Book picks similar to
A Hard Old Love Amongst Scavengers by David Doucette
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Making the Grade
Cate Shearwater - 2015
Ellie has a dream . . . to become a world-class gymnast. When she’s offered a place at the prestigious London Gymnastics Academy, it looks like she has a chance to make that dream come true. But there are many obstacles to overcome, new friends to make, and rivalries to face! Will she make it, against all the odds?Making the Grade is the first book in the Somersaults and Dreams series, a rollercoaster ride full of friendship, rivalries, setbacks and triumphs, with echoes of classic stories like Ballet Shoes.
Life Before Man
Margaret Atwood - 1979
Imprisoned by walls of their own construction, here are three people, each in midlife, in midcrisis, forced to make choices--after the rules have changed. Elizabeth, with her controlled sensuality, her suppressed rage, is married to the wrong man. She has just lost her latest lover to suicide. Nate, her gentle, indecisive husband, is planning to leave her for Lesje, a perennial innocent who prefers dinosaurs to men. Hanging over them all is the ghost of Elizabeth's dead lover...and the dizzying threat of three lives careening inevitably toward the same climax.
Brothers of Belle Fourche: Books 1-3
Kari Trumbo - 2018
Teach Me to Love Izzy Lawson has taken her last abuse. When her husband dies, she has a choice to make: go home and face the family who made her stay with the beast, or head to Belle Fourche to the only friend she has left. The reserve she's worked so hard to build crumbles in the verdant rolling hills, and in the arms of a man so different from her husband. Conrad Oleson can't read, and it's shamed him for longer than he can remember. When another teacher shows up on his front step, he's sure his brother is meddling again. But when Izzy reveals her painful past, he can't stay away. And if learning to read brings him closer to her, he'll do about anything for her. Including, teaching her how to love. What the Heart Holds Arnold's first love died in the Cheyenne river. He’s sure he’s had his one love. To guard his heart, he wants nothing to do with women. No one could ever compare to his Lynellen. He will work hard, be respectful, and never forget. Stephenia is the new teacher in Belle Fourche when she almost meets her Maker. Arnold saved her life, and maybe her heart. She’s avoided relationships her whole life, afraid of the pain of loss. When she finally gives up on him, he has to choose between the love he’s lost and the one who found him. Deep Longing of the Soul Eli Oleson killed a man. Never mind that he did it to save the lives of others, it’s eaten his soul to shreds. Nothing matters. When he injures himself breaking a horse, he has little reason to recover, except for the feisty English nurse who keeps pestering him. Anne Hammond is a skilled nurse, trained in curing the sick and treating the wounded, but some wounds don't heal as easily. She's seen war and heartache and left England for the American west to forget the images that haunt her. When a cowboy, broken in more ways than she can see, winds up on her examining table, will she be skilled enough to assist in his healing? Or will his wounds only open the ones she thought she'd left behind? Don't miss these sweet, western, cowboy romances bringing love from loss.
Taylor Swift
Sarah Parvis - 2009
The New York Times described her as "one of pop's finest songwriters, country's foremost pragmatist and more in touch with her inner life than most adults." This perfectly giftable Little Book tells Taylor's tale from her roots in Pennsylvania to Nashville to Hollywood. This is a must-have for Taylor Swift fans.
The Indigo Sun
Rupa Bhullar - 2017
It’s where you belong, and ultimately return - a return to the beginning, a return within.The Indigo Sun is an enchanting tale set amidst the deserts of Rajasthan where Maya, a young NRI woman is led on a transformative journey by a young boy Ananda; a mystic gypsy woman named Leela; and Veer, a well-respected, socially driven entrepreneur from London. Together, they embark on a colourful odyssey encompassing culture, heritage, simplicity and celebration of life.In this unknown and distant land surrounded by strangers, Maya’s past, present, and future come together as do her body, mind and soul. She discovers another meaning of life, forms incredible bonds, meets the man of her dreams, and finally comes face-to-face with her truth—the indigo sun, a treasure that lay buried in her heart all along.She is finally home.
Forest Green
Kate Pullinger - 2020
Forest Green is the story of how he ended up there.Arthur Lunn is a golden boy who spends long summer days roaming the hills and swimming in the lakes of the Okanagan Valley. But the Great Depression is destroying lives, even in Art's remote and bucolic hometown. Soon, Art finds himself caught up in a battle between the town and the vagrants flowing through it, and before long the tension reaches a boiling point.A catastrophe follows--and changes everything. The trauma from this event shapes and haunts Art's life moving forward, from his experiences as a soldier in World War II to his reckless, nomadic working days in logging camps across British Columbia to his turbulent relationship with his one great love--a woman he cannot believe he deserves.Painful, poignant, yet full of hope, Forest Green explores how trauma can warp our lives while love can help us to mend.
The Birthday Lunch
Joan Clark - 2015
Free-spirited Lily has always played the peacemaker between her fierce, doting sister, Laverne, and her loving, garrulous husband, Hal, as they competed for her attention, and the competition has only gotten worse since they all moved into the same big house. Today Laverne feels she's beaten Hal out for Lily's company at a birthday lunch, but it's a bittersweet and short-lived victory. When the sisters stop for celebratory ice cream cones at the town's famous Creamery after lunch, Lily is struck and killed by a speeding gravel truck. In The Birthday Lunch, Joan Clark explores the shock of unexpected death and the (occasionally comical) business of grieving. Each member of Lily's family comes alive in their unique confrontation of loss: Hal's open sorrow, her daughter Claudia's re-examination of her own choices, her son Matt's determination to expose the young truck-driver's liability. And, unforgettably, Laverne's eccentricity and isolation, her intensifying conflict with Hal, illuminates the brutal territory of blame and regret. Suspenseful and moving, with a powerfully evoked Maritime setting, The Birthday Lunch is an extraordinary novel from one of our most gifted storytellers.
The Girl Who Was Saturday Night
Heather O'Neill - 2014
Now, in The Girl Who Was Saturday Night, she returns to the grubby, enchanted city with a light and profound tale of the vice of fame and the ties of family.Nineteen years old, free of prospects, and inescapably famous, the twins Nicholas and Nouschka Tremblay are trying to outrun the notoriety of their father, a French-Canadian Serge Gainsbourg with a genius for the absurd and for winding up in prison. “Back in the day, he could come home from a show with a paper bag filled with women’s underwear. Outside of Québec nobody had even heard of him, naturally. Québec needed stars badly.”Since the twins were little, Étienne has made them part of his unashamed seduction of the province, parading them on talk shows and then dumping them with their decrepit grandfather while he disappeared into some festive squalor. Now Étienne is washed up and the twins are making their own almost-grown-up messes, with every misstep landing on the front pages of the tabloid Allo Police. Nouschka not only needs to leave her childhood behind; she also has to leave her brother, whose increasingly erratic decisions might take her down with him.
I Plan on Forever
Stefanie Jenkins - 2020
He opened her heart to love again. Almost four years later, their wedding day finally arrives. Family and friends travel from near and far to witness them promise each other forever. Kyler may not have been her first love, but he plans on being her last.
Moth to a Flame (Narrowdale Mystery Book 2)
Michael Omer - 2015
Since then, the recurring nightmares, creepy hallucinations and overpowering fear are gone. That's good, right? I mean, no one in their right minds wants to feel like that. I am starting to wonder if I'm in my right mind anymore...When a lady in my neighborhood died, I couldn't help but stick my nose in, to see what happened. I should just get on with things–I've got some new friends, and a cool boy named Chris has taken an interest in me. Everyone is telling me to just leave this weird murder alone.But I can't stop myself. The more I find out about her death, the more twisted everything is.I think there’s a predator in Narrowdale. And now it’s hunting me…What have I gotten myself into?
If You Were Mine
Rebecca King - 2012
With nothing more than a few coins in her pouch and the clothes on her back, she disappears into the night wholly unprepared for the stark reality of life on the streets.He was too late to save her. Vowing vengeance upon the uncle responsible for her brutal murder, Dominic Cavendish, Lord Havistock returns home to grieve for the woman he thought he had lost. The hauntingly familiar figure he finds there changes his life forever. Suddenly Dominic is faced with an entirely new battle.Will he and Isobel discover the truth behind the complex web of lies and deceit that tore them apart? Can he persuade Isobel to place her trust in him once more and take a chance on their future happiness, despite the threat to their very lives?Book One of new the Cavendish Mysteries series begins the journey of four very special couples living in Regency England, whose courtship is anything but conventional!Cinders and Ashes, book two of this intriguing new series is available from 15th January 2013. s
The True Wealth is Inside: A Pride and Prejudice Variation
Melanie Schertz - 2021
While visiting his aunt's home, he meets and falls in love with Margaret O'Brien. The married and had more children, including three sons, thus breaking the entail that had been in place by Thomas' grandfather. But Thomas' cousin is convinced that the sons cannot inherit. You see, the second Mrs Bennet came from Antigua, the child of an English born land owner and a freed slave. Mr Collins, the Bennet cousin believes that the sons are not worthy of inheriting an estate, and plans to eliminate the entire Bennet family, thus he could claim Longbourn. How will Darcy, who is visiting the community with his friend who had leased the neighboring estate of Netherfield Park, accept such knowledge? Will he follow his heart or will he bow to society's view of such a family? Will Elizabeth and Darcy have a happily ever after or is their relationship doomed?
After You've Gone
Jeffrey Lent - 2008
Henry Dorn has spent years building a family, but it only takes a single afternoon for it to fall apart. The woman with whom he fell in love in the first blush of youth, who has been his perfect mate through a lively young marriage ripened by the raising of three children, has been lost. The car wreck that killed her also took their son Robert, a veteran of the Great War whose bitterness and addiction to morphine had slowly been driving him and Henry apart. Restless, broken, questing but unsure for what, Henry buys a steamer ticket for Amsterdam, planning to research his family history and start life anew. But nothing could have prepared him for the young woman he meets on the ship: the fiery, self-sufficient Lydia Pearce, one of a new generation of women. At first Henry does not know what to make of Lydia but, before long, they have fallen into an affair of a depth and significance for which neither was prepared. And just as quickly as he was robbed of Olivia, Henry is faced with the gift of new possibilities--and the need to reconcile them with those already lost. From a hardscrabble Nova Scotia fishing town, to a women's college in New York, to a 1920s Europe alive with the unbuttoning of sexuality but scarred by war, After You've Gone is a gorgeous tale spanning several pivotal decades in American life, and an unforgettable portrait of one man and the extraordinary women he loved.
House Party
Eric Walters - 2007
When her parents leave town for the weekend, her friend suggests she have a house party. Casey is reluctant to go along, until she realizes maybe this is the answer to fitting in and making friends--and getting back at her parents. They invite a few people and then a few more, using msn and text messaging. Hundreds of people show up and things get out of hand. Casey is in more trouble than she thought possible and now she must decide whether--and how--to do the right thing.
Some Great Thing
Lawrence Hill - 1992
The son of a retired railway porter from Winnipeg, he returns home for a job as a reporter with The Winnipeg Herald. Soon Mahatma is scoping local stories of murder and mayhem, breaking a promise to himself to avoid writing victim stories.As Mahatma is unexpectedly drawn into the inflammatory issue of French-language rights in Manitoba, with all its racial side-channels, he is surprised to find that he has a social conscience. Combating his boss’s flair for weaving hysteria into his stories, Mahatma learns that to stay afloat he must remain true to himself.Populated with colourful characters — including an unlikely welfare crusader, a burned-out fellow reporter, a French-language-rights activist, and a visiting journalist from Cameroon — Some Great Thing is a fascinating portrait of a major urban newspaper and a deeply perceptive story of one man’s coming of age.
