A philosophical divagation about the evil banality of daily acts.
With this subtitle, the author dedicates herself to dissect a few hours of a man’s thoughts, feelings and life, in his non-functioning world, which is habitually regulated by tic-tacs, and the consequences of his previous acts.
My Review: Rated 5 out of 5 stars
Stunning work. Very creative, open-minded, and to the point. Gives the reader an understanding of what life has become when a person only thinks of work and doesn’t make time to live. It deserved all the amazing awards Cristiane received for making a marvelous poem that we all could learn from. It is short but powerful, and you don’t want to miss it.
Liv Constantine will be on tour next month with her upcoming book release, Don’t Open Your Eyes. She will open her book tour with a virtual event. Here is the link to RSVP a ticket for each event https://livconstantine.com/events/
I can’t wait to dive into this serial killers mind. I have read two of Alex’s previous books, and they were frightening 🫣 and thrilling 😱. I highly recommend you pick up his books.
Book synopsis
Dan Garvie’s life has been haunted by the crime he witnessed as a child―narrowly escaping an encounter with a notorious serial killer. He has dedicated his life since to becoming a criminal profiler, eager to seek justice for innocent victims. So when his father passes away under suspicious circumstances, Dan revisits his small island community, determined to uncover the truth about his death. Is it possible that the monster he remembers from his childhood nightmares has returned after all these years?
With his signature shock and suspense, Alex North brings us The Man Made of Smoke. In turn emotional, introspective, and utterly terrifying, this is a story of fathers and sons, shadows and secrets, and the fight we all face to escape the trauma of the past.
Author Biography
ALEX NORTH is the internationally bestselling author of The Angel Maker, The Whisper Man and The Shadows. He lives in Leeds, England, with his wife and son, and is a British crime writer who has previously published under another name.
Laura Holland awakes in the middle of the night to see a stranger standing in her bedroom doorway. She manages to defend herself from the would-be rapist, though he threatens to return as he retreats. Traumatized with recurring nightmares, Laura seeks therapy and is exposed to a unique treatment called EMDR. She also seeks self-protection— buying a gun against the wishes of her husband. When Laura learns she could have gone to prison had she shot her fleeing assailant, she decides to write a hypothetical legal case using the details of that night. She enlists the help of criminal defense lawyer, Thomas Bennett, who proves to be well versed in the justice system but has an uncanny resemblance to her attacker. As the two work together to develop the story, Laura’s discomfort escalates particularly when Thomas seems to know more about that night than he should. Reality and fiction soon merge as her real life drama begins to mirror the fiction she’s trying to create.
My Review: Rated 5 out of 5 stars
Bravo!!! This was such a captivating book. I was at the edge of my seat reading it. I kept on being suspicious of the three men who spent time with Laura and never saw what was coming head-on. I loved that the story revolved around the process of the court system. I took a course in college similar to the way this book was written. I not only was suspicious of the other characters, but part of me also thought she imagined the whole scenario. This is Liz’s first book, and readers would never be able to tell. This book had so much emotion, mystery, and thrill, which kept me focused. I highly recommend this psychological legal thriller.
Author Biography
LIZ LAZARUS is an engineer by education, a consultant & business owner from experience and an author given her passion to tell stories.
Her first novel is loosely based on a personal experience and a series of ‘what if’ questions. FREE OF MALICE traces the after effects of a foiled attack; a woman healing, and grappling with the legal system to acknowledge her right to self-defense.
PLEA FOR JUSTICE depicts the journey of a paralegal striving to reveal the truth about her estranged friend’s incarceration, and leading her on a parallel path of self-discovery.
SHADES OF SILENCE showcases the resilience of a woman faced with devastating loss, the unexpected friendship forged from tragedy and the recurring societal themes that confront every generation.
Some of Liz’s favorites: red wine, dark chocolate, spin class (to compensate for items 1 & 2), great music, a cozy bath robe, cats and Saturday mornings!
Containing a wide selection of poems, ‘A Lamp at Midday’ (Volume 1) gives voice to the contrasts and contradictions of modern life. As they challenge complex emotions and explore timeless themes, these poems also have relevance for the reader’s own life.
This personal collection of poems is a vivid celebration of one woman’s spiritual questioning and earthly existence, speaking with a haunting intensity of life, loss and love.
My Review: Rated 5 out of 5 stars
Judy spilled her heart, soul, love, sadness, happiness, and life in this book of poetry. Each word would engrave in my soul and let me see what Judy was thinking while writing. She shares her life in every poem. I learned to love and enjoy the moments we share with our family. Life is too short to worry about negative things. Live life to the fullest and love one another.
Author Biography
Judy Croome lives and writes in Johannesburg, South Africa. Judy loves cats, exploring the meaning of life, chocolate, cats, rainy days, ancient churches with their ancient graveyards, cats, meditation, and solitude. Oh, and cats. Judy loves cats (who already appear to have discovered the meaning of life.)
Writing as J A Croome, “The Sand People: a collection of magical realism and other stories” [Aztar Press, 2024] is also available.
Croome’s fiction and poetry books “the dust of hope (rune poems)” (Aztar Press, 2021); “Drop by Drop (poems of loss) (Aztar Press, 2020); “a stranger in a strange land” (Aztar Press, 2015); “The Weight of a Feather & Other Stories” (Aztar Press, 2013), “a Lamp at Midday” (Aztar Press, 2012) and “Dancing in the Shadows of Love” (Aztar Press, 2018, 2012, 2011) are available.
Croome co-authored the non-fiction book “Street Smart Taxpayers (Juta Law, 2017) with her late husband Dr. Beric Croome.
Shortlisted in the African Writing Flash Fiction 2011 competition, Judy’s short stories, poems and articles have appeared in various magazines, anthologies and newspapers, such as The Sunday Times, The Huffington Post (USA) and the University of the Witwatersrand’s Itch Magazine. In 2021 and 2016, Judy was the poetry judge for the Writers2000 (South Africa) annual poetry competition and, in 2021, presented “The Gift of Poetry” to Writers2000 (South Africa).
This is the first thing I saw when I walked into the Paramus BN. Check out Emily Henry’s new book, GreatBig Beautiful Life.
Goodreads Blurb
Alice Scott is an eternal optimist still dreaming of her big writing break. Hayden Anderson is a Pulitzer-prize winning human thundercloud. And they’re both on balmy Little Crescent Island for the same reason: To write the biography of a woman no one has seen in years–or at least to meet with the octogenarian who claims to be the Margaret Ives. Tragic heiress, former tabloid princess, and daughter of one of the most storied (and scandalous) families of the 20th Century.
When Margaret invites them both for a one-month trial period, after which she’ll choose the person who’ll tell her story, there are three things keeping Alice’s head in the game.
One: Alice genuinely likes people, which means people usually like Alice—and she has a whole month to win the legendary woman over.
Two: She’s ready for this job and the chance to impress her perennially unimpressed family with a Serious Publication
Three: Hayden Anderson, who should have no reason to be concerned about losing this book, is glowering at her in a shaken-to-the core way that suggests he sees her as competition.
But the problem is, Margaret is only giving each of them pieces of her story. Pieces they can’t swap to put together because of an ironclad NDA and an inconvenient yearning pulsing between them every time they’re in the same room.
And it’s becoming abundantly clear that their story—just like the tale Margaret’s spinning—could be a mystery, tragedy, or love ballad…depending on who’s telling it.
Author Biography
Emily Henry is the #1 New York Times bestselling author of Book Lovers, People We Meet on Vacation, and Beach Read, as well as the forthcoming Happy Place. She lives and writes in Cincinnati and the part of Kentucky just beneath it.
Four years after their bitter divorce, Claire and Aaron Litvak get a phone call no parent is prepared for: Their twenty-two-year-old daughter Lindsey, teaching English in China during a college gap year, has been critically injured in a hit-and-run accident. At a Shanghai hospital they wait at her bedside, hoping for the best and preparing for the worst.
The accident unearths a deeper fissure in the family: the shocking event that ended the Litvaks’ marriage and turned Lindsey against them. Estranged from her parents, she has confided only in her younger sister, Grace, adopted as an infant from China. As Claire and Aaron struggle to get their bearings in bustling, cosmopolitan Shanghai, the newly prosperous “miracle city,” they face troubling questions about Lindsey’s life there, in which nothing is as it seems.
My Review: Rated 3 out of 5 stars
Life can change in the blink of an eye. You mindlessly go through life like you are in survival mode. Lindsey Litvak was searching for her place in this world, and unfortunately, life put her through terrible challenges; she was alone in finding where she fit in society. While struggling to survive in China, a different country from where she grew up, a careless driver hit her with his car, changing the course of her life forever. That one second of a life amid death will unravel a broken family secret. Readers will have a front-row seat to the life Lindsey had led up to this horrifying unknown moment, fighting between life and death.
Having a support system and a family to guide you when you grow up plays a role in your future. Claire and Aaron Litvak had Lindsey and adopted Grace from China. Lindsey’s childhood wasn’t too bad until she fell in love with a married man; this was the beginning of her downfall. What gave Lindsey comfort was the close bond she had with her sister.
I wasn’t thrilled about this story. In part, it could be that I don’t enjoy reading about broken families and because the police officers investigating this incident did nothing to find out who the culprit was. They had many opportunities to find the suspect, and they dragged their feet. I had hoped that Grace would have located people from Lindsey’s past in China. She did run into one, but that character kept the secret of knowing Lindsey to herself. It’s a sad, dark story without a happy ending. It was a story about a female trying to figure out life and walking straight into harm’s way. Some topics this book addresses include the bonds between sisters, finding love with the wrong men, being an escort while living through terrifying experiences, dealing with the dynamics of parental divorce, and coping with death.
Author Biography
Jennifer Haigh is an American novelist and short story writer. Her new novel MERCY STREET takes on the contentious issue of abortion rights, following the daily life of Claudia Birch, a counselor at an embattled women’s clinic in Boston.
Her last novel, HEAT AND LIGHT, looks at a Pennsylvania town divided by the controversy over fracking, and was named a Best Book of 2016 by The New York Times, The Washington Post, The Wall Street Journal and NPR. Earlier books include the novel FAITH, about a beloved Boston priest accused of a molesting a child in his parish, and THE CONDITION, the story of a woman diagnosed in childhood with Turner’s Syndrome.
Haigh’s critically acclaimed debut novel MRS. KIMBLE won the PEN/Hemingway Award for first fiction. Her second novel, the New York Times bestseller BAKER TOWERS, won the PEN/L. L. Winship Award for outstanding book by a New England author. Her short story collection NEWS FROM HEAVEN won of the Massachusetts Book Award and the PEN New England Award in Fiction. A Guggenheim Foundation Fellow and a graduate of the Iowa Writer’s Workshop, she writes frequently for The New York Times Book Review. Her fiction has been published in eighteen languages.
Butterflies are one of the world’s most beloved insects. From butterfly gardens to zoo exhibitions, they are one of the few insects we’ve encouraged to infiltrate our lives. Yet, what has drawn us to these creatures in the first place? And what are their lives really like? In this groundbreaking book, New York Times bestselling author and science journalist Wendy Williams reveals the inner lives of these “flying flowers”—creatures far more intelligent and tougher than we give them credit for.
Monarch butterflies migrate thousands of miles each year from Canada to Mexico. Other species have learned how to fool ants into taking care of them. Butterflies’ scales are inspiring researchers to create new life-saving medical technology. Williams takes readers to butterfly habitats across the globe and introduces us to not only various species, but to the scientists who have dedicated their lives to studying them.
Coupled with years of research and knowledge gained from experts in the field, this accessible “butterfly biography” explores the ancient partnership between these special creatures and humans, and why they continue to fascinate us today. Touching, eye-opening, and incredibly profound, The Language of Butterflies reveals the critical role they play in our world.
Author Biography
Wendy Williams is a journalist whose work has appeared in The Boston Globe, The Wall Street Journal, The New York Times, and The Christian Science Monitor, among many other publications. She is the author of several books, including Kraken and Cape Wind, and is a lifelong equestrienne. She lives in Mashpee, Massachusetts.
Most people don’t even notice them—three tiny figures sitting at the end of a long pier in the corner of one of the most famous paintings in the world. Most people think it’s just a depiction of the sea. But Louisa, an artist herself, knows otherwise and she is determined to find out the story of these three enigmatic figures.
Twenty-five years earlier, in a distant town, a group of teenagers find refuge from their difficult home lives by spending their days laughing and telling stories out on a pier. There’s Joar, who never backs down from a fight; quiet and bookish Ted who is mourning his father; Ali, the daughter of a man who never stays in one place for long; and finally, there’s the artist, a boy who hoards sleeping pills and shuns attention, but who possesses an extraordinary gift that might be his ticket to a better life. These four lost souls find in each other a reason to get up each morning, a reason to dream.
Out of that summer emerges a transcendent work of art, a painting that will unexpectedly be put into eighteen-year-old Louisa’s care. As she struggles to decide what to do with this bequest, she embarks on a surprise-filled cross-country journey to learn the story of how the painting came to be. The closer she gets to the painting’s birthplace, the more she feels compelled to unleash her own artistic spirit, but happy endings don’t always take the form we expect in this fresh testament to the transformative power of friendship and art.
Author Biography
Fredrik Backman is the #1 New York Times bestselling author of A Man Called Ove (soon to be a major motion picture starring Tom Hanks), My Grandmother Asked Me to Tell You She’s Sorry, Britt-Marie Was Here, Beartown, Us Against You, as well as two novellas, And Every Morning the Way Home Gets Longer and Longer and The Deal of a Lifetime. Things My Son Needs to Know About the World, his first work of non-fiction, will be released in the US in May 2019. His books are published in more than forty countries. He lives in Stockholm, Sweden, with his wife and two children. Connect with him on Twitter @BackmanLand or on Instagram @backmansk.
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