Book picks similar to
The Atheist's Prayer by Amy R. Biddle


fiction
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How (Not) to Fall in Love


Lisa Brown Roberts - 2015
    Even her dog ate gourmet. Then one day, Darcy’s car is repossessed from the parking lot of her elite private school. As her father’s business hit the skids, Dad didn’t just skip town, he bailed on his family.Fortunately, Darcy’s uncle owns a thrift shop where she can hide out from the world. There’s also Lucas, the wickedly hot fix-it guy she can’t stop crushing on, even if she’s not sure they’ll ever get out of the friend zone. But it’s here among the colorful characters of her uncle’s world that Darcy begins to see something more in herself… if she has the courage to follow it.

All Things Irish


Michael Loynd - 2012
    Meg McKenna spent the last decade avoiding her crazy mother's shamrock-shaped world of Celtic witchery and bad Irish luck that brought nothing but heartbreak. But when locals threaten to put her mother's newly-opened Irish shop out of business, the prodigal daughter returns, attracting unexpected surprises, laughter, friendship, romance, and more bad Irish luck-which her mother swears is a good thing.

The Boyfriend Thief


Shana Norris - 2011
    2 former BFFs. 11 days to seduce a boy. Avery James doesn’t believe in romance—she’s studied enough biology to know that love is nothing more than hormones and chemicals. Besides, she has more practical goals in mind, namely saving up for a summer humanitarian program in Costa Rica. But when her Diggity Dog House supervisor denies her a raise and Avery finds herself $500 dollars short for the trip of a lifetime, Avery has no choice but to accept an unexpected offer. The deal? She must steal her arch nemesis Hannah’s boyfriend before prom, giving Avery eleven days to seduce Zac Greeley. Avery is sure the job will be easy. But a few midnight comedy shows and spontaneous dance parties (not to mention one particularly intimate carwash) later, Avery finds herself questioning everything she’s ever thought about love. Could Zac’s signature cherry-lime Slurpees be causing brain freeze, or is Avery actually starting to fall for him? Will Avery be able to steal Zac away from Hannah before he steals Avery’s heart?

Arc Of A Shooting Star


Simon Northouse - 2018
    It's a far cry from the heady days when he led his band, The Shooting Tsars, to the top of the charts and sell-out tours and festivals around the world.An unwelcome phone call from his deceitful ex-manager, Chas Dupont, sets in motion a chain of events that seems unstoppable.Can Will get his fractured band back together and rediscover his mojo? Are Chas Dupont's motives purely altruistic? Who are the musical mafia? And are the legendary rumours about the lost "Bloom Tape" true?

The Tour


Jean Grainger - 2013
    But this particular tour with its cast of unintentionally hilarous characters leaves seasoned tour guide Conor speechless for the first time in his life. Among this eclectic group are Corlene, a gold digging multiple divorcee on the prowl; Patrick, a love-starved Boston cop; Dylan, a goth uilleann piper; Dorothy, a poisonous college professor who wouldn't spend Christmas; Elliot, a wall street shark who finally shows his true colours, and then there's Ellen, back on Irish soil after so many years to discover a truth no-one could have guessed, least of all herself. And thats just a few of the colourful cast.The locals they meet on their journey, eccentric West Brits, passionate musicians, Ukranian waitresses and Garda high flyers all help to make this a tour that nobody will ever forget. And of course, there's Conor, stuck in the thick of it all, solving problems and mending hearts, but what about his own?

The Intuitives


Erin Michelle Sky - 2017
    Seven years later, every public school student in America takes a strange new test, but only six are chosen to attend a summer program at the mysterious Institute for the Cultivation of Intuitive Cognition, where nothing is as it appears to be, including the students themselves.Roman Jackson, 11—the lonely artist.Sees things. Around people. Things he can never, ever tell.Samantha Prescott, 16—the sarcastic nerd.Isolated by a premonition even she doesn’t understand.Daniel Walker, 17—the shy musician.Hides his private thoughts in the soundtrack of his mind.Kaitlyn Wright, 15—the bubbly engineer.Can fix anything, except the one thing that matters most.Mackenzie Gray, 17—the disciplined athlete.Armors her deepest fears against a world she can’t control.Ashton Hunt, 17—the frustrated gamer.Hoping to turn pro, and a constant disappointment to his father.But why is the U.S. government so interested in six outcasts? And what, exactly, is it teaching them to do? Now, they must band together to uncover the true purpose behind the institute—and the ancient secrets that lie hidden beneath its surface.Before history catches up to them.

Virgin


Radhika Sanghani - 2014
    I don’t need the perfect guy. I don’t need candlelight or roses. Honestly, I don’t even need a real bed.The guys I know complain that girls are always looking for Mr. Right—do I have to wear a sign that says I’m only looking for Mr. Right Now?Sooooo…anyone out there want sex? Anyone? Hello? Just for fun?I am not going to die a virgin. One way or another I am going to make this happen.Hey, what have I got to lose? Besides the obvious.

Tales From The Loon Town Cafe


Dennis Frahmann - 2013
    Just be assured a cup of coffee at this small town spot always comes with a story. It's the go-go 1980s when journalist Wally Pearson gets mugged in Times Square. It's a jolt that prompts him to throw away his career and open a cafe in his small hometown. Little does he know that in doing so he's about to get entrapped in the collision of fame, fortune, ambition and love in the northwoods of Wisconsin-all tempered with more than a little delusion. His Loon Town Cafe is the common meeting ground for many different forces. Chicago millionaire Henry Van Elkind plots from his lavish summer camp a transformation of the region. The Native American tribe, whose reservation edges the town, is about to flex its muscle on fishing and gambling rights. Wally's young wait staff is more interested in romance, and his oddball trio of regulars spend much of their time arguing over probing spacemen, giant musket and the availability of wild strawberry jam. "Tales from the Loon Town Cafe" captures the unique character and rhythms of small Midwestern towns. But it also recognizes the undercurrent of despair and sometime downright loopiness that emerges when most everyone thinks they know most everything that's going on. But of course they don't really know all, and that's why "Tales from the Loon Town Cafe" is ultimately a mystery of life.

My Last Continent


Midge Raymond - 2016
    It is only at the end of the world among the glacial mountains, cleaving icebergs, and frigid waters of Antarctica where Deb Gardner and Keller Sullivan feel at home. For the few blissful weeks they spend each year studying the habits of emperor and Adelie penguins, Deb and Keller can escape the frustrations and sorrows of their separate lives and find solace in their work and in each other. But Antarctica, like their fleeting romance, is tenuous, imperiled by the world to the north. A new travel and research season has just begun, and Deb and Keller are ready to play tour guide to the passengers on the small expedition ship that ferries them to their research destination. But this year, Keller fails to appear on board. Then, shortly into the journey, Deb s ship receives an emergency signal from the" Australis," a cruise liner that has hit desperate trouble in the ice-choked waters of the Southern Ocean. Soon Deb s role will change from researcher to rescuer; among the crew of that sinking ship, Deb learns, is Keller. As Deb and Keller s troubled histories collide with this catastrophic present, Midge Raymond s phenomenal novel takes us on a voyage deep into the wonders of the Antarctic and the mysteries of the human heart. "My Last Continent" is packed with emotional intelligence and high stakes a harrowing, searching novel of love and loss in one of the most remote places on earth, a land of harsh beauty where even the smallest missteps have tragic consequences Half adventure, half elegy, and wholly recommended (Karen Joy Fowler, author of "We Are All Completely Beside Ourselves")."

Abandoned


Warren Craig Shan - 2013
    She was found abandoned on a park bench in Glasgow, Scotland when she was only two years old. Being unable to talk or explain herself meant that growing up within the Scottish welfare system was depressingly harsh.This all changes the day a young social worker named Kim comes into seven-year-old Emily's life. Kim suspects that there is definitely more to Emily than the workers in the social system have surmised. A suspicion that Emily is no ordinary sufferer of domestic trauma. Emily, through Kim, finds hope, guidance and the chance of a normal life. But when a teenaged Emily becomes a victim of assault, leading to the death of her attackers, it fires off an urgent need to find out who she actually is.Through the first person accounts of a social worker, a teenager, a gymnastics coach, an investigative agent and a sickly, elderly man, we observe Emily's often-perilous journey to discover her true identity and what led to her abandonment in the first place--what she eventually finds may be truly extraordinary.

Fight for Your Long Day


Alex Kudera - 2010
    Meet Cyrus Duffleman "Duffy" for short an adjunct professor who can barely afford his two-room apartment. Forget about an unfinished novel: He'd be thrilled with health insurance. Still, he gamely shuffles to four urban universities each day to teach, and works a security guard graveyard shift once a week. Cobbled together, he can almost make a living. But today, Duffy's routine isn't quite so predictable: The cryptic mumblings of a possibly psychotic student. Government protests and a bow-and-arrow assassination. Frenzied attempts to spare his sanity (and safety) all while a female coed quietly eyes him. Part A Confederacy of Dunces (John Kennedy Toole), part Straight Man (Richard Russo), FIGHT FOR YOUR LONG DAY is a promising debut from a new literary talent. It will resonate with anyone who has ever known, been taught by, felt sorry for, or lived the life of an adjunct professor."

How Andrew Got His Spots


Louise Lintvelt - 2014
    He does not have any spots, you see! He keeps seeing spots wherever he goes… One spot, two spots, three spots, Four! And many, many, many more. “Where did you get your spots?” he asks. Join Andrew as he discovers how the ladybug, the leopard and the owl came to have spots and discovers that spots often appear when you are least expecting them! This is a wonderful rhyming picture book for children of all ages.

Poe


J. Lincoln Fenn - 2013
    It’s the one-year anniversary of his parents’ deaths, he’s stuck on page one thousand of his Rasputin zombie novel, and he makes his living writing obituaries.But things turn from bleak to terrifying when Dimitri gets a last-minute assignment to cover a séance at the reputedly haunted Aspinwall Mansion.There, Dimitri meets Lisa, a punk-rock drummer he falls hard for. But just as he’s about to ask her out, he unwittingly unleashes malevolent forces, throwing him into a deadly mystery. When Dimitri wakes up, he is in the morgue—icy cold and haunted by a cryptic warning given by a tantalizing female spirit.As town residents begin to turn up gruesomely murdered, Dimitri must play detective in his own story and unravel the connections among his family, the Aspinwall Mansion, the female spirit, and the secrets held in a pair of crumbling antiquarian books. If he doesn’t, it’s quite possible Lisa will be the next victim.

Panther


Chhimi Tenduf-La - 2015
    Legs like toothpicks, body and face all ribs and cheekbones. And that hair. Come on, what is it? Like friggin' barbed wire. I see you with a hand-me-down cracked bat creaming a leather ball, in a sock, hanging from the branch of a mango tree.' Being accepted into an elite international school on a cricket scholarship doesn't mean your life is going to change. Except it does, because hunky Indika - I for Indika, I for Incredible - takes you under his wing, drags you to posh restaurants and shows you pictures from glossy magazines of women who ... well, never mind, that's not the point. The point is: if your best friend snogs your girlfriend, can he still be Incredible? Was he ever? But don't sweat the small stuff. There are cricket matches to win, examinations to pass, a horrifying past to forget, a sinister schoolmaster to avoid ... and, of course, a first kiss to finally experience. Prabu's life is never going to be the same again. Funny, diamond-sharp and unapologetic, Panther is a novel about that familiar, fractured passage to adulthood that can make us magnificent if it does not kill us.

After the Execution


James Raven - 2012
    He's lost everything - his wife, his dreams, his future. He finally enters the death chamber at the famous 'Walls' prison in Texas. He's strapped to a gurney and given an injection of lethal drugs in front of witnesses. Minutes later he's pronounced dead. But that's not the end of it. After the execution comes the shocking revelation - Jordan is still alive. And to stop him talking he has to die all over again - before he brings down the entire American justice system.