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I Never Promised You a Goodie Bag
I Never Promised You a Goodie Bag
Gilbert, Jennifer
¥83.03
When Jennifer Gilbert was just a year out of college, a twenty-two-year-old fresh-faced young woman looking forward to a bright future, someone tried to cut her life short in the most violent way. But she survived, and not wanting this traumatic event to define her life, she buried it deep within and never spoke of it again. She bravely launched a fabulous career in New York as an event planner, designing lavish parties and fairy-tale weddings. Determined to help others celebrate and enjoy life's greatest moments, she was convinced she'd never again feel joy herself. Yet it was these weddings, anniversaries, and holiday parties, showered with all her love and attention through those silent, scary years, that slowly brought her back to life. Always the calm in the event-planning storm she could fix a ripped wedding dress, solve the problem of an undelivered wedding cake in the nick of time, and move a party with two days' notice when disaster struck there was no crisis that she couldn't turn into a professional triumph. Somewhere along the way, she felt a stirring in her heart and began yearning for more than just standing on the sidelines living vicariously through other people's lives. She fell in love, had her heart broken a few times, and then one day she found true love in a place so surprising that it literally knocked her out of her chair. As Gilbert learned over and over again, no one's entitled to an easy road, and some people's roads are bumpier than others. But survive each twist and turn she does sometimes with tears, sometimes with laughter, and often with both. Warm, wise, alternately painful and funny, I Never Promised You a Goodie Bag is an inspiring memoir of survival, renewal, and transformation. It's a tale about learning to let go and be happy after years of faking it, proving that while we can't always control what happens to us, we can control who we become. And instead of anticipating our present in a goodie bag at the end of an event, we realize our presence at every event is the real gift.
The Anti-Romantic Child
The Anti-Romantic Child
Gilman, Priscilla
¥83.03
Priscilla Gilman had the greatest expectations for the birth of her first child. Growing up in New York among writers and artists, Gilman experienced childhood as a whirlwind of imagination and creative play. Later, as a student and scholar of Wordsworth, she embraced the poet's romantic view of children and eagerly anticipated her son's birth, certain that he, too, would come "trailing clouds of glory." But her romantic vision would not be fulfilled in the ways she dreamed. Though Benjamin was an extraordinary child, the signs of his remarkable precocity were also manifestations of a developmental disorder that would require intensive therapies and special schooling, and would dramatically alter the course Priscilla had imagined for her family.In The Anti-Romantic Child, a memoir full of lyricism and light, Gilman explores the complexity of our hopes for our children, our families, and ourselves, and the ways in which experience can lead us to reimagine those hopes and expectations. Using Wordsworth's poetry as a touchstone, she speaks intimately of her poignant journey through crisis and disenchantment to a place of peace and resilience. Gilman illuminates the flourishing of life that occurs when we embrace the unexpected, and shows how events and situations often perceived as setbacks can actually enrich us. The Anti-Romantic Child is a courageous and inspiring synthesis of memoir and literature, one that resonates long after you finish the last page.The Anti-Romantic Child, Gilman's first book, was excerpted in Newsweek magazine and featured on the cover of its international edition in April 2011. It was an NPR Morning Edition Must-Read, Slate's Book of the Week, selected as one the Best Books of 2011 by the Leonard Lopate Show, and chosen as a Best Book of 2011 by The Chicago Tribune. The Anti-Romantic Child was one of five nominees for a Books for a Better Life Award for Best First Book.
The Astor Orphan
The Astor Orphan
Aldrich, Alexandra
¥83.03
Alexandra Aldrich, a direct descendant of the famous Astor dynasty, grew up in the servants' quarters of Rokeby, the forty-three-room Hudson Valley mansion built by her ancestors. Her childhood was one of bohemian neglect and real privation. But it was fairly stable until the summer of her tenth year, when her father took up with an alluring interloper, Giselle.Alexandra idolized her father, Rokeby's charismatic lord of misrule, who had attended elite private schools as a child but inherited only landed property, not money. To him, she says, "poverty was amusing, a delightful challenge." All of the family's resources emotional and financial went to the maintenance of the Astor house and legacy. If the family had sold the house and its 450 acres, they all would have been able to live comfortably. Instead, Alexandra and her parents lived precariously in the grand house, scavenging for the next meal. Her mother, an icy Polish artist, disguised her maternal indifference by extolling the virtues of independence. Relatives preyed on Alexandra's low status in the household. Once her father got involved with Giselle, Alexandra's only stalwart was her affectionate grandmother (whose great-great-grandfather, Nicholas Fish, was a close friend of Alexander Hamilton's and an executor of his estate). Grandma Claire held Alexandra's life together with family dinner parties, rides to violin lessons, and snacks after school. But as she grew progressively more debilitated by alcohol, she soon became too frail to provide a safe haven for her granddaughter. Determined to impose order on her anarchic world and prove her worth, Alexandra awoke promptly at six thirty each morning, adhering to a strict personal regimen of exercise, grooming, and intensive violin practice. With money borrowed from the owner of the local gas station, she did the grocery shopping, occasionally setting aside four dollars to buy herself clean white socks. The betrayal of her father's flagrant affair, however, ignited a series of familial feuds that shook her hard-won stability and set her on a path toward escaping the Astor legacy.Reaching back to the Gilded Age, when that legacy first began to come undone, Alexandra has written an unflinching, mordantly funny account of neglect and class anxiety amid the ruins of a once prominent family. More than an insider's look at a decaying American institution, The Astor Orphan is the debut of a thrilling new voice able to render the secret pains and glories of childhood afresh.
The Wedding Bees
The Wedding Bees
Lynch, Sarah-Kate
¥83.03
Sugar Wallace did not believe in love at first sight, but her bees did. . . . Every spring Sugar Wallace coaxes her sleepy honeybee queen—presently the sixth in a long line of Queen Elizabeths—out of the hive and lets her crawl around a treasured old map. Wherever the queen stops is their next destination, and this year it's New York City. Sugar sets up her honeybees on the balcony of an East Village walk-up and then––as she's done everywhere since leaving South Carolina––she gets to know her neighbors. She is, after all, a former debutante who believes that manners make the world a better place even if they seem currently lacking in the big city. Plus, she has a knack for helping people. There's Ruby with her scrapbook of wedding announcements; single mom Lola; reclusive chef Nate; and George, a courtly ex-doorman. They may not know what to make of her bees and her politeness, but they can't deny the magic in her honey. And then there's Theo, a delightfully kind Scotsman who crosses Sugar's path as soon as she gets into town and is quickly besotted. But love is not on the menu for Sugar. She likes the strong independent woman she's become since leaving the South and there's nothing a charmer like Theo can do to change her mind . . . only her bees can do that. The Wedding Bees is a novel about finding sweetness where you least expect it and learning to love your way home.
The Witch Doctor's Wife
The Witch Doctor's Wife
Myers, Tamar
¥83.03
From beloved mystery writer Tamar Myers comes an enthralling tale of duty, greed, danger, and miracles in equatorial Africa.The Congo beckons to young Amanda Brown in 1958, as she follows her missionary calling to the mysterious "dark continent" far from her South Carolina home. But her enthusiasm cannot cushion her from the shock of a very foreign culture—where competing missionaries are as plentiful as flies, and oppressive European overlords are busy stripping the land of its most valuable resource: diamonds. Little by little, Amanda is drawn into the lives of the villagers in tiny Belle Vue—and she is touched by the plight of the local witch doctor, a man known as Their Death, who has been forced to take a second job as a yardman to support his two wives. But when First Wife stumbles upon an impossibly enormous uncut gem, events are set in motion that threaten to devastate the lives of these people Amanda has come to admire and love—events that could lead to nothing less than murder.Richly evocative, written with warmth and humor, and based on the author's own experiences, Tamar Myers's The Witch Doctor's Wife is an unforgettable African journey with a spellbinding mystery at its heart.
Thanks for the Memories
Thanks for the Memories
Ahern, Cecelia
¥83.03
New York Times bestselling author Cecelia Ahern's charming new novel explores what happens when "what if" becomes a reality for two strangers whose lives are at a crossroads.How can you know someone you've never metThat's the question haunting Joyce Conway these days. Recovering from a terrible accident and with her marriage in pieces, Joyce is suddenly plagued by an overwhelming sense of déjà vu that makes her feel as if the life she's living is not her own. During the day she has vivid memories of things she's never seen—such as cobblestoned Parisian streets she's never visited—and at night she dreams of a little girl she's sure she's never met. Joyce is convinced she's lost her mind . . . until a series of coincidences leads her on a journey to meet the one person who may hold the answer she needs.Someone's life could be depending on you right now. . . . That's the pitch that finally persuades Justin Hitchcock to donate blood—the first thing to come straight from his heart in a long time.Restless and lonely, Justin chased his ex-wife and daughter from Chicago to London, and now he's in Dublin, guest-lecturing to bored college students. When he receives a basket of muffins with a thank-you note attached, he's sure someone's playing a joke on him, but then the presents keep coming. Intrigued, Justin is determined to solve the mystery—a quest that will change his life forever.Thanks for the Memories is a heartwarming story of hope, love, and second chances—Cecelia Ahern's most magical novel yet.
Egypt
Egypt
Drake, Nick
¥83.03
The future of Egypt lies in the hands of chief detective Rahotep in this final installment of Nick Drake’s acclaimed ancient Egyptian trilogy.King Tutankhamun has died without an heir, and his young widow, Queen Ankhesenamun, last of her dynasty, struggles to maintain power and order. To defeat her enemies, she has but one hope: to forge an alliance with the Hittites, a powerful, militant new empire that threatens Egypt’s supremacy.The loyal Rahotep, chief detective of the Thebes Medjay—the ancient capital’s elite police force—and his friend, the royal envoy Nakht, are sent on a clandestine mission to the Hittite homeland, to persuade the king to agree to a marriage between one of his sons and Ankhesenamun—a union that would bring peace to the region and consolidate the queen’s power.Back in Egypt, the nefarious General Horemheb is poised to use his army to impose martial law and destroy the dynasty. But he is not the only enemy vying for control. A mysterious and brutal new opium cartel has emerged within the criminal underworld of Thebes, ready to take over the lucrative black market—and, ultimately, the very heart of the government. In this epic quest to the dark heart of the ancient world, Rahotep must also confront his own demons if he is to prevent the gathering forces of chaos from destroying Egypt’s greatest dynasty, and to return home in time to save his own family from the terror that threatens them all.Based on a true story and meticulously researched, Egypt: The Book of Chaos brings to life the ancient world and the cradle of civilization in a riveting, suspenseful finale to Nick Drake’s acclaimed trilogy.
So Pretty It Hurts
So Pretty It Hurts
White, Kate
¥83.03
At long last, the New York Times bestselling author of The Sixes and the editor-in-chief of Cosmopolitan brings back the sassy crime writer turned amateur sleuth Bailey Weggins in an addictive story involving the mysterious death of a supermodel. Bailey Weggins, the Manhattan-based thirtysomething true-crime journalist, is in a good place. She's enjoying her regular gig at Buzz, a leading celebrity magazine, getting freelance work, and hoping her first book will garner attention. In the love department, she's finally back in the game with her recently-turned-exclusive boyfriend, Beau Regan. When Beau heads out of town one early December weekend, Bailey accepts an invitation from her office friend Jessie to a music mogul's house in the country, hoping for a fun, relaxing getaway. But a weird tension settles over the houseguests—a glamorous crowd that includes the famously thin supermodel Devon Barr. An impending snowstorm only adds to the unease. So when Devon's lifeless body is found in her bed, Bailey immediately suspects foul play: she can't stop thinking of the day before, when a frightened Devon shivered in the woods and pleaded, "I have to get out of here. . . . It's not safe for me." When Bailey starts to nose around, she finds herself a moving target—running closer to the truth and straight into danger. With her trademark irreverent wit, Bailey is a heroine who keeps us laughing while on the edge of our seats. New and longtime fans alike will devour this eagerly awaited mystery.
The Driver
The Driver
Roy, Alexander
¥83.03
The riveting memoir of a life lived at the right-hand edge of the speedometer. Alex Roy's father, while on his deathbed, hints about the notorious, utterly illegal cross-country drive from Los Angeles to New York of the 1970s, which then inspired his young son to enter the mysterious world of underground road rallies. Tantalized by the legend of the Driver the anonymous, possibly nonexistent organizer of the world's ultimate secret race Roy set out to become a force to be reckoned with. At speeds approaching 200 mph, he sped from London to Morocco, from Budapest to Rome, from San Francisco to Miami, in his highly modified BMW M5, culminating in a new record for the infamous Los Angeles to New York run: 32:07.Sexy, funny, and shocking, The Driver is a never-before-told insider's look at an unbelievably fast and dangerous society that has long been off-limits to ordinary mortals.
The Mozart Effect
The Mozart Effect
Campbell, Don
¥83.03
Anyone who has ever seen a two-year-old start bouncing to a beat knows that music speaks to us on a very deep level. But it took celebrated teacher and music visionary Don Campbell to show us just how deep, with his landmark book The Mozart Effect.Stimulating, authoritative, and often lyrical, The Mozart Effect has a simple but life-changing message: music is medicine for the body, the mind, and the soul. Campbell shows how modern science has begun to confirm this ancient wisdom, finding evidence that listening to certain types of music can improve the quality of life in almost every respect. Here are dramatic accounts of how music is used to deal with everything from anxiety to cancer, high blood pressure, chronic pain, dyslexia, and even mental illness.Always clear and compelling, Campbell recommends more than two dozen specific, easy-to-follow exercises to raise your spatial IQ, "sound away" pain, boost creativity, and make the spirit sing!
Raven Stole the Moon
Raven Stole the Moon
Stein, Garth
¥83.03
From the author of the acclaimed New York Times bestseller The Art of Racing in the Rain comes an extraordinary tale of grief, devotion, redemption, and timeless mystery.When Jenna Rosen abandons her comfortable Seattle life to visit Wrangell, Alaska, it's a wrenching return to her past. The hometown of her Native American grandmother, Wrangell is located near the Thunder Bay Resort, where Jenna's young son, Bobby, disappeared two years before. His body was never recovered, and Jenna is determined to lay to rest the aching mystery of his death. But whispers of ancient legends begin to suggest a frightening new possibility about Bobby's fate, and Jenna must sift through the beliefs of her ancestors, the Tlingit, who still tell of powerful, menacing forces at work in the Alaskan wilderness. Armed with nothing but a mother's protective instincts, Jenna's quest for the truth behind her son's disappearance is about to pull her into a terrifying and life-changing abyss.
The Third Child
The Third Child
Piercy, Marge
¥83.03
Under her mother's constant scrutiny and lost in the shadow of her famous senator father, Melissa is the third child in the politically prominent Dickenson family, where ambition comes first and Melissa often comes last. In college, she meets Blake, a man of mixed race and apparently unknown parentage. His adoptive parents are lawyers whose defense of death-row cases in the past brought them head-to-head with Melissa's father when he was the governor of Pennsylvania.While Melissa and Blake's attraction is immediate and fiery, a dangerous secret lurks beneath their relationship -- one that could destroy them ... and their families.Provocative and beautifully written, and dealing with themes of love, honesty, identity, and the consequences of ambition, The Third Child is a remarkable page-turner.
The Color of Lightning
The Color of Lightning
Jiles, Paulette
¥83.03
In 1863, the War Between the States creeps slowly yet inevitably toward its bloody conclusion—and eastern thoughts are already turning to different wars and enemies. Searching for a life and future, former Kentucky slave Britt Johnson is venturing west into unknown territory with his wife, Mary, and their three children—wary but undeterred by sobering tales of atrocities inflicted upon those who trespass against the Comanche and the Kiowa. Settling on the Texas plains, the Johnson family hopes to build on the dreams that carried them from the Confederate South to this new land of possibility—dreams that are abruptly shattered by a brutal Indian raid upon the settlement while Britt is away establishing a business. Returning to face the unthinkable—his friends and neighbors slain or captured, his eldest son dead, his beloved Mary severely damaged and enslaved, and his remaining children absorbed into an alien society that will never relinquish its hold on them—the heartsick freedman vows not to rest until his family is whole again.Samuel Hammond follows a different road west. A Quaker whose fortune is destroyed by a capricious act of an inscrutable God, he has resigned himself to the role the Deity has chosen for him. As a new agent for the Office of Indian Affairs, it is Hammond's goal to ferret out corruption and win justice for the noble natives now in his charge. But the proud, stubborn people refuse to cease their raids, free their prisoners, and accept the farming implements and lifestyle the white man would foist upon them, adding fuel to smoldering tensions that threaten to turn a man of peace, faith, and reason onto a course of terrible retribution.A soaring work of the imagination based on oral histories of the post–Civil War years in North Texas, Paulette Jiles's The Color of Lightning is at once an intimate look into the hearts and hopes of tragically flawed human beings and a courageous reexamination of a dark American history.
What Looks Like Crazy On an Ordinary Day
What Looks Like Crazy On an Ordinary Day
Cleage, Pearl
¥83.03
After a decade of elegant pleasures and luxe living with the Atlanta brothers and sisters with the best clothes and biggest dreams, Ava Johnson has temporarily returned home to Idlewild—her fabulous career and power plans smashed to bits by cold reality. But what she imagines to be the end is, instead, a beginning. Because, in the ten-plus years since Ava left, all the problems of the big city have come to roost in the sleepy North Michigan community whose ordinariness once drove her away; and she cannot turn her back on friends and family who sorely need her in the face of impending trouble and tragedy. Besides which, that one unthinkable, unmistakable thing is now happening to her: Ava Johnson is falling in love.Acclaimed playwright, essayist, New York Times bestselling author, and columnist Pearl Cleage has created a world rich in character, human drama, and deep, compassionate understanding, in a remarkable novel that sizzles with sensuality, hums with gritty truth, and sings and crackles with life-affirming energy.
Together Alone
Together Alone
Delinsky, Barbara
¥83.03
New York Times bestselling author Barbara Delinsky weaves a stunning and intricate tapestry of life, love, and acceptance.With their daughters off to college, the time has come for forever best friends Emily, Kay, and Celeste to redefine themselves as women. Once half of a perfect marriage—still suffering from a terrible loss—Emily hardly knows her workaholic husband, Doug, anymore, and is drawn instead to what is offered by a new neighbor. A dedicated teacher who loves her job, Kay is confused and troubled by husband John's unfamiliar demands. And Celeste, long-divorced and ecstatic with freedom, sees her electric new life dimmed when her child is endangered.As the three friends struggle to navigate this uncharted territory, they find themselves redefining their dreams, desires, and what it means—to each of them—to be a woman. But before they can bring about change, they must learn the hardest lesson of all: how to love themselves.
The Last Place
The Last Place
Lippman, Laura
¥83.03
Five lives in the Baltimore area have been brutally destroyed over the past six years -- five unsolved homicides, seemingly unconnected except for the suspicion that each death was the result of domestic violence. In hot legal water -- and court-ordered therapy -- Tess Monaghan accepts an assignment with a local nonprofit organization, agreeing to review police documents on each case for inconsistencies and investigative blunders. But curiosity is leading the disgraced P.I. off the paper trail as she follows scant leads and intuitions into the most remote corners of Maryland -- where a psychopath can hide as easily in the fabric of a tiny fishing community as in the alleys and shadows of Charm City. Because a single common thread to five senseless murders is beginning to emerge with shocking clarity to tie the loose ends together into one bloody knot -- and the link is Tess Monaghan herself.
Queen of Babble Gets Hitched
Queen of Babble Gets Hitched
Cabot, Meg
¥83.03
Big Mouth, Big Heart, Big City . . . Big ProblemsThings are looking up at last for Lizzie Nichols. She has a career she loves in the field of her choice (wedding gown restoration), and the love of her life, Jean-Luc, has finally proposed. Life's become a dizzying whirl of wedding gown fittings—not necessarily her own—as Lizzie prepares for her dream wedding at her fiancé's ch?teau in the south of France. But the dream soon becomes a nightmare when the best man—whom Lizzie might once have accidentally slept with...no, really, just slept—announces his total lack of support for the couple, a sentiment seconded by the maid of honor; Lizzie's Midwestern family can't understand why she doesn't want to have her wedding in the family backyard; her future French in-laws are trying to lure the groom back into investment banking; and Lizzie finds herself wondering if her Prince Charming really is as charming as she once believed.
The Thirteen
The Thirteen
Moloney, Susie
¥83.03
Haven Woods is suburban heaven, a great place to raise a family. It's close to the city, quiet, with great schools and its own hospital right up the road. Property values are climbing, and the crime rate is practically nonexistent. Paula Wittmore hasn't been back to Haven Woods since she left as a disgraced teenager. Now she's returning to care for her suddenly ailing mother, and she's bringing her daughter and a pile of emotional baggage. She's also bringing, unknowingly, the last chance for her mother's closest frenemies . . . twelve women bound together by a powerful secret that requires the sacrifice of a thirteenth.
Help for the Haunted
Help for the Haunted
Searles, John
¥83.03
It begins with a call one snowy February night. Lying in her bed, young Sylvie Mason overhears her parents on the phone across the hall. This is not the first late-night call they have received, since her mother and father have an uncommon occupation: helping "haunted souls" find peace. And yet something in Sylvie senses that this call is different from the others, especially when they are lured to the old church on the outskirts of town. Once there, her parents disappear, one after the other, behind the church's red door, leaving Sylvie alone in the car. Not long after, she drifts off to sleep, only to wake to the sound of gunfire.As the story weaves back and forth through the years leading up to that night and the months following, the ever-inquisitive Sylvie searches for answers and uncovers secrets that have haunted her family for years.Capturing the vivid eeriness of Stephen King's works and the quirky tenderness of John Irving's novels, Help for the Haunted is told in the captivating voice of a young heroine who is determined to discover the truth about what happened on that winter night.
Dark Tide
Dark Tide
Haynes, Elizabeth
¥83.03
From the author of the acclaimed New York Times bestseller Into the Darkest Corner comes another page-turning novel of "gripping suspense" (Wall Street Journal).Genevieve has finally escaped the stressful demands of her sales job and achieved her dream: to leave London behind and begin a new life aboard a houseboat in Kent. Not many people know that she financed her fresh start by working weekends as a dancer at a less-than-reputable gentlemen's club called the Barclay, and she's determined to keep it that way. But on the night of her housewarming party the past intrudes when a body washes up beside the boat, and Genevieve recognizes the victim, a fellow dancer from the Barclay.As the sanctuary of the marina is threatened, and Genevieve's life seems increasingly at risk, the story of how she came to be so out of her depth unfolds, and she discovers the hard way the real cost of mixing business with pleasure. . . .
Cold Light
Cold Light
Ashworth, Jenn
¥83.03
I’m sitting on my couch, watching the local news. There’s Chloe’s parents, the mayor, the hangers on, all grouped round the pond for the ceremony. It’s ten years since Chloe and Carl drowned. You can tell from their faces that something has gone wrong. But I’m the one who knows straightaway that the mayor has found a body. And I know who it is.Jenn Ashworth’s gripping and unforgettable Cold Light is the story of a friendship unsettling in its intensity and of one terrible summer when lies, secrets, jealousy, and perversion result in tragedy more twisted and evil than one unsuspecting community can handle. A dark tale with a surreal edge, it follows two fourteen-year-old girls, best friends, as they confront the dangers of a predatory adult world, where truth is cruelly sacrificed in the name of innocence.