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Midnight at the Bright Ideas Bookstore: A Novel

by Matthew Sullivan


When a bookshop patron commits suicide, his favorite store clerk must unravel the puzzle he left behind in this “intriguingly dark, twisty” (Kirkus Reviews) debut novel from an award-winning short story writer.

Lydia Smith lives her life hiding in plain sight. A clerk at the Bright Ideas bookstore, she keeps a meticulously crafted existence among her beloved books, eccentric colleagues, and the BookFrogs—the lost and lonely regulars who spend every day marauding the store’s overwhelmed shelves.

But when Joey Molina, a young, beguiling BookFrog, kills himself in the bookstore’s upper room, Lydia’s life comes unglued. Always Joey’s favorite bookseller, Lydia has been bequeathed his meager worldly possessions. Trinkets and books; the detritus of a lonely, uncared for man. But when Lydia flips through his books she finds them defaced in ways both disturbing and inexplicable. They reveal the psyche of a young man on the verge of an emotional reckoning. And they seem to contain a hidden message. What did Joey know? And what does it have to do with Lydia?

As Lydia untangles the mystery of Joey’s suicide, she unearths a long buried memory from her own violent childhood. Details from that one bloody night begin to circle back. Her distant father returns to the fold, along with an obsessive local cop, and the Hammerman, a murderer who came into Lydia’s life long ago and, as she soon discovers, never completely left. “Both charming and challenging” (Marilyn Stasio, The New York Times Book Review), Midnight at the Bright Ideas Bookstore is a “multi-generational tale of abandonment, desperation, and betrayal…inventive and intricately plotted” (Publishers Weekly, starred review).

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Home Work: A Memoir of My Hollywood Years

by Julie Andrews


NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER
In this follow-up to her critically acclaimed memoir, Home, Julie Andrews shares reflections on her astonishing career, including such classics as Mary Poppins, The Sound of Music, and Victor/Victoria.

In Home, the number one New York Times international bestseller, Julie Andrews recounted her difficult childhood and her emergence as an acclaimed singer and performer on the stage.

With this second memoir, Home Work: A Memoir of My Hollywood Years, Andrews picks up the story with her arrival in Hollywood and her phenomenal rise to fame in her earliest films--Mary Poppins and The Sound of Music. Andrews describes her years in the film industry -- from the incredible highs to the challenging lows. Not only does she discuss her work in now-classic films and her collaborations with giants of cinema and television, she also unveils her personal story of adjusting to a new and often daunting world, dealing with the demands of unimaginable success, being a new mother, the end of her first marriage, embracing two stepchildren, adopting two more children, and falling in love with the brilliant and mercurial Blake Edwards. The pair worked together in numerous films, including Victor/Victoria, the gender-bending comedy that garnered multiple Oscar nominations.

Cowritten with her daughter, Emma Walton Hamilton, and told with Andrews's trademark charm and candor, Home Work takes us on a rare and intimate journey into an extraordinary life that is funny, heartrending, and inspiring.

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The Night Fire (Renée Ballard Book 3)

by Michael Connelly


A NEW YORK TIMES BOOK REVIEW BEST CRIME NOVEL OF THE YEAR
A CrimeReads Best Crime Novel Notable selection
Harry Bosch and LAPD Detective Renée Ballard come together again on the murder case that obsessed Bosch's mentor, the man who trained him---new from #1 New York Times bestselling author Michael Connelly

Back when Harry Bosch was just a rookie homicide detective, he had an inspiring mentor who taught him to take the work personally and light the fire of relentlessness for every case. Now that mentor, John Jack Thompson, is dead, and his widow gives Bosch a murder book, one that Thompson took with him when he left the LAPD twenty years before -- the unsolved killing of a troubled young man.

Bosch takes the murder book to Detective Renée Ballard and asks her to help him discover what about this crime lit Thompson's fire all those years ago. As she begins her inqueries -- while still working her own cases on the midnight shift -- Ballad finds aspects of the initial investigation that just don't add up.

The bond between Bosch and Ballard tightens as they become a formidable investigation team. And they soon arrive at a disturbing question: Did Thompson steal the murder book to work the case in retirement, or to make sure it never got solved?
Written with the intense pacing and masterful suspense that have made Michael Connelly "the hard-boiled fiction master of our time" (NPR), The Night Fire continues the unofficial partnership of two fierce detectives determined not to let the fire with burn out.

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Red, White & Royal Blue: A Novel

by Casey McQuiston

 

* GOODREADS CHOICE AWARD WINNER for BEST DEBUT and BEST ROMANCE of 2019 *

* THE INSTANT NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER that is a *BEST BOOK OF THE YEAR* for VOGUE, NPR, BOOKPAGE, and more! *

What happens when America's First Son falls in love with the Prince of Wales?

When his mother became President, Alex Claremont-Diaz was promptly cast as the American equivalent of a young royal. Handsome, charismatic, genius—his image is pure millennial-marketing gold for the White House. There's only one problem: Alex has a beef with the actual prince, Henry, across the pond. And when the tabloids get hold of a photo involving an Alex-Henry altercation, U.S./British relations take a turn for the worse.

Heads of family, state, and other handlers devise a plan for damage control: staging a truce between the two rivals. What at first begins as a fake, Instragramable friendship grows deeper, and more dangerous, than either Alex or Henry could have imagined. Soon Alex finds himself hurtling into a secret romance with a surprisingly unstuffy Henry that could derail the campaign and upend two nations and begs the question: Can love save the world after all? Where do we find the courage, and the power, to be the people we are meant to be? And how can we learn to let our true colors shine through? Casey McQuiston's Red, White & Royal Blue proves: true love isn't always diplomatic.

"I took this with me wherever I went and stole every second I had to read! Absorbing, hilarious, tender, sexy—this book had everything I crave. I’m jealous of all the readers out there who still get to experience Red, White & Royal Blue for the first time!" - Christina Lauren, New York Times bestselling author of The Unhoneymooners

"Red, White & Royal Blue is outrageously fun. It is romantic, sexy, witty, and thrilling. I loved every second." - Taylor Jenkins Reid, New York Times bestselling author of Daisy Jones & The Six

 

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Kate & Walker: The Collection

by Lorhainne Eckhart

 

Are you ready for Kate and Walker? A high-stakes suspense and sizzling, red-hot romance. This is two weeks of craziness you won’t want to miss.

Kate Sikes is just looking for Mr. Right, but somehow she only seems to attract Mr. Wrongs — and some of them are dangerous. Luckily for her, sexy detective Walker Pruett is determined to protect her… A sizzling box set from a USA Today bestselling author!


Grab all three books in one collection.

ONE NIGHT

A blind date goes deadly on a night she’ll never forget!


Kate Sikes has it all: she’s smart and sexy, she has a great career, and she really does believe in happy endings—only she always picks the wrong guys. Nonetheless, she’s determined to meet the man of her dreams, and she believes she’s finally found the one when she turns to online dating. However, her high hopes are once again dashed when Mr. Right turns out to be Mr. Wrong, with some seriously heavy baggage that has Kate running for her life.


When Detective Walker Pruett comes to Kate’s rescue not once but twice, he realizes the only way to keep her safe from a crazy stalker is to keep her close. But his life is far from easy. He’s a lone wolf, and the last thing he’s looking for is attachment. After One Night with Kate, though, Walker can’t fight the chemistry sizzling between them. Not only does he find her irresistible, he feels compelled to protect her. And Kate soon discovers just how far Walker will go to do so.


EDGE OF NIGHT

Kate Sikes has finally met who she believes is Mr. Right, only Detective Walker Pruett isn’t all about flowers and living happily ever after. In fact, after the greatest night of sex Kate’s ever had, she hasn’t seen Walker once.


However, she refuses to pine away for him or call him even though he invades her thoughts and her dreams—that is, until he shows up to investigate a case of robbery at the hotel where she works. Once again, Kate is left to fight Walker’s charms, though she knows he can’t commit and she’s convinced he’ll eventually break her heart.


LAST NIGHT

The adventure continues for Kate & Walker in LAST NIGHT as Walker proposes marriage to Kate realizing he can’t live without her. Only an intruder from Walker’s past puts his relationship with Kate in jeopardy.

 

 

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Broken Waves (Deadly Lies Book 1)

by Aitana Moore


She is no stranger to lying. Until someone starts lying to her — and that someone also happens to be a killer ...

Lee lies for a living. She infiltrates rich men's lives under false identities to steal.

She enters an exclusive rehab facility to meet renegade aristocrat James St. Bryce because she wants the jewels in his safe.
But, brilliant and unpredictable, St. Bryce keeps turning the tables on her, and making her feel dangerous things.

Has he found out her secret? Should she get out while she can?
She has always known when to run ...

Instead, at his lavish estate in southern England Lee starts to think of St. Bryce's dead wife. How did she end up smashed at the bottom of the cliff?
Did his renowned temper have anything to do with it?

As the emotional stakes get higher for Lee, she searches for the truth behind a cold-blooded murder, up to its shocking final twist.

If you like stories with a noir feel where the mysteries matter as much as the love, this trilogy is bound to thrill you.
Although the sensuality in the story is important, the heat level is medium.
The mystery is solved, but the relationship remains in a cliffhanger until Book 2, which is already available on Amazon.


Advisory: This book contains strong language and a few explicit love scenes.

DEADLY LIES: A COMPLETE TRILOGY:

Broken Waves
Lives Undone
Lesser Crimes

 
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What Alice Forgot

by Liane Moriarty


FROM THE #1 NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLING AUTHOR OF THE HUSBAND'S SECRET AND BIG LITTLE LIES.

A “cheerfully engaging”(Kirkus Reviews) novel for anyone who’s ever asked herself, “How did I get here?”

Alice Love is twenty-nine, crazy about her husband, and pregnant with her first child. So imagine Alice’s surprise when she comes to on the floor of a gym (a gym! She HATES the gym) and is whisked off to the hospital where she discovers the honeymoon is truly over—she’s getting divorced, she has three kids, and she’s actually 39 years old. Alice must reconstruct the events of a lost decade, and find out whether it’s possible to reconstruct her life at the same time. She has to figure out why her sister hardly talks to her, and how is it that she’s become one of those super skinny moms with really expensive clothes. Ultimately, Alice must discover whether forgetting is a blessing or a curse, and whether it’s possible to start over...

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Once Upon A Time: Billionaires in Disguise: Flicka (Runaway Princess Book 1)

by Blair Babylon


When a modern princess falls in love with her bodyguard, a man who is definitely not a prince, a royal fairy tale turns dangerous.

ONCE UPON A TIME, there was a beautiful princess. Flicka von Hannover lived an enchanted life. She jetted around Europe staging charity events with friends, had married a handsome prince in the most spectacular royal wedding of the 21st century, and should have lived happily ever after.

But then she found the handsome prince in bed with a duchess. And then a coffee shop barista. And then her own goddamn secretary.

Finally, the beautiful princess had had enough of the cheating prince, and she ran away.

The prince didn’t want to let her go. He couldn’t take his throne without her and sent henchmen to take her back to the castle. Her worried royal brother sent people to look for her, too.

The prince threatened her. He said that if the princess contacted her brother or any of her friends for help, he would kill her brother and her brother’s new, pregnant wife.

So the princess ran to the only person she could trust, a man who was frankly not a handsome prince.

Dieter Schwarz had been Flicka’s bodyguard for years. He had protected her from assassins, kidnappers, and high school dates who got too handsy after a few drinks. He was a sharp-witted, sharp-jawed, hard-muscled former Swiss Special Forces operator who had started his own private security firm, Rogue Security, and had no past that he spoke of.

No one knew that he had been her first lover and broken her heart, but he's the only one she can trust now.

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Lady Leaves the Lake (Faerie Forge Chronicles)

by Helen Savore


A smith’s courage is bound into a sword of destiny

Viviane is a fae smith, capable of creating epic weapons that shape the elements. Smiths aren’t permitted to fight in the battles that forge the faewilds, but Viviane rebels and finds herself responsible for the death of a herald.

Cast out by her family, Viviane must sunder fae society so that smiths are free to shape the world.

 
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Trust (Things That Matter Series Book 1)

by Casey Diam

 

"Magnetic. Masterful. Mesmerizing.-Bookalicious Babes Blog

Paige
Nearly five years ago, my mom, dad, and sisters had been assassinated.
I should have died that night.
I still questioned my mental state because I had no proof they had been after me. But, since then, I'd been trying to outrun my past and the men responsible for what had happened that night.
Until I met him--Caleb Connor.
Caleb became my safety net, and I found I couldn't pull away from him. Couldn't run away from him. And, if sanity hadn't been lost on me, I would have recognized he was the last person I should have let into my life.
The last person I should have trusted.

Caleb
My life had been anything but normal until Paige. She was supposed to be an opportunity, my father's next target.
I should have stayed away. It should've been that simple. But it wasn't.
Paige was my main ingredient to changing everything, and in order to do that, I needed to get inside her head. It wasn't easy, but when it happened, a line was crossed we'd never known existed.
Now, Paige had to confront her past and everything that tormented her at night because a look into the past was the only solution to everything we'd been afraid of questioning.

Who am I, and who is she?
 
***Not a standalone. This is book 1 of 3 in the Things That Matter Series.
Book 1-Trust
Book 2 -Hope
Book 3- Love (Coming January 30, 2019)

 

 
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Sinful (Sinful Surrender Quartet Book 1)

by Katherine Hawthorne


"This story will captivate you from page one and hold you until the last page." Merry Jelks-Emmanuel, VINE VOICE.

Xander was a dream that would never be.

One catastrophic night left me orphaned at the age of seventeen. Hunted by a murderer, Xander saved me from the pits of hell, braving a fire that would have ended my life. Hiding me from a killer, he became my protector, my best friend, but never anything more.

Sin was a nightmare waiting to happen.

Six years later, a friend is murdered at the hottest nightclub in Manhattan, again thrusting me into a killer's crosshairs. Now a detective with the NYPD, I refuse to hide, unyielding in my pursuit of justice, which has eluded me for so long. Determined to keep me safe, Sin forces me from the case. Defying him at every turn, our contentious relationship finally explodes in the most scandalous way conceivable, leaving me devastated.

I wanted them both.

Xander, sophisticated and elegant. My hero, the man who owns my heart. Sin, dominating alpha-male. My lieutenant, forbidden in so many ways. One dangerous kiss changes everything, catapulting me into a war between the two, neither of them willing to let me go. I become a pawn in their game until they join forces in a way I never saw coming. But lies and deception threaten to destroy us, leading to a betrayal that cuts so deep, I wonder if I'll ever survive.


AUTHOR'S NOTE: This book is intended for mature audiences due to explicit language and sexual content and is perfect for fans of Lexi Blake's Masters of Ménage fans. Sinful is all about the girl. There are NO M/M scenes.

Sinful ends in a cliffhanger! Enjoy the rest of the completed series as follows:
Sensuous
Scandalous
Shameless.

 
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How to Marry a Billionaire (Operation Billionaire Trilogy Book 1)

by Elise Sax


“Elise Sax will win your heart.” –NYT bestselling author Jill Shalvis

*

Love sucks. Every time Beatrice Hammersmith falls for a guy, he breaks her heart and steals her appliances. It’s no fun sleeping alone and waking up without a coffeemaker. Fed up, Beatrice hatches a plan with two other women to find true love and marry billionaires. First on their agenda is to capture the heart of hottie billionaire, Cole Stevens. Cole is handsome, brilliant, and he owns his own appliances. Operation Billionaire sends the three new friends (and one of their mothers and a passel of children) to Cole’s ranch to make him fall in love with Beatrice. But their plans run into some trouble. It’s not so easy to bag a billionaire. Will Beatrice find love with Cole? Will she marry the billionaire of her dreams? How to Marry a Billionaire is the first book in the hot and hilarious new trilogy by the author of the Matchmaker books.
*
This is a full-length novel, perfect for fans of billionaire romance, beach reads, romantic comedy, and chick lit.
*
“Elise Sax belongs on every bookshelf.”—NYT bestselling author Melissa Foster

 
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The Bookshop of Yesterdays

by Amy Meyerson


THE INTERNATIONAL BESTSELLER

Best Books of Summer 2018 Selection by Philadelphia Inquirer and Library Journal

“Part mystery and part drama, Meyerson uses a complex family dynamic in The Bookshop of Yesterdays to spotlight the importance of truth and our need for forgiveness.” —Associated Press

A woman inherits a beloved bookstore and sets forth on a journey of self-discovery in this poignant debut about family, forgiveness and a love of reading.


Miranda Brooks grew up in the stacks of her eccentric Uncle Billy’s bookstore, solving the inventive scavenger hunts he created just for her. But on Miranda’s twelfth birthday, Billy has a mysterious falling-out with her mother and suddenly disappears from Miranda’s life. She doesn’t hear from him again until sixteen years later when she receives unexpected news: Billy has died and left her Prospero Books, which is teetering on bankruptcy—and one final scavenger hunt.

When Miranda returns home to Los Angeles and to Prospero Books—now as its owner—she finds clues that Billy has hidden for her inside novels on the store’s shelves, in locked drawers of his apartment upstairs, in the name of the store itself. Miranda becomes determined to save Prospero Books and to solve Billy’s last scavenger hunt. She soon finds herself drawn into a journey where she meets people from Billy’s past, people whose stories reveal a history that Miranda’s mother has kept hidden—and the terrible secret that tore her family apart.

Bighearted and trenchantly observant, The Bookshop of Yesterdays is a lyrical story of family, love and the healing power of community. It’s a love letter to reading and bookstores, and a testament to how our histories shape who we become.

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The Likeness (Dublin Murder Squad, Book 2)

by Tana French


New York Times bestselling author Tana French, author of The Witch Elm, is “the most important crime novelist to emerge in the past 10 years” (The Washington Post) and “inspires cultic devotion in readers” (The New Yorker).

“Required reading for anyone who appreciates tough, unflinching intelligence and ingenious plotting.” —The New York Times

Soon to be a Starz series


In the “compellingˮ (The Boston Globe) and “pitch perfectˮ (Entertainment Weekly) follow-up to Tana French’s runaway bestseller In the Woods, itʼs six months later and Cassie Maddox has transferred out of the Dublin Murder Squad with no plans to go back—until an urgent telephone call summons her to a grisly crime scene. The victim looks exactly like Cassie and carries ID identifying herself as Alexandra Madison, an alias Cassie once used as an undercover cop. Cassie must discover not only who killed this girl, but, more important, who was this girl?

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Crucial Conversations Tools for Talking When Stakes Are High, Second Edition

by Kerry Patterson et al

 

The first edition of Crucial Conversations exploded onto the scene and revolutionized the way millions of people communicate when stakes are high. This new edition gives you the tools to:

  • Prepare for high-stakes situations
  • Transform anger and hurt feelings into powerful dialogue
  • Make it safe to talk about almost anything
  • Be persuasive, not abrasive

 

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Good to Great: Why Some Companies Make the Leap...And Others Don't

by Jim Collins

 

The Challenge
Built to Last, the defining management study of the nineties, showed how great companies triumph over time and how long-term sustained performance can be engineered into the DNA of an enterprise from the verybeginning.

But what about the company that is not born with great DNA? How can good companies, mediocre companies, even bad companies achieve enduring greatness?

The Study
For years, this question preyed on the mind of Jim Collins. Are there companies that defy gravity and convert long-term mediocrity or worse into long-term superiority? And if so, what are the universal distinguishing characteristics that cause a company to go from good to great?

The Standards
Using tough benchmarks, Collins and his research team identified a set of elite companies that made the leap to great results and sustained those results for at least fifteen years. How great? After the leap, the good-to-great companies generated cumulative stock returns that beat the general stock market by an average of seven times in fifteen years, better than twice the results delivered by a composite index of the world's greatest companies, including Coca-Cola, Intel, General Electric, and Merck.

The Comparisons
The research team contrasted the good-to-great companies with a carefully selected set of comparison companies that failed to make the leap from good to great. What was different? Why did one set of companies become truly great performers while the other set remained only good?

Over five years, the team analyzed the histories of all twenty-eight companies in the study. After sifting through mountains of data and thousands of pages of interviews, Collins and his crew discovered the key determinants of greatness -- why some companies make the leap and others don't.

The Findings
The findings of the Good to Great study will surprise many readers and shed light on virtually every area of management strategy and practice. The findings include:

  • Level 5 Leaders: The research team was shocked to discover the type of leadership required to achieve greatness.
  • The Hedgehog Concept (Simplicity within the Three Circles): To go from good to great requires transcending the curse of competence.
  • A Culture of Discipline: When you combine a culture of discipline with an ethic of entrepreneurship, you get the magical alchemy of great results. Technology Accelerators: Good-to-great companies think differently about the role of technology.
  • The Flywheel and the Doom Loop: Those who launch radical change programs and wrenching restructurings will almost certainly fail to make the leap.

“Some of the key concepts discerned in the study,” comments Jim Collins, "fly in the face of our modern business culture and will, quite frankly, upset some people.”

Perhaps, but who can afford to ignore these findings?

 

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Room to Dream

by David Lynch et al


NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • An unprecedented look into the personal and creative life of the visionary auteur David Lynch, through his own words and those of his closest colleagues, friends, and family

“Insightful . . . an impressively industrious and comprehensive account of Lynch’s career.”—The New York Times Book Review
 
In this unique hybrid of biography and memoir, David Lynch opens up for the first time about a life lived in pursuit of his singular vision, and the many heartaches and struggles he’s faced to bring his unorthodox projects to fruition. Lynch’s lyrical, intimate, and unfiltered personal reflections riff off biographical sections written by close collaborator Kristine McKenna and based on more than one hundred new interviews with surprisingly candid ex-wives, family members, actors, agents, musicians, and colleagues in various fields who all have their own takes on what happened.

Room to Dream is a landmark book that offers a onetime all-access pass into the life and mind of one of our most enigmatic and utterly original living artists.

With insights into . . .
Eraserhead
The Elephant Man
Dune
Blue Velvet
Wild at Heart
Twin Peaks
Twin Peaks: Fire Walk with Me
Lost Highway
The Straight Story
Mulholland Drive
INLAND EMPIRE
Twin Peaks: The Return

Praise for Room to Dream

“A memorable portrait of one of cinema’s great auteurs . . . provides a remarkable insight into [David] Lynch’s intense commitment to the ‘art life.’ ”The Guardian

“This is the best book by and about a movie director since Elia Kazan’s A Life (1988) and Michael Powell’s A Life in Movies (1986). But Room to Dream is more enchanting or appealing than those classics. . . . What makes this book endearing is its chatty, calm account of how genius in America can be a matter-of-fact defiance of reality that won’t alarm your dog or save mankind. It’s the only way to dream in so disturbed a country.”San Francisco Chronicle

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Everything Happens for a Reason: And Other Lies I've Loved

by Kate Bowler


NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • “A meditation on sense-making when there’s no sense to be made, on letting go when we can’t hold on, and on being unafraid even when we’re terrified.”—Lucy Kalanithi

“Belongs on the shelf alongside other terrific books about this difficult subject, like Paul Kalanithi’s When Breath Becomes Air and Atul Gawande’s Being Mortal.”—Bill Gates

NAMED ONE OF THE BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR BY REAL SIMPLE


Kate Bowler is a professor at Duke Divinity School with a modest Christian upbringing, but she specializes in the study of the prosperity gospel, a creed that sees fortune as a blessing from God and misfortune as a mark of God’s disapproval. At thirty-five, everything in her life seems to point toward “blessing.” She is thriving in her job, married to her high school sweetheart, and loves life with her newborn son.

Then she is diagnosed with stage IV colon cancer.

The prospect of her own mortality forces Kate to realize that she has been tacitly subscribing to the prosperity gospel, living with the conviction that she can control the shape of her life with “a surge of determination.” Even as this type of Christianity celebrates the American can-do spirit, it implies that if you “can’t do” and succumb to illness or misfortune, you are a failure. Kate is very sick, and no amount of positive thinking will shrink her tumors. What does it mean to die, she wonders, in a society that insists everything happens for a reason? Kate is stripped of this certainty only to discover that without it, life is hard but beautiful in a way it never has been before.

Frank and funny, dark and wise, Kate Bowler pulls the reader deeply into her life in an account she populates affectionately with a colorful, often hilarious retinue of friends, mega-church preachers, relatives, and doctors. Everything Happens for a Reason tells her story, offering up her irreverent, hard-won observations on dying and the ways it has taught her to live.

Praise for Everything Happens for a Reason
 
“I fell hard and fast for Kate Bowler. Her writing is naked, elegant, and gripping—she’s like a Christian Joan Didion. I left Kate’s story feeling more present, more grateful, and a hell of a lot less alone. And what else is art for?”—Glennon Doyle, #1 New York Times bestselling author of Love Warrior and president of Together Rising

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A Woman of No Importance: The Untold Story of the American Spy Who Helped Win World War II

by Sonia Purnell


A NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER

Chosen as a BEST BOOK OF THE YEAR by NPR, the New York Public Library, the Seattle Times, the Washington Independent Review of Books, BookBrowse, the Spectator, and the Times of London

“Excellent…This book is as riveting as any thriller, and as hard to put down.” -- The New York Times Book Review

"A compelling biography of a masterful spy, and a reminder of what can be done with a few brave people -- and a little resistance." - NPR

The perfect holiday gift for the World War II history buff, a never-before-told story of Virginia Hall, the American spy who changed the course of World War II, from the author of Clementine


In 1942, the Gestapo sent out an urgent transmission: "She is the most dangerous of all Allied spies. We must find and destroy her."

The target in their sights was Virginia Hall, a Baltimore socialite who talked her way into Special Operations Executive, the spy organization dubbed Winston Churchill's "Ministry of Ungentlemanly Warfare." She became the first Allied woman deployed behind enemy lines and--despite her prosthetic leg--helped to light the flame of the French Resistance, revolutionizing secret warfare as we know it.

Virginia established vast spy networks throughout France, called weapons and explosives down from the skies, and became a linchpin for the Resistance. Even as her face covered wanted posters and a bounty was placed on her head, Virginia refused order after order to evacuate. She finally escaped through a death-defying hike over the Pyrenees into Spain, her cover blown. But she plunged back in, adamant that she had more lives to save, and led a victorious guerilla campaign, liberating swathes of France from the Nazis after D-Day.

Based on new and extensive research, Sonia Purnell has for the first time uncovered the full secret life of Virginia Hall--an astounding and inspiring story of heroism, spycraft, resistance, and personal triumph over shocking adversity. A Woman of No Importance is the breathtaking story of how one woman's fierce persistence helped win the war.

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The Beautiful Ones

by Prince


#1 NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • The brilliant coming-of-age-and-into-superstardom story of one of the greatest artists of all time, in his own words—featuring never-before-seen photos, original scrapbooks and lyric sheets, and the exquisite memoir he began writing before his tragic death

NAMED ONE OF THE BEST MUSIC BOOKS OF THE YEAR BY THE NEW YORK TIMES BOOK REVIEW AND ONE OF THE BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR BY THE WASHINGTON POST AND THE GUARDIAN

Prince was a musical genius, one of the most beloved, accomplished, and acclaimed musicians of our time. He was a startlingly original visionary with an imagination deep enough to whip up whole worlds, from the sexy, gritty funk paradise of “Uptown” to the mythical landscape of Purple Rain to the psychedelia of “Paisley Park.” But his most ambitious creative act was turning Prince Rogers Nelson, born in Minnesota, into Prince, one of the greatest pop stars of any era.

The Beautiful Ones is the story of how Prince became Prince—a first-person account of a kid absorbing the world around him and then creating a persona, an artistic vision, and a life, before the hits and fame that would come to define him. The book is told in four parts. The first is the memoir Prince was writing before his tragic death, pages that bring us into his childhood world through his own lyrical prose. The second part takes us through Prince’s early years as a musician, before his first album was released, via an evocative scrapbook of writing and photos. The third section shows us Prince’s evolution through candid images that go up to the cusp of his greatest achievement, which we see in the book’s fourth section: his original handwritten treatment for Purple Rain—the final stage in Prince’s self-creation, where he retells the autobiography of the first three parts as a heroic journey.

The book is framed by editor Dan Piepenbring’s riveting and moving introduction about his profound collaboration with Prince in his final months—a time when Prince was thinking deeply about how to reveal more of himself and his ideas to the world, while retaining the mystery and mystique he’d so carefully cultivated—and annotations that provide context to the book’s images.

This work is not just a tribute to an icon, but an original and energizing literary work in its own right, full of Prince’s ideas and vision, his voice and image—his undying gift to the world.

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