Journee's Journey

      Allen B. Grose IV
     Journee's Journey

On her fifth birthday, Journee's grandmother gave her something magical. Journee soon learns that there is much more to the eye than just a family heirloom that her grandmother passed down to her as she enters into a magical world full of new friends, trolls, ogres, fairies, magical talking trees and so much more.Journee received a magical present from her grandmother on her birthday that takes her into the most extraordinary world she has ever seen. Getting to this world by her dreams, Journee meets new friends and encounters new adventures during her sleep. Who knows what Journee will encounter when she closes her eyes? Teaming up with two friends she meets along the way, Aniya and Daesin, they solve problems, help others and learn lessons along the way. Trolls, fairies, magical talking trees and let's not forget those sneaky blendables? All Journee knows is that she can't wait until bedtime gets here so she can get back to this magical world she has grown to learn and love.

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    By the Light of My Father's Smile

      Alice Walker
     By the Light of My Father's Smile

"By The Light Of My Father's Smile" presents a celebration of sexuality, its absolute usefulness in the accessing of one's mature spirituality, and the father's role in assuring joy or sorrow in this arena for his female children, " says Walker. "It examines the ways imposed religion almost always acts to inhibit and harden the hearts of those who would instinctively love, and presents the richness and coherence of an alternative culture's experience of sexuality as a celebration of life, " she adds.The story begins at an outpost in the remote Sierras in Mexico, where an African American family (two daughters and their partners) from the United States come to live for several years. The father, who narrates much of the novel from the grave, finds his fifteen-year-old daughter Magdalena, having sex with a local boy named Manuelito. He beats her in a scene witnessed by her sister, Susannah. While both daughters are wounded by the beating, it is Magdalena who remains scarred throughout her life by this incident. However, it is because of Manuelito and his tradition that reconciliation between father and daughters eventually happens. Manuelito is a Mundo, a deeply spiritual and wise tribe of mixed race, both Black and Indian. The Mundo are unimpressed by a world concerned primarily with exploitation and monetary gain. They treasure their relationship to the earth and ultimately teach the father, who believes his daughter's sexuality is evil, that in fact sexuality is a blessing. In the end, it is the Mundo way of life that leads the father back to his daughters.

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    The Peacock Emporium

      Jojo Moyes
     The Peacock Emporium

In the Sixties, Athene Forster is the most glamorous girl of her generation. Nicknamed the Last Deb, she is also beautiful, spoilt and out of control. When she agrees to marry dashing young heir Douglas Fairley-Hulme her parents breathe a sigh of relief. But within two years rumours have begun to circulate about Athene's affair with a young salesman. Thirty five years on, Suzanna Peacock is struggling with her glamorous mother's legacy. At odds with her father and his second wife, struggling in a stalled marriage, she returns to the place of her birth to find that the ghost of her mother, in differing ways, still haunts them all. The only place she finds comfort is in her shop, The Peacock Emporium, a coffee shop-cum-curio store, decorated in her own image, which provides a haven for other misfits in the town. There she makes perhaps the first real friends of her life, including Alejandro, a male midwife, escaping his own ghosts in Argentina. But the spectre of Athene and the shop itself combine to set in place a chain of tragic events, forcing Suzanna to confront the feelings she has disguised for so long - and her family, in their varying ways, finally to deal with the events of the past. And Suzanna discovers the key to her history, and her happiness, may have been in front of her all along.

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    Sugar Rush

      Sawyer Bennett
     Sugar Rush

**In the steamy and suspenseful sequel to Sugar Daddy, a heartbreaking rift threatens to unravel a dangerous alliance... and a fragile new love.** After posing as an escort for the Sugar Bowl online dating service, Sela Halstead is looking for one thing: payback. She's closing in on the site's heartless founder, Jonathon Townsend, and she needs Beckett North, Townsend's business partner and her lover, by her side. She'd thought that their intimate nights together had forged an unbreakable bond, but after a shocking betrayal, Sela begins to doubt the brilliant bad boy. When push comes to shove, can she trust Beck to do the right thing? Now that he understands the truth, Beck will stop at nothing to secure the reckoning Sela deserves. But between his desire for her and his disgust for JT, Beck doesn't exactly have a lot of control over his emotional state. Left with no other choice, he must summon all his discipline to maintain JT's trust and pretend that they're still friends. But how far will Beck go to prove his loyalty to Sela? He nearly lost her once. To keep her, Beck might have to kill for her. **Note: Sugar Rush ends on a cliffhanger. Sela and Beck's story concludes in Sugar Free!**

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    Keeping the Moon

      Sarah Dessen
     Keeping the Moon

There is an alternate cover edition for this ISBN13 here. Colie expects the worst when she's sent to spend the summer with her eccentric aunt Mira while her mother, queen of the television infomercial, tours Europe. Always an outcast -- first for being fat and then for being "easy" -- Colie has no friends at home and doesn't expect to find any in Colby, North Carolina. But then she lands a job at the Last Chance Cafe and meets fellow waitresses Morgan and Isabel, best friends with a loving yet volatile relationship. Wacky yet wise, Morgan and Isabel help Colie see herself in a new way and realize the potential that has been there all along.

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    The Proud Tower: A Portrait of the World Before the War, 1890-1914

      Barbara W. Tuchman
     The Proud Tower: A Portrait of the World Before the War, 1890-1914

During the fateful quarter century leading up to World War I, the climax of a century of rapid, unprecedented change, a privileged few enjoyed Olympian luxury as the underclass was “heaving in its pain, its power, and its hate.” In The Proud Tower, Barbara W. Tuchman brings the era to vivid life: the decline of the Edwardian aristocracy; the Anarchists of Europe and America; Germany and its self-depicted hero, Richard Strauss; Diaghilev’s Russian ballet and Stravinsky’s music; the Dreyfus Affair; the Peace Conferences in The Hague; and the enthusiasm and tragedy of Socialism, epitomized by the assassination of Jean Jaurès on the night the Great War began and an epoch came to a close.

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    Letters to a Young Writer

      Colum McCann
     Letters to a Young Writer

From the bestselling author of the National Book Award winner Let the Great World Spin comes a lesson in how to be a writer—and so much more than that. Intriguing and inspirational, this book is a call to look outward rather than inward. McCann asks his readers to constantly push the boundaries of experience, to see empathy and wonder in the stories we craft and hear. A paean to the power of language, both by argument and by example, Letters to a Young Writer is fierce and honest in its testament to the bruises delivered by writing as both a profession and a calling. It charges aspiring writers to learn the rules and even break them. These fifty-two essays are ultimately a profound challenge to a new generation to bring truth and light to a dark world through their art.

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    The Wars of the Roses

      Alison Weir
     The Wars of the Roses

Lancaster and York. For much of the fifteenth century, these two families were locked in battle for control of the English throne. Kings were murdered and deposed. Armies marched on London. Old noble names were ruined while rising dynasties seized power and lands. The war between the royal houses of Lancaster and York, the most complex in English history, profoundly altered the course of the monarchy. Alison Weir, one of the foremost authorities on British history, brings brilliantly to life both the war itself and the larger-tha-life figures who fought it on the great stage of England. The Wars of the Roses is history at its very best—swift and compelling, rich in character, pageantry, and drama, and vivid in its re-creation of an astonishing period of history. Look for special features inside. Join the Circle for author chats and more. RandomHouseReadersCircle.com

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    Arranged

      Sara Wolf
     Arranged

When Rose Jensen’s grandfather dies, he leaves her enough money to save her parents’ failing business and get her through UCLA. The only catch – she has to marry Lee Montenegro, the infuriating half-Spanish, all-playboy transfer. Rose and Lee’s grandfathers were fast friends, and betrothed their grandchildren to each other. Lee wants the money to run from his suffocating family, and turns his full burning charisma on Rose, but she won’t give in. She’ll never marry someone she doesn't love, and who doesn't love her. But memories of a mysterious boy in her childhood haunt her, and Lee insists they know each other. With her parent’s pressures mounting, her scholarship slipping, and Lee’s advances heating up with more than just money-lust, Rose is torn between doing the right thing for her family, and doing the right thing for her heart. **This story contains language and sexual scenes, some of which may be unsuitable for younger readers. **This is the first book in the ARRANGED series.

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    The Adulterants

      Joe Dunthorne
     The Adulterants

Ray Morris is a tech journalist with a forgettable face, a tiresome manner, a small but dedicated group of friends, and a wife, Garthene, who is pregnant. He is a man who has never been punched above the neck. He has never committed adultery with his actual body. He has never been caught up in a riot, nor arrested, nor tagged by the state, nor become an international hate-figure. Not until the summer of 2011, when discontent is rising on the streets and within his marriage. Ray has noticed none of this. Not yet. The Adulterants would be a coming-of-age story if its protagonist could only forget that he is thirty-three years old. Throughout a series of escalating catastrophes, our deadpan antihero keeps up a merciless mental commentary on the foibles and failings of those around him, and the vicissitudes of modern urban life: internet trolls, buy-to-let landlords, open marriages, and the threat posed by more sensitive men. But the wonder of The Adulterants is how we feel ourselves rooting for Ray even as we acknowledge that he deserves everything he gets.

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    What Comes Next and How to Like It

      Abigail Thomas
     What Comes Next and How to Like It

From the bestselling author of A Three Dog Life, which "shines with honest intelligence" (Elizabeth Gilbert): a fresh, exhilarating, superbly written memoir about aging, family, creativity, tragedy, friendship, and the richness of life. What comes next? What comes after the devastating loss of Abigail's husband, a process both sudden and slow? What form does her lifelong platonic friendship take after a certain line is crossed? How to cope with her daughter's diagnosed illness? Or the death of her beloved dog? Is life worth living without three cocktails before dinner? How do you paint the ocean on a sheet of glass? And how to like it? How to accept, appreciate, enjoy? Who are our most trusted, valuable companions and what will we do for them? Instead of painting an ocean, paint a forest, turn it over, scrape the surface, and presto: there is the ocean. When you've given up, when you least expect it, there it is. What Comes Next and How to Like It is an extraordinarily moving memoir about many things, but at the center is a steadfast friendship between Abigail Thomas and a man she met thirty-five years ago. Through marriages, child-raising, the vicissitudes and tragedies of life, it is this deep, rich bond that has sustained her. Readers who loved the perfectly honed observations of a clear-eyed and witty writer (Newsweek) in Thomas's spare, astonishing (Entertainment Weekly) memoir, A Three Dog Life, will relish this beautiful examination of her life today often solitary, but rich and engaging, with children, grandchildren, dogs, a few suitors, and her longtime best friend.

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    Thinking Out Loud: On the Personal, the Political, the Public and the Private

      Anna Quindlen
     Thinking Out Loud: On the Personal, the Political, the Public and the Private

"A splendid collection...Eloquent, powerful, compassionate and droll. There is considerable variety in the subjects she addresses....Compelling." THE CLEVELAND PLAIN DEALER Thinking out loud is what Anna Quindlen does best. A syndicated columnist with her finger on the pulse of women's lives, and her heart in a place we all share, she writes about the passions, politics, and peculiarities of Americans everywhere. From gays in the military, to the race for First Lady, to the trials of modern motherhood and the right to choose, Anna Quindlen's views always fascinate. More of her views can be found in LIVING OUT LOUD, and OBJECT LESSONS. From the Trade Paperback edition.

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    The Bleeding Heart

      Marilyn French
     The Bleeding Heart

By the author of the groundbreaking feminist novel THE WOMEN'S ROOM, THE BLEEDING HEART is a compelling novel about the devastating power of marriage -- and the unexpected power of love. A love story for and about adults, it speaks to the hearts and minds of women and men everywhere. Dolores and Victor are both both successful, both Americans living alone in England. They meet and fall instantly in love, only to discover they agree on nothing. From the start they know they have only one year together. Their affair is sometimes bitter, always passionate, and, in the end, an extraordinary revelation for them both. "A monumental achievement." -- Cosmopolitan

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    Pack of Cards

      Penelope Lively
     Pack of Cards

In Pack of Cards, Penelope Lively introduces the reader to slivers of the everyday world that are not always open to observation, as she delves into the minutiae of her characters' lives. Whether she writes about a widow on a visit to Russia, a small boy's consignment to boarding school, or an agoraphobic housewife, Penelope Lively takes the reader past the closed curtains, through the locked door, into a world that seems at first mundane and then at second glance, proves to be uniquely memorable.

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    Betrothal (Queen’s Honor, Tales of Lady Guinevere: #1), a Medieval Fantasy Romance NOVELLA

      Mande Matthews
     Betrothal (Queen’s Honor, Tales of Lady Guinevere: #1), a Medieval Fantasy Romance NOVELLA

This is an 80 page NOVELLA - 17 year old Lady Guinevere is caught between the responsibility of her crown and the desires of her heart. Without brothers to ascend the throne, marriage to her will assure any man the right to rule. Imbued with Celtic Lore and Druid magic, Queen's Honor puts a new spin on an age old legend.Seventeen year old Lady Guinevere holds the crown to an ancient kingdom. Without brothers to ascend the throne, marriage to her will assure any man the right to rule.Arthur Pendragon has won his power through battle. His legions have elected him their king and protector but he seeks to legitimize his claim to High King through marrying Guinevere.Lancelot, a valiant knight with a broken past, is driven by his desire to protect those in need. He's joined Arthur's forces because he believes in Arthur's dream of peace for a war-torn country.But Lancelot possesses something that Arthur can never win...Guinevere's heart.QUEEN'S HONOR is told from the point of view of a young Guinevere as she is caught between the responsibility of her crown and the desires of her heart. This romantic legend is imbued with Celtic lore and magic, as Guinevere discovers she holds an ancient power--a power of the old ones, the Druids. But without a reliable guide to develop her power, she finds herself caught in a dangerous web of ambition and manipulation. Queen's Honor puts a fresh spin on an age-old tale of love and honor.Betrothal is a novella (about ½ the length of a novel). Queen's Honor will be told in episodic books meant to be read in a few hours each. What's an episodic book? It's formatted like your favorite television show or a miniseries where an overall story is broken down into smaller, self-contained stories. Each novella is a story by itself, yet the continuing characters will return for new stories that tie to an overall story-line. For those who don't have time for longer books, this is a great shorter read, while those who love longer books will get the benefit of more episodes and a deepening story through multiple episodes.

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