Sugar and Spite
Sugar and Spite

Author: Gail D. Villanueva

Publisher: Scholastic Inc.

Published: 2021-04-20

Total Pages: 177

ISBN-13: 1338630946

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Can a bully be defeated by a magical love potion? Jolina can't take Claudine's bullying any longer! The taunts and teasing are too much. Though Jolina knows she's still in training to use her grandfather's arbularyo magic, she sneaks into his potions lab to get her revenge. Jolina brews a batch of gayuma, a powerful love potion. And it works. The love potion conquers Claudine's hateful nature. In fact, Claudine doesn't just stop bullying Jolina -- now she wants to be Jolina's BFF, and does everything and anything Jolina asks. But magic comes with a cost, and bad intentions beget bad returns. Controlling another person's ability to love -- or hate -- will certainly have consequences. The magic demands payment, and it is about to come for Jolina in the form of a powerful storm... Magic and reality mingle in this brilliant new middle-grade novel by Gail D. Villanueva that asks whether it's ever okay to take away someone's free will.

Sugar and Spite
Sugar and Spite

Author: G. A. McKevett

Publisher: Kensington Cozies

Published: 2018-03-20

Total Pages: 307

ISBN-13: 1496721829

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A plus-sized private investigator must clear her friend and ex-partner of murdering his ex-wife in this cozy mystery by the author of Cooked Goose. When Savannah Reid’s only shot at romance for Valentine’s Day includes a stakeout with her ex-partner, Dirk Coulter, things aren’t exactly looking up in the hearts-and-flowers department. After pulling an all-nighter, Savannah wants nothing more than to cook up a plate of steamy grits and hash browns. But no sooner has she buttered the skillet when disaster arrives in the overdone, underdressed form of Polly Coulter, Dirk’s ex-wife. Days later, the no-good, two-timing broad is found lying in a pool of blood in Dirk’s doublewide trailer, shot through the chest with his service revolver. When Dirk is arrested for Polly’s murder, Savannah goes to work to clear his name, and every lead points to trouble. All in all, this is one Valentine’s Day that’s shaping up to be a real massacre . . . Praise for Sugar and Spite “Savannah’s fifth outing is fresh, breezy, and believably plotted.” —Kirkus Reviews “Delightful and spunky, California private detective Savannah Reid, always enticed by food, turns her talents toward clearing her ex-partner of the murder of his ex-wife. Never a dull moment, so be sure to buy this one.” —Library Journal “Romping good fun, and don't forget the chocolates.” —Booklist

Tiny Beautiful Things
Tiny Beautiful Things

Author: Cheryl Strayed

Publisher: Vintage

Published: 2012-07-10

Total Pages: 370

ISBN-13: 0307949338

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NATIONAL BESTSELLER • Soon to be a Hulu Original series • The internationally acclaimed author of Wild collects the best of The Rumpus's Dear Sugar advice columns plus never-before-published pieces. Rich with humor and insight—and absolute honesty—this "wise and compassionate" (New York Times Book Review) book is a balm for everything life throws our way. Life can be hard: your lover cheats on you; you lose a family member; you can’t pay the bills—and it can be great: you’ve had the hottest sex of your life; you get that plum job; you muster the courage to write your novel. Sugar—the once-anonymous online columnist at The Rumpus, now revealed as Cheryl Strayed, author of the bestselling memoir Wild—is the person thousands turn to for advice.

Jitterbug Perfume
Jitterbug Perfume

Author: Tom Robbins

Publisher: Bantam

Published: 2003-06-17

Total Pages: 439

ISBN-13: 0553897926

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Jitterbug Perfume is an epic. Which is to say, it begins in the forests of ancient Bohemia and doesn’t conclude until nine o’clock tonight (Paris time). It is a saga, as well. A saga must have a hero, and the hero of this one is a janitor with a missing bottle. The bottle is blue, very, very old, and embossed with the image of a goat-horned god. If the liquid in the bottle actually is the secret essence of the universe, as some folks seem to think, it had better be discovered soon because it is leaking and there is only a drop or two left.

My Fate According to the Butterfly
My Fate According to the Butterfly

Author: Gail D. Villanueva

Publisher: Scholastic Inc.

Published: 2019-07-30

Total Pages: 190

ISBN-13: 1338310526

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* "Villanueva's debut is a beautiful #ownvoices middle-grade novel. Tough topics are addressed, but warmth and humor... bring lightness to Sab's story. This immersive novel bursts with life." -- Kirkus Reviews, starred review When superstitious Sab sees a giant black butterfly, an omen of death, she knows that she's doomed! According to legend, she has one week before her fate catches up with her -- on her 11th birthday. With her time running out, all she wants is to celebrate her birthday with her entire family. But her sister, Ate Nadine, stopped speaking to their father one year ago, and Sab doesn't even know why.If Sab's going to get Ate Nadine and their father to reconcile, she'll have to overcome her fears -- of her sister's anger, of leaving the bubble of her sheltered community, of her upcoming doom -- and figure out the cause of their rift.So Sab and her best friend Pepper start spying on Nadine and digging into their family's past to determine why, exactly, Nadine won't speak to their father. But Sab's adventures across Manila reveal truths about her family more difficult -- and dangerous -- than she ever anticipated.Was the Butterfly right? Perhaps Sab is doomed after all!

Burnt Sugar
Burnt Sugar

Author: Avni Doshi

Publisher: Abrams

Published: 2021-01-26

Total Pages: 264

ISBN-13: 1647002265

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Shortlisted for the 2020 Booker Prize, a searing literary debut novel set in India about mothers and daughters, obsession and betrayal “I would be lying if I say my mother’s misery has never given me pleasure," says Antara, Tara’s now-adult daughter. This is a love story and a story about betrayal—not between lovers but between a mother and a daughter. . . . In her youth, Tara was wild. She abandoned her arranged marriage to join an ashram, embarked on a stint as a beggar (mostly to spite her affluent parents), and spent years chasing a disheveled, homeless “artist,” all with little Antara in tow. But now Tara is forgetting things, and Antara is an adult—an artist and married—and must search for a way to make peace with a past that haunts her as she confronts the task of caring for a woman who never cared for her. Sharp as a blade and laced with caustic wit, Burnt Sugar unpicks the slippery, choking cord of memory and myth that binds mother and daughter: Is Tara’s memory loss real? Are Antara’s memories fair? In vivid and visceral prose, Avni Doshi tells a story at once shocking and empathetic of a mother-daughter relationship and a daughter’s search for self. A journey into shifting memories, altering identities, and the subjective nature of truth, Burnt Sugar is the stunning and unforgettable debut of a major new voice in contemporary fiction.

Spirals
Spirals

Author: Joan Gould

Publisher: Random House

Published: 2012-10-31

Total Pages: 344

ISBN-13: 0307826457

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“A journey to the center of a woman’s life.”—Maggie Scarf “A moving and exquisitely drawn portrait . . . Spirals is about commitment, courage, and the meaning of love.”—New Woman “Family. Familiar. Only my family isn’t familiar at all. My friends are familiar, my friends are as dependable as telephone poles, but the members of my family change in size, looks, powers, burdens and expectations, when all I ask of them is that they remain the same. Children grow, gather power while their parents lose it, leave home, travel in other orbits. Parents move, remarry or don’t remarry, dwindle away, die. Spouses may stay around for a long while—mine did, for twenty-eight years—but sooner or later they leave. And I keep changing too, even though I’m the one who stays home. I picture myself in the role of mother, particularly the mother of young children, because this is a self I like—distracted and short-tempered, I grant you, but well-meaning in spite of outbursts. Still, I have to recognize that this is different from the self who was a daughter or wife—and these don’t have much in common with the new, apprentice selves, who have to learn a whole set of limits, as mother of adults, mother-in-law, widow and grandmother. One thing these selves have in common, however: They’re not the same as my self when I’m alone.”—from Spirals

Spite
Spite

Author: Simon McCarthy-Jones

Publisher: Basic Books

Published: 2021-04-13

Total Pages: 176

ISBN-13: 1541646983

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Spite angers and enrages us, but it also keeps us honest. In this provocative account, a psychologist examines how petty vengeance explains human thriving. Spite seems utterly useless. You don't gain anything by hurting yourself just so you can hurt someone else. So why hasn't evolution weeded out all the spiteful people? As psychologist Simon McCarthy-Jones argues, spite seems pointless because we're looking at it wrong. Spite isn't just what we feel when a car cuts us off or when a partner cheats. It's what we feel when we want to punish a bad act simply because it was bad. Spite is our fairness instinct, an innate resistance to exploitation, and it is one of the building blocks of human civilization. As McCarthy-Jones explains, some of history's most important developments—the rise of religions, governments, and even moral codes—were actually redirections of spiteful impulses. A provocative, engaging read, Spite shows that if you really want to understand what makes us human, you can't just look at noble ideas like altruism and cooperation. You need to understand our darker impulses as well.

Blackass
Blackass

Author: A. Igoni Barrett

Publisher: Graywolf Press

Published: 2016-03-01

Total Pages: 273

ISBN-13: 1555979262

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Furo Wariboko, a young Nigerian, awakes the morning before a job interview to find that he's been transformed into a white man. In this condition he plunges into the bustle of Lagos to make his fortune. With his red hair, green eyes, and pale skin, it seems he's been completely changed. Well, almost. There is the matter of his family, his accent, his name. Oh, and his black ass. Furo must quickly learn to navigate a world made unfamiliar and deal with those who would use him for their own purposes. Taken in by a young woman called Syreeta and pursued by a writer named Igoni, Furo lands his first-ever job, adopts a new name, and soon finds himself evolving in unanticipated ways. A. Igoni Barrett's Blackass is a fierce comic satire that touches on everything from race to social media while at the same time questioning the values society places on us simply by virtue of the way we look. As he did in Love Is Power, or Something Like That, Barrett brilliantly depicts life in contemporary Nigeria and details the double-dealing and code-switching that are implicit in everyday business. But it's Furo's search for an identity--one deeper than skin--that leads to the final unraveling of his own carefully constructed story.