Book picks similar to
Dawn Through the Shadows by Linda Anne Smith
read-fiction
american
biography-biographical
book-club
The Novel of Beneath a Scarlet : Back to Garden
Alexandre Briau - 2018
Disenchanted with city life, international celebrity Fly, returns to the island of his birth to find stability of mind in a natural environment. Eventually, he is traced by his manager, a man determined to involve Fly in a cunning scheme that would convert that peaceful haven into a leisure complex for the mega rich, a development that would turn the gentle island into a glittering millionaire's bauble. Can Fly and his peaceful community defend their island and their lifestyle from the treacherous mind of his manager?
Queenology
R.C. Blakes Jr. - 2018
One might call it the sequel. In the Father Daughter Talk he diagnoses the condition of a generation of women who are suffering from a deep father wound and the implications on their choices and self esteem. If the Father Daughter Talk is a diagnosis, QUEENOLOGY is the prescription. In this book (QUEENOLOGY), he expands his message to the woman to the next dimension. He boldly declares that every woman is a queen and in spite of her broken history, royalty is her destiny. Queenology offers the woman insights and principles for reigning in spite of the odds being against her. Queenology is as a king sitting down with queens and saying this is who you are and here's how you do it. Queenology is R.C. Blakes' answer to a generation of queens who've not been informed of their true station yet. In the book he discusses such principles as: Queens manage emotion, Queens study kings, Queens are financially savvy, Queens maximize their potential, Queens eliminate insecurity and negativity, Queens possess presence, Queens only hear kings, and Queens keep a royal circle. Queenology is a manual for the modern queen. It is for the woman who is ready to fix her crown, take her throne and expand her empire.
In the Kingdom of Men
Kim Barnes - 2012
Gin Mitchell knows a better life awaits her when she marries hometown hero Mason McPhee. Raised in a two-room shack by her Oklahoma grandfather, a strict Methodist minister, Gin never believed that someone like Mason, a handsome college boy, the pride of Shawnee, would look her way. And nothing can prepare her for the world she and Mason step into when he takes a job with the Arabian American Oil company in Saudi Arabia. In the gated compound of Abqaiq, Gin and Mason are given a home with marble floors, a houseboy to cook their meals, and a gardener to tend the sandy patch out back. Even among the veiled women and strict laws of shariah, Gin’s life has become the stuff of fairy tales. She buys her first swimsuit, she pierces her ears, and Mason gives her a glittering diamond ring. But when a young Bedouin woman is found dead, washed up on the shores of the Persian Gulf, Gin’s world closes in around her, and the one person she trusts is nowhere to be found. Set against the gorgeously etched landscape of a country on the cusp of enormous change, In the Kingdom of Men abounds with sandstorms and locust swarms, shrimp peddlers, pearl divers, and Bedouin caravans—a luminous portrait of life in the desert. Award-winning author Kim Barnes weaves a mesmerizing, richly imagined tale of Americans out of their depth in Saudi Arabia, a marriage in peril, and one woman’s quest for the truth, no matter what it might cost her.
The Hangman's Daughter - chapters 1-3
Oliver Pötzsch - 2010
Exclusive to Kindle: a free sample of The Hangman's Daughter
The 5 Love Languages of Children/The 5 Love Languages of Teenagers Set
Gary Chapman - 2010
Sellevision
Augusten Burroughs - 2000
When Max Andrews, the much-loved and handsome (lonely and gay) host of "Slumber Sunday Sundown" accidentally exposes himself in front of twenty million kids and their parents during a "Toys for Tots" segment, Sellevision faces its first big scandal. As Max fails to find a job in television, another host, the popular and perky Peggy Jean Smythe is receiving sinister emails about her appearance from a stalker. Popping pills and drinking heavily, she fails to notice that her husband is spending a lot of time with the very young babysitter who lives next door. Then there's Leigh, whose affair with Sellevision boss Howard Toast is going nowhere, until she exposes him on air; and Bebe, Sellevision's star host, who finds Mr. Right through the Internet--if she can just stop her shopping addiction from taking over.
Valentines
Olaf Olafsson - 2006
While their settings range from the East Coast to the West Coast, from Paris to Slovenia and Iceland, these contemporary stories probe the complexity of modern relationships over time. A wife realizes her closest confidante is much more than that. A father tries to make his new lover into the image of his late wife. A lusty photographer confronts his own mortality. A couple�s long-anticipated anniversary vacation opens onto the past. A husband, a wife, a child, a boating accident: no harm done . . . and yet? Each of the twelve stories reveals another element in the agonizing nature of passion, diminished and yet sustained over time. This is a powerful work of fiction from one of our most gifted and subtle international writers at work today.
The Woody
Peter Lefcourt - 1998
But when he is stricken with an ill-timed case of ED (Erectile Dysfunction), the desperate player faces his biggest campaign killer of all and goes to hilarious extremes to keep himself in the running. Peter Lefcourt holds a perfectly cracked mirror to the spin-filled world of Washington's sexual politics and asks a penetrating question: How hard does a politician have to be?
The Pandora Prescription
James Sheridan - 2007
He is sucked into a silent war which hinges on an incriminating data file. Finding it is Travis’s only hope for surviving a deadly chase across America. But to find its location, Travis must discover the link between the biggest medical cover-up in history and the greatest assassination conspiracy of the twentieth century. The key lies within a secret underground of doctors sworn to an ancient oath.When the solution is the problem, which side will you be on?
Gap Creek
Robert Morgan - 1999
People depend on her to slaughter the hogs and nurse the dying. People are weak, and there is so much to do. At just seventeen she marries and moves down into the valley of Gap Creek, where perhaps life will be better.But Julie and Hank's new life in the valley, in the last years of the nineteenth century, is more complicated than the couple ever imagined. Sometimes it's hard to tell what to fear most—the fires and floods or the flesh-and-blood grifters, drunks, and busybodies who insinuate themselves into their new life. To survive, they must find out whether love can keep chaos and madness at bay. Their struggles with nature, with work, with the changing century, and with the disappointments and triumphs of their union make Gap Creek a timeless story of a marriage.A native of the North Carolina mountains, Robert Morgan was raised on land settled by his Welsh ancestors. An accomplished novelist and poet, he has won the James B. Hanes Poetry Prize, the North Carolina Award in Literature, and the Jacaranda Review Fiction Prize. His short stories have appeared in Prize Stories: The O. Henry Awards and New Stories from the South, and his novel The Truest Pleasure was a finalist for the Southern Book Critics Circle Award for Fiction.
Border Songs
Jim Lynch - 2009
Though his curious mind proves surprisingly adept at intercepting Canadian pot smugglers and potentially dangerous illegals, years of security hysteria and cross-border resentment - and a fascinating young Canadian who has turned her green thumb to a more lucrative crop - complicate Brandon’ s world in ways even he might not be able to see past.Border Songs is that rare delight: a gently satirical portrait, an extraordinary love story and a celebration of the coincidental and the miraculous.From the Hardcover edition.
The Believers
Zoë Heller - 2008
When Joel Litvinoff is felled by a stroke, his wife, Audrey, uncovers a secret that forces her to re-examine her ideas about their forty-year marriage. Joel’s children will soon have to come to terms with this unsettling discovery themselves, but for the time being, they are grappling with their own dilemmas. Rosa is being pressed to make a commitment to religion. Karla is falling in love with the owner of a newspaper concession and Lenny is back on drugs. In the course of battling their own demons and each other, every member of the family is called upon to re-examine long-held articles of faith and to decide what – if anything – they still believe in.
Where You Once Belonged
Kent Haruf - 1990
But when he fails to make the grade as a college footballer, and takes a job with the local farmers' co-operative, it seems he has finally settled into the rhythm and routine of everyday life. Outward appearances can be deceptive, however, as Jack proves: returning from a weekend conference with a new wife in tow, then leaving her behind and skipping town with a bundle of other folk's money.Nearly a decade later, no one has forgiven or forgotten, and when Jack reappears, resentment runs high. Once again though, it is Jack whose presence - even more than his eight-year absence - proves the most devastating.
Golden State
Stephanie Kegan - 2014
All her life, Natalie Askedahl has played the part of the good girl. Growing up as the youngest child in one of California’s most prominent political families, she worshipped her big brother, Bobby, a sensitive math prodigy who served as her protector and confidante. But after Bobby left home at sixteen on a Princeton scholarship, something changed between them as Bobby retreated deeper into his own head. Now that Natalie is happily married, with two young daughters, a satisfying job, and a house in the Berkeley Hills, her only real regret is losing Bobby.Then, a bomb explodes in the middle of her ideal-seeming life. Her brother is accused of carrying out a lethal campaign of terrorism against California’s universities. Thrust into overnight notoriety, Natalie is torn between helping him and protecting her own family. The decisions she makes will send her down a rabbit hole of confusion, lies, and betrayals that threaten to destroy her relationships with everyone she holds dear. As her life splits irrevocably into before and after, what she begins to learn is that some of the most dangerous things in the world are the stories we tell ourselves.