"This sparkling novel about two sisters is both witty and stylish. Even if you don't have a sister of your own, you won't be able to resist LaZebnik's charming take on modern relationships. Read it!"
- Holly Peterson, bestselling author of The Manny
When Ava Nickerson was a child, her mother jokingly betrothed her to a friend's son, and the contract the parents made has stayed safely buried for years. Now that still-single Ava is closing in on thirty, no one even remembers she was once "engaged" to the Markowitz boy. But when their mother is diagnosed with cancer, Ava's prodigal little sister Lauren comes home to Los Angeles where she stumbles across the decades-old document.
Frustrated and embarrassed by Ava's constant lectures about financial responsibility (all because she's in a little debt. Okay, a lot of debt), Lauren decides to do some sisterly interfering of her own and tracks down her sister's childhood fiancé. When she finds him, the highly inappropriate, twice-divorced, but incredibly charming Russell Markowitz is all too happy to re-enter the Nickerson sisters' lives, and always-accountable Ava is forced to consider just how binding a contract really is . . . Views: 246
David Brown is a lonely 70 year old man driving into the country to fish in a trout stream behind the house he grew up in. A place he hasn’t seen in a half-century or more. But of course, there’s more to it than that. While fishing, he notices something that he should have found when he was a child, and it opens up a whole new range of regrets to David… and magical opportunity.John Mortenson is a highly intelligent but poor student at an Ivy League university. One day, when he returns to his dorm, he sees a note taped up to his door. It's an invitation to a philosophical discussion. Participants will be paid! Being in dire need of funds and a lover of philosophy, he decides to go. This may turn out to be the worst decision he's ever made.(This story was inspired by the true story of Ted Kaczynski, better known as the Unabomber, and the mind control experiments he was subjected to as a young Harvard student.) Views: 230
When the Wilson family is hit with a financial Ponzi-style fraud, losing everything but the old family manse, they get creative and turn their home into a small inn. The Four Acorns Inn sounds like a good idea, except for one thing -- someone is out to ruin them anyway possible, and that includes murder. As if that's not bad enough, Scarlet Wilson's love life keeps tanking, no matter what she does. Pretty sad when the elderly ladies have a better romantic life than the forty-something innkeeper. Is she cursed when it comes to men, or is there something more sinister going on? Better known as "Miz Scarlet", the feisty former teacher finds she's up to her eyeballs in questions when someone posts a threat in the garden. Who's in danger and why? What does it have to do with the Jordan family, who disappeared without a trace? When Miz Scarlet comes across items belonging to the Jordan children, her fears are only heightened. Enter Kenny Tolliver ("Captain Peacock"), the still-handsome hunk who captured Miz Scarlet's heart all those years ago in high school. Widowed, retired as Assistant Director of Public Safety at Princeton University, now working for Mercer Security, "Captain Peacock" has all kind of tricks up his sleeve. Good thing, because two guests of the Four Acorns Inn have been murdered and no one knows who's next. What can possibly come between "Miz Scarlet" and "Captain Peacock"? How about the constant interference of "Colonel Grey Poupon", Scarlet's annoying, twice-married brother? Even as Bur Wilson slides into fifty, the old sibling rivalry lives. As brother and sister vie for Kenny's attention, things spiral out of control, further endangering them. Just how involved was Bur with one of the now-dead guests? When the challenges seem insurmountable, the trio puts differences aside to find the motive for the series of bizarre attacks on the family. Secrets can be buried deep, and it's not always easy to dig them up, even as the guests are dropping like flies. Is there a killer inside the Four Acorns Inn? It's up to Miz Scarlet, Captain Peacock, and Colonel Grey Poupon to solve the clues before someone else winds up deader than a doornail. Views: 227
With the same grace and breadth of learning she brought to her studies of the mind’s pathologies, Kay Redfield Jamison examines one of its most exalted states: exuberance. This “abounding, ebullient, effervescent emotion” manifests itself everywhere from child’s play to scientific breakthrough and is crucially important to learning, risk-taking, social cohesiveness, and survival itself. Exuberance: The Passion for Life introduces us to such notably irrepressible types as Teddy Roosevelt, John Muir, and Richard Feynman, as well as Peter Pan, dancing porcupines, and Charles Schulz’s Snoopy. It explores whether exuberance can be inherited, parses its neurochemical grammar, and documents the methods people have used to stimulate it. The resulting book is an irresistible fusion of science and soul.
From the Trade Paperback edition. Views: 187
A thrilling mystery for younger men, about ages between 10 and 18 or so. Views: 186
A classic novel by S. Weir Mitchell. From the preface: There will be many people in this book; some will be important, others will come on the scene for a time and return no more. The life-lines of these persons will cross and recross, to meet once or twice and not again, like the ruts in a much used road. To-day the stage may be crowded, to-morrow empty. The corner novels where only a half dozen people are concerned give no impression of the multitudinous contacts which affect human lives. Even of the limited life of a village this is true. It was more true of the time of my story, which lacking plot must rely for interest on the influential relations of social groups, then more defined in small communities than they are to-day. Long before the Civil War there were in the middle states, near to or remote from great centres, villages where the social division of classes was tacitly accepted. In or near these towns one or more families were continuously important on account of wealth or because of historic position, generations of social training, and constant relation to the larger world. They came by degrees to constitute what I may describe as an indistinct caste, for a long time accepted as such by their less fortune-favoured neighbours. They were, in fact, for many years almost as much a class by themselves as are the long-seated county families of England and like these were looked to for helpful aid in sickness and in other of the calamities of life. The democrat time, increasing ease of travel and the growth of large industries, gradually altered the relation between these small communities, and the families who in the smaller matters of life long remained singularly familiar with their poorer neighbours and in the way of closer social intimacies far apart. It seemed to me worth while to use the life of one of these groups of people as the background of a story which also deals with the influence of politics and war on all classes. Views: 174
The crew of the starship Ganymede were afraid their chief was losing his mind.Commander Walter Fox had explored and opened up more colony-worlds than any other man alive - yet it was rumored that he still believed there were other intelligent beings in the galaxy.Now as the ship grounded on unfamiliar terrain, the crew realized that the routine flight to Vega had been interrupted - and their worst fears were true . . .They had landed on Wolf IV - the one planet from which no man had ever returned alive. Views: 172
From the author of the best-selling memoir An Unquiet Mind, comes the first major book in a quarter century on suicide, and its terrible pull on the young in particular. Night Falls Fast is tragically timely: suicide has become one of the most common killers of Americans between the ages of fifteen and forty-five.An internationally acknowledged authority on depressive illnesses, Dr. Jamison has also known suicide firsthand: after years of struggling with manic-depression, she tried at age twenty-eight to kill herself. Weaving together a historical and scientific exploration of the subject with personal essays on individual suicides, she brings not only her remarkable compassion and literary skill but also all of her knowledge and research to bear on this devastating problem. This is a book that helps us to understand the suicidal mind, to recognize and come to the aid of those at risk, and to comprehend the profound effects on those left behind. It is... Views: 155
Billy Gimp was a bladerunner . . . one of the shadowy procurers of illegal medical supplies for the rapidly expanding, nightmare world of the medical black market. Doc was a skilled surgeon at a government-operated hospital by day . . . and an underground physician by night, providing health care for the multitudes who could not - or would not - qualify for legal medical assistance.Trapped by Health Control Police, Billy Gimp knew he had to warn Doc that they were closing in on him.But something even more deadly than the law had already mad its first move . . . a new plague that Health Control could not handle! Views: 137
RetailThe inspiring (and hilarious) memoir of a gloriously eccentric dad raising an equally eccentric son, by the bestselling author of *Look Me in the Eye*John Elder Robison wasn't a model child. He was awkward in school; he ran away from home; he threatened people with knives. As an adult, he learned he had Asperger's syndrome, which explained a lot, and his youthful shenanigans made for riotous stories. But it wasn't so funny when his son, Cubby, started having trouble in school and seemed like he might be headed the same way.Not that John was a model dad, either. When Cubby asked, "Where did I come from?" John said he'd bought him at the Kid Store-and that the salesman had cheated him by promising Cubby would do chores. He ditched Good Night, Moon for stories he made up about nuclear-powered horses. He taught Cubby to drive at age twelve. Cubby turned out to have his father's intelligence but also some of his resistance to authority. At seventeen, he was brilliant enough in chemistry to make military-grade explosives, which led to a raid by the ATF. That woke John up to another thing he and Cubby shared: Asperger's syndrome.This is an unforgettable memoir about a different boy being raised by a different father-and learning to cope with, even celebrate, the difference. JOHN ELDER ROBISON is the author of two previous books, Look Me in the Eye and Be Different, and he lectures widely on autism and neurological differences. An adjunct professor at Elms College, he also serves on committees and review boards for the CDC, the National Institutes of Health, and Autism Speaks. A machinery enthusiast and avid photographer, John lives in Amherst with his family, animals, and machines.Author Residence: Amherst, Massachusetts "How does a man who lacks a sense of empathy and an ability to read nonverbal cues learn to be a father? And how does a man with Asperger's learn to recognize the same symptoms in his own child? (A key element in the book is Robison's son's own diagnosis, and Robison's reaction to his having missed seeing the signs for as long as he had.) In many ways, this is a traditional father-and-son memoir, but the added element of Asperger's gives the story a stronger emotional core: when Robison and his wife separated, for example, he realized he had been misreading a lot of what had been going on between them. It's a story of a man learning to be a parent, yes, but it's also-and perhaps more importantly-the story of a man discovering, as an adult, who he really is."-Booklist"John Elder Robison is one of my autism super heroes because he bravely brings humor and humility to the heart and soul of the taboo and unexpected corners of life lived with autism. His new book, Raising Cubby, is more than a memoir about a father and son bound by their Asperger syndrome. It's a story that reminds us how precious and precarious the parent child relationship is and how beautiful our lives can be when we are share that ride together. Raising Cubby is Robison's best work yet."-Liane Holliday-Willey, coauthor of Pretending To Be Normal: Living with Asperger Syndrome"John Robison's skill as a master storyteller is nowhere more evident than in his third book, Raising Cubby. This heartwarming memoir takes us on the colorful journey of John and his son, Jack (aka Cubby), as they learn about the world together. At turns funny and poignant, it is, above all, the story of the powerful love of a father for his son. Told in the immensely entertaining and engaging style of John Elder Robison, it should be on everyone's must-read list."-Lori S. Shery, President and Founder, ASPEN®"Funny and moving...A warmhearted, appealing account by a masterful storyteller."-Kirkus Reviews"Robison's third book starts with a bang-his description of the 'malicious explosion' created by his teenage Cubby that has the boy, who has Asperger's syndrome, looking at 60 years in prison, is as disconcerting as it is captivating....With the ensuing investigation and trial, Cubby and the author are drawn into a crazy world that threatens to tear apart their already delicate lives."-Publishers Weekly Views: 122
Silas Weir Mitchell was an American physician and writer known for his discovery of causalgia (complex regional pain syndrome) and erythromelalgia. Views: 110
