A beautiful love story set in the jazz age of Seattle. For centuries, humans have been the pawns in the game between Love and Death. You may be familiar with a few of the challenges, Antony and Cleopatra, Helen of Troy and Paris, Romeo and Juliet. And Death always wins…always.
A new game is afoot and Love and Death have chosen the players.
Flora is an African-American girl who is truly at home in the sky. A plane mechanic by day and a jazz singer by night, Flora lives with her grandmother and is trying to save up enough money to finance a flight around the world!
My Name Is Lucy Barton by Pulitzer Prize winner Elizabeth Strout is a novel to be read slowly and savored for its richness of story. At less than 200 pages, it is a novel with a simple plot: a woman, Lucy, is in the hospital for a prolonged stay, and her mother is visiting her. Lucy has been estranged from her
Kristin Armstrong, a contributing editor to Runner's World, is a delightful writer as well as a dedicated runner.
Her reflections are gathered into different themes that allow her to cover a lot of ground (ahem) - family, friendships, self-reflection and self-esteem, relationships, goals both short term and long. And she does it all with a lot of inspiring, kind words and a ready wit.
A Man Called Ove is one of those stories where you initially hate the main character but fall completely in love with him by the end of the book. Ove (pronounced ooh-va) is a sad, lonely, and grumpy older man. He believes everything should have a purpose, and one should always follow the rules. Ove does not believe in exceptions, he never smiles, he has zero tolerance for small talk, and he'll tell you to your face if he thinks
It’s a tale as old as time: teens going to parties far beyond their years. For this Johnson County reader, the interest in Jason Reynold's When I Was the Greatest lies in the microclimate of Bed-Stuy in New York City.
This is the story of Amanda and how she overcomes her past and embraces her new life, learning to live with her father, and making new friends. Amanda has a complicated past that she struggles with and does not want people to know about. There are flashbacks, sprinkled throughout the book, which feature Andrew and his battle with everyday life. Andrew and Amanda are connected in ways that most would not understand, as they are the same person only in different versions.
I couldn’t have read A Fine Romance at a more perfect time. It was the perfect book to read while cooped up in a hospital room waiting for a loved one to heal. I sailed right along with Susan Branch and her husband, Joe, as they journeyed to England via ship and explored the country for two months. This book is not only Susan’s diary during their vacation in England, i
Christy Reed has had a difficult year. First she lost both of her parents in a car wreck, then just a few months later her sister Ginny dies in a house fire. Just as Christy is starting to pull herself out of her grieving and begins to accept that she is alone in the world, an envelope arrives in the mail. The envelope is addressed in Ginny’s handwriting and is postmarked just a few days ago. What is going on, and where is Ginny?
Even if you aren’t quite ready to seek out editors and agents, it’s never too soon to start building your platform. And even if you aren’t interested in building an author’s platform, you should at least check out Social Media for Writers for Chuck Wendig’s Forward. That alone garners a recommendation.
Writing is serious business. If you’re a writer, especially a self-published or small-press author, you need to take social media seriously and see it as a business strategy for your work.
In The Curious Nature Guide, author Clare Walker Leslie uses beautiful photographs and exquisite illustrations to entice us to rediscover the wonders that surround us in the natural world. Filled with easy-to-follow prompts and exercises, Walker inspires readers to reduce stress by spending time in nature. Her book includes simple suggestions for reconnecting with the outside world.
