Speed Dating
Natalie Standiford
Meet sophomores Madison, Holly, and Lina. When the Dating Game Web site that they create for class becomes a campus hit, they become the matchmaking masters of their school, and they hope, their lives.
The Far Reaches
Homer Hickam
The year is 1943 and World War II in the Pacific rages on, with Americans engaged in desperate battles against a cunning enemy. Coast Guard Captain Josh Thurlow is on hand at the invasion of Tarawa, as the U.S. Navy begins the grand strategy of throwing her marines at island after bloody island across the Pacific. But nothing goes as planned as young Americans go up against fanatical defenders, who revel in snipers, big guns, and human wave attacks from which there is no escape save death. As blood colors the waters around Tarawa, Josh flounders ashore through a floating graveyard of dead men and joins the survivors, determined to somehow wrest victory from disaster. Critically wounded, ,Josh expects to die. Instead, he is spun off on one of his greatest adventures when Sister Mary Kathleen, a young Irish nun, nurses him back to health, then shanghais Josh, sidekick Bosun Ready O'Neal, and three American marines to a group of beautiful tropical islands...
Reese: A Safe Haven Novella
Terri Anne Browning Andrew Kaufman Colm Toibin Henning Mankell Henning Mankell Henning Mankell Sarah Prineas Tommy Wallach Jane Harvey-Berrick Julia Spencer-Fleming David Morrell Tim Lott Anne Sexton
Safe HavenThe name of the bar pretty much said it for me. Safe Haven was just that. It had been my safe place when I had needed it the most. I ran away when I was 16 to get away from my supposed life of privilege. Let me tell you, money does not buy happiness. For me it has only left the scars on my soul. But five years after running away my grandfather has finally found me...And little did I know that his finding me really has lead me to my true Safe Haven. In this new novel by ReLit award–winning, Leacock-nominated writer Andrew Kaufman, Charlie eschews the usual avenues of mid-life crisis—sportscars, mistresses—and instead seeks meaning in the least likely of places: small claims court. There, he struggles to understand what's gone wrong in his marriage, his career as a writer, and his relationship with his two young children. With small observations, subtle investigations, and the constant pursuit of small-scale justice, Charlie attempts to rebuild his faith in humanity through the framework of a court system that won't let you sue for damages above twenty thousand dollars. This is Andrew Kaufman minus the magic realism and with a big dose of tenderness for the frailties of the heart. From one of contemporary literature’s bestselling, critically acclaimed and beloved authors, a magnificent new novel set in Ireland, about a fiercely compelling young widow and mother of four, navigating grief and fear, struggling for hope. Set in Wexford, Ireland, Colm Tóibín’s superb seventh novel introduces the formidable, memorable and deeply moving Nora Webster. Widowed at forty, with four children and not enough money, Nora has lost the love of her life, Maurice, the man who rescued her from the stifling world to which she was born. And now she fears she may be drawn back into it. Wounded, strong-willed, clinging to secrecy in a tiny community where everyone knows your business, Nora is drowning in her own sorrow and blind to the suffering of her young sons, who have lost their father. Yet she has moments of stunning empathy and kindness, and when she begins to sing again, after decades, she finds solace, engagement, a haven—herself. Nora Webster is a masterpiece in character study by a writer at the zenith of his career, “beautiful and daring” (The New York Times Book Review) and able to “sneak up on readers and capture their imaginations” (USA TODAY). In Nora Webster, Tóibín has created a character as iconic, engaging and memorable as Madame Bovary or Hedda Gabler.** WINNER OF THE CWA GOLD DAGGER FOR SIDETRACKEDHerbert Molin, a retired police officer, is living alone in a remote cottage in the vast forests of northern Sweden. He has two obsessions: one is the tango and the other is a conviction that he is being hunted, constantly pursued by 'demons'. He has no close friends, no close neighbours, and by the time his body is eventually found, Molin is almost unrecognisable. Lindman, a police officer on extended sick leave, hears of the death of his former colleague and, to take his mind off his own problems, decides to involve himself in the case. What he discovers, to his horror and disbelief, is a network of evil almost unimaginable in this remote district, and one which seems impossible to link to Molin's death. A moving and disturbing companion to DepthsOnce a successful surgeon, Frederick Welin now lives in self-imposed exile on an island in the Swedish archipelago. Nearly twelve years have passed since he was disgraced for attempting to cover up a tragic mishap on the operating table. One morning in the depths of winter, he sees a hunched figure struggling towards him across the ice. His past is about to catch up with him. The figure approaching in the freezing cold is Harriet, the only woman he has ever loved, the woman he abandoned in order to go and study in America forty years earlier. She has sought him out in the hope that he will honour a promise made many years ago. Now in the late stages of a terminal illness, she wants to visit a small lake in northern Sweden, a place Welin's father took him once as a boy. He upholds his pledge and drives her to this beautiful pool hidden deep in the forest. On the journey through the desolate snow-covered landscape, Welin... Linda Wallander is bored. Just graduated from the police academy, she is waiting to start work at the Ystad police station and move into her own apartment. Meanwhile, she's living with her father and, like fathers and daughters everywhere, they are driving each other crazy. Nor will they be able to escape each other when she moves out. Her father is Inspector Kurt Wallander, a veteran of the Ystad police force, whom she will have to work alongside. Linda's boredom doesn't last long. Soon she is embroiled in the case of her childhood friend, Anna, who has inexplicably disappeared. As the investigation proceeds, she makes a few rookie mistakes. They are understandable, but they are also life-threatening. And as the case her father is working on dovetails with her own, something far more calculated and dangerous than either could have imagined begins to emerge.Already an international bestseller, Before the Frost inaugurates Henning Mankell's new mystery series about... The Magic Thief: Home, the fourth book in the acclaimed Magic Thief series (also including The Magic Thief, The Magic Thief: Lost, and The Magic Thief: Found), finds new wizard Conn back where he started--accused of being a thief.Despite successfully securing a balance between the competing magics of Wellmet, Conn is not happy. Duchess Rowan has promoted him to ducal magister, but the other wizards see him only as a thief. But something sinister is brewing, as magicians' locus stones are being stolen and magical spells are going awry. As Conn faces old enemies and powerful magical forces, is he strong enough to save the city he calls home?Diana Wynne Jones, author of Howl's Moving Castle, praised this middle grade fantasy series filled with magic and wonder, saying of the first, "I couldn't put it down. Wonderful, exciting stuff." For teens who grew up reading and adoring The Giver and The City of Ember. Oregon Trail meets Westworld in this epic new trilogy from the New York Times bestselling author of We All Looked Up, Tommy Wallach.Knowledge has always been the enemy of faith. They said that the first generation of man was brought low by its appetites: for knowledge, for power, for wealth. They said mankind's voracity was so great, the Lord sent his own Daughter to bring fire and devastation to the world. The survivors were few, but over the course of centuries they banded together to form a new civilization—the Descendancy—founded on the belief that the mistakes of the past must never be repeated. Brothers Clive and Clover Hamill, the sons of a well-respected Descendant minister, have spent their lives spreading that gospel. But when their traveling ministry discovers a community intent on rediscovering the... When journalist Helene La Borde overhears a chance conversation on a train, she becomes implicated in one of the great cover-ups in history. Chased from her home, her first clue about the people trying to kill her is at a drug-fumed house among the surfers of Hawaii’s North Shore. Her second clue is revealed by a Shinto priest in Japan, and the third clue – or possibly a dangerous red herring – by an IT and security specialist in Bahrain. When she lands in the bizarre twilight world of conspiracy-theorist super-hackers on America’s West Coast, the danger is chillingly real. Along for the ride is ex-mercenary Charlie Paget. But Helene begins to wonder if he is protecting her or using her. When government agents do more than threaten, Helene is forced to tell everything she knows, or thinks she knows. A final chase through New York’s Holland Tunnel gets Helene to her publishing agent, and the chance to tell her story – if she dares. Helene’s personal cost is high. Set against the backdrop of international finance, government debt and the murky world of computer hackers, ‘Exposure’ is a fast-paced, intelligent thriller that will appeal to readers of crime, as well as action adventure fiction. One horrible murder. Two people destined for love or tragedy. Emotions explode in the novel Julia Spencer-Fleming's readers have been clamoring for. Police Chief Russ Van Alstyne's first encounter with Clare Fergusson was in the hospital emergency room on a freezing December night. A newborn infant had been abandoned on the town's Episcopal church steps. If Russ had known that the church had a new priest, he certainly would never have guessed that it would be a woman. Not a woman like Clare. That night in the hospital was the beginning of an attraction so fierce, so forbidden, that the only thing that could keep them safe from compromising their every belief was distance---but in a small town like Millers Kill, distance is hard to find.Russ Van Alstyne figures his wife kicking him out of their house is nobody's business but his own. Until a neighbor pays a friendly visit to Linda Van Alstyne and finds the woman's body, gruesomely butchered,... Savage, a former Navy SEAL and American state-of-the-art security specialist. Akira, Japan's most brilliant executive protector and a master of the samurai arts. Their mission: the retrieval of Rachel Stone, a beautiful American woman whose ruthless billionaire husband is out to destroy her. But quickly Savage and Akira realize they are trapped in a mission more far-reaching than the protection of one person. For they are bound together in a common nightmare, a set of horrifying memories, a terrifying past that never happened, but is somehow inexplicably real. Only together can they confront the mystery. Yet when they do, an even more chilling scenario awaits them - one with the power to shatter not only their world but ours as well. Estate agent Frankie Blue is known on his home turf - White City, Shepherd's Bush - as "Frank theFib." He's a liar - but one who always tries to tell the truth. He has been friends with Diamond Tony, a hairdresser, Colin, a computer nerd, and Nodge,a cabbie, since schooldays. Now they are thirty, and trying to live the same life as they did then - drinking, girls, coke, football. But Frankie is bored. He's decided to carry out the great "betrayal" - he's going to get married. From the moment he tells his mates, the whole patchwork of their friendships begins to collapse - revealing the sad, shocking but often hilarious truths that lie underneath. A revealing collection of letters from Pulitzer Prize–winning poet Anne Sexton While confessional poet Anne Sexton included details of her life and battle with mental illness in her published work, her letters to family, friends, and fellow poets provide an even more intimate glimpse into her private world. Selected from thousands of letters and edited by Linda Gray Sexton, the poet's daughter, and Lois Ames, one of her closest friends, this collection exposes Sexton's inner life from her boarding school days through her years of growing fame and ultimately to the months leading up to her suicide. Correspondence with writers like W. D. Snodgrass, Robert Lowell, and May Swenson reveals Sexton's growing confidence in her identity as a poet as she discusses her craft, publications, and teaching appointments. Her private letters chart her marriage to Alfred "Kayo" Sexton, from the giddy excitement following their elopement to their eventual divorce;...
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