After a painful divorce and family upheaval in working-class Lake Como, New Jersey, draftswoman Jess Capodimonte Baratta flees to Carrara, Italy, where artistic ambition, and new relationships reshape her understanding of love, loyalty, and personal fulfillment.
Joan Goodwin has been obsessed with the stars for as long as she can remember. Thoughtful and reserved, Joan is content with her life as a professor of physics and astronomy at Rice University and as aunt to her precocious niece, Frances. That is, until she comes across an advertisement seeking the first women scientists to join NASA's space shuttle program. Suddenly, Joan burns to be one of the few people to go to space. Selected from a pool of thousands of applicants in the summer of 1980, Joan begins training at Houston's Johnson Space Center, alongside an exceptional group of fellow candidates: Top Gun pilot Hank Redmond and scientist John Griffin, who are kind and easygoing even when the stakes are highest; mission specialist Lydia Danes, who has worked too hard to play nice; warmhearted Donna Fitzgerald, who is navigating her own secrets; and Vanessa Ford, the magnetic and mysterious aeronautical engineer, who can fix any engine and fly any plane. As the new astronauts become unlikely friends and prepare for their first flights, Joan finds a passion and a love she never imagined. In this new light, Joan begins to question everything she thinks she knows about her place in the observable universe. Then, in December of 1984, on mission STS-LR9, it all changes in an instant.
"When the Cassidy-Shaws' autonomous minivan collides with an oncoming car, seventeen-year-old Charlie is in the driver's seat, with his father, Noah, riding shotgun. In the back seat, tweens Alice and Izzy are on their phones, while their mother, Lorelei, a world leader in the field of artificial intelligence, is absorbed in her work. Yet each family member harbors a secret, implicating them each in the accident. During a weeklong recuperation on the Chesapeake Bay, the family confronts the excruciating moral dilemmas triggered by the crash. Noah tries to hold the family together as a seemingly routine police investigation jeopardizes Charlie's future. Alice and Izzy turn strangely furtive. And Lorelei's odd behavior tugs at Noah's suspicions that there is a darker truth behind the incident -- suspicions heightened by the sudden intrusion of Daniel Monet, a tech mogul whose mysterious history with Lorelei hints at betrayal. When Charlie falls for Monet's teenaged daughter, the stakes are raised even higher in this propulsive family drama that is also a fascinating exploration of the moral responsibility and ethical consequences of AI"--
"100 accessible recipes for both sweet and savory baked goods and including some of the Sally's most beloved and popular recipes"--
"Deadwood: Gold, Guns, and Greed in the American West is the first book dedicated the story of early Deadwood. It also probes timeless subjects such as race and sex, crime and punishment, religion and recreation, and everyday life in a manner that will immerse readers in the sights, sounds, tastes, and smells of the frontier West"-- Provided by publisher.
"Con artists are everywhere-your new boyfriend or girlfriend, your new neighbor or coworker, your new friend-and they don't outsmart you; they out-feel you to get their hands on your money. In Anatomy of a Con Artist, Walton lays out "the tells" based on hundreds of real-life cases he's investigated, including: Red Flag #1-A Stranger Offering Help: Someone new and overly helpful insinuates themselves into your life. Red Flag #3-Drama, Drama, Drama: Constant dramatic "emergencies" to pull you in. Red Flag #8-Beak Wetting: Faux generosity-gifts, money, or favors to bring your guard down. After being scammed out of nearly $100,000 by a devious con artist, Walton was turned away by police. Infuriated and armed with the investigative skills he'd gained from years as a TV reporter, Walton launched his own investigation and built a compelling criminal case authorities could not ignore. Walton got his con artist charged, prosecuted, and convicted, then devoted his life to helping other victims do the same. This book packs in all he has learned. Some con artists scheme for money, some for attention, some just for the thrill of lying. And if you think it can't happen to you, then you are exactly the kind of "mark" a professional con artist is looking for. With this insightful guide in your hands, you are far less likely to get conned and far more likely to spot these nefarious manipulators from a mile away-and cross the street when you see them coming"-- Provided by publisher.
Alice Storm returns to her family's private island after five years of exile to attend her father's funeral--only to be drawn into his final, twisted game: a week-long inheritance challenge. Trapped with her dysfunctional family, old wounds, and the enigmatic Jack Dean, Alice must survive secrets, rivalries, and manipulation to claim her legacy--and her freedom.
"Back then, when I was a young woman, there were still witches": That was how Nana Alba always began the stories she told her great-granddaughter Minerva—stories that have stayed with Minerva all her life. Perhaps that’s why Minerva has become a graduate student focused on the history of horror literature and is researching the life of Beatrice Tremblay, an obscure author of macabre tales. In the course of assembling her thesis, Minerva uncovers information that reveals that Tremblay’s most famous novel, The Vanishing, was inspired by a true story: Decades earlier, during the Great Depression, Tremblay attended the same university where Minerva is now studying and became obsessed with her beautiful and otherworldly roommate, who then disappeared under mysterious circumstances. As Minerva descends ever deeper into Tremblay’s manuscript, she begins to sense that the malign force that stalked Tremblay and the missing girl might still walk the halls of the campus. These disturbing events also echo the stories Nana Alba told about her girlhood in 1900s Mexico, where she had a terrifying encounter with a witch. Minerva suspects that the same shadow that darkened the lives of her great-grandmother and Beatrice Tremblay is now threatening her own in 1990s Massachusetts. An academic career can be a punishing pursuit, but it might turn outright deadly when witchcraft is involved. --
A few weeks after the 2016 election, at Thanksgiving with his daughter and her belligerent new husband, Rhys Kinnick finally snapped. After an escalating fight about politics, he hauled off and punched the jerk. Immediately horrified by what he'd done, by the state of the world around him, and by his own spiraling mental health, Rhys chucked his smartphone out the car window and fled for a remote cabin in the woods of the Pacific Northwest. Seven years later, when his grandchildren show up on his doorstep, Rhys barely recognizes them. Their mother has disappeared, and they need a safer place to stay than with their father, who has taken up with a Christian Nationalist militia. So what if Rhys’s cabin has no electricity or indoor plumbing, and the raccoons help themselves to the monthly grocery haul? He'll do whatever he needs to for these sweet kids. But when the militia members show up and kidnap the children, Rhys realizes he'll have to re-enter the broken world. With the help of a bipolar retired detective and his caustic ex-girlfriend, Rhys reluctantly heads off on a madcap journey through the rubble of the life he left behind.
"The riveting story of a 1985 double murder, a long-overdue investigation, and the fight to exonerate an innocent man. In 1985, a white man walked into a South Georgia church and brutally murdered Harold and Thelma Swain, two pillars of the area's Black community. The killer vanished into the night. For fifteen years, the case remained unsolved. Then authorities zeroed in on Dennis Perry, a carpenter who grew up nearby. Convicted with devastatingly flawed evidence, Perry received a double life sentence. When award-winning journalist and South Georgia native Joshua Sharpe retraces the case, he discovers a winding path of corruption, devastating missteps, and secrets. Driven by the pursuit of the truth, Sharpe's investigation takes him through dusty courthouse archives, down winding dirt roads, and into intense interviews. But he keeps knocking on doors--even after they're slammed in his face. Sharpe uncovers explosive evidence that helps prove Dennis Perry's innocence. And he confronts a long-ignored suspect: an alleged white supremacist who had bragged about committing the murders" --
"Alice Law has only ever had one goal: to become one of the brightest minds in the field of Magick. She has sacrificed everything to make that a reality: her pride, her health, her love life, and most definitely her sanity. All to work with Professor Jacob Grimes at Cambridge, the greatest magician in the world. That is, until he dies in a magical accident that could possibly be her fault. Grimes is now in Hell, and she's going in after him. Because his recommendation could hold her very future in his now incorporeal hands and even death is not going to stop the pursuit of her dreams.... Nor will the fact that her rival, Peter Murdoch, has come to the very same conclusion. With nothing but the tales of Orpheus and Dante to guide them, enough chalk to draw the Pentagrams necessary for their spells, and the burning desire to make all the academic trauma mean anything, they set off across Hell to save a man they don't even like. But Hell is not like the storybooks say, Magick isn't always the answer, and there's something in Alice and Peter's past that could forge them into the perfect allies...or lead to their doom"--
"Native America presents an infinitely surprising and fascinating deep history of the continent's Indigenous peoples. Kenneth Feder, a leading expert on Native American history and archaeology, draws on archaeological, historical, and cultural evidence to tell the ongoing story, more than 20,000 years in the making, of an incredibly resilient and diverse mixture of peoples, revealing how they have ingeniously adapted to the many changing environments of the continent, from the Arctic to the desert Southwest. Richly illustrated, Native America introduces close to a hundred different peoples, each with their own language, economic and social system, and religious beliefs. Here, we meet the Pequot, Tunxis, Iroquois, and Huron of the Northeast; the Navajo, Hopi, Zuni, and Apache of the Southwest; the Hidatsa, Mandan, and Lakota of the Northern Plains; the Haida, Kwakiutl, Nootka, and Salish of the Northwest Coast; the Tule River and Mohave of Southern California; the Cherokee, Creek, and Seminole of the Southeast; and the Inuit and Kalaallit of the Arctic. We learn about hunters of enormous Ice Age beasts; people who raised stone toolmaking to the level of art; a Native American empire ruled by a king and queen, with a huge city at its center and colonies hundreds of miles away; a society that made the desert bloom by designing complex irrigation networks; brilliant architects who built fairy castles in sandstone cliffs; and artists who produced beautiful and moving petroglyphs and pictographs that reflect their deep thinking about history, the sacred, the land, and the sky. Native America is not about peoples of the past, but vibrant, living ones with an epic history of genius and tenacity--a history that everyone should know"--
When Ali McCain, an eighteen-year-old from Los Angeles, is accepted at Oxford, it's a chance to fulfill his dreams. To study English literature in England; to meet true intellectuals; and to glimpse the life he might have lived had his father--British rock star Gel McCain, legendary frontman of the Pale Fires--not abandoned him and his mother when he was a toddler. But not long after he arrives at the storied campus, Ali is drawn into a dark, disorienting world where events grow more and more curious by the day. Trading on his father's name, he gains entry into one of Oxford's oldest and most selective secret societies, the Saracens. As he immerses himself in this rarefied world, he inadvertently sets in motion a series of events that might culminate in disaster.
In the sleepy coastal town of New Castle, New Hampshire, seventeen-year-old Billy Hasler's life is about to take a terrifying turn. When his best friend David Spivey inherits a mysterious house on a nearby island, it seems like the perfect place to spend their final summer before heading off to college. No parents. No police. No responsibilities. As they dig into the island's dark past, they awaken an ancient evil that has influenced generations. What begins as an innocent summer adventure quickly descends into a nightmare. --Amazon.com.
"In this electric horror novella from the author of The Insatiable Volt Sisters, an exhausted mother thinks her newborn might be a monster. She's right. Thea's third pregnancy was her easiest. She wasn't consumed with anxiety about the baby. She wasn't convinced it was going to be born green, or have a third eye, or have tentacles sprouting from its torso. Thea was fine. The baby would be fine. Then they handed Lucia to her, and Thea knew. Not only was Lucia born with a full set of teeth and a devilish glint in her eye, but she is always hungry. Indiscriminately so. Thea learns quickly that she needs to keep Lucia away from the chickens and watch her closely around her baby brother. Thea doesn't know whether to be terrified or proud of her rapacious baby girl. But Lucia's rapid growth starts to bring dark memories to the surface. Flashes from Thea's childhood that won't release their hooks from her heart. Lucia wants to eat. Thea might just let her"--
"On the occasion of her daughter Valerie's wedding and her upcoming fiftieth birthday, bestselling author Halley Holbrook finds herself reflecting. Raising twins Valerie and Olivia is her proudest accomplishment. Halley has been able to give them the loving and safe home she never had, having survived a childhood so traumatic she's never talked about it with her girls. Long ago, Halley decided to live in the sunlight of the present, not the dark shadows of the past. After Valerie moves to Los Angeles with her producer husband, and Olivia follows to remain close to her sister, Halley is empty-nesting in her Fifth Avenue apartment. Facing her first holiday alone in years, she books a trip to Paris. On the flight over, she meets charming Bart Warner, and the two become fast friends. Halley hasn't dated since her partner died three years ago, yet she quickly begins to feel more like herself. But when a cunning thief makes off with her handbag and then begins to harass her, it reawakens old ghosts from her past. Vowing not to be a victim, and with Bart's help, she chooses a bold course of action." --
"The epic of the American West became a tale of progress, redemption, and glorious conquest that came to shape the identity of a new nation. Over time a darker story emerged--one of ghastly violence and environmental spoliation that stained this identity. The Undiscovered Country strips away the layers of myth to reveal the true story of this first epoch of American history. From the forests of Pennsylvania and Kentucky to the snow-crested California Sierras, and from the harsh deserts of the Southwest to the buffalo range of the Great Plains, Paul Andrew Hutton masterfully chronicles a story that defined America and its people. From Braddock's 1755 defeat to the 1890 Wounded Knee massacre, he unfolds a grand narrative steeped in romantic impulses and tragic consequences. Hutton uses seven main protagonists--Daniel Boone, Red Eagle, Davy Crockett, Mangas Coloradas, Kit Carson, Sitting Bull, and William "Buffalo Bill" Cody--as the biographical threads by which to weave a tapestry across seven generations, revealing a story of heroic conquest and dark tragedy, of sacrifice and greed, and of man-made wonders and environmental ruin. The American frontier movement has proven eternally fascinating around the world--the subject of countless books, paintings, poems, television shows, and films. The Undiscovered Country reveals the truth behind America's great creation myth"--
"When you live on a tiny island, it's easy to stir up a scandal... For Callum Macabe, there's no one better than Juniper Ross. She's razor-tongued, sarcastic, elusive. And not to mention drop-dead gorgeous. There's just one problem: his brother got there first. And even though Juniper and Alistair split up five years ago, Callum knows he could never break the actual bro code. Or could he?"--
"A woman takes a job at a secretive French garden to avoid reminders of children; there she meets a mysterious girl needing help. This debut adult novel blends the charm of The Secret Garden and magic realism of Where the Forest Meets the Stars."--
"Laura McElroy of the embroidery business Cat & Magpie shares her favorite whimsical and adorable designs for celebrating spooky season ... Laura also shares creative tricks and tips on getting started with embroidery and insider secrets about how she creates her colorful designs"--Page 4 of cover.
"An apparent suicide in a London townhouse uncannily mirrors a similar incident from twenty-five years ago, prompting Scotland Yard's George Flint to delve deep into the past in search of the solution to a long-forgotten mystery. Meanwhile, Joseph Spector travels with a coach party through the rainy English countryside to visit an allegedly haunted house on a lonely island called Devil's Neck. The house, first built by a notorious alchemist and occultist, was later used as a field hospital in the First World War before falling into disrepair. The visitors hold a seance to conjure the spirit of a long-dead soldier. But when a storm floods the narrow causeway connecting Devil's Neck to the mainland, they find themselves stranded in the haunted house. Before long, the guests begin to die one by one, and it seems that the only possible culprit is the phantom soldier. Flint's and Spector's investigations are in fact closely linked, but it is only when the duo are reunited at the storm-lashed Devil's Neck that the truth is finally revealed. Tom Mead once again creates a brilliant homage to John Dickson Carr and the Golden Age of mysteries with this intricately plotted puzzle"--
A mother and daughter in hiding are threatened by more than secrets and lies in a twisting novel of paranoia, revenge, and psychological suspense by bestselling author Douglas Corleone. For two years, Kati Dawes and her teenage daughter, Zoe, have lived off the grid in Hawaii, hiding from a past Kati must forget as if her life depends on it. New names. Anonymous online presence. So far, safe. Until Kati's fiancé, attorney Eddie Akana, disappears along a popular hiking trail in a Maui national park. Now all eyes are on Kati. Exposure can make a woman with so many secrets very paranoid. Eddie's law partner, Noah Walker, is doing everything he can to protect his new client from the press that's hovering like a vulture and the authorities whose suspicions about Kati--and the disappearance--are rising. Then suddenly, Zoe goes missing as well. Kati will risk anything to find her. But the worst is still to come. Because Kati's not the only one with secrets. And buried among them is a twist she never saw coming.
"Brent Walker is returning home to Concord, a quaint town in central Georgia nestled close to the Savannah River. Ten years ago, after the sudden death of his wife, Brent closed his law practice, said goodbye to his parents, and moved three hundred miles away to a self-imposed exile. His father died two years ago, and now Brent's coming back to take care of his ailing mother, hired by Southern Republic Pulp and Paper Company as an assistant general counsel. For decades Southern Republic has invested heavily in Concord, building a paper mill and creating a thriving community, one where its employees live, work, and retire. Unlike countless other mills that have closed Southern Republic survived, becoming a model for the paper industry. But Southern Republic's success is based largely on something called the Priority program, a highly unorthodox way to secretly control costs, one that provides a huge edge over its competition. Only the three owners of the company are aware of the program's existence, but one of them, Christopher Bozin, has had a change of heart. Brent's return to Concord, a move Bozin personally orchestrated, provides a chance at redemption that Bozin desperately wants before cancer takes his life. So a plan is set into motion-one that will not only criminally implicate Bozin's two partners-it will also place Brent Walker right in the crosshairs of men who want him dead. With only one course left available: Find and reveal the shocking secret of the list." —publisher.
"Welcome to the Poppy Fields, where there's hope for even the most battered hearts to heal. Here, in a remote stretch of the California desert, lies an experimental and controversial treatment center that allows those suffering from the heartache of loss to sleep through their pain... and keep on sleeping. After patients awaken from this prolonged state of slumber, they will finally be healed. But only if they're willing to accept the potential shadowy side effects. On a journey to this mystical destination are four very different strangers and one little dog: Ava, a book illustrator; Ray, a fireman; Sasha, an occupational therapist; Sky, a free spirit; and a friendly pup named PJ. As they attempt to make their way from the Midwest all the way to the Poppy Fields--where they hope to find Ellis, its brilliant, enigmatic founder--each of their past secrets and mysterious motivations threaten to derail their voyage."--