Download or read book Craigslist Confessional written by Helena Dea Bala and published by Simon and Schuster. This book was released on 2020-07-07 with total page 250 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: “Touching.” —The New York Times For fans of Humans of New York and PostSecret, a collection of raw, urgent, and heartfelt stories, shared anonymously. Helena Dea Bala was an exhausted and isolated DC lobbyist, suffocating under the weight of her student loan debt, when she decided to split her lunch with a man who often panhandled near her office. They chatted effortlessly as they ate; there were no half-truths or white lies, and no fear of judgment. Helena felt connected and unburdened in a way she hadn’t in years. Inspired, she posted an ad on Craigslist promising to listen, anonymously and for free, to whatever the speaker felt he or she couldn’t tell anyone else. Emails from people desperate to connect flooded her inbox, and she listened. Within months, Helena quit her job, deferred her loans, and dove into listening full time. The forty first-person confessions in this book are vivid, intimate, and real; they range from devastating traumas, to lost loves, to reflections on hard choices. Some accounts are quotidian, like that of one increasingly estranged husband: “I want to feel that we’re not just roommates—that we’re not just waiting for the kids to grow up so that we can move on.” Others are deeply disconcerting, like that of a sex addict employed by a religious organization and several are heartening, like that of a mother who dares to hope that her daughter, born with life-threatening heart defects, will one day walk down the aisle: “Sometimes you need to have the audacity to believe that it will all be okay, that it is okay to have the same kinds of dreams as everyone else.” In its complex portrayal of the common human experience, Craigslist Confessional challenges us to explore the depths of our vulnerability and expand the borders of our empathy.

Download or read book Confessions to a Stranger written by Danielle Grandinetti and published by Hearth Spot Press. This book was released on 2023-03-14 with total page 378 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: She’s lost her future. He’s sacrificed his. Now they have a chance to reclaim it—together. Wisconsin, 1930—While fleeing for her life, Adaleigh Sirland’s rescue of a child introduces her to a family who provides her safe harbor. But all is not what it seems in the little fishing town. Danger lurks. And, though hiding under an assumed name, Adaleigh offers her ability to draw out confessions, making her a valuable asset to the police. First mate David Martins is intrigued by the mysterious woman taken in by his grandmother, but knows she wrestles with a troubled past. When his estranged father is arrested for murder, David enlists Adaleigh’s help in proving his innocence. In return, he’s determined to help her find hope once again. As the truth becomes more knotted, and Adaleigh’s real identity risks revelation, David must put aside his own struggles to discern which secret threatens Adaleigh before it kills them both. Welcome to Crow’s Nest, where danger and romance meet at the water’s edge. Read the whole series! Book One: Confessions to a Stranger Book Two: Refuge for the Archaeologist Book Three: Escape with the Prodigal Book Four: Relying on the Enemy Book Five: Sheltered by the Doctor Book Six: Investigation of a Journalist

Download or read book What Happens at Night written by Peter Cameron and published by Catapult. This book was released on 2021-10-19 with total page 321 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A couple find themselves at a fading, grand European hotel full of eccentric and sometimes unsettling patrons in this "faultlessly elegant and quietly menacing" allegorical story that examines the significance of shifting desires and the uncertainty of reality (Garth Greenwell, author of Cleanness). An unnamed American couple travels to a strange, snowy European city to adopt a baby. It’s a difficult journey that leaves the wife, who is struggling with cancer, desperately weak, and her husband worries that her illness will prevent the orphanage from releasing their child. On arrival, the couple checks into the cavernous and eerily deserted Borgarfjaroasysla Grand Imperial Hotel where the bar is always open and the lobby populated with an enigmatic cast of characters ranging from an ancient, flamboyant chanteuse to a debauched businessman to an enigmatic faith healer. Nothing is as it seems in this baffling, frozen world, and the more the couple struggles to claim their baby, the less they seem to know about their marriage, themselves, and life itself. For readers of Ian McEwan, Elizabeth Strout, and Iris Murdoch, What Happens at Night is a "masterpiece" (Edmund White) poised on the cusp of reality, told by "an elegantly acute and mysteriously beguiling writer" (Richard Eder, The Boston Globe).

Download or read book Confessions on the 7 45 A Novel written by Lisa Unger and published by Harlequin. This book was released on 2020-10-06 with total page 402 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: COMING TO NETFLIX “Intricate and nuanced—on par with the best top-flight psychological suspense.” —L.A. Times INTERNATIONAL BESTSELLER From master of suspense Lisa Unger comes a riveting thriller about a chance encounter that unravels a stunning web of lies. Selena Murphy is commuting home on the train when she strikes up a conversation with a beautiful stranger in the next seat. The woman introduces herself as Martha and soon confesses that she’s been stuck in an affair with her boss. Selena, in turn, confesses that she suspects her husband is sleeping with the nanny. When the train arrives at Selena’s station, the two women part ways, presumably never to meet again. Then the nanny disappears. As Selena is pulled into the mystery of what happened, and as the fractures in her marriage grow deeper, she begins to wonder, who was Martha really? But she is hardly prepared for what she’ll discover… Don't miss The New Couple in 5B, Lisa Unger's newest psychological thriller about a couple that inherits an apartment with a truly chilling past. Looking for more spine-tingling thrillers? Check out these other titles by New York Times bestselling author Lisa Unger: Under My Skin The Stranger Inside Last Girl Ghosted Secluded Cabin Sleeps Six The New Couple in 5B (coming March 2024!)

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 Seducing The Stranger A Forbidden Fling Surprise Wedding Romance written by Shayla Black and published by Shelley Bradley LLC. This book was released on 2020-05-15 with total page pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Just how deep will she fall after one night with a hot stranger? I’m Calla. I’m responsible. I plan. I’m cautious—always. Until I see the gorgeous stranger with the rugged hands and the dark mood. I want him. When he makes me an indecent proposal, I do something reckless. I say yes. I follow a man I don’t know to his hotel room and surrender my body. But he may be more than I can handle. Especially when I discover the shocking identity of my sexy stranger…

Download or read book Stranger Stranger written by Michael Washburn and published by . This book was released on 2020-01-16 with total page 362 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: How often, upon hearing about people who have had regrettable experiences or have lost their lives, we wish they had followed advice received early in life about not talking to strangers. But there are strangers we would be better off knowing, and it is hard to imagine a functioning society comprised of elementary particles (to allude to the title of one of French author Michel Houllebecq's great novels) existing in perfect isolation and never interacting at all. The interplay of strangers has inspired storytellers of all epochs in every corner of the planet. The encounters in the short stories in Michael Washburn's latest collection take place at the fault lines of a violent and unstable society. In these tales, fugitives, drifters, misfits, and outcasts meet in locales as varied as hotels, bars, galleries, lecture halls, parks, pastures, beaches, and battlefields, but tension arises almost invariably from the interplay of sinister intelligences that rightly distrust one another. Marking all the stories in this collection are the suspense, originality, vividness, wit, and dark humor for which the author is known. Michael Washburn is a Brooklyn-based writer and journalist. His short fiction has appeared recently in Concho River Review, Green Hills Literary Lantern, Rosebud, Weirdbook, Serial, The Tishman Review, Meat for Tea: The Valley Review, and other publications. Michael's story "Confessions of a Spook" won Causeway Lit's 2018 fiction contest. Two other collections, The Uprooted and Other Stories (2018) and When We're Grownups (2019), are available from Adelaide Books.

Download or read book PostSecret written by Frank Warren and published by Harper Collins. This book was released on 2005-11-29 with total page 290 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The project that captured a nation's imagination. The instructions were simple, but the results were extraordinary. "You are invited to anonymously contribute a secret to a group art project. Your secret can be a regret, fear, betrayal, desire, confession, or childhood humiliation. Reveal anything -- as long as it is true and you have never shared it with anyone before. Be brief. Be legible. Be creative." It all began with an idea Frank Warren had for a community art project. He began handing out postcards to strangers and leaving them in public places -- asking people to write down a secret they had never told anyone and mail it to him, anonymously. The response was overwhelming. The secrets were both provocative and profound, and the cards themselves were works of art -- carefully and creatively constructed by hand. Addictively compelling, the cards reveal our deepest fears, desires, regrets, and obsessions. Frank calls them "graphic haiku," beautiful, elegant, and small in structure but powerfully emotional. As Frank began posting the cards on his website, PostSecret took on a life of its own, becoming much more than a simple art project. It has grown into a global phenomenon, exposing our individual aspirations, fantasies, and frailties -- our common humanity. Every day dozens of postcards still make their way to Frank, with postmarks from around the world, touching on every aspect of human experience. This extraordinary collection brings together the most powerful, personal, and beautifully intimate secrets Frank Warren has received -- and brilliantly illuminates that human emotions can be unique and universal at the same time.

Download or read book The Private Memoirs and Confessions of a Justified Sinner written by James Hogg and published by . This book was released on 1824 with total page 406 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Published anonymously in 1824, this gothic mystery novel was written by Scottish author James Hogg. The Private Memoirs and Confessions of a Justified Sinner was published as if it were the presentation of a century-old document. The unnamed editor offers the reader a long introduction before presenting the document written by the sinner himself.

Download or read book Talking to Strangers written by Malcolm Gladwell and published by Little, Brown. This book was released on 2019-09-10 with total page 316 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Malcolm Gladwell, host of the podcast Revisionist History and author of the #1 New York Times bestseller Outliers, offers a powerful examination of our interactions with strangers and why they often go wrong—now with a new afterword by the author. A Best Book of the Year: The Financial Times, Bloomberg, Chicago Tribune, and Detroit Free Press How did Fidel Castro fool the CIA for a generation? Why did Neville Chamberlain think he could trust Adolf Hitler? Why are campus sexual assaults on the rise? Do television sitcoms teach us something about the way we relate to one another that isn’t true? Talking to Strangers is a classically Gladwellian intellectual adventure, a challenging and controversial excursion through history, psychology, and scandals taken straight from the news. He revisits the deceptions of Bernie Madoff, the trial of Amanda Knox, the suicide of Sylvia Plath, the Jerry Sandusky pedophilia scandal at Penn State University, and the death of Sandra Bland—throwing our understanding of these and other stories into doubt. Something is very wrong, Gladwell argues, with the tools and strategies we use to make sense of people we don’t know. And because we don’t know how to talk to strangers, we are inviting conflict and misunderstanding in ways that have a profound effect on our lives and our world. In his first book since his #1 bestseller David and Goliath, Malcolm Gladwell has written a gripping guidebook for troubled times.

Download or read book No 44 The Mysterious Stranger written by Mark Twain and published by Univ of California Press. This book was released on 2011-02-05 with total page 216 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Originally published: Berkeley, Calif; London: University of California Press, 1969.

Download or read book Confessions of a Forty Something written by Alexandra Potter and published by Pan Macmillan. This book was released on 2023-04-28 with total page 346 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Now a major TV series. Read the hilarious rom-com that inspired the hit sitcom Not Dead Yet starring Gina Rogriguez. As recommended on Davina McCall's Making the Cut podcast, and perfect for fans of Dolly Alderton, Ruth Jones and Marian Keyes. 'The new Bridget Jones' – Celia Walden, Telegraph 'Funny but layered . . . this is a perfect and inspiring new year read' – Red A novel for any woman who wonders how the hell she got here, and why life isn't quite how she imagined it was going to be. And who is desperately trying to figure it all out when everyone around them is making gluten-free brownies. Meet Nell. Her life is a mess. In a world of perfect Instagram lives, she feels like a disaster. But when she starts a secret podcast and forms an unlikely friendship with Cricket, an eighty-something widow, things begin to change. Because Nell is determined. This time next year things will be very different. But first, she has a confession . . . Confessions of a Forty-Something by Alexandra Potter will make you laugh, and it might even make you cry. Above all, it will remind you that you're not on your own – we're all in this together. 'Brilliant! Laughing out loud' – Emma Gannon, podcaster (Ctrl Alt Delete) and author of Olive 'Say hello to a book that will have you laughing with every page, whether you're 20, 40 or 80' – Heat

Download or read book The Flight of Gemma Hardy written by Margot Livesey and published by Harper Collins. This book was released on 2012-01-24 with total page 337 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: New York Times Bestseller “An exceptionally well-plotted, well-crafted, innovatively interpreted modern twist on a timeless classic, one that’s sure to delight the multitudes of Brontë fans, and the multitudes of fans that Livesey deserves.” —The Boston Globe “A suspenseful, curl-up-by-the-fire romance with a willfully determined protagonist who’s worthy of her literary role model.” — People The resonant story of a young woman’s struggle to take charge of her own future, The Flight of Gemma Hardy is a modern take on a classic story—Charlotte Brontë’s Jane Eyre—that will fascinate readers of the Gothic original and fans of modern literary fiction alike, with its lyrical prose, robust characters, and abundant compassion. Set in early 1960s Scotland, this breakout novel from award-winning author Margot Livesey is a tale of determination and spirit that, like The Three Weissmanns of Westport and A Thousand Acres, spins an unforgettable new story from threads of our shared, still-living literary past.

Download or read book The Stranger Inside written by Lisa Unger and published by Harlequin. This book was released on 2019-09-17 with total page 394 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Named a BEST BOOK by People Magazine, Boston Globe, BookBub, PopSugar, CrimeReads and more. “Brilliant…. A well-crafted psychological thriller.” —The New York Times Book Review When former journalist Rain Winter was twelve years old, she narrowly escaped an abduction while walking to a friend’s house. The abductor was eventually found and sent to prison, but years later was released. Then someone delivered real justice--and killed him in cold blood. Now Rain is living the perfect suburban life, spending her days as a stay-at-home mom. But when another criminal who escaped justice is found dead, Rain is unexpectedly drawn into the case, forced to revisit memories she’s worked hard to leave behind. Is there a vigilante at work? Who is the next target? Why can’t Rain just let it go? Introducing one of the most compelling and original killers in crime fiction today, Lisa Unger takes readers deep inside the minds of both perpetrator and victim, blurring the lines between right and wrong, crime and justice, and showing that sometimes even good people are drawn to do evil things. Don't miss The New Couple in 5B, Lisa Unger's newest psychological thriller about a couple that inherits an apartment with a truly chilling past. Looking for more spine-tingling thrillers? Check out these other titles by New York Times bestselling author Lisa Unger: Under My Skin Confessions on the 7:45 Last Girl Ghosted Secluded Cabin Sleeps Six The New Couple in 5B (coming March 2024!)

Download or read book Stranger in the Lake written by Kimberly Belle and published by HarperCollins Australia. This book was released on 2020-09-01 with total page 328 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: When Charlotte married the wealthy widower Paul, it caused a ripple of gossip in their small lakeside town. They have a charmed life together, despite the cruel whispers about her humble past and his first marriage. But everything starts to unravel when she discovers a young woman’s body floating in the exact same spot where Paul’s first wife tragically drowned. At first, it seems like a horrific coincidence, but the stranger in the lake is no stranger. Charlotte saw Paul talking to her the day before, even though Paul tells the police he’s never met the woman. His lie exposes cracks in their fragile new marriage, cracks Charlotte is determined to keep from breaking them in two. As Charlotte uncovers dark mysteries about the man she married, she doesn’t know what to trust — her heart, which knows Paul to be a good man, or her growing suspicion that there’s something he’s hiding in the water. ‘Spellbinding. Another outstanding novel by Kimberly Belle, masterfully written to lure you in and never let go.’ — Samantha Downing, USA Today bestselling author of My Lovely Wife

Download or read book I Didn t Come Here to Make Friends written by Courtney Robertson and published by Harper Collins. This book was released on 2014-06-24 with total page 219 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In I Didn’t Come Here to Make Friends former Bachelor “villain” and season 16 winner Courtney Robertson shares her story of love and heartbreak, and the reality of appearing on reality TV. For the first time ever, a former Bachelor contestant takes us along on her journey to find love and reveals that “happily ever after” isn't always what it seems.

Download or read book The Confessions of Max Tivoli written by Andrew Sean Greer and published by Farrar, Straus and Giroux. This book was released on 2007-04-01 with total page 290 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: From the bestselling and Pulitzer Prize-winning author of Less comes Andrew Sean Greer's extraordinarily haunting love story The Confessions of Max Tivoli, told in the voice of a man who appears to age backwards. A Today Show Book Club Pick We are each the love of someone's life. So begins The Confessions of Max Tivoli, a heartbreaking love story with a narrator like no other. At his birth, Max's father declares him a "nisse," a creature of Danish myth, as his baby son has the external physical appearance of an old, dying creature. Max grows older like any child, but his physical age appears to go backward--on the outside a very old man, but inside still a fearful child. The story is told in three acts. First, young Max falls in love with a neighborhood girl, Alice, who ages as normally as any of us. Max, of course, does not; as a young man, he has an older man's body. But his curse is also his blessing: as he gets older, his body grows younger, so each successive time he finds his Alice, she does not recognize him. She takes him for a stranger, and Max is given another chance at love. Set against the historical backdrop of San Francisco at the turn of the twentieth century, Max's life and confessions question the very nature of time, of appearance and reality, and of love itself. A beautiful and daring feat of the imagination, Andrew Sean Greer's The Confessions of Max Tivoli reveals the world through the eyes of a "monster," a being who confounds the very certainties by which we live and in doing so embodies in extremis what it means to be human.