Make your book fly off the shelves! Every author knows what a back cover blurb is, but crafting an effectively good one is no easy task. Many writers outright dislike writing them or dread the process because so much is at stake if the blurb fails to engage. A sizzling back cover blurb needs to convince readers they absolutely have to read the story inside the pages…or they'll set the book down without ever opening it. Additionally, a powerful series blurb can sell not just one book but all of them in that set! High-concept blurbs are necessary in every author's marketing to provide intriguing "sound bites" that sell books and series'. Writing Blurbs That Sizzle--And Sell! is the definitive guide on how to craft back cover, series, and high-concept blurbs.
Cupcakes, crafting and love at The Cherry Tree Cafe... Perfect feel-good summer reading for fans of Great British Bake-Off Lizzie Dixon's life feels as though it's fallen apart. Instead of the marriage proposal she was hoping for from her boyfriend, she is unceremoniously dumped, and her job is about to go the same way. So, there's only one option: to go back home to the village she grew up in and to try to start again. Her best friend Jemma is delighted Lizzie has come back home as she has just bought a little cafe and Lizzie's sewing skills are just what she needs to help get it ready for the grand opening. With a new venture and a new home, things are looking much brighter for Lizzie. But can she get over her broken heart, and will an old flame reignite a love from long ago...? For everyone who loves settling down to watch Great British Bake-Off, the Great British Sewing Bee, or curling up to read Milly Johnson or Jenny Colgan,The Cherry Tree Cafe is a coffee-break treat. 'A heart-warming sweet treat of a read' Mandy Baggot 'Fans of Jenny Colgan and Carole Matthews will enjoy this heartfelt debut novel from talented new author, Heidi Swain. The Cherry Tree Cafe is that most delicious of things - a warm and gently funny story of reinvention, romance, and second chances that you'll devour in one sitting' Katie Oliver, author of the bestselling 'Marrying Mr Darcy' series 'The Cherry Tree Cafe is every bit as delicious as the cover promises. Drop in for a minute, and the fabulous world of the crafting cafe wraps itself around you, pulling you in right from the first page. Beautifully written, with a heroine I rooted for all the way, and a great supporting cast. Original and assured, and like a cup of Orange Pekoe tea - perfect to enjoy in the afternoon' Jane Linfoot, author of The Vintage Cinema Club
A New York Times bestseller and enduring classic, All About Love is the acclaimed first volume in feminist icon bell hooks' "Love Song to the Nation" trilogy. All About Love reveals what causes a polarized society, and how to heal the divisions that cause suffering. Here is the truth about love, and inspiration to help us instill caring, compassion, and strength in our homes, schools, and workplaces. “The word ‘love’ is most often defined as a noun, yet we would all love better if we used it as a verb,” writes bell hooks as she comes out fighting and on fire in All About Love. Here, at her most provocative and intensely personal, renowned scholar, cultural critic and feminist bell hooks offers a proactive new ethic for a society bereft with lovelessness--not the lack of romance, but the lack of care, compassion, and unity. People are divided, she declares, by society’s failure to provide a model for learning to love. As bell hooks uses her incisive mind to explore the question “What is love?” her answers strike at both the mind and heart. Razing the cultural paradigm that the ideal love is infused with sex and desire, she provides a new path to love that is sacred, redemptive, and healing for individuals and for a nation. The Utne Reader declared bell hooks one of the “100 Visionaries Who Can Change Your Life.” All About Love is a powerful, timely affirmation of just how profoundly her revelations can change hearts and minds for the better.
Escape the cold winter nights with Sunday Times Top Five bestseller Heidi Swain's Summer at Skylark Farm! Amber is a city girl at heart. So when her boyfriend Jake suggests they move to the countryside to help out at his family farm, she doesn't quite know how to react. But work has been hectic and she needs a break so she decides to grasp the opportunity and make the best of it. Dreaming of organic orchards, paddling in streams and frolicking in fields, Amber packs up her things and moves to Skylark Farm. But life is not quite how she imagined - it's cold and dirty and the farm buildings are dilapidated and crumbling. But Amber is determined to make the best of it and throws herself into farm life. But can she really fit in here? And can she and Jake stay together when they are so different? A story of love in the countryside from the Sunday Times bestselling author of the The Cherry Tree Café and Sleigh Rides and Silver Bells at the Christmas Fair. ~*~ What your favourite authors are saying about Heidi Swain ~*~ 'A delightful, charming read - perfect for summer!' Milly Johnson, author of The Queen of Wishful Thinking 'A real cracker of a read' Penny Parkes, author of Practice Makes Perfect 'Fans of Carole Matthews will enjoy this heartfelt novel' Katie Oliver 'Sprinkled with Christmas sparkle' Trisha Ashley, author of The Little Teashop of Lost and Found 'A heart-warming sweet treat of a read' Mandy Baggot, author of Those Summer Nights
Will the events of one snowy November night haunt her forever?Grab a cup of joe and meet Tula DuBois, Sugar to everyone who loves her, an accomplished ballroom dance instructor living in the Twin Ports of Lake Superior. From the outside Sugar appears to have it all, a successful business and a wonderful family, but behind closed doors Sugar's emotional walls are crumbling as the events of one snowy November night ten years ago fill her nights with terror. As she struggles to keep her sanity from slipping away she is taunted by the never-ending mantra of why. Why is she still here? Why was she spared? When Drug Task Force Agent Donovan Walsh arrives in Duluth, Minnesota, there is no doubt in his mind that it's the tip of the end of the world and he prays that his assignment will be short so he can escape back home to sunny, warm Texas. That is until he meets his latest protected witness, Sugar. His job is simple -- protect her from a madman determined to engage her in a dangerous tango. All it takes is one dance across the floor and Agent Walsh quickly discovers there is nothing simple about Sugar. As the gales of November blow early, Van finds himself drawn to Sugar as he leads her through a tender dance of grief and guilt. The sadness in her eyes when she thinks no one is looking compels him to help her rediscover her love for dancing and the reasons why she was left behind. As one storm eases another intensifies and Sugar is pulled back into a high stakes promenade with a psychopath hellbent on destroying her family and her town. Sugar must summon her strength and give the performance of a lifetime as she becomes an unwilling partner in a treacherous dance of drugs, kidnapping and family betrayal. It's a dance where one misstep could leave her fighting for her life!As winter descends upon Lake Superior, Sugar will waltz through the darkness to find faith, hope, and the greatest of these, love….
National Book Award Finalist A heartstrong story of family and romance, tribulation and tenacity, set on the High Plains east of Denver. In the small town of Holt, Colorado, a high school teacher is confronted with raising his two boys alone after their mother retreats first to the bedroom, then altogether. A teenage girl—her father long since disappeared, her mother unwilling to have her in the house—is pregnant, alone herself, with nowhere to go. And out in the country, two brothers, elderly bachelors, work the family homestead, the only world they've ever known. From these unsettled lives emerges a vision of life, and of the town and landscape that bind them together—their fates somehow overcoming the powerful circumstances of place and station, their confusion, curiosity, dignity and humor intact and resonant. As the milieu widens to embrace fully four generations, Kent Haruf displays an emotional and aesthetic authority to rival the past masters of a classic American tradition.
When New Orleans homicide detective Bobby Doucet comes to New Bergin, Wisconsin, to investigate a series of murders, Rachel Larsen uses her ability to see ghosts to help with the case, which awakens strange powers within her.
Dance prodigy Karma Clark's unrequited love for Danny is unbearable until Aaryn, son of Cupid, returns to try to fix his mistake and ends up falling in love with Karma, now a teenage mother.
Examines "the gruesome, morbid details of some of the worst plagues in human history, as well as stories of the heroic figures who fought to ease their suffering. With her signature mix of ... research and ... storytelling, and not a little dark humor, Jennifer Wright explores history's most gripping and deadly outbreaks"--
NATIONAL BESTSELLER • From “one of the most acute and lasting writers of her generation” (The New York Times) comes a piercing novel of race, class, love, and war in America. Twenty-year-old Tassie Keltjin, the daughter of a gentleman farmer, has come to a university town as a student. When she takes a job as a part-time nanny for a mysterious and glamorous family, she finds herself drawn deeper into their world and forever changed. “An indelible portrait of a young woman coming of age in the Midwest in the year after 9/11…. Moore has written her most powerful book yet.” —The New York Times
