Tag: Contemporary Fiction

Meet Nina Hill: A young woman supremely confident in her own…shell.

The only child of a single mother, Nina has her life just as she wants it: a job in a bookstore, a kick-butt trivia team, a world-class planner and a cat named Phil. 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.

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Detective Ellie Reeves should be enjoying the wedding of her dear friend Mia Norman. But instead of celebrating, she is frantically searching for the missing bride. Something is terribly wrong—just hours ago, Mia was blissfully happy. Why would she suddenly vanish?

Bursting through the dressing room, Ellie finds it in disarray—chairs overturned, a perfume bottle shattered. Hiding in the bathroom is Mia’s six-year-old daughter Pixie, curled in a ball and sobbing her heart out. The little girl says she was locked inside when she heard a man’s voice, and her mother crying. “I just want my mommy back,” she pleads. Ellie vows to make that happen.

Turning the venue upside down, Ellie’s blood turns to ice when she reaches the riverbank. Someone is dead in the rippling water, floating beside a white veil. Ellie holds her breath as she turns the body over. It belongs to Tori, Mia’s bridesmaid, a gunshot wound in her back. Near the murder scene, Ellie discovers a button from a man’s shirt, and her friend’s engagement ring. The race is on to find Mia—before it’s too late.

Facing the most complex case of her career, Ellie is in a race against time. Can she uncover the truth before her friend is brutally killed? And when the murderer comes after innocent little Pixie, will Ellie save her from the clutches of death?

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Told from the tender perspective of a young girl who comes of age amid the Cambodian killing fields, this searing first novel – based on the author’s personal story – has been hailed as “a masterpiece… utterly heartbreaking and impossibly beautiful.”

For seven-year-old Raami, the shattering end of childhood begins with the footsteps of her father returning home in the early dawn hours bringing details of the civil war that has overwhelmed the streets of Phnom Penh, Cambodia’s capital. Soon the family’s world of carefully guarded royal privilege is swept up in the chaos of revolution and forced exodus.

Over the next four years, as she endures the deaths of family members, starvation, and brutal forced labor, Raami clings to the only remaining vestige of childhood – the mythical legends and poems told to her by her father. In a climate of systematic violence where memory is sickness and justification for execution, Raami fights for her improbable survival.

Displaying the author’s extraordinary gift for language, In the Shadow of the Banyan is testament to the transcendent power of narrative and a brilliantly wrought tale of human resilience.

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From the beloved Pulitzer Prize–winning author comes a funny, joyful, brilliantly perceptive journey deep into one Baltimore family’s foibles, from a boyfriend with a red Chevy in the 1950s up to a longed-for reunion with a grandchild.

The Garretts take their first and last family vacation in the summer of 1959. They hardly ever leave home, but in some ways they have never been farther apart. Mercy has trouble resisting the siren call of her aspirations to be a painter, which means less time keeping house for her husband, Robin. Their teenage daughters, steady Alice and boy-crazy Lily, could not have less in common. Their youngest, David, is already intent on escaping his family’s orbit, for reasons none of them understand. Yet, as these lives advance across decades, the Garretts’ influences on one another ripple ineffably but unmistakably through each generation.

Full of heartbreak and hilarity, French Braid is classic Anne Tyler: a stirring, uncannily insightful novel of tremendous warmth and humor that illuminates the kindnesses and cruelties of our daily lives, the impossibility of breaking free from those who love us, and how close—yet how unknowable—every family is to itself.

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Vicky Bliss, a brain with a body like a centerfold, often has a tough time getting people to take her seriously. But when it comes to medieval history, this blonde beauty knows her stuff — and she’s a master at solving mysteries that would turn the art world upside down.

Vicky gasped at the sight of the exquisite gold pendant her boss at Munich’s National Museum held in his hand. The Charlemagne talisman replica, along with a note in hieroglyphs, was found sewn into the suit pocket of an unidentified man found dead in an alley.

Vicky vows to find the master craftsman who created it. It’s a daring chase that takes her all the way to Rome and through the dusty antique centers and moonlit streets of the most romantic city in the world. But soon she’s trapped in a treacherous game of intrigue that could cost her life — or her heart…

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The groundbreaking phenomenon that kick-started the grain-free movement, now revised and expanded with the latest nutritional and scientific research findings!

First published in 2011, Wheat Belly introduced the world to the hidden dangers of modern wheat and gluten, revolutionizing the conversation around health and weight loss forever. Nearly a decade later, Dr. William Davis’s provocative indictment of the dominant staple in our diet continues to inspire countless people to “lose the wheat.”

After witnessing thousands of patients regain their health after giving up wheat, Davis reached the disturbing conclusion that wheat is the single largest contributor to the nationwide obesity epidemic—and its elimination is key to drastic weight loss and optimal health. In Wheat Belly, Dr. Davis provides readers with a user-friendly, step-by-step plan to navigate a new wheat-free lifestyle.

Now updated with refreshed recipes, new program guidelines, and cutting-edge nutritional findings, Wheat Belly is an illuminating look at what truly is making Americans sick and an action plan to clear our plates of this harmful ingredient.

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Welcome to Normal, Kentucky, where nothing is normal!

Solving murders come easy for Mae West and the Laundry Club Ladies. Trying to solve a cold case is proving a bit challenging.

Mae has been having memories about the house fire that killed her family, leaving her orphaned.

As a child she couldn’t do much to prove the fire wasn’t an accident, but as an adult and with a group of friends to help, Mae is on the case to put the clues of the past together to bring out the truth.

Their investigation heats up making this cold case come to a rolling boil!

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Real love… as seen on TV. A plus-size bachelorette brings a fresh look to a reality show in this razor-sharp, divinely witty debut.

Bea Schumacher is a devastatingly stylish plus-size fashion blogger who has amazing friends, a devoted family, legions of Insta followers—and a massively broken heart. Like the rest of America, Bea indulges in her weekly obsession: the hit reality show Main Squeeze. The fantasy dates! The kiss-off rejections! The surprising amount of guys named Chad! But Bea is sick and tired of the lack of body diversity on the show. Since when is being a size zero a prerequisite for getting engaged on television?

Just when Bea has sworn off dating altogether, she gets an intriguing call: Main Squeeze wants her to be its next star, surrounded by men vying for her affections. Bea agrees, on one condition—under no circumstances will she actually fall in love. She’s in this to supercharge her career, subvert harmful beauty standards, inspire women across America, and get a free hot air balloon ride. That’s it.

But when the cameras start rolling, Bea realizes things are more complicated than she anticipated. She’s in a whirlwind of sumptuous couture, Internet culture wars, sexy suitors, and an opportunity (or two, or five) to find messy, real-life love in the midst of a made-for-TV fairy tale. In this joyful, wickedly observant debut, Bea has to decide whether it might just be worth trusting these men—and herself—for a chance to live happily ever after.

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Satisfy your anytime cravings with a smoothie!

On a summer day, after an intense workout, or on a lazy afternoon, nothing refreshes better than a cold smoothie. Unfortunately, it can often take a lot of time and effort to make and enjoy them. But not the smoothie recipes in Healthy, Quick & Easy Smoothies. You won’t need more than 10 minutes and no more than 5 ingredients to make any smoothie in this book–and they’re all under 300 calories!

Inside you’ll find:

• 100 mouthwatering recipes for tropical fruit, berry, combination, and green smoothies.
• Complete nutritional data to help with your weight loss goals.
• Expert information from Dana Angelo White, nutritionist for the Food Network, on why smoothies are better than juices and how to best make smoothies.

Every recipe contains complete nutritional data to help you plan your meals and meet your daily dietary needs. Many recipes also offer modifications you can make-but the healthy, quick, and easy promises never change. And because you have so many delicious smoothies to choose from, your blender is sure to occupy a permanent place on your countertop!

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In the tiny town of Patience, California, newcomer Dr. Abby Dolan has noticed a frightening syndrome among her emergency room patients…

It begins with a baffling, seemingly minor set of symptoms, but builds relentlessly until it plunges its victims into insane, murderous rages. As she searches for clues to this deadly mystery, Abby’s superiors make it clear her probing is unwelcome.

Soon Abby will learn just how high the cost of the truth may be–and how far someone will go to keep a lethal secret. But she may not find the answer until it’s too late to save her patients, her career…her life.

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The message was undeniable… Fight for her.

Six months after her divorce, Hope St. Cloud is struggling with her guilt over leaving her daughter’s father. She needs a fresh perspective, and she knows exactly how to find it—by spending the summer at her family’s cottage in Sea Glass Cove. Surrounded by abundant peace and fond childhood memories, Hope and her daughter will be able to find a new rhythm with just the two of them.

Nothing could’ve prepared her for the immediate and tantalizing attraction to local gallery owner Owen McKinney. Or for his instant connection with her shy daughter.

It’s been three years since the accident that stole everything Owen held dear. That’s more than enough time to mourn and move on, but he can’t seem to let go… until Hope and her adorable daughter stroll into his gallery. In them, he finds everything he lost—all the joy and adventure that comes with being a family. But Hope’s divorce is still fresh, and he’s afraid she might’ve made a mistake divorcing her husband.

Then a sign straight from his past makes it clear he can’t let them walk away.

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Thomas Mann, winner of the 1929 Nobel Prize in literature and author of such world-renowned novels as Buddenbrooks and The Magic Mountain, began his self-imposed exile in the United States in 1938, having fled his native Germany in the wake of Nazi persecution and public burnings of his books. Mann embraced his role as a public intellectual, deftly using his literary reputation and his connections in an increasingly global publishing industry to refute Nazi propaganda.

As Boes shows, Mann undertook successful lecture tours of the country and penned widely-read articles that alerted US audiences and readers to the dangers of complacency in the face of Nazism’s existential threat. Spanning four decades, from the eve of World War I, when Mann was first translated into English, to 1952, the year in which he left an America increasingly disfigured by McCarthyism, Boes establishes Mann as a significant figure in the wartime global republic of letters.

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Lainie Lovett has three passions: her two nearly-grown children, her fourth-grade students, and her recreational soccer team.

One evening after soccer practice, she’s startled to spot the husband of one of her teammates canoodling with another woman in a local eatery. She’s even more shocked when he turns up dead the next day. And more shocked yet when she winds up under suspicion as an accessory to murder.

But Lainie is smart and she’s stubborn. She’ll figure out who killed her teammate’s husband—if she can stay out of jail, if she can stay alive, and if she can hang onto her sense of humor.

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