The Spectacular Now


Tim Tharp - 2008
    HE’S the guy you want at your party. He’ll get everyone dancing. He’ ll get everyone in your parents’ pool. Okay, so he’s not exactly a shining academic star. He has no plans for college and will probably end up folding men’s shirts for a living. But there are plenty of ladies in town, and with the help of Dean Martin and Seagram’s V.O., life’s pretty fabuloso, actually.Until the morning he wakes up on a random front lawn, and he meets Aimee. Aimee’s clueless. Aimee is a social disaster. Aimee needs help, and it’s up to the Sutterman to show Aimee a splendiferous time and then let her go forth and prosper. But Aimee’s not like other girls, and before long he’s in way over his head. For the first time in his life, he has the power to make a difference in someone else’s life—or ruin it forever.

How to Love


Katie Cotugno - 2013
    But he's never seemed to notice that Reena even exists until one day, impossibly, he does. Reena and Sawyer fall in messy, complicated love. But then Sawyer disappears from their humid Florida town without a word, leaving a devastated—and pregnant—Reena behind. After: Almost three years have passed, and there's a new love in Reena's life: her daughter, Hannah. Reena's gotten used to being without Sawyer, and she's finally getting the hang of this strange, unexpected life. But just as swiftly and suddenly as he disappeared, Sawyer turns up again. Reena doesn't want anything to do with him, though she'd be lying if she said Sawyer's being back wasn't stirring something in her. After everything that's happened, can Reena really let herself love Sawyer LeGrande again?In this breathtaking debut, Katie Cotugno weaves together the story of one couple falling in love—twice.

Beautiful Lies


Heather Bentley - 2016
    But looks can be deceiving, and in my family, deception is an art form. So, I bide my time and count the days until I’m free. Heiress Christina Harcourt lives a life surrounded by the finest this world has to offer. Unfortunately, what she wants most can’t be bought. After losing her mother in a heinous crime, she tries her best to live the life she knows her mother would want for her. But through her family’s hurtful ways, Christina learns the only way to do that, is to leave this life far behind. Everything is going as planned, until she meets him.Sexy, carefree CJ Whitford is a hard-working, blue collar guy who can’t get the guarded brunette out of his head. So, he takes a chance and rearranges his life to go after the girl he’s falling for. He quickly discovers that Christina’s secrets are as big as her heart. A heart so fragile that all it will take to destroy it is one more lie…his.TRIGGER WARNING: Please read reviews before purchasing.

Runner Up


Leah Banicki - 2012
    Last year's runner up was the 'good guy' heart throb Anthony Capriccio, who won over every good girl's heart when he showed off his sweet nature and his stunning good looks. Though successful in her career as a professional photographer, Hannah had been a flop on the dating scene. Would the lights and drama of a TV crew, twenty-five beautiful woman, and one good looking guy be too much? From the hearth of a Scottish castle, to expansive Australia, to the busy streets of London, Hannah Parker will find out if she is up to the task of catching her very own Prince Charming. -Appropriate for young teens and older-

Johnny Voodoo


Dakota Lane - 1996
    At Charmette High, Deirdre's a Yankee who'll never fit in. She's alone in a way she's never been before--until she meets Johnny. People say he's dangerous and that he has special powers. All Deirdre knows is that he makes her feel real and loved. An ALA Best Book for Young Adults.

Indelible Acts


A.L. Kennedy - 2002
    A. L. Kennedy’s men and women huddle in foreign hotel rooms, immobilized by travel-sickness and betrayal. They plan seductions on the line at a cheese shop. They’re undone by a passing embrace in the office men’s room. Their passion is so urgent and imperious that it invades the stories they tell their children.By turns chaste and ferociously sexy, funny and unbearably sad, every story in Indelible Acts is a testament to the lengths to which desire drives us. And all are marked by Kennedy’s wisdom and humanity, and language that captures the briefest tremor of the infatuated heart.

Any Old Iron


Lynda Page - 1998
    Her mother is dying and needs constant care; her father has returned to Leicester from the Second World War but is an emotional wreck; and her brother Mickey has turned to a life of crime that is putting the whole family at risk. Kelly's boyfriend Rodney and his sister Glenda know that she's scared of what Micky might do next. But they turn a blind eye to her fears - with disastrous consequences for them all. When Kelly has lost eveything she holds dear, she and Glenda pick up the pieces and start again. And one man in particular, Alec Alderman, is there when she needs him most. But Alec has problems of his own...

One Step at a Time


Beryl Matthews - 2006
    She is intelligent, but has trouble with words. How is she going to survive when her father is hanged for murder and her mother dies, leaving her alone? Ben Scott, an artist she has met only once, finds her at this crucial time and takes her back to his landlady, who gives her a home. The people living in the house become her family, and, step-by-step, the past is put behind her. In 1939 she marries a young doctor, John Sterling, and her happiness is complete. Then war comes to tear her family apart. John is killed during an air raid, and Ben is reported missing. Is she destined to lose the two men she adores? And how many painful steps will it take to regain her happiness?

A Brighter Dawn


Rosie Harris - 2011
    Keep well away from that Hadyn Jenkins.' In spite of her father's words of warning, Sharon Pritchard decides to give up everything to follow her heart. However, her new life with Hadyn is anything but easy. Although he is handsome and charming, he is feckless and unreliable. And they soon find themselves sinking ever faster into poverty. The birth of their son should be a joyous occasion, but Sharon fears for him amongst the filth and despair of Tiger Bay. And when Hadyn's errant ways catch up with him, Sharon is faced with a devastating truth. Can her love for Hadyn survive and will she be able to provide a better future for herself and her son...? From the Paperback edition.

Our Kind of Love


Shane Morgan - 2014
    That’s until Micah walks into her Mom’s restaurant looking for a job. Reign can’t seem to stop her heart from yearning for the guy with the mysterious sea blue eyes and a melting smile.Micah is all but perfect. He’s spent eight months in a juvenile detention center back in Colorado for his unintentional involvement in a crime. Now at nineteen and hoping to escape his ghosts, he lands a part-time job working at a seaside restaurant in Newport, Rhode Island where he meets the irresistible Reign.He can’t help the way he feels whenever he’s around her, but she’s already taken, and Micah doesn't want to disrupt her life or get himself in any more trouble. But then his attraction for Reign proves too strong to deny, and Micah finds that he just might discover a reason to stop running.

You Can't Win


Jack Black - 1926
    Jack Black's autobiography was a bestseller and went through five printings in the late 1920's. It has led a mostly subterranean existence since then - best known as William S. Burrough's favorite book, one he admitted lifting big chunks of from memory for his first novel, Junky. But it's time we got wise to this book, which is in itself a remarkably wise book - and a ripping true saga. It's an amazing journey into the hobo underworld: freight hopping around the still wide open West at the turn of the 20th century, becoming a member of the "yegg" (criminal) brotherhood and a highwayman, learning the outlaw philosophy from Foot-and-a-half George and the Sanctimonious Kid, getting hooked on opium, passing through hobo jungles, hop joints and penitentiaries. This is a chunk of the American story entirely left out of the history books - it's a lot richer and stranger than the official version. This new edition also includes an Afterword that tells some of what became of Black after he wore out the outlaw life and washed up in San Francisco, wrote this book and reinvented himself.

The Bookish Life of Nina Hill


Abbi Waxman - 2019
    If she sometimes suspects there might be more to life than reading, she just shrugs and picks up a new book. When the father Nina never knew existed suddenly dies, leaving behind innumerable sisters, brothers, nieces, and nephews, Nina is horrified. They all live close by! They're all—or mostly all—excited to meet her! She'll have to Speak. To. Strangers. It's a disaster! And as if that wasn't enough, Tom, her trivia nemesis, has turned out to be cute, funny, and deeply interested in getting to know her. Doesn't he realize what a terrible idea that is?Nina considers her options.1. Completely change her name and appearance. (Too drastic, plus she likes her hair.) 2. Flee to a deserted island. (Hard pass, see: coffee). 3. Hide in a corner of her apartment and rock back and forth. (Already doing it.)It's time for Nina to come out of her comfortable shell, but she isn't convinced real life could ever live up to fiction. It's going to take a brand-new family, a persistent suitor, and the combined effects of ice cream and trivia to make her turn her own fresh page.

The Sex Life of My Aunt


Mavis Cheek - 2002
    Apart from the envy of her less contented sister, she has everything she could possibly want - a loving husband, a beautiful home, a privileged lifestyle - and she's proud that she has achieved so much when she began with so little.But then one day her illusion of perfection is shattered when she meets a man at a train station. As she hurtles towards either her destruction or her liberation, she discovers that life isn't as simple as thought, and that the right choice, like truth, is rarely pure and never simple.

Saving Zoë


Alyson Noel - 2007
    Her parents are numb, her friends are moving on, and the awkward start to her freshman year proves she'll never live up to her sister's memory. Until Zoë's former boyfriend Marc shows up with Zoë's diary.At first Echo's not interested, doubting there's anything in there she doesn't already know. But when curiosity prevails, she starts reading, becoming so immersed in her sister's secret world, their lives begin to blur, forcing Echo to uncover the truth behind Zoë's life so that she can start to rebuild her own.Prepare to laugh your heart out and cry your eyes out in this highly addictive tale as Alyson Noël tackles the complicated relationship between two sisters and shows how the bond can endure long after one of them is gone.

The Lehman Trilogy


Stefano Massini - 2013
    The Lehman Trilogy follows the epic rise and fall of three generations of that infamous family and through them tells the story of American ambition and hubris. After leaving his native Bavaria, Henry Lehman arrives in America determined to make a better life. Sensing opportunity in the Deep South, he opens a textile shop in Alabama, laying the foundation for a dynasty that will come to dominate and define modern capitalism. Emanuel and his brother Mayer begin investing in anything and everything that will turn a profit, from cotton to coal to railroads to oil to airplanes—even at the expense of the very nation that forged them. Spanning three generations and 150 years, The Lehman Trilogy is a moving epic that dares to tell the story of modern capitalism through the saga of the Lehman brothers and their descendants. Surprising and exciting, brilliant and inventive, Stefano Massini’s masterpiece—like Hamilton—is a story of immigration, ambition, and success; it is the story of America itself from a daring and original perspective.