Book picks similar to
I Used to Think I Was Normal But Now I Take Pills for That by J.L. Black
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I Thought You Said This Would Work
Ann Wertz Garvin - 2021
It’s for the best. Samantha prefers to avoid conflict. The blisteringly honest Holly craves it. What they still have in common puts them both back on speed dial: a mutual love for Katie, their best friend of twenty-five years, now hospitalized with cancer and needing one little errand from her old college roomies.It’s simple: travel cross-country together, steal her loathsome ex-husband’s VW camper, find Katie’s diabetic Great Pyrenees at a Utah rescue, and drive him back home to Wisconsin. If it’ll make Katie happy, no favor is too big (one hundred pounds), too daunting (two thousand miles), or too illegal (ish), even when a boho D-list celebrity hitches a ride and drives the road trip in fresh directions.Samantha and Holly are following every new turn—toward second chances, unexpected romance, and self-discovery—and finally blowing the dust off the secret that broke their friendship. On the open road, they’ll try to put it back together—for themselves, and especially for the love of Katie.
27 (Twenty-Seven): Six Friends, One Year
R.J. Heald - 2012
Kurt Cobain. Amy Winehouse. Janis Joplin. They died at 27. Six friends reunite in London. From the outside their lives are enviable; from the new father, to the rich entrepreneur to the carefree traveller. But underneath their facades, they are starting to unravel. Dave is made redundant, Renee's marriage is crumbling and Katie is forced to return home to her parents after six years abroad. In a world fuelled by social media and ravaged by recession, the friends must face up to the choices they must make to lead the lives they truly want to live.“The characters are sharply observed and as I read, I quickly came to feel they were my friends too… All along we feel we are in the hands of an accomplished storyteller, and of course there is a satisfying climax.” "Well written and interesting...this was great and I wanted to read more." - Amazon Breakthrough Novel Expert Reviewer“This is a fantastic read for the summer holidays. A genuinely lovely warm surprising story. I loved the characters and felt part of their journey. Can highly recommend.” “An enjoyable read for a generation who are obsessed with how others perceive them and who measure success in terms of job titles and relationship statuses.”“27 is one of those books that you really want to finish so that you can find out what's happened but on the other hand, you want it to carry on so that you can stay with the characters that little bit longer!” “The characters are realistic, their dramas riveting and the writing profoundly charming as Ruth Heald expertly takes you through a tumultuous year-long journey through the lives of the modern daytwenty-something.
Love and Shenanigans
Zara Keane - 2014
When she discovers the drunken vows she exchanged with the groom during a wild Las Vegas trip eight years previously mean they're legally married, her future plans ricochet out of control.Gavin Maguire's life is low on drama, high on stability, and free of pets. But Gavin hadn't reckoned on Fiona blasting back into his life and crashing his wedding. In the space of twenty-four hours, he loses a fiancée and a job, and gains a wife and a puppy. Can he salvage his bland-but-stable life? More importantly, can he resist losing his heart to Fiona all over again?
Apathy and Other Small Victories
Paul Neilan - 2006
Usually on a Greyhound bus, right before his life falls apart again. Just like he planned. But this time it's complicated: there's a sadistic corporate climber who thinks she's his girlfriend, a rent-subsidized affair with his landlord's wife, and the bizarrely appealing deaf assistant to Shane's cosmically unstable dentist. When one of the women is murdered, and Shane is the only suspect who doesn't care enough to act like he didn't do it, the question becomes just how he'll clear the good name he never had and doesn't particularly want: his own.
Chuck Klosterman X: A Highly Specific, Defiantly Incomplete History of the Early 21st Century
Chuck Klosterman - 2017
His writing spans the realms of culture and sports, while also addressing interpersonal issues, social quandaries, and ethical boundaries. Klosterman has written nine previous books, helped found and establish Grantland, served as the New York Times Magazine Ethicist, worked on film and television productions, and contributed profiles and essays to outlets such as GQ, Esquire, Billboard, The A.V. Club, and The Guardian.Chuck Klosterman's tenth book (aka Chuck Klosterman X) collects his most intriguing of those pieces, accompanied by fresh introductions and new footnotes throughout. Klosterman presents many of the articles in their original form, featuring previously unpublished passages and digressions. Subjects include Breaking Bad, Lou Reed, zombies, KISS, Jimmy Page, Stephen Malkmus, steroids, Mountain Dew, Chinese Democracy, The Beatles, Jonathan Franzen, Taylor Swift, Tim Tebow, Kobe Bryant, Usain Bolt, Eddie Van Halen, Charlie Brown, the Cleveland Browns, and many more cultural figures and pop phenomena. This is a tour of the past decade from one of the sharpest and most prolific observers of our unusual times.
Unusual Ways to Die: History's Weirdest Deaths
James Proud - 2018
This irreverent little book gathers together some of the most peculiar and outrageous ways that people across the globe have met their untimely ends. Whether shocking or silly, these true stories are proof at least that the grim reaper has a strange sense of humour.
Keeper of Secrets
Anjuelle Floyd - 2007
One truth begets another as a passionate tale of confrontation in a San Francisco restaurant travels from eyewitnesses to others. Each protagonist views the attack through an emotion-stained lens, the story taking on a life of its own as filtered through different individuals' pasts, present and futures. Each character unweaves and re-braids their hidden truths, and exposes a chain of inner mysteries that binds them."Karmic truth, the effect of our decisions with our secrets and our deepest loves, comes back and squeezes the hearts of these characters. The elegant, super-rich, super-accomplished African-Americans in Keeper of Secrets are as susceptible as anyone to conflicting passions, ones that may not be reconcilable in this world... Floyd pulls the reader into their lives without mercy." --Clive Matson, author of Let the Crazy Child Write! and First Ten SongsA linked novel centered around the inhabitants of a wealthy enclave of African Americans in the Bay Area. An attempted murder transforms each character. Told from eight different perspectives.
Peter and the Frankenstein
Darren Pillsbury - 2011
Rowling (the HARRY POTTER series), Darren Shan (CIRQUE DU FREAK), R.L. Stine (the GOOSEBUMPS series), and Stephen King (IT)! Volume Three in the PETER AND THE MONSTERS series! Follow the adventures started in PETER AND THE VAMPIRES (Volume One) and PETER AND THE WEREWOLVES (Volume Two)!Tragedy has struck Peter’s best friend Dill. In his effort to help, Grandfather might have actually made things worse. But help is on the way in the form of a new ally, and important information surfaces that might explain the Curse now haunting Peter and his family. In this volume, Peter battles more supernatural mayhem, including:A scientist who pieces together a family of monstrous creations…A pack of small creatures that kill the local baker, and plan to make Peter their next victim…Peter’s own dark side, which rears its ugly head in a violent rampage…A mysterious ‘snow demon’ out of Native American legend that menaces Peter on a ski trip…And a couple of ‘walking dead’ who try to put Peter in the morgue during a visit to the hospital. The PETER AND THE VAMPIRES series is for teens and adults who, when they were kids, were looking for stories that kicked butt. The protagonist might be young, but the stories are dark, funny, and edge-of-your-seat suspenseful.PETER AND THE FRANKENSTEIN is the third in an ongoing series that includes PETER AND THE VAMPIRES (Volume 1) and PETER AND THE WEREWOLVES (Volume 2). This book is 150,000 words (450+ pages) and contains some mild language, violence, and scary situations.
Fresh Eggs and Dog Beds 3: More living 'The Dream' in Rural Ireland
Nick Albert - 2019
But three years later, with the economy crashing and the house refurbishments unfinished, their plan for a tranquil life is falling apart. Are they in danger of replicating the very lifestyle they had hoped to escape, or can they get their lives back on track? Only time will tell.Chock-full of laughter and with a few tears too, this third installment of their quirky life in County Clare sees these whimsical chicken farmers forge ahead with the renovations, make new friends, rescue more dogs, eat a lot of cake and dance joyfully, whilst enduring floods, droughts, fire and ice, and debating the curious problem of what to do with 300 eggs.
Bone Horses
Lesley Poling-Kempes - 2013
Until she comes to New Mexico. During one summer in Agua Dulce, a village haunted by a phantom herd of wild horses and where ravens embody the spirits of ancestors, Charlotte’s world is upended as she unearths the details of her mother’s forbidden love affair, chilling murder, and courageous last act of redemption. Pursued by a madman hell-bent on killing her, Charlotte finds shelter, romance, and her own misplaced soul at the desert camp of a surprisingly sophisticated cowboy, and learns how love in its myriad forms is the only path to lasting salvation.
The Goldblum Variations: Adventures of Jeff Goldblum Across the Known (and Unknown) Universe
Helen McClory - 2019
We like Jeff Goldblum. Helen McClory really likes Jeff Goldblum.So lie back, Jurassic Park-style, and prepare to enjoy The Goldblum Variations, a collection of stories, musings, puzzles, and games based on the one and only Jeff Goldblum as he (and alternate versions of himself) travels through the known (and unknown) universe in a mighty celebration of weird and wonderful Goldbluminess.Maybe he's cresting the steep bluffs of a mysterious planet on an epic treasure hunt, maybe he's wearing a nice sweater, maybe he's reading from this very book. The possibilities are endless. Treat yourself . . . because all that glitters is Goldblum.
Tomato Rhapsody: A Fable of Love, Lust & Forbidden Fruit
Adam Schell - 2009
Rich in literary delights, filled with spectacular wordplay, and rife with the bawdy humor of Shakespeare’s comedies, Tomato Rhapsody is the almost-true tale of how the tomato came to Italy—at once a brilliantly inventive fable of love, lust, and longing, and a dazzling feast for the imagination.This is a story born from love—a forbidden love—between Davido, an Ebreo tomato farmer, and Mari, a beautiful Catholic girl.…But it’s not only Davido and Mari who have secrets of the heart. Everyone around them yearns for something—from Davido’s grandfather, who tenderly cultivates the tomato plant he stole on his voyages with Columbus, to Mari’s villainous stepfather, whose eye is trained on his stepdaughter’s virginity and his neighbor’s land.Caught in the midst of these passions and machinations is a village full of eccentrics who speak in rhyme, celebrate the Feast of the Drunken Saint, and live a life untouched by the passage of time. The schemes and dreams of these men and women are about to change as what is forbidden becomes too delicious to resist. Tradition, religion, and good taste collide unforgettably in a story about the courage to pursue love and tomato sauce at all costs.
The Prisoner and the Chaplain
Michelle Berry - 2017
As the hours drain away, the chaplain must decide if the prisoner’s story is an off-the-cuff confession or a last bid for salvation. As the chaplain listens he realizes a life has many stories, and he has his own story to tell – a last ditch plea for forgiveness told to someone who will never be able to repeat it. Each man is guilty in his own way, and their stories have led them to the same room, a room that only one of them will leave alive. If you had only twelve hours left to live, what would you have to say?
Eating Bitter (The Randall Lee Mysteries)
Charles Colyott - 2015
This time there are no suave, wise-cracking good guys, no humorless, drug-addled bad guys. The story I want to tell you is all about how I learned to sleep at night, to close my eyes without seeing cold places and dead eyes… how I dragged whatever was left of me up out of the dark, finally. That’s the story I want to tell, because that’s the story I need to hear. I want to know how it ends..."Returning to normal life after his dark days in the depths of the Jianghu hasn't been easy for Randall Lee. With big changes coming in his future, though, Randall offers to help rehabilitate an injured friend, only to find that the need for healing goes far deeper than he ever expected. Bridging the events of Jianghu and the upcoming Randall Lee Mystery, The Art of War, Eating Bitter is a quiet story of resilience and perseverance, punctuated with Randall's trademark humor and self-deprecation.
Devil in the Hole
Charles Salzberg - 2013
In an upstairs bedroom: an elderly woman and the family dog, both of them shot as well. The only person missing is the husband, father, son, and prime suspect, John Hartman, who's got a three-week jump on the police. Through the eyes of almost two dozen characters, including the neighbor who reports the crime, Hartman’s mistress, a dogged state investigator, the family minister, and some of the characters Hartman meets on his escape route, we piece together not only what happened and how these shocking murders affect the community, but how John Hartman evades capture, where he’s headed, and maybe even why he committed this gruesome crime in the first place. Based on the notorious John List murders and already compared to works by Norman Mailer and Russell Banks, Devil in the Hole is gripping, literate, and haunting.