Book picks similar to
The Essence of Nathan Biddle by J. William Lewis
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Shakespeare Burning
Charisse Moritz - 2019
One mistake and seventeen-year-old Shake LeCasse lost everything. Now there’s no going back and no way to move forward. The once-popular Varsity hockey captain is living in the basement of a grandmother he barely knows, ditching school, avoiding friends and working hard on self-destruction. She’s the girl nobody sees. Cleo Lee survives however she can. Lie, cheat, steal, whatever it takes, and saving Mr. Popular isn’t part of the plan. Telling him the truth about the night that destroyed his life is downright dangerous. She needs to keep quiet, be smart and let the guy she’s been half in love with since middle school throw away a future she’d do anything to have. Too bad she sucks at playing it safe.
Limbo.
Marko Pandza - 2016
A place beyond time and space as we know it where psychopaths compete for perverse honour and status as they carry out their deathly duties. As Grim struggles to hold onto the memories of the life he’s lost, he discovers that the insane being who shaped him (and the course of existence itself) may have sinister plans for the one thing he values most.In Limbo, the end is only the beginning.
To the River's End: A Novel of the American Frontier
William W. Johnstone - 2021
This is an unforgettable journey into the untamed American frontier. Where nature is cruel, violence lurks behind every tree, and where only the strongest of the strong survive. This is a story of America.
TO THE RIVER’S END Luke Ransom was just eighteen years old when he answered an ad in a St. Louis newspaper that would change his life forever. The American Fur Company needed one-hundred enterprising men to travel up the Missouri River—the longest in North America—all the way to its source. They would hunt and trap furs for one, two, or three years. Along the way, they would face unimaginable hardships: grueling weather, wild animals, hunger, exhaustion, and hostile attacks by the Blackfeet and Arikara. Luke Ransom was one of the brave men chosen for the job—and one of the few to survive . . . Five years later, Luke is a seasoned trapper and hunter, a master of his trade. The year is 1833, and the American Fur Company is sending him to the now-famous Rendezvous at Green River. For Luke, it may be his last job for the company. After facing death countless times, he is ready to strike out on his own. But when he encounters a fellow trapper under attack by Indians, his life takes an unexpected turn. A new friendship is forged in blood. And a dangerous new journey begins...
Braiding Roses
Elise Stoltenbreck - 2021
Things nosedive from bad to terrible when she finds herself in a shouting match with Gareth, resident doctor and her boss, on her first day.Between the love of her life urging her to return to Perth and a prickly, dismissive, and rude boss practically tossing her to the curb on day one, Mandy faces the coming year with thorns bared, determined to come out with her head held high. While she hones her doctoring skills in order to prove herself to the highly capable Gareth after their less-than-ideal first encounter, she might learn a little something about herself, too.
The Disappearance of Trudy Solomon
Marcy McCreary - 2021
The glamorous and gregarious matriarch, Rachel. The cunning and successful businessman, Stan. Four beautiful children. A perfect family deserving of respect and loyalty. Or so it seemed.Fast forward forty years. The Roths have lost their clout. When skeletal remains are found on the side of the road, the disappearance of Trudy Solomon, a coffee shop waitress at the Cuttman in 1978, is reopened. Each member of the Roth family holds a clue to the case, but getting them to admit what they know will force Detective Susan Ford to face a family she’d hoped never to see again.
St. Anthony's Fire
Garry Harper - 2018
A journey of self-discovery capped off by a bad batch of moonshine transforms Rabelais into a cult leader. Meanwhile, John wants nothing more than to be left alone, but is caught between the burgeoning movements unwittingly started by his two friends. Dark, caustic, and wickedly sardonic, St. Anthony's Fire casts a burning light on the absurdities of 21st century society in the form of The City. If reading it leaves you feeling frustrated and miserable, with a worse outlook on life and the world around you, then it has done its job.
Bell Hammers
Lancelot Schaubert - 2020
Remmy's life of constant schemes and pranks and a lifelong feud with classmate Jim Johnstone and the local oil drilling company proves consequential. This is a hoot."- Publisher's Weekly🏆 finalist for Glimmer Train's Fiction Open.PRANKS. OIL. PROTEST. JOKES BETWEEN NEWLYWEDS.AND ONE HILARIOUS SIEGE OF A MAJOR CORPORATION.Remmy grows up with Beth in Bellhammer, Illinois as oil and coal companies rob the land of everything that made it paradise. Under his Grandad, he learns how to properly prank his neighbors, friends, and foes. Beth tries to fix Remmy by taking him to church. Under his Daddy, Remmy starts the Bell Hammer Construction Company, which depends on contracts from Texarco Oil. And Beth argues with him about how to build a better business. Together, Remmy and Beth start to build a great neighborhood of "merry men" carpenters: a paradise of s’mores, porch furniture, newborn babies, and summer trips to Branson where their boys pop the tops off of the neighborhood’s two hundred soda bottles. Their witty banter builds a kind of castle among a growing nostalgia.Then one of Jim Johnstone’s faulty Texarco oil derricks falls down on their house and poisons their neighborhood's well.Poisoned wells escalate to torched dog houses. Torched dog houses escalate to stolen carpentry tools and cancelled contracts. Cancelled contracts escalate to eminent domain. Sick of the attacks from Texaco Oil on his neighborhood, Remmy assembles his merry men:"We need the world's greatest prank. One grand glorious jest that'll bloody the nose of that tyrant. Besides, pranks and jokes don't got no consequences, right?"
Vera
Carol Edgarian - 2021
Vera has grown up straddling two worlds—the madam’s alluring sphere, replete with tickets to the opera, surly henchmen, and scant morality, and the violent, debt ridden domestic life of the family paid to raise her.On the morning of the great quake, Vera’s worlds collide. As the shattered city burns and looters vie with the injured, orphaned, and starving, Vera and her guileless sister, Pie, are cast adrift. Vera disregards societal norms and prejudices and begins to imagine a new kind of life. She collaborates with Tan, her former rival, and forges an unlikely family of survivors. Together they navigate their way beyond disaster.
An Honest Lie
Tarryn FisherTarryn Fisher
You’d better come if you want to save her.” Lorraine—“Rainy”—lives at the top of Tiger Mountain. Remote, moody, cloistered in pine trees and fog, it’s a sanctuary, a new life. She can hide from the disturbing past she wants to forget. If she’s allowed to. When Rainy reluctantly agrees to a girls’ weekend in Vegas, she’s prepared for an exhausting parade of shots and slot machines. But after a wild night, her friend Braithe doesn’t come back to the hotel room. And then Rainy gets the text message, sent from Braithe’s phone: someone has her. But Rainy is who they really want, and Rainy knows why. What follows is a twisted, shocking journey on the knife-edge of life and death. If she wants to save Braithe—and herself—the only way is to step back into the past. This seething, gut-punch of a thriller can only have sprung from the fiendish brain of Tarryn Fisher, one of the most cunning writers of our time.Looking for more great reads by Tarryn Fisher? Don't miss The Wives and The Wrong Family.
Grand Portage
Scott Seeger - 2019
He enjoys his expensive toys, lush mansion, and life of comfort, but something is missing. A chance meeting with fellow billionaires sparks his imagination and he sets forth on a new venture. He will buy a nuclear aircraft carrier, sail it through the Great Lakes, drag it across Northern Minnesota to an Indian reservation, and hook it up to the power grid. With this bold publicity stunt, he hopes to reinvigorate the nuclear energy debate in this country. Intrepid visionaries see into the future and trudge forward. They are the builders of societies and the makers of progress. But sometimes they get sidetracked and lull into comfort. Along the way Tyler encounters an echelon of obstacles from angry energy companies to zealous environmentalists, and even his own nuclear physicist peers. The government wants to shut him down, his own wife thinks he’s crazy, and he’s running out of money. But Tyler also learns that people love getting behind a man with a vision. In this adventure we learn of leadership, ingenuity in the face of overwhelming odds, and what it is to take people with you. Who will you take with when your inspiration comes?
A Reason to Be
Norman McCombs - 2020
Douglas McCombs is an accomplished engineer and recent widower driven to discover the truth of who he is by studying the people and places he comes from. After losing his wife to a battle with Alzheimer’s, Douglas is left devastated until a chance encounter with a sharp, compassionate librarian named Suzy Hamilton on the steps of the New York Public Library shakes him from the throes of grief. With Suzy’s help, Douglas takes up genealogy and begins an investigation into his Scottish lineage that takes the reader on a sprawling journey through time and the remarkable lives of Douglas’s ancestors—from legendary highland clan chiefs and American war generals to humble farmers and family men. As he traces his ancestry through the generations, Douglas manages to discover not only the roots he was searching for, but also a brand-new reason to be.
The Crowns of Croswald
D.E. Night - 2017
Hailed by Kirkus Reviews as “an action-packed treat […] with a relatable heroine facing challenges in a vivid world of magic and mystery,” and called a new classic by readers, The Crowns of Croswald series is a magical romp through a fully formed universe with dragons, magical quills, potions, and mythical creatures.Ivy Lovely is 16 and she has no idea who she is—or what her powers could be. When she crosses a magical boundary, she discovers a whole new world of enchantment and mystery. Making friends that will last a lifetime—and save her life—she steps into her own abilities and discovers more about her hidden past, magical blood, and the power of Croswald’s mystical stones. But all is not well: a dark history and an evil Queen threatens all that is good. Will Ivy’s bravery and wit be enough?Curious and whimsical, both shy and brave, Ivy is a hero that connects with readers of all ages. For those who wished that Narnia, Harry Potter, and Alice in Wonderland could go on forever, Croswald opens a whole new world of magic. Recommended as a read-aloud for families and a first middle-grade fantasy read, The Crowns of Croswald is a four-part series that will carry readers to a whimsical world that they won’t want to leave.
A Very Nice Girl
Imogen Crimp - 2022
Not with her wealthy classmates at the selective London Conservatory where she unexpectedly wins a place after university, not with the family she left behind, and definitely not with Max, a man she meets in the bar where she sings for cash. He’s everything she’s not—rich, tailored to precision, impossible to read—and before long Anna is hooked, desperate to hold his attention, and determined to ignore the warning signs that this might be a toxic relationship.As Anna shuttles from grueling rehearsals to brutal auditions, she finds herself torn between two conflicting desires: the drive to nurture her fledgling singing career, which requires her undivided attention, and the longing for human connection. When the stakes increase, and the roles she’s playing—both on stage and off—begin to feel all-consuming, Anna must reckon with the fact that, in carefully performing what’s expected of her as a woman, she risks losing sight of herself completely.Both exceedingly contemporary and classic, A Very Nice Girl reminds us that even once we have taken possession of our destinies we still have the power to set all we hold dear on fire.
The Touch: A Supernatural Story
Robert Flynn III - 2017
He is considered autistic by many. He is not. He appears autistic because he is hearing a voice. The voice is real, but it is a supernatural presence. What the voice gives him is a power that he can transfer by touch. Gabriel is the starting point for a change that is happening to many young people just like himself, all over the world. The change is wondrous and difficult at the same time. One thing is certain. The voice holds power beyond anything any of these young people could have ever imagined. This power is changing everyone, one beautiful child after another. The problem with this mysterious blessing is that Gabriel does not trust this voice completely. This distrust never leaves him, and for good reason, but Gabriel finds that the wonder of what he is experiencing is far too great for him to resist. Below, Gabriel experiences the shock of “hearing” the voice for the first time. “If only I could tell someone what this is like! God! What is wrong with me? What is wrong?” Gabriel was screaming with a tremendous power of his own, not with his voice, but with his mind. As soon as he screamed these thoughts, which he had done so many times through the years, he received the one thing he had always been very, very scared of, an actual answer. His body tensed to rigidity as the sound rose from within. As often as he had felt a communication with this presence, he had never had an interaction like this. Before today he had heard “voice” whisperings to his body, mind and soul, and these were very strong, but seemingly subconscious. What was happening now was completely new, and extremely unsettling. He was hearing now. To make it even more difficult for the boy to deal with, this was much more than just a voice, it was a sound of so much complexity that the richness of it made Gabriel senseless for a moment. It was the sound of the universe, every timbre of an orchestra, every harmonic of all the tones of every instrument in the world, buzzing together in something beyond harmony. This sound made extreme loudness seem quiet. It was all encompassing, crushing, like a freight train coming straight for you, the ground shaking, and a complete madness. Still, with all this, Gabriel could not resist it, because even with the unstoppable fear, he felt an absolute connection to it that could not be denied. This book is an excellent read for all ages. It has many youthful characters, adult characters and supernatural characters, and each of them bristle with personality. The work also has a deeper meaning. The author has attempted to present the world condition in a truthful and hopeful way, which is designed to ignite imagination and possibility.
Mean Little People
Paige Dearth - 2016
When I was seven years old the bullies in my class almost killed me; my father was angry that I let it happen but he always hated me.At thirteen I went to prison for a crime I didn’t commit; it was the worst experience of my life.Living on the streets was hard; being part of a gang was harder.Oh, and I did find people to love along the way…and, I would do anything to protect them. Anything.**WARNING** 18+ Readers Only. Graphic content and subject matter. (This is a standalone novel)NOTE: Mean Little People was previously titled Born Mobster. The content remains the same.