Book picks similar to
Against The Wind: Jane-Claire's Personal Salvation by Dawn C. Crouch
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Fire in the Blood
Perry O'Brien - 2020
Army paratrooper serving in Afghanistan—is called urgently to his Captain’s office, he fears he’s headed for a court martial. Coop has been keeping a terrible secret from his fellow soldiers, and worries he’s been discovered. Instead, his life is devastated in a different way: his wife, Kay, has been killed in a hit-and-run.Given a brief leave to fly back to New York and attend to Kay’s affairs, Coop is increasingly disturbed by the suspicious circumstances of his wife’s death. He decides to go AWOL, using his military training to uncover the real story behind Kay’s fatal accident. As he circles in on the truth, Coop must distinguish ally from enemy among a cast of players in the Bronx underworld: Albanian heroin smugglers, shady cops, corrupt rehab doctors, and his wife’s family, a powerful clan of financial elites. Navigating this new battlefield, he’ll have to find justice for Kay while also seeking his own redemption.Humming with mystery and grief, Fire in the Blood is a compulsively readable thriller about the wars we fight, whether overseas, in our city streets, or in the depths of our own hearts.
Men Like Air
Tom Connolly - 2016
Nineteen-year-old Finn has just arrived in the city with his irrepressible and volatile girlfriend, Dilly, determined to even the score with his older brother Jack for abandoning him in the UK in the aftermath of their parents’ deaths. Across town, successful gallery owner Leo Emerson is haunted by loneliness, unsettled by the contrast between his life and that of his brother-in-law and oldest friend Isidor, who is enviably contented in his faith and his marriage. When Finn wanders into Leo’s gallery, a series of unexpected and interconnected events unfold, changing the lives of all four men, for better or worse. Leo and Isidor’s settled existences are overturned by events outside of their control, while Jack and Finn’s complex relationship reaches its long overdue showdown. Beautifully orchestrated and richly comic, Men Like Air explores the romance and solitude of cosmopolitan life, the transformative power of art, and the impact we have on one another’s lives—and what happens when the ties that bind us are tested or broken. It is an intense and uplifting story of growth and renewal, mapping the complex workings of the human heart across the streets of New York City.
The bench by Cromer beach
R.J. Gould - 2020
One year that changes everything. They seem to have it all. They’re in good health and are financially secure. They live in a pleasant and comfortable town. But as their lives intertwine, cracks emerge and restlessness grows. For Clive, is retirement the beginning of the end? Can fun-loving Saskia break free from her adulterous husband? Will Andy marry his childhood sweetheart? Is Jamie prepared to change his dishonest ways? Might Ellie’s happy marriage be shattered by temptation?Heart-warming and heart-breaking collide in this novel about aspirations, expectations and the realities of everyday life.
Spoken
Melanie Weiss - 2019
A relationship with his father. When Roman’s life gets turned upside down, (thanks, Mom!?), he is forced to leave his pampered Hollywood lifestyle and move into his grandparents’ Midwestern home. Sleeping on a lumpy pullout sofa and starting at a new high school is the worst, but Roman’s life starts to look up when his pink-haired friend, Zuzu, and his crush, a classmate named Claire, introduce him to performance poetry through the high school's Spoken Word Club. While his mom is flying back and forth to L.A., trying to return them to the life they had, Roman becomes part of a diverse group of characters who challenge his rather privileged view of the world. Through Spoken Word, Roman recognizes the hole in his own life he needs to fill and discovers his voice. Spoken Word leads Roman on a journey of new friendships, first love, and finding the dad he never knew. “Spoken” is an uplifting, funny, and heartfelt coming-of-age story that captures how the honesty of performance poetry binds together students from all different walks of life and forever changes Roman’s life.
The Weight of Water
W.A. Schwartz - 2021
Raised by relatives, they become fiercely devoted to one another until tragic circumstances intervene. They are separated, Talia disappearing into a life of drugs and petty crime, Rachel fleeing to New Orleans. Years later, Rachel is living in New Orleans and married to the CEO of the Southeast’s largest provider of long-term healthcare. She lives what appears to be a perfect life, yet she struggles with anxiety, prescription drug abuse, and grief.One night, Rachel receives a phone call. The information she is given sets in motion a series of events that will unravel her life, force her to examine past decisions, and take her on a psychologically arduous journey to save her sister. Ultimately she is faced with the an almost impossible choice.Set against the backdrop of Hurricane Katrina, The Weight of Water tells the story of two sisters, their love for one another, and their struggle to survive and overcome the consequences of one of the greatest disasters in human history.WHAT ARE READERS SAYING ABOUT THE WEIGHT OF WATER?
Paradox
Arya Narrayan - 2020
No one has any idea how this pandemic happened; even the WHO is stuck for an effective cure. Just as the whole world is growing desperate for resolution and low in hope, unexpectedly, a grey alien visits the earth in December 2025—five years after the initial outbreak—claiming that it has the concrete cure for A-virus.Can humans believe the announcement from the grey alien? Who really is this grey alien? Where did it come from? What could the purpose of its visit to Earth be? Did the grey alien bring the first life to our planet? Does it have any influence on ancient architecture and the many great wonders of the Earth? Did Neil Armstrong meet the alien?If you’re a fan of sci-fi, don’t miss Paradox—an enthralling rendition!
The River
Helen Bryan - 2021
From the ancestral blood and sweat of its settlers—the immigrants, the slaves, the Cherokee—a new generation strives for prosperity in the united township of Grafton.Across the unfolding decades, childhood friends, mothers and daughters, wives and lovers will have their bonds tested. New hopes and dreams lie beyond the river, and as allegiances are challenged, a harmonious community finds itself grappling with inevitable cultural change—change that creates a vast, opportune, and unpredictable new beginning for generations yet to come.
The World Without You
Joshua Henkin - 2012
But this is no ordinary holiday. The family has gathered to memorialize Leo, the youngest of the four siblings, an intrepid journalist and adventurer who was killed on that day in 2004, while on assignment in Iraq. The parents, Marilyn and David, are adrift in grief. Their forty-year marriage is falling apart. Clarissa, the eldest sibling and a former cello prodigy, has settled into an ambivalent domesticity and is struggling at age thirty-nine to become pregnant. Lily, a fiery-tempered lawyer and the family contrarian, is angry at everyone. And Noelle, whose teenage years were shadowed by promiscuity and school expulsions, has moved to Jerusalem and become a born-again Orthodox Jew. The last person to see Leo alive, Noelle has flown back for the memorial with her husband and four children, but she feels entirely out of place. And Thisbe? - Leo's widow and mother of their three-year-old son - has come from California bearing her own secret. Set against the backdrop of Independence Day and the Iraq War, The World Without You is a novel about sibling rivalries and marital feuds, about volatile women and silent men, and, ultimately, about the true meaning of family.
Playing to Win (The Complete Series Box Set)
Alix Nichols - 2018
3 passionate women who fall under their spell. 3 hot and tender love stories.BOOK 1: PLAYING WITH FIREEmbroiderer Uma is all kinds of wrong for single dad Zach.She’s his son’s nanny, still chaste at 23... and falling for him, hard and fast. In short, she’s completely off-limits. And just as completely irresistible. BOOK 2: PLAYING FOR KEEPSEx-player Isabelle takes a job as a publicist for a Paris water-polo team.That means she must face amnesiac coach Lucas, the jerk who broke her heart six years ago. But Lucas is a brand-new man after his head trauma. He has no idea why Isabelle is avoiding him — or why he is so drawn to her. BOOK 3: PLAYING DIRTYIn his pimply teens, Julien was led on, played and publicly humiliated by Noemi.Now a heartthrob and a sports star, he craves revenge. Even as he still craves Noemi.If you like single dad romances, revenge plots filled with angst and passion, and heartwarming second chance novels, you’ll love the PLAYING TO WIN series!
The Rocking R Ranch
Tim Washburn - 2020
. . THE LEGEND BEGINS When the Ridgeway family staked their claim on more than 40,000 acres of land in northwest Texas, they knew they had their work cut out for them. Located on a sharp bend of the treacherous Red River, their new home—the Rocking R Ranch—was just a stone’s throw away from Indian territory. It was as lawless and wild as the West itself, crawling with unsavory characters, cattle rustlers, horse thieves, outlaws, robbers, and worse. But still, the Ridgeways were determined to make the Rocking R a success—and a home—for their four remarkable children: Percy, Eli, Abigail, and Rachel. This is their story. Together, the Ridgeways could endure anything. Floods, tornadoes, Commanche raids in the dead of night. But when one of their own is kidnapped . . . that’s when all hell breaks loose. This is their story. The story of the American West.
Secrets in the Sand
Carolyn Brown - 2021
Not when they are deep within the heart like Angela Conrad's. Ten years ago, Clancy Morgan broke her heart and even though she's made a successful life for herself, she's never gotten over that pain. Angel didn't intend to ever go back home, but when the Alumni Association asked her to return to her hometown to play for the dance at their alumni gathering, she agreed.Clancy wasn't planning to attend, but he does, and he recognizes Angela immediately. He never expected to see her again, and definitely didn't expect to see her standing up there looking like a movie star and singing like a seasoned famous country artist. She's the Angel he walked away from and has been kicking himself ever since.He made a big mistake, but maybe he can mend it, if only she'll let him. She's not so easily inclined, but he gets to know her posse of protective girlfriends, and they cook up a scheme to help her get over him once and for all. Or, maybe she'll let him win her back.
Appetite
Sheila Grinell - 2016
Her father, Paul, is wary of this beggar Jenn has brought home who, he suspects, is conning his much-loved daughter while her mother, Maggie, is frightened that this alien stranger will steal away her only child, her focus in life. In the months leading up to the backyard wedding, Maggie is forced to reevaluate her virtues as she casts about for support, and Paul faces an unexpected threat at work one that Maggie could help him meet, if he would only ask. But even with these distractions, the two parents are focused on one primary question: Can they convince their daughter she is making a terrible mistake before the wedding takes place?
Been In Love Before
Bryan Mooney - 2016
o get them to reengage with the world, Ryan’s daughter, Mary Kate, signs them up for dance lessons and insists that each find a partner in time for her wedding.Robert, the eldest of the brothers, rediscovers an old friend who brings the spark back to his life. Eian, a former professional baseball player, takes another swing at love with the widow of his best friend. Ryan, the doctor in the family, hopes his beautiful new dance instructor can put the spring back in his step. But Mary Kate’s fiancé is a member of the rival Campbell clan, and as the wedding approaches, joyful anticipation turns into a heated family rivalry.Together the Macgregor brothers will dance their way through first-date jitters and plenty of wrong moves as they try to save the wedding—and restart their lives.