Will anyone be worthy of melting the guard around her heart to let love in? A fun-filled, festive read for fans of Christie Barlow, Fiona Gibson and Colleen Coleman
Day of Atonement
Jay Rayner - 1998
Down the side of a dilapidated synagogue in North-west London, a great partnership is born. Apart, Mal Jones and Solly Princeton are two teenage no-hopers scrabbling about in the dirt. Together they are dynamite: a world-beating team who turn a company selling chicken-soup machines to the Jewish mothers of Edgware into an international hotel and leisure empire.But success is never simple. Before long pressures draw them away from the comforts of their roots. They find themselves cutting corners, taking risks and breaking the law. Finally Mal has to confront his life, his friendship with Solly and where their very different ambitions have led them.Thirty-five years later as sunset ushers in the beginning of Yom Kippur, the Jewish day of atonement, Mal, his fortune gone, picks over the ruins of his past with his niece, Natasha. He tells her the story of the Sinai Corporation, of his best friend and business partner, Solly, and at last begins to ask himself: how far must you go before you lose faith in yourself?
The Hollow Places
Dean Clayton Edwards - 2014
Simon delivers live bodies to a psychic creature in the water. He has a natural ability for the work and is even beginning to think he might enjoy it, until the creature asks for the life of his sister. He has less than 24 hours to save both their lives.
The Lion Trees
Owen Thomas - 2016
The Johns family is unraveling. Hollis, a retired Ohio banker, isolates himself in esoteric hobbies and a dangerous flirtation with a colleague's daughter. Susan, his wife of forty years, risks everything for a second chance at who she might have been. David, their eldest, thrashes to stay afloat as his teaching career capsizes in a storm of accusations over a missing student and the legacy of Christopher Columbus. While Tilly, the black sheep, trades her literary promise for an improbable career as a starlet, and then struggles to define herself amidst a humiliating scandal and the judgment of an uncompromising writer. By turns comical, suspenseful and poignant, the Johns family is tumbling toward the discovery that sometimes youhave to let go of your identity to find out who you are.
Missing Evidence (Goodlove and Shek #5)
Al Macy - 2021
The boy asks for help because he thinks his older sister may be some kind of vigilante. Belinda, eighteen and way too sexy for her own good, has been missing for five months. The police are convinced that she’s just another runaway. Her bullheaded stepdad agrees.But the younger brother found Belinda’s secret stash of chatroom texts. They suggest she’s on a misguided mission to entrap and kill a sexual predator. If so, she’s in over her head and on a collision course with a first-degree murder indictment.Goodlove promises Belinda’s family that he’ll help her.But first, he has to find her.Missing Evidence may be enjoyed as a standalone book or as part of the Goodlove and Shek series.
Take Two
Stephen Leather - 2013
But when she witnesses a gangland killing she has to ask herself if her fame could be the death of her.The killer is charismatic gangster Warwick Richards. A man more than capable of killing again to protect his secret. But does he know that Carolyn saw him commit murder?Take Two is a fast-paced full-length crime thriller and at 92,000 words is the equivalent of about 320 pages. Stephen Leather is one of the UK's most successful thriller writers. He was a journalist for more than ten years on newspapers such as The Times, the Daily Mail and the South China Morning Post in Hong Kong. Before that, he was employed as a biochemist for ICI, shovelled limestone in a quarry, worked as a baker, a petrol pump attendant, a barman, and worked for the Inland Revenue. He began writing full time in 1992. His bestsellers have been translated into more than ten languages. He has also written for television shows such as London's Burning, The Knock and the BBC's Murder in Mind series. Two of his books, The Stretch and The Bombmaker, were made into movies.
The Only Way Home
Jeanette Minniti - 2021
Danger on the rails. A journey to save a family.It is 1933 inside a sweltering courtroom in Macon, Georgia. Fifteen-year-old Robert sits on a bench awaiting sentencing after being picked up for vagrancy and spending a night in jail. He left his home in Illinois with a neighborhood friend to ride the rails and find work to help their families. The friend turned back, too afraid to face the perils ahead. But going back empty-handed isn’t an option for Robert.THE ONLY WAY HOME is the story of one boy’s determination to survive loss and hardship to help his family — and how fate and a violin touch the course of his life.Fans of Where the Crawdads Sing by Delia Owens and Sold On a Monday by Kristina Morris will love this story set during the Great Depression of a fatherless boy fighting to keep his family together.
One by One
Robert Enright - 2015
Daily Muay Thai training sessions with his best friend, a progressive career as a mechanic and married to Helen, the love of his life. All of it comes to an end on a rainy saturday night in London. When Helen is ripped from the world by the notorious Drayton family on a visit to the capital and the police, including the prodigal Officer Starling, do little to bring them to justice, Lucas embarks on a rain soaked London to put things right himself. As the body count rises and the ripple effects of the escalating violence reaches further than he could have imagined, Lucas has to confront his dark past, his continuous grief, a nationwide police hunt and, of course, the Draytons.... One by One. A riveting story of revenge and redemption with hard-hitting action and heart-wrenching grief, One by One is a must for fans of Crime Thrillers.
The Garden
Gillian Linscott - 2003
No wonder the purple beech is weeping. I'm sure it is from sheer bewilderment. Oh my girl of little patience, this is not the way one makes a garden, any more than one makes a painting by squeezing every tube to hand onto canvas. I shall explain when I come. Holders Hope, Herefordshire. The roots of a great garden are laid in the long summer of the Edwardian age. Grown from a woman s desperate need to hold on to beauty, created by a man who plants his love for her, hated by a husband it humiliates and imprisons - the garden grows around a secret it will take almost a century to solve.For two generations the lives of two families are bound up with the garden. The Allegri family, mine owners with the money to pay for it. The Thomas family, mine workers from the Welsh valleys with whose care and skill help to shape it. Three children - an unhappy rich girl, a musician and a boy dreaming of revolution - meet in the garden and share a secret that will affect the rest of their lives.
Sisters
Prue Leith - 2001
Years later, in London, Poppy, a stage actress with three children and a charming, handsome husband, never imagines that Carrie, now a sexy and passionate caterer, would try to hurt her. But Carrie can't help herself. She's resentful that Poppy has everything she always wanted: a successful, fulfilling career, a gorgeous husband, a loving family, a house in the country, while Carrie has nothing but debts, one-night-stands, and an uncertain future. Carrie discovers the chink in Poppy's armor, her husband Eduardo, and she sets out to exploit it in the way she knows best. She provides Eduardo with danger, excitement, and great sex - all things that have faded in Eduardo and Poppy's marriage. But in destroying her sister's peace of mind, Carrie risks losing all those who love her.Prue Leith has written a poignant and moving story about the real choices siblings have to make once they grow up and start taking stock of their lives. Sisters is a brilliantly crafted portrait of sibling rivalry, love, and the ultimate betrayal.
The Red Storm Series Box Set: Books One - Three
James Rosone - 2018
Battlefield Ukraine:
When superpowers collide……a single shot can ignite a global disaster.
Will the Ukrainian conflict start WWIII?
Barely settled into the White House, the new American President is faced with a choice. With the smartest military advisers by his side, and the Joint Chiefs prepared for war, he must give the order. Who will he listen to?What’s the correct move?In Moscow, the memory of the long winter never fades. The Ukraine is key to the Kremlin’s plans and the Americans are meddling where they don’t belong. This chess match will change the world.
Never has technology been so advanced.
But that alone won’t win the day.
If you enjoy force-on-force battles filled with hair raising action, you’ll be hooked from the start. It will keep you turning the pages because everyone loves an edge of your seat thriller.
Battlefield Korea:
The world’s eyes watch…
…but it’s what they don’t see that matters.
With eyes on Europe, will North Korea exploit this chance?While the soldiers of the 2nd Infantry Division patrol the DMZ, China convinces North Korea to mobilize. This is the scenario the Chinese have been planning for and they’re ready.
A surprise attack in Europe has NATO reeling.
The new American President has to learn quickly if he wants to pull the country out of the disaster in Europe, but will he be ready for what comes from the South China Sea?
The news headlines can’t be trusted.
There’s a war being fought behind the scenes, but who is pulling the strings? Who will step up and support the President in the country’s greatest time of need?You’ll love this thrilling story because James Rosone and Miranda Watson know how to keep you turning the pages until well past your bedtime.
Battlefield Taiwan:
Is it too late to stop the dominoes from falling?
Not since the US pulled out of Vietnam has the communist threat been so real.
Taiwan is at risk.
If America loses its ally in the Pacific Rim, the Chinese will be one step closer to dominating all of Asia. Japan, Thailand, the Philippines—no one will be safe from their hostile takeover.The President must act. Force is needed, but the deployment won’t be popular. Politics are always being played. Can POTUS muster the courage to do what’s right?
Will the United States of America remain the beacon of democracy the world needs?
Is it too late?If you enjoy force-on-force battles filled with hair raising action, you’ll be hooked from the start. It will keep you turning the pages because this one strikes a nerve.
Get it now.