Book picks similar to
FISH TANK: A Fable for Our Times by Scott Bischke
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fiction
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grad-school
Untimed
Andy Gavin - 2012
Hell, his own mother can't remember his name. So when a mysterious clockwork man tries to kill him in modern day Philadelphia, and they tumble through a hole into 1725 London, Charlie realizes even the laws of time don't take him seriously. Still, this isn't all bad. Who needs school when you can learn about history first hand, like from Ben Franklin himself. And there's this girl... Yvaine... another time traveler. All good. Except for the rules: boys only travel into the past and girls only into the future. And the baggage: Yvaine's got a baby boy and more than her share of ex-boyfriends. Still, even if they screw up history - like accidentally let the founding father be killed - they can just time travel and fix it, right? But the future they return to is nothing like Charlie remembers. To set things right, he and his scrappy new girlfriend will have to race across the centuries, battling murderous machines from the future, jealous lovers, reluctant parents, and time itself.
The First Conception: Rise of Eris
Nesly Clerge - 2018
I’m the one who altered human conception around the world in an unimaginable way, unimaginable to all but me—a seed planted while I was young. People had to be punished for what they did. The punishment had to be specific. I became a medical doctor, researcher, and vindicator of the verbal, physical, and sexual assaults perpetrated against women by men for eons. Including me. I’m not alone in my work. A great number of women share my ultimate goal. All except one. I’ll find the betrayer. Until then, men are beginning to pay for their sins against us. And I’m just getting started. Dr. Katherine Eris Barnes—remember my name. Although, I don’t know how you’ll be able to forget it.Reviewers and bloggers can email me at clergebooks@gmail.com for a digital copy.
Family Trees
Kerstin March - 2015
She'll never again depend on her errant mother, Jackie, who abandoned Shelby when she was a baby—and is forever searching for an elusive, glittering life. All Shelby needs is her beautiful, windswept Lake Superior, her loving grandparents, and the treasured-but-struggling family apple orchard she helps run—until a new love, Ryan Chambers, opens her heart to chance, and her eyes to a wider world than she ever imagined.But just as Shelby is looking toward an exciting future, Jackie unexpectedly returns—determined to make up for the past and "help" her daughter get everything she never could. Her confidence shaken, Shelby finds herself at odds with Ryan, and with his wealthy family's overbearing expectations. Now, through wrenching change and sudden loss, Shelby must find a way to see herself, and her mother, in a new light, forge an all-too-fragile understanding—and risk the kind of freedom that brings its own unexpected, enduring rewards…
The Petpost Secret
Radhika R. Dhariwal - 2014
But not in the way he thinks.Though he is just thirteen, Squirrel is the PetPost slave—the last slave in the animal town of Bimmau. Every morning,he puts on his PetPost uniform and delivers the mail for hislazy mongoose boss. But when Squirrel swigs someforbidden wine at a wedding, his mother's voice speaks tohim. 'Start your journey that leads to long-lost Brittle’s Key,' she urges. 'Go find, my son, your destiny.'Brittle's Key—with the power to set him free and turnanyone in the land into a slave—can be Squirrel's. But, tofind the key, he must find and sip three mysterious liquids.With his friend Des and a crow, Azulfa, he sets off on adangerous quest. He travels from the walled city of beesto the fireless mice tea-estate to the treacherous desert,while fleeing the savage Kowa army and outsmarting thevicious Colonel who wants the key for himself.Will Squirrel succeed? For not only his fate, but alsothe fate of the land hangs in the balance . . .
The Warrior's Path
Karim Soliman - 2017
Blood will be his redemption.Forced to slay his father to prevent a massacre, Masolon and his name will be cursed until the end of days. To escape the shame of kinslaying and the justice of his clansmen, the young warrior braves the haunted desert to reach the fabled lands of Gorania. A journey he survives with his body, but not with his mind.Tormented by the guilt of his sin, Masolon seeks redemption through the war he wages against the armed gangs that infest every corner of his new home. But Masolon has to be careful; the war he has started might grow bigger than he can handle. The lords of Gorania do not take vigilantes so lightly.Now enemies and false friends close in from all sides. And Masolon, betrayed and outnumbered, must win one decisive battle to earn the peace he has been pursuing. But in the brutal world of Gorania, peace could just be a delusion. Masolon's path to redemption could be a lie after all.THE WARRIOR'S PATH is the first book in Tales of Gorania: a series for epic fantasy fans who are ready to immerse themselves in a world of flawed heroes and false legends, a world of political games and battles to the death.
Relativity
Antonia Hayes - 2015
Claire, a former professional ballerina, has been a wonderful parent to Ethan, but he’s becoming increasingly curious about his father’s absence in his life. Claire is fiercely protective of her talented, vulnerable son—and of her own feelings. But when Ethan falls ill, tied to a tragic event that occurred during his infancy, her tightly-held world is split open. Thousands of miles away on the western coast of Australia, Mark is trying to forget about the events that tore his family apart, but an unexpected call forces him to confront his past and return home. When Ethan secretly intercepts a letter from Mark to Claire, he unleashes long-suppressed forces that—like gravity—pull the three together again, testing the limits of love and forgiveness. Told from the alternating points of view of Ethan and each of his parents, Relativity is a poetic and soul-searing exploration of unbreakable bonds, irreversible acts, the limits of science, and the magnitude of love.
The Existence Of Amy
Lana Grace Riva - 2019
That is, if you were to go by a definition of 'no obvious indicators of peculiarity', and you didn't know her very well. She has good friends, a good job, a nice enough home. This normality, however, is precariously plastered on top of a different life. A life that is Amy's real life. The only one her brain will let her lead.What is it really like to live with mental illness?An insight into the reality of life with obsessive compulsive disorder (OCD), anxiety and depression.
The Summer I Met Jack
Michelle Gable - 2018
Alicia is at once dazzled by the large and charismatic family, in particular the oldest son, a rising politician named Jack. Alicia and Jack are soon engaged, but his domineering father forbids the marriage. And so, Alicia trades Hyannisport for Hollywood, and eventually Rome. She dates famous actors and athletes and royalty, including Gary Cooper, Kirk Douglas, and Katharine Hepburn, all the while staying close with Jack. A decade after they meet, on the eve of Jack’s inauguration as the thirty-fifth President of the United States, the two must confront what they mean to each other. The Summer I Met Jack is based on the fascinating real life of Alicia Corning Clark, a woman who J. Edgar Hoover insisted was paid by the Kennedys to keep quiet, not only about her romance with Jack Kennedy, but also a baby they may have had together.
The Beech Tree
Don Phelan - 2011
We follow Johnny and Margo, Johnny's lifelong, albeit socially taboo, friendship with his friend, “Bullet Joe” Rogan, a pitcher in the Negro Leagues.Johnny introduces his granddaughter, Debby, to the tree in 1957, an era of bobby socks, roller-skating carhops and Elvis music, and Debby meets Mason in 1967's Summer of Love, just before Mason is drafted to fight in Vietnam.For 30 years, Debby wonders whatever became of the boy who changed her life. Then she finds out.
Dark Side: The Haunting
J.M. Barlog - 1999
Because only a miracle could have brought her through after a terrible car crash.Do you believe in ghosts?Jenny didn't either, until...A tenacious and talented surgeon made Jenny almost as good as new. Almost.Accidents happen--sometimes. But sometimes accidents are planned. Somebody wanted Jenny Garrett dead, and now Detective Rick Walker has to find out who and why. But Jenny can't help with the investigation. Jenny's memory of the accident, and the weeks preceding it, are gone. Yet somehow Rick has to get to the truth before the killer tries again.But the real horror in Jenny's life transcends far beyond the stalking of an earthly killer. Jenny is being terrorized by a Doppelganger--a ghostly image of herself. Dwight Mackenzie believes in ghosts. So much so, that he is willing to help Jenny uncover the truth behind her torment.But the real truth is: there is only one way to escape the vicious torment of a Doppelganger.
Whispering Bodies: A Roy Belkin Disaster
Jesse Michaels - 2013
Belkin must begin each day with the task he calls The Service: visiting Christian chat-rooms to reply to users innocent questions with mocking answers. “Why do they call the taking of the communion ‘Mass?’”? Belkin124 responds: “They call it the Mass because after Jesus was crucified, a mass of people rushed forward to the cross and ate him. Now they eat the wafer to remember it.” At forty-seven, balding, and mildly agoraphobic, Belkin is a man without direction. He rarely leaves his apartment (he refers to the outside world as The Pounding), and when he must leave, he meticulously recounts the day in his Thunder Book; a journal where he lists all that repulsed him that day.But everything changes the day Belkin returns to his apartment to find the building ablaze along with the suspected murder of the apartment building’s maintenance man. As police question him, Belkin meets the mysterious Pernice Balfour, the alluring, religiously obsessed neighbor accused of the crime. Soon, Belkin has no choice but to come out of his shell (and his apartment) to try to clear her name. But the more Belkin investigates, the muddier things become. Wandering through San Francisco’s seedy Tenderloin district, Belkin begins to unravel the truth behind the murder, and encounters a bizarre series of characters and situations: "pansexual" crime-scene photographer, an idiot detective, and an all-knowing government operative.Whispering Bodies is comical offbeat exploration of the wisdom found in madness and the madness found in conventional life, all brought together in a classic tale of who-done-it.
Searching for Lincoln's Ghost
Barbara J. Dzikowski - 2011
After losing both parents in a car accident and being raised by a grandmother obsessed with death, Andi is struggling with an unusual quest for a girl her age-- to determine whether there is life after death.It is 1966, and Castalia, Indiana, like most cities of that time, is grappling with social and cultural change. Meanwhile, rumors have long swirled around Castalia's Lincoln Elementary School. Over its long history, the school has produced two sixth graders who claim to have seen Lincoln's ghost in the school's auditorium. When Andi prays on her dead mother's rosary to be the next to encounter Lincoln's ghost in order to confirm the existence of an after-life, a complex chain of events is set into motion, including the appearance of John Malone, a new boy at school who harbors an explosive secret, and mysterious moaning emanating from behind the dark stage after school. While Andi desperately seeks answers to life's most difficult questions, an unlikely new friend emerges--a mystical bait shop owner named Ezra.Searching for Lincoln's Ghost is a story about coming-of-age during the tumultuous 1960s, exploring such disturbing topics as personal isolation, fear and depression, bullying, social and racial intolerance. Peppered with Lincoln folklore and history, it is a timeless tale of the power of love, empathy, and how the actions of one person can profoundly impact another.
Do Not Go Gentle
C.A. Larmer - 2016
Did her beloved boy really stab her in the back? Over chocolate cake?! Or is there something even more disturbing going on? Help Lulu sort the dead herrings from the clues in the latest, stand-alone mystery from the best-selling author of The Agatha Christie Book Club and Ghostwriter Mystery series, C.A. Larmer.A quick, fun read with Aussie colloquialisms and some mild adult language.
Bourbon & Blood
Garrard Hayes - 2013
Drugs, white slavery, prostitution, murder... Former soldier and decorated war hero Bill Conlin finds himself immersed in it all when he can't find "respectable" work after his tour in Afghanistan. When his cousin, Jimmy, first tries to talk him into joining Irish mafia boss Frank Sullivan's gang, Bill brushes him off. All Bill really wants is a normal life with a nice girl, and he's pretty sure the waitress he just met, Dana, is the one. But with his savings running low, and desperate to get out of his Hell's Kitchen near-tenement apartment building, Bill, against his better judgment, agrees to a meeting with Mr. Sullivan, an Irish Mob boss--and immediately hits the point of no return... Now with a brand new Lincoln and fancy new uptown digs (complete with a live-in girl whose only purpose is to serve him, and a wardrobe packed with weapons), Bill's tasked to take down a Harlem-based Mexican prostitution ring. One thing leads to another, however, and the deeper he gets, the more he learns, and the more tangled up he becomes in a lifestyle he never wanted. But how long until he takes matters into his own hands... And what will the ultimate cost be... Mystery & suspense lurk around every corner of this hard-boiled crime drama where mobsters shoot it out with urban gangs on the streets of New York City.
So the Doves
Heidi James - 2017
When a body is discovered in a Kent orchard, he begins to question everything he has ever believed to be true.