Me Before You


Jojo Moyes - 2012
    . .Louisa Clark is an ordinary girl living an exceedingly ordinary life—steady boyfriend, close family—who has barely been farther afield than their tiny village. She takes a badly needed job working for ex–Master of the Universe Will Traynor, who is wheelchair bound after an accident. Will has always lived a huge life—big deals, extreme sports, worldwide travel—and now he’s pretty sure he cannot live the way he is.Will is acerbic, moody, bossy—but Lou refuses to treat him with kid gloves, and soon his happiness means more to her than she expected. When she learns that Will has shocking plans of his own, she sets out to show him that life is still worth living.A Love Story for this generation and perfect for fans of John Green’s The Fault in Our Stars, Me Before You brings to life two people who couldn’t have less in common—a heartbreakingly romantic novel that asks, What do you do when making the person you love happy also means breaking your own heart?

The Secret Life of Bees


Sue Monk Kidd - 2001
    When Lily's fierce-hearted black "stand-in mother," Rosaleen, insults three of the deepest racists in town, Lily decides to spring them both free. They escape to Tiburon, South Carolina--a town that holds the secret to her mother's past. Taken in by an eccentric trio of black beekeeping sisters, Lily is introduced to their mesmerizing world of bees and honey, and the Black Madonna. This is a remarkable novel about divine female power, a story women will share and pass on to their daughters for years to come.

I Am Funny Like That: A Funny Look At Life


Helen C. Escott - 2016
    There are no granny panties in this drawer!He picks up a pair of my NASA engineered favourites and insisted, "These are granny panties."No they are not!" I protested, "Granny panties are cotton, with flowers all over them and come up to your armpits." I grabbed my daily favourites out of his hand, "These are a modern-day wonder! They hide years of not doing sit-ups every day, cellulite dimples, Big Macs with extra sauce and muffin belly! My grandmother never had panties like this!"Call them what you want. They are modern-day granny panties" he informs me.Putting them back in the drawer I thought, "I would have to join a gym if I ever gave these beauties up."Anyway it got me to thinking. So I made a visit to a lingerie store. Maybe my underwear drawer did need some updating.The walls of the store were lined with massive posters of girls who don't eat so they can wear lace without tummy control panels. Looking at their photo-shopped abs didn't inspire me to drop to the floor and do a hundred sit-ups it just made me want to hold them down and force feed them hamburgers.The 20 something sales girl came over with her size 0 figure and asked if I needed help. "I am looking to update my underwear drawer" I tell her, "I am looking for something that is comfortable but... sexy." I know in her head she's thinking "Sex at her age! Wow good for her!"First she shows me the wall of underwear designed to turn on perverts. "No, that's not what I am looking for" and we move along to the "School girl" underwear to turn on pedophiles. "That's not me either" I tell her. Then she shows me the "new" line just in that week with the red or black fur around the waistband. "Doesn't that show through your dress pants?" I ask her. "Oh, you don't wear anything over these ones." That ought to make my work day more interesting I thought to myself.Then she brings out the most dreaded, torturous devise knows to woman... the G-String!I tried a pair once and I looked like a summo wrestler. Even I laughed when I looked in the mirror. It brought back a memory to me. I was doing a two-day course at university. Before the course started the students were standing around the back of the class chatting and getting to know one another. I met this lovely lady who told me she was 60-years-old and was doing the course out of interest. When it was time to sit down, she sat in front of me and to my horror she was wearing low-cut jeans that revealed a tattooed pair of eyes above her butt cheeks but the worst part, she was wearing a silver thong.It was like a car crash, I couldn't look away. For seven hours the droopy eyes on her butt watched me, staring at me, scarring me for life. Every time she put up her hand to ask a question her hips shifted and her butt winked at me. The sliver G-string thread around her waist looked like a disco Hippie headband. I would never be able to look at a G-string without thinking of her butt eye balling me."I don't do fanny-floss" I told her. I need something comfortable. "Maybe you should go to Walmart" she says. "Maybe you should go to hell" I thought in my head.With her sales commission still in my wallet, I left and called hubby from my cell phone in the car."Ok I am willing to compromise. Wh

Dirty Love


Andre Dubus III - 2013
    On the Massachusetts coast north of Boston, a controlling manager, Mark, discovers his wife's infidelity after twenty-five years of marriage. An overweight young woman, Marla, gains a romantic partner but loses her innocence. A philandering bartender/aspiring poet, Robert, betrays his pregnant wife. And in the stunning title novella, a teenage girl named Devon, fleeing a dirty image of her posted online, seeks respect in the eyes of her widowed great-uncle Francis and of an Iraq vet she’s met surfing the Web.Slivered by happiness and discontent, aging and death, but also persistent hope and forgiveness, these beautifully wrought narratives express extraordinary tenderness toward human beings, our vulnerable hearts and bodies, our fulfilling and unfulfilling lives alone and with others.

Water for Elephants


Sara Gruen - 2006
    When Jacob Jankowski, recently orphaned and suddenly adrift, jumps onto a passing train, he enters a world of freaks, drifters, and misfits, a second-rate circus struggling to survive during the Great Depression, making one-night stands in town after endless town. A veterinary student who almost earned his degree, Jacob is put in charge of caring for the circus menagerie. It is there that he meets Marlena, the beautiful young star of the equestrian act, who is married to August, the charismatic but twisted animal trainer. He also meets Rosie, an elephant who seems untrainable until he discovers a way to reach her. Beautifully written, Water for Elephants is illuminated by a wonderful sense of time and place. It tells a story of a love between two people that overcomes incredible odds in a world in which even love is a luxury that few can afford.