Download or read book A South Side Love Story written by Jessica N Watkins and published by Independently Published. This book was released on 2021-09-19 with total page 354 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Tricey, Vic, and Lyric are three friends from the Southside of Chicago fighting in the tumultuous war between finding the one amongst the chaotic sea of Mr. Wrongs. After breaking up with her baby's father, Memphis, Vic is in the arms of one new beau after the next; turning her heartbreak into a life filled with bald-headed h*e shenanigans. Vic's new approach to love terribly clashes with Asa's uncontrollable need for being more than her next sneaky link. However, Vic's refusal to commit doesn't keep Asa's alpha male, street swag from trying desperately to blow up the wall that she has built around her terribly damaged heart. As Vic runs from Asa's attempts to woo her, Tricey has done the unthinkable: fallen in love with her friend-with-benefits. After the heart-rendering endings of her past relationships, Akbar was the ideal replacement. Everything was perfect about him... except for his pregnant wife. After fighting against it, she falls in love and realizes that she needs to walk away from the man that she can't imagine living without. Then enters "Blood" the dope boy ready to sweep her off of her feet. But can she find the courage to walk away from the explosive chemistry between she and Akbar in order to enjoy the life that Blood wants to give her? While Tricey is stuck between a dope boy and her married love, Lyric and Salem are approaching their wedding date. As they prepare to spend the rest of their lives together, Salem is under the impression that he has chosen the perfect wife-to-be. Lyric struggles with this cloak of perfection as she figures out a way to quietly end the affair she's had on the side since the day she met her soon-to-be-husband. This is only the beginning of this Urban Romance, which is filled with love that hurts, betrayals, and feels tragically unsustainable. Packed with a sea of characters that add their own two cents of drama and contribute to the shocking and heartrending end, this love story is of three homegirls, not only falling in love with the one, but also falling in love with themselves. * This is a re-release of the previously published book, Love, Sex, Lies. Since this book was written when I was very young, I wanted to give it the quality and attention that these characters deserve. This story has been revamped. Changes have been made, and many scenes have been added.

Download or read book The Enchanted Garden Cafe written by Abigail Drake and published by . This book was released on with total page 324 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: She knew trouble when she saw it, and he was definitely trouble. After spending years dealing with her flighty mother, a café on the edge of ruin, a misbehaving backyard fountain, and tea that may or may not be increasing the libido of her elderly neighbors, Fiona Campbell has had enough. She’s ready to move out, get away from her mother and all the craziness that accompanies her, and start a life of her own. The last thing she needs is another complication, especially one like Matthew Monroe. When he walks through their door with a guitar on his back and a sexy gleam in his eyes, Fiona knows she should stay away. She doesn’t trust him, or his motives, but there is something about Matthew that draws her close, against her better judgment. And when disaster strikes, it seems he’s the only one she can turn to for help. But Matthew represents all the things she’s spent a lifetime trying to escape. She has her future mapped out in detail, including what kind of man she should date. She wants safety and predictability, but could it be that the best thing that ever happened to her is the one thing she never planned on?

Download or read book The South Side written by Natalie Y. Moore and published by Macmillan. This book was released on 2016-03-22 with total page 272 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A lyrical, intelligent, authentic and necessary look at the intersection of race and class in Chicago, a Great American City.Mayors Richard M. Daley and Rahm Emanuel have touted Chicago as a "world-class city." The skyscrapers kissing the clouds, the billion-dollar Millennium Park, Michelin-rated restaurants, pristine lake views, fabulous shopping, vibrant theater scene, downtown flower beds and stellar architecture tell one story. Yet swept under the rug is another story: the stench of segregation that permeates and compromises Chicago. Though other cities - including Cleveland, Los Angeles, and Baltimore - can fight over that mantle, it's clear that segregation defines Chicago. And unlike many other major U.S. cities, no particular race dominates; Chicago is divided equally into black, white and Latino, each group clustered in its various turfs.In this intelligent and highly important narrative, Chicago native Natalie Moore shines a light on contemporary segregation in the city's South Side; her reported essays showcase the lives of these communities through the stories of her family and the people who reside there. The South Side highlights the impact of Chicago's historic segregation - and the ongoing policies that keep the system intact.

Download or read book Yummy written by Greg Neri and published by Perfection Learning. This book was released on 2010 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A graphic novel based on the true story of Robert Yummy Sandifer, an 11-year old African American gang member from Chicago who shot a young girl and was then shot by his own gang members.

Download or read book A Pho Love Story written by Loan Le and published by Simon and Schuster. This book was released on 2021-02-09 with total page 416 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: “Will leave readers swooning.” —PopSugar ​When Dimple Met Rishi meets Ugly Delicious in this funny, smart romantic comedy, in which two Vietnamese American teens fall in love and must navigate their newfound relationship amid their families’ age-old feud about their competing, neighboring restaurants. If Bao Nguyen had to describe himself, he’d say he was a rock. Steady and strong, but not particularly interesting. His grades are average, his social status unremarkable. He works at his parents’ pho restaurant, and even there, he is his parents’ fifth favorite employee. Not ideal. If Linh Mai had to describe herself, she’d say she was a firecracker. Stable when unlit, but full of potential for joy and fire. She loves art and dreams pursuing a career in it. The only problem? Her parents rely on her in ways they’re not willing to admit, including working practically full-time at her family’s pho restaurant. For years, the Mais and the Nguyens have been at odds, having owned competing, neighboring pho restaurants. Bao and Linh, who’ve avoided each other for most of their lives, both suspect that the feud stems from feelings much deeper than friendly competition. But then a chance encounter brings Linh and Bao in the same vicinity despite their best efforts and sparks fly, leading them both to wonder what took so long for them to connect. But then, of course, they immediately remember. Can Linh and Bao find love in the midst of feuding families and complicated histories?

Download or read book Everywhere You Don t Belong written by Gabriel Bump and published by Algonquin Books. This book was released on 2020-02-04 with total page 267 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A New York Times Book Review Notable Book of 2020 Winner of the Ernest J. Gaines Award for Literary Excellence “A comically dark coming-of-age story about growing up on the South Side of Chicago, but it’s also social commentary at its finest, woven seamlessly into the work . . . Bump’s meditation on belonging and not belonging, where or with whom, how love is a way home no matter where you are, is handled so beautifully that you don’t know he’s hypnotized you until he’s done.” —Tommy Orange, The New York Times Book Review In this alternately witty and heartbreaking debut novel, Gabriel Bump gives us an unforgettable protagonist, Claude McKay Love. Claude isn’t dangerous or brilliant—he’s an average kid coping with abandonment, violence, riots, failed love, and societal pressures as he steers his way past the signposts of youth: childhood friendships, basketball tryouts, first love, first heartbreak, picking a college, moving away from home. Claude just wants a place where he can fit. As a young black man born on the South Side of Chicago, he is raised by his civil rights–era grandmother, who tries to shape him into a principled actor for change; yet when riots consume his neighborhood, he hesitates to take sides, unwilling to let race define his life. He decides to escape Chicago for another place, to go to college, to find a new identity, to leave the pressure cooker of his hometown behind. But as he discovers, he cannot; there is no safe haven for a young black man in this time and place called America. Percolating with fierceness and originality, attuned to the ironies inherent in our twenty-first-century landscape, Everywhere You Don’t Belong marks the arrival of a brilliant young talent.

Download or read book Southern Exposure written by Lee Bey and published by Second to None: Chicago Storie. This book was released on 2019 with total page 186 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Southern Exposure is the definitive guide to the often overlooked architectural riches of Chicago's South Side by architecture expert and former Chicago Sun-Times architecture writer Lee Bey.

Download or read book Geek Love written by Katherine Dunn and published by Vintage. This book was released on 2011-05-25 with total page 366 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: National Book Award Finalist • Here is the unforgettable story of the Binewskis, a circus-geek family whose matriarch and patriarch have bred their own exhibit of human oddities—with the help of amphetamines, arsenic, and radioisotopes. One of The Atlantic’s Great American Novels of the Past 100 Years Their offspring include Arturo the Aquaboy, who has flippers for limbs and a megalomaniac ambition worthy of Genghis Khan . . . Iphy and Elly, the lissome Siamese twins . . . albino hunchback Oly, and the outwardly normal Chick, whose mysterious gifts make him the family’s most precious—and dangerous—asset. As the Binewskis take their act across the backwaters of the U.S., inspiring fanatical devotion and murderous revulsion; as its members conduct their own Machiavellian version of sibling rivalry, Geek Love throws its sulfurous light on our notions of the freakish and the normal, the beautiful and the ugly, the holy and the obscene. Family values will never be the same.

Download or read book Before We Were Strangers written by Renée Carlino and published by Simon and Schuster. This book was released on 2015-08-18 with total page 320 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: From the USA TODAY bestselling author of Sweet Thing and Nowhere But Here comes a love story about a Craigslist “missed connection” post that gives two people a second chance at love fifteen years after they were separated in New York City. To the Green-eyed Lovebird: We met fifteen years ago, almost to the day, when I moved my stuff into the NYU dorm room next to yours at Senior House. You called us fast friends. I like to think it was more. We lived on nothing but the excitement of finding ourselves through music (you were obsessed with Jeff Buckley), photography (I couldn’t stop taking pictures of you), hanging out in Washington Square Park, and all the weird things we did to make money. I learned more about myself that year than any other. Yet, somehow, it all fell apart. We lost touch the summer after graduation when I went to South America to work for National Geographic. When I came back, you were gone. A part of me still wonders if I pushed you too hard after the wedding… I didn’t see you again until a month ago. It was a Wednesday. You were rocking back on your heels, balancing on that thick yellow line that runs along the subway platform, waiting for the F train. I didn’t know it was you until it was too late, and then you were gone. Again. You said my name; I saw it on your lips. I tried to will the train to stop, just so I could say hello. After seeing you, all of the youthful feelings and memories came flooding back to me, and now I’ve spent the better part of a month wondering what your life is like. I might be totally out of my mind, but would you like to get a drink with me and catch up on the last decade and a half? M

Download or read book Tina Turner My Love Story Official Autobiography written by Tina Turner and published by Random House. This book was released on 2018-10-18 with total page 320 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: *As seen in the sensational TINA documentary* _______________________ 'Astonishing, soul-baring - the must-read memoir by rock's greatest survivor' DAILY MAIL ***The full, dramatic story of one of the most remarkable women in music history, celebrating Tina Turner's 60th year in the industry*** 'Unbearably poignant' THE TIMES, Book of the Week _______________________ Love's got everything to do with it. Tina Turner is the Queen of Rock 'n' Roll, a musical icon celebrating her 60th year in the industry. In this dramatic autobiography, she tells the story of a truly remarkable life in the spotlight. From her early years picking cotton in Nutbush, Tennessee to her rise to fame alongside Ike Turner, and finally to her phenomenal success in the 1980s and beyond, Tina candidly examines her personal history, from her darkest hours to her happiest moments and everything in between. In her honest and heart-felt voice, Tina reveals: · How (love) and a kidney transplant saved her life - and how her new husband made an incredible personal sacrifice · How she has coped with the tragic suicide of her son · How ex-husband Ike Turner forced her to go to a brothel on their wedding night... and why she tried to kill herself because of Ike's mistresses · The Cinderella moment when David Bowie made Tina a star ... · ...and the day Mick Jagger ripped her skirt off! AND MUCH MORE Brimming with her trademark blend of strength, energy, heart and soul, My Love Story is a gripping, surprising memoir, as memorable and entertaining as any of her greatest hits. _______________________ 'The book is written with a warm heart and a generous spirit... It is a thoughtful, moving reflection on a life of spectacular achievement' DAILY EXPRESS 'Turner comes across as courageous, optimistic, big-hearted and generous' SUNDAY TIMES 'Fascinating, dramatic, surprising' OK! MAGAZINE 'An honest, thoughtful and touching reflection on a full and fulfilling life' SUNDAY EXPRESS

Download or read book We Were the Lucky Ones written by Georgia Hunter and published by Penguin. This book was released on 2018-01-02 with total page 417 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The New York Times bestseller with more than 1 million copies sold worldwide | Soon to be a Hulu limited series starring Joey King and Logan Lerman Inspired by the incredible true story of one Jewish family separated at the start of World War II, determined to survive—and to reunite—We Were the Lucky Ones is a tribute to the triumph of hope and love against all odds. “Love in the face of global adversity? It couldn't be more timely.” —Glamour It is the spring of 1939 and three generations of the Kurc family are doing their best to live normal lives, even as the shadow of war grows closer. The talk around the family Seder table is of new babies and budding romance, not of the increasing hardships threatening Jews in their hometown of Radom, Poland. But soon the horrors overtaking Europe will become inescapable and the Kurcs will be flung to the far corners of the world, each desperately trying to navigate his or her own path to safety. As one sibling is forced into exile, another attempts to flee the continent, while others struggle to escape certain death, either by working grueling hours on empty stomachs in the factories of the ghetto or by hiding as gentiles in plain sight. Driven by an unwavering will to survive and by the fear that they may never see one another again, the Kurcs must rely on hope, ingenuity, and inner strength to persevere. An extraordinary, propulsive novel, We Were the Lucky Ones demonstrates how in the face of the twentieth century’s darkest moment, the human spirit can endure and even thrive.

Download or read book Open Water written by Caleb Azumah Nelson and published by Grove Press. This book was released on 2021-04-13 with total page 175 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: WINNER OF THE COSTA FIRST NOVEL AWARD A NATIONAL BOOK FOUNDATION 5 UNDER 35 WINNER OF THE BRITISH BOOK AWARD FOR DEBUT FICTION “Open Water is tender poetry, a love song to Black art and thought, an exploration of intimacy and vulnerability between two young artists learning to be soft with each other in a world that hardens against Black people.”—Yaa Gyasi, author of Homegoing In a crowded London pub, two young people meet. Both are Black British, both won scholarships to private schools where they struggled to belong, both are now artists—he a photographer, she a dancer—and both are trying to make their mark in a world that by turns celebrates and rejects them. Tentatively, tenderly, they fall in love. But two people who seem destined to be together can still be torn apart by fear and violence, and over the course of a year they find their relationship tested by forces beyond their control. Narrated with deep intimacy, Open Water is at once an achingly beautiful love story and a potent insight into race and masculinity that asks what it means to be a person in a world that sees you only as a Black body; to be vulnerable when you are only respected for strength; to find safety in love, only to lose it. With gorgeous, soulful intensity, and blistering emotional intelligence, Caleb Azumah Nelson gives a profoundly sensitive portrait of romantic love in all its feverish waves and comforting beauty. This is one of the most essential debut novels of recent years, heralding the arrival of a stellar and prodigious young talent.

Download or read book Ghosts in the Schoolyard written by Eve L. Ewing and published by University of Chicago Press. This book was released on 2020-04-10 with total page 237 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: “Failing schools. Underprivileged schools. Just plain bad schools.” That’s how Eve L. Ewing opens Ghosts in the Schoolyard: describing Chicago Public Schools from the outside. The way politicians and pundits and parents of kids who attend other schools talk about them, with a mix of pity and contempt. But Ewing knows Chicago Public Schools from the inside: as a student, then a teacher, and now a scholar who studies them. And that perspective has shown her that public schools are not buildings full of failures—they’re an integral part of their neighborhoods, at the heart of their communities, storehouses of history and memory that bring people together. Never was that role more apparent than in 2013 when Mayor Rahm Emanuel announced an unprecedented wave of school closings. Pitched simultaneously as a solution to a budget problem, a response to declining enrollments, and a chance to purge bad schools that were dragging down the whole system, the plan was met with a roar of protest from parents, students, and teachers. But if these schools were so bad, why did people care so much about keeping them open, to the point that some would even go on a hunger strike? Ewing’s answer begins with a story of systemic racism, inequality, bad faith, and distrust that stretches deep into Chicago history. Rooting her exploration in the historic African American neighborhood of Bronzeville, Ewing reveals that this issue is about much more than just schools. Black communities see the closing of their schools—schools that are certainly less than perfect but that are theirs—as one more in a long line of racist policies. The fight to keep them open is yet another front in the ongoing struggle of black people in America to build successful lives and achieve true self-determination.

Download or read book The Prince of Tides written by Pat Conroy and published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt. This book was released on 1986 with total page 588 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In his most brilliant and powerful novel, Pat Conroy tells the story of Tom Wingo, his twin sister, Savannah, and the dark and violent past of the family into which they were born. Set in New York City and the lowcountry of South Carolina, the novel opens when Tom, a high school football coach whose marriage and career are crumbling, flies from South Carolina to New York after learning of his twin sister's suicide attempt. Savannah is one of the most gifted poets of her generation, and both the cadenced beauty of her art and the jumbled cries of her illness are clues to the too-long-hidden story of her wounded family. In the paneled offices and luxurious restaurants of New York City, Tom and Susan Lowenstein, Savannah's psychiatrist, unravel a history of violence, abandonment, commitment, and love. And Tom realizes that trying to save his sister is perhaps his last chance to save himself. With passion and a rare gift of language, the author moves from present to past, tracing the amazing history of the Wingos from World War II through the final days of the war in Vietnam and into the 1980s, drawing a rich range of characters: the lovable, crazy Mr. Fruit, who for decades has wordlessly directed traffic at the same intersection in the southern town of Colleton; Reese Newbury, the ruthless, patrician land speculator who threatens the Wingos' only secure worldly possession, Melrose Island; Herbert Woodruff, Susan Lowenstein's husband, a world-famous violinist; Tolitha Wingo, Savannah's mentor and eccentric grandmother, the first real feminist in the Wingo family. Pat Conroy reveals the lives of his characters with surpassing depth and power, capturing the vanishing beauty of the South Carolina lowcountry and a lost way of life. His lyric gifts, abundant good humor, and compelling storytelling are well known to readers of The Great Santini and The Lords of Discipline. The Prince of Tides continues that tradition yet displays a new, mature voice of Pat Conroy, signaling this work as his greatest accomplishment.

Download or read book A Complicated Love Story Set in Space written by Shaun David Hutchinson and published by Simon and Schuster. This book was released on 2021-01-19 with total page 387 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: “A riveting ride through the stars.” —Kirkus Reviews Black Mirror meets What If It’s Us in this gripping, romantic, and wildly surprising novel about two boys lost in space trying to find their way home—while falling in love—from the critically acclaimed author of We Are the Ants. When Noa closes his eyes on Earth and wakes up on a spaceship called Qriosity just as it’s about to explode, he’s pretty sure things can’t get much weirder. Boy is he wrong. Trapped aboard Qriosity are also DJ and Jenny, neither of whom remember how they got onboard the ship. Together, the three face all the dangers of space, along with murder, aliens, a school dance, and one really, really bad day. But none of this can prepare Noa for the biggest challenge—falling in love. And as Noa’s feelings for DJ deepen, he has to contend not just with the challenges of the present, but also with his memories of the past. However, nothing is what it seems on Qriosity, and the truth will upend all of their lives forever. Love is complicated enough without also trying to stay alive.

Download or read book Tough Love written by Susan Rice and published by Simon & Schuster. This book was released on 2020-08-04 with total page 560 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Recalling pivotal moments from her dynamic career on the front lines of American diplomacy and foreign policy, Susan E. Rice—National Security Advisor to President Barack Obama and US Ambassador to the United Nations—reveals her surprising story with unflinching candor in this New York Times bestseller. Mother, wife, scholar, diplomat, and fierce champion of American interests and values, Susan Rice powerfully connects the personal and the professional. Taught early, with tough love, how to compete and excel as an African American woman in settings where people of color are few, Susan now shares the wisdom she learned along the way. Laying bare the family struggles that shaped her early life in Washington, DC, she also examines the ancestral legacies that influenced her. Rice’s elders—immigrants on one side and descendants of slaves on the other—had high expectations that each generation would rise. And rise they did, but not without paying it forward—in uniform and in the pulpit, as educators, community leaders, and public servants. Susan too rose rapidly. She served throughout the Clinton administration, becoming one of the nation’s youngest assistant secretaries of state and, later, one of President Obama’s most trusted advisors. Rice provides an insider’s account of some of the most complex issues confronting the United States over three decades, ranging from “Black Hawk Down” in Somalia to the genocide in Rwanda and the East Africa embassy bombings in the late 1990s, and from conflicts in Libya and Syria to the Ebola epidemic, a secret channel to Iran, and the opening to Cuba during the Obama years. With unmatched insight and characteristic bluntness, she reveals previously untold stories behind recent national security challenges, including confrontations with Russia and China, the war against ISIS, the struggle to contain the fallout from Edward Snowden’s NSA leaks, the U.S. response to Russian interference in the 2016 election, and the surreal transition to the Trump administration. Although you might think you know Susan Rice—whose name became synonymous with Benghazi following her Sunday news show appearances after the deadly 2012 terrorist attacks in Libya—now, through these pages, you truly will know her for the first time. Often mischaracterized by both political opponents and champions, Rice emerges as neither a villain nor a victim, but a strong, resilient, compassionate leader. Intimate, sometimes humorous, but always candid, Tough Love makes an urgent appeal to the American public to bridge our dangerous domestic divides in order to preserve our democracy and sustain our global leadership.

Download or read book A Lady for a Duke written by Alexis Hall and published by Forever. This book was released on 2022-05-24 with total page 392 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: From the bestselling author of Husband Material comes a lush, sweeping queer historical romance where sparks fly between childhood friends after a life-changing separation—perfect for fans of Bridgerton, Evie Dunmore, and Lisa Kleypas!​ When Viola Carroll was presumed dead at Waterloo she took the opportunity to live, at last, as herself. But freedom does not come without a price, and Viola paid for hers with the loss of her wealth, her title, and her closest companion, Justin de Vere, the Duke of Gracewood. Only when their families reconnect, years after the war, does Viola learn how deep that loss truly was. Shattered without her, Gracewood has retreated so far into grief that Viola barely recognises her old friend in the lonely, brooding man he has become. As Viola strives to bring Gracewood back to himself, fresh desires give new names to old feelings. Feelings that would have been impossible once and may be impossible still, but which Viola cannot deny. Even if they cost her everything, all over again.