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Birdcall Morning


Mark J. Asher - 2016
    The last time he was conscious, at thirty-one, O.J. Simpson had just led police on a long car chase and nobody knew the name Monica Lewinsky. When he turns on the strange-looking flat screen in his room at the nursing home, he hears reporters on one channel after another talking about Charlie Sheen’s infamous meltdown. After his mother arrives at his bedside, he learns that his father has died, his wife has divorced him, and the music store that he owned for most of his adult life has been sold. As Joel grapples with the loss of his independence, he realizes that his mother, who has driven him crazy since birth, will be his caretaker for the foreseeable future. Luckily, angels disguised as therapists and the support of old friends help him through a grueling rehabilitation. With one foot in the past and a heavy heart, Joel is about to slowly reenter a very different world than the one he left. Birdcall Morning is an emotional and life-affirming tale about the struggle to start over, the value of friendship, the true nature of love, and the changing times that we live in. It’s the sort of book that takes you on an unexpected journey that’s captivating until the very last word.

Playing with Fire: A Legal Thriller


James Taylor Adams - 2015
    Thwarted in a previous attempt to bring charges for other nefarious crimes, Ms. Battle is determined to put the crime boss behind bars, and this time she has what looks like an airtight case. Claiming he has been framed, Carmine hires the blue blood, Harvard-educated attorney Harrison Fletcher, Jr. who was recently fired from his position as Assistant DA for refusing to compromise his ethics, to help him prove his innocence. Assisted by his beautiful wife and a scruffy, alcohol-loving detective, Harry sets out to discover who set the fire and why. As what really happened that June night becomes clear, evidence begins to disappear. With the defense’s case starting to crumble, Harry devises a way to prove Carmine’s innocence. But will the plan work?

Being Invisible


Thomas Berger - 1987
    Fed up, one day he wills himself physically invisible, and the results are both sadly pathetic and hilariously funny.

The Wreckage of Agathon


John Gardner - 1970
    He sits imprisoned with his apprentice, Peeker, for his presumed involvement in a rebellion against the Spartan tyrant Lykourgos. Confined to a cell, the men produce extraordinary writings that illustrate the stories of their lives and give witness to Agathon's deterioration and the growth of Peeker from a bashful young apprentice to a self-assured and passionate seer. Captivating and imaginative, The Wreckage of Agathon is a tribute to author John Gardner's passion for ancient storytelling and those universal themes that span the course of all human civilization.

Goodbye Vietnam


William Broyles Jr. - 2013
    Previously published as Brothers in Arms, this edition includes a new preface by the author.When William Broyles Jr. was drafted, he was a twenty-four-year-old student at Oxford University in England, hoping to avoid military service. During his physical exam, however, he realized that he couldn’t let social class or education give him special privileges. He joined the marines, and soon commanded an infantry platoon in the foothills near Da Nang. More than a decade later, Broyles found himself flooded with emotion during the dedication of the Vietnam Veterans Memorial in Washington, DC. He decided to return to Vietnam and confront what he’d been through. Broyles was one of the very first combat veterans to return to the battlefields. No American before or since has gone so deeply into the other side of the war: the enemy side. Broyles interviews dozens of Vietnamese, from the generals who ran the war to the men and women who fought it. He moves from the corridors of power in Hanoi—so low-tech that the plumbing didn’t work—to the jungles and rice paddies where he’d fought. He meets survivors of American B-52 strikes and My Lai, and grieves with a woman whose son was killed by his own platoon. Along the way, Broyles also explores the deep bonds he shared with his own comrades, and the mystery of why men love war even as they hate it. Amidst the landscape of death, his formerly faceless enemies come to life. They had once tried to kill each other, but they are all brothers now.

Green Ice


Gerald A. Browne - 1978
    Cynical, ne'er-do-well New Yorker John Wiley, seeking to get away from it all, meets up with a self-destructive young heiress and earns the disfavor of the South American syndicate which controls the black market in Colombian emeralds.

Slipstream


Leslie Larson - 2006
    When Rudy loses his job cleaning jets at the airport, his sanity and his marriage threaten to follow. While his wife, Inez, secretly saves her pennies and plots an escape, his coworker Wylie, a bartender at LAX, is about to receive the surprise of his life. Meanwhile, Wylie’s brother, Logan, freshly released from jail, tries desperately to stay out of trouble while traipsing through a minefield of temptation. And Logan’s daughter Jewell is nursing a heart broken once by an unfaithful girlfriend and again by a father who can’t seem to stick around. Though they don’t know it, these five people are headed toward an explosive event that will have consequences for them all.Deftly weaving suspense, humor, and revelation, Slipstream is a rich human drama with the breathless pace of a thriller and the soul of classic noir.Also available as a Books on Tape AudioBook and as an eBookFrom the Hardcover edition.

The Year of Silence


Madison Smartt Bell - 1987
    The author approaches Marian's death from the viewpoints of the people that touched her life including her lover, her best friend, and even her enemies.

Girl Through Glass


Sari Wilson - 2016
    Enduring the mess of her parent’s divorce, she finds escape in dance—the rigorous hours of practice, the exquisite beauty, the precision of movement, the obsessive perfectionism. Ballet offers her control, power, and the promise of glory. It also introduces her to forty-seven-year-old Maurice DuPont, a reclusive, charismatic balletomane who becomes her mentor.Over the course of three years, Mira is accepted into the prestigious School of American Ballet run by the legendary George Balanchine, and eventually becomes one of “Mr. B’s girls”—a dancer of rare talent chosen for greatness. As she ascends higher in the ballet world, her relationship with Maurice intensifies, touching dark places within herself and sparking unexpected desires that will upend both their lives.In the present day, Kate, a professor of dance at a Midwestern college, embarks on a risky affair with a student that threatens to obliterate her career and capsizes the new life she has painstakingly created for her reinvented self. When she receives a letter from a man she’s long thought dead, Kate is hurled back into the dramas of a past she thought she had left behind.Told in interweaving narratives that move between past and present, Girl Through Glass illuminates the costs of ambition, secrets, and the desire for beauty, and reveals how the sacrifices we make for an ideal can destroy—or save—us.

Assignment Bletchley: A WWII Novel of Navy Intelligence, Spies and Intrigue (Commander Romella, USN, WWII Assignments series Book 1)


Peter J. Azzole - 1999
    Navy is a specialist in the field of communications intelligence. Little did Tony know that the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor would have such a direct impact on his career and life. He is urgently ordered from his comfortable duty in Washington, DC to an assignment at Bletchley Park, the British communications intelligence center. This fast-paced, riveting story thrusts Tony into personal, technical and diplomatic situations that test his skills and ingenuity. His love life intermingles with his involvement in a high-level world of intelligence, spies and intrigue. Tony loves every minute of it. Published author, Peter J. Azzole, is a retired U.S. Navy officer with a career in communications intelligence. He crafts this story from history and professional experience.

In the Blue Light of African Dreams


Paul Watkins - 1990
    Disfigured and demoralized, he deserts from France's famed Lafayette Escadrille, only to be captured, convicted, and sentenced to twenty years in the Foreigh Legion. He serves in Africa, where, along with a motley group of convicts and outcasts, Halifax is forced to fly illegal arms shipments to the very tribesmen they have been sent to fight. But a dream keeps Halifax alive even as his companions fall to harm or misery-the relentless determination to become the first pilot to fly nonstop from Paris to New York.

October Ferry To Gabriola


Malcolm Lowry - 1971
    It is not a completed novel, however. According to Margerie Lowry, the author's widow, this published version is her "sorting out" of numerous drafts of chapters, paragraphs and even sentences that Lowry began to write in 1946.

Water Shall Refuse Them


Lucie McKnight Hardy - 2019
    Following the accidental drowning of her sister, sixteen-year-old Nif and her family move to a small village on the Welsh borders to escape their grief. But rural seclusion doesn't bring any relief. As her family unravels, Nif begins to put together her own form of witchcraft - collecting talismans from the sun-starved land. That is, until she meets Mally, a teen boy who takes a keen interest in her, and has his own secret rites to divulge.Reminiscent of the suspense of Shirley Jackson and soaked in the folk horror of the British landscape, Water Shall Refuse Them is an atmospheric coming-of-age novel and a thrilling debut.

Strings


Dave Duncan - 1990
    So the scientists of 4-I were happy to promise her a place in the next offworld colonization team if she agreed to assess the potential of the latest worlds they had discovered. Then she met Cedric, the grandson of 4-I's brilliant and tyrannical director, and for the first time ever she began to doubt her uncanny intuition.Cedric dreamed of becoming a scout and exploring other worlds. When he met the lovely Alya he was more determined than ever to leave Earth -- with her. His grandmother, though, needed him as a pawn in her Machiavellian plot to cover up a murder and protect 4-I itself from being destroyed.She had no intention of letting him go. But the director underestimated her grandson -- and the woman whose destiny seemed linked with his . . .

Storms Gather Between Us


Clare Flynn - 2019
    Since escaping his family’s notoriety in Australia Will Kidd has spent a decade sailing the seas, never looking back. Content to live the life of a wanderer, everything changes in a single moment when he comes face to face with a ghost from his past on a cloudy beach in Liverpool.The daughter of an abusive zealot, every step of Hannah Dawson's life has been laid out for her... until she meets Will by chance and is set on a new path. Their love is forbidden and forces on all sides divide them, but their bond is undeniable. Now, they will have to fight against all the odds to escape the chains of their histories and find their way back to one another. A compelling tale of family secrets and love against the odds, perfect for fans of Fiona Valpy and Gill Paul. Praise for Storms Gather Between Us 'Another great book by Clare Flynn’ Reader Review‘A really gripping and moving pre WWII story’ Reader Review‘I would recommend this book without hesitation’ Reader Review‘Very descriptive, immersive and well written. This book is guaranteed to make you turn each and every page.’ Reader Review‘I was totally gripped from the first page’ Reader Review