Wes Bennett was never going to be Liz Buxbaum’s type of guy. You’d think that her next-door neighbor, Wes, would fulfill her romantic comedy fantasies, but ever since they were kids, Wes has only shown himself to be a pain in the butt. Wes was the little monster who concealed a lawn gnome’s severed head in her homemade neighborhood book exchange and the child who put a frog in her Barbie Dreamhouse.
Ten years have passed since the Great Gnome Decapitation. Liz needs Wes’ assistance throughout her senior year, which is filled with moments fit for any big screen. See, Wes is getting along with Michael, who has been Liz’s eternal crush, and who recently moved back to the area. In other words, Liz needs Wes if she wants Michael to start paying attention to her and, ideally, ask her to prom. He draws her in.
However, Liz is surprised to see that she truly enjoys being with Wes as they plan to give Liz her ideal prom moment. And as they become closer, she has to reconsider all she believed she knew about love and reconsider her idea of what Happily Ever After really entails.
Best Quotes from this Book:
“Enemies-to-lovers—it’s our trope, Buxbaum.”
“You look best when you’re you.”
“I fell in love with teasing you in the second grade, when I first discovered that I could turn you cheeks pink with just a word. Then I fell in love with you.”
“Sometimes we get so tied up in our idea of what we think we want that we miss out on the amazingness of what we could actually have.”
“I did what I had to. All is fair in love and parking.”
Eadlyn didn’t anticipate falling in love with any of her 35 suitors when she became the very first princess of Illéa to conduct her own Selection. During the initial stages of the tournament, she focused on ticking down the days until she was able send everyone home. Eadlyn discovers that she might not be comfortable staying alone when events at the palace thrust her even further into the spotlight.
Eadlyn is still unsure whether she will discover the happily ever after her parents did twenty years ago. However, the heart occasionally has a way of surprising you. Eadlyn will soon have to make a decision that feels more difficult—and significant—than she could have ever imagined.
Best Quotes from this Book:
“Maybe it’s not the first kisses that are supposed to be special. Maybe it’s the last ones.”
“This is a dandelion, ” I told him. He shrugged. “I know. Some see a weed; some see a flower. Perspective.”
“You have to embrace the idea of imperfection, even if the thing that is most perfect for you.”
“Beauty is subjective. You know how sometimes what makes a person attractive is the way they make you laugh or how it seems like they can read your mind?”
“You have to do whatever it takes to be with the person you love.”
The offspring of two Hematoi pure types of blood possess godlike abilities. The Hematoi are descended from the couplings of gods and mortals. Hematoi children and mortals, not so much. The only two options available to half-bloods are to either train as Sentinels and hunt and kill daimons or to work as slaves in the pures’ mansions.
Alexandria, age 17, would rather fight than squander her life cleaning toilets, yet she might wind up slumming it anyhow. Students at the Covenant are required to adhere to a number of rules. All of them, but especially rule #1—the prohibition on relationships between pures and halves—cause Alex issues. Sadly, she has a serious crush on the totally hot pure-blood Aiden.
Her biggest issue, though, isn’t falling in love with Aiden; it’s staying alive long enough to complete the Covenant and become a Sentinel. She risks being converted into a daimon and pursued by Aiden if she neglects her job, which would be a fate worse than either death or servitude. And that would be very awful.
Best Quotes from this Book:
“Okay. I’m ready to move onto something else, like practicing with knives or defense against the dark arts. Cool things.”
“So? What are you going to do about it? Throw your mashed potatoes at me? I’m consumed by terror.”
“I was gonna be super pissed in the afterlife if I died a virgin in this crap hole.”
“You better have had a baby, killed someone, or slept with a pure. Those are your three options. Anything less is unsuitable.”
“Seth glanced back over his shoulder at the door. “Alex, you’re starting to worry me. Insult me… or something.”
The House on Mango Street is Esperanza Cordero’s astonishing tale, which has been praised by critics, adored by readers of all ages, taught everywhere from inner-city elementary schools to universities across the nation, and been translated into many languages.
A little Latina girl growing up in Chicago and creating for herself who and what she will become is the subject of this collection of vignettes, some of which are painful and others which are incredibly joyful. Few other works have affected as many readers as this one in our time.
Richard Connell’s short story “The Most Dangerous Game,” also known as “The Hounds of Zaroff,” was first published on January 19, 1924, in Collier’s with artwork by Wilmot Emerton Heitland. In the story, ‘The Most Dangerous Game’, a big-game hunter from New York becomes shipwrecked on a remote Caribbean island and is pursued by a Russian aristocrat.
Best Quotes from this Book:
“There is no greater bore than perfection.”
“Sometimes I think evil is a tangible thing – with wave lengths, just as sound and light have.”
“The world is made up of two classes – the hunters and the huntees.”
“Instinct is no match for reason.”
“I have played the fox, now I must play the cat of the fable.”
Greek stories are modernized in Stephen Fry’s book Mythos, which he has written, acted in, and humorously retold. Without sacrificing any of their initial enchantment, Fry turns the exploits of Zeus and the Olympians into stories that are both wonderfully hilarious and emotionally powerful.
This gorgeous book includes educational notes from the author as well as traditional artwork drawn from mythology. Fry’s particular wit, voice, and writing style permeate every adventure. Greek myth enthusiasts will value this innovative yet reverent retelling, and newbies will feel at home. Retellings have rich cultural backgrounds, are funny, and are filled with emotion.
Mythos gives ancient stories new life, bringing to life everything from Pandora’s box to Prometheus’ fire while celebrating the excitement, grandeur, and outright fun of the Greek myths. This stunning book enables you to journey through an enthralling universe with Stephen Fry as your tour guide.
Best Quotes from this Book:
“For the world seems never to offer anything worthwhile without also providing a dreadful opposite.”
“The Greeks created gods that were in their image; warlike but creative, wise but ferocious, loving but jealous, tender but brutal, compassionate, but vengeful.”
“It is enough to say that the Greeks thought it was Chaos who, with a massive heave, or a great shrug, or hiccup, vomit or cough, began the long chain of creation that has ended with pelicans and penicillin and toadstools and toads, sea-lions, lions, human beings and daffodils and murder and art and love and confusion and death and madness and biscuits.”
“When lust descends, discretion, common sense and wisdom fly off and what may seem cunning concealment to one in the grip of passion looks like transparently clumsy idiocy to everyone else.”
“The seeding of Gaia gave us meaning, a germination of thought into shape. Seminal semantic semiology from the semen of the sky.”
The newest member of the Palmetto State University Exy team is Neil Josten. He is young, quick and full of potential. He is also the fugitive son of The Butcher, a violent crime boss.
It is the absolute last thing a person like Neil should do to sign a contract with the PSU Foxes. He does not need any sports crews disseminating images of his face around the country because the team is well-known. Under this type of scrutiny, his lies will only last so long, and the truth will result in his death. However, Neil is not the only member of the team who has secrets. Neil cannot walk away from his old friend a second time because he is one of his new comrades. Running has helped Neil get by over the past eight years. Perhaps he has at last discovered someone or something to fight for.
Best Quotes from this Book:
“It’s not the world that’s cruel. It’s the people in it.”
“Hope was a dangerous, disquieting thing, but he thought perhaps he liked it.”
“Remember this feeling. This is the moment you stop being the rabbit.”
“It sounded like a dream; it tasted like damnation.”
“It’s about second chances, Neil. Second, third, fourth, whatever, as long as you get at least one more than what anyone else wanted to give you.”
There was nothing Devon Tennyson would alter. She is content to sit in the stands and watch Friday night games while secretly harboring crushes on her best buddy Cas and blissfully putting off thinking about life after high school. The universe, however, has different ideas. Foster, Devon’s cousin and an unrepentant social outcast with a surprising talent for football, as well as star running back Ezra, who is obnoxiously superior and indescribably attractive, are delivered into her P.E. class and then into every other area of her life, exactly where she doesn’t want them.
In this modern book about being in love with the surprising boy, with a new brother, and with oneself, Pride and Prejudice and Friday Night Lights collide.
Best Quotes from this Book:
“A thousand electric cars could run on how you feel when you know that the person you like likes you back. It feels incredible. Like it shouldn’t be possible. Of all the happy coincidences to ever exist, it’s one of the happiest.”
“When you love something, you can’t be happy all the time, can you? Like, that’s why you love it. It makes you feel all kinds of things, not just happy. It can hurt, it can make you fucking mad, but… it makes you feel something, you know?”
“As far as I was concerned, physical education was evil. You take a bunch of teenagers, make them strip down in front of each other in a locker room, have them don hideous matching uniforms, and then measure their worth based on their ability to chuck balls at a net, into a hoop, or at each other. It was just. Evil.”
“I had also never realized before that I loved him, but I did. And his pain was my pain, and it hurt, but it also felt good in a strange way, knowing that we could share in it together.”
“Tragic deaths aren’t avoidable. That’s what Ezra said outside Sam’s wake, and even though–to use Foster’s phrasing–I didn’t know anything about anything, I felt in this moment that Ezra was wrong. What often makes something tragic is that it can be avoided.”
In this sensual thriller from Hush, Hush series author and New York Times bestselling novelist Becca Fitzpatrick, the danger is difficult to avoid.
When Britt Pheiffer’s ex-boyfriend, who still haunts her every thought, wants to join her on her Teton Range backpacking trip, she is unprepared despite her training. Britt is forced to seek shelter in a secluded cabin by an unexpected blizzard before she has a chance to explore her feelings for Calvin. She accepts the hospitality of the cabin’s two incredibly attractive residents, but these men are wanted for murder, and they hold her prisoner.
As she helps the men down the mountain, Britt is aware that she must survive long enough for Calvin to find her. When Britt uncovers horrific proof of a string of deaths that have occurred there, the mission is further difficult. and if she discovers this, she might end up being the murderer’s next victim. Mason, one of her kidnappers, and everyone else are harboring secrets, so nothing is as it seems. His generosity is perplexing Britt. Is he a foe? or a friend?
Best Quotes from this Book:
“They say that when you’re about to die, your life flashes before your eyes. They never tell you that when you watch someone you once loved dying, hovering between this life and the next, it’s twice as painful, because you’re reliving two lives that traveled one road together.”
“If you have a weakness, you have to work hard to defend it. You can’t be lazy about it.”
“If I had known things would turn out this way, I would have trained harder. I would have learned to take care of myself. But I guess that’s the point, isn’t it? You never know what you’re going to have to face, so you’d better be prepared.”
“Because those four days in the mountains, they changed us. I gave you a piece of me. And you must have given me a piece of yourself, too, because you wouldn’t have come here otherwise. You would have let go. I can’t let go of you, Britt. And I don’t want you to let go of me.”
“I like having you around, Britt. That’s the truth. I’m not leaving you. Even if you were a pain in the butt, I’d stay with you. It’s the right thing to do. But it turns out I find you likable and interesting, and while I’m not glad you have to go through this, I’m glad we have each other.”
The world suddenly transformed while Zac was by himself in the middle of the forest. An impersonal system—or God—introduced the entire world to the multiverse. a universe where countless races and civilizations competed for supremacy.
Zac finds himself alone in a dangerous jungle full with monsters, demons, and worse. He must find a way to survive and become stronger in this new, brutal reality while being all alone, bewildered, and devoid of any solutions. He will have to locate his family before the world ends, or he will perish trying, with just a hatchet as his weapon. Discover the beginning of the popular LitRPG series with over 20,000,000 views on Royal Road. Defiance of the Fall is now available for the first time on Kindle, Kindle Unlimited, and Audible, read by Pavi Prozcko.
Regarding the Series: Enter a System Apocalypse tale that combines eastern cultivation with LitRPG features. There are unlimited options for growth, class systems, skill systems, and everything else that aficionados of the genre enjoy. Discover a vast realm filled with intrigue, adventure, danger, and even aliens. Here, a chance onlooker could have the authority of a god. Watch Zac as he tries to carve himself a special route to dominance in a world filled with cultivators while being a mortal.
Best Quotes from this Book:
“Information is power. It can both be the sword with which you impale your enemy, or the sword you impale yourself upon.”
“Cosmic Energy is the building block of the Multiverse. It is energy, it is magic, and it is life. It is everything. You couldn’t really see the effects of it earlier,”
Bill oversees the IT department at Parts Unlimited. On his way to work on Tuesday morning, Bill receives a call from the CEO. The future of Parts Unlimited depends on the company’s new IT venture, code-named Phoenix Project, but the project is wildly over budget and horribly behind schedule. Bill must report directly to the CEO and fix the problem within 90 days, or else the CEO will outsource Bill’s whole department.
Bill begins to realize that IT work has more in common with manufacturing plant work than he ever expected, thanks to the assistance of a potential board member and his cryptic ideology known as The Three Ways. Bill has a limited amount of time to streamline interdepartmental interactions, arrange workflow, and efficiently support the other business operations at Parts Unlimited.
Three leading figures in the DevOps movement tell a narrative that will be familiar to anyone who works in IT in a quick-paced and engaging manner. In addition to learning how to enhance their own IT departments, readers will receive a new perspective on IT.
Best Quotes from this Book:
“Improving daily work is even more important than doing daily work.”
“Any improvements made anywhere besides the bottleneck are an illusion.”
“Being able to take needless work out of the system is more important than being able to put more work into the system.”
“A great team doesn’t mean that they had the smartest people. What made those teams great is that everyone trusted one another. It can be a powerful thing when that magic dynamic exists.”
“To tell the truth is an act of love. To withhold the truth is an act of hate. Or worse, apathy.”
Will West takes care to lead a quiet existence. He has made care to maintain a low GPA and was placed in the middle of his cross-country squad at his parent’s insistence. Then Will makes a mistake and scores astronomically high on a national exam.
A prestigious prep school is now courting Will, and men in black sedans are following him. Will is forced to run to the school after losing his parents unexpectedly. There he starts to discover all of his powers, including seemingly unachievable physical and cerebral prowess and discovers how they relate to a long-running conflict between titanic forces. This cerebral adventure, which combines intrigue, pulse-pounding action, and the supernatural, is co-created by Mark Frost, who also contributed to the breakthrough television series Twin Peaks.
Best Quotes from this Book:
“Don’t make another’s pain the source of your own happiness.”
“Dude, you’re scaring the crap out of me,’ said Nick. ‘I’m serious, I literally have no crap right now.”
“It is not the ink and the paper that matter, but the hand that holds the pen.”
“He wants us to think for ourselves, without fear of ridicule or judgment. He wants us to make up our minds and ignore what the rest of the world is saying. Pay no attention to fads or fashions, and listen, always, to the voice of your innermost self. Learning who you are is your primary task. There are no mistakes in life, as far as Emerson’s concerned, only lessons. Once you master one lesson, you move on to the next. And the only place you can learn is right now. In the everlasting present.”
“If this is a dream, I’m begging you, don’t ever let them wake me.”
The children’s book everyone needs is I Am Enough. From Empire actor and activist Grace Byers and gifted emerging artist Keturah A. Bobo, this is a beautiful, poetic hymn to enjoying who you are, appreciating others, and being kind to one another. For moms and daughters, baby showers, and graduation, this is the ideal present. Everybody is present for a reason. We have plenty of resources. Just have faith in it.
Best Quotes from this Book:
“The intention and outcome of vulnerability is trust, intimacy and connection. The outcome of oversharing is distrust, disconnection – and usually a little judgment.”
“Yes, I, well, when I write, as often as I can, I try to write as if I’m talking to people. It doesn’t always work, and one shouldn’t always try it, but I try and write as if I am talking, and trying to engage the reader in conversation.”
“I do notice that when I’ve been away and I come back to London. People look at you. People are ready to pick arguments.”
The Overstory is a grand, passionate piece of action and resistance that also serves as a breathtaking evocation of and ode to the natural environment. The twelfth book by Richard Powers develops in concentric rings of interwoven fables that span from antebellum New York to the Timber Wars of the Pacific Northwest in the late twentieth century and beyond. A world exists alongside ours that is enormous, slow, connected, resourceful, incredibly imaginative, and practically invisible to us. This is the tale of a select group of individuals who discover how to view that world and become enmeshed in its impending disaster.
Best Quotes from this Book:
“The best arguments in the world won’t change a person’s mind. The only thing that can do that is a good story.”
“What you make from a tree should be at least as miraculous as what you cut down.”
“This is not our world with trees in it. It’s a world of trees, where humans have just arrived.”
“You can’t come back to something that is gone.”
“Life has a way of talking to the future. It’s called memory. It’s called genes.”
For fans of young adult romance, When Harry Met Sally. Fans of Huntley Fitzpatrick, Stephanie Perkins, and Jenny Han will adore this story of opposites attracting. June is ready for high school to be over and for life to start. Oliver is enjoying his senior year to the fullest. They could have breezed through high school without really getting to know one another.
However, their mothers had arranged for Oliver to pick up June and drive her to school. Each and every day. These two polar opposites start arguing over music, life, and pretty much everything else all of a sudden. However, love might be a surprise. When hearts and commitments are broken, Oliver and June must determine what is truly important. then put up a battle for it.
Best Quotes from this Book:
“Actually, I only have one type, “Darbs says. “Human. And you don’t qualify.”
“It seems devastating to have your heart so completely undone for a single person. If they screw up, if they don’t feel the same, if their life is too busy or too complicated or too far away to fit you into it, something inside you breaks. Even when it heals, there are scars.
There are always scars.”
The start of a new academic year excites Rachel Brooks. She has finally earned a spot on her soccer team as a forward. Everything is fun because of her dearest friends. Additionally, she thinks Tate likes her a lot and that he reciprocates. She still has one more scoliosis doctor’s appointment, but after that, this will be her best year yet.
The doctor then breaks the bad news that Rachel must wear a back brace 24 hours a day due to the worsening sideways bend in her spine. From her shoulder blades to her hips, the brace encircles her in hard plastic. It alters how her clothes fit, how she kicks the ball, and how Tate and her friends view her. The biggest shift of all, though, maybe in how Rachel views herself as she faces the difficulties the brace offers.
Best Quotes from this Book:
“I guess when you don’t have another choice, you have to make things happen for yourself, or they won’t.”
“I guess change is pretty scary. Even if it’s the good kind.”
“Everything bad happened already, and it couldn’t have been worse, but you survived it. You’re on the other side.”
“Before bed, I make a new playlist. It’s a mix of anthems and fight songs that remind me there’s nowhere to go but up.”
“I was counting on Dad to be on my side. I really need someone to get why I’m so sad, and it’s not going to be Mom.”
The Cleveland Browns’ backup quarterback was Rick Dockery. To almost everyone’s amazement and dismay, Rick actually entered the game in the AFC Championship game versus Denver. Rick gave what was possibly the worst single performance in NFL history with just minutes remaining and a 17-point advantage. He was promptly released by the Browns and blacklisted by all other teams since he overnight became a national laughingstock.
But Rick insists that his agent, Arnie, locate a team that needs him because all he is familiar with is football. Against all chances, Arnie is able to find such a squad, and he tells Rick that he can now miraculously start at quarterback for the great Panthers of Parma, Italy. Yes, to some extent, Italians do play American football, and the Parma Panthers are yearning for a former NFL player—any former NFL player—to take over as their head coach. In order to avoid turning down a better offer, Rick grudgingly accepts to play for the Panthers and departs for Italy. He has no knowledge of Parma, has never been to Europe, and is completely illiterate in Italian. It would be an understatement to suggest that Rick Dockery will experience a few surprises while in Italy.
Best Quotes from this Book:
“in Italian. For the first time in his new home, Rick admitted to himself that learning a few words was not a bad idea. In fact, it was a great idea if he had any hope of scoring points with the girls.”
“And with that they passed another little milestone, took another step together. From flirting, to casual sex, to a more intense variety. From quick e-mails to much longer chats by phone. From a long-distance romance to playing house. From an uncertain near future to one that just might be shared. And now an agreement on exclusivity. Monogamy. All sealed with a mouthful of pistachio gelato.”
“At 1:00 a.m., they were in the Welsh pub again, having drinks and talking opera and football.”
Jessie has a lot of issues. It certainly seems that way during the first week of her junior year at her brand-new, incredibly scary prep school in Los Angeles. She receives an email from Somebody/Nobody (SN for short), offering to assist her to navigate the confusing waters of Wood Valley High School, just as she is preparing to go back to Chicago. Is it a sophisticated hoax? Or may she turn to SN for some much-needed assistance?
Just two years have passed since her mother’s passing, and Jessie has been forced to relocate across the country to reside with her stepmonster and her snobbish teenage son since her father eloped with a woman he found online. Jessie starts to rely on SN out of a leap of faith—or out of total desperation—and SN soon develops into her closest friend and ally. Jessie is compelled to seek out SN in person. But should certain enigmas remain unsolved?
Best Quotes from this Book:
“Just because you’re strong doesn’t mean you shouldn’t ask for help sometimes. Remember that.”
“Perfect days are for people with small, realizable dreams. Or maybe for all of us, they just happen in retrospect; they’re only now perfect because they contain something irrevocably and irretrievably lost.”
“Other people can’t make you feel stupid. Only you can.”
“But sometimes a kiss is not a kiss is not a kiss. Sometimes it’s a poetry.”
“Not knowing the right thing to do is not an excuse for not doing anything.”
Sister Souljah, a well-known hip-hop singer, political activist, and bestselling author, vividly depicts the streets of New York in her debut novel. My mother gave me the name Winter when I was born amid one of the worst snowstorms to ever hit New York. Winter was raised in the ghetto and is the young, affluent daughter of a well-known Brooklyn drug cartel. She is quick-witted, seductive, and business-savvy. She understands and adores the streets as well as her own body’s curves.
Her street smarts and seduction abilities are put to the ultimate test, though, as a chilly Winter wind sweeps her life in a way she doesn’t want it to. This ghetto girl will stop at nothing to maintain her position as the leader. Including a Special Collector’s Edition Reader’s Guide with a Q&A with the author, in-depth character assessments, and the author’s personal comments on the significance of her work.
Best Quotes from this Book:
“To be able to shit on people before they get a chance to shit on you. That’s power.”
“Now I realized that I and him were just alike. We were both born to win. And, when we were not winning, it was OK ’cause we were busy planning to win.”
“Drugs is a government game, Bilal. A way to rob us of our best black men, our army. Everyone who plays the game loses. Then they get you right back where we started, in slavery! Then they get to say “This time you did it to yourself.” I won’t play that game.”
“That’s how I stay on the top baby. I look at life from every position. I play from every side. you gotta know what each man on the board is thinking down to the littlest motherfucker like the pawn”
“Drugs rob every person, man, woman, and child of their beauty. Drugs turn people into animals who can only respond to instincts. Drugs are so powerful they eradicate the God in both the taker and the giver.”
On the first day of middle school, students exchange their poolside freeze tag games for new schedules, stylish clothes, and a fresh start. The confusion of brand-new locker combos, cafeteria cliques, and prospective first kisses, however, is too much for eleven-year-old Kaylan to handle. She fears the beginning of sixth grade and feels like she needs a winning strategy.
Fortunately, Kaylan and her utterly laid-back BFF, Arianna, have a foolproof strategy for dealing with transitions: a list of eleven things they must accomplish to totally change themselves before they turn twelve in November. However, the first 100 days of school turn out worse than Kaylan ever anticipated due to making guy friends, receiving detention (and makeovers! ), helping mankind, and having incredibly honest chats with their mothers about their imperfections. When Kaylan and Ari lose sight of their friendship, their devotion to the list—which was supposed to keep them together all the very thing that is tearing their lives apart.
Best Quotes from this Book:
“Just because you’re BFFs with someone doesn’t mean you’re exactly the same as they are. And that’s okay. That’s probably better, actually.”
“A big part of friendship is meeting people on their terms, I’m realizing, and not expecting them to be someone they’re not. Just because you’re BFFs with someone doesn’t mean you’re exactly the same as they are. And that’s okay. That’s probably better, actually.”
“Sometimes people need space to really appreciate each other.”
“Life is long, my dearie, if you’re lucky,” she continues. “And these things happen. As long as you don’t hold on to anger and you’re able to let some things go, all will be well. But—” She pauses and raises a finger. “You also have to tell people when they’ve hurt you. Sometimes they just don’t realize it.”
The truth doesn’t start to come out until after she’s been locked up. With 4 Walls, a single window no means of escape Hannah is aware that something went wrong. She did not require institutionalization. It was an accident that happened to her summer program companion. She can return home to begin her senior year as soon as the physicians and judges determine that she poses no risk to herself or others. She will utilize her influencing abilities to win the staff over in the interim.
Then Lucy shows up. Lucy has a lot of baggage. She might also be the only one who can persuade Hannah to face the risky games and dark truths that got her locked up in the first place.
Best Quotes from this Book:
“Lightfoot directs me to a car. I don’t know what I was expecting. Maybe a van with the name of the institute painted on its side, as if to say Caution: Contents Are Dangerous (To Themselves and Others).”
A sharply witty book about two college students who form an odd, unanticipated bond with a married couple. Frances, who is twenty-one years old, is calm and keenly perceptive. She spends her time in a life of the intellect and with Bobbi, her best friend and fellow combatant, who is gorgeous and insatiably self-possessed. She is a university student and aspiring author. The two young ladies, who were lovers in high school, now practice spoken-word literature together in Dublin, where a journalist named Melissa sees potential in them. Frances is reluctantly drawn into Melissa’s orbit and is impressed by her elegant home and tall, attractive husband. Frances feels that private property is a cultural evil and that Nick, a bored actor who has never lived up to his promise, embodies patriarchy.
However entertaining their initial flirtation may appear, it soon gives way to a peculiar intimacy that neither of them anticipates. Frances struggles to maintain control over her relationships with Nick, her tough and unhappy father, and eventually even with Bobbi as she tries to manage her life. Frances’s intellectual convictions start to give way to something new as she desperately tries to come to terms with the needs and weaknesses of her body. This new experience is a painful and confusing manner of living moment by moment.
Best Quotes from this Book:
“Gradually the waiting began to feel less like waiting and more like this was simply what life was: the distracting tasks undertaken while the thing you are waiting for continues not to happen.”
“I think I only appear smart by staying quiet as often as possible.”
“I realised my life would be full of mundane physical suffering, and that there was nothing special about it. Suffering wouldn’t make me special, and pretending not to suffer wouldn’t make me special. Talking about it, or even writing about it, would not transform the suffering into something useful.”
“Things and people moved around me, taking positions in obscure hierarchies, participating in systems I didn’t know about and never would. A complex network of objects and concepts. You live through certain things before you understand them. You can’t always take the analytical position.”
“You underestimate your own power so you don’t have to blame yourself for treating other people badly.”
Robot Roz finds herself all by herself on a desolate, wild island when she opens her eyes for the first time. She doesn’t know how she got there or what her goal is, but she is aware that she must survive. She discovers that her only opportunity to survive is to adapt to her environment and learn from the island’s hostile animal residents after braving a fierce storm and avoiding a deadly bear attack.
Roz gradually becomes friends with the animals, and the island begins to seem like her home—until the robot’s enigmatic past returns to haunt her one day. A touching and exciting book about what happens when nature and technology combine is available from bestselling and award-winning author and illustrator Peter Brown.
Best Quotes from this Book:
“I’ll tell you what: If I could do it all over again, I’d spend more time helping others. All I’ve ever done is dig tunnels. Some of them were real beauties too, but they’re all hidden underground, where they’re no good to anyone but me.”
“If you stand in a forest long enough, eventually something will fall on you. And Roz had been standing in the forest long enough.”
“The island was teeming with life. And now it had a new kind of life. A strange kind of life. Artificial life.”
“As the robot looked out at the island, it never even occurred to her that she might not belong there. As far as Roz knew, she was home.”
“Please leave your droppings”
My name is Alice Long, and I have always understood that I am unique. When I was younger, I used to spend the evenings scaling the house tree’s tallest branches to observe the starships landing at the orbital stations above. Watching ships thirty thousand kilometers above the earth from a height of forty meters, with senses that could distinguish radar pings and comm chatter almost as clearly as the ships themselves. At the moment, everything appeared quite natural.
At the orphanage, there were other children with mods, but none quite like that. I quickly figured out that I should play down my skills, keep my mouth quiet, and attempt to blend in. I already learned as a child not to trust the Matrons. What would they do if they discovered that the adjustments meant to turn me into a submissive little herd animal had had no effect? Then I made a mistake and revealed myself.
I’m currently running away and crossing my fingers that the Matrons won’t try too hard to find me. hoping to avoid all the terrible things that could occur to a girl in space by herself. No matter wherever I go, danger always seems to find me: kidnappers, slavers, pirates, and yakuza. Fortunately, I’m not as powerless as I seem to be.
Best Quotes from this Book:
“Freedom is messy, and often dangerous. But the only alternative is tyranny.”
“I once heard philosophy defined as ‘the study of things that no one understands.”
“You see? People don’t go to such extremes out of moral revulsion, Alice. That was fear.”
“If you need to resort to heroics, you’re doing it wrong.”
“Anything with an IQ above two hundred is a ticking time bomb, kid.”
Jude never imagined she would be departing for Syria across the seas, leaving her father and adored older brother behind. Jude and her mother are transferred to live with relatives in Cincinnati as things in her hometown start to get tense.
America initially appears to be a fast-paced, boisterous place. Jude had always loved American movies, but they didn’t completely prepare her for starting school in the US and her new identity as a “Middle Eastern,” which she had never known before. There are new friends, a brand-new family, and a school musical that Jude could just try out for, among other unanticipated surprises that come with this life. Maybe Jude can be accepted for who she truly is in America as well.
Best Quotes from this Book:
“Hoping,
I’m starting to think,
might be the bravest thing a person can do.”
“Lucky. I am learning how to say it
over and over again in English.
I am learning how it tastes—
sweet with promise
and bitter with responsibility.”
“Mama says the word cake like it’s just an ordinary food
which is strange since everyone knows that cakes are
made of magic.”
“Too much sunshine makes a desert.”
“Proud of each other, proud of what we have created together. It is lovely to be a part of something that feels bigger than you.”
My Brilliant Friend, a contemporary masterwork by one of Italy’s most renowned writers, is a complex, emotional, and kindhearted tale of two friends, Elena and Lila. A thorough portrayal of these two ladies that doubles as the history of a country and a moving reflection on the essence of friendship is well suited to Ferrante’s singular style. Ferrante chronicles the tale of a neighborhood, a city, and a nation as they undergo changes that also affect the connection between her two characters through the lives of these two women.
Best Quotes from this Book:
“Children don’t know the meaning of yesterday, of the day before yesterday, or even of tomorrow, everything is this, now: the street is this, the doorway is this, the stairs are this, this is Mamma, this is Papa, this is the day, this the night.”
“They were more severely infected than the men, because while men were always getting furious, they calmed down in the end; women, who appeared to be silent, acquiescent, when they were angry flew into a rage that had no end.”
“She took the facts and in a natural way charged them with tension; she intensified reality as she reduced it to words, she injected it with energy.”
“Nowhere is it written that you can’t do it.”
“If you don’t try, nothing ever changes.”
Mia Tang is very secretive.
1. She does not reside in a large home, but rather in a motel. Mia, 10, runs the Calivista Motel’s front desk and attends to its customers as her immigrant parents clean the rooms.
2. Her parents conceal immigration. The Tangs will be doomed if the nasty hotel owner, Mr. Yao, discovers that they have been letting them remain in the empty rooms for free.
3. She aspires to become a writer. Her mother, however, believes that she should adhere to math because English is not her primary language, so how can she?
Best Quotes from this Book:
“Sometimes terrible things happen, but there’s nothing more terrible than not having anybody to tell it to.”
“It’s going to be okay. I’ll make friends, and if I don’t, I’ll borrow books from the library.”
“You know what you are in English? You’re a bicycle, and the other kids are cars.”
“We’re immigrants,” she said. “Our lives are never fair.”
“Just because you have an important job doesn’t mean you’re better than everybody else.”
The characters in Jhumpa Lahiri’s exquisite, moving stories navigate between the inherited Indian traditions and the perplexing new world as they look for love that transcends generational and cultural boundaries. A young Indian-American couple experiences the heartache of stillbirth in “A Temporary Matter,” which was published in The New Yorker, as their Boston neighborhood struggles with regular blackouts. An interpreter takes an American family on a tour of India of their ancestors in the title story, during which the interpreter overhears an unexpected confession. Anita Desai would be proud of Lahiri’s acute cultural knowledge and Mavis Gallant would admire her nuanced depth in her writing.
Best Quotes from this Book:
“Still, there are times I am bewildered by each mile I have traveled, each meal I have eaten, each person I have known, each room in which I have slept. As ordinary, as it all appears, there are times when it is beyond my imagination.”
“Sexy means loving someone you do not know.”
“She watched his lips forming the words, at the same time she heard them under her skin, under her winter coat, so near and full of warmth that she felt herself go hot.”
“A woman who had fallen out of love with her life”
“It was only then, raising my water glass in his name, that I knew what it meant to miss someone who was so many miles and hours away, just as he had missed his wife and daughters for so many months.”
Mara Dyer thinks that waking up in the hospital with no recollection of how she arrived there is the craziest thing that has ever happened in her life. It can. She is convinced that the accident that left her friends dead and her mysteriously unhurt must have had more to it than she can recall. It exists. She doesn’t think she can fall in love after everything she’s been through. She is mistaken.
Best Quotes from this Book:
“Thinking something does not make it true. Wanting something does not make it real.”
“You’re distracting,’ I said truthfully.
‘I won’t be. I promise,’ Noah said. ‘I’ll get some crayons and draw quitely. Alone. In a corner.”
“You’re supposed to say, ‘All I want is your happiness. I’ll do whatever it takes, even if it means being without you.'”
“Sorry,” Noah said. “I’m just not that big of a person.”
“I hate you,” I muttered.
Noah smiled wider. “I know.”
“That mouth. Smoking was a bad habit, yes. But he looked so good doing it.”
Ivy & Bean and Junie B. Jones, get out of here! Here comes a cute, vivacious young sister with a BIG personality and an equally big imagination! Dory, the youngest member of her family, craves interaction with her brother and sister more than anything else. She is, however, too much of a baby for them, so she is left to fend for herself, using her irrational imagination and boundless energy. While her siblings may scoff at her silly antics, Dory has plenty to keep her occupied, including outwitting the creatures who lurk around the home, escaping from time out, and getting even with her sister’s beloved doll.
Daring Dory will display her courage when they really needed her and eventually find what she has been searching for. This amusing book about an enticing rogue, which has a tonne of illustrations and is filled with charm and personality, is the newest must-read for chapter book readers.
Best Quotes from this Book:
“There is the Toilet Monster, who comes into the bathroom if you sit on the toilet for too long.”
“There is the Toilet Monster, who comes into the bathroom if you sit on the toilet for too long. There is the Ketchup Monster, who makes weird noises when you squeeze the ketchup.”
“Did You Hear the Doorbell Ring?”
Don’t miss the iconic Pete the Cat series’ bestselling debut novel! In his brand-new white shoes, Pete the Cat strolls down the street. He walks over piles of strawberries, blueberries, and other large messes as his shoes turn from white to red to blue to brown to WET along the way! Pete continues to move, groove, and sing his song despite the colour of his shoes because everything is okay. Children enjoy interacting with stories, and Pete the Cat: I Love My White Shoes does just that by asking the reader questions about the hues of various meals and items.
Best Quotes from this Book:
“The moral of Pete’s story is:
No matter what you step in,
keep walking along and
singing your song. Because it’s all good.” Pete the Cat I Love My White Shoes”
“I guess it simply goes to show that stuff will come and stuff will go. But do we cry? Goodness, NO! We keep on singing.”
“Did Pete cry? Goodness no. Buttons come, and buttons go.”
I say, “Woof!”
Even when it is time for bed, Biscuit still wants to eat, play, and hear stories. Will he ever get any shut-eye?
My very first reading grade. Or!
What if certain teenagers’ survival depended on their ability to be negative role models? For daughters and sons of fallen angels, this is their reality. Anna Whitt, a sweet-natured Southern girl, was born with a sixth sense that allowed her to perceive and feel other people’s emotions. She is aware of an internal fight and an irrational want to run away from danger, but it isn’t until she reaches sixteen and meets the seductive Kaidan Rowe that she learns about her dreadful past and has to rely on all of her willpower. Your father forewarned you about this boy. If only Anna had been forewarned. Will Anna accept her halo or her horns when she must accept her fate?
Best Quotes from this Book:
“He was smoking hot. As in H-O-T-T, hott. I’d never understood until that moment why girls insisted on adding an extra t. This guy was extra-t-worthy.”
“Good gracious, he was sexy—a word that had not existed in my personal vocabulary until that moment. This guy was sexy like it was his job or something.”
“We have to face difficulties to find out what our true strengths are. How we come back from failure is a very valuable test.”
“The beauty of poetry is that it can mean different things to different people at different times.”
“Seriously,” I whispered, unable to look away. “You’re doing the bedroom-eyes thing again.”
Marie Leprince de Beaumont is the author of the classic fairy tale Beauty and the Beast. A wealthy merchant who is widowed and has six children—three sons and three daughters—lives in a mansion. The youngest of his daughters, Beauty, is the most lovely of them all and is also gentle, educated, and of pure heart, whereas the two older daughters are wicked, self-centered, conceited, and spoilt. They treat Beauty less like a sister and more like a servant in private. The merchant ends up losing everything during a storm at sea. As a result, he and his kids are made to live in a modest farmhouse and labor to support themselves.
A few years later, the merchant learns that one of the commerce ships he had dispatched has returned to port after sparing its fellow countrymen’s annihilation. He goes back to the city to see whether there is anything valuable there. He asks his kids if they want him to bring them any presents before he departs. His oldest daughters request clothing, jewelry, and the most luxurious gowns while his sons request hunting equipment and horses. The oldest girls believe that their father’s money has returned. Since no roses grow in that region of the country, beauty is satiated by the prospect of a rose. The merchant is shocked to discover that his ship’s cargo has been taken to settle his debts, leaving him without money and unable to purchase presents for his children.
Best Quotes from this Book:
“There is many a monster who wears the form of a man; it is better of the two to have the heart of a man and the form of a monster. ”
“Alas! I thought I had only a friendship for you, but the grief I now feel convinces me, that I cannot live without you.”
“Afterwards, thought she to herself, “Beast surely has a mind to fatten me before he eats me,”
“The greatest happiness fades when it is continual, derived always from the same source, and we find ourselves exempted from fear and from hope”
For the A-List crew, graduation season arrives. That entails extravagant yacht celebrations, fancy caps, and gowns, and permanently saying goodbye to high school. Anna isn’t in the mood to the party despite the festivities. She has been concerned about Ben’s distant behavior. Caine Manning, the attractive tattooed intern who works for her father, would lift Anna’s spirits. Sam has been heartbroken and without Eduardo ever after her nefarious kiss with Parker. But hopefully, Sam will employ her vast intelligence and resources to come up with novel ways to get Eduardo back. the notorious Cammie? Not now that she’s so close to solving the mystery behind her mother’s passing, she couldn’t give a damn about graduating. She will do whatever it takes to learn the truth.
Best Quotes from this Book:
“What does one wear when one goes to give one’s father hell?”
Lex last experienced happiness earlier. when she had a complete family. a beloved boyfriend. Friends who didn’t treat her as though she was about to cry any second. She is now just known as the girl whose brother committed suicide. And it seems as though she will only ever be that.
Lex attempts to forget what occurred the night Tyler passed away as she begins to put her life back together. However, she has a well-kept secret that Tyler sent her that could have made all the difference. Brother of Lex is missing. Lex is about to learn that a ghost need not be real in order to prevent you from moving on.
Best Quotes from this Book:
“Time passes. That’s the rule. No matter what happens, no matter how much it might feel like everything in your life has been frozen around one particular moment, time marches on.”
“Forgiveness is tricky, Alexis, because in the end it’s more about you than it’s about the person who’s being forgiven”
“Brave isn’t something you are. It’s something you do.”
“There’s death all around us. Everywhere we look. 1.8 people kill themselves every second. We just don’t pay attention. Until we do.”
“Everything changes. That’s the only constant.”
Matthias, a foolish young novice monk, sets off on a journey to find a renowned sword that has been lost. The peaceful Redwall Abbey, inhabited by a group of peace-loving mice, is in danger from the ferocious bilge rat warlord Cluny the Scourge and his battle-hardened army. However, the courageous and powerful Redwall mice team up with their devoted woodland companions.
Best Quotes from this Book:
“Even the strongest and bravest must sometimes weep. It shows they have a great heart, one that can feel compassion for others.”
“I am that is, my sword shall wield for me.”
“Who knows, my friend? Maybe the sword does have some magic. Personally, I think it’s the warrior who wields it.”
“All work and no play makes Matthias a dull mouse.”
“Capital,” cried Basil. “I could eat a stag, antlers and all. I say they they do make a wonderful nosebag for us wounded heroes, y’know.”
Jerome K. Jerome’s Three Men in a Boat, a comedy masterwork that has never been out of print since it was first released in 1889, has an introduction and notes by Jeremy Lewis in Penguin Classics.
J. and his cronies George and Harris feel that a trip up the Thames would suit them to a “T,” being martyrs to hypochondria and overall seediness. Tow lines, inaccurate weather predictions, and cans of pineapple pieces, not to mention the destruction left in the path of J.’s little fox-terrier Montmorency, are among the problems they can hardly foresee when they start out.
When Three Men in a Boat debuted in 1889, it became an immediate hit. With its benign escapism, authorial discourses, and superb portrayal of the late-Victorian “clerking classes,” it hilariously nailed the spirit of its time. In his introduction, Jeremy Lewis looks at the life and times of Jerome K. Jerome as well as the changing Victorian England he paints, from the emergence of a new mass culture of tabloids and best-selling books to the crazes for day trips and biking.
Best Quotes from this Book:
“I can’t sit still and see another man slaving and working. I want to get up and superintend, and walk round with my hands in my pockets, and tell him what to do. It is my energetic nature. I can’t help it.”
“I don’t know why it should be, I am sure; but the sight of another man asleep in bed when I am up, maddens me.”
“But who wants to be foretold the weather? It is bad enough when it comes, without our having the misery of knowing about it beforehand.”
“I don’t understand German myself. I learned it at school, but forgot every word of it two years after I had left, and have felt much better ever since.”
“Everything has its drawbacks, as the man said when his mother-in-law died, and they came down upon him for the funeral expenses.”
The angels and devils who dwell with humans are invisible to mortal eyes; these supernatural beings aim to positively or negatively impact our lives. John Constantine, an immoral and sarcastic renegade occultist, and the paranormal investigator have the gift and the curse of being able to communicate with this hidden realm. To solve the mysterious suicide of her twin sister, Constantine partners up with skeptic Angela Dodson of the Los Angeles Police Department. As their inquiry propels them into a catastrophic chain of supernatural occurrences, the forces of Hell plot to steal Constantine’s immortal soul.
Getting nurtured by a single father, three elder brothers, and Charlotte Reynolds, 16, has many advantages. She can outperform every boy she knows, even Braden, her longtime neighbor, and honorary fourth brother, in terms of speed, accuracy, and cunning. Charlie, meanwhile, is completely ignorant when it comes to being a girl. In order to pay off a speeding ticket, she begins working in a trendy shop. As a result, she is thrust into a weird new world of makeup, lacy skirts, and BeDazzlers. And to make matters crazier, she is hanging out with a boy who has never witnessed her dominate a pickup game.
Charlie retreats to her backyard late at night to unwind after the strain of bluffing her way through her new life, chatting things out with Braden behind the fence separating them. However, their Fence Chats can’t stop Charlie from falling for Braden, which is her biggest issue. Hard. She is aware of the value of going all in, but the stakes have suddenly become too high if disclosing her identity means permanently losing him.
Best Quotes from this Book:
“Sometimes we expect more that people are capable of giving at the moment”
“We can’t let boys define how we feel about ourselves. You have to know who you are before you should let any boy worth anything in.”
“I don’t know how to get over it.” “You can only go through it.”
“I knew why I cared. Why this mattered so much. Why his opinion was the only thing that mattered. I was more than crushing on him. I loved Braden.”
“There was nothing that made a girl feel better about a guy humiliating her than a different cute guy asking her out.”
Kyle and Kimberly were the ideal pair throughout high school, but when she leaves him the evening of their graduation party, Kyle’s entire world literally comes crashing down. He gets a brain injury when he awakens after their vehicle crash. Kimberly passed away. Furthermore, nobody in his life could possibly comprehend.
prior to Marley. Marley is going through her own loss, which she feels she should have prevented. Kyle recognizes in her all the unspoken emotions he is experiencing as their paths cross. Kyle and Marley’s affections for one another intensify as they attempt to mend each other’s scars. But Kyle can’t get rid of the feeling that he’s about to experience another life-changing incident right when he starts to put his life back together and he is correct.
Best Quotes from this Book:
“Always forward. Never back.”
“You don’t need to be like her. You’re already everything.”
“That’s the first thing you said to me, remember? Once upon a time.”
“Everything is the same. It’s me that’s different.”
“We’ll have a million more moments like this one, an entire story to live together.
Starting now.”
Connell and Marianne play the relationship off at school. She is isolated, prideful, and fiercely private in contrast to him who is popular, well-adjusted, and the star of the school soccer team. The two adolescents, however, develop a weird and enduring bond that they are driven to keep hidden until Connell arrives to pick up his mother from Marianne’s house where she is working as a housekeeper.
They are both enrolled in classes at Dublin’s Trinity College a year later. Connell stands on the sidelines, timid and unsure, while Marianne has settled into a new social environment. Throughout their time in college, Marianne and Connell continually circle one another, veering away to explore other options and people but always being magnetically drawn back together.
Each must decide how far they are ready to go in order to save the other as she begins to destroy herself and he starts looking for significance elsewhere. Sally Rooney writes a novel that examines the nuances of class, the excitement of the first love, and the intricate webs of friendship and family with her sharp psychological acumen and exquisitely restrained style.
Best Quotes from this Book:
“Marianne had the sense that her real life was happening somewhere very far away, happening without her, and she didn’t know if she would ever find out where it was or become part of it.”
“I’ m not a religious person but I do sometimes think God made you for me.”
“No one can be independent of other people completely, so why not give up the attempt, she thought, go running in the other direction, depend on people for everything, allow them to depend on you, why not.”
“Generally I find men are a lot more concerned with limiting the freedoms of women than exercising personal freedom for themselves.”
“Life offers up these moments of joy despite everything,”
In the wake of his brother’s passing, a kid struggles to navigate a safe way through the Harlem slums in an exceptional debut book that honors community and creativity.
Twelve-year-old Lolly Rachpaul and his mother aren’t enjoying Christmas Eve in Harlem. His older brother was killed in a gang-related assault only a few months prior, and they are still in shock about it. Then two large bags loaded with Legos from Lolly’s mother’s girlfriend arrive and disrupt everything. Lolly has always enjoyed playing with Legos and takes great delight in adhering to the kit’s instructions. Now that Lolly has a collection of building materials but no directions, he must fend for himself.
The urge to join a “crew,” as his brother joined, is constant, and his route isn’t clear. It nearly looks like the safe decision to join a crew when Lolly and his friend are attacked and robbed. But Lolly finds an escape—and an unforeseen bridge—back to the outside world while building a fantasy Lego city at the community center.
A boy on the cusp of adolescence, loss, and violence is powerfully portrayed by David Barclay Moore, who also demonstrates how Lolly’s creative energy aids him in creating a life with solid pillars and wide-open opportunities.
Best Quotes from this Book:
“Since then I had learned the most important thing: the decisions you make can become your life. Your choices are you.”
“The folks you hang out with can raise you up or bring you down low. Over time, they can make you think a certain way – change who you really are.”
“If you only expose yourself to whatever everybody else does, you’ll never create anything new.”
“I had learned it was better to share your stuff. You get back more than you think you would.”
“I guess it’s quicker to tear down something than to build it up.”
The Kandala kingdom is on the verge of collapse. Since a disease started devouring the kingdom, rifts across sectors have only gotten worse, and inside the Royal Palace, the monarch ruthlessly maintains a precarious peace.
After his parents’ unexpected assassination, King Harristan abruptly assumed control, allowing the younger Prince Corrick to assume the harsh duties of the King’s Justice. As the disease can strike anywhere and the only known treatment, an elixir created from delicate Moonflower petals, is tightly constrained, the brothers have learned to respond ruthlessly to any indication of rebellion.
Tessa Cade, an apprentice pharmacist, is sick of witnessing her neighbors perish in the Wilds while the stubborn royals do nothing to alleviate their suffering. Even though she and her best friend Wes put their lives in danger every night to steal Moonflower petals and give the elixir to people in need, it is still insufficient.
Tessa becomes so desperate that she tries the impossibility of getting into the palace as reports circulate that the treatment no longer functions and revolt sparks start to ignite. But what she discovers when she gets there makes her question whether Kandala can really be fixed without being destroyed first.
Best Quotes from this Book:
“A spark of rebellion is all it takes to defy the night.”
“Mind your mettle, Tessa.”
“Because despite all outward appearances, I’m not cruel. I don’t delight in pain. I don’t delight in any of this.”
“When there are calls for revolution,” I say to him, “we should be riding at the front, not hiding in the shadows.”
“I’m not a killer. I heal people; I don’t harm them.”
Dan Harris, the anchor of Nightline, sets out on an unexpected, humorous, and deeply skeptical quest through the bizarre worlds of mysticism and self-help, and he finds a real, doable method to be happier.
Dan Harris realized he needed to make some changes after experiencing a panic attack on Good Morning America that was broadcast nationwide. He has never been religious and now finds himself on an odd journey with a disgraced pastor, an enigmatic self-help guru, and a group of brain scientists. Harris eventually understood that the thing he always considered to be his greatest asset—the constant, insatiable voice in his head—was actually the cause of all of his problems. This voice was what propelled Harris through the ranks of a fiercely competitive industry and drove him to make the incredibly foolish decisions that resulted in his on-air freak-out.
Everybody has a voice in their head. It’s what causes us to snap at people without cause, obsessively check our emails, overeat when we’re not hungry, and focus on the past and future at the expense of the present. Most people would assume that this voice is something we must live with and that there is nothing we can do to control it, but Harris discovered a powerful technique for doing just that. Instead of the miracle treatments promoted by the self-help swamis he met, meditation is what he had always believed to be either impossible or pointless.
Harris dove further into the unreported world of CEOs, scientists, and even marines who are now embracing meditation for better calm, attention, and pleasure after learning about studies that say it can do everything from lower blood pressure to literally rewire your brain. 10% Happier takes readers on a journey through the strange margins of America’s spiritual scene, the inner sanctum of network news, and the furthest reaches of neuroscience before giving them a lesson that could genuinely alter their lives.
Best Quotes from this Book:
“When you have one foot in the future and the other in the past, you piss on the present.”
“There’s no point in being unhappy about things you can’t change, and no point being unhappy about things you can.”
“pursuit of happiness becomes the source of our unhappiness.”
“Meditation is not about feeling a certain way. It’s about feeling the way you feel.”
“Everything in the world is ultimately unsatisfying and unreliable because it won’t last.”
All is fair in love and cheese… until Pepper and Jack’s argument escalates into a trending Twitter battle. They have no idea that while they’re openly arguing with caustic memes and retweet wars, they’re actually beginning to develop feelings for one another.
People on the internet are shipping them as their relationship develops and their online antics intensify. Even these two enemies can’t deny that they were meant for the most surprising, awkward, all-the-feels relationship that neither of them anticipated as their conflict becomes more and more personal. A brand-new, captivating romantic comedy by debut author Emma Lord about the risks we take, the directions life may take us, and how love can be found in unexpected places.
Best Quotes from this Book:
“It’s weird, how you have no idea how far you’ve come until suddenly you can’t find the way back.”
“You can’t just casually tell someone you carry caramel sauce around and walk away like thats a normal thing”
“A stolen day. The kind of day that ends too fast but stays with you much longer.”
“It feels like there’s a fire in every corner of my brain, and instead of putting any of them out, I’m just frozen and watching it spread across the room.”
“You know, for someone named Pepper, you’re pretty salty about losing.”
DeLillo provides a stunning, at times overwhelming, documentation of forces when Edgar Hoover finds out about the Soviet Union’s second nuclear bomb explosion, he is seated next to a buzzed Jackie Gleason and an agitated Frank Sinatra. It’s a literary moment that is unquestionably exciting. The events of the following few decades are set in motion when Bobby Thomson smacks Branca’s pitch into Cotter’s outstretched hand, creating the “shot heard around the world,” and Jackie Gleason hurls up on Sinatra’s shoes.
DeLillo creates a tenuous web of connected experiences through snippets and interwoven tales that include those of highway killers, artists, celebrities, conspiracists, gangsters, nuns, and a variety of other characters. This communal Zeitgeist beautifully captures the chaotic whole of five decades of American life. The dual forces of the Cold War and American culture, intriguing that “swerve from evenness” in which he finds events and people both wondrous and horrifying. While Eisenstein documented the forces of totalitarianism and Stalinism upon the faces of the Russian people.
The prologue to Underworld is a wildly beautiful scene from the 1951 pennant-race championship game between the Giants and Dodgers. Young Cotter Martin jumps the gate to the press box, soars over the radio waves, rushes out to the diamond, slides in on a fastball, and pops into the stands where J. The words are written in what DeLillo refers to as “super-omniscience,” and they are written as he does each of these things.
Best Quotes from this Book:
“Sometimes I see something so moving I know I’m not supposed to linger. See it and leave. If you stay too long, you wear out the wordless shock. Love it and trust it and leave.”’
“Longing on a large scale makes history.”
“The cheesecake was smooth and lush, with the personality of a warm and well-to-do uncle who knows a hundred dirty jokes and will die of sexual exertions in the arms of his mistress.”
“It is all falling indelibly into the past.”
“You shout because it makes you brave or you want to announce your recklessness.”
Chase’s memory suddenly becomes useless. Chase had no recollection of falling from the roof. He has no recollection of falling on his head. In reality, he has no memories at all. He suddenly has to learn everything about his life from scratch after waking up in a medical room, beginning with his own name.
Chase is known to him. Who is Chase, though? When he returns to school, he observes that other students respond to his return in quite different ways. Some children view him as a hero. It’s obvious that some children fear him.
One specific girl is so enraged with him that she immediately pours her frozen yogurt on his head. Soon, the question will not only be about who Chase is but also about who he was and who he will become. Restart is a breathtaking tale of a young person with a troubled background who must learn what it means to start again from scratch, written by the #1 bestselling author of Swindle and Slacker.
Best Quotes from this Book:
“This is an awful thing that’s happened to you, but it’s also presenting you with a rare opportunity. You have the chance to rebuild yourself from the ground up, to make a completely fresh start.”
“Yeah, Rubio,” snorts Bear. “If I had a face like yours, I’d appreciate anyone who could make me look good. So shut up.”
“If it looks like a duck, and it quacks like a duck, it’s probably a duck.”
“What was so wrong about the old me that now I have to be somebody else?”
“But a dead man doesn’t care what uniform he’s wearing.”
Los Angeles. Christmas Eve. After the biggest party of the year, a fatal accident. Cara endures. G, her closest buddy, does not. Cara is still having trouble nine months later and is overcome with grief and remorse. In an effort to give Cara a new beginning, her mother sends her to a boarding school in Switzerland, where nobody is aware of what happened and will never be if Cara has any say in the matter.
Ren and Hector, two of her new students, won’t let her isolate herself, though. They are committed to tearing down the barriers she has painstakingly constructed. And perhaps Cara wants them to, especially Hector, who appears to comprehend her better than anybody else. The issue is that G keeps evaporating the closer Cara gets to Hector. Cara isn’t sure she can go on if it means letting go of the past and acknowledging what she did that night. She is unsure if she merits another opportunity.
Best Quotes from this Book:
“People always hurt the people they care about.” Her mouth transforms into a pitying smile. “That’s why it hurts so much.”
“People always hurt the people they care about, that’s why it hurts so much”
“I make myself a promise: this time round, I will fight like hell. This time round, despite what will inevitably come after, I will be honest.”
“I’m surprised to find that here, I may have finally found a place where I imagine myself surviving.”
“There are two types of lies; I know this now, and I knew it then. Yet, somewhere along the line, I chose to lose sight of the difference.”
“Everybody is smart in different ways. But if you judge a fish by its ability to climb a tree, it will live its life believing it is stupid.”
Many smart individuals have been duped by Ally because she is intelligent. She manages to cover up her incapacity to read by inventing crafty, disruptive distractions every time she enrolls in a new school. Since you can’t make the stupid smart, she is scared to ask for assistance. Mr. Daniels, her new teacher, however, recognizes the intelligent, imaginative child hidden behind the troublemaker. Ally has a new perspective on herself and discovers that dyslexia is not something to be embarrassed about with his assistance. Ally starts to feel free to be herself as her confidence builds, and possibilities begin to appear in the world. She learns that everyone has more to them than just a label and that brilliant minds don’t always think alike.
Best Quotes from this Book:
“One thing’s for sure. We’re not gonna fit in, but we’re gonna stand out” -Keisha”
“An older brother is older. A big brother looks out for you and smiles when you walk into a room.”
“What letters do you see backward?” “Well, O, I, T, A, M, V, X, U . . . and some others.”
“Great minds don’t think alike.”
“I believe that the things we put numbers on are not necessarily the things that count the most. you can’t measure the stuff that makes us human.”
Unlike other people, Melody is unique. She is unable to move or speak, but she has a perfect memory and can recall every little nuance of every encounter she has ever had. She is more intelligent than the majority of the adults who attempt to identify her and more intelligent than the students in her integrated school, the same students who label her mentally challenged despite her inability to do so. Melody, however, refuses to let her cerebral palsy limit her. And she’s eager to find some way to let everyone know it.
Best Quotes from this Book:
“Words have always swirled around me like snowflakes-each one delicate and different, each one melting untouched in my hands.”
“[A] person is so much more than the name of a diagnosis on a chart.”
“Thoughts need words. Words need a voice.”
“We all have disabilities. What’s yours?”
“What your body looks like has nothing to do with how well your brain works!”