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Sweetgirl
Travis Mulhauser - 2016
For years, Percy has had to take care of herself and Mama—a woman who’s been unraveling for as long as her daughter can remember. Fearing Carletta is strung out on meth and that she won’t survive the storm, Percy heads for Shelton Potter’s cabin, deep in the woods of Northern Michigan. A two-bit criminal, as incompetent as he is violent, Shelton has been smoking his own cook and grieving the death of his beloved Labrador, Old Bo.But when Percy arrives, there is no sign of Carletta. Searching the house, she finds Shelton and his girlfriend drugged into oblivion—and a crying baby girl left alone in a freezing room upstairs. From the moment the baby wraps a tiny hand around her finger, Percy knows she must save her—a split-second decision that is the beginning of a dangerous odyssey in which she must battle the elements and evade Shelton and a small band of desperate criminals, hell-bent on getting that baby back.Knowing she and the child cannot make it alone, Percy seeks help from Carletta’s ex, Portis Dale, who is the closest thing she’s ever had to a father. As the storm breaks and violence erupts, Percy will be forced to confront the haunting nature of her mother’s affliction and finds her own fate tied more and more inextricably to the baby she is determined to save.Filled with the sweeping sense of cultural and geographic isolation of its setting—the hills of fictional Cutler County in northern Michigan—and told in Percy’s unflinching style, Sweetgirl is an affecting exploration of courage, sacrifice, and the ties that bind—a taut and darkly humorous tour-de-force that is horrifying, tender, and hopeful.
The Secret Wisdom of the Earth
Christopher Scotton - 2015
In this peeled-paint coal town deep in Appalachia, Kevin quickly falls in with a half-wild hollow kid named Buzzy Fink who schools him in the mysteries and magnificence of the woods. The events of this fateful summer will affect the entire town of Medgar, Kentucky. Medgar is beset by a massive mountaintop removal operation that is blowing up the hills and back filling the hollows. Kevin's grandfather and others in town attempt to rally the citizens against the "company" and its powerful owner to stop the plunder of their mountain heritage. When Buzzy witnesses a brutal hate crime, a sequence is set in play that tests Buzzy and Kevin to their absolute limits in an epic struggle for survival in the Kentucky mountains.
The Quartzsite Trip
William Hogan - 1980
Cooper led thirty-six high school seniors on a spring vacation jaunt from Los Angeles to the desert near Quartzsite, Arizona. No student could earn the privilege of going on the Quartzsite Trip; it was given, and P.J. Cooper gave it. No activities were planned; they happened, and P.J. Cooper made them happen. What few rules there were were also P.J.'s and he enforced them with a whim of iron. In William Hogan's utterly delightful novel, the Quartzsite Trip turns out to be an utterly memorable experience.Here, the lion lies down with the lamb, the merciful find mercy, and the meek inherit the earth. Here, the tables are turned, and as they turn we meet a riotous and endearing cast of characters -- among them Deeter Moss, secret cowboy and closet Dodgers expert, who never talked to anybody before he went on the Quartzsite Trip; Margaret Ball, whose moonlit face displayed what pimples hid; Mary Allbright, who had a very secret fear and who, on the Quartzsite Trip, came up with a very secret plan to resolve it; and P.J. Cooper himself, the best teacher anyone ever had, who gave extra credit for Winnie the Pooh and The Catcher in the Rye and who discovered, in 1962, that the Great Equalizer makes rules too.[From the book jacket]
Love's Winning Plays: A Novel
Inman Majors - 2012
So head coach Von Driver will take his motivational magic and his Isosceles Triangle of Success on a Pigskin Cavalcade to the small towns in the state. Raymond Love, a young coach unfamiliar with the banquet circuit of big-shot boosters and chat-room gurus, will go along as his wide-eyed errand boy. Also on the trip is the athletic director 's daughter, whom Love has tried to win by joining her book club a dubious strategy at best. The football aspects of the Cavalcade will prove child 's play compared to the literary hazards he faces. Will Love master the art of coach-speak? Will he win the affection of the girl? Find out in this fist-bumping, high-fiving, all-out comedic blitz about the sublimely ridiculous world of college football.
The Last Promise
Richard Paul Evans - 2002
Years ago, a sweet girl from Utah was swept off her feet by a handsome Italian. Today, the sweet girl from Utah is a wife and mother living in Italy. And she's about to be swept off her feet all over again...
Moloka'i
Alan Brennert - 2003
Then one day a rose-colored mark appears on her skin, and those dreams are stolen from her. Taken from her home and family, Rachel is sent to Kalaupapa, the quarantined leprosy settlement on the island of Moloka'i. Here her life is supposed to end---but instead she discovers it is only just beginning.
White Fur
Jardine Libaire - 2017
Although they are next-door neighbors in New Haven, they come from different worlds. Elise grew up in a housing project without a father and didn't graduate from high school. Jamey is a junior at Yale, heir to a private investment bank fortune and beholden to high family expectations. The attraction is instant, and what starts out as sexual obsession turns into something greater, stranger, and impossible to ignore.The unlikely couple moves to Manhattan in hopes of forging an adult life together, but Jamey's family intervenes in desperation, and the consequences of staying together are suddenly severe. And when a night out with old friends takes a shocking turn, Jamey and Elise find themselves fighting not just for their love but also for their lives.
Schooled
Anisha Lakhani - 2008
For Anna Taggert, an earnest Ivy League graduate, pursuing her passion as a teacher means engaging young hearts and minds. She longs to be in a place where she can be her best self, and give that best to her students. Turns out it isn't that easy. Landing a job at an elite private school in Manhattan, Anna finds her dreams of chalk boards and lesson plans replaced with board families, learning specialists, and benefit-planning mothers. Not to mention the grim realities of her small paycheck. And then comes the realization that the papers she grades are not the work of her students, but of their high-priced, college-educated tutors. After uncovering this underground economy where a teacher can make the same hourly rate as a Manhattan attorney, Anna herself is seduced by lucrative offers -- one after another. Teacher by day, tutor by night, she starts to sample the good life her students enjoy: binges at Barneys, dinners at the Waverly Inn, and a new address on Madison Avenue. Until, that is, the truth sets in.
Something Borrowed
Emily Giffin - 2004
Rachel has always been the consummate good girl—until her thirtieth birthday, when her best friend, Darcy, throws her a party. That night, after too many drinks, Rachel ends up in bed with Darcy's fiancé. Although she wakes up determined to put the one-night fling behind her, Rachel is horrified to discover that she has genuine feelings for the one guy she should run from. As the September wedding date nears, Rachel knows she has to make a choice. In doing so, she discovers that the lines between right and wrong can be blurry, endings aren't always neat, and sometimes you have to risk all to win true happiness. Something Borrowed is a phenomenal debut novel that will have you laughing, crying, and calling your best friend.
Scratch
Troon Mcallister - 2003
When Eddie's former caddie, "Fat Albert" Auberlain (a cross between Tiger Woods and John Daly), loses his PGA Tour card, his endorsements, and his composure after posting a twelve on a par three at the Fruit-of-the-Loom Waste Management Open, Eddie finds the sad sack on his doorstep. Fat Albert, in debt up to his eyeballs and with several needy relatives to feed, had barely been eking out a living on Tour as it was, and the pressure was threatening to make him implode altogether. Eddie takes pity on his protege but isn't quite sure what he can do, when along comes nuclear physicist Norman Standish with the most revolutionary advance in golf equipment since the double niblick-a golf ball they call Scratch. If Standish's claims are true, Eddie could make the killing of his strange and wonderful life and just possibly change the game forever. With McAllister's patented golf hustling hijinks, roller-coaster plotting, and laugh-out-loud skewering of pro sports hypocrisy, Eddie's die-hard fans and golf fiction aficionados will laugh all the way to the putting green. As Eddie himself puts it in The Foursome, "Why do you think they call the devil "Scratch"?"
The Secret Lives of Dresses
Erin McKean - 2011
All a far cry from her vivid, eccentric childhood, growing up with her beloved grandmother Mimi.However, when disaster strikes, Dora knows she has no choice but to return to her childhood home and take over running Mimi’s vintage clothing shop. And there she makes a surprising discovery – Mimi’s been writing stories to accompany every dress she sells. Romantic, heartbreaking tales about each one’s secret life before it got to her shop...Dora starts to matchmake these lonely frocks with new owners, but will the stories help her as well? Trading her boring high street clothes for vintage glamour is one thing. What she needs to know is whether she can trade her safe old life – and love – for something better too?A captivating and enchanting novel for every girl who knows that the right dress can change your life. By the author of the popular blog www.dressaday.com.
The Bean Trees
Barbara Kingsolver - 1988
But when she heads west with high hopes and a barely functional car, she meets the human condition head-on. By the time Taylor arrives in Tucson, Arizona, she has acquired a completely unexpected child, a three-year-old American Indian girl named Turtle, and must somehow come to terms with both motherhood and the necessity for putting down roots. Hers is a story about love and friendship, abandonment and belonging, and the discovery of surprising resources in apparently empty places.
Fortune's Rocks
Anita Shreve - 1999
On a beach in New Hampshire at the turn of the last century, a young woman is drawn into a rocky, disastrous passage to adulthood. Olympia Biddeford is the only child of a prominent Boston couple--a precocious and well-educated daughter, alive with ideas and flush with the first stirrings of maturity. Her summer at the family's vacation home in Fortune's Rocks is transformed by the arrival of a doctor, a friend of her father's, whose new book about mill-town laborers has caused a sensation. Olympia is captivated by his thinking, his stature, and his drive to do right--even as she is overwhelmed for the first time by irresistible sexual desire. She and the doctor--a married man, a father, and nearly three times her age--come together in an unthinkable, torturous, hopelessly passionate affair. Throwing aside propriety and self-preservation, Olympia plunges forward with cataclysmic results that are the price of straying in an unforgiving era. Olympia is cast out of the world she knows, and Fortune's Rocks is the story of her determination to reinvent her broken life--and claim the one thing she finds she cannot live without. A meditation on the erotic life of women, an exploration of class prejudices, and most of all a portrayal of the thoughts and actions of an unforgettable young woman, Fortune's Rocks is a masterpiece of narrative drama, beautifully written by one of the most accomplished novelists of our time.
The Last Summer (of You and Me)
Ann Brashares - 2007
Each year, they return to the house and community they have known since they were children—and to Paul, the boy next door. But this summer marks a season of change: budding love and sexual interest, an illness, and a deep secret force all three to confront the increasing complexities of their lives and friendships.