Book picks similar to
Girls in the Grass by Melanie Rae Thon


short-stories
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Stephen King: The Playboy Interview


Stephen King - 1983
    This is the interview with the horror author Stephen King from the June 1983 issue.

Lucky


Alice Sebold - 1999
    What propels this chronicle of her recovery is Sebold's indomitable spirit - as she struggles for understanding ("After telling the hard facts to anyone, from lover to friend, I have changed in their eyes"); as her dazed family and friends sometimes bungle their efforts to provide comfort and support; and as, ultimately, she triumphs, managing through grit and coincidence to help secure her attacker's arrest and conviction. In a narrative by turns disturbing, thrilling, and inspiring, Alice Sebold illuminates the experience of trauma victims even as she imparts wisdom profoundly hard-won: "You save yourself or you remain unsaved."

They Don't Play Hockey in Heaven: A Dream, A Team, and My Comeback Season


Ken Baker - 2003
    . . colorful descriptions make this a fun read." -Los Angeles Times "One of the best sports books of the year." -Booklist Ken Baker wanted nothing more than to play ice hockey with the pros-until a brain tumor cut his dreams short while in college. After surgery and several years of rehab, Baker, who in high school was a top prospect for the U.S. Olympic team, put his successful journalism career on hold to attempt the seemingly impossible: a comeback. He moved away from his family to become the third-string goalie for the Bakersfield Condors, an AA-level minor-league team in the dusty oil town of Bakersfield, California. At the age of thirty-one, Baker became the oldest rookie in all of pro-hockey, facing 100-m.p.h. slap shots and long bus rides, hostile fans and cheap motel rooms, body bruises, and battle-worn teammates. From his visit to an NHL training camp to his first nerve-rattled minutes as a pro, Baker joins the rookies who still dream of making it to the Show, the veterans long past their prime, and the obsessive fans who keep them going. When the season is over, Baker's pro-hockey adventure ends up teaching him nearly everything he will ever need to know about life.

Happy Stories!: Real-Life Inspirational Stories from Around the World


Will Bowen - 2013
    The path to happiness is not determined by your circumstances, but by aligning your thoughts, words, and actions to focus on the goal of happiness. Now, through fifty true stories, Bowen shares how people have taken his philosophies to heart—and are becoming measurably happier!

Loose Balls: Easy Money, Hard Fouls, Cheap Laughs, & True Love in the NBA


Jayson Williams - 2000
    From revelations about the meanest, softest, and smelliest players in the league, to Williams’s early days as a “young man with a lot of money and not a lot of sense,” to his strong and powerful views on race, privilege, and giving back, Loose Balls is a basketball book unlike any other.No inspirational pieties or chest-thumping boasting here—instead, Jayson Williams gives us the real insider tales of refs, groupies, coaches, entourages, and all the superstars, bench warmers, journeymen, clowns, and other performers in the rarefied circus that is professional basketball.From the Trade Paperback edition.

With the Kisses of His Mouth


Monique Roffey - 2011
    Emotionally reeling, Monique Roffey went searching not just for lovers but to experience the furthest limits of her sexuality.

You Remind Me of Me


Dan Chaon - 2004
    He is a writer, observes the "Chicago Tribune," who can "convincingly squeeze whole lives into a mere twenty pages or so." Now Chaon marshals his notable talents in his much-anticipated debut novel. "You Remind Me of Me" begins with a series of separate incidents: In 1977, a little boy is savagely attacked by his mother's pet Doberman; in 1997 another little boy disappears from his grandmother's backyard on a sunny summer morning; in 1966, a pregnant teenager admits herself to a maternity home, with the intention of giving her child up for adoption; in 1991, a young man drifts toward a career as a drug dealer, even as he hopes for something better. With penetrating insight and a deep devotion to his characters, Dan Chaon" "explores the secret connections that irrevocably link them. In the process he examines questions of identity, fate, and circumstance: Why do we become the people that we become? How do we end up stuck in lives that we never wanted? And can we change the course of what seems inevitable? In language that is both unflinching and exquisite, Chaon moves deftly between the past and the present in the small-town prairie Midwest and shows us the extraordinary lives of "ordinary" people.

Non-Fiction


Chuck Palahniuk - 2004
    The pieces that comprise Non-Fiction prove just how different, in ways both highly entertaining and deeply unsettling. Encounters with alternative culture heroes Marilyn Manson and Juliette Lewis; the peculiar wages of fame attendant on the big budget film production of the movie Fight Club; life as an assembly-line drive train installer by day, hospice volunteer driver by night; the really peculiar lives of submariners; the really violent world of college wrestlers; the underground world of anabolic steroid gobblers; the harrowing circumstances of his father's murder and the trial of his killer - each essay or vignette offers a unique facet of existence as lived in and/or observed by one of America's most flagrantly daring and original literary talents.

Three Minutes More


Edward R. O'Dell - 2010
    Severely injured, he does not know if he will survive the night. Reflecting on the evening's dreadful events, wondering if he could have done anything to alter them, his thoughts begin to drift. He begins to contemplate his remarkable life, his dysfunctional family, and the unfortunate prospect that he may have to soon answer for his life to God. While vividly recalling the most amusing, distressing, bizarre, and disturbing events of his life, he soon comes to realize "the monster you know is far easier to deal with than the monster you don't!" Will he get the miracle he needs to make it through the night? If so, will he finally find peace? Author's Note: This book deals with sensitive topics, and is intended for mature audiences only.

Learn German with Stories: Dino lernt Deutsch - German Short Stories for Beginners: Explore German Cities and Boost Your Vocabulary


André Klein - 2015
     There's A Litte Bit Of Dino Inside All Of Us Lured by the promise of endless possibilities, Dino, a young man from Sicily tries to make a new home in Germany. Equipped only with an intense curiosity and a knack for meeting new people, he's eager to delve into local customs and cuisine, if there only wasn't this pesky business of learning German ... Follow Dino on his adventures through 4 different German cities, experience daily life in Germany through the eyes of a newcomer, learn about the country and its people, and learn German effortlessly along the way! This book is designed to help beginners make the leap from studying isolated words and phrases to reading (and enjoying) naturally flowing German short stories. Learning German Doesn't Have To Be A Chore Just got started on your German learning journey? Memorized a few words but struggle with longer texts? We've all been there. This book is designed to help beginners make the leap from studying isolated words and phrases to reading (and enjoying!) authentic German fiction. Using simplified sentence structures and a very basic vocabulary, this story series is carefully crafted to allow even novice learners to boost their confidence and speed up their German learning journey. Each chapter comes with a complete German-English dictionary, with a special emphasis on collocative phrases (high frequency word combinations), short sentences and useful expressions. By working with these building blocks instead of just single words, learners can accelerate their understanding, boost retention and active usage of new German language material and make the language learning process more fluid and fun. What You'll Find In This Book 40 German short stories about German culture, language and cuisine tons of phrases and expressions you will actually use in daily life a detailed German-English vocabulary after each chapter short quizzes to boost your text-comprehension a relatable protagonist and other fun characters hand-drawn illustrations by the author the beginning of a grand German learning adventure ... Read, Learn & Collect Them All Yes! That's right. Once you're done reading the four episodes contained in this collector's edition, the story continues! Follow our protagonist to Palermo, Zurich, Vienna and many other cities in the next installment! Before you know it, you'll have traveled half of Europe and picked up more German than years' worth of expensive courses. Learning German has never been more fun. What You'll NOT Find In This Book dull characters designed by academics archaic words and phrases nobody uses in real life

Mrs Funnybones


Twinkle Khanna - 2015
    and I am wide awake because the man of the house has decided that he needs to perform a series of complex manoeuvres that involve him balancing on his left elbow. When I fell asleep last night, there was a baby lying next to me. Her smelly diaper is still wedged on my head but aside from this rather damp clue, I can't seem to find her anywhere. I could ask my mother-in-law if she has seen the baby, but she may just tell me that I need to fast on alternate Mondays, and God will deliver the baby back to me . . . Full of wit and delicious observations, Mrs Funnybones captures the life of the modern Indian woman—a woman who organizes dinner each evening, even as she goes to work all day, who runs her own life but has to listen to her Mummyji, who worries about her weight and the state of the country. Based on Twinkle Khanna’s super-hit column, Mrs Funnybones marks the debut of one of our funniest, most original voices.

Trying to Save Piggy Sneed


John Irving - 1993
    To open this spirited collection, Irving explains how he became a writer. There follow six scintillating stories written over the last twenty years ending with a homage to Charles Dickens. This irresistible collection cannot fail to delight and charm.The first collection of short pieces--two of them previously unpublished--by the author of The World According to Garp includes memoirs, six short stories, and essays on Charles Dickens and Gu+a5nter Grass. Reprint. Tour.This gem, a delightful collection of shorter works, both fiction and nonfiction, written by one of the country's finest--and funniest--writers, includes a living portrait of Irving's grandmother, a new, never-before-published essay, six scintillating short stories--including the O. Henry Award-winning "Interior Space"--and two essays on Irving's favorite 19th-century novelist, Charles Dickens. Trying to Save Piggy Sneed is John Irving at the top of his form.

Lady, You're the Boss


Apurva Purohit - 2019
    

Like Hell


Ben Weasel - 2001
    About a guy and his punk band. Who start out shitty, but persevere, and eventually become pretty popular. If I mentioned that Ben Foster is better known as Ben Weasel from Screeching Weasel, you'll get a much more nuanced idea about what this book is about, and certainly, what this novel MIGHT be based upon. Regardless, it's a great, rollicking read. Whether or not it's entirely true, or entirely false, anyone with any knowledge of 90s punk in America will recognise large chunks of this. And anyone with any interest in, appreciation of, or experience of being in a band, breaking up with a girl, or punk rock, will thoroughly enjoy. It's that good. Though why he had to kill off his guitarist and best friend at the end I'll leave to his shrink to fathom...

Hummingbird


Jude Angelini - 2017
    He writes about his sexual encounters--both strange and intimate--alongside stories from his childhood and his tell-all experiences with -science drugs.- Throughout it all, Jude is critical of himself and his actions, proving himself to be vulnerable, lonely, and extremely relatable. Even more than his first book, Hyena, Hummingbird showcases a remarkable talent.