Book picks similar to
Twelve Bowls of Glass by Bucky Sinister
9-22-18
adult
booksivewritten
california
The Devil's Teeth: A True Story of Obsession and Survival Among America's Great White Sharks
Susan Casey - 2005
Two days later, she got her first glimpse of the famous, terrifying jaws up close and she was instantly hooked; her fascination soon yielded to obsession-and an invitation to return for a full season. But as Casey readied herself for the eight-week stint, she had no way of preparing for what she would find among the dangerous, forgotten islands that have banished every campaign for civilization in the past two hundred years.
The Dirty Secrets Club
Meg Gardiner - 2008
A superstar 49er jumps off the Golden Gate Bridge. And most shocking of all, a U.S. attorney launches her BMW off a highway overpass, killing herself and three others.Enter forensic psychiatrist Jo Beckett, hired by the SFPD to cut open not the victim’s body, but the victim’s life. Jo’s job is to complete the psychological autopsy, shedding light on the circumstances of any equivocal death. Soon she makes a shocking discovery: All the suicides belonged to something called the Dirty Secrets Club, a group of A-listers with nothing but money and plenty to hide. As the deaths continue, Jo delves into the disturbing motives behind this shadowy group—until she receives a letter that contains a dark secret Jo thought she’d left deep in her past, a secret that ends with the most chilling words of all: “Welcome to the Dirty Secrets Club.”Praise for Meg Gardiner:“If you read Sue Grafton, Lee Child, Janet Evanovich, Michael Connelly, or Nelson DeMille, you’re going to think Meg Gardiner is a gift from heaven.” —Stephen King“A winner in every way. The Dirty Secrets Club is nuanced and layered—and a harrowing thriller.… Meg Gardiner makes every one of her characters leap alive off the page.” —Jeffery Deaver“Meg Gardiner is an astonishing writer, and The Dirty Secrets Club is a humdinger of a thriller, with shocks and twists galore. I couldn’t turn the pages fast enough.” —Tess Gerritsen
Mafia Murders: 100 Kills that Changed the Mob
M.A. Frasca - 2015
For the Mob (as they are also known), crime was big business. Feuds between Mafia families and their associates led to Lucky Luciano, the preeminent Mob boss, creating the Commission, which to this day rules over Mob activity and disputes. Throughout the 20th century, the ruthlessness of the Mafia has been in evidence: the list of Mob victims seems endless. Mafia Hits recalls the most important executions - the rival bosses, the stool pigeons and snitches, the good cops and the dirty cops, the vicious feuds and the hit-men who lived by the gun and died by it. All are here in this fascinating tale of the American underworld.
Thank You Beary Much
C.D. Gorri - 2021
But the Black Bear Shifter has come a long way since then.Graduating with honors from the local community college and opening his own Taqueria in Barvale was like a dream come true. Life was good. Almost perfect.If only he could forget that one passionate night he’d spent with a gorgeous stranger in Cancun last spring break. He’d spent a week celebrating his upcoming graduation, leaving his friends high and dry to spend his days and nights in her company. A year later, he still dreamt about the beautiful Estella Baron.Imagine his shock when she comes to Barvale looking for her husband. Him!
My Roommate is a Reaper
Andrew Peed - 2020
On the advice of a wise elder that works at his favorite restaurant, Waylon decided to get a roommate. Everything turned upside down, and he found out more about himself and the rest of the world than he thought he ever wanted to know.Kaylie needed somewhere to live, and the spirit she was chasing led her straight to a perfect place, then she found out there was a Warlock living there that had no clue what he could do. With her past making things complicated, she tries her best to stay on the right side of things.
Dominica
Kate Harper - 2015
He is stunned to discover than his old friend Peter Mandeville left his only child in his care in the hope that he will teach her something about her heritage, an aspect of life that his strong willed daughter has yet to experience. Felix has spent his entire life avoiding the convoluted world that constitutes Society and is appalled by the burden that has been thrust upon him, especially when his new ward refuses to play by the rules. For Dominica Mandeville there are no rules. Beautiful and independent, she has spent her life following in the wake of battle in the company of her soldier father and her Portuguese mother. After a life of adventure, the knowledge that she has been given into the care of a perfect stranger chaffs unbearably. The loss of her beloved parents hurts but the loss of her freedom is the cruelest cut of all. Will she ever learn to be a demure debutante? Or will her impetuosity lead to scandals that even the capable Felix is unable to save her from?
The Gifts and Calling of God
Kenneth E. Hagin - 1986
Something about the calling or anointed of the teacher, because one of my callings is to be a teacher; the other is to stand in the office of prophet.
Monster Girl Hunter
Jack Porter - 2020
But now, with the help of a magic beacon, I’m seeking those who are tainted. The impure. Abominations.Monster girls.But not to kill.They need my help. All kinds of help.I'm more than happy to provide it, to do all I can to keep them safe from the real monsters that exist in the world.
The Rise and Fall Of A Crime God 2: Phantom and Zaria's Story
Latoya Nicole - 2017
But no matter how hard she tried, it seemed like nothing she did would keep her from her fate. Knowing she should have died that night with her family, everything seemed to have come full circle as she stares down the barrel of Phantom’s gun.... Freedom has dedicated his life trying to keep Phantom on track. Being his conscience was hard, but convincing him of his loyalty was worse. With one wrong move, Zaria and Freedom’s chances of living is left dangling in the wind.... Phantom being a complicated man with a dark past, worked hard at leaving it all behind. One fatal night brought It back and his world came crashing down. Trying to pick up the pieces, he may have fallen too deep. With the clock ticking, does he climb out the trenches or does everything come crashing down? Phantom is at the point of no return and everything seems like one bad dream. Can he rise again or is this the end?
Close Enough to Hear God Breathe: The Great Story of Divine Intimacy
Greg Paul - 2011
Our stories matter to Him. Your story matters to Him. Reading the Bible ought to be like putting one's head on God's chest and listening to His heartbeat.
The Hands of Day
Pablo Neruda - 2008
Moved by the guilt of never having worked with his hands, Neruda opens with the despairing confession, “Why did I not make a broom? / Why was I given hands at all?” The themes of hands and work grow in significance as Neruda celebrates the carpenters, longshoremen, blacksmiths, and bakers—those laborers he admires most—and shares his exuberant adoration for the earth and the people upon it.Yes, I am guiltyof what I did not do,of what I did not sow, did not cut, did not measure,of never having rallied myself to populate lands,of having sustained myself in the desertsand of my voice speaking with the sand.Pablo Neruda (1904–1973) was a Chilean poet and diplomat who received the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1971. Recognized during his life as “a people’s poet,” he is considered one of the greatest artists of the twentieth century.William O’Daly is the best-selling translator of six of Pablo Neruda’s books, including The Book of Questions and The Sea and the Bells. His work as a translator has been featured on The Today Show.
A Thousand Lives: The Untold Story of Hope, Deception, and Survival at Jonestown
Julia Scheeres - 2011
He was a charismatic preacher with idealistic beliefs, and he quickly filled his pews with an audience eager to hear his sermons on social justice. After Jones moved his church to Northern California in 1965, he became a major player in Northern California politics; he provided vital support in electing friendly political candidates to office, and they in turn offered him a protective shield that kept stories of abuse and fraud out of the papers. Even as Jones’s behavior became erratic and his message more ominous, his followers found it increasingly difficult to pull away from the church. By the time Jones relocated the Peoples Temple a final time to a remote jungle in Guyana and the U.S. Government decided to investigate allegations of abuse and false imprisonment in Jonestown, it was too late. A Thousand Lives follows the experiences of five People's Temple members who went to Jonestown: a middle-class English teacher from Colorado, an elderly African American woman raised in Jim Crow Alabama, a troubled young black man from Oakland, and a working-class father and his teenage son. These people joined the church for vastly different reasons. Some, such as eighteen-year-old Stanley Clayton, appreciated Jones’s message of racial equality and empowering the dispossessed. Others, like Hyacinth Thrash and her sister Zipporah, were dazzled by his claims of being a faith healer — Hyacinth believed Jones had healed a cancerous tumor in her breast. Edith Roller, a well-educated white progressive, joined Peoples Temple because she wanted to help the less fortunate. Tommy Bogue, a teen, hated Jones’s church, but was forced to attend services—and move to Jonestown — because his parents were members. A Thousand Lives is the story of Jonestown as it has never been told before. New York Times bestselling author Julia Scheeres drew from thousands of recently declassified FBI documents and audiotapes, as well as rare videos and interviews, to piece together an unprecedented and compelling history of the doomed camp, focusing on the people who lived there. Her own experiences at an oppressive reform school in the Dominican Republic, detailed in her unforgettable debut memoir Jesus Land, gave her unusual insight into this story. The people who built Jonestown wanted to forge a better life for themselves and their children. They sought to create a truly egalitarian society. In South America, however, they found themselves trapped in Jonestown and cut off from the outside world as their leader goaded them toward committing “revolutionary suicide” and deprived them of food, sleep, and hope. Yet even as Jones resorted to lies and psychological warfare, Jonestown residents fought for their community, struggling to maintain their gardens, their school, their families, and their grip on reality. Vividly written and impossible to forget, A Thousand Lives is a story of blind loyalty and daring escapes, of corrupted ideals and senseless, haunting loss.
Children of the Land
Marcelo Hernández Castillo - 2020
No one in this story was a ghost. This was not a story.”When Marcelo Hernandez Castillo was five years old and his family was preparing to cross the border between Mexico and the United States, he suffered temporary, stress-induced blindness. Castillo regained his vision, but quickly understood that he had to move into a threshold of invisibility before settling in California with his parents and siblings. Thus began a new life of hiding in plain sight and of paying extraordinarily careful attention at all times for fear of being truly seen. Before Castillo was one of the most celebrated poets of a generation, he was a boy who perfected his English in the hopes that he might never seem extraordinary.With beauty, grace, and honesty, Castillo recounts his and his family’s encounters with a system that treats them as criminals for seeking safe, ordinary lives. He writes of the Sunday afternoon when he opened the door to an ICE officer who had one hand on his holster, of the hours he spent making a fake social security card so that he could work to support his family, of his father’s deportation and the decade that he spent waiting to return to his wife and children only to be denied reentry, and of his mother’s heartbreaking decision to leave her children and grandchildren so that she could be reunited with her estranged husband and retire from a life of hard labor.Children of the Land distills the trauma of displacement, illuminates the human lives behind the headlines and serves as a stunning meditation on what it means to be a man and a citizen.
Three-Martini Lunch
Suzanne Rindell - 2016
In 1958, Greenwich Village buzzes with beatniks, jazz clubs, and new ideas—the ideal spot for three ambitious young people to meet. Cliff Nelson, the son of a successful book editor, is convinced he’s the next Kerouac, if only his father would notice. Eden Katz dreams of being an editor but is shocked when she encounters roadblocks to that ambition. And Miles Tillman, a talented black writer from Harlem, seeks to learn the truth about his father’s past, finding love in the process. Though different from one another, all three share a common goal: to succeed in the competitive and uncompromising world of book publishing. As they reach for what they want, they come to understand what they must sacrifice, conceal, and betray to achieve their goals, learning they must live with the consequences of their choices. In Three-Martini Lunch, Suzanne Rindell has written both a page-turning morality tale and a captivating look at a stylish, demanding era—and a world steeped in tradition that’s poised for great upheaval.
After the Parade
Lori Ostlund - 2015
After twenty years under the Pygmalion-like direction of his older partner Walter, Aaron at last decides it is time to stop letting life happen to him and to take control of his own fate. But soon after establishing himself in San Francisco—where he alternates between a shoddy garage apartment and the absurdly ramshackle ESL school where he teaches—Aaron sees that real freedom will not come until he has made peace with his memories of Morton, Minnesota: a cramped town whose four hundred souls form a constellation of Aaron’s childhood heartbreaks and hopes.After Aaron’s father died in the town parade, it was the larger-than-life misfits of his childhood—sardonic, wheel-chair bound dwarf named Clarence, a generous, obese baker named Bernice, a kindly aunt preoccupied with dreams of The Rapture—who helped Aaron find his place in a provincial world hostile to difference. But Aaron’s sense of rejection runs deep: when Aaron was seventeen, Dolores—Aaron’s loving, selfish, and enigmatic mother—vanished one night with the town pastor. Aaron hasn’t heard from Dolores in more than twenty years, but when a shambolic PI named Bill offers a key to closure, Aaron must confront his own role in his troubled past and rethink his place in a world of unpredictable, life-changing forces.Lori Ostlund’s debut novel is an openhearted contemplation of how we grow up and move on, how we can turn our deepest wounds into our greatest strengths. Written with homespun charm and unceasing vitality, After the Parade is a glorious new anthem for the outsider.