Download or read book A Grown Up Kind of Pretty written by Joshilyn Jackson and published by Grand Central Publishing. This book was released on 2012-01-25 with total page 336 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A Grown Up Kind of Pretty is a powerful saga of three generations of women, plagued by hardships and torn by a devastating secret, yet inextricably joined by the bonds of family. Fifteen-year-old Mosey Slocumb -- spirited, sassy, and on the cusp of womanhood -- is shaken when a small grave is unearthed in the backyard, and determined to figure out why it's there. Liza, her stroke-ravaged mother, is haunted by choices she made as a teenager. But it is Jenny, Mosey's strong and big-hearted grandmother, whose maternal love braids together the strands of the women's shared past -- and who will stop at nothing to defend their future.
Download or read book A Grown Up Kind of Pretty written by Joshilyn Jackson and published by . This book was released on 2014-07-02 with total page 181 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "A novel that follows a young woman's search for the truth about who her mother really is"--Provided by publisher.
Download or read book All Grown Up written by Jami Attenberg and published by HarperCollins. This book was released on 2017-03-07 with total page 224 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A national bestseller from the New York Times best-selling author of The Middlesteins, All Grown Up is a wickedly funny novel about a thirty-nine-year-old single, childfree woman who defies convention as she seeks connection. Who is Andrea Bern? When her therapist asks the question, Andrea knows the right things to say: she’s a designer, a friend, a daughter, a sister. But it’s what she leaves unsaid—she’s alone, a drinker, a former artist, a shrieker in bed, captain of the sinking ship that is her flesh—that feels the most true. Everyone around her seems to have an entirely different idea of what it means to be an adult: her best friend, Indigo, is getting married; her brother—who miraculously seems unscathed by their shared tumultuous childhood—and sister-in-law are having a hoped-for baby; and her friend Matthew continues to wholly devote himself to making dark paintings at the cost of being flat broke. But when Andrea’s niece finally arrives, born with a heartbreaking ailment, the Bern family is forced to reexamine what really matters. Will this drive them together or tear them apart? Told in gut-wrenchingly honest, mordantly comic vignettes, All Grown Up is a breathtaking display of Jami Attenberg’s power as a storyteller, a whip-smart examination of one woman’s life, lived entirely on her own terms.
Download or read book The Girl Who Stopped Swimming written by Joshilyn Jackson and published by Grand Central Publishing. This book was released on 2008-03-04 with total page 336 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Laurel Gray Hawthorne needs to make things pretty, whether she's helping her mother make sure the literal family skeleton stays in the closet or turning scraps of fabric into nationally acclaimed art quilts. Her estranged sister Thalia, an impoverished Actress with a capital A, is her polar opposite, priding herself on exposing the lurid truth lurking behind middle class niceties. While Laurel's life seems neatly on track--a passionate marriage, a treasured daughter, and a lovely home in suburban Victorianna--everything she holds dear is suddenly thrown into question the night she is visited by the ghost of a her 13-year old neighbor Molly Dufresne. The ghost leads Laurel to the real Molly floating lifelessly in the Hawthorne's backyard pool. Molly's death is inexplicable--an unseemly mystery Laurel knows no one in her whitewashed neighborhood is up to solving. Only her wayward, unpredictable sister is right for the task, but calling in a favor from Thalia is like walking straight into a frying pan protected only by Crisco. Enlisting Thalia's help, Laurel sets out on a life-altering journey that triggers startling revelations about her family's guarded past, the true state of her marriage, and the girl who stopped swimming. Richer and more rewarding than any story Joshilyn Jackson has yet written, yet still packed with Jackson's trademarked outrageous characters, sparkling dialogue, and defiantly twisting plotting, THE GIRL WHO STOPPED SWIMMING is destined both to delight Jackson's loyal fans and capture a whole new audience.
Download or read book Between Georgia written by Joshilyn Jackson and published by Grand Central Publishing. This book was released on 2006-07-03 with total page 320 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Nonny Frett understands the meaning of the phrase "in between a rock and a hard place" better than any woman alive. She's got two mothers, "one deaf-blind and the other four baby steps from flat crazy." She's got two men: a husband who's easing out the back door; and a best friend, who's laying siege to her heart in her front yard. And she has two families: the Fretts, who stole her and raised her right; and the Crabtrees, who won't forget how they were done wrong. Now, in Between, Georgia, a feud that began the night Nonny was born is escalating and threatening to expose family secrets. Ironically, it might be just what the town needs...if only Nonny weren't stuck in between.
Download or read book The Opposite of Everyone written by Joshilyn Jackson and published by HarperCollins. This book was released on 2016-02-16 with total page 279 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A fiercely independent divorce lawyer learns the power of family and connection when she receives a cryptic message from her estranged mother in this bittersweet, witty novel from the nationally bestselling author of Someone Else’s Love Story and Gods in Alabama—an emotionally resonant tale about the endurance of love and the power of stories to shape and transform our lives. Born in Alabama, Paula Vauss spent the first decade of her life on the road with her free-spirited young mother, Kai, an itinerant storyteller who blended Hindu mythology with southern oral tradition to re-invent their history as they roved. But everything, including Paula’s birth name Kali Jai, changed when she told a story of her own—one that landed Kai in prison and Paula in foster care. Separated, each holding secrets of her own, the intense bond they once shared was fractured. These days, Paula has reincarnated herself as a tough-as-nails divorce attorney with a successful practice in Atlanta. While she hasn’t seen Kai in fifteen years, she’s still making payments on that Karmic debt—until the day her last check is returned in the mail, along with a mysterious note: “I am going on a journey, Kali. I am going back to my beginning; death is not the end. You will be the end. We will meet again, and there will be new stories. You know how Karma works.” Then Kai’s most treasured secret literally lands on Paula’s doorstep, throwing her life into chaos and transforming her from only child to older sister. Desperate to find her mother before it’s too late, Paula sets off on a journey of discovery that will take her back to the past and into the deepest recesses of her heart. With the help of her ex-lover Birdwine, an intrepid and emotionally volatile private eye who still carries a torch for her, this brilliant woman, an expert at wrecking families, now has to figure out how to put one back together—her own. The Opposite of Everyone is a story about story itself, how the tales we tell connect us, break us, and define us, and how the endings and beginnings we choose can destroy us . . . and make us whole. Laced with sharp humor and poignant insight, it is beloved New York Times bestselling author Joshilyn Jackson at her very best.
Download or read book The Unwanteds written by Lisa McMann and published by Simon and Schuster. This book was released on 2012-07-10 with total page 416 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In a society that purges thirteen-year-olds who are creative, identical twins Aaron and Alex are separated, one to attend University while the other, supposedly Eliminated, finds himself in a wondrous place where youths hone their abilities and learn magic.
Download or read book All Our Pretty Songs written by Sarah McCarry and published by St. Martin's Griffin. This book was released on 2013-07-30 with total page 242 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This is a story about love, but not the kind of love you think. You'll see... In the lush and magical Pacific Northwest live two best friends who grew up like sisters: charismatic, mercurial, and beautiful Aurora, and the devoted, watchful narrator. Each of them is incomplete without the other. But their unbreakable bond is challenged when a mysterious and gifted musician named Jack comes between them. His music is like nothing I have ever heard. It is like the ocean surging, the wind that blows across the open water, the far call of gulls. Suddenly, each girl must decide what matters most: friendship, or love. What both girls don't know is that the stakes are even higher than either of them could have imagined. They're not the only ones who have noticed Jack's gift; his music has awakened an ancient evil—and a world both above and below which may not be mythical at all. We have paved over the ancient world but that does not mean we have erased it. The real and the mystical; the romantic and the heartbreaking all begin to swirl together in All Our Pretty Songs, Sarah McCarry's brilliant debut, carrying the two on journey that is both enthralling and terrifying. And it's up to the narrator to protect the people she loves—if she can.
Download or read book Girl in Pieces written by Kathleen Glasgow and published by Ember. This book was released on 2018-04-10 with total page 449 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: #1 NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER "A haunting, beautiful, and necessary book."—Nicola Yoon, #1 New York Times bestselling author of Everything, Everything Charlotte Davis is in pieces. At seventeen she’s already lost more than most people do in a lifetime. But she’s learned how to forget. The broken glass washes away the sorrow until there is nothing but calm. You don’t have to think about your father and the river. Your best friend, who is gone forever. Or your mother, who has nothing left to give you. Every new scar hardens Charlie’s heart just a little more, yet it still hurts so much. It hurts enough to not care anymore, which is sometimes what has to happen before you can find your way back from the edge. A deeply moving portrait of a girl in a world that owes her nothing, and has taken so much, and the journey she undergoes to put herself back together. Kathleen Glasgow's debut is heartbreakingly real and unflinchingly honest. It’s a story you won’t be able to look away from. And don’t miss Kathleen Glasgow's novels You’d Be Home Now and How to Make Friends with the Dark, both raw and powerful stories of life.
Download or read book How to Date Like a Grown Up written by Lisa Daily and published by Sourcebooks, Inc.. This book was released on 2009-01-01 with total page 258 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "Witty and smart, this is a must-read for any woman ready to find Mr. Right. Or at least Mr. Right Now." Christopher Hopkins, Oprah's Makeover Guy and author of Staging Your Comeback: A Complete Beauty Revival for Women Over 45 By the time you hit forty, you have a pretty good idea of what you want when it comes to dating, love, and romance. But how do you get it? HOW TO DATE LIKE A GROWN-UP will tell you everything you need to know to find the love you're looking for (even after a long marriage or other dating hiatus), how to get married (if that's what you're after), or how to just get lucky. Dating expert, bestselling author, and TV personality Lisa Daily (Daytime) uses her hilarious and compassionate voice to offer up realistic, counterintuitive advice that will help you finally find the relationship (and the guy) you deserve, including: Where (and how) to meet better men 5 easy tips to chat up any stranger What you may be doing to make yourself a magnet for losers How to deal with the pitfalls and fringe benefits of dating younger men Little-known secrets to dramatically improve your dating odds How to break it to your kids that you have a better social life than they do A foolproof way to find the best dating site for you How to face getting naked in front of someone new for the first time How to accommodate changes in your body (and the little blue pill) The one simple thing you can do in the bedroom that will make a man speed up his marriage proposal Why men are rushing to the altar, and why you might just want to wait Dating: It's Not Just For Kids Anymore
Download or read book There Are No Grown ups written by Pamela Druckerman and published by Penguin. This book was released on 2018-05-29 with total page 288 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The best-selling author of BRINGING UP BÉBÉ investigates life in her forties, and wonders whether her mind will ever catch up with her face. When Pamela Druckerman turns 40, waiters start calling her "Madame," and she detects a new message in mens' gazes: I would sleep with her, but only if doing so required no effort whatsoever. Yet forty isn't even technically middle-aged anymore. And there are upsides: After a lifetime of being clueless, Druckerman can finally grasp the subtext of conversations, maintain (somewhat) healthy relationships and spot narcissists before they ruin her life. What are the modern forties? What do we know once we reach them? What makes someone a "grown-up" anyway? And why didn't anyone warn us that we'd get cellulite on our arms? Part frank memoir, part hilarious investigation of daily life, There Are No Grown-Ups diagnoses the in-between decade when... • Everyone you meet looks a little bit familiar. • You're matter-of-fact about chin hair. • You can no longer wear anything ironically. • There's at least one sport your doctor forbids you to play. • You become impatient while scrolling down to your year of birth. • Your parents have stopped trying to change you. • You don't want to be with the cool people anymore; you want to be with your people. • You realize that everyone is winging it, some just do it more confidently. • You know that it's ok if you don't like jazz. Internationally best-selling author and New York Times contributor Pamela Druckerman leads us on a quest for wisdom, self-knowledge and the right pair of pants. A witty dispatch from the front lines of the forties, THERE ARE NO GROWN-UPS is a (midlife) coming-of-age story--and a book for anyone trying to find their place in the world.
Download or read book The Almost Sisters written by Joshilyn Jackson and published by HarperCollins. This book was released on 2017-07-11 with total page 456 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: With empathy, grace, humor, and piercing insight, the author of gods in Alabama pens a powerful, emotionally resonant novel of the South that confronts the truth about privilege, family, and the distinctions between perception and reality---the stories we tell ourselves about our origins and who we really are. Superheroes have always been Leia Birch Briggs’ weakness. One tequila-soaked night at a comics convention, the usually level-headed graphic novelist is swept off her barstool by a handsome and anonymous Batman. It turns out the caped crusader has left her with more than just a nice, fuzzy memory. She’s having a baby boy—an unexpected but not unhappy development in the thirty-eight year-old’s life. But before Leia can break the news of her impending single-motherhood (including the fact that her baby is biracial) to her conventional, Southern family, her step-sister Rachel’s marriage implodes. Worse, she learns her beloved ninety-year-old grandmother, Birchie, is losing her mind, and she’s been hiding her dementia with the help of Wattie, her best friend since girlhood. Leia returns to Alabama to put her grandmother’s affairs in order, clean out the big Victorian that has been in the Birch family for generations, and tell her family that she’s pregnant. Yet just when Leia thinks she’s got it all under control, she learns that illness is not the only thing Birchie’s been hiding. Tucked in the attic is a dangerous secret with roots that reach all the way back to the Civil War. Its exposure threatens the family’s freedom and future, and it will change everything about how Leia sees herself and her sister, her son and his missing father, and the world she thinks she knows.
Download or read book Mother May I written by Joshilyn Jackson and published by HarperCollins. This book was released on 2021-04-06 with total page 390 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: NATIONAL BESTSELLER “A finely paced, shrewdly observed, multi-tiered story . . . A thinking (and feeling) reader’s thriller.” –Wall Street Journal "Chilling, thought-provoking, and hauntingly written, Mother May I kept me on the edge of my seat with its breathless race against time." — Megan Miranda, New York Times bestselling author of The Girl from Widow Hills Recommended by Buzzfeed • Parade • Country Living • Atlanta Journal-Constitution • Augusta Chronicle • The Nerd Daily • She Reads • BookBub • and more! The New York Times bestselling author of the critically acclaimed Never Have I Ever returns with an even more addictive novel of domestic suspense in which a mother must decide how far she is willing to go to protect her child and the life she loves—an unforgettable tale of power, privilege, lies, revenge, and the choices we make, ones that transform our lives in unforeseen ways. Revenge doesn’t wait for permission. Growing up poor in rural Georgia, Bree Cabbat was warned that the world was a dark and scary place. Bree rejected that fearful outlook, and life has proved her right. Having married into a family with wealth, power, and connections, Bree now has all a woman could ever dream of. Until the day she awakens and sees someone peering into her bedroom window—an old gray-haired woman dressed all in black who vanishes as quickly as she appears. It must be a play of the early morning light or the remnant of a waking dream, Bree tells herself, shaking off the bad feeling that overcomes her. Later that day though, she spies the old woman again, in the parking lot of her daughters’ private school . . . just minutes before Bree’s infant son, asleep in his car seat only a few feet away, vanishes. It happened so quickly—Bree looked away only for a second. There is a note left in his place, warning her that she is being watched; if she wants her baby back, she must not call the police or deviate in any way from the instructions that will follow. The mysterious woman makes contact, and Bree learns she, too, is a mother. Why would another mother do this? What does she want? And why has she targeted Bree? Of course Bree will pay anything, do anything. It’s her child. To get her baby back, Bree must complete one small—but critical—task. It seems harmless enough, but her action comes with a devastating price. Bree will do whatever it takes to protect her family—but what if the cost tears their world apart?
Download or read book While I Was Gone written by Sue Miller and published by Ballantine Books. This book was released on 2002-11-26 with total page 348 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The "New York Times" bestseller called "quietly gripping" by "USA Today" demonstrates how impulses can fracture even the most stable family. Despite her loving family and beautiful home, Jo Becker is restless. Then an old roommate reappears, bringing back Jo's memories of her early 20s. Jo's obsession with that period in her life--and the crime that ended it--draws her back to a horrible secret.
Download or read book Pretty Is written by Maggie Mitchell and published by Henry Holt and Company. This book was released on 2015-07-07 with total page 320 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "[A] stunning, multilayered debut . . . . with a great deal of intelligent, beautifully written panache. . . . What a satisfying novel, with its shifting perspectives and competing stories and notion that our relationship to the truth changes with time and distance." -The New York Times A fiercely imagined fiction debut in which two young women face what happened the summer they were twelve, when a handsome stranger abducted them Everyone thought we were dead. We were missing for nearly two months; we were twelve. What else could they think? -Lois It's always been hard to talk about what happened without sounding all melodramatic. . . . Actually, I haven't mentioned it for years, not to a goddamned person. -Carly May The summer precocious Lois and pretty Carly May were twelve years old, they were kidnapped, driven across the country, and held in a cabin in the woods for two months by a charismatic stranger. Nearly twenty years later, Lois has become a professor, teaching British literature at a small college in upstate New York, and Carly May is an actress in Los Angeles, drinking too much and struggling to revive her career. When a movie with a shockingly familiar plot draws the two women together once more, they must face the public exposure of their secret history and confront the dark longings and unspeakable truths that haunt them still. Maggie Mitchell's Pretty Is beautifully defies ripped-from-the-headlines crime story expectations and announces the debut of a masterful new storytelling talent.
Download or read book Backseat Saints written by Joshilyn Jackson and published by Grand Central Publishing. This book was released on 2010-06-08 with total page 241 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Read this "enthralling" portrayal of the measures a mother will take to right the wrongs she's created while reigniting her rough and tough Texan bravery (Kathryn Stockett, bestselling author of The Help). Rose Mae Lolley's mother disappeared when she was eight, leaving Rose with a heap of old novels and a taste for dangerous men. Now, as demure Mrs. Ro Grandee, she's living the very life her mother abandoned. She's all but forgotten the girl she used to be-teenaged spitfire, Alabama heartbreaker, and a crack shot with a pistol-until an airport gypsy warns Rose it's time to find her way back to that brave, tough girl . . . or else. Armed with only her wit, her pawpy's ancient .45, and her dog Fat Gretel, Rose Mae hightails it out of Texas, running from a man who will never let her go, on a mission to find the mother who did. Starring a minor character from Jackson's bestselling Gods in Alabama, Backseat Saints will dazzle readers with its stunning portrayal of the measures a mother will take to right the wrongs she's created, and how far a daughter will travel to satisfy the demands of forgiveness.
Download or read book Made You Up written by Francesca Zappia and published by Harper Collins. This book was released on 2015-05-19 with total page 464 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Reality, it turns out, is often not what you perceive it to be—sometimes, there really is someone out to get you. For fans of Silver Linings Playbook and Liar, this thought-provoking debut tells the story of Alex, a high school senior—and the ultimate unreliable narrator—unable to tell the difference between real life and delusion. Alex fights a daily battle to figure out what is real and what is not. Armed with a take-no-prisoners attitude, her camera, a Magic 8 Ball, and her only ally (her little sister), Alex wages a war against her schizophrenia, determined to stay sane long enough to get into college. She's pretty optimistic about her chances until she runs into Miles. Didn't she imagine him? Before she knows it, Alex is making friends, going to parties, falling in love, and experiencing all the usual rites of passage for teenagers. But Alex is used to being crazy. She's not prepared for normal. Can she trust herself? Can we trust her?
