Book picks similar to
When the Finch Rises by Jack Riggs
fiction
male-friendship
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Confessions of a Teenage Jesus Jerk
Tony DuShane - 2010
But Gabe’s not alone: there’s Peter, who writes swear words in the margins of his papers; Jihyun, the Korean kid who subsists on Ho Hos and Doritos; and Camille, who follows Gabe around, trying to be his girlfriend. There’s also Gabe’s mom, who sleeps sixteen hours a day, and his dad, an elder who decides the fate of sinners (like the married couple who confesses to accidentally having anal sex). There’s Brother Miller, an elder with a Napoleon complex, who accompanies Gabe from door to door, encouraging him to knock with confidence, and Sister Feeney, who looks forward to the day she can move into a Spanish-style house after its owner dies at the end of the world. Luckily for Gabe, there is Uncle Jeff, who used to tour with Santana and now gives Gabe the only valuable girl advice he ever receives. It's hard when school days are spent dodging questions about your weird religion and weekends mean preaching house to house. Life looks dreary until Gabe falls for Camille’s beautiful older sister and begins to see her as the answer to his frustrations.
Prologue: The Brothers
Chris Stewart - 2003
Brother fought brother. Families were torn apart. Some fought to protect their homes, their freedom and peace. Others fought to destroy everything they had once held so dear. And as the battle between good and evil came into each home, all God's children had to chose which side they were on, which principles would they fight for, and what price would they pay.In this contest before the Great War, each of us learned the first lessons of life. The great ones may fall. The wicked can change. The weak and the foolish can be made the strongest of all. And when the contest was over, we also had learned the greatest secret of all: the children of God can defeat their adversary, for they have fought him before.
Sugarless
James Magruder - 2009
His mother’s second husband is a licensed psychologist who eats like an ape, his stepsister is a stoner slut, and his father is engaged to a Southern belle. Rick’s only solace is his growing collection of original Broadway-cast LPs, bought on the sly at Wax Trax. After he brings two girls in speech class to tears by reading a story aloud, Rick is coaxed onto the interscholastic forensics team to perform an eight-minute dramatic interpretation of The Boys in the Band, the controversial sixties play about homosexuality. Unexpectedly successful at this oddball event, Rick begins winning tournaments and making friends with his teammates. Rick also discovers the joys of sex—with a speech coach from a rival school—just as his mother, reacting to a deteriorating home environment, makes an unnerving commitment to Christ. The newly confident Rick assumes this too shall pass—until the combined forces of family, sex, and faith threaten to undo him at the state meet in Peoria. James Magruder’s Sugarless offers a ruefully entertaining take on the simultaneous struggles of coming-out, coming-of-age, and coming-to-Jesus. A selection of InsightOut Book Club Finalist, Lambda Book Award for Gay Debut Fiction, Lambda Literary Foundation Finalist, TLA Gaybie Award for Best Gay Fiction Semi-finalist, James Branch Cabell First Novelist Award, Virginia Commonwealth University Semi-finalist, William Saroyan International Prize For Writing, Stanford University
Summary of The Girl on the Train | Summary & Analysis
aBookaDay - 2015
If you have not yet bought the original copy, make sure to purchase it before buying this unofficial summary from aBookaDay. SPECIAL OFFER $2.99 (Regularly priced: $3.99) It is just a daily train ride, a little imagination running wild as she enjoys the scenery from her window seat. It is something we all do, right? Rachel Watson makes up innocent stories about the people she sees. For Rachel it is comforting, something steadfast in her crumbling world. She rides the train every morning like she always has, but without the purpose she once had. Her failed marriage and her descent into alcoholism make her an outcast. She rides into town to a job she no longer has, only to come back at the end of the day to a roommate she is lying to. She has no purpose and nothing seems to be changing until she witnesses something important. Rachel’s favorite imaginary couple that she peers at every day from the train seem to be having trouble. She calls them “Jason” and “Jess”. Rachel can’t quite figure out where she fits in. She was wandering around in a drunken stupor the night “jess” disappears. Rachel starts trying to regain her memories from that night. She tries to piece together the memories of that hazy night. Rachel’s new found hobby is a welcome distraction from her life and problems. She has been dealing not only with an ex-husband, but his new wife as well. Once his mistress, Anna is now having Tom’s baby. Rachel feels inadequate as a result of her infertility and her alcohol problems, blaming herself for the demise of her marriage. Rachel starts out trying to offer a little information into what might have happened to “Jess”, but she becomes obsessed with the case and the people in it. Rachel tries to fill a void with strangers and a case that, supposedly, has nothing to do with her. As Rachel learns to trust herself and her instincts she comes face to face with something she never expected. Read more.... Download your copy today! for a limited time discount of only $2.99! Available on PC, Mac, smart phone, tablet or Kindle device. © 2015 All Rights Reserved
The Tide Washed Her Away (Jessica Carter Mysteries Book 1)
J. Moriarty - 2015
Some remembered her as the innocent daughter of a local minister, while others whispered rumors about a recent lascivious turn. Was she really the 'other woman' who came between her friends' engagement? Is it true she convinced someone to give up a life of crime? Did she really spend time in jail for a DUI? After failing to maintain a blogging career, Jessica Carter must return to her home town of Hampton, New Hampshire. The place is nice enough: a beautiful summer destination with sandy beaches, a touristy boardwalk and a cozy, small-town atmosphere. But Jessica knows coming home means owning up to her mistakes and mending relationships with everyone she left behind. Corinne's death brings Jessica closer to her former friends, but as she digs into Corinne's life, she exposes dark secrets her friends wish would remain hidden. Caught between her investigation and her friends, Jessica seeks to answer the one question everyone else seems content to leave unresolved: who knew the real Corinne, and why would someone want her dead?
The Starlight Conspiracy
Steve Voake - 2008
That is, until she meets an old man who entrusts her with a package containing a mysterious item that has unbelievable powers. It is a meeting that will change her life.
Noughts & Crosses Sequence Boxset
Malorie Blackman - 2012
For Sephy is a Cross, and Callum is a nough - and noughts and Crosses must never fall in love. It's as simple as black and white . . .But they have defied the rules. A passionate love is growing, and a powerful rebellion is beginning to stir. For generations to come, nothing will ever be the same again.Groundbreaking and explosive, Malorie Blackman's original dystopian masterpieces are collected together here for the first time.
Let Love Come Last
Taylor Caldwell - 1949
. . Even when, brutally overriding her refined sensibility, he imprisoned her in a mansion of overwhelming opulence, an accursed house that brought all who lived there grief. . . Even when, before her eyes, she saw him destroying their children with his misguided indulgence. . . For here was a man more powerful, more truly gigantic than any she had ever known, a man she knew she would love until death. . .
Sophie
Guy Burt - 2003
Its light spreads across the wall and illuminates Sophie, tied up in a chair facing him. She is frightened, fearful of what he might do next. But for now, it seems, all Matthew wants to do is talk. Talk about the events of nearly twenty years ago, about their strange childhood, and about the summer when Sophie grew up and everything changed . . . forever.Young Mattie and Sophie lived in a world seemingly without constraints. Their cold mother barely paid attention to her children. Their father, a mere shadow in their lives, was never home. So Mattie and Sophie had the run of the gardens and the woods beyond. They played youthful games, but Sophie was extraordinarily intelligent, a fact she took great pains to hide from her teachers, so as not to stand out. Sophie was everything to Mattie, and he worshiped her. He wanted to know her secrets, the things that went on inside her brilliant mind. But Sophie was changing. And the summer before she went away to boarding school, the things she had worked so hard to conceal would come spilling out—and Mattie would have to live with the shocking consequences.Now he’s all grown up, too, and Matthew wants answers to the questions that still darken his mind—no matter what the cost. . . .
Grace
Richard Paul Evans - 2008
The New York Times bestselling author of The Christmas Box and The Walk series returns with a holiday novel of hope, love, and redemption.She was my first kiss. My first love. She was a little match girl who could see the future in the flame of a candle. She was a runaway who taught me more about life than anyone has before or since. And when she was gone my innocence left with her. As I begin to write, a part of me feels as if I am awakening something best left dead and buried, or at least buried. We can bury the past, but it never really dies. The experience of that winter has grown on my soul like ivy climbing the outside of a home, growing until it begins to tear and tug at the brick and mortar. I pray I can still get the story right. My memory, like my eyesight, has waned with age. Still, there are things that become clearer to me as I grow older. This much I know: too many things were kept secret in those days. Things that never should have been hidden. And things that should have.
Clearcut
Nina Shengold - 2005
A "shake-rat" who salvages cedar stumps left when loggers clearcut, Earley seems to have little in common with Reed Alton, a gifted Berkeley dropout. But when Earley meets Zan, the fiery and mysterious woman Reed has been following, erotic sparks fly in unexpected directions. Thrown together in the splendid isolation of the woods, with passions and tensions mounting, the unlikely trio achieves a fragile balance that--like their idyllic patch of forest--will be shattered by violence. At once a page-turning psychological drama and a colorful, wildly comic recreation of a lost time and place, Clearcut explores the boundaries that divide us, and what it takes to cross them.
The Delivery Room
Sylvia Brownrigg - 2006
'The Delivery Room' is a story about people, about life and death, about relationships, regrets and reconcilations - and about the therapist's couch.
Me and Caleb
Franklyn E. Meyer - 1962
A beloved children's classic with plenty of adventure, lots of laughs, and some good, old-fashioned hijinks, "Me and Caleb" is a touching story of brotherly love and friendship that is not to be missed.Winner of the 1962 Charles W. Follett award for worthy contributions to children's literature, this high-quality re-issue is the perfect book to share with children. A wonderful, nostalgic journey into small-town American life in a bygone era, "Me and Caleb" is for anyone who likes to read a book just for fun.
The Forgetting
Nicole Maggi - 2015
Why does she have a sudden urge for strawberries when she's been allergic for years? Why can't she remember last Christmas?Driven to find her donor, Georgie discovers her heart belonged to a girl her own age who fell out of the foster care system and into a rough life on the streets. Everyone thinks she committed suicide, but Georgie is compelled to find the truth - before she loses herself completely.
Deadly Provenance
Lynne Kennedy - 2013
Her lifelong friend, Ingrid, has asked her to do the impossible -- authenticate the painting from a photograph. The photograph in question was passed down to Ingrid by her grandfather, Klaus Rettke a key member of the German Einsatzstab Reichsleiter Rosenberg, the Nazi organization appointed to confiscate art from the Jews. Obscure references in Klaus Rettke's diary convince Maggie that Rettke stole the painting from the Nazis. Now she must use science to verify that the painting in the photo is genuine, something that has never been done before. From the National Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C. to the Musee du Jeu de Paume in Paris, Maggie searches for answers. Finally, she confronts the possibility that there is not one painting, but the original and several forgeries. With tens of millions of dollars at stake and a killer at large, she is determined to find the authentic Van Gogh. To do so, Maggie must stay alive . . . something that's proving difficult to do.