Early Reviewers: Free advance copies of books

Description: Meet Lucy Valentine; sassy, fabulously original…and psychic

Lucy hails from a long line of matchmakers known as Valentine INC. According to family legend, the Valentines have been blessed by Cupid with the ability to help couples find true love. Trouble is Lucy’s powers were zapped away by an electrical surge and now all she can find are lost objects.

But what good is that in the matchmaking world?

Lucy is about to find out when she tries to solve a murder and winds up falling into a romance of her own.

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Description: A madcap contemporary murder mystery set in Hollywood, featuring Valentino, the film archivist and amateur sleuth Estleman introduced in 2008's Frames . All Valentino wants to do is renovate the decrepit old movie palace he's bought as his new home, but murder . . . and the rocky road of romance. . . bring him into another unsolved Hollywood mystery. This time, he is on the case of a mysterious letter sent long ago by Greta Garbo... which is being used in a sinister blackmail plot that may have resulted in a murder. Valentino soon finds himself in a quandary. This letter must be something worth dying for. If only he could just see the choice item without the LAPD getting involved. Life shouldn't be so complicated for a film archivist.

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Description: In this magical Southern novel sparkling with humor, heart, eccentric charm, and wisdom, a young girl loses one mother and finds many others in the storybook city of Savannah, Georgia.

"CeeCee Honeycutt is a sweet, perceptive girl with a troubled family, and this story of the summer that transforms her life is rich with hard truths and charm. This book unfolds like a lush southern garden, blooming with vivid characters, beauty, and surprises."
—Kim Edwards, bestselling author of The Memory Keeper's Daughter

"Saving CeeCee Honecutt is an absolutely delightful debut novel packed full of Southern charm, strong women, wacky humor, and good old-fashioned heart. From the moment you first step into young CeeCee's unique world, you'll never want to leave."
—Kristin Hannah, bestselling author of True Colors and Winter Garden

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Description: John Barron was once a top detective in the Los Angeles Police Department’s elite 5-2 Squad. A deadly shootout with fellow officers changed his world forever.

Taking a new identity, he fled the country he loved and as Nicholas Marten became a landscape architect in the north of England determined to put a life of violence behind him forever. Then suddenly he found himself in Spain ensnared in a massive global conspiracy where he saved the life of John Henry Harris, the president of the United States. Not long afterward the president came calling again.

Sent to the West African country of Equatorial Guinea to gain information on alleged collusion between a U.S. oil company and mercenaries hired to protect its workers, Marten is caught up in a bloody civil war between rebellious tribesmen and a merciless dictator. Soon he meets a priest who has clandestine photographs that show the mercenaries supplying arms to the rebels. In a blink the priest is captured by army troops and Marten flees for his life, determined to find the photographs and turn them over to the president before they are made public and ignite a global firestorm of protest and propaganda. But others are close on his heels. Among them; Conor White, a highly decorated former SAS commando turned elite killer; Sy Wirth, the arrogant president of the oil company; the alluring and dangerous oil company board member, Anne Tidrow; and, quietly, operatives of the CIA.

Murder, suspense, and deceit shadow Marten every inch of the way as his harrowing journey takes him to Berlin, to the Portuguese Riviera, and finally to the always-mysterious Lisbon. At stake is the struggle for control of an ocean of oil, and with it the constantly shifting line between good and evil, love and hate, law and politics. Its cost, thousands of human lives. Its cause, a top secret agreement called The Hadrian Memorandum.

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Description: Emotional, issue-led fiction perfect for all fans of The Memory Keeper’s Daughter and Jodi Picoult

Tragedy came as if so often does: a teenage party, emotions running high, followed by a horrific car crash. A girl is left dead and a boy is forced to leave his home town, with a secret that he will carry with him forever… Years later, when Summer's mother disappears one summer, she is left with her father who is going slowly crazy. Obsessed with an accident from years ago, he slowly descends into mental illness. And as he becomes more disorientated, he reveals small fragments of a secret that has been hidden since his youth, a secret that changes everything. Summer supports her father as much as she can but eventually realises that she has to escape. She finds refuge with her great-aunt, Stella. Feisty, fun-loving, and dying of cancer, Stella holds parts of the family secret. Slowly, things fall into place for Summer - or at least so she thinks… This is a story of the importance of family, of the damage a lie can do, and of how nothing is ever what it seems.

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Description: The new Recluce fantasy novel from the bestselling writer!

Arms-Commander takes place ten years after the end of The Chaos Balance and tells the story of the legendary Saryn. The keep of Westwind, in the cold mountainous heights called the Roof of the World, is facing attack by the adjoining land of Gallos. Arthanos, son and heir to the ailing Prefect of Gallos, wishes to destroy Westwind because the idea of a land where women rule is total anathema to him.


Saryn, Arms-Commander of Westwind, is dispatched to a neighboring land, Lornth, to seek support against the Gallosians. In the background, the trading council of Suthya is secretly and informally allied with Gallos against Westwind and begins to bribe lord-holders in Lornth to foment rebellion and civil war. They hope to create such turmoil in Lornth that the weakened land will fall to Suthya. But Zeldyan, regent of Lornth, has problems in her family. To secure Zeldyan’s aid, Saryn must pledge her personal support—and any Westwind guard forces she can raise—to the defense of Zeldyan and her son. The fate of four lands, including Westwind, rests on Saryn’s actions.

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Description: After Hazen Wood kidnaps twelve-year-old Gemma Sullivan, the two embark upon a cross-country journey that tests the limits of Gemma's endurance. In scenes of physical and sexual violence, Hazen tries to destroy the young girl's will. When she does manage to escape he drags her back and threatens to have her arrested for the violent acts he performs. It is only Gemma's resilience and fertile imagination that protects her from the worst of the trauma she suffers. And, in the end, it is the healing power of unconditional love that gives Gemma the courage to speak out against her abuser at last and claim the life she deserves.

Praise for Gemma:
"Tilly achieves moments of raw beauty and genuine fierceness." —Booklist
"Successfully captures Gemma's wounded voice. The story is told from the point of view of both Gemma and her captor, and Tilly is equally proficient at conjuring up a revolting and consummate villian as she is his innocent victim." —Kirkus Reviews
"This is a shocking novel—shockingly convincing, shockingly authentic, shockingly well-written. the narrative moves between the viewpoints of a twelve-year-old girl and her middle-aged kidnapper, as Gemma is raped, beaten and humiliated repeatedly. Her story is driven by a tough, vernacular prose that cannot fail to touch the reader. Read this book and Gemma will touch you...You'll never forget her." —John Lawton
"Never had I read a book on this subject that so effectively captures both the psychology of the abusive relationship along with the social systems that work both to help and hinder the victim."—Susan Sarandon

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Description: In the latest captivating and enchanting novel from international bestseller Keyes, the lives of seven neighbors become entangled when a spirit pays a visit to their Dublin town house intent on changing one of their lives.

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Description: In this spectacular new novel, Barbara O’Neal delivers a generous helping of the best in life–family, food, and love–in the story of a woman’s search for the one thing worth more than anything.

At thirty-seven, Tessa Harlow is still working her way down her list of goals to “fall in love and have a family.” A self-described rolling stone, Tessa leads hiking tours for adventurous vacationers–it’s a job that’s taken her around the world but never a step closer to home. Then a freak injury during a trip already marred by tragedy forces her to begin her greatest adventure of all.

Located high in the New Mexico mountains, Las Ladronas has become a magnet for the very wealthy and very hip, but once upon a time it was the setting of a childhood trauma Tessa can only half remember. Now, as she rediscovers both her old hometown and her past, Tessa is drawn to search-and-rescue worker Vince Grasso. The handsome widower isn’t her type. No more inclined to settle down than Tessa, Vince is the father of three, including an eight-year-old girl as lost as Tessa herself. But Tessa and Vince are both drawn to the town’s most beloved eatery–100 Breakfasts–and to each other. For Tessa, the restaurant is not only the key to the mystery that has haunted her life but a chance to find the home and the family she’s never known.

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Description: The Wives of Henry Oades is a sweeping debut novel based on a widely publicized but little-known story. In the late 1800s, Henry Oades emigrates with his wife and children to
New Zealand. One night while he's away from home, his family is kidnapped by native Maoris and presumed dead. Grief-stricken, Henry accepts a job opportunity in California, where, several years later, he remarries...only for his first wife and children to show up soon after, alive and having finally escaped from captivity. Narrated primarily by the two wives, Johanna Moran's powerful imagining of what happens when Henry and the two Mrs. Oadeses face persecution for bigamy explores the intricacies of marriage, the construction of family, themes of guilt, grief, and the courage of two remarkable women in a page-turning drama.

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Description: Love in Tennessee is a fictional memoir of the author’s growing up in small town in East Tennessee. From earliest memory he dreams of the larger world outside, especially the glowing, beckoning lights of New York, but the lessons he learned, essentially in the varieties of love – its sorrows, dramas, and ennoblements – he learned in his long lost hometown. He felt the first stirrings of sexuality while crawling as a baby among the silken legs of women. He found out the intoxicating pleasure of exchanging views of hidden parts of the anatomy with a young neighborhood girl before either were six in his dilapidated backyard barn. In fact, the first chapter of the book, Secrets of the Barn, introduces much of the erotic that follows in the book. Subsequent chapters show others in the town coping with love and its complexities while the narrator’s journey continues. In this way, the patchwork narrative resembles Sherwood Anderson’s Winesburg, Ohio. The final part of the work, after a culmination of observations and first hand experiences, the narrator is hit with a thunderbolt when he finds his first true love. The inevitable ending of that adventure is preordained, but devastating and complete.

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Description: There are two entries for this title. This one is for US residents only. CA residents, look for the other entry to request.

“This book is wonderful. It took me right in, dropped me into a strange new world, and kept me captivated from first to last page. James Thompson has done a masterful job with Snow Angels!”
—Michael Connelly (New York Times-bestselling author of THE SCARECROW)

SNOW ANGELS is a chilling and resonant debut from author James Thompson.

The first thriller in a new series featuring Inspector Kari Vaara, the haunted, hardened detective who must delve into Finland's dark, violent underbelly.

Kaamos: Just before Christmas, the bleakest time of the year in Lapland. The unrelenting darkness and extreme cold above the Arctic Circle drive everyone just a little insane...perhaps enough to kill.

A beautiful Somali immigrant is found dead in a snowfield, her body gruesomely mutilated, a racial slur carved into her chest. Heading the murder investigation is Inspector Kari Vaara, the lead detective of the small-town police force. The vicious killing may have been a hate crime, a sex crime - or one and the same. Vaara knows he must keep this potentially explosive case out of the national headlines or it will send shock waves across Finland, an insular nation afraid to face its own xenophobia.

The demands of the investigation begin to take their toll on Vaara and his marriage. His young American wife, Kate, newly pregnant with their first child, is struggling to adapt to both the unforgiving Arctic climate and the Finnish culture of silence and isolation. Meanwhile Vaara himself, haunted by his rough childhood and a failed first marriage, discovers that the past keeps biting at his heels: he suspects that the rich man for whom his ex-wife left him years ago may be the killer.

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Description: Set in 18th century London, this very fine and atmospheric work of historical fiction from first-time novelist Borodale tells the mesmerizing story of Agnes Trussel, a pregnant and homeless 17 year old who becomes apprentice to a fireworks maker.

"Jane Borodale has a way with words that had me smelling the foul streets of 18th-century London and tasting the strange powders that went into making John Blacklock's fireworks. The story of the apprentice Agnes learning from the master Blacklock is reminiscent of The Girl with the Pearl Earring."
—Anne Easter Smith, author of A Rose for the Crown and The King's Grace

"Jane Borodale's captivating debut novel carried me back to a world where even strong young women had few options. Agnes Trussel is sure to become one of 21st-century literature’s most enduring characters."
– Brunonia Barry, New York Times bestselling author of The Lace Reader

"Jane Borodale's first novel contains a wondrous and utterly believable world built by the subtle accretion of precise detail. Young Agnes Trussel is a clever and innocent heroine. I found myself cheering when, by the end, she — and the very novel that contains her story — burst into new and luminous life."
—Lauren Groff, New York Times bestselling author of The Monsters of Templeton

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Description: In the heart of Medici Florence, part-time model and full-time prostitute Luciana Vetra stumbles across a deadly secret when she is asked to pose for the central figure of Flora in Sandro Botticelli's famous Primavera.

A novel that is Dan Brown meets Sarah Dunant, The Botticelli Secret is a masterful concoction of intelligent and lucid mystery, historical intrigue, and romantic adventure.

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Description: An inventive and richly visual novel about young lovers on a quest to find a cure for a magical ailment, perfect for readers of Alice Hoffman

Strange things are happening on the remote and snowbound archipelago of St. Hauda’s Land. Unusual winged creatures flit around the icy bogland, albino animals hide themselves in the snow-glazed woods, and Ida Maclaird is slowly turning into glass. Ida is an outsider in these parts, a mainlander who has visited the islands only once before. Yet during that one fateful visit the glass transformation began to take hold, and now she has returned in search of a cure.

Midas Crook is a young loner who has lived on the islands his entire life. When he meets Ida, something about her sad, defiant spirit pierces his emotional defenses. As Midas helps Ida come to terms with her affliction, she gradually unpicks the knots of his heart. Love must be paid in precious hours and, as the glass encroaches, time is slipping away fast. Will they find a way to stave off the spread of the glass?

The Girl with Glass Feet is a dazzlingly imaginative and magical first novel, a love story to treasure.

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Description: The How to Survive a Robot Uprising of Christmas: a dynamically illustrated, futuristic case for the scientific possibility that Santa Claus really exists.

We all know Santa Claus: fat, jolly, omniscient, swift. Lives in a nice home in the Arctic, with the missus and a pack of elves.

Well, forget what you know. Santa Claus is from Greenpoint, Brooklyn, as it turns out, and he’s not as fat as he used to be. Here’s something else you didn’t know: he’s been dabbling in some futuristic technology, and has found myriad ways to make his job possible. How can Santa know who’s been naughty and nice? Simple: implant listening devices into your ornaments. How can he make it to every house Christmas Eve? That’s nothing a little cloning and some wormholes can’t solve. And he has plenty of other tactics: quantum entanglement, organ replacement, drug-induced hibernation, and unmanned aerial vehicles, to name just a few.

In this fantastically illustrated, affectionate, and hilarious book, Gregory Mone uses science and technology to overturn the assumption that Santa can’t be real. Drawing on the work of accomplished scientists and researchers, Mone gives us a whole new portrait of this remarkable man and the miracles he makes happen every year. With imaginative artwork and an eye-catching package, this book makes an outstanding Christmas gift for just about anyone.

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Description: Paulo Coelho: A Warrior’s Life

Paulo Coelho is a worldwide phenomenon. At a time when he is coming up to the fantastic achievement of 100 million copies sold worldwide across all his books, his fans will be delighted with the first ever official biography of Paulo, an in-depth look at his life and work, and what makes him the much-loved author he is today.
Paulo's first official biographer, Fernando Morais, provides an exhaustive look at Paulo's fascinating and varied life, taking several years to research his subject, and interviewing everyone who knows Paulo. He weaves together the strands of Paulo's life, revealing the man behind the world-famous writer.

Paulo Coelho was born in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, in August 1947. Before he became internationally known and a worldwide bestseller, he had to overcome many obstacles. As a teenager, he was subjected to the brutality of electric shock treatment in the psychiatric hospital where his parents, who took his rebelliousness as a sign of madness, interned him three times. As a member of the esoteric underworld, he was put in prison for alleged subversive activities against the Brazilian dictatorship and subjected to physical torture.

Later, Paulo joined forces with rock star Raul Seixas and together they composed songs that revolutionized Brazilian rock music. Hippie, journalist, rock star, actor, playwright, theatre director and producer of television programs, this whirlwind life came to an end in 1982, during a trip to Europe. In Dachau and later in Amsterdam, Paulo had a mystical meeting with "J", his new mentor, who persuaded him to walk the Road to Santiago de Compostela, a medieval pilgrim's route between France and Spain.

In 1986 Paulo walked the Road to Santiago, and it was there that he reconverted to Christianity and found again the faith bequeathed to him by the Jesuit fathers of his school years. He would later describe this experience in his first book, The Pilgrimage. The following year, The Alchemist, established his worldwide reputation. The novel has already achieved the status of a universally admired modern classic. Now, for the first time, discover the true story of the man behind some of the world's most loved books.

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Description: " at 7:48 a.m. on a Tuesday, I am showered, cleaned, shaved, pruned, fed, and deodorized, wearing a pressed shirt and shiny shoes, in a cab on my way to the San Francisco waterfront I'm far from home, going to an unfamiliar place, and performing for strangers, three stressful facts that mean anything can happen "

In this hilarious and highly practical book, author and professional speaker Scott Berkun reveals the techniques behind what great communicators do, and shows how anyone can learn to use them well. For managers and teachers-and anyone else who talks and expects someone to listen-Confessions of a Public Speaker provides an insider's perspective on how to effectively present ideas to anyone. It's a unique, entertaining, and instructional romp through the embarrassments and triumphs Scott has experienced over 15 years of speaking to crowds of all sizes.

With lively lessons and surprising confessions, you'll get new insights into the art of persuasion-as well as teaching, learning, and performance-directly from a master of the trade.

Highlights include:
Berkun's hard-won and simple philosophy, culled from years of lectures, teaching courses, and hours of appearances on NPR, MSNBC, and CNBC

Practical advice, including how to work a tough room, the science of not boring people, how to survive the attack of the butterflies, and what to do when things go wrong

The inside scoop on who earns $30,000 for a one-hour lecture and why

The worst-and funniest-disaster stories you've ever heard (plus countermoves you can use)

Filled with humorous and illuminating stories of thrilling performances and real-life disasters, Confessions of a Public Speaker is inspirational, devastatingly honest, and a blast to read.

Please see a book trailer featuring Scott Berkun here:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SKFfvR...

Advance Praise
"A fresh, fun, memorable take on the most critical thing: what we say. Highly recommended." -Chris Anderson, Editor in Chief, Wired

"Loved it! Anyone who speaks for a living-including teachers-will greatly benefit from this book." -Garr Reynolds, author of Presentation Zen

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Description: The ideas of John Maynard Keynes inspired the New Deal and helped rebuild world economies after World War II —and were later dismissed as “depression economics.” Then came the great meltdown of 2008. Market forces that the world relied on suddenly failed to self-correct—and Keynes’s doctrine of corrective action in an imperfect world became more relevant than ever.

Keynes was not a traditional economist: He was a polemicist, iconoclastic public intellectual, peer of the realm, and political operative, as well as an openly homosexual Bohemian who befriended Virginia Woolf and E. M. Forster. In Keynes, noted historian Peter Clarke provides a timely and masterful accounting of Keynes’s life and work, bringing his genius and skepticism alive for an era fraught with economic difficulties that he surely would have relished solving.

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Description: Captivated by a chance meeting with a falconer’s peregrine as a child, the indelible memory leads the author to flying a peregrine falcon of her own and discovering that the journey is not as much about training the falcon as what it is the falcon has to teach her. Exploring themes of predator and prey, finding tribe, forgiveness and femininity, Lift asks universal questions through the unique perspective of a woman chasing her heart in the wake of a wayward falcon.

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Description: The compelling and authoritative story of the financial destruction of Iceland—a saga that mirrors, in microcosm, the forces that caused the global economic crisis.

The economic crisis that emerged in America in 2008 unleashed a veritable epidemic of ill health around the world. However it was Iceland, whose population of three hundred thousand had the world’s highest GDP per capita and counted itself the happiest of countries, that caught the worst cold. It has nearly killed them.

No story from the economic crisis of 2008 is more evocative than I celand’s. The names may be unfamiliar—Johanesson, Bjoergolfsson, Oddsson—but their exuberance, greed, and miscalculation have many counterparts on our shores. And however traumatic the collapse of individual companies may be in the United States, in Iceland’s case an entire country melted down. All the wealth accumulated in the previous decade—during which a new breed of Icelanders had dared to believe they could compete economically on an international level, during which Reykjavik became the Capital of Cool—disappeared practically overnight. Iceland’s story shows how closely the world economy is interconnected: The default on subprime mortgages in the U .S. led to the collapse of Lehman Brothers, which led directly to the run on Iceland’s banks, which forced local authorities in Britain to switch off the heating in their classrooms.

With panache and color, Roger Boyes tells the inside story of the bankrupting of I celand: how it happened, the human dramas—from politicians to financiers to fishermen—that continue to swirl around it, and the lessons we can not ignore. Published on the first anniversary of its collapse, Meltdown Iceland is a cautionary tale for our times, an authoritative and compelling account of the financial destruction of a tiny country whose saga should resonate for us all.

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Description: An intimate, behind-the-scenes chronicle of America’s most sacred ground.

“Along Eisenhower Drive, as far as the eye could see, the grave markers formed into bone-white brigades, climbed from the flats of the Potomac River, and scattered over the green Virginia hills in perfect order. They reached Arlington’s highest point, where they encircled an old cream-colored mansion with thick columns and a commanding view of the cemetery, the river, and the city beyond. The mansion’s flag, just lowered to half-staff, signaled that it was time to start another day of funerals, which would add more than twenty new conscripts to Arlington’s army of the dead.”

So does Robert Poole describe a day like so many others in the long and storied history of Arlington National Cemetery. Created towards the end of our greatest national crucible, the Civil War, its story—as revealed in On Hallowed Ground—reflects much of America’s own over the past century and a half. The mansion at its heart, and the rolling land on which it sits, had been the family plantation of Robert E. Lee before he joined the Confederacy; strategic to the defense of Washington, it became a Union headquarters, a haven for freedmen, and a burial ground for indigent soldiers before Secretary of War Edwin Stanton made it the latest in the newly established national cemetery system. It would become our nation’s most honored resting place.

No other country makes the effort the United States does to recover and pay tribute to its war dead—an effort Poole reveals in poignant details from the aftermaths of the Civil War, Spanish-American War, World Wars I and II, Korea, Vietnam, and the conflicts in the Gulf and Afghanistan today. Every tombstone at Arlington tells a story: from Private William Christman, the first soldier buried at Arlington on May 13, 1864, to Union General Montgomery Meigs, whose idea Arlington was; from Lieutenant Thomas Selfridge, the first casualty of powered flight, to Audie Murphy, America’s most decorated soldier; from the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier, so lovingly tended today, to John F. Kennedy’s eternal flame; from scientists and slaves to jurists and generals and tens of thousands of ordinary citizen-warriors, among the more than 300,000 interred on Arlington’s 624 acres. Their sagas, and the rites and rituals that have evolved at Arlington—the horse-drawn caissons, marble headstones, playing of taps, and rifle salutes—speak to us all.

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Description: A vivid portrait of a woman finding her place in the glamorous world of Los Angeles in the 1960s and 1970s—perfect for readers of high-flying memoirs such as Pattie Boyd’s Wonderful Tonight.

Fashion icon, Broadway and Hollywood insider, mob mistress, confidante to notorious gang members of both Crips and Bloods, wife, mother, award-winning journalist, Léon Bing has not followed the typical path through life. From her formative relationship with her mother to her days as a star model to her sisterly relationship with Mama Cass Elliot and ultimate reinvention as the author of the bestselling gang exposé, Do or Die, Swans and Pistols details Bing’s always exciting and sometimes dangerous life. In a series of riveting stories of unconventionality, Bing wrestles with the themes of mothers, daughters, and reinvention—a concept inseparable from the experience of her early adult life in the 1960s and the city she called home.

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Description: The rise, fall, and legacy of the inspirational United Farm Workers movement, and the untold story of iconic community organizer Cesar Chavez.

A generation of Americans came of age boycotting grapes, swept up in a movement that vanquished California’s most powerful industry and accomplished the unthinkable: dignity and contracts for farm workers. Four decades later, Cesar Chavez’s likeness graces postage stamps, and dozens of schools and streets have been renamed in his honor. But the real story of Chavez’s farm workers’ movement—both its historic triumphs and its tragic disintegration—has remained buried beneath the hagiography.

Drawing on a rich trove of original documents, tapes, and interviews, Miriam Pawel chronicles the rise of the UFW during the heady days of civil rights struggles, the antiwar movement, and student activism in the 1960s and ’70s. From the fields, the churches, and the classrooms, hundreds were drawn to la causa by the charismatic Chavez, a brilliant risk-taker who mobilized popular support for a noble cause. But as Miriam Pawel shows, the UFW was ripped apart by the same man who built it, as Chavez proved unable to make the transition from movement icon to union leader. Pawel traces the lives of several key members of the crusade, using their stories to weave together a powerful portrait of a movement and the people who made it.

A tour de force of reporting and a spellbinding narrative, The Union of Their Dreams explores an important and untold chapter in the history of labor, civil rights, and immigration in modern America.

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Description: That chill running down your spine —

  is it just the melting snow?
The thirteen stories in The Snow Cow tell of love and death, terror and
joy, mixing ancient myths with modern legends. They are stories to be shared
in the firelight after a long day’s skiing.

• The skier who leaves tracks on inaccessible mountain faces – is he dead
  or alive?
• 
  Your chalet girl – could she be a mass murderer?
• 
  A woman on her wedding night, a promise made to the devil – how can she
  escape?

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Description: A bank robbery and illegal weapons lead Kamil Pasha to uncover a plan to massacre an entire valley.

December 1888. Vera Arti carries The Communist Manifesto in Armenian through Istanbul’s streets, unaware of the men following her. When the police discover a shipload of guns and the Imperial Ottoman Bank is blown up, suspicion falls on a socialist commune Arti’s friends organized in the eastern mountains. Special Prosecutor Kamil Pasha is called in to investigate. He soon encounters his most ruthless adversary to date: Vahid, head of a special branch of the secret police, who has convinced the sultan that the commune is leading a secessionist movement and should be destroyed—along with surrounding villages. Kamil must stop the massacre, but he finds himself on the wrong side of the law, framed for murder and accused of treason, his family and the woman he loves threatened.

Exploring the dark obsessions of the most powerful and dangerous men of the dying Ottoman Empire, The Winter Thief also reflects the mad idealism of those turbulent times.

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Description: Family Britain continues David Kynaston’s groundbreaking series, telling as never before the story of Britain from VE Day in 1945 to the election of Margaret Thatcher in 1979.

As in his highly acclaimed Austerity Britain, David Kynaston invokes an astonishing array of vivid, intimate and unselfconscious voices to drive his narrative of 1950s Britain. The keen-eyed Nella Last shops assiduously at Barrow Market as rationing gradually gives way to relative abundance; housewife Judy Haines, relishing the detail of suburban life, brings up her children in Chingford; the self-absorbed civil servant Henry St John perfects the art of grumbling. Well-known figures are encountered on the way, such as Doris Lessing (joining and later leaving the Communist Party), John Arlott (sticking up on Any Questions? for the rights of homosexuals), and comic-strip hero Roy of the Rovers (making his goal-scoring debut for Melchester).

In this colorful, unfolding tapestry, great national events—the Tories’ return to power, the death of George VI , the coronation of Queen Elizabeth, the Suez Crisis—jostle alongside everything that gave Britain in the 1950s its distinctive flavor: Butlin’s holiday camps, Hancock’s Half-Hour, Ekco television sets, Davy Crockett, skiffle, and teddy boys. Deeply researched, David Kynaston’s Family Britain offers an unrivaled take on British society as it started to move away from the painful hardships of the 1940s toward domestic ease and affluence.

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Description: Bestseller Deeanne Gist Teams Up for Riveting Romantic Suspense

When novelists Deeanne Gist and J. Mark Bertrand first met in a Houston critique group, they never expected where friendship would take them. She wrote romance; he wrote crime novels. But growing respect for each others' work culminated in the decision to try blending their talents into this wonderfully engaging story merging romance and mystery.

Rylee Monroe walks dogs in old money Charleston, a part of the city recently targeted by a daring thief. Logan Woods works the crime beat for the local paper but dreams of a life as a nonfiction writer. When the string of robberies takes a strange twist, Logan sees the making of a once-in-a-lifetime book that seems to circle around this charming, eye-catching dogwalker. But pursuing the truth means ignoring that he seems to be falling for her. And what is she hiding in her past that could crack the story wide open?

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Description: Lily was married for just days before her husband was sent abroad to fight in WWII. Now, he and the other soldiers are returning, and the small town of Toccoa, Georgia plans a big celebration. But a handsome and kind Italian immigrant, responsible for the elaborate fireworks display the town commissioned captures Lily's heart and soul. Torn between duty to society and her husband, and a poor, passionate man who might be her only true love—Lily must choose between a love she never knew and a commitment she'd already made.

Poignant and elegant, FIREWORKS OVER TOCCOA is a mosaic of all the emotions that only love can make possible.

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Description: With no means to support herself, Ellie Kilmer agrees to work as a housekeeper for the young widower who lives on Dillon Island, hopeful she can obtain a proper reference. But Jackson Smith quickly realizes that Ellie's presence may solve his own problems—both the rearing of his young boys and the scandal that surrounds his first marriage.
When a marriage of convenience is offered, Ellie is initially humiliated. Though she is past the age most women marry, she has more pride than to agree to his outlandish suggestion. Yet what options does she have? To marry would mean a home and stability. So despite the rumors circling Jackson and his first wife, Ellie accepts this unlikely proposal.

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Description: A vivid, moving, and unprecedented biographical saga of John the Baptist.

Traditionally, John the Baptist is seen as little more than an opening act—“the voice crying in the wilderness”—in the great Christian drama. In presenting the epic of John’s life, novelist Brooks Hansen draws on an extraordinary array of inspirations, from the works of Caravaggio, Bach, and Oscar Wilde to the histories of Josephus, the canonical gospels, the Gnostic gospels, and the sacred texts of those followers of John who never accepted Jesus as Messiah: the Mandeans.

Gripping as literary historical fiction, and fascinating as a diligent exploration of ancient and modern sources, this book brings to eye-opening life the richly textured world—populated by the magnificently sordid, calculating, and reckless Herods, their families, and their courts—into which both John and Jesus were born. John the Baptizer is a captivating tapestry of power and dissent, ambition and self-sacrifice, worldly and otherworldly desire, faith, and doubt.

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Description: This enchanting tale plumbs the depths of life’s unexpected changes – love and heartache, unlikely friendships and surprising rivals, and that special bond between mothers and daughters – with equal doses of giggle-inducing wit and gut-wrenching poignancy. Every woman, no matter her age or life experience, can relate to Alice Hirsh’s story. This book is a great reminder that although life it not a fairy tale, in good time we all find a small piece of our own ‘happily ever after.’

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Description: Walk-in closet full of designer everything? Check. Private Caribbean island? Check. Connection to the aristocracy? Working on it. Cunning, malicious stalker? Double check.

Welcome to the world of the Kents, a charismatic, ambitious, and fabulously wealthy English family with two sisters – Emily is as strong and sparkling as Claudia is delicate and wounded – who must somehow put their differences aside to keep an unknown enemy from bringing them down.

Click on the link below to read the first
chapter http://us.macmillan.com/richagain

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Description: The debut novel and launch of an intriguing new fantasy series from a writer to watch. An epic fantasy, a coming-of-age tale, a story about families and the ties—-and the secrets—-that bind, Servant of a Dark God is all those things.

“Brown’s first novel, the opener in a new fantasy series, creates an elaborate new world with a rich and deep spiritual and political background … this well-wrought tale of families in conflict against both politics and religion represents a welcome addition to large-scale fantasy.”
—Library Journal Starred Review

“A smart setting and a great story.” —Brandon Sanderson

“Thoroughly engrossing from the first page to the last...A writer with remarkable depth and power. I haven’t seen a debut novel this good in years!” —David Farland

“A complex and intricate world, filled with all the permutations of human good and evil … Neither heroes nor villains are quite what they seem at first.” —L.E. Modesitt

Servant of a Dark God introduces an elaborate new world, a strange and dark system of magic, and a compelling cast of characters and monsters

The novel opens up with the young protagonist Talen living a seemingly ordinary existence with his family in a small village. At first, rumors of a dark and twisted magic—wrought by people beloved for years and thought of as family—are heard from neighboring villages. Then Talen, sent on a mission to outside cities, runs into age-old conflicts and rivalries and the surprising beginnings of a possible war, one to include everyone around him and stretch to the almost mythical lands beyond the seas.

If only humans were the only ones involved in the ominous developments. For an ancient and terrible force has awakened and begun to stalk the land and gather souls. Many have been in denial on the forces existing underneath everyday life, and a witch hunt begins among the villages. No one is certain of friend or enemy, those untouched by magic and those tainted by it.

Dark days are ahead as Talen and those close to him must come to terms with a wild and unwieldy magic—one that can exact a great price if used wrongly—as well as the many strange and unpredictable elements being revealed in the world around them.

Talen’s peaceful village life becomes a thing of the past, as he begins to see the true sides of the world and people around him, even his own family. He must reevaluate his definitions of good and evil and come to terms with who he is and what kind of stand he will make if forced to take sides in the coming events.

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Description: It is the middle of the twentieth century, and in a home economics program at a prominent university, real babies are being used to teach mothering skills to young women. For a young man raised in these unlikely circumstances, finding real love and learning to trust will prove to be the work of a lifetime. In this captivating novel, bestselling author Lisa Grunwald gives us the sweeping tale of an irresistible hero and the many women who love him.

From his earliest days as a “practice baby” through his adult adventures in 1960s New York City, Disney’s Burbank studios, and the delirious world of the Beatles’ London, Henry remains handsome, charming, universally adored—and never entirely accessible to the many women he conquers but can never entirely trust.

Filled with unforgettable characters, settings, and action, The Irresistible Henry House portrays the cultural tumult of the mid-twentieth century even as it explores the inner tumult of a young man trying to transcend a damaged childhood. For it is not until Henry House comes face-to-face with the real truths of his past that he finds a chance for real love.

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Description: Believing herself guilty of a crime, Olivia Keene flees her home, eventually stumbling upon a grand estate where an elaborate celebration is in progress. But all is not as joyous as it seems.

Lord Bradley has just learned a terrible secret, which, if exposed, will change his life forever. When he glimpses a figure on the grounds, he fears a spy or thief has overheard his devastating news. He is stunned to discover the intruder is a scrap of a woman with her throat badly injured. Fearing she will spread his secret, he gives the girl a post and confines her to his estate. As Olivia and Lord Bradley's secrets catch up with them, will their hidden pasts ruin their hope of finding love?

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Description: A riveting, psychologically rich family drama set in the American West, from a writer who has been compared to Cormac McCarthy.

Bandy Dorner, home from Vietnam, awakes with his car mired in a canal, his cabin reduced to ashes, and his pregnant wife preparing to leave town with her lover. Within moments, a cop lies bleeding on the road.

Eighteen years later, Bandy is released from prison. His parents are gone, but on the derelict family ranch, Bandy faces a different reunion. Tracy, his now teenaged son, has come to claim the father he’s never known. Iona, Bandy’s ex-wife, has returned on the heels of her son. All three are damaged, hardened, haunted. But warily, desperately, they move in a slow dance around each other, trying to piece back together a family that never was; trying to discover if they belong together at all.

With unflinching honesty and restrained beauty, Brian Hart explores the possibilities and limitations of his characters as they struggle toward a shared future. Like a traditional Greek tragedy, suffused with the mud, ice, and rock of the raw Idaho landscape, Then Came the Evening is tautly plotted and emotionally complex—a stunning debut.

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Description: Love, in its many forms and complexities, weaves through this collection by Amy Bloom, the New York Times bestselling author of Away. Bloom's astonishing and astute new work of interconnected stories illuminates the mysteries of passion, family, and friendship.

Propelled by Bloom's dazzling prose, unmistakable voice, and generous wit, Where the God of Love Hangs Out takes us to the margins and the centers of real people's lives, exploring the changes that love and loss create. A young woman is haunted by her roommate's murder; a man and his daughter-in-law confess their sins in the unlikeliest of places. In one quartet of interlocking stories, two middle-aged friends, married to others, find themselves surprisingly drawn to each other, risking all while never underestimating the cost. In another linked set of stories, we follow mother and son for thirty years as their small and uncertain family becomes an irresistible tribe.

Insightful, sensuous, and heartbreaking, these stories of passion and disappointment, life and death, capture deep human truths. As The New Yorker has said, "Amy Bloom gets more meaning into individual sentences than most authors manage in whole books."

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Description: What is the secret to finding hope in hard times?

When Suzan Colón was laid off from her dream job at a magazine during the economic downturn of 2008, she needed to cut her budget way, way back, and that meant home cooking. Her mother suggested, “Why don’t you look in Nana’s recipe folder?” In the basement, Suzan found the tattered treasure, full of handwritten and meticulously typed recipes, peppered with her grandmother Matilda’s commentary in the margins. Reading it, Suzan realized she had found something more than a collection of recipes—she had found the key to her family’s survival through hard times.

Suzan began re-creating Matilda’s “sturdy food” recipes for baked pork chops and beef stew, and Aunt Nettie’s clam chowder made with clams dug up by Suzan’s grandfather Charlie in Long Island Sound. And she began uncovering the stories of her resilient family’s past. Taking inspiration from stylish, indomitable Matilda, who was the sole support of her family as a teenager during the Great Depression (and who always answered “How are you?” with “Fabulous, never better!”), and from dashing, twice-widowed Charlie, Suzan starts to approach her own crisis with a sense of wonder and gratitude. It turns out that the gift to survive and thrive through hard times had been bred in her bones all along.

Cherries in Winter is an irresistible gem of a book. It's Tuesday's With Morrie meets Tender at the Bone. It makes you want to cook, it makes you want to know your own family’s stories, and, above all, it makes you feel rich no matter what.

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Description: Description:
When you face a difficult situation or a tough fight, it helps to have a wise coach and an understanding friend in your corner. Family lawyer Marjorie Just, author of Divorce Decisions: Practical Ways to Protect Yourself, Your Career, Your Children and Your Wallet, offers both to anyone going through a divorce or termination of a domestic partnership.

During her more than 15 years in practice, the author has seen it all, from the most acrimonious courtroom battles to the most amicable settlements––and everything in between.But what makes this book so authentic is that the author has been through it herself.

“After watching my clients go through the pain and upheaval of divorce, I went through it myself, and made many of the same mistakes they did. Even though I should have known better,” says Marjorie Just of the Maryland-based firm, Offit Kurman.

Ms. Just explains that the decision to divorce is just the beginning of a series of important decisions for you and your family. Making these decisions with forethought and deliberation can help you avoid the pitfalls. Ms. Just offers legal insight and practical guidance.

“This is a useful and informative book. … Having the knowledge gleaned from a reading of this book equips that person with the tools necessary to navigate the often dangerous waters of separation and divorce. … The author has, with this book, provided a useful service and considerable help to an ever-increasing number of people.”
––Aaron Satloff, MD, Clinical Professor of Psychiatry, U. of Rochester School of Medicine and Dentistry, Distinguished Life Fellow, American Psychiatric Association

Divorce Decisions provides a guidebook to the process including:

* Choosing a divorce process: negotiation or litigation, mediation or collaborative practice.
* Selecting a lawyer or representative.
* Minimizing emotional trauma for yourself and your children
* Saving money on legal fees
* Keeping the costs and the process from spiraling out of control
* Forming a support system
* How modern technology can play a role in divorce
* Preventing this from happening again.

"Reliable guidance about locating the skillful, reasonable lawyer who will aim toward durable long term solutions that benefit all members of the post-divorce family rather than the gladiator who fights without regard to financial, relational, and emotional costs is hard to find––or rather, has been hard to find, until Marjorie Just wrote this book."
—Pauline H. Tesler, Certified Specialist in Family Law, San Francisco, CA
Co-Author, Collaborative Divorce: The Revolutionary New Way to Restructure Your Family, Resolve Legal Issues, and Move on with Your Life and Co-Founder and first President, International Academy of Collaborative Professionals

About The Author:
MARJORIE JUST is a principal in the law firm of Offit/Kurman: Attorneys at Law, in Bethesda, Maryland, where she practices Family Law. She is a litigator, a mediator, and a Collaborative lawyer. Marjorie Just obtained undergraduate degree from Duke University and her JD from the George Washington University School of Law where she was a member of the Journal of International Law and Economics. She was admitted to the Maryland Bar in 1994 and the District of Columbia Bar in 1995; and is a member of the Family Law Sections of the District of Columbia Bar, the Maryland State Bar Association and the Bar Association of Montgomery County, Maryland. Ms. Just is a founding member of the Collaborative Divorce Association and the Maryland Collaborative Practice Council. She acts as a court-appointed mediator in family law cases, and she volunteers as a Family Law Mentor for the DC Bar Law Firm Pro Bono Program. This is her first book.

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Description: A true story of espionage with a plot worthy of John le Carré.

With the declaration of war in 1939, dashing young publisher, Tom Burns, left his business for the Ministry of Information, the propaganda arm of the British secret services, and found himself in Madrid as press attaché at the British embassy. Spurred on by his deep love of Spain, he threw himself into the propaganda war against the Nazis, who broadcast freely to the Spanish press. Spain was officially “nonbelligerent” during the war. But nonbelligerent doesn’t mean unimportant: Spain held Gibraltar, and so controlled the western Mediterranean. Germany desperately wanted Gibraltar and the Mediterranean for itself, and it was the responsibility of Tom Burns and the rest of the British Ministry of Information to do everything in their power to keep that from happening.

Executing that simple objective became complicated as Burns found he was making enemies in England, not least among them Kim Philby and members of MI 6. In Papa Spy, Jimmy Burns tells the extraordinary story of how his father overcame the odds, helped carry out the decoy plot called “The Man Who Never Was,” arranged what turned out to be actor Leslie Howard’s fatal propaganda trip to Portugal and Spain, and remained true to his faith while loyally serving his country.

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Description: RULES FOR MY UNBORN SON is a collection of traditional, humorous, and urbane fatherly advice for boys. From the sartorial ("If you are tempted to wear a cowboy hat, resist") to the practical ("Keep a copy of your letters. It makes it easier for your biographer") to even a couple of sure-fire hangover cures ("There is no better remedy than a dip in the ocean"), the book of rules and accompanying quotations is quite simply an instruction manual for becoming a Good Man - industrious, thoughtful, charming, and of course, well-dressed.

Hip and witty with a decidedly traditionalist flavor, RULES FOR MY UNBORN SON is meant to evoke simpler times when Father knew best and a suitable answer to "Why?" was "Because I said so."

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Description: The basics of The Five-Minute Miracle came to Tara Springett, a psychotherapist, in meditation one day. The system is a pleasurable self-help method that is designed to overcome all sorts of psychological problems, as well as easing chronic pain and tiredness. The method only takes five minutes each day and is so simple that it can be used by anyone, anywhere, even by children.

A synthesis of Tibetan Buddhist principles and humanistic psychology, the core of the practice is to make contact with our Higher Consciousness (in whatever form we perceive it) and receive a healing symbol to overcome our problems. This symbol will be visualized (or sensed) in our heart, radiating loving light to ourselves and to everyone who is involved in the problem. It's a system that can be used over and over again — for a new problem, ask for a new symbol. This system, which the author calls Higher Consciousness Healing, has brought extremely impressive and reliable results — within days or a few weeks of beginning the practice — to hundreds of individuals and families. Now everyone can learn and practice these principles through this extraordinary and miraculous book.

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Description: From the personal finance correspondent for public radio’s Marketplace Money, a new plan for a new economic reality—the philosophy and practice of living frugally.

As a once-in-a-lifetime downturn deepens, our go-go economy has become an uh-oh economy. But as trusted finance reporter Chris Farrell explains, there’s a silver lining to this cloud: It is accelerating a trend already under way in America toward what he calls the New Frugality—a fresh way of thinking about how, what, and why we consume. In today’s economy, a “sustainable” lifestyle isn’t just one that’s good for the planet—it’s one that is based around core values and one that sustains your bank balance as well.

In this friendly, approachable book, Farrell explains both the theory and the practice of living frugally. Frugality, he reminds us, does not mean old-fashioned penny-pinching. It means spending your money on quality rather than quantity—buying the best you can afford but the least you need. Drawing on his expertise as a financial reporter and his years of conversations with his public radio listeners, he provides down-to-earth, practical advice for every aspect of your financial life, including:

• how to always maintain a “margin of safety” in your spending

• the frugal home: renting vs. owning

• the two best ways to save for college

• wise debt vs. foolish debt

• why giving your money away can be “newly frugal”

The New Frugality amounts to a paradigm shift in the way we spend and save. The good news is, a frugal lifestyle is one of less waste, lower environmental impact, greater peace of mind, and, over the long run, deeper satisfaction.

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Description: The eye-opening and headline-generating UK bestseller that shows how one single factor—the gap between its richest and poorest members—can determine the health and well-being of a society.

“This is a book with a big idea, big enough to change political thinking…In half a page [The Spirit Level] tells you more about the pain of inequality than any play or novel could.”
—Sunday Times (UK )

It is well established that in rich societies the poor have shorter lives and suffer more from almost every social problem. Now a groundbreaking book, based on thirty years’ research, takes an important step past this idea. The Spirit Level shows that there is one common factor that links the healthiest and happiest societies: the degree of equality among their members. Not wealth; not resources; not culture, climate, diet, or system of government. Furthermore, more-unequal societies are bad for almost everyone within them—the well-off as well as the poor.

The remarkable data assembled in The Spirit Level reveals striking differences, not only among the nations of the first world but even within America’s fifty states. Almost every modern social problem—ill-health, violence, lack of community life, teen pregnancy, mental illness—is more likely to occur in a less-equal society. This is why America, by most measures the richest country on earth, has per capita shorter average lifespan, more cases of mental illness, more obesity, and more of its citizens in prison than any other developed nation.

Wilkinson and Pickett lay bare the contradiction between material success and social failure in today’s world, but they do not simply provide a diagnosis of our woes. They offer readers a way toward a new political outlook, shifting from self-interested consumerism to a friendlier, more sustainable society. The Spirit Level is pioneering in its research, powerful in its revelations, and inspiring in its conclusion: Armed with this new understanding of why communities prosper, we have the tools to revitalize our politics and help all our fellow citizens, from the bottom of the ladder to the top.

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Description: A compelling portrait of the life, work, and meaning of one of the greatest artists of all time.

Toward the end of his long life, Tiziano Vecelli—known to the world ever since as Titian (circa 1488– 1576)—was at work on a number of paintings that he kept in his studio, never quite completing them, as though wanting to endlessly postpone the moment of closure. Produced with his fingers as much as with the brush, Titian’s last paintings are imbued with a unique rawness and immediacy without precedent in the history of Western art. As if to further cloud their meaning, after the outbreak of plague that took his life, Titian’s studio was looted and many canvases were taken; what happened to them is not known.

But what did Titian, who had experienced as much in the way of material success and critical acclaim as any artist before or since, mean by these works? Titian: The Last Days is a quest through the great artist’s life and work toward the physical and spiritual landscape of his last paintings. Vividly re-creating the atmosphere of sixteenth-century Venice and Europe, Mark Hudson chronicles Titian’s relationships with his own mentors (Bellini and Giorgione), rivals, and patrons—among them popes, kings, and emperors— as well as his troubled dealings with his own family. Paralleling this narrative is Hudson’s personal journey through Titian’s life and career, exploring the relentless formal development that led to the breakthroughs of his last days, and the mystery behind his missing paintings.

Moving from Titian’s hometown in the Dolomites to the greatest churches and palaces of the age, to Venice then and now, Titian: The Last Days is an original and compelling study of one of Europe’s greatest artists.

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Description: The fourth in the widely acclaimed, laugh-out-loud Trash’n’Treasures Series by the husband-and-wife writing team New York Times bestselling author Max Allan Collins and mystery writer Barbara Collins.
Brandy Borne’s life in the small Mississippi River town of Serenity continues to be anything but serene. Living with her bipolar mom, Vivian, is challenging enough, but getting sucked into her plan to organizing a citywide antiques bazaar is positively daunting—especially with morning sickness.
Vivian persuades a ninety-year-old Russian widow to donate her priceless Faberge egg. The egg turns out to be not quite as expected, but this is the least of everyone’s worries when murder enters the mix. Vivian and Brandy slip into detective mode, and (with moral support from Sushi, the spoiled Shih Tzu) once again uncover a killer in their kooky, clumsy, and loveable style.

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Description: New York Times bestselling author Joanna Fluke never fails to satisfy readers’ appetite for intriguing culinary mysteries—and delicious recipes. In the latest installment of her Hannah Swensen mystery Series, the beloved baker and sleuth may have bitten off more than she can chew.
It’s June in Lake Eden, Minnesota, and for Hannah Swensen that means bridal showers galore, plus a massive fundraising event in need of confections. Hannah almost flips when her business partner, Lisa, suggests setting up an apple turnover stand. But, pushover that she is, she places her faith in Lisa’s mother-in-law’s recipe and agrees to be a magician’s assistant in the fundraiser’s talent show.
Dozens of pastries and one hideous purple dress later, Hannah has to admit that stepping out of her comfort zone has been fun as well as profitable. The only snag is the show’s host, community college professor Bradford Ramsey. Hannah and her youngest sister Michelle each had unfortunate relationships with Ramsey, and when the cad is discovered backstage—dead as a doornail with a turnover in his hand—it’s up to Hannah to uncover a killer who’s flakier than puff pastry, and far more dangerous.

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Description: Description:
In this extraordinary drama-in-dialogue, Naguib Mahfouz reveals his love for all of Egypt’s extensive history—and his deep knowledge of it. In Before the Throne, he summons nearly sixty of Egypt’s rulers to the afterlife Court of Osiris, from a king who unified Egypt for the first time, around 3000 BC, to a president assassinated by religious extremists in 1981.

He includes names as familiar as the pharaoh Ramesses II and as obscure as the medieval vizier Qaraqush. Defending their behavior before the divine tribunal, those who acted for the nation’s good are honored with immortality, but those who failed to protect it leave the gilded hall of eternal justice with a very different verdict.

Full of Mahfouz’s unique insight into his country’s timeless qualities, this controversial work skillfully traces five thousand years of Egypt’s past as it flows into the present, through the mind of its most acclaimed author.


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About The Authors:
NAGUIB MAHFOUZ was born in 1911 in the crowded Cairo district of Gamaliya. He studied philosophy at Cairo University, then worked in various government ministries until his retirement in 1971. His first three published novels were Khufu's Wisdom (1939), Rhadopis of Nubia (1943), and Thebes at War (1944), all of which are set in ancient Egypt. These political and philosophical critiques disguised as historical romances show the unmistakable signs of a burgeoning literary genius. He went on to write more than 35 other novel-length works, plus hundreds of short stories and numerous cinema plots and scenarios, many of which have been made into successful films. Naguib Mahfouz was awarded the Nobel prize for literature in 1988. In 2006, he died at the age of 95.

RAYMOND STOCK, with a Ph.D. in Near Eastern Languages and Civilizations from the University of Pennsylvania, is writing a biography of Naguib Mahfouz. He is the translator of numerous works by Mahfouz, most recently Dreams of Departure (AUC Press, 2007).

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Description: In his New York Times bestselling novel Something on the Side, Carl Weber introduced readers to the scandalous world of the Big Girls Book Club. In this fast-paced follow-up to the smash hit, the BGBC has a new chapter in Richmond, Virginia…but the biggest drama isn’t between the pages, it’s between the members themselves.
Welcome to the Big Girls Book Club, where only one rule applies: Members must be at least a size 14. Sisters and original BGBC members Isis and Egypt have left New York for Richmond, where Isis is happily married and living in the lap of luxury. Her sister Egypt has moved in to get away from her past, which isn’t easy when her ex is Isis’ husband, Rashid. Then Isis asks Egypt to make a giant sacrifice—to become a surrogate and carry her and Rashid’s baby…
New BGBC member Loraine Farrow is one of Richmond’s most successful women, but she has a secret she believes could ruin her. Jerome is Loraine’s personal secretary and the only male member of BGBC. He’s openly gay and never had a problem with it, until Loraine asks him to do a favor that will change his life.

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Description: Instead of running away to the circus, Chris Mitchell fled to Disney World® in search of some desperately needed magic but his journey through manufactured happiness bared the truth behind the costumes and of finding his own magic within.
Once upon a time, Chris Mitchell was living the dream, until his fairy-tale life came to a dramatic halt: he got fired, his girlfriend left him for his best friend, and his brother called to tell him their mother had lymphoma. Chris wanted a serious break from reality, so he fled to the “happiest place on Earth”… Disney World®, and began working as a photographer. During his year in the Mouse’s army, life became far stranger than any animated fiction.
Cast member Confidential: A Disneyfied Memoir is one of the few books to tell about the real Disney World® from an insider’s perspective. Originally based on his popular blog (www.disneydiaries.blogspot.com), Chris Mitchell’s personal adventures reveal the backstage world of the Magic Kingdom®, along with a colorful cast of memorable characters.
Every eccentric Cast Member has a common goal: to “preserve the magic” for Disney’s ® guests even as they seek it on a personal level for themselves.

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Description: Nine years after Friendship Cake, Lynne Hinton returns with a heartwarming story that celebrates the close and lifelong bonds among women. As the holiday season draws near, the four ladies of Hope Springs, North Carolina, have come up with an idea for a cake cookbook. They're hoping the project will raise the spirits of one of their group, Margaret Peele, whose cancer has returned.

All Margaret wants for Christmas is to visit the Texas town where her mother grew up, and to see Charlotte Stewart, the young pastor who recently left Hope Springs to run a battered women's shelter in New Mexico. So Louise Fisher, Beatrice Newgarden, and Jessie Jenkins hatch a plan to take Margaret to meet Charlotte in Texas. In doing so, they give Margaret the best Christmas gift of all - their friendship.

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Description: Miss Marple meets Jessica Fletcher—but with a New Orleans style all her own—Barbara Colley’s intrepid sixty-something sleuth, Charlotte LaRue, cleans up crime while running her Maid for a Day service. And this time, a movie shoot provides the perfect backdrop for murder.
When a big Hollywood studio wants to use Bitsy Duhe’s gorgeous Victorian home for a movie shoot, she agrees, but only if Charlotte LaRue agrees to take care of her place during the shoot. The cast includes one of Hollywood’s hottest ingénues, Angel Martinique—but as Charlotte quickly discovers, Angel is no saint—in fact, she’s a complete diva.
On the shoot, tensions run high, especially when Angel’s friend Gavin is found dead in the star’s dressing room. Charlotte senses there’s more to Angel’s story than meets the eye. But a little digging into her past turns up a lot more dirt than she bargained for—enough to put Charlotte in a killer’s crosshairs if she doesn’t watch her step.

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Description: Delving deeper into the genre-spanning territory explored in Interfictions, the Interstitial Arts Foundation’s first groundbreaking anthology, Interfictions 2 showcases twenty-one original and innovative writers. It includes contributions from authors from six countries, including the United States, Poland, Norway, Australia, France, and Great Britain.

Newcomers such as Alaya Dawn Johnson, Theodora Goss, and Alan DeNiro rub shoulders with established visionaries such as Jeffrey Ford (The Drowned Life), Brian Francis Slattery (Liberation), Nin Andrews (The Book of Orgasms), and M. Rickert (Map of Dreams).

Colleen Mondor, of the well-known blog Chasing Ray, interviews the editors for the afterword.

Henry Jenkins, ex-director of MIT’s Comparative Media Studies program and now a member of USC’s Annenberg School for Communication and School of Cinematic Arts, provides a fantastic introduction sure to set readers’ imaginations alight.

Interfictions 2 is here and ready to be read, discussed, taught, blogged, taken apart, and re-interpreted.

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Description: After watching a tv program about Otzi, a 5,000-year-old "Ice Man", Kit's friend Ike becomes convinced that Kit's destiny is to become the next ice man - a source of information for future generations. Together they obtain artifacts they think will accurately reflect life in the early twenty-first century and plan their journey to a nearby mountain. Kit gets tattoos similar to Otzi's, writes a manifesto and tries to come to terms with making the ultimate sacrifice. As he grows more and more agitated and isolated, his family and friends suspect that something is terribly wrong, but before they can discover the true severity of the situation, Kit and Ike set off on what could be their last journey. (Teen fiction)

"A stark and fascinating portrait of a paranoid and delusional teenager…Denman deftly gets into the head of a mentally unwell teenager while telling a coherent, engaging story." - Publishers Weekly

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Description: The fifth in Sara Rosett’s delightful, warm-hearted cozy mystery series has Ellie Avery—mom, military wife, part-time professional organizer, and sleuth—investigate a Southern family reunion with a murderous edge.
Ellie is barely surviving her husband’s boisterous Southern family reunion when she receives a phone call that puts her “crisis” in perspective. Her husband Mitch’s squadron commander, Colonel Pershall, has been murdered. And when the Colonel’s widow and Ellie’s good friend, Denise, is named prime suspect, Ellie must use her detective prowess to find the real killer.
The next afternoon another tragic death jars the otherwise sleepy town of Warm River, Georgia. Mitch’s cousin, Jake, collapses and dies during his morning jog. It looks like a heart attack, until clues surface that reveal sinister motives. If the Warm Springs killer has his way, the small town’s string of deaths is not yet over, and the next target will be a vital member of Ellie’s new Southern home…

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Description: The best holiday traditions are meant to be broken.,

It's only December 1, and Vanessa Clayton has been dreading Christmas since she spotted tinseled trees at her local mall in September. Thankfully, she and her husband, JT, can't afford to drag their twin boys across the country to New England for the annual celebration at her stuffy sister-in-law Patience's home. Not that Vanessa has prepared a proper Christmas for her family in years, and she has less time than ever since she agreed to consult on the script of a local play. Her older sister, Thea, is no help — she'd rather make art and flirt with surfers than babysit her nine-year-old nephews. Then Patience drops a holiday stress bomb: Her family will come to California instead.

In between "baking" cinnamon rolls for the school potluck and overbearing Patience testing her patience, Vanessa can't stop thinking about the difficult but charming playwright at work. Meanwhile, Patience's teenage daughter, Libby, obsesses over a college boy she has met by the pool, and Thea searches desperately for the meaning of Christmas — for her latest installation, of course. As their holiday plans go comically awry, these four women discover the true spirit of the season is hidden in every festive surprise

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Description: Description:
After a failed study mission in France, Abd al-Rahman returns home to Iraq to launch an existentialist movement akin to that of his hero. Convinced that it falls upon him to introduce his country’s intellectuals to Sartre’s thought, he feels especially qualified by his physical resemblance to the philosopher (except for the crossed eyes) and by his marriage to Germaine, who he claims is the great man’s cousin. Meanwhile, his wealth and family prestige guarantee him an idle life spent in drinking, debauchery, and frequenting a well-known nightclub.

But is his suicide an act of philosophical despair, or a reaction to his friend’s affair with Germaine? A biographer chosen by his presumed friends narrates the story of a somewhat bewildered young man who—like other members of his generation—was searching for a meaning to his life.

This parody of the abuses and extravagances of pseudo-philosophers in the Baghdad of the sixties throws into relief the Iraqi intellectual and cultural life of the time and the reversal of fortune of some of Iraq’s wealthy and powerful families.


About The Authors:
ALI BADER, born in Baghdad in 1964, studied philosophy and French literature and worked as a war correspondent covering the Middle East. He is the author of nine novels, many of which have won awards. He now lives in Amman, Jordan.

AIDA BAMIA is professor of Arabic language and literature at the University of Florida in Gainesville. She is the editor of Al-‘Arabiyya, the journal of the American Association of Teachers of Arabic, and the author of The Graying of the Raven: Cultural and Sociopolitical Significance of Algerian Folk Poetry (AUC Press 2001).

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Description: Following her successful debut Peach Blossom Pavilion, Mingmei Yip’s much-anticipated second novel is an evocative and sensual portrayal of a Chinese woman torn between the east and the west.
At age twenty, Ming Neng tells her mother that she wants to be a Buddhist nun. She will not be dissuaded—especially upon meeting her mentor, Yi Kong, and feeling enchanted by the nun’s beauty, talent, exquisite art collection, and mysterious background.
At thirty, after studying art in Paris, Ming Neng enters a retreat to test her karma as a nun. A fire breaks out and a young American doctor saves Ming Neng’s life. Ming Neng finds herself charmed and soon yields her body to him. Caught between her long-held spiritual quest and newfound desires, Ming Neng must find a way to her heart’s true calling.

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Description: A voyage of discoveries, a meeting of two remarkable women, and an extraordinary time and place enrich bestselling author Tracy Chevalier's enthralling new novel.

From the moment she's struck by lightning as a baby, it is clear Mary Anning is marked for greatness. On the windswept, fossil-strewn beaches of the English coast, she learns that she has "the eye" - and finds what no one else can see. When Mary uncovers an unusual fossilized skeleton in the cliffs near her home, she sets the religious fathers on edge, the townspeople to vicious gossip, and the scientific world alight.

Luckily, Mary finds an unlikely champion in prickly Elizabeth Philpot, a recent exile from London, who also loves scouring the beaches. Their relationship strikes a delicate balance between fierce loyalty, mutual appreciation, and barely suppressed envy.

Remarkable Creatures is a stunning novel of how one woman's gift transcends class and social prejudice to lead to some of the most important discoveries of the nineteenth century. Above all, it is a revealing portrait of the intricate and resilient nature of female friendship.

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Description: On the surface, Lena Spencer appears to have it all. She and her wealthy husband Randall have two wonderful children, and they live a life of luxury. In reality, however, Lena finds that happiness is elusive. Randall is emotionally distant, her son has developed a drug habit, and her daughter is disgusted by her mother's "overbearing behavior." When Randall decides that he's had enough of marriage counseling, he offers his wife an ultimatum: "Be grateful for all I've done for you or leave." Lena, realizing that money can't solve her problems and that her husband is no longer the man she married, decides to choose the latter.

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Description: An astonishing, hotly anticipated new novel from the great literary fantasist and creator of Thursday Next, Jasper Fforde.

It's our world, but not as we know it. Entire cities lie buried beneath overgrown fields and forests. Technology from another time peppers the landscape, and there is evidence of great upheaval.

As long as anyone can remember, society has been ruled by a Colortocracy. From the underground feedpipes that keep the municipal park green to the healing hues viewed to cure illness to a social hierarchy based upon one's limited color perception, society is dominated by colour. In this world, you are what you can see.

Young Eddie Russett has no ambition to be anything other than a loyal drone of the Collective. But everything changes when he moves with his father, a respected swatchman, to East Carmine. There, he falls in love with a Grey named Jane who opens his eyes to the painful truth behind his seemingly perfect, rigidly controlled society.

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Description: Part Tarantino-style operetta, part soap opera, Ottavio Cappellani's hilarious novel takes place in a twenty-first-century Sicily rife with moody aristocrats, vain politicians, inept gangsters, shabby theater actors, and high-tech assassins. Balding, fortyish Alfio Turrisi is a mid-level Mafioso with deep pockets. He's in love with Betty, the spoiled daughter of a rival mobster. Alfio and Betty would seem to be the Romeo and Juliet of this novel... until we meet another pair of star-crossed lovers: the gay theater director Tino Cagnotto and his bored and sexy youngamore, Bobo.

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Description: There are two entries for this title. This one is for CA residents only. US residents, look for the other entry to request.

The first thriller in a new series featuring Inspector Kari Vaara, the haunted, hardened detective who must delve into Finland's dark, violent underbelly.

Kaamos: Just before Christmas, the bleakest time of the year in Lapland. The unrelenting darkness and extreme cold above the Arctic Circle drive everyone just a little insane...perhaps enough to kill.

A beautiful Somali immigrant is found dead in a snowfield, her body gruesomely mutilated, a racial slur carved into her chest. Heading the murder investigation is Inspector Kari Vaara, the lead detective of the small-town police force. The vicious killing may have been a hate crime, a sex crime - or one and the same. Vaara knows he must keep this potentially explosive case out of the national headlines or it will send shock waves across Finland, an insular nation afraid to face its own xenophobia.

The demands of the investigation begin to take their toll on Vaara and his marriage. His young American wife, Kate, newly pregnant with their first child, is struggling to adapt to both the unforgiving Arctic climate and the Finnish culture of silence and isolation. Meanwhile Vaara himself, haunted by his rough childhood and a failed first marriage, discovers that the past keeps biting at his heels: he suspects that the rich man for whom his ex-wife left him years ago may be the killer.

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Description: What happens when the popular girl becomes a social misfit?

Regina Afton used to be a member of the Fearsome Fivesome. And just like the other members of this all girl clique, she was both feared and revered by the students at Halowell High. Now a vicious rumor has Regina frozen out of her former circle. Each day the bullying becomes more vicious and only Regina knows the terrifying truth. Out of desperation she befriends Michael a fellow misfit— that even Regina used to shun.Regina tries to make amends for her past while threats from the now Fearsome Foursome threatens to break them both.

visit stmartins.com/somegirlsare to read the first chapter
Courtney Summers is also the author of Cracked Up To Be, nominated for the 2010 Best Books for Young Adults award by YALSA

"Cracked Up To Be...is an excellent and intense debut novel...This is a captivating and powerful novel that is difficult to put down."—Teen Book Review

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Description: Holly Barrett first saw Jack Dane early one morning — tall, tan, and so heartbreakingly handsome he took her breath away. He also seemed like the last person to disrupt her quiet, uneventful days with her sensitive daughter, Katy. But the charming, enigmatic Englishman has blown into her small Cape Cod town like a brisk summer wind off the bay.

Jack sweeps Holly off her feet, and is soon touching the lives of everyone she deeply cares about. But is he the considerate, concerned gentleman he appears to be — or is there a very different creature lurking below the surface? Has a monster entered her life . . . and how far will Holly have to go to save the person she loves more than anyone else in the world?

Brooke Morgan's dazzling debut is a novel of unrelenting suspense that immediately rockets her into the upper echelons alongside Joy Fielding, Tana French, Mary Higgins Clark, and other masters of everyday terror.

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Description: Chester “Chet” Patterson, the protagonist-narrator of Kermit Moyer’s novel, is an Army brat who grows up in the 1950s and comes of age in the 1960s. He has a high-strung knock-out of a mother who may be drinking her way into alcoholism, an Army-officer father he both resents and admires, and a younger sister whose high-school popularity he can only envy. Moving every two or three years, Chester is a perennial “new kid” as well as a bookish and movie-besotted romantic who at the age of 13 falls in love, he thinks, with his own first cousin, Frenchie, a 17-year-old “older woman.” Each chapter is a discrete story that chronicles a pivotal moment in Chester’s life, taking him a little deeper into himself as well as a little farther into the century, in settings that vary from the Far East to the Wild West and during a time that includes the birth of rock & roll, the Civil Rights movement, the Cuban Missile Crisis, and the assassination of President John F. Kennedy.

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Description: In this lyrical, exuberant follow-up to her acclaimed 2007 novel, The Bastard of Istanbul, Turkish author Elif Shafak unfolds two tantalizing parallel narratives - one contemporary and the other set in the thirteenth century.

Ella Rubinstein is forty years old and unhappily married when she takes a job as a reader for a literary agent. Her first assignment is to read and report on Sweet Blasphemy, a novel written by a man named Aziz Zahara. Ella is mesmerized by his tale of Shams's search for Rumi and dervish's role in transforming the successful but unhappy cleric into a committed mystic, passionate poet, and advocate of love. She is also taken with Shams's lessons, or rules, that offer insight into an ancient philosophy based on the unity of all people and religions, and the presence of love in each and every one of us. As she reads on, she realizes that Rumi's story mirrors her own and that Zahara - like Shams - has come to set her free.

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Description: A beautifully written, compulsively readable debut that deals with the aftermath of a shocking act of violence that leaves two young sisters with nothing but each other—in the tradition of White Oleander, this haunting novel is a testament to the power of family and the ties that bind us together, even as they threaten to tear us apart

Mama was “no macaroni-necklace-wearing kind of mother.” She was a lipstick and perfume-wearing mother, a flirt whose estranged husband still hungered for her. After Mama threw him out, she warned the girls to never let Daddy in the house, an admonition that tears at ten-year-old Lulu whenever she thinks about the day she opened the door for her drunken father, and watched as he killed her mother, stabbed her five-year-old sister Merry and tried to take his own life.

Effectively orphaned by their mother’s death and father’s imprisonment, Lulu and Merry, unwanted by family members and abandoned to a terrifying group home, spend their young lives carrying more than just the visible scars from the tragedy. Even as their plan to be taken in by a well-to-do foster family succeeds, they come to learn they’ll never really belong anywhere or to anyone—that all they have to hold onto is each other.

As they grow into women, Lulu holds fast to her anger, denies her father’s existence and forces Merry into a web of lies about his death that eventually ensnares her own husband and daughters. Merry, certain their safety rests on placating her needy father, dutifully visits him, seeking his approval and love at the expense of her own relationships. As they strive to carve lives of their own, the specter of their father, unrepentant and manipulative even from behind bars, haunts them. And when they learn he’s about to be paroled, the house of cards they’ve built their lives on teeters on the brink of collapse.

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Description: In her debut collection, New York Times best-selling author Holly Black returns to the world of Tithe in two darkly exquisite new tales. Then Black takes readers on a tour of a faerie market and introduces a girl poisonous to the touch and another who challenges the devil to a competitive eating match. These stories have been published in anthologies such as 21 Proms, The Faery Reel, and The Restless Dead, and have been reprinted in many “Best of ” anthologies. The Poison Eaters is Holly Black’s much-anticipated first collection, and her ability to stare into the void—and to find humanity and humor there—will speak to young adult and adult readers alike.

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Description: Charlie Baker is a neurotic but charming 50-year-old workaholic CEO of a major Chicago ad agency who seems to have it all: an impressive house in an upscale suburb, an equally impressive salary, the requisite pretty wife and accomplished son. All of this comes crashing down when Charlie is unceremoniously fired. In an instant, his life is transformed from corporate titan to just another out of work American.

For Charlie—an admitted workaholic—a world without a job is a strange world indeed. Rather then tell his family, every morning Charlie leaves home to spend his days at an outplacement firm, where he meets a cast of equally desperate corporate misfits. As Charlie reluctantly embarks on a journey of self-discovery, he finds out what happens when his work life is lost and his real life begins.

Humorous, poignant, and honest, The Pursuit of Other Interests offers a glimpse into the lives, hearts, and minds of the 21st-century American family.

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Description: Psychiatrist Andrew Marlowe has a perfectly ordered life—solitary, perhaps, but full of devotion to his profession and the painting hobby he loves. This order is destroyed when renowned painter Robert Oliver attacks a canvas in the National Gallery of Art and becomes his patient. In response, Marlowe finds himself going beyond his own legal and ethical boundaries to understand the secret that torments this genius, a journey that will lead him into the lives of the women closest to Robert Oliver and toward a tragedy at the heart of French Impressionism.

Ranging from American museums to the coast of Normandy, from the late nineteenth century to the late twentieth, from young love to last love, THE SWAN THIEVES is a story of obsession, the losses of history, and the power of art to preserve human hope.

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Description: He was going to lose the house and everything in it.

The rare pleasure of a bath, the copper pots hanging above the kitchen island, his family-again he would

lose his family. He stood inside the house and took stock. Everything in it had been taken for granted. How had that happened again? He had promised himself not to take anything for granted and now he couldn't recall the moment that promise had given way to the everyday.

Tim Farnsworth is a handsome, healthy man, aging with the grace of a matinee idol. His wife Jane still loves him, and for all its quiet trials, their marriage is still stronger than most. Despite long hours at the office, he remains passionate about his work, and his partnership at a prestigious Manhattan law firm means that the work he does is important. And, even as his daughter Becka retreats behind her guitar, her dreadlocks and her puppy fat, he offers her every one of a father's honest lies about her being the most beautiful girl in the world.

He loves his wife, his family, his work, his home. He loves his kitchen. And then one day he stands up and walks out. And keeps walking.

THE UNNAMED is a dazzling novel about a marriage and a family and the unseen forces of nature and desire that seem to threaten them both. It is the heartbreaking story of a life taken for granted and what happens when that life is abruptly and irrevocably taken away.

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Description: The compelling and passionate new novel from the author of As Meat Loves Salt.

1672. A generation after the Civil War, England is still struggling to return to normal after the bloody conflict which turned neighbours and families against each other.

In the village of Spadboro, Jonathan Dymond, a cider maker who lives with his parents, has so far enjoyed a quiet and harmonious life. But the death of his uncle leads Jonathan to secrets – in both his family and his village – which have lain dormant since the war.

When Jonathan discovers his dying uncle's letter to his father, hinting at inheritance and revenge, he goes to stay with his now widowed aunt, under the pretence of pressing her apples, to try to unravel the mystery wrapped around his family. His aunt, however, is hostile and reluctant to speak of the past, and Jonathan’s investigations will eventually unleash obsessions and madness that threaten the lives and happiness of Jonathan and all those he holds dear.

The Wilding is a powerful novel of family secrets, casual violence, explosive passions and love at the end of its tether.

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Description: Description:
In 1982 a young American historian arrives in Zimbabwe filled with idealism and enthusiasm for the benevolent new Prime Minister Robert Mugabe and the postcolonial new beginning for that country. His historic research leads him to an apparent murder case, unresolved since the days of the bush war. As he draws – or is lead – or yet mislead – closer to an answer, he becomes involved with a local woman through whom he soon finds himself in the inner circle of the new ruling class.

Once the euphoria starts dissipating he encounters increasingly menacing instances of corruption and repression, including threats to himself to abandon his investigation. With every new revelation a new layer of decay is exposed and with that, his idealism retreats. In the process, the meaning of the novel’s title, taken from Mugabe’s conciliatory rhetoric at the beginning, gradually comes to mean: we are all trapped and compromised into the moral tangle and the destruction into which all the promise has degenerated. An extremely accomplished and compelling novel that deftly employs the instruments of a detective thriller.


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About The Author:
JAMES KILGORE was born in Oregon and grew up in California. He graduated from the University of California Santa Barbara in 1969. Living in the politically colatile San Francisco Bay area in the early 1970s, he ran afowl of the law. As a fugitive he lived in the United States, Zimbabwe, Australia and finally South Africa, where he was arrested in November 2002. He was extradited to the United States where he served six and a half years in prison. 'We Are All Zimbabweans Now', his first novel and first publication under his real name, was written during his years of incarceration. He is married with two children.

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Description: Savannah Reid, a plus-sized amateur sleuth, is on the trail of a shady weight loss therapist in the latest of the beloved Series that wins raves with both culinary cozy fans and P.I. aficionados.
Countless weight-challenged folks have flocked to Dr. Robert Wellman’s clinics to try his popular hypnosis techniques, but most have only lighter wallets to show for it. Still, Dr. Wellman seems to have the perfect life, until his wife Maria is found dead at the bottom of a cliff—and it’s clear she didn’t go down without a fight.
Savannah is happy to help Detective Sergeant Dirk Coulter investigate Maria’s untimely death. And since Dr. Wellman appears to be the only suspect, she’s sure it’s an open-and-shut case… but appearances can be deceptive, and pound for pound, this is shaping up to be her toughest case ever.

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Description: Can a woman ever really know herself if she doesn’t know her mother?

From the author of the smash-hit bestseller Firefly Lane and True Colors comes a powerful, heartbreaking novel that illuminates the intricate mother-daughter bond and explores the enduring links between the present and the past

Meredith and Nina Whitson are as different as sisters can be. One stayed at home to raise her children and manage the family apple orchard; the other followed a dream and traveled the world to become a famous photojournalist. But when their beloved father falls ill, Meredith and Nina find themselves together again, standing alongside their cold, disapproving mother, Anya, who even now, offers no comfort to her daughters. As children, the only connection between them was the Russian fairy tale Anya sometimes told the girls at night. On his deathbed, their father extracts a promise from the women in his life: the fairy tale will be told one last time—and all the way to the end. Thus begins an unexpected journey into the truth of Anya’s life in war-torn Leningrad, more than five decades ago. Alternating between the past and present, Meredith and Nina will finally hear the singular, harrowing story of their mother’s life, and what they learn is a secret so terrible and terrifying that it will shake the very foundation of their family and change who they believe they are.

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Description: From Lisa Jackson, the #1 New York Times bestselling author of Malice, Lost Souls, and Shiver, comes a riveting thriller—her most intense to date—that goes behind the doors of an exclusive academy where the student body is disappearing one by one…
Julia “Jules” Farentino knows that her teenaged half-sister, Shaylee, has been having problems lately. But when she learns of her mother’s plan to send Shay to an elite boarding school in southern Oregon, she’s skeptical. The Academy is remote, secluded institution with a other schools fail, when one of its students went missing six months ago and has never surfaced. The further Jules digs into the school’s history, the more concerned she becomes.
On impulse, Jules applies for a teaching job at the Academy, and once there, her suspicions grow. Another student disappears, and two more commit suicide in strange circumstances…or were they murdered? Something sinister is lurking beneath the Academy’s serene façade. And uncovering the truth will mean confronting a powerful force of evil that’s willing to kill, again and again…
Gripping, fast-paced and with a shocking twist that will leave readers gasping, Without Mercy is Lisa Jackson at her brilliant best.

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Description: Acclaimed Civil War expert Clint Johnson’s scorching, thrilling, and only account of how an undercover team of Confederate officers tried to set fire to New York City on Friday, November 25, 1864… and nearly succeeded.
The only book to accurately depict Confederate officers’ plan to set fire to New York City in 1864. More than 130 years before 9/11, a group from the South planned to attack on Northern soil…and had they succeeded, would have completely changed the map of North America as we know it. With Wall Street, the New York Clearing House, import and export businesses, and docks all devastated, the former financial capital would have taken decades to rebuild.
Respected author Clint Johnson recreates with frightening detail how theses ardent young Confederate soldiers—along with prominent members of New York City society—a vivid portrait of the lives and the minds of key individuals in the Civil War.

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Description: In the spirit of Jon Krakauers’s Into the Wild, Dane Metz’s monumental and death-defying trek across the perilous Alaskan Arctic is an awe-inspiring account of sheer survival.
Driven by his calling to explore the Arctic wilderness, Dave Metz packed up his two beloved Airedale dogs, sled, fifty pounds of food, and set out on a 600-mile adventure across the Gates of Alaska national park, into one of the world’s most remote and least-traveled regions. More people have landed on the moon than have completed the daring four-month-long journey Dave Metz made across the barren, inhospitable terrain.
Metz’s world-class trek is a monumental achievement in wilderness exploration. Many nature enthusiasts share his passion for the great outdoors, but few have the survival skills and sheer will to withstand frigid nights at -20°F, isolation from human comforts, and the inevitable abject exhaustion and despair. “I don’t look back now… I move forward or starve.”
Crossing the Gates of Alaska is Metz’s candid and stunning firsthand account of his astonishing physical, mental, and spiritual feat. Along with 16 breathtaking color photos, Dave shares this epic story of survival and the personal struggles of finding the right balance between living in the real world and living free…

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Description: Based on principles from the Human Performance Institute, renowned consultant to billion-dollar corporations, Energy Every Day shows how managing energy, not time, is vital to sustained high performance. You’ll be more productive and satisfied by integrating physical activity into your routine, tweaking eating habits, and applying key tactics.

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Description: Each year millions of people venture into the world’s beautiful but unpredictable wilderness, and thousands of them encounter unexpected natural dangers and disasters. Outdoor Survival Guide provides the most practical information and everything readers need to create a sensible survival plan and be prepared for any hazardous situation.

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Description: Parenting the Children of Now is the first book of its kind that addresses the needs of parents of Indigo and Crystal children. It teaches parents how to mine for their own truth, understand their purpose in life, stop sabotaging their own and their children's lives, discover their passion, and live their truth. Each chapter offers insightful ideas and strategies, and ends with exercises for parents to do for their own development and another set of exercises to do with their children.

Unless parents are comfortable with who they are, they can't help their children be who they are meant to be — gifted beings with a message for humanity and the future of our world. This helpful book is one that parents will turn to again and again as they face struggles with their children, learn to live life to its fullest, and take pleasure in the life they are creating with their children with Dr. Meg's help.

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Description: Twelve years ago, renowned physician and author Dr. William Sears was diagnosed with cancer. He, like so many people, wanted-and needed-to take control of his health. Dr. Sears created a comprehensive, science based, head-to-toe program for living a long, fit life-and it worked. Now at the peak of health, Dr. Sears shares his program in PRIME-TIME HEALTH. This engaging and deeply informative book will motivate readers to make crucial behavior and lifestyle changes. Dr. Sears explores how to keep each body system healthy and delay those usual age-related changes.

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Description: A gripping account of the environmental crusade to save the world’s most endangered species and landscapes—the last best hope for preserving our natural home

Scientists worldwide are warning of the looming extinction of thousands of species, from tigers and polar bears to rare flowers, birds, and insects. If the destruction continues, a third of all plants and animals could disappear by 2050—and with them earth’s life-support ecosystems that provide our food, water, medicine, and natural defenses against climate change.

Now Caroline Fraser offers the first definitive account of a visionary campaign to confront this crisis: rewilding. Breathtaking in scope and ambition, rewilding aims to save species by restoring habitats, reviving migration corridors, and brokering peace between people and predators. Traveling with wildlife biologists and conservationists, Fraser reports on the vast projects that are turning Europe’s former Iron Curtain into a greenbelt, creating trans-frontier Peace Parks to renew elephant routes throughout Africa, and linking protected areas from the Yukon to Mexico and beyond.

An inspiring story of scientific discovery and grassroots action, Rewilding the World offers hope for a richer, wilder future.

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Description: Childhood memories from differing perspectives

Milbank and Mitchell, dissimilar in size and separated by more than two hundred miles, have more in common than might appear at first glance. Elsewhere in the country, they would be considered small towns, but in South Dakota, they are urban population centers. In the first half of the twentieth century, when many more South Dakotans lived on farms and ranches than do today, towns such as Milbank and Mitchell formed hubs for commerce, social activities, and culture.

Eric Fowler and Sheila Delaney looked at their communities from different viewpoints, but their childhood and young adult memories of South Dakota share common themes of life away from the farm. Fowler dealt with the hardships of a low-income, single-parent family in Milbank. Delaney experienced the wealth and occasional grandeur of Mitchell's social elite. Both found respite and youthful joy in mid-century South Dakota urban life. Despite the differences in Fowler and Delaney's circumstances, these two contrasting memoirs bring forth commonalities in the authors' early experiences of small-town life, even while they followed differing paths to adulthood.

Award-winning author and editor Molly P. Rozum is associate professor at Doane College in Crete, Nebraska. She provides the introduction for this book, drawing the two stories together.

Reader's Guide available at www.sdshspress.com

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Description: Our planet, our home, is in crisis plain and simple and this collection of quotes, poems, essays, and prayers will inspire all to actively reverse the man-made cause of global warming, stem the tide of environmental destruction, and reconnect to the good earth.

Short essays of topical interest introduce each of the eight sections of this book, and the 250 voices inside, most of them contemporary, begin to harmonize together as they seem to call out for their own canonical structure — one bounded by the ancient elements: Earth, Air, Fire, Water. This collection of voices is like a "green book of devotional hours," reminiscent of the Books of Hours medieval people used to hold in their palms. It was called "a cathedral in your hands." And like that medieval book, The Green Devotional reminds us that we are connected to something broader and wiser than ourselves.

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Description: From the author of The Healing Powers of Vinegar comes a complete guide to chocolate and its unique powers for improving health and well-being.
In recent years, modern science has confirmed what ancient civilizations believed—that chocolate, as well as being one of nature’s most versatile foods, has an abundance of medical benefits and can fight and prevent common ailments and diseases.
In this fascinating book, renowned health expert Cal Orey draws on the latest research to unwrap some surprising chocolate facts. Rich in mood-enhancing ingredients and potent antioxidants, chocolate can help boost the immune system, lower the risk of heart disease, cancer, and diabetes, plus relieve a host of ailments including depression, fatigue, pain, and PMS, and even rev up your sex life. The Healing Power of Chocolate includes dozens of health-boosting recipes, beauty treatments and home remedies that combat everything from acne to anxiety, all made with this delicious wonder food.

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Description: In the tradition of Dian Fossey and Jane Goodall, one of the only books on orangutans—on the brink of extinction—and the people who study, care for, and protect them.
The Intimate Ape is the first book to explore the current knowledge and the status of orangutans, a species threatened with extinction in their last refuge, the rain forests of Borneo and Sumatra.
Written with infectious personal passion, The Intimate Ape takes readers into orangutan’s natural habitats and discovers the complex natures of these great apes, and the dedication of the humans who care for them. Each chapter is a direct portal into the lives of individual orangutans through experiences and comments from the world’s leading orangutan scientists and conservationists. Most of the scientists were personally interviewed by author Shawn Thompson.
With never-before-published material—along with firsthand descriptions and a dramatic narrative—no other book about orangutans has the same breadth and scope in terms of the people interviewed and portrayed, and the places visited.

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Description: Full Description
What technologies do we need to solve the complex environmental, economic, social, and political challenges facing us today? As this thought-provoking book reveals, one tool for enacting change is already at our fingertips: the global network.

Consider the private domains of companies, governments, and institutions along with the public Internet: we have an immense communications network that connects billions of people in ways we never thought possible. In this book, author Sarah Sorensen clearly demonstrates why this network is the best sustainable technology available to help us tackle a wide range of problems.

If each of us represents a node on this network, then it's time we realize the potential we hold. The Sustainable Network is a call to action, urging individuals, governments, markets, and organizations to put the power of this network to good use.

* Discover how the sustainable network connects us all, with examples of how it's already effecting change
* Understand how this network magnifies the impact of even the smallest change and newest idea
* Explore the role that various market and political forces play
* Learn how the network can be improved to better address environmental, economic, and social conditions
* Get practical advice that you or your business can follow now

ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Sarah Sorensen is currently the Sr. Manager of Corporate Communications at Juniper Networks. She has spearheaded Juniper's Corporate Social Responsibility initiatives and worked on the company's corporate sustainable program, while managing Juniper's business announcements, crisis communications, public sector outreach and overall corporate message consistency across all business units. She has developed and written dozens of white papers, byline articles, and presentations on and about the networking and security industries. A graduate of UCLA (1996) where she majored in English and was a member of UCLA's Division 1 women's soccer team, she has focused her efforts in marketing, communications, and public relations for both start-ups and Fortune 500 companies.

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Description: To mark the 20th anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall, Words Without Borders and Open Letter produced this gorgeous anthology of fiction, essays, and poems about both life behind the Iron Curtain and the change, optimism, and confusion that went along with the end of Communism. This collection includes both new voices (Dan Sociu, Uwe Tellkamp, Dorota Maslowska) along with contemporary masters (Ryszard Kapuscinski, Vladimir Sorokin, Victor Pelevin), and also contains a great introduction by novelist and translator Keith Gessen.

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Description: The guru of extreme tourism sets out to face his worst fears in Africa, India, Mexico City, and—most terrifying of all—at Disney World

In the widely-acclaimed Smile When You’re Lying, Chuck Thompson laid bare the travel industry’s dirtiest secrets. Now he’s out to discover if some of the world’s most ill-reputed destinations live up to their bad raps, while confronting a few of his own travel anxieties in the process. Whether he’s traveling across the Congo with a former bodyguard from notorious dictator Joseph Mobutu’s retinue or diving into the heart of India’s monsoon season, To Hellholes and Back delivers Thompson’s trademark combination of hilarious stories and wildly provocative opinions, as well as some surprising observations about America’s evolving place in the world.

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Description: Ethnic bias against Middle Eastern Jews within Israel has far-reaching implications for the whole region.

Middle Eastern Jews from Egypt, Morocco, Iraq, Yemen, and other Arab or Muslim lands—“Mizrahis”—make up nearly half of Israel’s population. Yet European or “Ashkenazi” Jews have historically disparaged them for looking like Arabs, speaking Arabic, and bringing with them what was viewed as a “backward” Middle Eastern culture. Journalist Rachel Shabi, who was born in Israel to Iraqi Jews and grew up in England, returned to investigate the subtle discrimination and tense relations that still exist between Mizrahi and Ashkenazi Jews in Israel. She combines historical research, her own family’s story, and the heartfelt oral history of several other Mizrahis to make We Look Like the Enemy a stunning, unforgettable book.

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Description: Biblical Strategies to Help Parents Guide Teen Boys Successfully Into Manhood

What Your Son Isn't Telling You provides a rare look at the secret lives of teen boys—a world characterized by loneliness and peer fear; one in which measuring up as a man means conforming to a code of always being a tough guy, never showing weakness, and never expressing true feelings. Too many boys feel the constant pressure to prove themselves in classrooms, on playing fields, and especially among their friends. Deep inside they hunger for family support and connection—and long to be accepted by their peers. Each chapter of this must-read book is packed with real-life stories and emails from teen boys that will give parents a new understanding of what their sons aren't telling them.

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Description: Energy: It's a problem that never goes away (despite our best efforts as a nation to ignore it). Why has there been so much talk and so little action? In Who Turned Out the Lights? Scott Bittle and Jean Johnson offer a much-needed reality check: The "Drill, Baby, Drill" versus "Every Day Is Earth Day" battle is not solving our problems, and the finger-pointing is just holding us up.

Sorting through the political posturing and confusing techno-speak, they provide a fair-minded, "let's skip the jargon" explanation of the choices we face. And chapters such as "It's All Right Now (In Fact, It's a Gas)" prove that, while the problem is serious, getting a grip on it doesn't have to be. In the end, the authors present options from the right, left, and center but take just one position: The country must change the way it gets and uses energy, and the first step is to understand the choices.
In Bittle and Johnson's own words, "We’re taking the long view. We don’t know whether Congress will pass climate legislation this fall or whether there will be an agreement in Copenhagen. We don’t know what the price of gas will be next summer. What we do know is that no matter what happens in the next year or two, the United States faces an energy challenge that will take decades to solve. Tackling the problem will depend on countless decisions made in city halls and state legislatures, in corporate boardrooms and community zoning departments – not to mention what we do in our own personal lives. We believe it’s worth taking a little time to get the basics down."

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Description: In Women’s Home Workout Bible, fitness expert Brad Schoenfeld makes sense of home-based workouts. The full-color book features 12 four-week programs for conditioning, sculpting, and core stability, plus three levels of fat-burning cardio workouts. It also has consumer tips for products and space guidelines for making the most of any home gym.

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Description: In Your Business and Your Life, Dr. McCallister covers four important areas that many professionals struggle with daily:

* Time and Efficiency
* Burnout
* Management
* Marketing

More than a how-to guide, Your Business and Your Life addresses the main struggle most successful professionals’ face: The balance act between a successful professional life and a successful business life.

Is it possible to have both?

Absolutely – and Your Business Your Life will show you the way.

Dr.McCallister illustrates how to achieve both happiness in work and home by offering unique insight and day-to-day strategies. Teaching you how to find the light of new opportunities during the darkness of disasters – you will begin to experience and learn all the things you never dreamed possible.

Start living your dreams - Get your copy of Your Business and Your Life today!

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Description: Jóvenes pensando el Mediterráneo / Des jeunes pensant la Méditerraneé / Young researchers thinking the Mediterranean

La Càtedra UNESCO del Diàleg Intercultural a la Mediterrània de la Universitat Rovira i Virgili ha posat la preocupació pels joves investigadors mediterranis en el centre dels seus objectius. Per això, junt amb altres organitzacions com JISER, IDAES, IEMed i amb la col·laboració indispensable de l’AECI, va convocar la PRIMERA TROBADA DE JOVES INVESTIGADORS DE LA MEDITERRÀNIA, que va tenir lloc a Tarragona els 3 i 4 de maig de 2007.

Aquesta primera experiència va posar de manifest la necessitat dels investigadors en for- mació de l’àrea euromediterrània d’establir nexes de relació humana i científica, i de la necessitat de crear una plataforma estable que vehiculés els problemes i les ambicions d’aquest ampli col·lectiu. D’aquí va sorgir l’Associació Xarxa Euromed de Joves Investigadors i la convocatòria de la Segona Trobada de Joves Investigadors Mediterranis 2009.

En català, castellà, francès i anglès.

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Description: La internacionalització de les universitats en aquest moment històric que vivim no és un objectiu per si mateix: és la conseqüència lògica, ineludible, del procés d’harmonització de les titulacions a Europa. Les IV Jornades d’Innovació Docent a la URV han significat una important reflexió sobre aquest tema i la relació amb la imprescindible renovació de les metodologies educatives en el marc del procés de convergència a l’EEES. Posem a disposició de tota la comunitat universitària i a altres persones interessades el recull de les aportacions presentades en aquestes Jornades, per estendre la reflexió i impulsar les actituds proactives del professorat.

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Description: Estamos asistiendo a un amplio debate acerca de la utilitdad de las tecnologías de la información y la comunicación (TIC) como herramientas pedagógicas. Se suceden experiencias e investigaciones que intentan aplicar estas herramientas a la enseñanza, aunque muchas veces se cae en el error de olvidar que el acto didáctico responde a un binomio en el que también debe tenerse en cuenta el aprendizaje. Sólo considerando este binomio se contribuirá a la mejora de la calidad educativa.

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This book is an eBook, not a physical book.

Description: Book Two in Staley's sweet small-town romance series, ANGEL RIDGE, set in Angel Ridge, a quaint town in the Smokey Mountains of Tennessee. Book One: ONLY YOU, was previously featured on Early Reviewers. In "Home for Christmas" Janice, a doctor, returns to Angel Ridge never intending to stay until she falls in love with a surprising and delightful man.

Here's what reviewers and authors are saying about
A Home For Christmas:

“A Home for Christmas is a charming, heart-warming story. Janice doesn't trust anyone easily and she suddenly finds two new men in her life wanting her to trust and depend on them.

Deborah Grace Staley does an excellent job of describing both Janice and Blake's vulnerabilities. Readers can't help but understand why Janice is shy to trust and readers also can't help but root for Blake as he tries his hardest to prove to Janice that he is worthy of her trust.

A Home for Christmas is the type of book that you want to curl up with and read over and over again. I couldn't help but laugh out loud at Blake's attempts to "court" Janice and her uncle's subsequent reactions. A Home for Christmas just has an old-fashion feeling to it. Deborah Grace Staley writes the type of stories that stay with you long after you've turned the last page." Fallen Angel Reviews

“I'll be looking for more books by Deborah Grace Staley.” Roundtable Reviews

“A HOME FOR CHRISTMAS is a feel good community talk in the best tradition of storytellers like Debbie Macomber. You won't be disappointed.” Romance Junkies

“A HOME FOR CHRISTMAS is a very sweet romance with an emotionally poignant story.” The Romance Studio

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This book is an eBook, not a physical book.

Description: Once in a generation, a book comes along that transforms the business landscape. For today's business leaders, The New How redefines the way companies create strategies and win new markets.

Management gurus have always said "people matter." But those same gurus still relegate strategy to an elite set of executives with a focus on grids, frameworks, long presentations, and hierarchical approaches. Business strategy typically has been planned by corporate chiefs in annual meetings, and then dictated to managers to carry out. The New How turns that notion on its head. After many years of working with Apple, Adobe, HP, and many other companies, Nilofer Merchant discovered the secret sauce: the best way to create a winning strategy is to include employees at all levels, helping to create strategy they not only believe in, but are also equipped to implement.

In The New How, Nilofer shows today's corporate directors, executives, and managers how they can transform their traditional, top-down approach to strategy planning and execution into collaborative "stratecution" that has proven to be significantly more effective.

Enhance performance and outcomes by deflating the "air sandwich" between the execs in the boardroom and their employees

Recognize that strategy and execution are thoroughly intertwined

Understand how successful strategy is founded in effective idea selection — a pile of good ideas doesn't necessarily build good strategy

Create company strategy and link it to targeted execution, using the practical models and techniques provided

About Nilofer Merchant
Nilofer Merchant, CEO, strategist, and author, is a leading authority on creating business strategy to achieve success. She has honed her unique, collaborative approach to solving tough problems while working with and for companies like Adobe, Apple, Nokia, HP and others.

As Rubicon’s founder and CEO, Nilofer leads a distinguished team of hands-on operational veterans. Her firm works with global corporations such as Hewlett-Packard, Pinnacle, Logitech, Openwave, Symantec, among others, to create solutions to win markets.

Nilofer’s keynote presentations attract SRO crowds at business leadership events, technology expos, women’s conferences, and universities, ranging from AjaxWorld, CTIA, and PBWC, to Stanford. She’s won multiple awards for her insights on applying strategic thinking and innovation, and has been quoted or published in major business publications such as BusinessWeek, Entrepreneur, Fortune, and The Wall Street Journal.

She has earned an MBA from Santa Clara University, a BS in Economics from University of San Francisco, and is a certified by Interaction Associates as an Instructor of Facilitative Leadership.

Rough Cuts give you early access to content on cutting-edge technologies — before it's published. It lets you literally read the book as it is being written.

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