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The Exceptionals: How the Best Become the Best and How You Can Too


Kumar Mehta - 2021
    They are the 1% of the 1%. They have reached seemingly unreachable heights. They may be athletes or entertainers who are household names, or they may be people who have invented life-saving drugs or won a Nobel Prize by making fundamental advances in knowledge. Or they may have changed the world through science or music or business by influencing millions or perhaps billions of lives.They are the people who have succeeded in being able to draw out the best talents they have within themselves and have maximized the physical, mental, and social potential available to them.The Exceptionals is their story, and it provides you with the blueprint to advance yourself from good to great—and from outstanding to elite.

Last Couple Standing


Matthew Norman - 2020
    They got married around the same time, had kids around the same time, and now, fifteen years later, they’ve started getting divorced around the same time, too. With three of the Core Four unions crumbling to dust around them, Jessica and Mitch Butler take a long, hard look at their own marriage. Can it be saved? Or is divorce, like some fortysomething zombie virus, simply inescapable?To maximize their chance at immunity, Jessica and Mitch try something radical. Their friends’ divorces mostly had to do with sex—having it, not having it, wanting to have it with other people—so they decide to relax a few things. Terms are discussed, conditions are made, and together the Butlers embark on the great experiment of taking their otherwise happy, functional marriage and breaking some very serious rules.Jessica and Mitch are convinced they’ve hit upon the next evolution of marriage. But as lines are crossed and hot bartenders pursued, they each start to wonder if they’ve made a huge mistake. What follows is sexy, fun, painful, messy, and completely surprising to them both. Because sometimes doing something bad is the only way to get to the heart of what’s really good.

Millicent Glenn's Last Wish


Tori Whitaker - 2020
    As she nears her ninety-first birthday, her daughter Jane, with whom she’s weathered a shaky relationship, suddenly moves back home. Then Millie’s granddaughter shares the thrilling surprise that she’s pregnant. But for Millie, the news stirs heartbreaking memories of a past she’s kept hidden for too long. Maybe it’s time she shared something, too. Millie’s last wish? For Jane to forgive her.Sixty years ago Millie was living a dream. She had a husband she adored, a job of her own, a precious baby girl, and another child on the way. They were the perfect family. All it took was one irreversible moment to shatter everything, reshaping Millie’s life and the lives of generations to come.As Millie’s old wounds are exposed, so are the secrets she’s kept for so long. Finally revealing them to her daughter might be the greatest risk a mother could take in the name of love.

Other People's Children


R.J. Hoffmann - 2021
    HOW FAR WOULD YOU GO TO SAVE YOUR FAMILY?As soon as Gail and Jon Durbin bring home their adopted baby Maya, she becomes the glue that mends their fractured marriage. But the Durbin’s social worker, Paige, can’t find the teenage birth mother to sign the consent forms. By law, Carli has seventy-two hours to change her mind. Without her signature, the adoption will unravel. Carli is desperate to pursue her dreams, so giving her baby a life with the Durbins seems like the right choice – until her own mother throws down an ultimatum. Soon Carli realizes how few choices she has. As the hours tick by, Paige knows that the Durbins’ marriage won’t survive the loss of Maya, but everyone’s life is shattered when they—and baby Maya—disappear without a trace. Filled with heartrending turns, Other People’s Children is a riveting page-turner you’ll find impossible to put down.

The Peninsula


Michael Burns - 2018
    Navy Lieutenant James Truman and his crew are back in action in an adventure even more dangerous than their first. Sailing into the waters off the Korean Peninsula, after all negotiations for denuclearization have failed, the Nemesis is tasked with giving support to a covert SEAL operation to assassinate Kim Jong-un.

The Museum of Forgotten Memories


Anstey Harris - 2020
    Cate and Richard felt an immediate and undeniable spark, but Richard also felt the weight of the world more deeply than most. As the three matured, he receded further and further into darkness until he disappeared altogether. Now, four years after Richard’s passing, Cate is let go from her teaching job and can’t pay the rent on the London flat she shares with her and Richard’s son, Leo. She packs the two of them up and ventures to Richard’s grandfather’s old Victorian museum in the small town of Crouch-on-Sea, where the dusty staff quarters await her. Despite growing pains and a grouchy caretaker, Cate falls in love with the quirky taxidermy exhibits and sprawling grounds and makes it her mission to revive them. When the museum is faced with closure because of a lack of visitors, Cate stages a grand reopening, but threats from both inside and outside the museum derail her plans and send her spiraling into self-doubt. As Cate becomes more invested in Hatters, she must finally confront the reality of Richard’s death—and the role she played in it—in order to reimagine her future. Perfect for fans of Evvie Drake Starts Over, The Museum of Forgotten Memories masterfully weaves life with death, past with present, and grief with hope.

From the Moon I Watched Her


Emily English Medley - 2021
    Jimmy Carter is in office. The Walters are a good, churchgoing family who stand for holiness, purity, grace, and Christian love. Except when they don't. Family patriarch and fanatic preacher, Victor Black, knows many things for sure, including the fact that abortion is murder and should be punishable by death--a position he defends live in a televised debate. Black’s youngest granddaughter, Stephanie Walters, sits in the front row wearing her frilly Sunday dress, listening carefully to every word. But it doesn't take long for cracks to appear in the Walters upstanding family facade. Stephanie's mother, Lily, begins telling unsettling stories about having a baby who died, and her story keeps changing. It’s clear Lily has a secret--one that righteous Victor Black would kill her for if he knew. This family secret burns more than the lies . . .From the Moon I WatchedHer is a coming-of-age tale about the skeletons that lurk under church pews and the little girl who goes looking for and finds them. Amid the dark and quirky terrain of camp revivals, burning crosses, and public shunnings, one child from the Southern Churches of Christ cries out.

Throne of Lies


Sara Secora - 2016
    She finds herself forever torn between duty and desire—desperately craving freedom, yet bound by the burden of her bloodline. With the realm of Vataenya divided by intolerance, and stained by a veiled and violent past, none take kindly to those who are different. For Amethysta’s sake, her mother must conceal her daughter’s mystifying secret from all—including from Amethysta herself.Once driven to her wit’s end, Amethysta sets out on an unrelenting search for answers that will leave her teetering on the very edge of anguish and strife. With each harrowing turn, Amethysta encounters devastating loss, uncovers the mortifying unknown, and comes face to face with the calamitous heartache that awaits her. All the while, an enigmatic blue glow sleeps below the surface, ready to unfold a world of chaos.

Before and Again


Barbara Delinsky - 2018
    Now she lives in Vermont under the name Maggie Reid, in a small house with her cats and dog. She’s thankful for the new friends she’s made―though she can’t risk telling them too much. And she takes satisfaction in working as a makeup artist at the luxurious local spa, helping clients hide the visible outward signs of their weariness, illnesses, and injuries. Covering up scars is a skill she has mastered.Her only goal is to stay under the radar and make it through her remaining probation. But she isn’t the only one in this peaceful town with secrets. When a friend’s teenage son is thrust into the national spotlight, accused of hacking a powerful man’s Twitter account, Maggie is torn between pulling away and protecting herself―or stepping into the glare to be at their side. As the stunning truth behind their case is slowly revealed, Maggie’s own carefully constructed story begins to unravel as well. She knows all too well that what we need from each other in this difficult world is comfort. But to provide it, sometimes we need to travel far outside our comfort zones.

One Wrong Turn


Deanna Lynn Sletten - 2019
     When his estranged wife, Jess, has a terrible accident leaving her lying in a coma, Clay Connors returns to his family to care for his two daughters. He has been separated from his family for nearly two years and his eldest daughter, Maddie, is resentful over his being absent. Sadly, his youngest daughter, Jilly, barely remembers him. Clay’s reasons for staying away now seem self-serving in the light of their family’s tragedy. The past washes over Clay as the memories of what led up to their separation envelope him and his future hangs in the balance over whether or not his wife will wake up. Can they be a family again, or is he too late? One Wrong Turn is a story of time lost and redemption as Clay and his daughters struggle to reconnect and learn to trust again in the wake of a tragedy. (This is a re-release of the book by the same title: One Wrong Turn)

The Godmothers


Camille Aubray - 2021
    Amie, a beautiful and dreamy French girl from upstate New York, escapes an abusive husband after falling in love with Johnny, the oldest of the brothers. Lucy, a tough-as-nails Irish nurse, ran away from a strict girls' home and marries Frankie, the sensuous middle son. And the glamorous Petrina, the family’s only daughter, graduates with honors from Barnard College despite a past trauma that nearly caused a family scandal.All four women become godmothers to one another’s children, finding hope and shelter in this prosperous family and their sumptuous Greenwich Village home, and enjoying New York life with its fine dining, opulent department stores and sophisticated nightclubs.But the women’s secret pasts lead to unforeseen consequences and betrayals that threaten to unravel all their carefully laid plans. And when their husbands are forced to leave them during the second World War, the Godmothers must unexpectedly contend with notorious gangsters like Frank Costello and Lucky Luciano who run the streets of New York City.Refusing to merely imitate the world of men, the four Godmothers learn to put aside their differences and grudges so that they can work together to protect their loved ones, and to find their own unique paths to success, love, forgiveness, and the futures they’ve always dreamed of.

The Fields


Erin Young - 2022
    It starts with a body—a young woman found dead in an Iowa cornfield, on one of the few family farms still managing to compete with the giants of Big Agriculture.When Sergeant Riley Fisher, newly promoted to head of investigations for the Black Hawk County Sheriff’s Office, arrives on the scene, an already horrific crime becomes personal when she discovers the victim was a childhood friend, connected to a dark past she thought she’d left behind.The investigation grows complicated as more victims are found. Drawn deeper in, Riley soon discovers implications far beyond her Midwest town.

Spot 12: Five Months in the Neonatal ICU


Jenny Jaeckel - 2009
    A routine prenatal exam reveals a dangerous problem, and first-time parents find themselves thrust into a world of close calls, sleepless nights, and psychological crisis. Surrounded by disagreements, deaths, extended family tensions, and questions of faith, the mother struggles to maintain a positive frame of mind. Against the antiseptic, mechanical reality of the NICU, the dedicated health professionals are drawn as sympathetic and wry animal characters. Doctor Eyes and Nurse Gentlehands are two of the care providers that do all they can to take care of Baby Asa. But even the best hospital staff make mistakes, and Jaeckel and her husband’s vigilance must be acute. At times they battle feelings of helplessness, but their determination, insight, bravery, and connection ultimately helps keep their little one alive.

The Victim of the System


Steve Hadden - 2018
    He surrendered his football scholarship and returned home to find their killer and raise his nine-year-old sister. Now, the crime of a local ten-year-old genius, Jack Cole, threatens to unearth old wounds rather than provide the closure Ike desperately wants.When Ike meets Jack inside the Pittsburgh courthouse, he doesn’t see a murderer but instead a boy who has been victimized by a system that has left them both without justice. Despite knowing the case will resurrect the painful demons of his parents’ unsolved murders, Ike agrees to clear Jack’s name. The court of public opinion and the district attorney have an airtight case. Worse, taking Jack’s side thrusts Ike into the crosshairs of the most powerful family in Pittsburgh, the Falzones.Now, with only days before the trial, Ike confronts the Falzones’ crumbling empire to find the shocking evidence that could save Jack. At the same time, he races to decipher a series of cryptic clues from Jack’s dead father that could hold the key to his son’s freedom. But each step closer to the truth draws them further into danger, and as three fractured families collide, Ike is forced to choose between saving Jack—and saving himself.The Victim of the System is a powerful and entertaining thriller about the justice system, closure and the abyss between them.

Blind Ambition


Lutishia Lovely - 2021
    But she's seldom seen her Hollywood-based sibling. More on the shy side, Chantel is perfectly happy with her own modest singing career and quiet Missouri hometown life. But when their mother dies and Chantel's world is upended, she hopes that moving to Los Angeles will give her a fresh start--and a chance to know Jett better. But the truth is, she doesn't know Jett at all.When Jett rebuffs her efforts to bond, Chantel learns a devastating secret she never could have imagined. Reeling and angry, Chantel soon comes up with the perfect vengeful weapon: a bestselling tell-all book that will reveal Jett's stormy past--and wreak havoc on the stardom she prizes more than anything or anyone. But Jett guards her private life for a reason and will stop at nothing to keep the past from being exposed. Now, between hard hidden truths and bitter new revelations, Chantel must decide how much payback is too much--and if the reward is worth the life-altering price.