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The Refining (Book One) by J.C. Brown


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The Spectacular


Zoe Whittall - 2021
    At twenty-two years old, Missy gets on stage every night and plays the song about her absent mother that made the band famous. As the only girl in the band, she's determined to party just as hard as everyone else, loving and leaving a guy in every town. But then she meets a tomboy drummer who is hard to forget, and a forgotten flap of cocaine strands her at the border.Fortysomething Carola is just surfacing from a sex scandal at the yoga center where she has been living when she sees her daughter, Missy, for the first time in ten years--on the cover of a music magazine.Ruth is eighty-three and planning her return to the Turkish seaside village where she spent her childhood. But when her granddaughter, Missy, winds up crashing at her house, she decides it's time that the strong and stubborn women in her family find a way to understand one another again.In this sharply observed novel, Zoe Whittall captures three very different women who each struggle to build an authentic life. Definitions of family, romance, gender, and love will radically change as they seek out lives that are nothing less than spectacular.

Gaga


Johnny Morgan - 2010
    This lavish volume examines the Lady's history and phenomenal rise, her music and videos, and her unique look and chameleon-like nature. Chock-full of photos that capture Gaga from childhood through stardom, it also includes images of those who have influenced her style and an appraisal of her place in the pantheon of performance artists.Gaga is a must-have for the millions who love this very special performer and celebrity.

Our Homesick Songs


Emma Hooper - 2018
    Aidan and Martha Connor now spend alternate months of the year working at an energy site up north to support their children, Cora and Finn. But soon the family fears they’ll have to leave Big Running for good. And as the months go on, plagued by romantic temptations new and old, the emotional distance between the once blissful Aidan and Martha only widens.Between his accordion lessons and reading up on Big Running’s local flora and fauna, eleven-year-old Finn Connor develops an obsession with solving the mystery of the missing fish. Aided by his reclusive music instructor Mrs. Callaghan, Finn thinks he may have discovered a way to find the fish, and in turn, save the only home he’s ever known. While Finn schemes, his sister Cora spends her days decorating the abandoned houses in Big Running with global flair—the baker’s home becomes Italy; the mailman’s, Britain. But it’s clear she’s desperate for a bigger life beyond the shores of her small town. As the streets of Big Running continue to empty Cora takes matters—and her family’s shared destinies—into her own hands.In Our Homesick Songs, Emma Hooper paints a gorgeous portrait of the Connor family, brilliantly weaving together four different stories and two generations of Connors, full of wonder and hope. Told in Hooper’s signature ethereal style, each page of this incandescent novel glows with mythical, musical wonder.

Flow


Kennedy Ryan - 2017
    Bristol Gray will be his tough, no-nonsense manager. But when they first meet, she’s a college student finding her way in the world, and he’s an artist determined to make his way in it. From completely different worlds, all the things that should separate them only draw them closer. It’s a beautiful beginning, but where will the story end? FLOW is the prequel chronicling the week of magical days and nights that will haunt Grip & Bristol for years to come. GRIP is the full-length conclusion of their story.

Prisoner 4374


A.J. Griffiths-Jones - 2015
     For more than a century, Dr. Thomas Neill Cream has been listed as a potential 'Jack the Ripper' suspect. He was a sinister character, preying on the unfortunate souls who were forced to make a living as streetwalkers in Victorian London, and ultimately led those poor women to an untimely and torturous death. These crimes eventually branded him the 'Lambeth Poisoner'. However, during the time of the heinous Ripper murders, Dr. Cream was incarcerated in Joliet Prison, Illinois. Over the decades, this fact alone has caused debate as to whether or not he deserves to be under suspicion of being the Whitechapel fiend. Was it possible that Dr. Cream bribed his way out of jail, perhaps using a doppelganger to take his place while secretly finding a passage to England with murder in mind? This fascinating book, told from the standpoint of Cream himself, explains the twisted logic behind his actions. The author has done considerable and meticulous research, tracing Cream's life from his adolescent years in Canada to his last moments on the gallows at Newgate.

In Search of Love


Piyushi Dhir - 2014
    Nursing a broken heart, she decides to visit her parents in Ahmedabad for a short reprieve. Even as she struggles to resign herself to a marriage ‘arranged’ by her parents, she runs into their neighbour’s attractive son.Parth is more than happy to spend time in his own company, in the comforts of his ‘resort’. His plan to take some time off before he plunges head long into his career lands him in front of a lovely girl. The pain in her eyes belies her warm smile and he finds himself irresistibly drawn to her. Yet he knows that this cannot end well, for any intimacy with her is forbidden.Fate plays a cruel trick with Ayesha when it ends her search for love in a cul-de-sac, a point of no return. Ayesha is distraught when she realizes that the one person she has finally fallen in love with, is not hers to be had. They part ways with memories that will return to haunt them and questions that will remain unanswered, until another tryst, seven years later on the other side of the world.

Cry Salty Tears


Dinah O'Dowd - 2007
    Not only did Dinah O'Dowd face the harsh and unforgiving elements of her background - an upbringing in poverty-stricken 50s Dublin, teenage pregnancy and a lone journey to London, but she also fought like a tigress against the shadows cast across four decades of her life by the dark central figure of her existence, her psychotically abusive husband Gerry. Over the years Dinah suffered repeated physical assault, prolonged mental torture and destructive ignorance, yet successfully raised a family of six and nurtured the unique personality of a world superstar, her son Boy George. Finally she has reached equilibrium in the wake of the death of her husband, and is now ready to tell her story, striking a chord with women everywhere.Unflinchingly honest, heart-rending in the telling and packed with inconsolable tragedy and biting wit, Cry Salty Tears recounts the long and painful journey Dinah had to take. From the moment when she first set eyes on the charming, blue-eyed Gerry, to the first blow he struck when she was pregnant with their child, the suicide attempt that depression and all encompassing fear led her to and ultimately to her release from his psychotic clutches, Cry Salty Tears tells how, despite it all, this extraordinary woman could at last reclaim her life.

Stray City


Chelsey Johnson - 2018
    . .Twenty-three-year-old artist Andrea Morales escaped her Midwestern Catholic childhood—and the closet—to create a home and life for herself within the thriving but insular lesbian underground of Portland, Oregon. But one drunken night, reeling from a bad breakup and a friend’s betrayal, she recklessly crosses enemy lines and hooks up with a man. To her utter shock, Andrea soon discovers she’s pregnant—and despite the concerns of her astonished circle of gay friends, she decides to have the baby.A decade later, when her precocious daughter Lucia starts asking questions about the father she’s never known, Andrea is forced to reconcile the past she hoped to leave behind with the life she’s worked so hard to build.A thoroughly modern and original anti-romantic comedy, Stray City is an unabashedly entertaining literary debut about the families we’re born into and the families we choose, about finding yourself by breaking the rules, and making bad decisions for all the right reasons.

We Can't Keep Meeting Like This


Rachel Lynn Solomon - 2021
    At the end of last summer, Quinn confessed her crush on him in the form of a rambling email—and then he left for college without a response.Quinn has been dreading seeing him again almost as much as she dreads another summer playing the harp for her parents’ weddings. When he shows up at the first wedding of the summer, looking cuter than ever after a year apart, they clash immediately. Tarek’s always loved the grand gestures in weddings—the flashier, the better—while Quinn can’t see them as anything but fake. Even as they can’t seem to have one civil conversation, Quinn’s thrown together with Tarek wedding after wedding, from performing a daring cake rescue to filling in for a missing bridesmaid and groomsman.Quinn can’t deny her feelings for him are still there, especially after she learns the truth about his silence, opens up about her own fears, and begins learning the art of harp-making from an enigmatic teacher.Maybe love isn’t the enemy after all—and maybe allowing herself to fall is the most honest thing Quinn’s ever done.

Donut Fall in Love


Jackie Lau - 2021
    After the sudden death of his mother and years of constant work, Ryan is taking some much-needed time off. But as he tries to be supportive to his family, he struggles with his loss and doesn't know how to talk to his dad—who now trolls him on Twitter instead of meeting him for dim sum. Innovative baker Lindsay McLeod meets Ryan when he knocks over two dozen specialty donuts at her bakery. Their relationship is off to a messy start, but there’s no denying their immediate attraction. When Ryan signs up for a celebrity episode of Baking Fail, he asks Lindsay to teach him how to bake and she agrees.As Lindsay and Ryan spend time together, bonding over grief and bubble tea, it starts to feel like they’re cooking up something sweeter than cupcakes in the kitchen.

If This Gets Out


Sophie Gonzales - 2021
    Along with their bandmates, Angel Phan and Jon Braxton, the four are teen heartbreakers in front of the cameras and best friends backstage. But privately, cracks are starting to form: their once-easy rapport is straining under the pressures of fame, and Ruben confides in Zach that he’s feeling smothered by management’s pressure to stay in the closet.On a whirlwind tour through Europe, with both an unrelenting schedule and minimal supervision, Ruben and Zach come to rely on each other more and more, and their already close friendship evolves into a romance. But when they decide they’re ready to tell their fans and live freely, Zach and Ruben start to truly realize that they will never have the support of their management. How can they hold tight to each other when the whole world seems to want to come between them?

Songs About a Girl


Chris Russell - 2016
    She's happiest out of the spotlight, behind her camera, unseen and unnoticed. But when she's asked to take backstage photos for hot new boy band Fire&Lights, she can't pass up the chance. Catapulted into a world of paparazzi and backstage bickering, Charlie soon becomes caught between gorgeous but damaged frontman, Gabriel West, and his boy-next-door bandmate Olly Samson. Then, as the boys' rivalry threatens to tear the band apart, Charlie stumbles upon a mind-blowing secret, hidden in the lyrics of their songs...

Julian


Piper Shelly - 2012
    Thank God, in six weeks, I’ll be eighteen and free!Except, a certain stupid sweater in my backpack—okay, okay! I didn’t actually pay for it—lands me at court. And, look at that…my mother is back, too.I want to keel over dead when the judge sentences me to time in France with her. Actually, I take that back, I want her to keel over dead! And then somebody says she has cancer. Wow, I’ve never had a wish fulfilled this fast. But until that happens—or I turn eighteen, whichever comes first—I’m required to work in some unknown family’s vineyards. Yeah, right…France, however, holds another surprise for me. Julian.He doesn’t miss a chance to provoke me, and for some reason he seems to foresee each step of my brilliant escape plan. What the hell—?But then he makes a tiny mistake. And suddenly, I’m confronted with a secret that makes my blood run cold.

If Ever


Angie Stanton - 2017
    Chelsea is coined ‘America’s Chance to Dance,’ but her partner planned on an A-lister, not a nobody. Clashing with her partner, she’s ready to go home; but during an emotional dance, her heart-breaking past as an abandoned, homeless teen is revealed. Not only do the viewers fall in love with her, so does the flirty British guest singer, Broadway star Thomas Evan Oliver.Tom is struck by this feisty girl who complicates his over-structured life, and pursues her in a romantic cross-country courtship until she’s voted off and joins him. Their sexy whirlwind love affair blossoms in New York as she navigates the big city and his exhausting eight shows a week, but most important, her scarred heart begins to heal. Perhaps happily ever after might be a possibility after all.

Two White Queens and the One-Eyed Jack


Heidi von Palleske - 2021
    When Jack falls and loses his eye on a thorn bush, the accident sets off a series of events that will bind the boys together for the rest of their lives. When the best friends meet albino twins Clara and Blanca, a shared fate unfolds. With Gareth and Jack’s help, the twins are able to reclaim their lives and leave their nightmarish past behind them. From the shores of Lake Ontario to the hustle of Berlin, from the art of oculary to punk opera, this is a story of dark secrets, suppressed desires, forgiveness, and love.