Brielle was having one of the worst days ever. She had just lost her scholarship—with it her room at the school dormitory—and was about to face the wrath of her mother. It was probably fate that brought Infinite Chase, her favorite band in the world, to her town that day to perform live. Could it also be fate that Kyle Yves, the band’s lead singer and the boy she was in love with, picked her to sing a duet with him on stage and that she somehow got the chance to live with the band as their new band manager? She has been given every chance to turn the worst day ever around. All she had to do was take a chance on fate. Will she take it?
Publicly humiliated, Marisa Banks is blindsided by the news that the man she's been dating for months is married. Being called names she wouldn't wish on anyone in front of a room full of people by her boyfriend's wife is enough to shake her identity to its foundations. In an attempt to rebuild, she makes a few questionable decisions. Asher Blaine is one of them. He's intelligent and sexy, but the pedestal he's got himself up on is unshakeable. Or so he thinks. Marisa asks for the one thing he can't deny her, even if it's the craziest thing he's ever done. She wants one night, his best eight hours. And damn if he doesn't deliver. The next morning, her bubble is shattered by his loud mouth, and Marisa retaliates with a stiletto and a remote. The best night of her life is over, and she's more than happy to walk away a free woman. Asher's job sends him to Marisa’s city, and when they cross paths again, it’s Asher's turn to make an offer. And just like him, she can't refuse. Will her worst nightmare and his complicated past ruin what they're building, or can they lean on one another to make it through?
Her mind tried to fight a bloody battle against what her body already knew. She wanted him, and she wanted him bad. On the heels of college graduation and the unexpected death of her mother, Emily Cooper moves to New York City to join her boyfriend for a fresh start. Dillon Parker has been sweet, thoughtful, and generous through Emily’s loss, and she can’t imagine her life without him—even as her inner voice tells her to go slow. Then she meets Gavin Blake. A rich and notorious playboy, Gavin is dangerously sexy and charming as hell. Their first encounter is brief, but it’s enough to inflame Emily’s senses. When their paths cross again through an unexpected mutual acquaintance, she tries to deny the connection she feels, but Mr. Tall, Dark, and Handsome won’t let go so easily. As she discovers Gavin’s pain-filled past and Dillon’s true nature begins to surface, Emily knows she must take action or risk destroying everyone—including herself. But how can she choose when she can’t trust her own heart?
NAMED ONE OF THE BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR BY People ∙ O: The Oprah Magazine ∙ Financial Times ∙ Kansas City Star ∙ BookPage ∙ Kirkus Reviews ∙ Publishers Weekly ∙ Booklist NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER “A stunner.”—Justin Cronin “It’s never the disasters you see coming that finally come to pass—it’s the ones you don’t expect at all,” says Julia, in this spellbinding novel of catastrophe and survival by a superb new writer. Luminous, suspenseful, unforgettable, The Age of Miracles tells the haunting and beautiful story of Julia and her family as they struggle to live in a time of extraordinary change. On an ordinary Saturday in a California suburb, Julia awakes to discover that something has happened to the rotation of the earth. The days and nights are growing longer and longer; gravity is affected; the birds, the tides, human behavior, and cosmic rhythms are thrown into disarray. In a world that seems filled with danger and loss, Julia also must face surprising developments in herself, and in her personal world—divisions widening between her parents, strange behavior by her friends, the pain and vulnerability of first love, a growing sense of isolation, and a surprising, rebellious new strength. With crystalline prose and the indelible magic of a born storyteller, Karen Thompson Walker gives us a breathtaking portrait of people finding ways to go on in an ever-evolving world. “Gripping drama . . . flawlessly written; it could be the most assured debut by an American writer since Jennifer Egan’s Emerald City.”—The Denver Post “Pure magnificence.”—Nathan Englander “Provides solace with its wisdom, compassion, and elegance.”—Curtis Sittenfeld “Riveting, heartbreaking, profoundly moving.”—Kirkus Reviews (starred review) Look for special features inside. Join the Circle for author chats and more.
Secrets ruin lives, and lies protect those secrets... Wanting to escape her life in New York City before starting medical school in the fall, Anna Dillon convinces her best friend Dante to travel with her to Thailand on a medical mission. While volunteering in a coastal village recently ravaged by a tsunami, Anna meets Jude Grayson. They share an instant attraction that leads to a brief, passionate affair. When she has to rush home for a family emergency, he promises to stay in touch. But Jude never calls, and Anna tries desperately to forget him. Five years pass, and Anna finally moves on with Dante after giving up hope that Jude will ever return--until they come face to face again in a chance encounter. Reeling, Anna discovers the life-altering secret of why Jude never contacted her--and why they can't be together. But the passion that ignited between them on an exotic beach years ago never died, making it impossible to stay away from each other. And Dante? Anna discovers that the friend she grew to love--and trust--has a secret of his own.
A stunning star-crossed love story set against the glitz and grit of 1980s New York City When Elise Perez meets Jamey Hyde on a desolate winter afternoon, fate implodes, and neither of their lives will ever be the same. Although they are next-door neighbors in New Haven, they come from different worlds. Elise grew up in a housing project without a father and didn’t graduate from high school; Jamey is a junior at Yale, heir to a private investment bank fortune and beholden to high family expectations. Nevertheless, the attraction is instant, and what starts out as sexual obsession turns into something greater, stranger, and impossible to ignore. The couple moves to Manhattan in search of a new life, and White Fur follows them as they wander through Newport mansions and East Village dives, WASP-establishment yacht clubs and the grimy streets below Canal Street, fighting the forces determined to keep them apart. White Fur combines the electricity of Less Than Zero with the timeless intensity of Romeo and Juliet in this searing, gorgeously written novel that perfectly captures the ferocity of young love.
Kyrell Knight believes life is a game to be played and thoroughly enjoyed. He rarely takes anything seriously, lives in the moment, and indulges in as much pleasure with women as possible. But the sarcasm, money, and women are an attempt to erase the memories of his past as he tries to forget what he came from. It works until his past wants to be a part of his present. Kyrell reconnects with Quinn Halifax at their mutual best friend's engagement party. They spark up a friendship that quickly turns to flames when it becomes a superficial, no strings attached relationship. Kyrell is struggling with his past while Quinn is trying to secure her future. Neither is looking for more, but fate has other plans. What happens when two people collide with fate? Content Advisory: child abuse, death, mentions of suicide
Scientists are building rocket ships for a chosen few to escape planets hurtling toward each other on a direct collision course, leaks out touching off a savage struggle for survival.
Some 4.6 billion years ago, a planetary system was born form a disc of gas and dust surrounding a young star. Specks of dust, pushed into dense clumps, collided stuck together, and grew. While the gas disappeared, the growing bodies clashed in a final violent phase, leaving a series of planets, and much debris. The planets jostled and moved around as they sought a stable arrangement, knocking many small fragments out of the system altogether while others forms a distant icy fringe. The massive violent collisions of this time gouged out vast craters form the newborn planets, and sometimes created moons. Such was the birth of our Solar System. Only recently have scientists begun to find subtle clues of these ancient, violent times. Remarkably, they are still there, if we look carefully at the Earth's oldest rocks, at Mars and the Moon with their ancient surfaces, and at the asteroids, which are themselves startlingly varied small worlds. Clues are also to be found in the meteorites that have landed on Earth. From such splinters, from the precious collection of lunar rocks brought back by the Apollo astronauts, and the information gleaned by spacecraft and the Mars rovers, we are slowly building up a picture of the early days of the planets.
In 2004, Dutch filmmaker Theo van Gogh was brutally murdered on a busy Amsterdam street. His killer was Mohammed Bouyeri, a twenty-six-year-old Dutch Moroccan offended by van Gogh's controversial film about Muslim suppression of women. The Dutch government had funded separate schools, housing projects, broadcast media, and community organizations for Muslim immigrants, all under the umbrella of multiculturalism. But the reality of terrorism and radicalization of Muslim immigrants has shattered that dream. In this arresting book, Paul Sniderman and Louk Hagendoorn demonstrate that there are deep conflicts of values in the Netherlands. In the eyes of the Dutch, for example, Muslims oppress women, treating them as inferior to men. In the eyes of Muslim immigrants, Western Europeans deny women the respect they deserve. Western Europe has become a cultural conflict zone. Two ways of life are colliding. Sniderman and Hagendoorn show how identity politics contributed to this crisis. The very policies meant to persuade majority and minority that they are part of the same society strengthened their view that they belong to different societies. At the deepest level, the authors' findings suggest, the issue that government and citizens need to be concerned about is not a conflict of values but a clash of fundamental loyalties.
