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Against All Odds
Against All Odds
Brown, Scott
¥95.39
The extraordinary personal journey of a man who, against all odds, rose to become one of America’s most surprising and promising new political figures Scott Brown's greatest win did not occur on a cold January election night in 2010 when he came from behind to capture the U.S. Senate seat held by Ted Kennedy for nearly fifty years. It began when he survived a savage beating at the drunken, dirty-fingernail hands of a stepfather when he was barely six years old, while trying to protect his mother.In this gripping memoir of resilience and redemption, Brown tells the story of his difficult, often nomadic childhood, shunted from house to apartment, and town to town, seventeen times over his first eighteen years. He somehow thrived despite a largely absent father, who married four separate times. So did his mother, in relationships frequently stained with alcohol, anger, and even violence. For nearly two decades' growing up, Brown endured innumerable hardships and challenges, even stealing food to eat. He was periodically sent off to live with relatives, his possessions wrapped in a few old blankets. Saved by basketball, he was the boy who shoveled snow from the public courts to shoot hoops alone in the frozen cold.With clear-eyed conviction and unflinching can-dor, Brown tells the story of his own bad-boy days, of the coaches who mentored him, and of how he found a way out of familial chaos through the swish of a ball in the net, winning a starting slot on the Tufts varsity basketball team as a freshman player and becoming the tenth-highest scorer to graduate in the school's history. His rise from there was even more improbable: a first-year law student and member of the Massachusetts National Guard, he was picked as Cosmopolitan magazine's "America's Sexiest Man" and was vaulted into the glamorous world of New York modeling at the height of the 1980s. But the man who was once ushered into the backrooms of Studio 54 returned to Massachusetts to continue with his military and legal training, settle down, raise a family, and soon found an unlikely path that would lead him to national political stardom. Here, too, are the secrets from the unprecedented Senate race that captured the country's imagination and how Scott Brown won his remarkable victory.Poignant, heartfelt, humorous, and profound, this is the story of one man's dream and his determination to fight for a better future.
Beautiful Ruins
Beautiful Ruins
Walter, Jess
¥95.39
The story begins in 1962. On a rocky patch of the sun-drenched Italian coastline, a young innkeeper, chest-deep in daydreams, looks out over the incandescent waters of the Ligurian Sea and spies an apparition: a tall, thin woman, a vision in white, approaching him on a boat. She is an actress, he soon learns, an American starlet, and she is dying. And the story begins again today, half a world away, when an elderly Italian man shows up on a movie studio's back lot searching for the mysterious woman he last saw at his hotel decades earlier. What unfolds is a dazzling, yet deeply human, roller coaster of a novel, spanning fifty years and nearly as many lives. From the lavish set of Cleopatra to the shabby revelry of the Edinburgh Fringe Festival, Walter introduces us to the tangled lives of a dozen unforgettable characters: the starstruck Italian innkeeper and his long-lost love; the heroically preserved producer who once brought them together and his idealistic young assistant; the army veteran turned fledgling novelist and the rakish Richard Burton himself, whose appetites set the whole story in motion along with the husbands and wives, lovers and dreamers, superstars and losers, who populate their world in the decades that follow. Gloriously inventive, constantly surprising, Beautiful Ruins is a story of flawed yet fascinating people, navigating the rocky shores of their lives while clinging to their improbable dreams.
The Ultimate Tea Diet
The Ultimate Tea Diet
Ukra, Mark
¥95.39
It's proven! Tea can be a powerful tool for fast and lasting weight loss.The Ultimate Tea Diet harnesses tea's incredible weight-loss potential in a straightforward plan for losing weight in a safe and healthy way. Tea's ability to encourage weight loss comes from the synergy of its three main ingredients: caffeine to stimulate, L-theanine to neutralize the harmful side effects of caffeine and act as an appetite suppressant, and EGCG, which causes you to burn fat faster and more efficiently. In other words, tea reduces your appetite and stimulates your metabolism. Don't worry—you won't go hungry on the Ultimate Tea Diet. The food plan includes tea-based meals for breakfast, lunch, and dinner as well as tempting choices for midday snacks and sweet treats. All are made with tea so not only is your food incredibly flavorful, but you're also getting the weight-loss benefits in every single bite you enjoy.Drinking tea—and maintaining a conscientious focus on good health—can easily become a way of life. Slim down to a leaner, more energetic, and healthier you with the Ultimate Tea Diet.
Dreamer, Wisher, Liar
Dreamer, Wisher, Liar
Harper, Charise Mericle
¥95.39
Dreamer, Wisher, Liar is a heartwarming story about one girl's transformative summer full of friendship, secret magic, and family. Fans of Rebecca Stead will enjoy Charise Mericle Harper's funny and poignant novel.When her best friend is moving away and her mom has arranged for some strange little girl to come and stay with them, Ash—who is petrified of change and new people—is expecting the worst summer of her life. Then seven-year-old Claire shows up. Armed with a love of thrift-store clothes and an altogether too-sunny disposition, Claire proceeds to turn Ash's carefully constructed life upside down.While every part of Ash's life seems to be disrupted, she must protect a carefully hidden secret: She has discovered a magical jar in her basement. It's a wish jar, full of someone's old wishes—and it has the power to send her back in time and provide a window into another friendship between two girls. Discovering her own connection to the girls' story shows Ash that her life is full of surprises and friends she never saw coming.
The Archer's Tale
The Archer's Tale
Cornwell, Bernard
¥95.39
A brutal raid on the quiet coastal English village of Hookton in 1342 leaves but one survivor: a young archer named Thomas. On this terrible dawn, his purpose becomes clear -- to recover a stolen sacred relic and pursue to the ends of the earth the murderous black-clad knight bearing a blue-and-yellow standard, a journey that leads him to the courageous rescue of a beautiful French woman, and sets him on his ultimate quest: the search for the Holy Grail.
School of Charm
School of Charm
Scott, Lisa Ann
¥95.39
At the School of Charm, everyone has a wish to whisper. With an enchanting small-town setting, lively storytelling, and a hint of magic, this debut novel is perfect for fans of Ingrid Law, Clare Vanderpool, and Rebecca Stead.Eleven-year-old Chip has always been her daddy's girl, so when he dies she pins her hopes on winning a beauty pageant to show her family of southern belles that she still belongs. But she'd rather be covered in mud than makeup! Can a rough-and-tumble girl ever become a beauty queenA universal story about finding your place in the world, School of Charm explores themes of loss, family, and friendship.
The Impossible Lives of Greta Wells
The Impossible Lives of Greta Wells
Greer, Andrew Sean
¥95.39
1985. After the death of her beloved twin brother, Felix, and the breakup with her longtime lover, Nathan, Greta Wells embarks on a radical psychiatric treatment to alleviate her suffocating depression. But the treatment has unexpected effects, and Greta finds herself transported to the lives she might have had if she'd been born in different eras. During the course of her treatment, Greta cycles between her own time and alternate lives in 1918, where she is a bohemian adulteress, and 1941, which transforms her into a devoted mother and wife. Separated by time and social mores, Greta's three lives are remarkably similar, fraught with familiar tensions and difficult choices. Each reality has its own losses, its own rewards, and each extracts a different price. And the modern Greta learns that her alternate selves are unpredictable, driven by their own desires and needs.As her final treatment looms, questions arise: What will happen once each Greta learns how to remain in one of the other worldsWho will choose to stay in which life?Magically atmospheric, achingly romantic, The Impossible Lives of Greta Wells beautifully imagines "what if" and wondrously wrestles with the impossibility of what could be.
Love Again
Love Again
Lessing, Doris
¥95.39
Love, Again tells the story of a 65-year-old woman who falls in love and struggles to maintain her sanity. Widowed for many years, with grown children, Sarah is a writer who works in the theater in London. During the production of a play, she falls in love with a seductive young actor, the beautiful and androgynous 28-year-old Bill, and then with the more mature 35-year-old director Henry. Finding herself in a state of longing and desire that she had thought was the province of younger women, Sarah is compelled to explore and examine her own personal history of love, from her earliest childhood desires to her most recent obsessions. The result is a brilliant anatomy of love from a master of human psychology who remains one of the most daring writers of fiction at work today.
The Loser's Guide to Life and Love
The Loser's Guide to Life and Love
Cannon, A. E.
¥95.39
Ordinary, boring Ed works a loser summer job at Reel Life Movies, where he doesn't even have his own name tag. He's stuck with "Sergio." Ed's only consolations are his two best friends. Shelving DVDs isn't so mind-numbingly dull with Scout cracking jokes, and after hours Ed hangs out with the superbrain, Quark. Life starts to look up when the girl of his dreams saunters into Reel Life. Ed knows he doesn't stand a chance . . . but maybe, just maybe Sergio does. All he has to do is pretend to be a smoldering Brazilian stud for the rest of his life. Simple, rightBut . . . Ed's new dream girl has her own secrets, Scout wants to be more than Ed's best friend, and his buddy Quark wants Scout for himself. Star-crossed crushes make for hilarious misunderstandings as Ed guides his life toward disaster in this fresh, contemporary twist on Shakespeare's Midsummer Night's Dream.
The Dog Days of Charlotte Hayes
The Dog Days of Charlotte Hayes
Kennedy, Marlane
¥95.39
It's not that Charlotte hates dogs. Or that she wants all of them to disappear off the face of the planet. It's just that she doesn't see why everyone loves them so much. So how did she get stuck taking care of a big, drooling Saint Bernard puppyRain or shine, hot or cold, poor Beauregard is left chained in the backyard. No one ever plays with him or checks his food and water bowls, and Charlotte can tell he's sad. So she makes sure he has water, gives him belly rubs—blech!—and feeds him every single day. But it's kind of a pain, and she knows Beauregard deserves better. There's a new girl at school who lives in a huge house—plenty of room there for a big dog. Charlotte has an idea. Now all she needs is a plan. Maybe a lot of plans. How do you rescue your own dog?
Battle Flag
Battle Flag
Cornwell, Bernard
¥95.39
Distinguished at the Battle of Cedar Mountain, Confederate Captain Nate Starbuck's career is jeopardized once again by the suspicion and hostility of his brigade commander, General Washington Faulconer. The outcome of this vicious fight drastically changes both men's fortunes and propels AX into the ghastly bloodletting at the Second Battle of Manassas.Evocative and historically accurate, Battle Flag continues Bernard Cornwell's powerful series of Nate's adventures on some of the most decisive battlefields of the American Civil War.
The Girl with the Mermaid Hair
The Girl with the Mermaid Hair
Ephron, Delia
¥95.39
Click. Sukie Jamieson takes a selfie after her tennis lesson. Click. She takes one before she has to give a presentation in class. Click. She takes one to be sure there's nothing in her teeth after eating pizza at Clementi's. And if she can't take a selfie, she checks her reflection in windows, spoons, car chrome—anything available, really. So when her mother gives her an exquisite full-length mirror that once belonged to her grandmother, Sukie is thrilled. So thrilled that she doesn't listen to her mother's warning: “This mirror will be your best friend and worst enemy.” Because mirrors, as Sukie discovers, show not only the faraway truth but the truth close up. And finding out that close-up truth changes people. Often forever. Acclaimed novelist and screenwriter Delia Ephron crafts a powerful novel of truth, beauty, and the secrets about family and friends that lie beneath perfection.
The Heart Is Not a Size
The Heart Is Not a Size
Kephart, Beth
¥95.39
Georgia knows what it means to keep secrets. She knows how to ignore things. She knows that some things are better left unsaid. . . . Or are theyWhen Georgia and her best friend, Riley, travel along with nine other suburban Pennsylvania kids to Anapra, a squatters' village in the heat-flattened border city of Juarez, Mexico, secrets seem to percolate and threaten both a friendship and a life. Certainties unravel. Reality changes. And Georgia is left to figure out who she is outside the world she's always known.Beth Kephart paints a world filled with emotion, longing, and the hot Mexican sun.
sifting through the madness for the word, the line, the way
sifting through the madness for the word, the line, the way
Bukowski, Charles
¥95.39
from "neither Shakespeare nor Mickey Spillane"young young young, only wanting the Word, going mad in the streets and in the bars,brutal fights, broken glass, crazy women screaming inyour cheap room,you a familiar guest at the drunk tank, NorthAvenue 21, Lincoln Heightssifting through the madness for the Word, the line the way,hoping for a check from somewhere,dreaming of a letter from a great editor:"Chinaski, you don't know how long we've beenwaiting for you!"no chance at all.
Snap
Snap
Snow, Carol
¥95.39
Madison Sabatini thought she knew who she was: an almost-sophomore with a bright future. The newest photographer on her school paper. A shopaholic with great hair and a fabulous wardrobe. Then, in a flash, everything changed.Now she's stuck in Sandyland, a gloomy beach town in the middle of nowhere, living with her parents in a crappy hotel "suite." Instead of spending the summer with her friends at home, she's hanging out with pink-haired Delilah, an artist who works in a shop called Psychic Photo, and a skater boy named Duncan who's totally not her type. Except, maybe he is . . .Determined to make the best of things, Madison throws herself into her one passion: photography. But when strange figures start appearing in her pictures—people who weren't there when she snapped the shots, people who are later reported dead—she begins to question everything about who she is . . . and who she wishes she could be.
Hide Me Among the Graves
Hide Me Among the Graves
Powers, Tim
¥95.39
London, winter of 1862, Adelaide McKee, a former prostitute, arrives on the doorstep of veterinarian John Crawford, a man she met once seven years earlier. Their brief meeting produced a child who, until now, had been presumed dead. McKee has learned that the girl lives—but that her life and soul are in mortal peril from a vampiric ghost. But this is no ordinary spirit; the bloodthirsty wraith is none other than John Polidori, the onetime physician to the mad, bad, and dangerous Romantic poet Lord Byron. Both McKee and Crawford have mysterious histories with creatures like Polidori, and their child is a prize the malevolent spirit covets dearly. Polidori is also the late uncle and supernatural muse to the poet Christina Rossetti and her brother, the painter Dante Gabriel Rossetti. When she was just fourteen years old, Christina unwittingly brought Polidori's curse upon her family. But the curse bestowed unexpected blessings as well, inspiring Christina's poetry and Gabriel's paintings. But when Polidori resurrects Dante's dead wife—turning her into a horrifying vampire—and threatens other family members, Christina and Dante agree that they must destroy their monstrous uncle and break the spell, even if it means the end of their creative powers. Determined to save their daughter, McKee and Crawford join forces with the Rossettis, and soon these wildly mismatched allies are plunged into a supernatural London underworld whose existence goes beyond their wildest imaginings. Ultimately, each of these disparate individuals—the sensitive poet, the tortured painter, the straitlaced animal doctor, the reformed prostitute, and even their Artful Dodger–like young daughter—must choose between the banality and constraints of human life and the unholy immortality that Polidori offers.Sweeping from the mansions of London's high society to its grimy slums, the elegant salons of the West End to the pre-Roman catacombs beneath St. Paul's Cathedral, Hide Me Among the Graves blends the historical and the supernatural in a dazzling, edge-of-your-seat thrill ride—a modern horror story with a Victorian twist.
Blood & Flowers
Blood & Flowers
Blubaugh, Penny
¥95.39
Three years ago, Persia ran awayfrom her drug-addict parents and found a homewith the Outlaws, an underground theatertroupe. This motley band of mortals and fey,puppeteers and actors, becomes the lovingfamily Persia never had, and soon Persia notonly discovers a passion for theater but also fallsin love with Nicholas, one of the other Outlaws.Life could not be more perfect.Until an enemy with a grudge makesan unfair accusation against the group andforces them to flee the mortal world and hidein the neighboring realm of Faerie. But inFaerie, all is not flowers and rainbows—withbloodthirsty trolls, a hostile monarchy, anda dangerous code of magic, the fey world isnot quite the safe haven the Outlaws hadhoped for. And they must decide what’s moreimportant: protecting their right to performor protecting themselves.From critically acclaimed author PennyBlubaugh comes this mesmerizing tale offamily, faeries, and finding a place to call home.
Dead Rules
Dead Rules
Russell, Randy
¥95.39
Till deathJana Webster and Michael Haynes were in love. They were destined to be together forever.DoBut Jana's destiny was fatally flawed. And now she's in Dead School, where Mars Dreamcote lurks in the back of the classroom, with his beguiling blue eyes, mysterious smile, and irresistibly warm touch.UsMichael and Jana were incomplete without each other. There was no room for Mars in Jana's life—or death—story. Jana was sure Michael would rush to her side soon.PartBut things aren't going according to Jana's plan. So Jana decides to do whatever it takes to make her dreams come true—no matter what rules she has to break.
The Siren's Cry
The Siren's Cry
Kogler, Jennifer Anne
¥95.39
Not just an Otherworldly...an Unusual.Fern is not like other girls. She has strange and vivid visions and has the ability to teleport—anywhere, anytime. Fern is an Otherworldly, a special kind of vampire that lives in the human world. What's more, Fern is one of the Unusual Eleven, a group of Otherworldlies all born on the same day with extraordinary powers, prophesied to change the fate of Otherworldlies and humans alike.On a school trip to Washington, DC, Fern has a dramatic vision that reveals another Unusual in grave danger. Now it's up to Fern to put together the pieces of where he is and why he's been taken. Can Fern solve the puzzle and free the boy in time to defeat the darkness that threatens?In this gripping and fast-paced tale, the world of vampires has never been more compelling.
Blue Collar, White Collar, No Collar
Blue Collar, White Collar, No Collar
Ford, Richard
¥95.39
This vital and compelling collection of stories about work, compiled by novelist and short-story writer Richard Ford, explores tales of how we Americans are employed; how we find work and leave it; how it excites, ennobles, occasionally debilitates, but often defines us.Contributing writers for Blue Collar, White Collar, No Collar range from contemporary Pulitzer Prize winners Edward P. Jones and Jhumpa Lahiri to iconic short-story masters Tobias Wolff, Annie Proulx, and Joyce Carol Oates, as well as emerging writers such as Lewis Robinson. Encompassing a wide range of contemporary literary styles, ages, ethnic backgrounds, and geographical locations, Blue Collar, White Collar, No Collar is a masterful, exhilarating, and timely fictional exploration of work and its relationship to the human spirit.All author proceeds from Blue Collar, White Collar, No Collar: Stories of Work will go directly to fund the free youth writing, tutoring, and publishing programs offered by 826michigan.
Alex Van Helsing: Voice of the Undead
Alex Van Helsing: Voice of the Undead
Henderson, Jason
¥95.39
Now that Alex is in the know about the deadly vampires that live—and hunt—around his boarding school, everything is different. Putting his talents to use, Alex is training with the Polidorium to become a vampire hunter, just like his Van Helsing ancestors. Sure, he’s only fourteen, but c’mon: This runs in his blood.But Alex is wondering if he’ll live long enough to succeed. His archnemesis Elle, a vampire whose youthful appearance and blond hair disguise a rage that’s directed at him, is out to get him before a powerful leader called Ultravox arrives on the scene. Ultravox specializes in assassinations, but who is he targetingAs he dodges Elle’s attacks, Alex is on a mission to uncover Ultravox’s deadly plan before his friends and his school become collateral damage. There’s no time to report back; innocent lives hang in the balance, and it’s on Alex to act now—or else.