Search results for ""story plant""

WINNER OF THE SECOND ANNUAL AUTHORSFIRST NOVEL CONTEST Laura Baily's life is meaningless. In a world where purpose and passion are everything, Laura feels as though she has no place and no business even existing. Her life is forfeit, and it would be better for everyone if she simply ended it, if she simply got a ticket for a train to oblivion and faded from memory. But what awaits her at the end of the line isn't death but Terminal B - a community of people more like her than she considered possible, including the beautiful, tormented Will Noble. Though Laura still thinks little of her own life, the lives of others begin to fascinate her as never before. And when those lives become imperiled, Laura discovers the last thing she ever expected to find on her way out of the world: a mission and a reason to live. Compelling on both a human and global scale, TERMINAL REGRESSION is a novel of rare power and humanity. It is the story of a tomorrow that teeters on the edge of utopia and dystopia and a resigned outsider who might just change it forever.

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Middle-aged brothers Jason and Tom Prendergast thought they were completely done with each other. Perceived betrayal had burned the bridge between them, tossing them into the icy river of estrangement. But life - and death - has a robust sense of irony, and when they learn that their cruel father has died and made his final request that they travel together across the country to spread his ashes, they have no choice but to spend a long, long car trip in each other's company. It's either that or lose out on the contents of the envelope he's left with his lawyer. The trip will be as gut-wrenching as each expects it to be ...and revealing in ways neither of them is prepared for. At turns humorous, biting, poignant, and surprisingly tender, ASHES puts a new spin on family and dysfunction with a story that is at once fresh and timelessly universal. Grand prize winner of the 2017 Los Angeles Book Festival Winner, General Fiction, Great Northwest Book Festival

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Mary Jacob grew up as an anomaly. A child of Louisiana in the early sixties, she found little in common with most of the people in her community and in her household, and her best friend was Lavina, the black woman who cooked and cleaned for her family. Now, in the early nineties, Mary Jacob has escaped her history and established a fresh, if imperfect, life for herself in New York. But when she learns of her father's critical illness, she needs to go back home. To a disapproving father and a spiteful sister. To a town decades out of alignment with Mary Jacob's new world. To the memories of Billy Ray, Lavina's son who grew up to be a musical legend whose star burned much too bright.And to the echoes of a fateful day three decades earlier when three lives changed forever.A generation-spanning story both intimate and enormous in scope, LAVINA is a novel rich in humanity, sharp in its indictments, and stunning in its resolution.

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His rock star days may be behind him, but stay-at-home dad Grant Kelly's life is getting more interesting by the day. It's the beginning of the post 9/11 era, and he and his wife and four-year-old son have traded a New York City apartment for a Catskills farmhouse, where ghosts from the past, worries for the future, and temptations in the present converge to bring about drastic changes in their marriage, their friendships, and their family. A gorgeously nuanced novel with unforgettable characters, PERFECTLY BROKEN is a story of human frailty, the endurance of the heart, and the power and possibility of forgiveness.

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His rock star days may be behind him, but stay-at-home dad Grant Kelly's life is getting more interesting by the day. It's the beginning of the post 9/11 era, and he and his wife and four-year-old son have traded a New York City apartment for a Catskills farmhouse, where ghosts from the past, worries for the future, and temptations in the present converge to bring about drastic changes in their marriage, their friendships, and their family. A gorgeously nuanced novel with unforgettable characters, PERFECTLY BROKEN is a story of human frailty, the endurance of the heart, and the power and possibility of forgiveness.

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As difficult as it is to have your first big success, most people find it exponentially harder to repeat success. So many of us, after "bringing the crowd to its feet," worry that we're going to get booed off the stage with our next venture. Is there a way to avoid this, to have multiple hits and "endless encores?"Technology executive and bestselling author Ken Goldstein shows the way to repeating success by concentrating on three essentials - people, products, and profits, in that order. In this affecting and instructive business parable, he tells the story of a man who has accomplished much but now fears exposure as a fraud and the woman who, as a CEO with multiple successes to her credit, shows him the secret to consistent achievement.Are you ready to play endless encores? If so, this is your story.

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From their home in the South Carolina foothills, Rachel and Peter James are entering the "twilight time" of their long and loving marriage. This is a stage they have wistfully anticipated for decades, a period when they could enjoy the fruits of a life well, if not always peacefully, lived. But fate has something else in store for them. There are challenges awaiting them, both internal, in the form of a shadow creeping into Peter's mind, and external, in the form of ill-doers from the present and ghosts from the past descending upon them.For Rachel and Peter, their twilight time will be a time of tests and realizations. Will they find their way through it, or will their twilight turn to darkness.A novel of rich feeling and deep exploration into the human heart, Twilight Time is the most passionate and affecting novel yet from one of our most soul-stirring novelists.

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It's really a very simple story. What happened was this: I met this girl and did a very stupid thing. I fell in love. Hard. I know that to some people that makes me an idiot and a loser. What can I say? They're right. I did some extremely foolish things; I'm the first to say it. And they've left me in jail and alone."So begins one of the most compelling, emotionally charged, and affecting novels you are likely to read this year.It is the summer of 1968 and a young man takes a job at a camp in upstate New York before starting his first semester at Columbia University. There, he meets Rachel Price, a fellow counselor who is as beautiful as she is haunted. Their romance will burn with a passion neither of them has ever known before...a passion with the power to destroy.In the tradition of Endless Love and Gone Girl, What it was Like is an intimate, raw, and revealing journey through the landscape of all-consuming love. It announces the debut of a remarkable storyteller.

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The houses in Pine Estates are beautiful McMansions filled with high-achieving parents, children on the fast track to top colleges, all of the comforts of modern living, and the best security systems money can buy. Welcome to normal upper-middle-class suburbia. The Turners know in their hearts that they're anything but normal. Jenna is a high-schooler dressed in black who is fascinated with breaking into her neighbors' homes, security systems be damned. Everett genuinely believes he loves his wife ...he just loves having a continuing stream of mistresses more. JT is a genius kid with Asperger's who moves from one obsession to the next. And Kate tries to manage her family, manage her mother (who lives down the street), and avoid wondering why her life is passing her by. And now everything is changing for them. Jenna suddenly finds herself in a boy-next-door romance she never could have predicted. Everett's secrets are beginning to unravel on him. JT is getting his first taste of success at navigating the world. And Kate is facing truths about her husband, her mother, and her father that she might have preferred not to face. Life on Pine Road has never been more challenging for the Turners. That's what happens when you're practicing normal. Combining her trademark combination of wit, insight, and tremendous empathy for her characters, Cara Sue Achterberg has written a novel that is at once familiar and startlingly fresh. PRAISE FOR CARA SUE ACHTERBERG'S NATIONAL BESTSELLER I'M NOT HER: Girls' Weekend.indd - Tome Tender AND FOR HER NATIONAL BESTSELLER GIRLS' WEEKEND: Had I known I'd still be sitting in my favorite chair at 2am, racing to the finish, I probably would have put on my pajamas before I started. (Sometime before lunch...) Yeppers, it was that good. It was compelling, touching, and a bit soul-searching. Oh, and it was fun, too." -Momma on the Rocks GIRLS' WEEKEND is beautifully written. It feels as though you are right there with Dani, Charlotte, and Meg. It's a wonderful read and I highly recommend it to any woman who has ever been struck with a case of the 'what ifs.'" - Life, Motherhood, and the Pursuit of Happiness Surprised me in so many good ways." - Lost in a Bookstore

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