Book picks similar to
To Dream the Blackbane by Richard J. O'Brien
contemporary
novels
recommended
excellent
The Call to Serve
Cece Whittaker - 2017
Friends Helen, Annie, Bernice & Joan struggled to hold onto devotion and service in a changing world. Would their loved ones survive the dark and destructive dangers of the War?When Helen’s husband Harry and Annie's Sylvester go MIA at the same time, Joan and Bernice are determined to keep their dear friends from losing faith. As Christmas approaches, they are all possessed of a very special kind of hope. But will their prayers be answered?
Six Days of the Condor
James Grady - 1974
He contacts CIA headquarters for help but when an attempted rendezvous goes wrong, it quickly becomes clear that no one can be trusted. Malcolm disappears into the streets of Washington, hoping to evade the killers long enough to unravel the conspiracy—but will that be enough to save his life?
Negative Zero
Ireland Gill - 2014
Life was barely manageable after my mom was murdered three years ago. I wasn’t sure what my purpose was anymore. But then on my twenty-first birthday, I drank a little too much and fell from the roof of my nine-story apartment building. I died. Then... I un-died. Enter Hayden, my really bossy (and hot) guardian angel whose duty is to train me to be the next “Soldier of Light.” Sound fun? Well, it’s not. I save dead people, helping them move on to the World of Light. And to make matters even worse, they are all troubled souls stuck in the Dark Realm with the devil and his army of demonic creatures. They roam my city’s streets at night, waiting for me to screw up. The Afterlife is one of Death’s best kept secrets, and I’m living proof. I’m pretty sure I’m the wrong person for this job, despite what Hayden thinks. Guess I’m stuck saving the dead. “Paranormal elements, action, drama, friendship, struggles, mystery, life and death, romance….all put together nicely, and driven by a strong female MC.” “An absolute must-read for fans of novels such as “Hush, Hush,” and “Twilight.”
Westwind Secrets
Marilyn Dalla Valle - 2021
Left by her estranged grandmother, the Second Empire Victorian mansion on Rhode Island's Narragansett Bay is thirty years past prime condition. The estate has no money for maintenance and repairs. Stuck, with meager means and no place to go, Mysti stays, despite rumored ghosts. When a drifter, Harry Pearson, shows up during a severe thunderstorm, she agrees to let him live in the carriage house in exchange for work. Soon, the tumbledown, brick fortress, springs back to life with mowed lawns, tended gardens, rebuilt porches and painted trim, but invisible evil shrouds the property. Broke, and heartbroken by her failed marriage, Mysti abandons a romance novel to write a mystery, using reality for inspiration. Oblivious to danger and driven by an unexplainable force, she delves into her grandmother’s accidental death and squandered assets with skeptical eyes. Bodies drop to protect guilty secrets, some buried for generations. Walking a tightrope to stay alive and protect her dog, Mysti Wade exposes deceit, greed and murder. Justice is served!
When the Side Nigga His Brother
Cherlina Works - 2016
The power of their charm takes them on a journey that leaves a trail of broken hearts and random cuddy buddies. They lived by the laws of “do not tell them that you love them and never ever sleep over”. However, that all changed the day they both met Tyla. The brothers engage in a bitter battle to win her heart and suddenly blood didn’t matter. Rules were made to be broken, right? When Tyla falls in love with one and disregards the other, it breaks the bonds between Tyri and Tyrease; neither of them saw it coming. Tyla was beautifully tempting, and women like her didn’t come around too often. Nevertheless, to fall in love with your brother’s girl is the ultimate betrayal, or is it? Will the love for one woman forever break their brotherly bond, or will they learn to accept what cards they were dealt? When the Side Nigga His Brother, the fight to be with the one you love, could very well cost you the love of another.
Primal Fear
William Diehl - 1992
Vail is certain to lose, but Vail uses his unorthodox ways to good advantage when choosing his legal team—a tight group of men and women who must uncover the extraordinary truth behind the archbishop's slaughter. They do, in a heart-stopping climax unparalleled for the surprise it springs on the reader...
The Brothers Silver
Marc Jampole
Downstairs in the basement, their mother is unconscious, having swallowed hundreds of Librium while the brothers were at Boy Scout camp, her latest suicide attempt. The food cupboards are empty. The phone doesn’t give a dial tone. As the sun goes down, the kitchen grows cold. The boys sit in silence, waiting for their mother to die. She doesn’t, but the guilt and anger they feel haunt the brothers for decades. The Brothers Silver follows Jules and Leon as they try to find their unanchored way through the cultural upheavals of the second half of the 20th century. The younger Leon lives on the drug-addled edges of society. The older brother, Jules, falls into a destructive relationship that parallels his past insecurities and chaos. What lies in store for the Silver brothers? Recovery or turmoil?The 12 chapters of The Brothers Silver unfold in ten voices, each of which has its own language and style, making the novel a tour de force of technique in the American tradition of accessible literary innovation established by Heller, Pynchon, and Wallace.
The Secret Lives of Monsters and Legends
Sunny Basra - 2015
Dragons, monsters and strange creatures; All that you thought you knew about them will be forgotten once you glimpse into the strange world hidden in this book.The mysteries and legends of some of the world's most popular fables are retold in four stories in this colourful, fun and imaginative book. You’ll be surprised by what you discover!You should also buy this book if you like surprise, you love colourful pictures, using your imagination makes you happy, you are scared of monsters but want to understand why you shouldn't and you believe that to your kids are the best thing ever!Are you ready? It's time to uncover the mysteries of these monsters and legends!You should also buy this book if;• You like surprises• You love colourful pictures• Using your imagination makes you happy• You are scared of monsters• You think kids are the best!Are you ready? It's time to uncover the mysteries of these monsters and legends!
Pilgrims at the White Horizon
Michael Wyndham Thomas - 2013
That wasn’t Keith Huxtable, expert handyman, but since he’s just about the only person who remembers their world’s fleeting appearance in a 1950s comic strip, he’s the one they’ve got pegged! The unfinished bits are spreading. Eating away at Razalia. Beings are falling in and they don’t come out. Can Keith fix it? And get back home in time to save his comics collection and his marriage?A tribute to the magic of British annuals! A father and daughter in an intergalactic adventure beyond imagination! The story you weren’t expecting but will never forget!
The Nightingale
Kristin Hannah - 2015
She doesn’t believe that the Nazis will invade France…but invade they do, in droves of marching soldiers, in caravans of trucks and tanks, in planes that fill the skies and drop bombs upon the innocent. When a German captain requisitions Vianne’s home, she and her daughter must live with the enemy or lose everything. Without food or money or hope, as danger escalates all around them, she is forced to make one impossible choice after another to keep her family alive.Vianne’s sister, Isabelle, is a rebellious eighteen-year-old, searching for purpose with all the reckless passion of youth. While thousands of Parisians march into the unknown terrors of war, she meets Gaëtan, a partisan who believes the French can fight the Nazis from within France, and she falls in love as only the young can…completely. But when he betrays her, Isabelle joins the Resistance and never looks back, risking her life time and again to save others.With courage, grace and powerful insight, bestselling author Kristin Hannah captures the epic panorama of World War II and illuminates an intimate part of history seldom seen: the women’s war. The Nightingale tells the stories of two sisters, separated by years and experience, by ideals, passion and circumstance, each embarking on her own dangerous path toward survival, love, and freedom in German-occupied, war-torn France—a heartbreakingly beautiful novel that celebrates the resilience of the human spirit and the durability of women. It is a novel for everyone, a novel for a lifetime.
Casanova and the Devil's Doorbell
Harry F. MacDonald - 2020
It was only with the discovery of Casanova and the Devil’s Doorbell, written by his late valet Jacques del Rosso, that historians realized we need to reappraise his mature years. Casanova, it turns out, was more spirited and more enterprising than history has given him credit for.Jacques’ journal faithfully recounts the intrigues and dalliances therein that occurred in the times just preceding the French revolution – and Casanova’s role. The memoir appears to be a compilation of the highlights of their adventures together during the years 1787 to 1793, a tumultuous time in history. Casanova was nearing the age of seventy, but, as you will see, age posed no barrier to his dauntless pursuits.The memoir was found lying in a hidden vault in the Palazzo Malipiero in Venice, a known haunt of Jacques and Casanova. It is not for those who are faint- hearted or for those who are set on judging works and men by modern day standards of political correctness. For readers who can suspend their moral high ground and enjoy the hijinks of one of history’s great rogues, a rollicking read awaits.
Betrayal of Faith
Mark M. Bello - 2017
Standing in her way? The Coalition-a secret church organization tasked with the responsibility of taking care of these types of incidents quickly and quietly and by any means necessary. Jennifer decides to file a lawsuit against the priest and the church and seeks out an attorney, Zachary Blake, who handled her late husband's industrial death case. However, through an unfortunate series of events, Zachary has gone from the penthouse to the poorhouse, working out of a dingy one-room office, handling traffic cases. Although Jennifer has misgivings, she reluctantly retains him and, together, they embark on a "David vs. Goliath" legal battle against an organization hell-bent on thwarting their efforts. Zachary hires an investigator, the infamous Micah Love, who travels to Ohio, where he discovers that two families have disappeared after an encounter with the same priest-and the one person who may provide some answers has died under mysterious circumstances. Religion, law, betrayal, mystery, intrigue, faith, and love converge in Michigan for the trial of the century. Will Zachary resurrect his troubled career and obtain the justice Jennifer seeks for her kids? Or will the church and the Coalition and its mysterious leader prevail in covering up the decadent acts of the priest and circumvent justice once again? Will the truth prevail?
Where the Crawdads Sing
Delia Owens - 2018
Kya Clark is barefoot and wild; unfit for polite society. So in late 1969, when the popular Chase Andrews is found dead, locals immediately suspect her.But Kya is not what they say. A born naturalist with just one day of school, she takes life's lessons from the land, learning the real ways of the world from the dishonest signals of fireflies. But while she has the skills to live in solitude forever, the time comes when she yearns to be touched and loved. Drawn to two young men from town, who are each intrigued by her wild beauty, Kya opens herself to a new and startling world—until the unthinkable happens.In Where the Crawdads Sing, Owens juxtaposes an exquisite ode to the natural world against a profound coming of age story and haunting mystery. Thought-provoking, wise, and deeply moving, Owens’s debut novel reminds us that we are forever shaped by the child within us, while also subject to the beautiful and violent secrets that nature keeps.The story asks how isolation influences the behavior of a young woman, who like all of us, has the genetic propensity to belong to a group. The clues to the mystery are brushed into the lush habitat and natural histories of its wild creatures.
Next!: The Search for My Last First Date
Robert James - 2014
Necessary Lies
Diane Chamberlain - 2013
Bestselling author Diane Chamberlain delivers a breakout book about a small southern town fifty years ago, and the darkest—and most hopeful—places in the human heartAfter losing her parents, fifteen-year-old Ivy Hart is left to care for her grandmother, older sister and nephew as tenants on a small tobacco farm. As she struggles with her grandmother’s aging, her sister’s mental illness and her own epilepsy, she realizes they might need more than she can give.When Jane Forrester takes a position as Grace County’s newest social worker, she doesn’t realize just how much her help is needed. She quickly becomes emotionally invested in her clients' lives, causing tension with her boss and her new husband. But as Jane is drawn in by the Hart women, she begins to discover the secrets of the small farm—secrets much darker than she would have guessed. Soon, she must decide whether to take drastic action to help them, or risk losing the battle against everything she believes is wrong.Set in rural Grace County, North Carolina in a time of state-mandated sterilizations and racial tension, Necessary Lies tells the story of these two young women, seemingly worlds apart, but both haunted by tragedy. Jane and Ivy are thrown together and must ask themselves: how can you know what you believe is right, when everyone is telling you it’s wrong?