Niall Williams

Beautiful brand new book in pristine condition and from a smoke free home.

Hardcover (1 to 2 lbs)

Michigan

"I am such a fan of Niall Williams." -Ann Patchett, New York Times bestselling author of Tom Lake From the author of This Is Happiness, a compassionate, life-affirming novel about the Christmas season that transforms the small Irish town of Faha. Doctor Jack Troy was born and raised in Faha, but his responsibilities for the sick and his care for the dying mean he has always been set apart from the town. His eldest daughter, Ronnie, has grown up in her father's shadow, and remains there, having missed one chance at love – and passed up another offer of marriage from an unsuitable man. But in the Advent season of 1962, as the town readies itself for Christmas, Ronnie and Doctor Troy's lives are turned upside down when a baby is left in their care. As the winter passes, father and daughter's lives, the understanding of their family, and their role in their community are changed forever. Set over the course of one December in the same village as Williams' beloved This Is Happiness, Time of the Child is a tender return to Faha for readers who know its charms, and a heartwarming welcome to new readers entering for the very first time.

Time of the Child

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Julie Gilbert

Edna Ferber, Her Best-Selling Novel of Texas, and the Making of a Classic American Film

A book that explores the great American novelist and playwright Edna Ferber, winner of the Pulitzer Prize for Ficton, whose work was made into many Academy Award-winning movies; the writing of her controversial, international best-selling novel about Texas, and the making of George Stevens’ Academy Award winning epic film of the same name, Giant. The stupendous publication of Edna Ferber's Giant in 1952 set off a storm of protest over the novel's portrayal of Texas manners, money and mores with oil-rich Texans threatening to shoot, lynch or ban Ferber from ever entering the state again. In Giant Love, Julie Gilbert writes of the internationally best-selling Ferber, one of the most widely read writers in the first half of the 20th Century – her evolution from mid-west maverick girl-reporter to Pulitzer Prize winning, beloved American novelist, from her want-to-be actress days to becoming Broadway's acclaimed prize-winning playwright whose collaborators – George S. Kauffman and Moss Hart, among them, were, along with Ferber, herself, the most successful playwrights of their time. Here is the making of an American classic novel and the film that followed in its wake. We see how George Stevens, Academy-Award winning director, wooed the prickly, stubborn Ferber, ultimately getting her to agree to everything including writing, for the first time ever, a draft of a screenplay, to her okaying James Dean for the part of the ranch hand, Jett Rink, something she was dead set against. Here is the casting of Elizabeth Taylor, Rock Hudson, James Dean and their backstory triangle of sex and seduction – each becoming a huge star because of the film; the frustrated Stevens trying to direct the instinctive but undisciplined Dean, and the months long landmark filming in the sleepy town of Marfa, Texas, suddenly invaded by a battalion of a film crew and some of the biggest stars in the rising celebrity culture.

Giant Love

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Graham Moore

A Novel

An ordinary man joins a secret mission to bring down the Nazi war machine by crashing their economy in this historical thriller based on a true story, from the Academy Award-winning screenwriter of The Imitation Game and bestselling author of The Last Days of Night. 1939. Ansel Luxford has everything a person could want—a comfortable career, a brilliant spouse, a beautiful new baby. But he is obsessed by a belief that Europe is on the precipice of a war that will grow to consume the world. The United States is officially proclaiming neutrality in any foreign conflict, but when Ansel is offered an opportunity to move to Washington, D.C., to join a clandestine project within the Treasury Department that is working to undermine Nazi Germany, he uproots his family overnight and takes on the challenge of a lifetime. How can they defeat the enemy without firing a bullet? To thwart the Nazis, Ansel and his team invent a powerful new theater of battle: economic warfare. Money is a dangerous weapon, and Ansel’s efforts will plunge him into a world full of espionage, peril, and deceit. He will crisscross the globe to broker backroom deals, undertake daring heists, and spar with titans of industry like J.P. Morgan and the century’s greatest economic mind, Britain’s John Maynard Keynes. When Ansel’s wife takes a job with the FBI to hunt for spies within the government, the need for subterfuge extends to the home front. And Ansel discovers that he might be closer to those spies than he could ever imagine. The Wealth of Shadows is a gripping, mind-expanding thriller about the mysterious powers of money, the lies worth telling to defeat evil, and a hidden war that shaped the modern world.

The Wealth of Shadows

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Tod Lending

Paperback (1 to 2 lbs)

A Novel of WWII

"For readers of Heather Morris and Lisa Barr, a novel following the odyssey of a 17-year-old at the outset of WWII from the occupied Krakow ghetto to the Polish countryside and finally to the arms of the young woman he's loved since childhood; a story of survival against all odds, guided by the transformative power of love. Born to a middle class Polish Jewish family, Reuven grows up admiring his father, the respected businessman who owns the local shop that produces beautiful handmade umbrellas. The family's peaceful life begins to unravel as the Nazis infiltrate the town, take over the business, and eventually persecute Reuven and all other Jews. One night, Zelda, the girl who seven-year-old Reuven loves, disappears with her family; soon thereafter, Reuven and his father are conscripted by the Nazis into backbreaking physical labor that almost kills them. Clearly, they must escape-and some of them will die trying. What ensues is a fast paced, but heartfelt and lovely, story of survival and hope. Reuven is saved by a local farmer who has never met a Jew before-mostly because he wants him to help work the farm. Meanwhile, the farmer's wife has other ideas about Reuven-which lead to his desperate escape further into the countryside, and eventually to a local town where he hopes to reconnect with Zelda, herself forever changed by her experiences of war. A love story and a story of family, The Umbrella Maker's Son joins The Tattooist of Auschwitz as a tale of triumph in the face of unfathomable horror"--

The Umbrella Maker's Son

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Lore Segal

Light Paperback (1 lb or less)

And Other Stories

"For almost six decades Segal has quietly produced some of the best fiction and essays in American literature..."—The New York Times Beloved New Yorker writer Lore Segal, at 95-years-old, is a national treasure. Working at the height of her powers, in this story collection she turns her gimlet eye and compassionate humor on aging and life in the slow lane. From the master of the short short comes a collection of 16 new stories featuring old friends who have loved and lunched together for over 40 years. These erudite, sharp-minded nonagenarians offer startling insights into friendship, family and aging. Can the group organize a visit to one of their number in her new, and detested, assisted living situation? Is this a fabulous party with old friends, or a funeral reception? And does who was sleeping with whom, way back when, still matter? In story after story, Segal's voice is always hilarious and urbane, heartbreaking and profound, keen and utterly unsentimental, as she tackles aging's affronts.

Ladies' Lunch

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Tom Selleck

Ellis Henican

Beautiful brand new book in pristine condition and from a smoke free home 

A Memoir

The long-awaited memoir from the beloved film and television star--known to multiple generations for his starring roles on the long-running shows Magnum, P.I. and Blue Bloods--chronicles both his life in show business and his life away from it. Nearly every American knows Tom Selleck, both by name and by face. For four decades and counting, Selleck has been a television and film icon, first as Magnum, P.I., one of the most popular and enduring shows of the eighties, and currently in Blue Bloods, where he plays New York City Police Commissioner Frank Reagan. But Selleck's career is longer, and richer, than those two hits suggest. He began in the trenches as a working actor in the late sixties and struggled for more than a decade before breaking out with Magnum. At the height of his stardom, he opted not for cookie-cutter blockbusters but for more interesting character-based projects: comedies like Three Men and a Baby and In & Out, a record-setting trilogy of TV-movie Westerns, and the acclaimed Jesse Stone TV-movie franchise. And that doesn't even count his key supporting role on the generation-defining sitcom Friends or his appearance on Broadway in A Thousand Clowns. All along the way, Selleck has been careful to balance his stardom with a devotion to family life and privacy. His memoir offers a rare and rewarding look inside that career and that life. Beginning with Selleck's Southern California childhood, following him through an America roiled by Vietnam and the counterculture, this memoir chronicles Selleck's development not just as an actor (and as an actor who worked with such legends as Mae West, Frank Sinatra, and Marlon Brando), but as a man. Rich with charm, insight, and a surprising dose of self-deprecating humor, this memoir illuminates five decades of Hollywood--and of America. A vivid and incisive portrait that combines heart and head, work and home, hard-fought wisdom and renewable optimism, Selleck's memoir is an up-close and inspiring look at America's favorite actor.

You Never Know

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Elizabeth Bass Parman

Heavy Paperback (2 to 4 lbs)

"Get ready to laugh! Elizabeth Bass Parman is a true Southern storyteller. I couldn't have loved it more." --Fannie Flagg, New York Times bestselling author Posey Jarvis knows she's the rightful empress of Cooke County . . . She just needs to make everyone else realize it too. Thirty-eight-year-old Posey Jarvis is the self-appointed "empress" of rural Spark in Cooke County, Tennessee. She spends her days following every word about her idol and look-alike Jackie Kennedy, avoiding her stalwart husband Vern, and struggling to control her newly defiant daughter Callie Jane--all while sneaking nips of gin. When Posey unexpectedly inherits a derelict mansion from her quirky old aunt Milbrey, she finagles her way into hosting her high school's twentieth reunion there. She cares nothing about seeing her classmates, but she cares deeply about seeing the love of her life, a man who dumped her nineteen years ago. Possums are nesting in the parlor and the stench of cat urine permeates the sunroom, but she must be ready for the big day, even if she has to do the work herself. Eighteen-year-old Callie Jane finds herself accidentally engaged and is panicking about her fast-approaching wedding. She's also had enough of her domineering mother. Even though she loves her father, the idea of working at his emporium for the rest of her life just makes her . . . so sad. She longs to escape from her mother, her job, her upcoming wedding, and the creepy Peeping Tom terrorizing the town. She dreams of leaving everything she's ever known in her rearview mirror and starting over in California. But when her life has been mapped out for her from birth, how can she break free? Set in a gossipy small town during the turbulent 1960s and full of Southern charm and unforgettable characters, The Empress of Cooke County is a novel about found family, what it means to be loved, and how being true to yourself can have life-altering consequences. Southern women's fiction Stand-alone novel Book length: approximately 82,000 words Includes discussion questions for book clubs

The Empress of Cooke County

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Light Hardcover (1 lb or less)

Joe Nuthin’s Guide to Life

Susen Edwards

Based on a compelling and sometimes tragic true story, this novel follows young mother Ava from the go-go bars of the 1970s to the heart of Florida’s drug trade to a Kenyan prison to, ultimately, a place of forgiveness, faith, and love through recovery. Inspired by a gripping true story, Lookin’ for Love begins in 1963, when Ava, nineteen and pregnant, marries a violent alcoholic and is disowned by her abusive mother. She bears two sons, leaves her husband, and turns to go-go dancing to provide for her children, using alcohol and drugs to numb herself to the degrading work. Then she meets Mike, a charismatic drug dealer who promises to give her “a beautiful life.” They move to Florida and begin working for The Crew, one of the largest drug smuggling organizations in the country. The Crew sends Ava and Mike to Kenya to find farmers to grow marijuana—but while they’re there, their home is raided, they’re charged with international drug smuggling, and Ava is sentenced to serve time in a Kenyan prison. After her release, Ava struggles with sobriety but soon returns to dancing, alcohol, and drugs. Eventually, she hits bottom and surrenders her will to God. Once sober, she learns the power of forgiveness, faith, and love.

Lookin' for Love

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Jennifer Gooch Hummer

In this colorful and humorous tale, a hopeful young painter finds herself embroiled in the world of art heists...and possibly responsible for the counterfeits needed to cover them up. Freshly graduated from the Rhode Island School of Design, Veridian Sterling is ready to hang her work in any of the countless New York galleries that are sure to give her a show. The problem is only one will, and they're not interested in her art so much as her personal assistant skills. No glitz, no glam, and definitely none of the money she needs to help her struggling mother finally realize her dream of starting her own business after having sacrificed everything for Veri to go to art school. So when she overhears her new boss discussing the impressive finder's fee for a lost Van Gogh, Veri takes matters into her own hands. Maybe her own artwork isn't celebrated, but she knows how to copy what is, and maybe those skills can help lead to a discovery. But when a famous art dealer takes her under his wing (and his charming driver takes her interest), Veri realizes she's in deeper than she expected, and quite possibly with the wrong people. With her mother's dreams and her own future at stake, Veri will have to pull out every trick she can think of to wipe her canvas clean and erase the mess she's created before she goes down for someone else's crimes.

Veridian Sterling Fakes It

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Joseph Earl Thomas

"A brilliant and brilliantly different" (Kiese Laymon), wrenching and redemptive coming-of-age memoir about the difficulty of growing up in a hazardous home and the glory of finding salvation in geek culture.



Stranded within an ever-shifting family's desperate but volatile attempts to love, saddled with a mercurial mother mired in crack addiction, and demeaned daily for his perceived weakness, Joseph Earl Thomas grew up feeling he was under constant threat. Roaches fell from the ceiling, colonizing bowls of noodles and cereal boxes. Fists and palms pounded down at school and at home, leaving welts that ached long after they disappeared. An inescapable hunger gnawed at his frequently empty stomach, and requests for food were often met with indifference if not open hostility. Deemed too unlike the other boys to ever gain the acceptance he so desperately desired, he began to escape into fantasy and virtual worlds, wells of happiness in a childhood assailed on all sides.



In a series of exacting and fierce vignettes, Thomas guides readers through the unceasing cruelty that defined his circumstances, laying bare the depths of his loneliness and illuminating the vital reprieve geek culture offered him. With remarkable tenderness and devastating clarity, he explores how lessons of toxic masculinity were drilled into his body and the way the cycle of violence permeated the very fabric of his environment. Even in the depths of isolation, there were unexpected moments of joy carved out, from summers where he was freed from the injurious structures of his surroundings to the first glimpses of kinship he caught on his journey to becoming a Pokémon master. SINK follows Thomas's coming-of-age towards an understanding of what it means to lose the desire to fit in--with his immediate peers, turbulent family, or the world--and how good it feels to build community, love, and salvation on your own terms.

Sink

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The Pairing

Celia Bell

This radiant and thrilling debut follows a passionate love affair between two noblewomen who wish to free themselves from their repressive society, whatever the cost. In 17th century Paris, everyone has something to hide. The noblemen and women and writers consort with fortune tellers in the confines of their homes, servants practice witchcraft and black magic, and the titled poison family members to obtain inheritance. But for the Baroness Marie Catherine, the only thing she wishes to hide is how unhappy she is in her marriage, and the pleasures she seeks outside of it. When her husband is present, the Baroness spends her days tending to her children and telling them elaborate fairy tales, but when he’s gone, Marie Catherine indulges in a more liberated existence, one of forward-thinking discussions with female scholars in the salons of grand houses, and at the center of her freedom: Victoire Rose de Bourbon, Mademoiselle de Conti, the androgynous, self-assured countess who steals Marie Catherine’s heart and becomes her lover. Victoire possesses everything Marie Catherine does not—confidence in her love, and a brazen fearlessness in all that she’s willing to do for it. But when a shocking and unexpected murder occurs, Marie Catherine must escape. And what she discovers is the dark underbelly of a city full of people who have secrets they would kill to keep. The Disenchantment is a stunning debut that conjures an unexpected world of passion, crime, intrigue, and black magic.

The Disenchantment

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Kat Tang

In Kat Tang’s exciting and resonant debut, a “Rental Stranger”—a companion hired under various guises—walks the line between personal and professional in surprising new ways. Would you hire someone to be the best man at your wedding? Your stand-in brother? Your husband? In an age where online ratings are all-powerful, Five-Star Stranger follows the adventures of a top-rated man on the Rental Stranger app—a place where users can hire a pretend fiancé, a wingman, or an extra mourner for a funeral. Referred to only as Stranger, the narrator navigates New York City under the guise of characters he plays, always maintaining a professional distance from his clients. But, when a nosy patron threatens to upend his long-term role as father to a young girl, Stranger begins to reckon with his attachment to his pretend daughter, her mother, and his own fraught past. Now, he must confront the boundaries he has drawn and explore the legacy of abandonment that shaped his life. Five-Star Stranger is a strikingly vivid novel about the commodification of relationships in a gig economy, isolation in a hyperconnected world, and the risk of asking for what we want from those who cannot give. This is the story of a man who finds out who he is by being anyone but himself.

Five-Star Stranger

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Mary Beth Albright

How Food Supports Emotional Well-Being

Food has power to nourish your mind, supporting emotional wellness through both nutrients and pleasure. In this groundbreaking book, journalist Mary Beth Albright draws on cutting-edge research to explain the food/mood connection. She redefines "emotional eating" based on the science, revealing how eating triggers biological responses that affect humans' emotional states both immediately and long-term. Albright's accessible voice and ability to interpret complex studies from the new field of nutritional psychology, combined with straightforward suggestions for what to eat and how to eat it, make this an indispensable guide. Readers will come away knowing how certain foods help reduce the inflammation that can harm mental health, the critical relationship between the microbiome and the brain, which vitamins help restore the body during intensely emotional times, and how to develop a healthful eating pattern for life--with 30-day kickoff plan included. Eat and Flourish is the entertaining, inspiring book for today's world.

Eat and Flourish

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Alana Saab

Beautiful brand new book in pristine condition and from a smoke free home

An "engrossing, affecting, and singular" (Publishers Weekly) debut novel about love, family, queerness, and losing your mind in the modern world. While god is sending her signs through Instagram and Spotify demanding she break up with her girlfriend, Norma meets with a new therapist for one reason: she really needs to write again. With only one chapter missing in her manuscript, Norma is desperate to know if she needs to leave her girlfriend in order to write The Last Story. The new therapist diagnoses Norma with Depersonalization/Derealization Disorder, but Norma isn’t having it. It’s just Oblivion. Haunted by SSRI side effects and life becoming less hazily fictional by the day, Norma has never felt crazier. Does anyone else see the world’s poorly crafted plotline? Like, who even wrote this story? Norma begins sharing her manuscript with her therapist, hoping to connect the dissociative dots once and for all—or at least enough so that Google ads stop giving her panic attacks. But soon Norma is questioning everything she’s ever believed about life, writing, and love. And then there’s Norma’s girlfriend, the one with a crack of light in her eyes. Could she be Oblivion’s antagonist, the manuscript’s savior? Or is she just a human? Told alternately through Norma's barely fictional fiction and her crackling stream of consciousness, Please Stop Trying To Leave Me is an honest, comedic, horrifying, and heart-wrenching story about existing in today’s world, challenging all we’ve been taught about the distance between fiction and reality, sanity and insanity, mental illness and healing.

Please Stop Trying to Leave Me

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Constance Sayers

"1968: Actress Gemma Turner once dreamed of stardom. Unfortunately, she's on the cusp of slipping into obscurity. When she's offered the lead in a radical new horror film, Gemma believes her luck has finally changed. But L'Etrange Lune's set is not what she expected. The director is eccentric, and the script doesn't make sense. Gemma is determined to make this work. It's her last chance to achieve her dream-but that dream is about to derail her life. One night, between the shadows of an alleyway, Gemma disappears on set and is never seen again. Yet, Gemma is still alive. She's been transported into the film and the script-and the monsters within it-are coming to life. She must play her role perfectly if she hopes to survive. 2015: Gemma Turner's disappearance is one of film history's greatest mysteries-one that's haunted film student Christopher Kent ever since he saw his first screening of L'Etrange Lune. The screenings only happen once a decade and each time there is new, impossible footage of Gemma long after she vanished. Desperate to discover the truth, Christopher risks losing himself. He'll have to outrun the cursed legacy of the film-or become trapped by it forever"--

The Star and the Strange Moon

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Zibby Owens

A Memoir of Love, Loss, and Literature

A deeply personal memoir about one woman's journey to finding her voice and rewriting her story by the creator and host of the award-winning podcast Moms Don't Have Time to Read Books(tm).

Zibby Owens has become a well-known personality in the publishing world. Her infectious energy, tasteful authenticity, and smart, steadfast support of authors started in childhood, a precedent set by the profound effect books and libraries had on her own family.

But after losing her closest friend on 9/11 and later becoming utterly stressed out and overwhelmed by motherhood, Zibby was forgetting what made her her. She turned to books and writing for help.

Just when things seemed particularly bleak, Zibby unexpectedly fell in love with a tennis pro turned movie producer who showed her the path to happiness: away from type-A perfectionism and toward letting things unfold organically. What unfolded was a meaningful career, a great love, and finally, her voice, now heard by millions of listeners.

An honest and moving story about relationships, love, food issues, the writing life, and finding one's true calling, Bookends will inspire and uplift.

Bookends

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Kevin Young

Poems

A book of loss, looking back, and what binds us to life, by a towering poetic talent, called "one of the poetry stars of his generation." —Los Angeles Times "We sleep long, / if not sound," Kevin Young writes early on in this exquisite gathering of poems, "Till the end / we sing / into the wind." In scenes and settings that circle family and the generations in the American South—one poem, "Kith," exploring that strange bedfellow of "kin"—the speaker and his young son wander among the stones of their ancestors. "Like heat he seeks them, / my son, thirsting / to learn those / he don't know / are his dead." Whether it's the fireflies of a Louisiana summer caught in a mason jar (doomed by their collection), or his grandmother, Mama Annie, who latches the screen door when someone steps out for just a moment, all that makes up our flickering precarious joy, all that we want to protect, is lifted into the light in this moving book. Stones becomes an ode to Young's home places and his dear departed, and to what of them—of us—poetry can save.

Stones

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Amani Ballour

Rania Abouzeid

A Secret Underground Hospital and One Woman's Story of Survival in Syria

This searing memoir tells the story of a young doctor and activist who ran an underground hospital in Damascus, humanizing the enduring crisis in Syria. Simply put, there is no one in Syria with a story like Dr. Amani Ballour. The only woman to have ever run a wartime hospital, she saved her peers from the atrocities of war while contending with the patriarchal conservatism around her. Growing up in Assad's Syria, Ballour knew she wanted to be more than a housewife, even as her siblings were married off in their teens. As the revolution unfolded, she volunteered at a local clinic and was thrown into the deep end of emergency medicine, where she found her voice. Among the facets of this powerful tale: Becoming a hospital director. Shielding children from a horrific sarin attack. Losing colleagues. Attempting to employ more women. Abandoning the hospital. Becoming a refugee. Moving forward. Amani Ballour is a game changer who, like Malala Yousafzai, will be remembered as one of history's great heroines. Growing up in a closely confined society, she dared to dream--first of an education, then of a career--that allowed her to make her mark on the world and protect the country she loves. A passionately committed humanitarian, she is determined that others will escape the horrors she survived.

The Cave

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Dolly Alderton

Collected Wisdom

"One of the foremost 'it' writers of our time. . . . There is no writer quite like Dolly."--Lisa Taddeo, author of #1 New York Times bestseller Three Women "Nora Ephron for the millennial generation."--Elizabeth Day, author of How to Fail and The Party Advice and answers to your questions about dating, love, sex, family, friendship and more from the author of Everything I Know About Love and longtime Sunday Times Style columnist For years, New York Times bestselling author Dolly Alderton has been sharing her wisdom, warmth, and wit with the diverse universe of fans who have turned to her "Dear Dolly" column seeking guidance on a host of life problems. Dolly has thoughtfully answered questions ranging from the painfully--and sometimes hilariously--relatable to the occasionally bizarre. They include breakups and body issues, families, relationships platonic and romantic, dating, divorce, the pleasures and pitfalls of social media, sex, loneliness, longing, love and everything in between. Without judgement, and with deep empathy informed by her own, much-chronicled adventures with love, friends, and dating, Dolly helps us navigate the labyrinths of life. In this wonderful collection, she brings together her collected knowledge in one invaluable volume that will make you think, make you laugh, and help you confront any conundrum or crisis.

Dear Dolly

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Melanie Maure

In the spirit of Heather Morris, Kate Quinn, and Pam Jenoff, an enthralling and deeply moving story that begins during World War II, about orphaned twin sisters in Ireland whose lives diverge for decades, until fate--and faith--reunite them in the twilight of their lives. Orphaned during the Second World War, Aelish and Isabel McGuire--known as the twins of Belfast--are given over to the austere care of the Sisters of Bethlehem. Though they are each all the other has, the girls are propelled in opposite directions as they grow up. Rebellious Isabel turns her back on the church and Ireland, traveling to Newfoundland where she pursues a perilous yet independent life. Devout Aelish chooses to remain in Northern Ireland and takes the veil, burying painful truths beneath years of silence. For decades the two are separated, each unaware of the other's life. But after years of isolation Aelish is unexpectedly summoned to Newfoundland, where she and her estranged sister begin to bridge the chasm between them. Reunion brings to light the painful secrets and seismic deceptions that have kept these sisters apart, leaving the McGuire twins to begin reconstructing their understanding about themselves as women and as family-what they know of love, hope, and above all, forgiveness. A story of faith--in religion, in the world, and in one another--Sisters of Belfast is a heartbreaking, tragic, and deeply moving novel about survival and the enduring power of sisterhood.

Sisters of Belfast

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Rachelle Unreich

My Mother's Inspiring True Story of Surviving the Holocaust

The powerful, true story of a Holocaust survivor told by her daughter--a tale that reminds us of the resilience of the soul and the ability of the heart to heal. As Mira is nearing the end of her life, her daughter Rachelle wants to find out how her mother had lived through four concentration camps, including Auschwitz, and a Death March. There was a mystery to her survival, it seemed--which perhaps had something to do with the strange things that always happened around her. And, incredibly, when giving testimony later in life, she says that it was during this time--despite witnessing the depths of man's cruelty--that she learned about "the goodness of people." Born in Czechoslovakia, Mira was only 12 years old when World War II broke out. At 88, living in Australia, she is diagnosed with cancer, and her journalist daughter decides to interview her to distract her from her illness. What Rachelle discovers about her mother helps her fit together the jigsaw pieces of her own life. A Brilliant Life portrays not only how remote a prospect it was to live through the Holocaust, but what it is like to be the child of a survivor. A story of love, loss, wonder and the deepest kind of faith, A Brilliant Life questions the role that fate, chance and destiny play in one's life. It is a tribute to family, a story of incredible resilience and a chronicle of the deep connection between mother and child that not even death can destroy.

A Brilliant Life

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Sam Akbar

How to Beat Stress and Build Resilience

Sam Akbar's Stressilient offers smart, easy explanations and practical suggestions dispensed in a fresh, assured voice on a topic of large and growing concern...

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