Book picks similar to
This is Our Story by Wendi Adelson


fiction
biography-autobiography
human-trafficking
memoir

An American Childhood


Annie Dillard - 1987
    She remembers the exhilaration of whipping a snowball at a car and having it hit straight on. She remembers playing with the skin on her mother's knuckles, which "didn't snap back; it lay dead across her knuckle in a yellowish ridge." She remembers the compulsion to spend a whole afternoon (or many whole afternoons) endlessly pitching a ball at a target. In this intoxicating account of her childhood, Dillard climbs back inside her 5-, 10-, and 15-year-old selves with apparent effortlessness. The voracious young Dillard embraces headlong one fascination after another--from drawing to rocks and bugs to the French symbolists. "Everywhere, things snagged me," she writes. "The visible world turned me curious to books; the books propelled me reeling back to the world." From her parents she inherited a love of language--her mother's speech was "an endlessly interesting, swerving path"--and the understanding that "you do what you do out of your private passion for the thing itself," not for anyone else's approval or desire. And one would be mistaken to call the energy Dillard exhibits in An American Childhood merely youthful; "still I break up through the skin of awareness a thousand times a day," she writes, "as dolphins burst through seas, and dive again, and rise, and dive."

Tempting Secrets (Tempting Nights Romance #1)


Michelle Windsor - 2018
    Or at least, it’s the name my clients call me. I work for the elite escort agency, Temptations, and for a price, I’ll be whatever you want and need me to be. I have the body, I have the looks, and I have a smile that makes any woman swoon. But It’s just a job. A necessary evil to help fund my dreams of becoming a doctor. I’m simply a robot, performing my required tasks. Until the night I’m hired to seduce Charlotte Harvey and remind her how good a man can make her feel. I didn’t expect her beauty to spark a desire in me long buried. I didn’t expect her smile to turn that spark into a flame. And I definitely didn’t expect her passion to ignite that flame into an inferno. I should have walked away without looking back, but she started a fire in me that I can’t seem to tame. Tempting Nights is the first book in the Tempted Nights Romance Series. Each book can be read as a stand-alone and features a happily ever after.

Sea Legs: One Family's Year on the Ocean


Guy Grieve - 2013
    Sick of the weather, perennial colds and their increasingly routine lifestyle, they’d all been getting restless. Finally, Guy and Juliet broke in spectacular style – they re-mortgaged their house and bought a yacht. Her name was Forever.The plan? To pick up Forever from her mooring in the Leeward Antilles off the coast of Venezuela, and sail around the West Indies before crossing the Atlantic back to Scotland. This was despite the fact that Guy, skipper of the expedition, had almost no sailing experience.Travelling around the lush tropical islands of the Caribbean and up the waterways of America, the family had countless sublime moments as they discovered the freedoms of sailing – anchoring in deserted bays, night passages under star-studded skies, and entering New York by water, greeted by the Statue of Liberty. But there were also testing times as they grappled with seasickness and bad weather, coping with young children at sea and learning to run a large, complex boat. Far from being the idyllic escape they’d envisaged, the journey forced Guy and Juliet to draw on reserves of courage and endurance they never knew they had.Wry, funny and buccaneering, this is a compelling tale of bravery and endeavour, out on the open sea.

Comfort Me With Apples


Peter De Vries - 1956
    

To Sir, With Love


E.R. Braithwaite - 1959
    Mr. Braithwaite, the new teacher, had first to fight the class bully. Then he taught defiant, hard-bitten delinquents to call him "Sir," and to address the girls who had grown up beside them in the gutter as "Miss".He taught them to wash their faces and to read Shakespeare. When he took all forty-six to museums and to the opera, riots were predicted. But instead of a catastrophe, a miracle happened. A dedicated teacher had turned hate into love, teenage rebelliousness into self-respect, contempt into into consideration for others. A man's own integrity - his concern and love for others - had won through. The modern classic about a dedicated teacher in a tough London school who slowly and painfully breaks down the barriers of racial prejudice, this is the story of a man's integrity winning through against the odds.

Amsterdam Rampant


Neil Cocker - 2014
    The city had promised an escape from all of his problems back in Scotland. It was the perfect fresh start – well-paid job, luxury apartment in the canal district, sobriety and celibacy.But everything changed when he went on a blind date with an unhinged sexologist, and now the city’s dark side is closing in on him.To make matters more complicated, his old life is hurtling back towards him in the shape of a stag party – four nutters from his hometown in Scotland, including his future brother-in-law and the former school bully – will arrive in the city within hours.Over the course of one chaotic weekend, Fin McPhail will come face-to-face with all of his demons.Vividly cinematic, Amsterdam Rampant draws on a potent blend of modern culture (Pulp Fiction, Breaking Bad, Mad Men, and the work of Donna Tartt and Iain Banks). A riotously entertaining novel exploring the neon shadows of Europe’s sin city, this 21st Century tale of sex, friendship, and coming to terms with the past will leave readers wanting more from Scotland’s newest literary star.

Chaos In The Blink Of An Eye: Part Six: The Sealing


Patrick Higgins - 2019
     In retaliation for their actions, Salvador Romanero orderedthree Muslims killed for every life they took, and a thousand Muslims for everypregnant woman killed. Islamic mosques, universities, and religious trainingcenters were set ablaze by fire. Anyone found inside those buildings wereordered outside then killed by firing squad. This was only the beginning... Soon after the attack, Air Force One was blown out of the sky,as part of a coordinated attempt to strip President Jefferson Danforth of hispower. Only the President wasn't on board the plane with the First Lady, whenan on board explosion brought the aircraft down in a field somewhere inKansas--it was one of the President's body doubles. Now living in hiding, as Vice President Everett Ashford wasabout to be sworn in as the next Commander-in-Chief, Jefferson Danforth wasdoing all he could to fulfill the promise he made to supply the End TimesSalvation Movement with all the resources they would need. Without them, survival would be impossible... But before Ashford could even take the oath to become America'snext President, a new wave of chaos rocked the nation, plunging much of thecountry into darkness. Soon after that, the situation took another tragic turnfor the worse, leaving the new President immobilized, and rendering the UnitedStates, and Jefferson Danforth, completely powerless. With America now ripe for the taking, Salvador Romanero's goalof achieving a one world economical and religious system was one huge stepcloser to being realized. But for his ultimate goal to come to fruition, whichwas nothing short of global worship, those who would never submit to him neededto be wiped off the face of the earth. With nearly a billion Muslims gone, it was time for Romanero toshift his focus onto born-again Christians. After them, the Jews would end upin his cross hairs... But knowing the Most High God would soon place His seal on theforeheads of His 144,000 chosen servants, and send them out to evangelize theworld for the One they were forbidden, as practicing Jews, from reading aboutall their lives--Yeshua HaMashiach--meant Romanero's desire for globaladoration would not come easy...  WARNING: Please be advised that this installment is quitegraphic at times, due to the fact that Christians are being imprisoned andtortured. But this should come as no surprise to all who profess faith inChrist Jesus. The persecuted Church has faced similar types of torture (andeven worse) from the days of Jesus until this present age, and will onlycontinue until Christ returns for His people...

The Glassblower's Apprentice


Peter Pezzelli - 2013
    Fabio Terranova is a brilliant dancer. Young, handsome, and enormously talented he is desperate to leave his little hometown in the mountains of central Italy. With dreams of one day making his mark on Broadway and Hollywood, he has made plans to travel to Milan to enter a dance competition he hopes will be his springboard to fame and fortune in America. All is set until the eve of his departure when a night of wild celebration with his friends ends in tragedy. Left broken in body and spirit, his dreams of dancing shattered by the events of that night, Fabio descends into bitter darkness. Fearing for her son, his mother, Liliana, makes a fateful decision. She sends Fabio across the ocean to live with her uncle, Rick Vitale, who runs a small glassmaking operation in a quaint New England village. Rick lives in solitude, his own reasons for abandoning Italy years earlier long shrouded in mystery. He takes Fabio in and sets about teaching him the art of glassblowing. Relentlessly driven, ever laboring by the searing heat of the furnace, Fabio learns to create dazzling works of glass. The endless hours of toil, however, provide him no solace and he remains tormented by the past, a past he can't bear to face. Now, with the days growing short and the darkness of winter closing in, it is up to Rick to show his nephew the way back to the light. But it is a long journey through the deepest chambers of the heart, one that Fabio must ultimately make on his own if he is to learn that the best days of his life may yet lie ahead...

Black Like Me


John Howard Griffin - 1961
    Using medication that darkened his skin to deep brown, he exchanged his privileged life as a Southern white man for the disenfranchised world of an unemployed black man. His audacious, still chillingly relevant eyewitness history is a work about race and humanity-that in this new millennium still has something important to say to every American.

Dear America: Notes of an Undocumented Citizen


Jose Antonio Vargas - 2018
    This book––at its core––is not about immigration at all. This book is about homelessness, not in a traditional sense, but in the unsettled, unmoored psychological state that undocumented immigrants like myself find ourselves in. This book is about lying and being forced to lie to get by; about passing as an American and as a contributing citizen; about families, keeping them together, and having to make new ones when you can’t. This book is about constantly hiding from the government and, in the process, hiding from ourselves. This book is about what it means to not have a home.After 25 years of living illegally in a country that does not consider me one of its own, this book is the closest thing I have to freedom.”—Jose Antonio Vargas, from Dear America

The Bodyguard's Fake Marriage


Bree Livingston - 2018
    When her father calls, telling her he’s arranged for her to marry a man she barely knows, Lexi is positive something is wrong. In an effort to give herself some time to figure out what’s going on, she decides the only way to slow things down is to arrange her own marriage.Ex-Army Ranger Jake Maverick promised Basil Maheras that he’d keep Lexi safe at all costs — he just never thought the cost would include his bachelor status. But when Lexi tells him her father is forcing her to marry the man he was hired to protect her from in the first place, he feels the only way to keep her safe is to marry her in an attempt to get her father from Greece to the states so he can figure out what’s going on.When their secret is leaked, and Lexi’s life is put in danger, they have no choice but to run. Now, they’re stuck together, and the more they learn about each other, the less pretend their marriage feels.

Bad Boss


Lolah Lace - 2019
     Robin MacDowell’s luck changes for the better when she lands a comfortable new job making more money. Getting to know her new boss proves to be challenging when his handsome good looks start to distract her from doing her job. Even if Robin can keep it strictly professional can her boss follow suit? Bad Boss is a BWWM office romance novella.

Wonder Women


Rosie Fiore - 2013
    Then she hits on a brilliant idea – a kids’ clothing shop with a twist – and is thrilled when it really takes off. When husband Lee offers to quit his job to look after the family while her business grows, it seems a godsend – but will their marriage stand the test of reversing their roles?Jo soon recruits Holly and Mel to help her in the shop. Designer Holly’s high-flying career has come crashing down and she’s moved back home – but is she ready to manage a major family crisis? Meanwhile, Mel worries her teenage daughter Serena is going off the rails. Is finding out more worth risking her daughter’s trust?At the crossroads of their lives, friendship could be the only the thing keeping these wonder women strong.

The Rainbow Rowell YA Collection


Rainbow Rowell - 2016
    Now, for the first time ever, her three critically acclaimed young adult novels are together at last in one e-bundle. Discovering your new favorite author has never been easier!Eleanor & ParkSet over the course of one school year in 1986, this is the story of two star-crossed misfits--smart enough to know that first love almost never lasts, but brave and desperate enough to try. When Eleanor meets Park, you'll remember your own first love--and just how hard it pulled you under.FangirlCath and Wren are not only identical twins, they are also the two biggest Simon Snow fans ever. Or at least, they used to be. Now that they are starting their freshman year of college, Wren is moving on to new things and leaving Cath behind. But Cath isn't quite ready to let go.Carry OnCarry On - The Rise and Fall of Simon Snow is a ghost story, a love story and a mystery. It has just as much kissing and talking as you'd expect from a Rainbow Rowell story - but far, far more monsters.

Drugs, Behavior and Modern Society


Charles F. Levinthal - 1995
    Drugs, Behavior, and Modern Society, 6/e, examines the impact of drug-taking behavior on our society and our daily lives.  The use and abuse of a wide range of licit and illicit drugs are discussed from historical, biological, psychological, and sociological perspectives.  The use of Drugs in our lives and drug-taking behavior, legally restricted drugs in our society, legal drugs in our society, medicinal drugs, treatment, prevention, and education.  Forstudents, or people working with drug related topics in the fields of psychology and health.