A paradise that became ravaged by smog that choked out the skies.Now the realm exists in darkness and its people need a champion, a chosen one to save them from the poison that cloaks the land and threatens to smother its inhabitants.That's what they needed. They got sixteen-year-old Sammy Ellis instead. Her only responsibility was to help the "chosen one" open a gateway into the realm. But, not only has she entered the land in their place, she's also locked them out in the process.Sammy finds herself lost in a twilight land of giant mushrooms and pursued by dark forces. Can she find a way home so the true chosen one can return or has the realm been doomed by her actions?

    Even her mother doubted her as a child. Psychiatrists doubted her too. Psychics tried to recruit her to enrich and empower themselves. Now she’s thirty-two, living on her own, and sharing her secret only with her mother and a few friends.A threatening specter begins to visit her at night, and more than her sleep is at stake. She follows a friend’s recommendation to visit Detta Washington, a church lady who believes that Sophie does see angels and demons. Even if Sophie is skeptical about the labels Detta uses for what she sees, she comes to respect Detta and finds ways to use her gift to help others.When she helps free Detta from an incurable disease and releases two of her friends from creepy creatures shadowing them, Sophie starts to embrace her identity. But she still needs help with the ghoul that hovers above her bed at night. And that’s not the last enemy who threatens her in the dark.Anthony, Detta’s handsome son, helps Sophie understand his mother’s religious language, and he becomes convinced that Sophie is for real. After years of doubt and frequent commitments to mental hospitals, Sophie’s mother comes to trust her daughter’s visions as well.Recovering from a life of being condemned as a crazy person, Sophie finds new confidence. She is gifted. She is the girl who sees angels.

    Some are good, and others not so much. Though her bad choices bring her face-to-face with the dark side of human nature, Kara's heartfelt desire to find a pure and everlasting love give her the courage to take chances. She's a strong spirited female with a snarky attitude and an often-colorful viewpoint on life. Kara's no Barbie doll (either in build or temperament) and thus, her tale will relate to many female readers.Kara shares her journey of friendships, romance, lust and loss in Take a Piece of My Heart. She learns slowly that mistrust, love, and hatred for some people may require a second chance. This sexy and heartwarming story is Book One of The Wavering Heart Series, a trio of stand-alone contemporary romance novels with a twist of small town charm."Take a Piece of My Heart by author Diane Rose Duffy is a wonderful book that will have you hooked from the start. Diane Rose Duffy's writing style is engaging and articulate. At times, you will find yourself giggling out loud at Kara's thoughts and actions, and in the very next minute, your heart will ache for her." - READERS' FAVORITE BOOK REVIEWS

    In this book you will find the funniest 288 of them (with a few all-new funny pages squeezed in just because we couldn’t help ourselves). That’s page after page after page of laugh-out-loud dumb jokes, dumb jocks, toasts, pranks, kings, kittens, caboodles, and, of course, poorly translated kung-fu movie subtitles—such as. "It took my seven digestive pills to dissolve your hairy crab!” So whether you like your humor witty or witless, light or dark, or silly or sublime, you’ll laugh until your head explodes. Chortle at…Dumb crooks: The robber who ran face-first into a wall because he forgot to poke eye holes in his pillow case.Witty wordplay: If Snoop Doggy Dogg were to marry Winnie the Pooh, his name would become Snoop Doggy Dogg Pooh.Flubbed headlines: "British Left Waffles On House Floor”Quirky stars: Billy Idol’s concert rider demands he have one large tub of I Can’t Believe It’s Not Butter in his dressing room.Job Lingo: If you hear an E.R. doc mention a "VIP,” be on the lookout for a "Very Intoxicated Patient.”Comedian quips: "I wonder if deaf people have a sign for "Talk to the hand.’” --Zach GalifianakisSputtering sportscasters: "If only faces could talk.” --Pat SummerallAnd much, much more!

    For over 100 years the community orbited around a paper mill that employs most townspeople, including three generations of Arsenault’s own family. Years after she moved away, Arsenault realized the price she paid for her seemingly secure childhood. The mill, while providing livelihoods for nearly everyone, also contributed to the destruction of the environment and the decline of the town’s economic, physical, and emotional health in a slow-moving catastrophe, earning the area the nickname “Cancer Valley.” Mill Town is an personal investigation, where Arsenault sifts through historical archives and scientific reports, talks to family and neighbors, and examines her own childhood to illuminate the rise and collapse of the working-class, the hazards of loving and leaving home, and the ambiguous nature of toxics and disease. Mill Town is a moral wake-up call that asks, Whose lives are we willing to sacrifice for our own survival?

    history. Over the course of four decades, he carved a legacy for himself as one of the most respected legislators in the country, and was a close friend and partner to President Barack Obama, who valued his vice president’s vast experience in domestic and foreign affairs.Yet Biden's political success has been matched by personal tragedy and countless challenges. Within two months of being elected in 1972, Biden lost his wife, Neilia, and his young daughter in a tragic accident—a loss that brought him to the nadir of despair and shook his resolve to stay in politics. He suffered two brain aneurysms and career-threatening gaffes and miscues. In 2015, he lost his eldest son, Beau, to brain cancer. Biden then faced the biggest challenge of his political career as the Democratic nominee for the 2020 elections and won both the electoral college and popular vote. He is now poised to enter the White House once more—this time as President—at a time of great global uncertainty. Based on exhaustive research by one of Washington's most prolific journalists, including numerous exclusive interviews with Biden's confidants and family members, as well as President Obama and the President-elect himself, Joe Biden goes beyond conventional biography to track the forces that have shaped the man who will be the next President of the United States.

    But concern over what Louis Brandeis called the "curse of bigness" can no longer remain the province of specialist lawyers and economists, for it has spilled over into policy and politics, even threatening democracy itself. History suggests that tolerance of inequality and failing to control excessive corporate power may prompt the rise of populism, nationalism, extremist politicians, and fascist regimes. In short, as Wu warns, we are in grave danger of repeating the signature errors of the twentieth century.In The Curse of Bigness, Columbia professor Tim Wu tells of how figures like Brandeis and Theodore Roosevelt first confronted the democratic threats posed by the great trusts of the Gilded Age--but the lessons of the Progressive Era were forgotten in the last 40 years. He calls for recovering the lost tenets of the trustbusting age as part of a broader revival of American progressive ideas as we confront the fallout of persistent and extreme economic inequality.

    It's full of family trips to the beach and long afternoons at the local pool with her older sister Kathy, which they mostly use as an excuse to ogle Billy Barnes, who works the concession stand there. A rising senior and local basketball star, Billy has been an unending source of intrigue for both girls since he jumped off the school roof in fifth grade, and their fascination with him is one of the few things the increasingly different sisters have in common. By summer’s end Billy and Kathy are an item—an unthinkable stroke of luck that ends in an even more unthinkable tragedy.Set over the course of fifteen years, Notes on Your Sudden Disappearance is narrated by Sally as she addresses Kathy before, during, and after her death. We watch as Kathy’s absence creates a gaping hole that only Billy—now firmly off-limits to Sally—understands and might possibly begin to fill. Charting years of their shared history and missed connections, Notes on Your Sudden Disappearance is both a breathtaking love story between two broken people who are unexplainably, inconveniently drawn to each other, and a wry, sharply observant coming-of-age story that looks at the ways the people we love the most continue to shape our lives long after they’re gone.

    From the financial crisis to rising student debt to collapsing public infrastructure, she found a common root problem: racism. But not just in the most obvious indignities for people of color. Racism has costs for white people, too. It is the common denominator of our most vexing public problems, the core dysfunction of our democracy and constitutive of the spiritual and moral crises that grip us all. But how did this happen? And is there a way out?McGhee embarks on a deeply personal journey across the country from Maine to Mississippi to California, tallying what we lose when we buy into the zero-sum paradigm--the idea that progress for some of us must come at the expense of others. Along the way, she meets white people who confide in her about losing their homes, their dreams, and their shot at better jobs to the toxic mix of American racism and greed. This is the story of how public goods in this country--from parks and pools to functioning schools--have become private luxuries; of how unions collapsed, wages stagnated, and inequality increased; and of how this country, unique among the world's advanced economies, has thwarted universal healthcare.But in unlikely places of worship and work, McGhee finds proof of what she calls the Solidarity Dividend: gains that come when people come together across race, to accomplish what we simply can't do on our own.McGhee marshals economic and sociological research to paint a story of racism's costs, but at the heart of the book are the humble stories of people yearning to be part of a better America, including white supremacy's collateral victims: white people themselves. With startling empathy, this heartfelt message from a Black woman to a multiracial America leaves us with a new vision for a future in which we finally realize that life can be more than a zero-sum game.

    It is a reality today. The country has gone from the world's largest creditor to its greatest debtor; the value of the dollar is sinking; domestic manufacturing is winding down - and these trends don't seem to be slowing. Peter Schiff casts a sharp, clear-sighted eye on these factors and explains what the possible effects may be and how investors can protect themselves. For more than a decade, Schiff has not only observed the U.S. economy, but also helped his clients reposition their portfolios to reflect his outlook. What he sees is a nation facing an economic storm brought on by growing federal, personal, and corporate debt, too-little savings, a declining dollar, and lack of domestic manufacturing. Crash-Proof is an informed and informative warning of a looming period marked by sizeable tax hikes, loss of retirement benefits, double digit inflation, even - as happened recently in Argentina - the possible collapse of the middle class. However, Schiff does have a survival plan that can provide the protection that readers will need in the coming years.

    Today it is damaged, discouraged, and fighting for its future. In Glass House, journalist Brian Alexander uses the story of one town to show how seeds sown 35 years ago have sprouted to give us Trumpism, inequality, and an eroding national cohesion.The Anchor Hocking Glass Company, once the world’s largest maker of glass tableware, was the base on which Lancaster’s society was built. As Glass House unfolds, bankruptcy looms. With access to the company and its leaders, and Lancaster’s citizens, Alexander shows how financial engineering took hold in the 1980s, accelerated in the 21st Century, and wrecked the company. We follow CEO Sam Solomon as he tries to rescue the company from the New York private equity firm that hired him. Meanwhile, Alexander goes behind the scenes, entwined with the lives of residents as they wrestle with heroin, politics, high-interest lenders, low wage jobs, technology, and the new demands of American life: people like Brian Gossett, the fourth generation to work at Anchor Hocking; Joe Piccolo, first-time director of the annual music festival who discovers the town relies on him, and it, for salvation; Jason Roach, who police believed may have been Lancaster’s biggest drug dealer; and Eric Brown, a local football hero-turned-cop who comes to realize that he can never arrest Lancaster’s real problems.

    New York Times #1 bestselling author Ben Shapiro asks how far Americans are actually willing to go in forcing each other to fall in line.

    One by one, the team falls violently ill, bleeding from their eyes and ears before succumbing to a slow, painful death. Whatever was buried with the Aztec chief is still active, infectious--and now airborne…It Spreads Quickly…In Austin, a young archeologist listens to the dying words of her mentor in Mexico--a warning to quarantine the site before all hell breaks loose. In Atlanta, the CDC's Dr. Mason Williams leads an emergency squad on a life-or-death mission--into the hot zone. At Fort Detrick, an army officer sends a trained team to secure the anthrax--as a biological weapon. But time is running out. The disease is spreading rapidly across the border, into the airports, and across the globe, killing thousands. With no cure, no vaccine, and no way to contain it, there will be no hope for humanity--to survive…

    In this entertaining first novel, set in rural Pennsylvania, a young San Francisco woman searches for her birthparents and from the moment she arrives in the backwoods town of Tungston, she falls under the spell of unforgettable characters, the unexpected-but-real threat of a violent fugitive, and the unexpected-but-real charm of a local fireman—all leading her to discover the true meaning of family.

    During a chilly meeting over cocktails, the family reads the will that makes Nell the executor of the estate and leaves her one item: a fantastically valuable, beautiful necklace from India. While the rest of the family jewels have been stored in a bank vault, Nell finds this priceless, forgotten heirloom in a Crown Royal whiskey bag stashed in the back of a dresser. As predatory Quincy's circle, Nell and art experts begin to question the necklace’s shadowy provenance, Nell turns to the only person she thinks she can trust—the attractive and ambitious estate lawyer who definitely is not part of the old money crowd.Ambrose Quincy brought the necklace home from India in the 1920s as a dramatic gift for May, the woman he intended to marry. However, upon his return he discovers that May has married his brother Ethan, the “good” Quincy, devoted to helping their father with the family coal empire. As a gesture of friendship, Ambrose gives May the necklace anyway—reigniting their passion and beginning a tense love triangle. When Ethan confronts the two lovers, the encounter ends tragically, entombing a secret in the past that Nell must uncover if she is ever to claim her true Quincy birthright.Alternating between the past and present, The Necklace is the elegant and compelling story of a star-crossed romance, long-simmering family resentments, and a young woman whose inheritance is much more than a legendary necklace.