Raven Phillips is a good girl with an around-the-way persona. Recently graduating high school, she and her two best friends are set to embark on this journey called life and turn up in the process. Not looking for love, it soon finds her in the form of an outspoken, nonchalant, “real one” named Jermaine “Maine” Towns. Maine is an up-and-coming rapper, who has control of the streets alongside his brother Ant. Maine has always been the wild card; a shoot first ask questions later type of guy. Recently discovering his passion for rapping, he quickly takes off on the underground rap scene. Swearing off relationships, will an encounter with the feisty Raven result in the love he’d been craving all along? Kamaya Phillips is running from her past, dealing with an ex who just won’t let her go. Her new interest, Anthony, becomes a welcomed distraction that she embraces. With a persistent ex, will new love be able to blossom or crumble right before her eyes? Anthony “Ant” Towns plans to retire early from the streets and help his brother reach new heights in the music industry. Being the HNIC makes it hard because everyone depends on him. He’s trying to figure things out on the business end, but his personal life is all over the place. That is until the beautiful Kamaya enters, bringing about a sense of calmness. The saying goes, “What looks good to you, isn’t always good for you.”What happens when that bad thing has some good qualities that you just can’t seem to shake? In fact, you start to crave it.
When it rains, it pours! That seems to be the new theme for these couples. Part one left off with drama at an all-time high, and in part two, the stakes go up even more. No matter what happens, Ryan refuses to give up his quest to regain control of Kamaya. He’s even willing to enlist the help of the women closest to Ant and Maine to accomplish his goal. Finally getting his hands on Kamaya, he exposes her to depravities that shake her world. Causing her to fall into a deep depression. When Ant shows up to hold her down, her fragile state of mind may be too broken for him to mend alone. Finding out that Chloe, his baby mama helped pull the kidnapping off has him contemplating things that he never thought he would, and more determined than ever to get rid of Ryan. Raven is positive that she’s done with Maine when she walks in on him visiting with his ready-made family. But is she really? With Kandice’s obsession with Maine and him gaining the attention of another woman close to him, will life’s circumstances reconnect them or tear them apart before they can start a family of their own? After an unpredictable romance, life as these couples know it starts coming apart at the seams. Ryan lingers, playing puppeteer; plotting against anyone remotely close to Kamaya in order to get her attention. As life altering events plague the couples, it becomes hard to focus on the task at hand; taking Ryan down, giving him the space he needs to continue creating chaos in their lives. In this explosive, action packed second installment, a critical question will be answered: Who will walk through the fire to claim the love that they crave so deeply?
Kidnappings, death, and other unfortunate events have plagued the new couples . Fed up with being on the defense it's time to be on the offense side of things. The guys must perfect the art of war to protect their growing family by any means necessary. With different obstacles thrown at them it's time to weed out whose friend or foe. This time around will they be able to get rid of Ryan for good or will he slip through their fingers yet again? It’s been one heck of a ride and in this finale we find out who's willing to go to the edge in order to maintain the love they’ve been craving since the beginning.
18- year old Cioni CiCi Lee was just your ordinary around the way girl. With a young mother for an example, Cioni was easily influenced by the neighborhood and things going on around her. Her and her best friends Ali, and Madden loved chilling on the stoop, attending house parties, and just doing the regular teenage things. Growing up in the hood with messed up parents was the one thing that brought them all together. Products of their environments, each girl is forced to figure their way through life, not every choice a good one. Even with their circumstances, Ali, Madden, and Cioni all have a bond was always unbreakable, and nothing could and would ever come between them. Not even boys...well...There was one boy... one who is now a man and the man in the streets-Knowledge. Cioni had always had her eyes on him, but Madden was always the bold one and had eventually scored him first. Cioni was always the one that was overlooked due to her shy girl ways and not knowing her beauty and worth. She was always in last place, but what she doesn't know was that she was actually the hood's gem.Knowledge "Ledge" Armstrong; at an early age always knew that he was a king. With his brother Wisdom Wiz" Armstrong and cousin Major Armstrong by his side, the heroin game was readily theirs for the taking. With a knack for hustling and swagger out of this world, Ledge manages to move him and his family out of the hood, eventually bringing his girlfriend Madden along all off the strength of his hustle. Life is sweet, and then life has its problems especially when money is involved. Soon, Ledge quickly realizes that the girl he picked out the crowd was the wrong one and now has his eyes set on Cioni. With Cioni refusing to break the girl code, Ledge stops at nothing to have her. It doesn't take long before he has her so deep in her feelings, and unable to escape them. With the two of them having love, and optimism nothing could come between them, right? But when reality of their consequences are brought to the light, will it be enough to break them apart?Ali Morris was dealt a bad hand like a lot of kids around the way. Her mother a junkie, and her father absent, Ali only knew to get it by any means necessary. Her by any means necessary lands her in a predicament that ultimately has her back against the wall. Forced to make a decision to choose her life or HIS, she definitely chooses hers. Choosing her life sent her spiraling out of control with only one thing that could save her...love. Love from Wisdom comes at just right the time, but will it be enough to keep her from going down a path of destruction.
NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • A stunning “portrait of the enduring grace of friendship” (NPR) about the families we are born into, and those that we make for ourselves. A masterful depiction of love in the twenty-first century. NATIONAL BOOK AWARD FINALIST • MAN BOOKER PRIZE FINALIST • WINNER OF THE KIRKUS PRIZE A Little Life follows four college classmates—broke, adrift, and buoyed only by their friendship and ambition—as they move to New York in search of fame and fortune. While their relationships, which are tinged by addiction, success, and pride, deepen over the decades, the men are held together by their devotion to the brilliant, enigmatic Jude, a man scarred by an unspeakable childhood trauma. A hymn to brotherly bonds and a masterful depiction of love in the twenty-first century, Hanya Yanagihara’s stunning novel is about the families we are born into, and those that we make for ourselves. Look for Hanya Yanagihara’s latest bestselling novel, To Paradise.
A dark, engrossing, blood-drenched tale of the familiar threats to female power—and one girl’s journey to regain it. Five starred reviews greeted this powerful story from Elana K. Arnold, author of the Printz Honor winner Damsel. You are alone in the woods, seen only by the unblinking yellow moon. Your hands are empty. You are nearly naked. And the wolf is angry. Since her grandmother became her caretaker when she was four years old, Bisou Martel has lived a quiet life in a little house in Seattle. She’s kept mostly to herself. She’s been good. But then comes the night of homecoming, when she finds herself running for her life over roots and between trees, a fury of claws and teeth behind her. A wolf attacks. Bisou fights back. A new moon rises. And with it, questions. About the blood in Bisou’s past, and on her hands as she stumbles home. About broken boys and vicious wolves. About girls lost in the woods—frightened, but not alone.
Falling in love was never part of Larissa's plan, especially with a thug. Meet Larissa Bradshaw, a strong-willed hardworking girl. After her parents turn their backs on her she closes her heart to love and becomes determined to make something of herself despite her situation. She meets Messiah "Money" Lawson and everything changes. Messiah is an up and coming boss in the streets. He's a nigga that's respected and feared by all. From the moment he first sees Larissa he has to have her. The two share an instant connection and can't seem to get enough of each other. Messiah's lifestyle and desire for money brings jealousy, temptation, and violence threatening to ruin what he and Larissa are trying to build.Follow Larissa and Messiah on their journey of ups and downs as they fight for the love, loyalty and life they always wanted.
With his stunning debut novel, She's Come Undone, Wally Lamb won the adulation of critics and readers with his mesmerizing tale of one woman's painful yet triumphant journey of self-discovery. Now, this brilliantly talented writer returns with I Know This Much Is True, a heartbreaking and poignant multigenerational saga of the reproductive bonds of destruction and the powerful force of forgiveness. A masterpiece that breathtakingly tells a story of alienation and connection, power and abuse, devastation and renewal--this novel is a contemporary retelling of an ancient Hindu myth. A proud king must confront his demons to achieve salvation. Change yourself, the myth instructs, and you will inhabit a renovated world. When you're the same brother of a schizophrenic identical twin, the tricky thing about saving yourself is the blood it leaves on your bands--the little inconvenience of the look-alike corpse at your feet. And if you're into both survival of the fittest and being your brother's keeper--if you've promised your dying mother--then say so long to sleep and hello to the middle of the night. Grab a book or a beer. Get used to Letterman's gap-toothed smile of the absurd, or the view of the bedroom ceiling, or the influence of random selection. Take it from a godless insomniac. Take it from the uncrazy twin--the guy who beat the biochemical rap. Dominick Birdsey's entire life has been compromised and constricted by anger and fear, by the paranoid schizophrenic twin brother he both deeply loves and resents, and by the past they shared with their adoptive father, Ray, a spit-and-polish ex-Navy man (the five-foot-six-inch sleeping giant who snoozed upstairs weekdays in the spare room and built submarines at night), and their long-suffering mother, Concettina, a timid woman with a harelip that made her shy and self-conscious: She holds a loose fist to her face to cover her defective mouth--her perpetual apology to the world for a birth defect over which she'd had no control. Born in the waning moments of 1949 and the opening minutes of 1950, the twins are physical mirror images who grow into separate yet connected entities: the seemingly strong and protective yet fearful Dominick, his mother's watchful "monkey"; and the seemingly weak and sweet yet noble Thomas, his mother's gentle "bunny." From childhood, Dominick fights for both separation and wholeness--and ultimately self-protection--in a house of fear dominated by Ray, a bully who abuses his power over these stepsons whose biological father is a mystery. I was still afraid of his anger but saw how he punished weakness--pounced on it. Out of self-preservation I hid my fear, Dominick confesses. As for Thomas, he just never knew how to play defense. He just didn't get it. But Dominick's talent for survival comes at an enormous cost, including the breakup of his marriage to the warm, beautiful Dessa, whom he still loves. And it will be put to the ultimate test when Thomas, a Bible-spouting zealot, commits an unthinkable act that threatens the tenuous balance of both his and Dominick's lives. To save himself, Dominick must confront not only the pain of his past but the dark secrets he has locked deep within himself, and the sins of his ancestors--a quest that will lead him beyond the confines of his blue-collar New England town to the volcanic foothills of Sicily 's Mount Etna, where his ambitious and vengefully proud grandfather and a namesake Domenico Tempesta, the sostegno del famiglia, was born. Each of the stories Ma told us about Papa reinforced the message that he was the boss, that he ruled the roost, that what he said went. Searching for answers, Dominick turns to the whispers of the dead, to the pages of his grandfather's handwritten memoir, The History of Domenico Onofrio Tempesta, a Great Man from Humble Beginnings. Rendered with touches of magic realism, Domenico's fablelike tale--in which monkeys enchant and religious statues weep--becomes the old man's confession--an unwitting legacy of contrition that reveals the truth's of Domenico's life, Dominick learns that power, wrongly used, defeats the oppressor as well as the oppressed, and now, picking through the humble shards of his deconstructed life, he will search for the courage and love to forgive, to expiate his and his ancestors' transgressions, and finally to rebuild himself beyond the haunted shadow of his twin. Set against the vivid panoply of twentieth-century America and filled with richly drawn, memorable characters, this deeply moving and thoroughly satisfying novel brings to light humanity's deepest needs and fears, our aloneness, our desire for love and acceptance, our struggle to survive at all costs. Joyous, mystical, and exquisitely written, I Know This Much Is True is an extraordinary reading experience that will leave no reader untouched.
National Book Award Finalist • Here is the unforgettable story of the Binewskis, a circus-geek family whose matriarch and patriarch have bred their own exhibit of human oddities—with the help of amphetamines, arsenic, and radioisotopes. One of The Atlantic’s Great American Novels of the Past 100 Years Their offspring include Arturo the Aquaboy, who has flippers for limbs and a megalomaniac ambition worthy of Genghis Khan . . . Iphy and Elly, the lissome Siamese twins . . . albino hunchback Oly, and the outwardly normal Chick, whose mysterious gifts make him the family’s most precious—and dangerous—asset. As the Binewskis take their act across the backwaters of the U.S., inspiring fanatical devotion and murderous revulsion; as its members conduct their own Machiavellian version of sibling rivalry, Geek Love throws its sulfurous light on our notions of the freakish and the normal, the beautiful and the ugly, the holy and the obscene. Family values will never be the same.
