Tag: Contemporary Fiction

Coming home to small-town Maine brings a big surprise: a second shot at first love…

After college, Ryan Kowalski decided to leave Whitford, Maine, rather than watch Lauren Carpenter marry another man. Now his siblings need his help to refurbish the family-owned Northern Star Lodge, and he’s forced to face the past sooner rather than later when he collars a vandal—and learns the boy is Lauren’s son…

The last person Lauren needs back in her life is Ryan Kowalski. With a bitter ex-husband and a moody teenage son, she has enough man trouble already. But her son needs to learn a few lessons about right and wrong, even if Lauren has to escort him to Ryan’s door every day to work off his crime.

With all this close contact, Ryan and Lauren can’t deny the chemistry between them is as powerful as ever. But can a few searing kisses erase their past and pave the way for a second chance at true love?

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From the New York Times best-selling author of Wool comes a story of teenage colonists marooned on a distant planet.

We woke in fire…

Five hundred colonists have been sent across the stars to settle an alien planet. Vat-grown in a dream-like state, they are educated through simulations by an artificial intelligence and should awaken at thirty years old, fully-trained, and ready to tame the new world.

But fifteen years in, an explosion on their vessel kills most of the homesteaders and destroys the majority of their supplies. Worse yet, the sixty that awaken and escape the flames are only half-taught and possess the skills least useful for survival.

Naked and terrified, the teens stumble from their fiery baptism ill-prepared for the unfamiliar and harsh alien world around them. Though they attempt to work with the colony A.I. to build a home, tension and misery are rampant, escalating into battles for dominance.

Soon they find that their worst enemy isn’t the hostile environment, the A.I., or the blast that nearly killed them. Their greatest danger is each other.

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“A gifted conversationalist” reveals how to improve your conversation skills with this handbook on successful communication both online and in real life.

Small-talk expert Don Gabor has completely revised and updated this definitive guide, showing how to combine essential techniques in the art of conversation with necessary skills for communicating in the twenty-first century. By following the simple and dynamic guidelines in this easy-to-read book, you’ll be ready to strike up a great conversation anytime, anywhere—whether you’re at a cocktail party or chatting online. Learn how to keep the conversation going by asking the right questions, using body language effectively, and avoiding conversation pitfalls.

Combining his tried-and-true methods with a whole new section on communicating online and through social networking, Don Gabor shows you how to:

• Identify your personal conversation style
• Engage in online conversations using proper etiquette and security
• Turn online conversations into face-to-face relationships
• Boost your personal and professional speaking skills to the next level

Packed with charts, hundreds of opening lines, real-life examples, FAQs, helpful hints, and solid professional advice, How to Start a Conversation and Make Friends will help you connect with others at home, work, online, in person, and everywhere in between.

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Will one summer in Sicily change her life for ever?

After her marriage falls apart, Ursula Quinn is offered the chance to spend the summer working at a hotel on a beautiful island off the coast of Sicily, Italy. Excited by a new adventure, she sets off at once.

At Residenza dei Tringali, Ursula receives a warm welcome from everyone except Alfio, son of the Tringali family. He gave up his life in Barcelona to help his mother Agata with the ailing business, and is frustrated with Ursula’s interference – and she in turn is less than impressed with his attitude. As they spend more time together, though, they begin to see each other in a different light.

But what with Ursula’s ex-husband on her tail, family secrets surfacing and an unexpected offer that makes Alfio question his whole life, there’s plenty to distract them from one another. Can she face her past and he his future, and together make the most of their Sicilian summer?

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July 12, 1939: Perry Nelson is driving along the palisades when another vehicle swerves into his lane, a tire blows out, and his car careens off the road and over a bluff. The last thing he sees before his head connects with the boulders below is a girl in a green bathing suit, prancing along the shore.

When he wakes, the girl in green is a woman dressed in furs, and the sun-drenched shore has been replaced by snowcapped mountains. The woman, Diana, rescues Perry from the bitter cold and takes him to her home to rest and recuperate. Later they debate the cause of the accident, for Diana is unfamiliar with the concept of a tire blowout and Perry cannot comprehend snowfall in mid-July. Then Diana shares with him a vital piece of information: the date is now January 7, the year 2086.

When his shock subsides, Perry begins an exhaustive study of global evolution over the past 150 years. He learns, among other things, that a United Europe was formed; the military draft was completely reconceived; banks became publicly owned and operated; and in the year 2003, two helicopters destroyed Manhattan in a galvanizing act of war.

But education brings with it inescapable truths…

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The rebel… the socialite… and the fugitive. Together, they will risk everything for one another in this beguiling story of friendship, deception, and women crossing boundaries in the name of freedom.

Philadelphia, 1837. After Charlotte escaped from the crumbling White Oaks plantation down South, she’d expected freedom to feel different from her former life as an enslaved housemaid. After all, Philadelphia is supposed to be the birthplace of American liberty. Instead, she’s locked away playing servant to her white-passing father, as they both attempt to hide their identities from slavecatchers who would destroy their new lives.

Longing to break away, Charlotte befriends Nell, a budding abolitionist from one of Philadelphia’s wealthiest Black families. Just as Charlotte starts to envision a future, a familiar face from her past reappears: Evie, her friend from White Oaks, has been brought to the city by the plantation mistress, and she’s desperate to escape. But as Charlotte and Nell conspire to rescue her, in a city engulfed by race riots and attacks on abolitionists, they soon discover that fighting for Evie’s freedom may cost them their own.

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From the New York Times bestselling author of More Than Friends comes an emotionally charged novel that reflects upon the consequences of one irrevocable act.

In the idyllic small town of Tucker, Vermont, life flows at a rhythmic pace for pediatrician Paige Pfeiffer. But when Mara O’Neill, her best friend and medical partner, inexplicably kills herself, Paige’s comfortable life is suddenly shattered. Temporarily caring for Mara’s newly adopted baby daughter while she comes to grips with her grief, Paige clings to the hope that, in time, her orderly life will return.

What she hadn’t counted on were the unexpected pleasures that often come with change, including the touch of a man who offers Paige things she never thought she wanted. She hadn’t counted on finding the meaning of life in the death of a friend.

For everyone who has ever made a choice between what is and what could be, Barbara Delinsky unveils a truly moving gift from the heart that captures one woman’s story and ultimately speaks to us all.

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Born and raised on sprawling Texas land, Margaret O’Brien prides herself on her competence as a rancher. But her father believes she’s made for more than just dawn-to-dusk work.

He wants her to have the love of a good man, to raise children, to build a life. But Margaret gave up such dreams years ago. She’s convinced no man would have her, that the ranch is her life now.

So when Margaret’s father hires Daniel Cutler as a new foreman, she’s frustrated and suspicious. Then an overheard conversation links him with a gang of bank robbers, and she’s downright worried. Daniel swears he’s not involved, but Margaret’s not convinced. She knows the man still has secrets. But would a criminal be so kind and talk so convincingly of his faith?

As a series of tragic “accidents” threatens all she holds dear, Margaret must decide what to trust: her own ears, her best judgment… or what her heart keeps telling her.

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How to Read the Constitution–and Why is essential reading for anyone who cares about maintaining an accountable government and the individual freedoms that the Constitution enshrines for everyone in America.

The Constitution is the most significant document in America. But do you fully understand what this valuable document means to you? In How to Read the Constitution—and Why, legal expert and educator Kimberly Wehle spells out in clear, simple, and common sense terms what is in the Constitution, and most importantly, what it means. In compelling terms and including text from the United States Constitution, she describes how the Constitution’s protections are eroding—not only in express terms but by virtue of the many legal and social norms that no longer shore up its legitimacy—and why every American needs to heed to this “red flag” moment in our democracy.

How to Read the Constitution—and Why explains why it has never been more important than now for all Americans to know how our Constitution works—and why, if we don’t step in to protect it now, we could lose its protections forever.

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New York Times bestselling author Jennifer McMahon is back with a gut-wrenching mystery about an architect whose troubled mother has been found 25 years after being kidnapped—by a killer who is still on the loose.

The summer of 1985 changes Reggie’s life. An awkward thirteen-year-old, she finds herself mixed up with the school outcasts. That same summer, a serial killer called Neptune begins kidnapping women. He leaves their severed hands on the police department steps and, five days later, displays their bodies around town. Just when Reggie needs her mother, Vera, the most, Vera’s hand is found on the steps. But after five days, there’s no body and Neptune disappears.

Now, twenty-five years later, Reggie is a successful architect who has left her hometown and the horrific memories of that summer behind. But when she gets a call revealing that her mother has been found alive, Reggie must confront the ghosts of her past and find Neptune before he kills again.

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In the eerie, enigmatic town of Lost Grove, where secrets whispered among the rustling pines are as thick as the fog rolling in from the sea, the discovery of Sarah Elizabeth Grahams’ lifeless body on the windswept beach is but the first note in a haunting symphony of mysteries.

Sergeant Seth Wolfe, the town’s tenacious lawman, penetrates the cryptic and labyrinthine secrets veiled beneath the town’s cheerful facade. A connection to Sarah Elizabeth, one he could never have fathomed, begins to take shape, blurring the lines between his own existence and the mysteries that enshroud the town. Suspects multiply like whispers in a haunted forest, but each lead unravels, and the mysteries of the case deepen.

Meanwhile, a group of local teenagers embark on their own harrowing mission, driven by a relentless desire to answer the riddle of their friend’s vanished brother and expose the sinister secrets harbored by an affluent institute nestled in the heart of Lost Grove. Further complicating matters, one teen’s father left town the morning Sarah Elizabeth’s body was found. With ties to a similar case seven years prior, he has become a prime suspect in the case.

As Seth dives deeper into the abyss of darkness gripping Lost Grove, an unsettling discovery threatens to derail his investigation and shatter the illusions of safety the town has harbored for far too long…

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Will danger catapult these lifelong friends to lovers?

Autumn Buchanan has loved Judd all her life. Best friends since they were children, he’s been fulfilling her rescue fantasies for years. But years ago, her dreams of more ended in blood and a nightmare that nearly cost them both their lives.

Now she’s ready to take the leap and profess all to the friend who’s stood by her through thick and thin. But before she can make her confession, their nightmare returns and secrets are revealed that threaten the very fabric of their lifelong friendship.

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Nobody slays demons like Kate Connor. At least that used to be true…

She gave up her supernatural past to settle into the role of devoted wife and stay-at-home mom, and never regretted it for a single second.

But now her past has come calling…

Out of practice and pushing forty, Kate knows she can’t go this alone. But who can she trust when she’s been out of the game for over a decade?

At the end of the day, this mom will do whatever it takes to keep her family safe–including skipping PTA meetings to go head-to-head with hellspawn. Can she use her mom skills to put the demons in time out, once and for all?

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