Set during the '50s to the present-day; their romance spans decades of the most turbulent times in America.         Xavier Cyrus meets and marries the impoverished Estella in college during a tumultuous courtship. Being a member of a wealthy prominent political family, Xavier runs for Congress and easily wins. Thrusting his new family into the exciting DC social scene and an Ancient Secret Society. However, Xavier's abuse and indiscretions with celebrities quickly destroy their marriage. Due to the responsibilities of motherhood and duty Estella remains in her unhappy marriage but finds love with her kind and gentle protector, Michael. Will Estella abandon her responsibilities to live happily ever after with Michael or will she remain in the glamorous and powerful world of a Senator's wife?

    She was an intern at twenty-nine and met her husband on Tinder in her late thirties, after many of her friends had already gotten married, started families, and entered couples’ counseling. After a long fertility struggle, she became a first-time mom at forty-one, joining Mommy & Me classes where most of the other moms were at least ten years younger. And while she was one of Gawker’s early hires and one of the first editors at BuzzFeed, she didn’t find professional fulfillment until she co-launched the successful self-care podcast Forever35—at forty. Now, in her debut memoir, Shafrir explores the enormous pressures we feel, especially as women, to hit particular milestones at certain times and how we can redefine what it means to be a late bloomer. She writes about everything from dating to infertility, to how friendships evolve as you get older, to why being pregnant at forty-one is unexpectedly freeing—all with the goal of appreciating the lives we’ve lived so far and the lives we still hope to live. Thanks for Waiting is about how achieving the milestones you thought were so important don’t always happen on the time line you imagined. In a world of 30 Under 30 lists, this book is a welcome reminder that it’s okay to live life at your own speed.

    

    A buried secret.Juliet is used to wielding power and influence in her line of work, but when her beloved niece dies, she finds herself powerless in the face of her grief and has doubts over the coroner’s report of suicide.She travels back to her family’s remote coastal home where Beth was found. As Juliet delves deeper into the investigation, her personal and professional lives collide and she unwittingly finds herself pitted against dangerous opposition who seem intent on silencing her.In order to expose the truth behind her niece's death, Juliet must face the fact that nobody in her life is who she previously thought them to be – including herself.

    Tackling subjects like addiction, fertility, feminism and sexual violence, and where these subjects intersect with legislation, these beautifully written essays are at once fascinating and funny, intimate and searingly honest. Honest, raw, brave and new, Notes to Self breaks new ground in the field of personal essays.

    Until now.For years, behind the closed doors of their farmhouse in Raymond, Washington, their sadistic mother, Shelly, subjected her girls to unimaginable abuse, degradation, torture, and psychic terrors. Through it all, Nikki, Sami, and Tori developed a defiant bond that made them far less vulnerable than Shelly imagined. Even as others were drawn into their mother’s dark and perverse web, the sisters found the strength and courage to escape an escalating nightmare that culminated in multiple murders.

    The rape of eight-year-old Kathleen by a neighbour had triggered their removal - the Irish authorities ruling that her mother must have been negligent. They were only allowed a strictly supervised visit once a year, until they were permitted to leave the harsh and cruel regime of the institution at the age of sixteen. But Kate survived her traumatic childhood and escaped her past by leaving for England and then Australia when the British government offered a scheme to encourage settlement there. Fleeing her past again, Kate worked as a governess in Paris and then returned to England where she trained as a beautician at Elizabeth Arden. She married and had a son.A turning point in Kate's life came when she applied to become a magistrate and realised that she had to confront her hidden personal history and make it public. This is her inspiring story.

    After witnessing his fiancée’s death and being left alone to raise his daughter, falling in love again is the last thing on his mind. However, when a total stranger risks her life to help him, he finds himself enthralled with the beauty who swooped in to save the day. Sova Blow is fed up with love. After wasting her best years on men who couldn’t see her worth, she decides to focus on herself while enjoying the single life. That is until unusual circumstances place the alluring Supreme into her world and leaves her wondering if love isn't so bad after all. They say when someone isn’t looking for love, that is exactly when they find it. Will these two broken hearts find love in each other, or will their pasts keep them from the best love they could ever have?

    What could be more elemental than Phire and Ice? Sapphire Henson and Isaiah Harrison had been riding together since childhood. She held him down through his days in the game and his thot-filled nights. But Phire had grown tired of Ice’s arrogance and when he crosses one bridge too many, is there a way for this couple to bounce back… especially when a sexy arms dealer known as Bleu is waiting in the wings to make her his own “Sapphire Bleu?” Elijah Harrison, II, can’t understand the back and forth nature of his brother Ice’s relationship with Phire. He’s convinced that Ice should be more like him and avoid drama by dodging relationships altogether… that is, till a wounded angel crosses his path one night. Ariana Alexander makes Jah throw away all his no-attachment rules. But will she allow her past to destroy any chance of their future? Joshua (Jace) Taylor was supposed to get his family out the hood the legitimate way—with his phenomenal basketball talent. His best friends, Ice and Jah, work hard to keep him out of the game and Jace works just as hard to keep up his college kid façade. Meeting the beautiful Laila MacNamara stirs his darkest desires, bringing out the side of him he wants to keep under wraps. Her heated responses to his dominance make it unlikely that the bad boy in him will stay hidden. Just as they begin to explore the limits of their passion, the intoxicating world of professional basketball, with its endless excesses, pulls at him. At twenty-one, can Jace stay strong enough to be true to Laila? Join these childhood friends from the East Side of San Antonio as they struggle to figure out where life—and love—will take them.

     The Skye Preston. The daughter of the wealthiest businessman in the world, and the most beautiful woman I'd ever known. Her looks don't compare to her golden heart. And her heart doesn't compare to that big brain of hers. But I could never tell her. Because we've been best friends for twenty years. She has a jerk for a boyfriend, and I'm not the only one who thinks so. The rest of the gang can't stand him either. But I'm not the kind of guy to intervene. I respect her too much to pull a stunt like that. But then I spot her at a party, too drunk to even walk. The men are eyeing her like easy prey so I take her home. But when we get there Skye is different. She looks at me differently. She touches me differently. And she wants me differently.

    She's craving it from the man that knows her inside and out, a man that think he knows her, and the best friend who doesn’t know her so well. Mica left a hectic lifestyle in hopes that the grass was greener on the other side, only to find out its just as dark. Mike is the first love of her life. Wes is the love of her life. What to do when you have two wrongs that both feel right? Both are south siders, but which one really has her heart? Will either of them change for her? Are they even worthy of her love? At the same time, she has a messed-up view of what love should really be. In this book of love, lies, and deceit, find out what Mica's next move will be! Maybe there’s no hope for love on the southside of Chicago. Or will she ruin her only chance at love?

    Now she shares her story with the child she gave away.Adopted at birth, Marylee's parents told her she was a "chosen child." She tried her hardest to be a model daughter, but divorce sent her into the comforting arms of a handsome Catholic boy.It's a familiar story. Romeo and Juliet. Theirs was the love story of all time.Starry-eyed, she surrendered to passion. Unfortunately, it was 1961. Pregnant girls were sent away, and their babies given up for adoption. History was repeating itself.Nature vs. nurture: Which plays a greater role in who we become? The family we were raised in, or the parents we never knew?In telling her adult son the story of his birth, can the narrator find compassion for her own wounded inner child?If you like truthful accounts laced with the passion of youth and the wisdom of age, read Marylee MacDonald's funny and poignant memoir about how we grow up, grow old, and learn to accept ourselves.

    There have been exhilarating highs and devastating lows, but his love for the practice of neurosurgery has never wavered. Following the publication of his celebrated New York Times bestseller Do No Harm, Marsh retired from his full-time job in England to work pro bono in Ukraine and Nepal. In Admissions, he describes the difficulties of working in these troubled, impoverished countries and the further insights it has given him into the practice of medicine. Marsh also faces up to the burden of responsibility that can come with trying to reduce human suffering. Unearthing memories of his early days as a medical student and the experiences that shaped him as a young surgeon, he explores the difficulties of a profession that deals in probabilities rather than certainties and where the overwhelming urge to prolong life can come at a tragic cost for patients and those who love them. Reflecting on what forty years of handling the human brain has taught him, Marsh finds a different purpose in life as he approaches the end of his professional career and a fresh understanding of what matters to us all in the end.

    But underneath the gleaming mid-century house, the flawless hostess mom, and the thriving businessman dad ran an unspoken tension that, amid the upheaval of the late 1960s, was destined to fracture their precarious facade.His older sister Donna introduces him to the charismatic Valentine, who places a tab of acid on twelve-year-old Rush's tongue, proclaiming: "This is sacrament. You are one of us now."After an unceremonious ejection from an experimental art school, Rush heads to Tuscon to make a major drug purchase and, still barely a teenager, disappears into the nascent American counterculture. Stitching together a ragged assemblage of lowlifes, prophets, and fellow wanderers, he seeks kinship in the communes of the west. His adolescence is spent looking for knowledge, for the divine, for home. Given what Rush confronts on his travels--from ordinary heartbreak to unimaginable violence--it is a miracle he is still alive.The Light Years is a prayer for vanished friends, an odyssey signposted with broken and extraordinary people. It transcends one boy's story to perfectly illustrate the slow slide from the optimism of the 1960s into the darker and more sinister 1970s. This is a riveting, heart-stopping journey of discovery and reconciliation, as Rush faces his lost childhood and, finally, himself.

    Ebony Canion has had her share of tumultuous events, yet even she was stunned when a speeding car hit her intentionally, dragging her through the streets with her body folded underneath the vehicle. In a coma for nearly two months, Ebony had no idea her tongue and face had to be sewn back on, or the list of thirty other life-threatening injuries she had sustained. Ultimately,Ebony had been Left for Dead. In this horrifying first-hand account of a survivor, Ms. Canion delivers a riveting story about overcoming tragedy throughout her childhood, and developing the will to live after numerous attacks on her life. Her strength to learn to walk, talk, and eat again will leave you spellbound and inspired. Her scars tell a story that must be heard and will have you never wanting to complain again.