Book picks similar to
Destiny at Oak Valley by Jeffree Wyn Itrich


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The Gingerbread House


Nell Carson - 2012
    For two years she’s fought to save her house from Stephanie Harwood of Harwood Development, who is intent on razing her home to build a new mall. But now Greta’s running out of time. The town council is about to approve the final plans for the mall.When Gray Daniels walks into her shop, Greta is immediately attracted to his rugged good looks and midnight blue eyes, until she learns he’s Stephanie Harwood’s fiancé. She’s furious to find they’ve tricked her into a publicity stunt aimed at garnering support for the mall. So now her little war has a new front: Gray Daniels. If only she could also fight her growing attraction to him.A knock on the door brings a return of old danger, and Greta must now put aside her anguish over the house to discover if she’s at last capable of looking the past in the eye and overcoming it—and if she’s finally free to love again.

Summer Letters


Dan Petermeier - 2013
    He quickly realizes that God's plan for him may take him on a surprising and unexpected journey. Caring and considerate, the young Midwesterner doesn't suspect that the pursuit of his soul mate would be wrought with heartbreak. Raised in a conservative environment, Liam struggles with finding faith not only in his religion, but also in others, especially women. As spring turns to summer and Liam's love life starts to heat up, he leaves no stone unturned and he finds himself writing letters to someone he's never met. Will any of the women in his life be anything more than friends? If so, will he be left heartbroken once more?Summer Letters is a tear-jerking romantic drama novel that is inspired on some real-life eventsMake sure to watch the video trailers for "Summer Letters".

The Dead Don't Talk


Lawrence J. Epstein - 2018
    He is asked by a dying man to investigate an unsolved murder. Seeking help, Danny turns to a retired killer--his father. Set on Long Island in 1982, this book follow's Danny's adventures as he tries to escape those trying to kill him and find the truth.

The Beech Tree


Don Phelan - 2011
    We follow Johnny and Margo, Johnny's lifelong, albeit socially taboo, friendship with his friend, “Bullet Joe” Rogan, a pitcher in the Negro Leagues.Johnny introduces his granddaughter, Debby, to the tree in 1957, an era of bobby socks, roller-skating carhops and Elvis music, and Debby meets Mason in 1967's Summer of Love, just before Mason is drafted to fight in Vietnam.For 30 years, Debby wonders whatever became of the boy who changed her life. Then she finds out.

The First Private


Pablo Andrés Wunderlich Padilla
    I was born under the banner of war. I'm ready to enlist, sign the contract to serve for ten years under the ally ranks. We're done, me and my friends are. We must leave this shit-hole country conquered by the totalitarians. I was born here. Now I'm ready to leave it behind. We're going to war.The world is being conquered by the Megachine, a totalitarian regime commanding more than a billion drones. They are strong. Undefeated. Unrivaled. They have wiped out the ally drone force and now they are moving in for the final blow. First they took Europe, then Asia. With the help of the Chavistas, they conquered Latin America. The world is about to fall. I have to--need to serve--to fight for whatever freedom is left!

In Name Only


Carol Kilgore - 2012
    No family. No place to hide. For Summer Newcombe, that's only the beginning.The night Summer escapes from a burning Padre Island eatery and discovers the arsonist is stalking her, is the same night she meets Fire Captain Gabriel Duran. As much as she's attracted to Gabe, five years in the Federal Witness Security Program because of her father's testimony against a mob boss have taught her the importance of being alone and invisible.No matter how much she yearns for a real home, Summer relinquished that option the night she killed the man who murdered her father. But Gabe breaks down her guard and places both of them in danger. Summer has vowed never to kill again, but she's frantic she'll cost Gabe his life unless she stops running and fights for the future she wants with the man she loves.

Secrets on Saulter Road: Discovering Hope and Forgiveness in the Wake of My Toxic Upbringing


Joan Kendall - 2019
    With remarkable honesty and wit, author Joan Kendall nimbly explores her upbringing in the prim and proper segregated South during the 1950s with an outrageously unpredictable and destructive alcoholic mother.Joan and her two sisters--Linda, the perplexing spendthrift, and Susan, the practical optimist--never knew which mother would appear on the scene: the charming Mary Poppins or the spiteful Cruella de Vil. Their loving father did his best, but behind closed doors, his criticism of their mother's drinking fueled her bizarre and neglectful behaviors and further withdrawal into an ocean of whiskey.The sisters often had each other's backs, and the family maid and daytime buffer, Jadie Bell, provided a fortress in their domestic war. Although Jadie Bell loved them as her own, she could not rid their home of gloom and shame.In Joan's adulthood, a lamentable family secret is divulged, and the pain and trauma of the past becomes clear. In this beautifully written memoir, Joan reveals her own brokenness, and shares her path to redemption, healing, and joy.

Keto-Green 16: The Fat-Burning Power of Ketogenic Eating + The Nourishing Strength of Alkaline Foods = Rapid Weight Loss and Hormone Balance


Anna Cabeca - 2020
    There is no question that keto eating is the biggest diet trend in years. And it really works--dieters often report super-fast weight loss. But they also complain about the rigidity of the diet, as well as the flu-like symptoms that often accompany this high-fat/low-carb way of life. The solution? Add alkaline foods to your plate--leafy greens, other vegetables, broths, healthy oils, nuts and seeds--for a lifestyle that's more sustainable and easier on your body. In other words: go Keto-Green!A triple-board certified physician, Dr. Anna Cabeca developed this unique method through years of careful patient and test panel research. In Keto-Green 16, she explains the science behind her innovative plan: Pairing keto staples with foods that bring the body's pH to a more alkaline level (lots of greens!) is the best way to balance the hormones responsible for hijacking intentions and increased belly fat. An added bonus: a Keto-Green diet also sharpens thinking and boosts mood. With 16 days of what-to-eat instruction, more than 50 delicious breakfast, lunch, dinner and snack recipes (many shown in the mouth-wateringly beautiful four-color photo insert), information about the 16 best alkaline foods, a 16-hour intermittent fasting strategy, and 16-minute HIIT exercise routines, Keto-Green 16 will ensure that readers skip the flu and get on with rapid and amazing weight loss.

Hold Me Tight and Tango Me Home


Maria Finn - 2010
    Maria Finn relays her adventures in the world of tango with excitement, wit, and insight.” —Robert Farris Thompson, author of Tango: The Art History of Love Maria Finn's husband was cheating. First she threw him out. Then she cried. Then she signed up for tango lessons. It turns out that tango has a lot to teach about understanding love and loss, about learning how to follow and how to lead, how to live with style and flair, take risks, and sort out what it is you really want. As Maria's world begins to revolve around the friendships she makes in dance class and the milongas (social dances) she attends regularly in New York City, we discover with her the fascinating culture, history, music, moves, and beauty of the Argentine tango. With each new dance step she learns—the embrace, the walk, the sweep, the exit—she is one step closer to returning to the world of the living. Eventually Maria travels to Buenos Aires, the birthplace of tango, and finds the confidence to try romance again.  As exhilarating as the dance itself, the story whirls us into the center of the ballroom dancing craze. And buoyed by the author's humor and passion, it imparts surprising insights about how to get on with life after you've lost in love.

Like Dandelion Dust / This Side of Heaven


Karen Kingsbury - 2011
    In the days that follow, Jack Campbell has a desperate and dangerous thought. What if they can devise a way out? Then they could take Joey and disappear...like dandelion dust.THIS SIDE OF HEAVEN is a story of secrets, broken relationships, and a love strong enough to reunite a family. Annie Warren always wanted the best for her son, Josh. But years of failure and bad choices created a heartbreaking distance. When Annie sets out to defend her son, she might find a treasure more valuble than money, one she never expected, this side of heaven.

Pacific Homicide


Patricia Smiley - 2016
    LAPD Homicide Detective Davie Richards is an outlier, a cop who killed a suspect to save her partner’s life.While she waits for the police commission to rule her shooting was within policy, she’s called out to probe the gruesome homicide of Anya Nosova, a nineteen-year-old Russian beauty whose body is found in the Los Angeles sewer system. With her own case in limbo, Davie knows that any mistakes in the investigation could end her career. Meanwhile, as she hunts for the murderer, somebody from her past is hunting her. Knowing she’s in the crosshairs, Davie must bring Anya’s killer to justice before her life and the lives of those she loves are destroyed.

The Champion Mindset: An Athlete's Guide to Mental Toughness


Joanna Zeiger - 2017
    Reaching the top of any sport, or any aspect of life, takes years upon years of dedication and proper preparation. But if there's a huge pool of individuals who have undertaken the same commitment and steps towards becoming the best, what truly separates the winners from everyone else? Joanna Zeiger believes proper mental preparation is the answer.The Champion Mindset is a much-needed and long overdue look into how to program a competitor's mind to achieve optimal success. Changing behaviors and ways of thinking are never easy, but the chapters in this book aim to simplify this process to make it manageable and achievable. This book is for every athlete--from the weekend warrior, who wants to complete in his or her first 5k running race, to those who have aspirations of one day becoming Olympians and world champions.The Champion Mindset is a compendium of Zeiger's own personal journey from struggling novice swimmer to Olympian and World Champion. Through steps including: Proper Goal Setting, Keeping it Fun, Building Your Team, Intention in Training, Improving Motivation, Promoting Self-Confidence, and Mind/Body Cohesion, among others, Zeiger uses her decades of personal experience, doctoral-level research, and professional success, to prepare readers to go all-in with their mental game.

Shipbuilder


Marlene Dotterer - 2011
    He has spent his career researching time travel and now, in early 2006, he’s finally reached the point where he can send objects backwards through time. The only problem is, he doesn’t know where the objects go. They don’t show up in the past, and no one notices any changes to the present. Are they creating alternate time lines?To collect more data, Sam tries a clandestine experiment in a public park, late at night. But the experiment goes horribly wrong when Casey Wilson, a student at the university, stumbles into his isolation field. Sam tries to rescue her, but instead, he and Casey are transported back to the year 1906. Stuck in the past, cut off from everyone and everything they know, Sam and Casey work together to help each other survive. Then Casey meets Thomas Andrews, the man who will shortly begin to build the most famous ship since Noah’s Ark. Should they warn him, changing the past and creating unknown consequences for the future? Or should they let him die?

Gil Scott-Heron: Pieces of a Man


Marcus Baram - 2014
    He tantalized audiences with his charismatic stage presence, and his biting, observant lyrics in such singles as "The Bottle" and "Johannesburg" provide a time capsule for a decade marked by turbulence, uncertainty, and racism. While he was exalted by his devoted fans as the “black Bob Dylan” (a term he hated) and widely sampled by the likes of Kanye West, Prince, Common, and Elvis Costello, he never really achieved mainstream success. Yet he maintained a cult following throughout his life, even as he grappled with the personal demons that fueled so many of his lyrics. Scott-Heron performed and occasionally recorded well into his later years, until eventually succumbing to his life-long struggle with addiction. He passed away in 2011, the end to what had become a hermit-like existence.In this biography, Marcus Baram--an acquaintance of Gil Scott-Heron's--will trace the volatile journey of a troubled musical genius. Baram will chart Scott-Heron's musical odyssey, from Chicago to Tennessee to New York: a drug addict's twisted path to redemption and enduring fame. In Gil Scott-Heron: Pieces of a Man, Marcus Baram puts the complicated icon into full focus.

The Thursday Night Men


Tonino Benacquista - 2012
    Each man’s life, his story, his situation, is as different from the others’ as can be. What unites them is heartache. Trouble, that is, with women. The meetings are held in a spirit of openness and tolerance. In an almost religious silence each man confesses while the others listen. Philippe is a philosopher of repute. Since the woman he considered to be his perfect mate left him, he has been dating one of the world’s most famous models in an effort to forget. Denis has been working as a waiter for years. Women have lost interest in him entirely and he is in a deep funk because of it. But one day a mysterious woman with a suitcase appears on his doorstep and moves into his living room without explanation, throwing his life into turmoil. Yves is a husband and a cuckold, who, after having discovered his wife’s betrayal, refuses to honor any and all forms of faithfulness. He is spending a lifetime’s worth of savings in search of pleasure.In The Thursday Night Men, Benacquista gives his readers a variety of unexpected and amusing perspectives on romance, the relationship between the sexes, and friendship between men.