Must Read Releases 5th December 2017
It's Publication Day!
Happy book birthday to the following list of books which I can't wait to read & review:
A Breakpoint Novel
The next novel from author Bryce Zabel, whose debut, Surrounded by Enemies: What if Kennedy Survived Dallas? won the coveted Sidewise Award for Alternate History.“I have some experience with shattered timelines and altered realities, but this one kept me guessing every page.” —Damon Lindelof, writer and producer of Lost, Star Trek into Darkness, on Surrounded by Enemies
We all know the tragic story by now. After seven years as the most popular rock-and-roll group the world has ever seen, The Beatles—torn apart by personal and creative differences—called it quits in 1970, never to play together again. The fact that their contemporaries like the Rolling Stones are still playing today makes their ending even more painful.
Once There Was a Way: What if The Beatles Stayed Together? is a story of another reality, the one we wished had happened, where the Fab Four chose to work it out rather than let it be. This book is no mere fairy tale, but a chronicle crafted from the people and events of our own history, shaped to create a brand new narrative in which John, Paul, George, and Ringo find a way to stay friends and keep the band together. Imagine there was more. Lots more. It’s easy if you try.
We all know the tragic story by now. After seven years as the most popular rock-and-roll group the world has ever seen, The Beatles—torn apart by personal and creative differences—called it quits in 1970, never to play together again. The fact that their contemporaries like the Rolling Stones are still playing today makes their ending even more painful.
Once There Was a Way: What if The Beatles Stayed Together? is a story of another reality, the one we wished had happened, where the Fab Four chose to work it out rather than let it be. This book is no mere fairy tale, but a chronicle crafted from the people and events of our own history, shaped to create a brand new narrative in which John, Paul, George, and Ringo find a way to stay friends and keep the band together. Imagine there was more. Lots more. It’s easy if you try.
Essay's & Guided Journaling for Self-Reflection
As publisher of Natural Awakenings Long Island magazine, each month Kelly Martinsen writes a letter to readers that sets the tone of that issue's unique editorial theme. Four years ago, within two days of publishing her first letter, 'You Only Regret the Things You Don't Do,' a reader called to thank her for the thought-provoking piece that spoke deeply to her. Month after month, topic after topic, responses to Martinsen's editorial letters grew and readers were connecting with her words in life-changing ways.
A Year of Inspired Living is a monthly chapter book with weekly sub-chapters, compiling and expanding on Martinsen's letters leaving the last page of each week for the reader to write their own letter. Chapter topics include: love, commitment, faith, challenges, death, freedom, middle age, children, cancer, dog poop and more. Written in a familiar voice, A Year of Inspired Living speaks with wisdom, tongue-in-cheek self-effacing humour, and raw honesty to help readers reach into the hidden corners of their lives and develop a greater awareness of their own personal relationships and journeys. To help them reap the maximum benefit of their experiences, a reflection question and blank page follows each weekly entry, guiding and inspiring them to record their own life-story.
Exploring the Science of Social Intelligence with Jane Austen
An Austen scholar and therapist reveals Jane Austen's intuitive ability to imbue her characters with hallmarks of social intelligence—and how these beloved works of literature can further illuminate the mind-brain connection.
Why is Jane Austen so phenomenally popular? Why do we read Pride and Prejudice again and again? Why do we delight in Emma’s mischievous schemes? Why do we care that Anne Elliot of Persuasion suffers? We care because it is our biological destiny to be interested in people and their stories—the human brain is a social brain. And Austen’s characters are so believable, that for many of us, they are not just imaginary beings, but friends whom we know and love. And thanks to Austen's ability to capture the breadth and depth of human psychology so thoroughly, we feel that she empathizes with us, her readers.
Humans have a profound need for empathy, to know that we are not alone with our joys and sorrows. And then there is attachment, denial, narcissism, and of course, love, to name a few. We see ourselves and others reflected in Austen’s work. Social intelligence is one of the most highly developed human traits when compared with other animals. How did it evolve? Why is it so valuable? Wendy Jones explores the many facets of social intelligence and juxtaposes them with the Austen cannon. Brilliantly original and insightful, this fusion of psychology, neuroscience, and literature provides a heightened understanding of one of our most beloved cultural institutions—and our own minds.
This book of hear-twarming sketches reveals the everyday intimate moments that make up a marriage.
Inspired by his wife, artist and wedding photographer Curtis Wiklund sketched a new drawing every day for a year. The result is this collection of adorable illustrations depicting the tender, true moments the couple shares. From winter walks to end-of-day cuddles, inside jokes to impromptu forts, this dreamy art has already captured the hearts of thousands of fans around the world. Now in book form, Us delights as a gift and a keepsake.
Inspired by his wife, artist and wedding photographer Curtis Wiklund sketched a new drawing every day for a year. The result is this collection of adorable illustrations depicting the tender, true moments the couple shares. From winter walks to end-of-day cuddles, inside jokes to impromptu forts, this dreamy art has already captured the hearts of thousands of fans around the world. Now in book form, Us delights as a gift and a keepsake.
Split City Book 2
Arden and Dade are running for their lives from a city on fire; they’re wounded, desperate, and shadowed by two families who want them dead. But it’s Dade’s debt to a devious crime lord that plunges them further into danger—especially with their mining planet in chaos…
The ruling Solizen have grown more calculating, while the Undercity population remains trapped in the darkness below. With the supply of life-saving VitD wiped out, the rebellion is ready to erupt at any moment.
Now, Arden and Dade reluctantly join a new team on a hazardous operation to infiltrate the Solizen’s most protected facility. Caught up in the uncertainty of shifting allegiances and suspicious allies, their relationship will be put to the test. But to carry out their dangerous mission, the teens must rely on their love more than ever—will it be enough to keep them alive?
Gripping, romantic, and evocative of its time— A Shine that Defies the Dark is a spellbinding story of one woman who will stop at nothing to survive during a tumultuous time in American history.
After a six-year exile, Ophelia Breaux and her mother are overjoyed to return to the Louisiana bayou. But it seems the ghosts of the epic feud that drove them away still haunt Plaquemines Parish, and with the Great Depression sweeping the nation, the two soon find they can’t make ends meet.
Seeing no other option, Ophelia’s mother takes the drastic step of sharing her bed with the town judge in exchange for a reduced rent. The judge has had a life-long obsession with Momma, and Ophelia is desperate to end this arrangement and get her away from him.
When Remy Granger shows up, Ophelia knows it could mean more trouble—and that’s the last thing they need. Handsome and dangerous, he’s the first boy she ever kissed, and a member of the most notorious family in southern Louisiana—but he’s also got an opportunity for fast money in rum-running. Ophelia goes all in, and it turns out she may have a knack for the business. But she’s going to have to run even faster if she wants to save Momma… dodging the cops, rival gangs, and her traitorous heart at every turn.
The Ryogan Chronicles Book 2
The only way for Khya to get her brother back alive is to kill Varan—the immortal ruler who can’t be killed. But not even Varan knew what he was doing when he perverted magic and humanity to become immortal.
Khya’s leading her group of friends and rebels into the mountains that hold Varan’s secrets, but if risking all their lives is going to be worth it, she has to give up everything else—breaking the spell that holds her brother captive and jeopardizing her deepening relationship with Tessen, the boy who has been by turns her rival and refuge since her brother disappeared. Immortality itself might be her only answer, but if that’s where Khya has to go, she can’t ask Tessen or her friends to follow.
The Ryogan Chronicles are best enjoyed in order.
Reading Order:
Book #1 Island of Exiles
Book #2 Sea of Strangers
Reading Order:
Book #1 Island of Exiles
Book #2 Sea of Strangers
How to Build a Grace-Filled, Life-Giving Morning Routine
Are you ready to wake up for your life and not just to your life?
Don't worry; you don’t have to be a morning person to start each new day well. Join Kat Lee and thousands of women from countries around the world who have learned to maximize their mornings. In Hello Mornings, Kat introduces a simple yet powerful three-minute morning routine that integrates Bible study, planning, and fitness into a foundational morning habit that fits into every schedule. She then helps you build each of these core habits for life-long growth.
Everyone can find three minutes. And instead of adding one more thing to the list, Hello Mornings lifts the weight off women by revealing a grace-filled way to establish a powerful morning routine that offers a simple way to incorporate the most-sought-after daily habits into a simple morning routine: God. Plan. Move. the latest research on habit formation and development, practical tools to help readers develop and grow their own personalized, adaptable plan for mornings, stories of transformed mornings from women in every season and stage of life.
Join us for the fourth year of the Young Explorer's Adventure Guide anthology - 24 amazing science fiction stories for middle grade readers.
“When I was a child, the school library had a Girls’ Section, which included fairy tales, and a Boys’ Section, which included all the science fiction. Things have changed, of course, but not enough. There is a strong need for science fiction, as opposed to fantasy, aimed at girls, especially in the middle grades. This anthology is an important contribution to the effort to fill that need, and I’m delighted to be a part of it.”~ Nancy Kress, winner of six Nebulas, two Hugos, a Sturgeon, and the John W. Campbell Memorial Award
We’ve got another great collection of 24 stories from amazing authors, ranging from Nebula and Hugo winners to relative newcomers to the field. Our characters are white, black, asian, latino. Human and robot. Everyone belongs here.
She’s a friendly voice on the phone. But can you trust her?
The people who call End of the Line need hope. They need reassurance that life is worth living. But some are unlucky enough to get through to Laura. Laura doesn’t want them to hope. She wants them to die.
Laura hasn’t had it easy: she’s survived sickness and a difficult marriage only to find herself heading for forty, unsettled and angry. She doesn’t love talking to people worse off than she is. She craves it.
But now someone’s on to her—Ryan, whose world falls apart when his pregnant wife ends her life, hand in hand with a stranger. Who was this man, and why did they choose to die together?
The sinister truth is within Ryan’s grasp, but he has no idea of the desperate lengths Laura will go to…
Because the best thing about being a Good Samaritan is that you can get away with murder.
In this mesmerizing drama, one life-altering event catapults a family into turmoil, revealing secrets that may leave them fractured forever . . . or bind them together tighter than ever before.
From the outside, the Davenports look like any other family living a completely ordinary life—until that devastating day when five-year-old Jonah is killed, and the family is torn apart. As the fury of guilt engulfs them, the Davenports slowly start to unravel, one by one.
Losing her son forces Rachel to withdraw into a frayed, fuzzy reality. Her husband, Sam, tries to remain stoic, but he’s consumed by regret with the choices he’s made. Eden mourns her brother, while desperately fighting to regain a sense of normalcy. And Aunt Ruth, Rachel’s sister, works too hard to care for the family, even as her own personal issues haunt her.
Told from multiple points of view—including Jonah’s—the family struggles to cope with unthinkable loss. But as they face their own dark secrets about that terrible day, they have a choice: to be swallowed up in sadness forever, or begin the raw, arduous ascent back to living.
When fiery and idealistic Kitty O’Kane escapes the crushing poverty of Dublin’s tenements, she’s determined that no one should ever suffer like she did. As she sets out to save the world, she finds herself at the forefront of events that shaped the early twentieth century. While working as a maid, she survives the sinking of the Titanic. As a suffragette in New York’s Greenwich Village, she’s jailed for breaking storefront windows. And traveling war-torn Europe as a journalist, she’s at the Winter Palace when it’s stormed by the Bolsheviks. Ultimately she returns to her homeland to serve as a nurse in the Irish Civil War.
During Kitty’s remarkable journey, she reunites with her childhood sweetheart, Tom Doyle, but Tom doesn’t know everything about her past—a past that continues to haunt her. Will Kitty accept that before she can save everyone else, she needs to find a way to save herself? Or will the sins of her past stop her from pursuing her own happiness?
Watch out for full reviews of all these books - and if you liked this reading list have a look at my complete list of reading lists.
Happy Reading!
During Kitty’s remarkable journey, she reunites with her childhood sweetheart, Tom Doyle, but Tom doesn’t know everything about her past—a past that continues to haunt her. Will Kitty accept that before she can save everyone else, she needs to find a way to save herself? Or will the sins of her past stop her from pursuing her own happiness?
Watch out for full reviews of all these books - and if you liked this reading list have a look at my complete list of reading lists.
Happy Reading!
Comments
I'm hosting a giveaway on my own website: an autographed copy of A Shine That Defies the Dark, a flask--for the modern-day bootleggers--and a selection of 1930's sweets
( https://jodigallegos.com/a-shine-that-defies-the-dark-giveaway/ ).
Thank you again for sharing!--------Jodi