Search results for ""chance""

A moving story of one man, deeply troubled by the circumstances of his life, who travels to the islands of Hawaii hoping to find peace. Here, he is befriended by two intriguing people who speak in ways that mystify yet fascinate him. Thus begins a spiritual journey into a world of extraordinary feelings, which bring him understanding and an answer beyond anything he had ever dreamed possible. In this novel, set in a world of soft tropical beauty, the author shares his quiet philosophical knowledge in a comprehensible yet profound manner.

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When a little girl is shot on the steps of a San Francisco church, Detective Lindsay Boxer reconvenes the Women's Murder Club. Working with reporter Cindy Thomas, assistant DA Jill Bernhardt, and medical examiner Claire Washburn, Lindsay tracks a mystifying killer who quickly turns his pursuers into victims. The unorthodox allegiances of the Women's Murder Club lead them to suspect the unexpected - the killer may be an ex-cop. But nothing prepares them for the demented logic behind his choice of victims.

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Colleen Curran returns with her latest novel, Guests of Chance, completing the hilarious trilogy that has taken readers through break-ups, make-ups, fierce friendships, a trip to Hollywood and everything in between. Starring Lenore Rutland, an unsophisticated but astute former singing waitress who owns a theme restaurant in Montreal, Guests of Chance is proof that life can be an adventure. The new novel picks up where Curran left off in Overnight Sensation. Without skipping a beat, our heroine finds herself nervously flying away from her beloved Montreal to England, all the while reflecting on her "star turn" at the Oscars. She has left behind her beloved partner Benoît and her collection of unique friends: Madame Ducharme, who is doing time for poisoning six of her fellow jurors when they let a murderer go free; heartbroken Viola, whose lesbian lover has left for Toronto with her much younger, slimmer and more glamorous new love interest; Heidi's fireman brother Daniel, who hasn't told their parents that he's gay; Elspeth and her odious husband; and Madame's spoiled lap dogs, Montcalm and Brioche. Lenore's best friend Heidi, a professor of English, has persuaded Lenore to come to England with her for moral support as she tries to discover whether her handsome pen-pal "boyfriend" is the real deal. Akin to Bridget Jones's Diary and My Big Fat Greek Wedding, Guests of Chance is a laugh-filled romp with two inexperienced thirty-something travellers, enchanting new readers and making those who met Lenore in Something Drastic and Overnight Sensation fall in love with her all over again.

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In the stories in Winning Chance, Katherine Koller explores second chances, how we find them, and how we find the courage to take them. Whether they are contractors running into an ex while on the job, a busy mother pursuing community theatre, or a family building an illegal ice rink after an environmental collapse, Katherine Koller has created empathetic portraits of characters searching to connect.

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Once a cowboy, always a cowboy Ten years ago, Jack Everett left his family's ranch without a backward glance. Now, what was supposed to be a quick trip home for his father's funeral has suddenly become more complicated. The ranch Jack can handle-he might be a lawyer, but he still remembers how to work with his hands. But turning around the failing vineyard he's also inherited? That requires working with the one woman he never expected to see again.Ava Ellis broke her own heart the night she let Jack go. She was young and scared-and secretly pregnant with Jack's baby. Now that he's back and asking for her help, Ava sees her opportunity to right the wrongs of the past. But how will he feel about the son he's never known? Could this be their second chance-or their final heartbreak?"A fabulous storyteller who will keep you turning pages and wishing for just one more chapter at the end."-New York Times bestselling author Carolyn Brown"Cross my heart, this sexy, sweet romance gives a cowboy-at-heart lawyer a second chance at first love and readers a fantastic ride."-New York Times bestselling author Jennifer Ryan"A.J. Pine's writing is superb."-Romancing-the-Book.com on Six Month Rule

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A hilarious, emotional and thought-provoking book club read for fans of David Nicholls and Beth O'Leary.-?Nell has always known the date she''s going to die.After a psychic predicted her death date twenty years ago, she has lived life accepting she would never see forty embracing adventure and travelling the world, choosing fun over commitment and laying down roots.So, when the fateful day comes, Nell feels ready. She sends five excruciatingly honest confessions to her sister, parents and past loves, knowing she won't be around to face the consequences. Then, with her heart laid bare, all that''s left to do is check into a glamorous hotel and wait for the inevitableBut when Nell unexpectedly wakes up the next morning broke, single and very much alive, she must figure out exactly how to seize this second chance at life. And then it also hits her:What on earth happens now that everyone knows how she really feels?This is the perfect book club read for fans of David Nicholls, Holly Smale

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A heartwarming, exciting story of friendship, wonder and dance from Waterstones Prize-shortlisted author Efua Traoré! Jomi’s mum left when he was little to make a new life for them in Lagos, the city of dreams. When Jomi doesn’t hear from her, he decides to follow. His only starting place is a TV dance competition that his mum used to love. Things go badly for the boy and his pet bushbaby, until he meets a crew of street kids. Together, they come up with a one-chance idea to find Jomi’s mother – and make their own dreams come true. A brand new novel full of joy and wonder by the author of Children of the Quicksands, shortlisted for the Waterstones Children’s Book Prize Selected as The Times Children's Book of the Year 2023 A contemporary adventure of destiny, friendship and dance set in the vibrant city of Lagos, Nigeria Jomi hopes to find his missing mum by dancing on a TV talent show in a story which offers emotional pull and a lot of fun! PRAISE FOR CHILDREN OF THE QUICKSANDS: ‘A joy of a book: rich, warm, powerful storytelling’ KATHERINE RUNDELL ‘A thrilling adventure bright with the gorgeous colours of Nigeria – glorious!’ JASBINDER BILAN ‘An excellent book … rich in tradition and realism.’ HANNAH GOLD ‘[A] beautifully evoked story’ THE TELEGRAPH

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Breaking up is hard to do, especially when it''s with your best friend. Can these two ex-besties survive summer camp together? Maddie and Chloe have always been best friends, until last year, when Chloe's popularity and budding fame as an actor left Maddie in the dust one too many times. Their friendship is over, and they're both ready to move on.But when the girls arrive at summer camp, they discover that the universe isn't ready to let go of this friendship just yet: they're cabinmates, and each of them has to spend the summer with her exbest friend. Is it time to try again, or are they doomed to drift apart for good?

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They Both Die at the End meets You’ve Reached Sam, in this heart-stopping speculative young adult novel from New York Times bestselling author Robbie Couch that explores all the different ways love can live on after tragedy.It’s been a year since eighteen-year-old River Lang’s best friend died in a car accident. And every day since, he’s had to pass by the depressing billboard that appeared as a result: a texting and driving PSA that reduces Dylan to a cautionary tale and River to the best friend of the dead kid at school. Dylan was so much more than a statistic, though, and River hates that everyone in town seems to have forgotten. When he’s caught improving (a.k.a. vandalizing) Dylan’s billboard, River is blackmailed into joining the Affinity Trials—a research study that’s observing teens who are “struggling socially.” But as soon as he arrives, River’s social struggle

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Weaving a tapestry of creativity and circumstance, this lauded chronicle of the many links and serendipitous meetings between giants of American culture—from Henry James to Helen Keller to Zora Neale Hurston to Marcel Duchamp—now includes a new introduction by the author.“They met in ordinary ways,” writes Rachel Cohen in her introduction, “a careful arrangement after long admiration, a friend’s casual introduction, or because they both just happened to be standing near the drinks. . . . They talked to each other for a few hours or for forty years, and later it seemed to them impossible that they could have missed each other.”Each chapter of this inventive consideration of American culture evokes an actual meeting between two historical figures. In 1854, Henry James, as a boy, goes with his father to have a daguerreotype made by Mathew Brady and is captured in a moment of self-consciousness about being American. Brady ret

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Jack Everett Jr. split town at eighteen to escape his abusive father...and the girl who broke his heart. He swore he'd never leave until his brothers were safe-and that he'd never return until his father was six feet under. Now, ten years later, he's back for his dad's funeral and to help his brothers figure out what to do with their unexpected inheritance-the vineyard next door to their California ranch.Ava Ellis was eighteen and madly in love with Jack Everett when she set him free for his own good. He'd never leave town-never find the life he deserved-if he knew what she was hiding: she was pregnant with Jack's son. Owen, now nine, is the center of Ava's world, and she's put her dreams of an art career on hold to raise him and help with the family vineyard. When Jack comes back to town and meets his son before she has the chance to explain, she wonders if she made the right decision all those years ago-and if she's finally lost Jack Everett for good.

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The third book in the bestselling Chronicles of St Mary's series which follows a group of tea-soaked disaster magnets as they hurtle their way around History. If you love Jasper Fforde or Ben Aaronovitch, you won't be able to resist Jodi Taylor.History happens all around you. And, occasionally, to you.I could have been a bomb-disposal expert, or a volunteer for the Mars mission, or a firefighter, something safe and sensible. But, no, I had to be an historian.It began well. A successful assignment to 17th century Cambridge to meet Isaac Newton, and another to witness the historic events at The Gates of Grief. So far so good.But then came the long-awaited jump to the Trojan War that changed everything. And for Max, nothing will ever be the same again.With the bloody Battle of Agincourt playing out around her, Max risks everything on one last desperate gamble to save a life and learns the true meaning of a second chance. Readers love Jodi Taylor: 'Once in a while, I discover an author who changes everything... Jodi Taylor and her protagonista Madeleine "Max" Maxwell have seduced me' 'A great mix of British proper-ness and humour with a large dollop of historical fun' 'Addictive. I wish St Mary's was real and I was a part of it' 'Jodi Taylor has an imagination that gets me completely hooked' 'A tour de force'

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You’ve Got Mail meets Morgan Matson in this smart, banter-filled romcom with a bookish twist. Nothing will stop Madeline Moore from taking over her family’s independent bookstore after college. Nothing, that is—until a chain bookstore called Prologue opens across the street and threatens to shut them down. Madeline sets out to demolish the competition, but the guy who works over at Prologue seems intent on ruining her life. Not only is he taking her customers, he has the unbelievable audacity to be… extremely cute. But that doesn’t matter. Jasper is the enemy and he will be destroyed. After all—all’s fair in love and (book) war.

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You’ve Got Mail meets Morgan Matson in this smart, banter-filled romcom with a bookish twist. Nothing will stop Madeline Moore from taking over her family’s independent bookstore after college. Nothing, that is—until a chain bookstore called Prologue opens across the street and threatens to shut them down. Madeline sets out to demolish the competition, but the guy who works over at Prologue seems intent on ruining her life. Not only is he taking her customers, he has the unbelievable audacity to be… extremely cute. But that doesn’t matter. Jasper is the enemy and he will be destroyed. After all—all’s fair in love and (book) war.

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Or so they think. The girls arrive at camp only to discover that the universe isn't ready to let go of this friendship just yet: They're cabinmates, and now they both have to spend the summer with their ex-best friend. Each of the girls has to decide: Is it time to try again, or is this friendship doomed for good?

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In W. Stone Cotter''s Second Chance, the young readers fantasy sequel to Saint Philomene''s Infirmary for Magical Creatures, a brother and sister duo return to a magical underground realm to prevent disaster.Chance and Pauline Jeopard have been on an incredible adventureone they can never talk about. After all, who would believe that a magical realm exists deep below ground, home to extraordinary creatures found only in fables? Worse yet, what if someone did believe?When a miner finds out about Donbaloh and threatens to drill and destroy it, Chance and Pauline must travel back to warn its inhabitantsrisking it all in the process.

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THE SECOND BREAKNECK PACED YOUNG ADULT ADVENTURE THRILLER IN THE RAINS BROTHERS SERIES FROM BESTSELLING AUTHOR GREGG HURWITZ. Chance, that's me, the youngest Rain brother - and right now I'm kind of stuck between a rock and hard place.... Or more specifically, tied up and kidnapped. My captors? We call them Drones, and they serve the Harvesters that have infected all the adults in our town of Creek's Cause with parasites, turning them into mindless rage zombies that have only two objectives: capture or kill. What we know so far is that there are two factions of Drones, one that wants my big brother Patrick and me to save the world, and the other that is taking kids and using them to hatch something... otherworldly. I don't want to know what they are, but I'm pretty sure I'm about to find out.What I do know is that Patrick and his girlfriend Alex are out there, they aren't dead and they won't let me die at the hands of the Harvesters. Not when we have things to do: because come on, the world isn't going to save itself.Last Chance is the relentlessly action-packed sequel to The Rains. Fans of The Hunger Games and Rick Yancey's The 5th Wave will love this thrilling adventure from the bestselling author of Orphan X and comics in the Batman, Wolverine and Punisher universes.

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Meet Zoe and Greg Milton, a married couple who have let themselves go a bit. Zoe was a stunner in her college days, but the intervening decades have added five stone, and removed most of her self-esteem. Greg's rugby-playing days are well and truly behind him, thanks to countless pints of beer and chicken curry. When Elise, a radio DJ and Zoe's best friend, tells them about a new competition, it seems like the perfect opportunity to turn their lives around. Fat Chance will pit six hefty couples against one another to see who can collectively lose the most weight and walk away with a £50,000 prize. So begins six months of abject misery, tears, and frustration—that just might turn out to be the best thing that ever happened to them—in another laugh-out-loud look at the way we live now from bestselling author Nick Spalding.

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Compiled to meet the challenges of a rapidly changing security environment, this important collection grew out of an innovative Department of Defense (DOD) workshop.

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Chance, Calculation and Life brings together 16 original papers from the colloquium of the same name, organized by the International Cultural Center of Cerisy in 2019. From mathematics to the humanities and biology, there are many concepts and questions related to chance. What are the different types of chance? Does chance correspond to a lack of knowledge about the causes of events, or is there a truly intrinsic and irreducible chance? Does chance preside over our decisions? Does it govern evolution? Is it at the origin of life? What part do chance and necessity play in biology? This book answers these fundamental questions by bringing together the clear and richly documented contributions of mathematicians, physicists, biologists and philosophers who make this book an incomparable tool for work and reflection.

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Give fun a chance! Surprise your mum with a chainsaw, be a bigger star than Tom Cruise, save the world with a plate of vegetables, start your new life in a taxi, rescue your family with a tomato, send your dad into a panic with a tractor, do a good deed with a paper bag on your head, pack your suitcase for a trip to the spleen, upset your auntie with ten kilos of chocolate, swap a bomb for three ice creams on a steam train . . . and lots more.

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For Rod Mengham sculpture and painting exist in the world the way poems do. He invokes the Polish sculptor Katarzyna Kobro, who believes that sculpture must be understood as part of the world around it. In Chance of a Storm, poetry is language that comes trailing bits of other forms of speech and writing. 'Poems should be finished, but be still hot to the touch, giving a vivid sense of the thinking and feeling that went into their creation,' he says. Drew Milne speaks of the poems' 'beautiful, belligerent laconicism'. While the lyric is central to his work, it cannot shrug off the ambition of epic, scaled down but still latent. This telescoping informs the structure of these prose poems, a species of modernist fable.

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When her husband suggests a romantic break, Claire feels obliged to say yes but immediately regrets it. After the tragedy they've been through, how can one weekend in Paris save their marriage? Claire and Ronan aren't the only people on a make-or-break visit to the City of Love. There is a big-shot movie producer from Hollywood, full of regret for a life ill-lived; a student from Boston, torn between love and duty; a Ukrainian refugee struggling to protect her little sister; and an old woman from Dijon, hoping to be braver than she has ever had to be before.When their lives briefly intertwine, something extraordinary happens...

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Trust is essential to the foundation of America’s democracy, asserts Pete Buttigieg, the former presidential candidate and South Bend mayor. Yet, in a century warped by terrorism, financial collapse, Trumpist populism, systemic racism, and now a global pandemic, trust has been squandered, sacrificed, abused, stolen, or never properly built in the first place. And now, more so than ever before, Americans must work side by side to reckon with the monumental challenges posed by our present moment. Interweaving history, political philosophy, and affecting passages of memoir, Buttigieg explores the strong relationship between measures of prosperity and levels of social trust. He provides an impassioned account of a threefold crisis of trust: in our institutions, in each other, and in the American project itself. Today, these perilous patterns of distrust have wreaked havoc on nearly every sector of society, as Americans increasingly resent the very government that needs to be part of the solution. With the internet and partisan television networks acting as accelerants, Americans jettison any sense of shared reality, lose confidence in experts and scientists, and cope with the grim national tragedy of a pandemic that has only further exemplified the lethality of distrust. Buttigieg contends that our success, or failure, at confronting the greatest challenges of the decade—racial and economic justice, pandemic resilience, and climate action—will rest on whether we can effectively cultivate, deepen, and, where necessary, repair the networks of trust that are now endangered, or for so many, have never even existed. An urgent call to foster an “American way of trust” at this painfully polarized juncture in the nation’s history, Trust is a direct reckoning with the prevailing corruption of social responsibility. Yet refusing to give in to the despair that threatens our foundations, Trust seeks to inspire Americans to build a powerful movement that will define all of us in the years to come.

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