Book picks similar to
Hot Water Man by Deborah Moggach
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Girls I Know
Douglas Trevor - 2013
In the aftermath, Walt forms two new relationships: one with Ginger Newton, a privileged, reckless, Harvard undergraduate who is interviewing women about their lives for a book called Girls I Know, and the other with 11-year-old Mercedes Bittles, whose parents were killed in the restaurant. Wounded but resilient, all three must deal with loss and grief and the consequences that come when their lives change in unexpected ways.
Malarky
Anakana Schofield - 2012
She’s just caught her son Jimmy in the barn with another man. She’s been accosted by Red the Twit, who claims to have done the unmentionable with her husband. And now her son’s gone and joined the only group that will have him: an army division on its way to Afghanistan.Setting aside her prim and proper ways, Our Woman promptly embarks on an odyssey of her own – one that forces her to look grief in the eye and come face-to-face with the mad agony of longing.
Ore Oru Naal!
Rajesh Kumar
Since publishing his first short story "Seventh Test Tube" in Kalkandu magazine in 1968, he has written over 1,500 short novels and over 2,000 short stories. Many of his detective novels feature the recurring characters Vivek and Rubella. He continues to publish at least five novels every month, in the pocket magazines Best Novel, Everest Novel, Great Novel, Crime Novel, and Dhigil Novel, besides short stories published in weekly magazines like Kumudam and Ananda Vikatan. His writing is widely popular in the Indian state of Tamil Nadu and in Sri Lanka.
A Beginner's Guide to Free Fall
Andy Abramowitz - 2020
Brothers and sisters. Mothers and daughters. Okay, everybody. Hold on tight.
Davis Winger has it all. A respected engineer who designs roller coasters in theme parks across the country, he is deeply in love with his wife and has a beautiful young daughter and a happy home. Until an accident strikes on one of his rides. Nothing fatal—except to his career. And to his marriage, when a betrayal from his past inadvertently comes to light. In one cosmically bad day, Davis loses it all.His sister, Molly, is at a crossroads herself. She’s coasting through a dire relationship with an incompatible man-child. And she’s a journalist whose deeply personal columns about mothers and daughters are forcing her to confront the truth about her own mother, who abandoned Molly and Davis years ago and disappeared.For these two siblings, it’s just a matter of bracing themselves for one turbulent summer in this redemptive and painfully funny family drama about making the best of the sharp turns in life—those we choose to take and those beyond our control.
Riding Lessons
Sara Gruen - 2004
Then, at eighteen, a tragic accident destroyed her riding career and Harry, the beautiful horse she cherished. Now, twenty years later, Annemarie is coming home to her dying father's New Hampshire horse farm. Jobless and abandoned, she is bringing her troubled teenage daughter to this place of pain and memory, where ghosts of an unresolved youth still haunt the fields and stables—and where hope lives in the eyes of the handsome, gentle veterinarian Annemarie loved as a girl . . . and in the seductive allure of a trainer with a magic touch. But everything will change yet again with one glimpse of a white striped gelding startlingly similar to the one Annemarie lost in another lifetime. And an obsession is born that could shatter her fragile world.
Velva Jean Learns to Drive
Jennifer Niven - 2009
Set in Appalachia in the years before World War II, Velva Jean Learns to Drive is a poignant story of a spirited young girl growing up in the gold-mining and moonshining South. Before she dies, Velva Jean's mother urges her to "live out there in the great wide world". Velva Jean dreams of becoming a big-time singer in Nashville until she falls in love with Harley Bright, a handsome juvenile delinquent turned revival preacher. As their tumultuous love story unfolds, Velva Jean must choose between keeping her hard-won home and pursuing her dream of singing in the Grand Ole Opry.
Oakdale Confidential
Anonymous - 2006
This is the scandal they can't ignore.It's a major event in Oakdale -- a black-tie gala honoring the Marron family's fifty years of support for Oakdale's Memorial Hospital. But high spirits are cut short when patron of honor Gregory Marron Jr. is delivered in his limo dead on arrival, from an apparent heart attack. Three women in the crowd have reasons of their own to suspect murder. . . .Event organizer Katie Peretti never understood her boyfriend Mike Kasnoff's reasons for not attending the party -- until now. Wrongly implicated in a crime against the Marrons, Mike served a stiff sentence, and has nursed a simmering rage ever since. Maddie Coleman, the teenaged sister of the limo's driver, Henry, knows that her brother owed Marron thirty-thousand dollars. She also knows he couldn't pay him back, and had only one recourse for permanently erasing the debt. Carly Snyder's suspicions are more personal. The wife of police detective Jack Snyder, Carly was one of Marron's mistresses. In a heated moment she wanted her shameful past dead and buried -- a wish her husband possibly honored.Now Katie, Maddie, and Carly, each of them desperate to protect the man they love, are crossing paths in an investigation that's uncovering more poisonous secrets in Oakdale than they ever imagined. The means, motives, and suspects are shifting with each new twist -- and one of these determined women may not live to see the killer revealed.
Criminal Justice (Max Harrison #1)
Patrick Grisham - 2014
Criminal attorney Max Harrison takes on a case for an old school friend, Wayne Snowden. Wayne has been charged with the attempted murder of an old flame, but it quickly becomes evident that the prosecution is not interested in this conviction. So why are they still pressing ahead with the charge? What is Wayne hiding? This thrilling legal short story will take you for a ride through the courtroom and leave you with twists and turns that you didn’t see coming.
79 A.D. (Bachiyr Book 3)
David McAfee - 2015
One now roams the Spanish countryside, feeding on robbers and bandits, while the other hides in a cave on the slopes of Mt. Vesuvius, experimenting with his newfound powers. Neither has thought much about the other over the last eighteen years. But Baella, the ancient renegade, has plans for the pair, and her plans don’t involve letting the two live out their lives in relative peace. Through her treachery, they are reunited in Pompeii, but not even Baella can stop the coming cataclysm. Powerful forces are rising in the world of the Bachiyr, and Taras and Theron may find themselves caught up in something much bigger than they can imagine. That is, if either of them survive the mountain’s fiery anger.
Zhool
Bhalchandra Nemade - 1979
asprawling narrative of the moral life of post-independent society across Maharashtra. The novel unfolds the microcosm of the commercialized education in India.
The Guestbook
Andrea Hurst - 2012
The lush and majestic setting of the Pacific Northwest calls to her and offers a place of refuge and perhaps renewal. Her grandmother has passed away, leaving the Madrona Island Bed & Breakfast Inn to Lily. Left with only an old guestbook as her guide–a curious book full of letters, recipes, and glimpses into her family history–Lily is determined to embrace her newfound independence and recreate herself, one page at a time. With the help of the quirky island residents she has befriended, she slowly finds the strength to seek out happiness on her own terms. But as soon as she has sworn off men and is standing on her own two feet, Lily meets Ian, the alluring artist who lives next door, and her new life is suddenly thrown off course. The last thing she wants to do right now is to open her heart to another man. Ultimately, Lily must decide if it’s worth giving up her soul for security or risking everything to follow her heart.
In the Pond
Ha Jin - 1998
He has been praised for his works relating to Chinese life and culture. The novel centers around the character Shao Bin, a Chinese man working at fertilizer plant, and his epic struggle to obtain a decent apartment for his young family. Continually passed over by the plant's corrupt leaders, Bin decides to fight back against his communist superiors. Conflict espouses when Bin's struggle is met with counterattacks and opposition he could never have imagined.
Then We Came to the End
Joshua Ferris - 2007
The characters in Then We Came To The End cope with a business downturn in the time-honored way: through gossip, secret romance, elaborate pranks, and increasingly frequent coffee breaks. By day they compete for the best office furniture left behind and try to make sense of the mysterious pro-bono ad campaign that is their only remaining "work."
Paragon Place
Harry Bowling - 1990
But it's taken its toll on a hard-working and tight-knit community. Despite going through the very worst of times - the never-ending fight against poverty, rationing and bombs - the residents of Paragon Place have been brought closer together by laughter and tears in the face of despair. There is Sally Brady, who is torn between two men, local drunk Alf Porter, the prim Carey sisters, the gossips and the villains. After surviving the horror of the war, they face new dramas as they rebuild their lives together...