Book picks similar to
Memories and a Cedar Chest by Paula Baker
abuse
drama
fiction
sexuality
A Drop of You
Krishna Chhetri - 2019
Three closely knit people, Karma, Diana & Ghazal meet at the crossroads of life, unaware of the cosmic conspiracy and its comical destiny. Heart is their road, love is their journey and the soul, the final destination. Sailing on the tides of emotions, they encounter deceit, with a tinge of poison and drop of bliss. Forever love; it is a myth? Or a reality? Is it stifling pain or undying love, that makes love eternal? Come, let us explore!
The Divine Apprentice
Allen J. Johnston - 2013
. .waiting. At six months old, he could hardly do much more as his grandfather agonizes over the task of taking the life of his only grandson. Born with the rare ability to control the Divine, Kade has the potential to become one of the most powerful Chosen to ever exist. Taken from his parents, at the age of ten, by his grandfather, a Master Chosen, Kade is taught to harness the power of the Divine for good. After a decade of training, Kade learns the harsh reality of the dangerous world he is about to be thrust into, as his Master is brutally murdered right before his eyes. Kade soon realizes he is next. With the help of a dragon, a species thought to have been a myth, and a feisty Essence Guardian, Kade must discover who - or what - is trying to eradicate his kind, before the Chosen are brought to extinction.
Lost Lake
Sarah Addison Allen - 2014
The first time Eby Pim saw Lost Lake, it was on a picture postcard. Just an old photo and a few words on a small square of heavy stock, but when she saw it, she knew she was seeing her future. That was half a life ago. Now Lost Lake is about to slip into Eby's past. Her husband George is long passed. Most of her demanding extended family are gone. All that's left is a once-charming collection of lakeside cabins succumbing to the Southern Georgia heat and damp, and an assortment of faithful misfits drawn back to Lost Lake year after year by their own unspoken dreams and desires. It's a lot, but not enough to keep Eby from relinquishing Lost Lake to a developer with cash in hand, and calling this her final summer at the lake. Until one last chance at family knocks on her door. Lost Lake is where Kate Pheris spent her last best summer at the age of twelve, before she learned of loneliness, and heartbreak, and loss. Now she's all too familiar with those things, but she knows about hope too, thanks to her resilient daughter Devin, and her own willingness to start moving forward. Perhaps at Lost Lake her little girl can cling to her own childhood for just a little longer... and maybe Kate herself can rediscover something that slipped through her fingers so long ago. One after another, people find their way to Lost Lake, looking for something that they weren't sure they needed in the first place: love, closure, a second chance, peace, a mystery solved, a heart mended. Can they find what they need before it's too late? At once atmospheric and enchanting, Lost Lake shows Sarah Addison Allen at her finest, illuminating the secret longings and the everyday magic that wait to be discovered in the unlikeliest of places.
The Scandalous Life of Sasha Torte
Lesley Truffle - 2017
and pastry. The witty new novel from the author of Hotel du Barry, for fans of Jonas Jonasson.In the winter of 1912 on the wild West Coast of Tasmania, Wolfftown's most notorious heiress and murderess, Sasha Torte, tells the tale of her own spectacular downfall.Forsaken by her parents and raised by criminals and reprobates, Sasha becomes a world-famous pastry chef at the tender age of seventeen. Entanglement with the disreputable Dasher brothers leads to love, but also to a dangerous addiction.Behind bars in Wolfftown's gaol, Sasha sips premium champagne as she recalls a life of seduction, betrayal, ghosts, opium and an indiscreet quantity of confectionary - and plots her escape.The Scandalous Life of Sasha Torte: revenge, redemption and pastry, is a novel of dastardly deeds, intrepid protagonists, dark villains, wild gangs, luxurious hotels … and murder.
The Fifth Avenue Artists Society
Joy Callaway - 2016
Virginia Loftin knows what she wants most: to become a celebrated novelist despite her gender, and to marry Charlie, her best friend, neighbor and first love. Yet when Charlie proposes to another woman, Ginny is devastated; shutting out her family, she holes up and obsessively rewrites how their story should have gone.Though Ginny works with newfound intensity, success eludes her—until she attends a salon hosted in her brother’s handsome author friend John’s Fifth Avenue mansion. Amongst painters, musicians, actors, and writers, Ginny returns to herself, even blooming under John’s increasingly romantic attentions. Just as she has begun to forget Charlie, however, he throws himself back into her path, and Ginny finds herself torn between a lifetime’s worth of complicated feelings and a budding relationship with a man who seems almost too good to be true.The brightest lights cast the darkest shadows, and as Ginny tentatively navigates the Society’s world, she begins to suspect all is not as it seems in New York’s dazzling “Gay Nineties” scene. When a close friend is found dead in John’s mansion, Ginny must delve into her beloved salon’s secrets to discover her true feelings about art, family, and love.
Roost
Ali Bryan - 2013
Her ex, after all, has moved on to a new wardrobe, a new penchant for lattes--and worst of all, new adult friends. But in Claudia's house she's still finding bananas in the sock drawer and cigarettes taped to wrestling figures. Then Claudia receives the unexpected news that her mother has died.Shared through the hilarious, honest, and often poignant perspective of a single mother, Roost is the story of a woman learning about motherhood while grieving the loss of her own mother. And as she begins to mend, she's also learning that she might be able to accept her home--as it is.
Highs in the Low Fifties: How I Stumbled through the Joys of Single Living
Marion Winik - 2005
Her stories of being single in middle age, marked by stylish writing and stunning candor, left readers bent double with laughter when they appeared in her column, rated "Best of Baltimore" by Baltimore Magazine.Highs in the Low Fifties follows Winik’s attempt to rebuild her world as a once-widowed, once-divorced single mom. With her signature optimism, resilience, and poor judgment, Winik dives into a series of ill-starred romantic experiences. Her clarity about her mistakes and ability to find humor in the darkest moments—in love, and in all parts of life—has won her a growing crowd of devoted followers . . . and a few voyeurs.
Southern Comfort
Fern Michaels - 2011
. .Atlanta homicide detective Patrick "Tick" Kelly turned his back on the world the day his wife and children were murdered. Holed up in a beach shack on Mango Key, Florida, he drowned his grief in Jack Daniels. Now sober and a bestselling author, Tick would gladly stay a recluse forever if his brother Pete didn't keep trying to drag him back to the land of the living. After years of sacrificing her personal life in favor of her DEA job, special agent Kate Rush resigned and moved back to her native Miami. But the unofficial assignment that has just come her way is too intriguing to pass up. She and a fellow ex-agent are relocated to Mango Key to keep an eye on an imposing, mysterious fortress believed to be at the center of a human trafficking ring. At first, the Kelly brothers are suspected of involvement, but Kate is sure Tick poses no danger--except for the slow-burning gaze that makes her breath catch and her heart race. . ."A page-turner. . .the perfect blend of mystery, adventure and romance." --The Charleston Mercury "[A] thrilling read ripped from today's headlines." --RT Book Reviews
The Wisdom of Perversity
Rafael Yglesias - 2015
Julie’s right: I would have saved dozens of others. Jeff, Julie, Sam, the academy kids, the Huck Finn boys, everyone else was ignorant or greedy or scared or confused or overwhelmed by bullies, but I was strong enough—I could’ve pushed him away. I did push him away. I saved myself and let everyone else suffer. Me and the god of creation—we’re the villains of this story.
Brian and Jeff were best friends, growing up together in New York City in the late 1960s. Then something happened that drove a wedge between them, ending both their friendship and their childhood, something that neither ever spoke about . . . at least until their shared secret resurfaced some forty years later, forcing them to reunite and, along with Jeff’s cousin Julie, to face the consequences of their years of silence. In The Wisdom of Perversity, Rafael Yglesias, the critically acclaimed, bestselling novelist and screenwriter and the author of A Happy Marriage, winner of the Los Angeles Times Fiction Prize, and Fearless, the basis for the cult film by the same name, has crafted a novel that tells the stories of three childhood friends who join together as adults to acknowledge the ways in which their lives were altered by the actions of a predator, a predator who now, many years later, has been exposed by more recent victims yet is on the verge of escaping punishment--thanks to his wealth and influence. Damaged in different ways by the events of the past but all sharing the same feelings of guilt and anger for allowing this man to go unpunished, leaving him free to abuse others, Julie, Jeff, and Brian band together to force a public outcry that will assure that he will finally face justice. With a tone that cleverly mixes humor with stark reality, The Wisdom of Perversity is a groundbreaking novel that by giving a voice to the youthful victims of sexual abuse will inspire both praise and debate. “Many contemporary works of fiction are bold,but few are this courageous . . . Rafael Yglesias has written a frightening, evocative, and intensely compassionate novel that manages somehow to do the impossible,shedding light on one of the darkest corners of this human theater.” —Helen Schulman, author of This Beautiful Life “The sly courage, the deft intelligence, and the fierceness of vision that we, his fans, have come to expect from a Raphael Yglesias novel all blaze brightly forth—and cast very dark shadows—in The Wisdom of Perversity.” —Michael Chabon, Pulitzer Prize–winning novelist
Lies You Wanted to Hear
James Whitfield Thomson - 2013
They have been gone for seven years, and she is tormented by the role she played in that heartbreaking loss. You can hardly see a glimpse of the sexy, edgy woman she used to be. Back then, she was a magnet for men like Matt, who loved her beyond reason, and Griffin, who wouldn't let go but always left her wanting more. Now the lies they told and the choices they made have come to haunt all three of them.With shattering turns, Lies You Wanted to Hear explores the way good people talk themselves into doing terrible, unthinkable things. What happens when we come to believe our own lies? And what price must we pay for our mistakes?A searing story that will leave you wondering what choices you would make, Lies You Wanted to Hear is a stunning debut.
Kalayla
Jeannie Nicholas - 2019
We meet three families, one Irish, one Italian and one black, confronting the legacy of the past in 1999 Cambridge, MA.Kalayla: a feisty bi-racial, 11 year old loner whose world implodes when she discovers her parents belong in the Guinness Book of World Records for being “The World’s Biggest Liars” about her mother’s family. Maureen: Kalayla’s mother cocoons herself in art projects, deflecting the pain of her parent’s rejection. Her husband’s sudden death catapults her into life as a single mother raising a rebellious, incomprehensible daughter. Lena: their landlady, financially successful, seventy-two years old, wears only black, and lives in a fourth-floor walk-up apartment. Lena is tormented by memories of the dead--her twin sons and husband, and the living--two sons from whom she is estranged. Anyone who has experienced the angularities, rigid pockets and soft spots of family life can take hope from reading Kalayla which shows that pathways for change do exist--and if we choose to, we can find them.
No One's Angel
Kelly Walker - 2013
No One's Angel's angel is a New Adult (NA) Contemporary Romance about a girl learning to fight back and a boy learning to let go. Tess used to spend more hours than she'd care to admit playing her favorite computer game, using the nickname Angel. She could pretend her life was different, and she could pretend Arion was just a friend. But a girl needs more to keep her warm at night than pixels, and she traded her virtual heaven for a real-life hell. Now she's on the run from a past she won't talk about, and the only place she has to go is the doorstep of the friend she's never actually met.When Angel disappeared from their nightly games, it nearly destroyed Arion. He threw himself into work and women, but he can't help knowing the one-night stands will never compare to the angel who haunts his dreams. At first, when she shows up soaking wet and scared-shitless on his doorstep, he thinks his prayers have been answered.But the more Arion tries to keep Angel close, the more her fear drives her away. If they are ever going to have a chance for a future, they'll first have to deal with the past that hasn't forgotten her any more than she's forgotten it--and Arion will have to learn how to let her go.
The Return of Cassandra Todd
Darrel Nelson - 2013
Turner Caldwell works at a local motel as a handyman while attending college full-time. On his way to class one day, he is shocked to see Cassandra Todd and her young son in town. The sight of her brings back powerful memories of being bullied in high school--she was the popular head cheerleader and he the target of her friends’ mean-spirited pranks. When Cassandra and her son check into the motel where he works and she asks for his help in eluding her abusive husband, he finds himself entangled in a dangerous drama that will require him to forgive and draw on every skill he has if they are to survive.
How Will I Know You?
Jessica Treadway - 2016
Her death looks like a tragic drowning accident at first, but an autopsy reveals something sinister -- the teenager's body shows unmistakable signs of strangulation. The discovery upends an otherwise uneventful small town, as police grapple with a rare homicide case and those closest to Joy wonder how she could have been taken from them -- and by whom. Susanne, Joy's mother, tries to reconcile past betrayals with their wrenching consequences. Martin, an African-American graduate student, faces ostracism when blame is cast on him. Tom, a rescue diver and son-in-law of the town's police chief, doubts both the police's methods and his own perceptions. And Harper, Joy's best friend, tries to figure out why she disappeared from Harper's life months before she actually went missing.
The Impossible Lives of Greta Wells
Andrew Sean Greer - 2013
After the death of her beloved twin brother, Felix, and the break up with her long-time lover, Nathan, Greta Wells embarks on a radical psychiatric treatment to alleviate her suffocating depression. But the treatment has unexpected effects, and Greta finds herself transported to the lives she might have had if she'd been born in a different era.During the course of her treatment, Greta cycles between her own time and her alternate lives in 1918, as a bohemian adulteress, and 1941, as a devoted mother and wife. Separated by time and social mores, Greta's three lives are achingly similar, fraught with familiar tensions and difficult choices. Each reality has its own losses, its own rewards, and each extracts a different price. And the modern Greta learns that her alternate selves are unpredictable, driven by their own desires and needs.As her final treatment looms, questions arise. What will happen once each Greta learns how to stay in one of the other worlds? Who will choose to remain in which life?Magically atmospheric, achingly romantic, The Impossible Lives of Greta Wells beautifully imagines "what if" and wondrously wrestles with the impossibility of what could be.