Book picks similar to
Dog-Heart by Diana McCaulay
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Walland
Andrea Thome - 2016
But when she decides to call off her high-profile wedding and take time off from her network television job, everything turns upside down. Tranquil Blackberry Farm in the moody Smoky Mountains of Tennessee was supposed to be a place she could hide out and lick her wounds. Instead she finds herself questioning everything she ever thought she wanted.Wyatt is a man with scars that run deep. He's built a careful life for himself, and he has no intention of letting anyone get close to him . . . again.But what happens when two people who are running away from love run right into one another? Will the intense chemistry they feel be enough to overpower their fears? Or will their time together in the Smoky Mountains end with broken hearts?
What's Not Said
Valerie Taylor - 2020
Once again, she postpones her path to freedom—at least, until she pokes around his pajama drawer and discovers his illness is the least of his deceits.But Kassie is no angel, either. As she struggles to justify her own indiscretions, the secret lives she and Mike have led collide head-on, revealing a tangled web of sex, lies, and DNA. Still, mindful of her vows, Kassie commits to helping her husband find an organ donor. In the process, she uncovers a life-changing secret. Problem is, if she reveals it, her own immorality will be exposed, which means she has an impossible decision to make: Whose life will she save—her husband’s or her own?
The River Within
Karen Powell - 2020
Alexander, Tom and his sister Lennie, discover the body of their childhood friend Danny Masters in the river that runs through Starome, a village on the Richmond estate in North Yorkshire. His death is a mystery. Did he jump, or was it just an accident?Lady Venetia Richmond has no time to dwell on the death. Newly widowed, she is busy trying to keep the estate together, while struggling with death duties and crippling taxation.Alexander, her son and sole heir to Richmond Hall, is of little help. Just when she most needs him, he grows elusive, his behavior becoming increasingly erratic.Lennie Fairweather, ‘child of nature’ and daughter of the late Sir Angus’s private secretary, has other things on her mind too. In love with Alexander, she longs to escape life with her over-protective father and domineering brother. Alexander is unpredictable though, hard to pin down. Can she be sure of his true feelings towards her?In the weeks that follow the tragic drowning, the river begins to give up its secrets. As the truth about Danny’s death emerges, other stories come to the surface that threaten to destroy everyone’s plans for future and, ultimately, their very way of life.The River Within will surely take its place as a classic in a tradition of English fiction that takes in Thomas Hardy, Graham Swift and Helen Dunmore.
The Girl with No Hands and Other Tales
Angela Slatter - 2010
These are the stories told to warn children, entertain adults and beguile all. Contents:BluebeardThe Living BookThe Jacaranda WifeRed SkeinThe Chrysanthemum BrideFrozenThe Hummingbird HeartWordsThe Little Match GirlThe Juniper TreeSkinThe Bone MotherThe Dead Ones Don’t Hurt YouLight As Mist, Heavy As HopeDresses, ThreeThe Girl With No HandsCover design by Lisa L. Hannett
Amiable with Big Teeth
Claude McKay - 2017
as 'a major event which dramatically expands the canon of novels written by Harlem Renaissance writers'. Building on the already extraordinary legacy of McKay's life and work, this colourful, dramatic novel centres on the effort by Harlem intelligentsia to organize support for the liberation of Mussolini-occupied Ethiopia, a crucial but largely forgotten event in American history. At once a penetrating satire of political machinations in Depression-era Harlem and a far-reaching story of global intrigue and romance, Amiable with Big Teeth plunges into the concerns, anxieties, hopes and dreams of African-Americans at a moment of crisis for the soul of Harlem.
The Healing
Gayl Jones - 1998
But before she found her calling, Harlan had been a minor rock star's manager and, before that, a beautician. Harlan retraces her story to the beginning, when she once had a fling with the rock star's ex-husband and found herself infatuated with an Afro-German horse dealer. Along the way she's somehow lost her own husband, a medical anthropologist now traveling with a medicine woman across eastern Africa. Harlan draws us deeper into her world and the mystery at the heart of her tale: the story of her first healing.The Healing is a lyrical and at times humorous exploration of the struggle to let go of pain, anger, and even love. Slipping seamlessly back through Harlan's memories in a language rich with the textured cadences of unfiltered dialogue, Gayl Jones weaves her story to its dramatic--and unexpected--beginning.
Manja
Anna Gmeyner - 1938
Set in the turbulent Germany of the Weimar Republic, it goes on, equally dramatically, to describe the lives of the children and their families until 1933 when the Nazis came to power. 'What is so unusual,' wrote the playwright Berthold Viertel in 1938, 'is the way the novel contrasts the children's community - in all its idealism, romanticism, decency and enchantment - with the madhouse community of the adults.'
There Will Be No More Good Nights Without Good Nights
Laura van den Berg - 2012
They know there are whole worlds out there that have never been seen, some as distant as the Amazon rain forest, others as close as a neighbor’s house, the curtains left open. Laura van den Berg helps us discover these worlds, blending the mundane and routine with the strange and unexpected. The search won’t always end with the stories—these restless narrators will always be left with mysteries unsolved, questions unanswered and hidden aches not quite healed—but what they see along the way will be nothing short of marvelous.Order here.
The Memory Keeper
Jenny Hale - 2021
She has the perfect job at a New York magazine, a small but elegant apartment in the upper west side, and an incredibly successful beau named Miles Monahan. This year, for her thirty-fifth birthday, she’s leaving the icy city sludge for sunshine! She’s got tickets for two to Barbados, and she’s all packed and meeting Miles at the airport for a week of cocktails, sandy beaches, and the music of steel drums. But her life is turned upside down in the span of that one morning. Hannah is rocked by the news that her beloved grandmother is very sick, and Hannah needs to come home to her small Tennessee town right away to be with her family and help run her gran’s dilapidated flower shop. It also means she has to face Ethan Wright, the best friend she’d left behind so many years ago. If that isn’t enough to deal with, she discovers her boyfriend is seeing someone else. With flights grounded and rental cars in great demand due to the winter snowstorm, she’s stranded at the airport. On her birthday, instead of waking up in a stylish beachfront hotel in Miles’s arms like she thought, she finds herself packed like sardines into a car, with two passengers, on a ride-share from LaGuardia Airport to her hometown of Franklin, Tennessee.When everything seems to be going wrong, it’s the kindness of a handsome businessman from Hannah’s past named Liam McGuire that might just save her. But a new development that threatens Gran’s shop and secrets surrounding Liam could alter both their lives forever. A heartwarming, sweet romance that will have you laughing, crying, and best of all, hugging those around you a little tighter. If you loved the Christmas movies based on Jenny’s books and are looking for more feel-good, small town romance, look no further!
The Summer House
Hannah McKinnon - 2017
Clementine, her youngest child and a young mother of two small children, has caused Flossy the most worry after enduring a tragically life-altering year. But Samuel and his partner Evan are not far behind in their ability to alarm: their prospective adoption search has just taken a heart-wrenching turn. Only Paige, the eldest of the headstrong Merrill clan, is her usual self: arriving precisely on time with her well-adapted teens. Little does her family know that she, too, is facing personal struggles of her own.No matter. With her family finally congregated under one seaside roof, Flossy is determined to steer her family back on course even as she prepares to reveal the fate of the summer house that everyone has thus far taken for granted: she’s selling it. The Merrill children are both shocked and outraged and each returns to memories of their childhoods at their once beloved summer house—the house where they have not only grown up, but from which they have grown away. With each lost in their respective heartaches, Clementine, Samuel, and Paige will be forced to reconsider what really matters before they all say goodbye to a house that not only defined their summers, but, ultimately, the ways in which they define themselves. Featuring McKinnon’s “sharp and evocative” (Kirkus Reviews) voice, this warm-hearted novel is perfect for fans of Elin Hilderbrand and Mary Alice Monroe.
The Marvellous Equations of the Dread: A Novel in Bass Riddim
Marcia Douglas - 2016
Bob Marley.” Reincarnated as homeless Fall-down man, Bob Marley sleeps in a clock tower built on the site of a lynching in Half Way Tree, Kingston. The ghosts of Marcus Garvey and King Edward VII are there too, drinking whiskey and playing solitaire. No one sees that Fall-down is Bob Marley, no one but his long-ago love, the deaf woman, Leenah, and, in the way of this otherworldly book, when Bob steps into the street each day, five years have passed. Jah ways are mysterious ways, from Kingston’s ghettoesto London, from Haile Selaisse’s Ethiopian palace and back to Jamaica, Marcia Douglas’s mythical reworking of three hundred years of violence is a ticket to the deep world of Rasta history. This amazing novel—in bass riddim—carries the reader on a voyage all the way to the gates of Zion.
How Not to Save the World
Jessica Yinka Thomas - 2011
Frustrated by her inability to raise funds and faced with the imminent closure of the APC, Remi turns to a life of crime to keep her nonprofit afloat.From Sydney, to Tokyo, Geneva and Cape Town, Remi transforms from a fundraiser too shy to speak during staff meetings into a daring international art thief who must stop a war from breaking out and figure out how to save herself from a life behind bars.With the help of her best friend, a designer and inventor who creates gadget-packed gowns, Remi eludes a dashing insurance agent and a terrifying stalker, all while redistributing the wealth of the world, one work of art at a time.
One Taste Too Many
Debra H. Goldstein - 2018
With nothing much to show for the last decade but her feisty Siamese cat, RahRah, and some clumsy domestic skills, she's the polar opposite of her bubbly twin, Emily--an ambitious chef determined to take her culinary ambitions to the top at a local gourmet restaurant . . .Sarah knew starting over would be messy. But things fall apart completely when her ex drops dead, seemingly poisoned by Emily's award-winning rhubarb crisp. Now, with RahRah wanted by the woman who broke up her marriage and Emily wanted by the police for murder, Sarah needs to figure out the right recipe to crack the case before time runs out. Unfortunately, for a gal whose idea of good china is floral paper plates, catching the real killer and living to tell about it could mean facing a fate worse than death--being in the kitchen! Includes quick and easy recipes!
This Is Not Chick Lit: Original Stories by America's Best Women Writers
Elizabeth Merrick - 2006
Davis • Jennifer Egan • Carolyn Ferrell • Mary Gordon • Cristina Henríquez • Samantha Hunt •Binnie Kirshenbaum • Dika Lam • Caitlin Macy • Francine Prose • Holiday Reinhorn • Roxana Robinson • Curtis Sittenfeld • Lynne Tillman • Martha Witt
Chick lit: A genre of fiction that often recycles the following plot: Girl in big city desperately searches for Mr. Right in between dieting and shopping for shoes. Girl gets dumped (sometimes repeatedly). Girl finds Prince Charming. This Is Not Chick Lit is a celebration of America’s most dynamic literary voices, as well as a much needed reminder that, for every stock protagonist with a designer handbag and three boyfriends, there is a woman writer pushing the envelope of literary fiction with imagination, humor, and depth. The original short stories in this collection touch on some of the same themes as chick lit–the search for love and identity–but they do so with extraordinary power, creativity, and range; they are also political, provocative, and, at turns, utterly surprising. Featuring marquee names as well as burgeoning talents, This Is Not Chick Lit will nourish your heart, and your mind. “This Is Not Chick Lit is important not only for its content, but for its title. I’ll know we’re getting somewhere when equally talented male writers feel they have to separate themselves from the endless stream of fiction glorifying war, hunting and sports by naming an anthology This Is Not a Guy Thing.”–Gloria Steinem“These voices, diverse and almost eerily resonant, offer us a refreshing breath of womanhood-untamed, ungroomed, and unglossed.”–ELLE