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Book Thought I Knew You

    Book Details:
  • Author : Kate Moretti
  • Publisher : Red Adept Publishing, LLC
  • Release : 2014-11-28
  • ISBN :
  • Pages : 287 pages

Download or read book Thought I Knew You written by Kate Moretti and published by Red Adept Publishing, LLC. This book was released on 2014-11-28 with total page 287 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: New York Times & USA Today Bestseller Big Al's Books & Pals 2013 Readers' Choice Award Romance Winner Claire Barnes is shattered when her husband, Greg, goes on a business trip and never returns. Unwilling to just wait for the police to find him, Claire conducts her own investigation. Her best friend Drew helps her look for answers, but all she finds are troubling questions. With every clue, she discovers that Greg may not be the man she thought she married. While battling her growing feelings for Drew and raising her two young children, Claire must learn to live with the knowledge that the truth behind Greg’s disappearance may never be revealed. Be sure to check out Kate Moretti's newest book, Binds That Tie.

Book I Thought I Knew You

    Book Details:
  • Author : Penny Hancock
  • Publisher : Pan Macmillan
  • Release : 2019-03-07
  • ISBN : 1509867880
  • Pages : 352 pages

Download or read book I Thought I Knew You written by Penny Hancock and published by Pan Macmillan. This book was released on 2019-03-07 with total page 352 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: For fans of He Said/She Said and Anatomy of a Scandal, Penny Hancock’s I Thought I Knew You is about secrets and lies – and whose side you take when it really matters. Who do you know better? Your oldest friend? Or your child? And who should you believe when one accuses the other of an abhorrent crime? Jules and Holly have been best friends since university. They tell each other everything, trading revelations and confessions, and sharing both the big moments and the small details of their lives: Holly is the only person who knows about Jules’s affair; Jules was there for Holly when her husband died. And their two children – just four years apart – have grown up together. So when Jules’s daughter Saffie makes a rape allegation against Holly’s son Saul, neither woman is prepared for the devastating impact this will have on their friendship or their families. Especially as Holly, in spite of her principles, refuses to believe her son is guilty.

Book We Thought We Knew You

Download or read book We Thought We Knew You written by M. William Phelps and published by Kensington. This book was released on 2020-12-29 with total page 354 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: New York Times bestselling author, television personality, and host of the #1 podcast "Paper Ghosts," M. William Phelps is one of America's most celebrated true crime authorities. In WE THOUGHT WE KNEW YOU, he takes readers deep into the murder of Mary Yoder, a popular wife, mother, and healer in Upstate New York -- telling a gripping tale of a family drama, a determined investigation, and a killer with the face of an angel. In July 2015, Mary Yoder returned home from the chiropractic center that she operated with her husband, Bill, complaining that she felt unwell. Mary, health-conscious and vibrant, was suddenly vomiting, sweating, and weak. Doctors in the ER and ICU were baffled as to the cause of her rapidly progressing illness. Her loved ones--including Bill and their children, Adam, Tamryn, and Liana--gathered in shock to say goodbye. In the weeks that followed Mary's death, the grief-stricken family received startling news from the medical examiner: Mary had been deliberately poisoned. The lethal substance was colchicine, a chemical used to treat gout but extremely toxic if not taken as prescribed. Mary did not have gout. Another bombshell followed when the local sheriff's office received a claim that Adam Yoder had poisoned his mother. But Adam was not the only person of interest in the case. Pretty and popular Kaitlyn Conley, Adam's ex-girlfriend, worked at the Yoders' clinic. She'd even been at Mary's bedside during those last terrible hours. Still, some spoke of her talent for manipulation and a history of bizarre, rage-fueled behavior against anyone who dared to reject her. Had Kaitlyn and Adam conspired to kill Mary Yoder, or was the killer someone else entirely? In another twist, accusations were hurled at Bill Yoder himself, ricocheting blame in still another direction... Renowned investigative journalist M. William Phelps details this incredible story piece by piece, revealing a heartless plan of revenge--a scheme that would tear a family apart, divide a community, and result in two gripping, high-profile trials.

Book Everything I Thought I Knew

Download or read book Everything I Thought I Knew written by Shannon Takaoka and published by Candlewick Press. This book was released on 2023-10-10 with total page 337 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A teenage girl wonders if she's inherited more than just a heart from her donor in this compulsively readable debut. Seventeen-year-old Chloe had a plan: work hard, get good grades, and attend a top-tier college. But after she collapses during cross-country practice and is told that she needs a new heart, all her careful preparations are laid to waste. Eight months after her transplant, everything is different. Stuck in summer school with the underachievers, all she wants to do now is grab her surfboard and hit the waves--which is strange, because she wasn't interested in surfing before her transplant. (It doesn't hurt that her instructor, Kai, is seriously good-looking.) And that's not all that's strange. There's also the vivid recurring nightmare about crashing a motorcycle in a tunnel and memories of people and places she doesn't recognize. Is there something wrong with her head now, too, or is there another explanation for what she's experiencing? As she searches for answers, and as her attraction to Kai intensifies, what she learns will lead her to question everything she thought she knew--about life, death, love, identity, and the true nature of reality.

Book What I Thought I Knew

Download or read book What I Thought I Knew written by Alice Eve Cohen and published by Penguin. This book was released on 2009-07-09 with total page 160 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "Darkly hilarious...an unexpected bundle of joy." -O, The Oprah Magazine Alice Cohen was happy for the first time in years. After a difficult divorce, she had a new love in her life, she was rais­ing a beloved adopted daughter, and her career was blossoming. Then she started experiencing mysterious symptoms. After months of tests, x-rays, and inconclusive diagnoses, Alice underwent a CAT scan that revealed the truth: she was six months pregnant. At age forty-four, with no prenatal care and no insurance coverage for a high-risk pregnancy, Alice was besieged by opinions from doctors and friends about what was ethical, what was loving, what was right. With the intimacy of a diary and the suspense of a thriller, What I Thought I Knew is a ruefully funny, wickedly candid tale; a story of hope and renewal that turns all of the "knowns" upside down.

Book I Knew You Could

Download or read book I Knew You Could written by Craig Dorfman and published by Penguin. This book was released on 2003-03-24 with total page 32 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Celebrate graduation and achievements big or small with The Little Engine That Could! The determined Little Blue Engine is back, bringing inspiring and enlightening words of wisdom to graduates of all ages as they make the transition from one phase of life to the next. I Knew You Could! provides familiar comfort in changing times and serves as a wonderful gift that will be treasured for years to come. Readers will revisit the story again and again as they move forward along life's path. From "I think I can" to "I knew I could," The Little Engine That Could helps kids of all ages realize that anything is possible if you just put your mind to it!

Book I Knew You d Be Lovely

Download or read book I Knew You d Be Lovely written by Alethea Black and published by Crown. This book was released on 2011-07-05 with total page 242 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: “What smart, memorable, inventive stories these are—skilled, insightful, full of heart.”—Joan Silber, author of Ideas of Heaven Alethea Black's deeply moving and wholly original debut features a coterie of memorable characters who have reached emotional crossroads in their lives. Brimming with humor, irony, and insights about the unpredictable nature of life, the unbearable beauty of fate, and the power that one moment, or one decision, can have to transform us, I Knew You'd Be Lovely delivers that rare thing—stories with both an edge and a heart.

Book I Know This Much Is True

    Book Details:
  • Author : Wally Lamb
  • Publisher : Cambridge University Press
  • Release : 1998-06-03
  • ISBN : 9780060391621
  • Pages : 884 pages

Download or read book I Know This Much Is True written by Wally Lamb and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 1998-06-03 with total page 884 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: With his stunning debut novel, She's Come Undone, Wally Lamb won the adulation of critics and readers with his mesmerizing tale of one woman's painful yet triumphant journey of self-discovery. Now, this brilliantly talented writer returns with I Know This Much Is True, a heartbreaking and poignant multigenerational saga of the reproductive bonds of destruction and the powerful force of forgiveness. A masterpiece that breathtakingly tells a story of alienation and connection, power and abuse, devastation and renewal--this novel is a contemporary retelling of an ancient Hindu myth. A proud king must confront his demons to achieve salvation. Change yourself, the myth instructs, and you will inhabit a renovated world. When you're the same brother of a schizophrenic identical twin, the tricky thing about saving yourself is the blood it leaves on your bands--the little inconvenience of the look-alike corpse at your feet. And if you're into both survival of the fittest and being your brother's keeper--if you've promised your dying mother--then say so long to sleep and hello to the middle of the night. Grab a book or a beer. Get used to Letterman's gap-toothed smile of the absurd, or the view of the bedroom ceiling, or the influence of random selection. Take it from a godless insomniac. Take it from the uncrazy twin--the guy who beat the biochemical rap. Dominick Birdsey's entire life has been compromised and constricted by anger and fear, by the paranoid schizophrenic twin brother he both deeply loves and resents, and by the past they shared with their adoptive father, Ray, a spit-and-polish ex-Navy man (the five-foot-six-inch sleeping giant who snoozed upstairs weekdays in the spare room and built submarines at night), and their long-suffering mother, Concettina, a timid woman with a harelip that made her shy and self-conscious: She holds a loose fist to her face to cover her defective mouth--her perpetual apology to the world for a birth defect over which she'd had no control. Born in the waning moments of 1949 and the opening minutes of 1950, the twins are physical mirror images who grow into separate yet connected entities: the seemingly strong and protective yet fearful Dominick, his mother's watchful "monkey"; and the seemingly weak and sweet yet noble Thomas, his mother's gentle "bunny." From childhood, Dominick fights for both separation and wholeness--and ultimately self-protection--in a house of fear dominated by Ray, a bully who abuses his power over these stepsons whose biological father is a mystery. I was still afraid of his anger but saw how he punished weakness--pounced on it. Out of self-preservation I hid my fear, Dominick confesses. As for Thomas, he just never knew how to play defense. He just didn't get it. But Dominick's talent for survival comes at an enormous cost, including the breakup of his marriage to the warm, beautiful Dessa, whom he still loves. And it will be put to the ultimate test when Thomas, a Bible-spouting zealot, commits an unthinkable act that threatens the tenuous balance of both his and Dominick's lives. To save himself, Dominick must confront not only the pain of his past but the dark secrets he has locked deep within himself, and the sins of his ancestors--a quest that will lead him beyond the confines of his blue-collar New England town to the volcanic foothills of Sicily 's Mount Etna, where his ambitious and vengefully proud grandfather and a namesake Domenico Tempesta, the sostegno del famiglia, was born. Each of the stories Ma told us about Papa reinforced the message that he was the boss, that he ruled the roost, that what he said went. Searching for answers, Dominick turns to the whispers of the dead, to the pages of his grandfather's handwritten memoir, The History of Domenico Onofrio Tempesta, a Great Man from Humble Beginnings. Rendered with touches of magic realism, Domenico's fablelike tale--in which monkeys enchant and religious statues weep--becomes the old man's confession--an unwitting legacy of contrition that reveals the truth's of Domenico's life, Dominick learns that power, wrongly used, defeats the oppressor as well as the oppressed, and now, picking through the humble shards of his deconstructed life, he will search for the courage and love to forgive, to expiate his and his ancestors' transgressions, and finally to rebuild himself beyond the haunted shadow of his twin. Set against the vivid panoply of twentieth-century America and filled with richly drawn, memorable characters, this deeply moving and thoroughly satisfying novel brings to light humanity's deepest needs and fears, our aloneness, our desire for love and acceptance, our struggle to survive at all costs. Joyous, mystical, and exquisitely written, I Know This Much Is True is an extraordinary reading experience that will leave no reader untouched.

Book Educated

Download or read book Educated written by Tara Westover and published by Random House. This book was released on 2018-02-20 with total page 352 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: #1 NEW YORK TIMES, WALL STREET JOURNAL, AND BOSTON GLOBE BESTSELLER • One of the most acclaimed books of our time: an unforgettable memoir about a young woman who, kept out of school, leaves her survivalist family and goes on to earn a PhD from Cambridge University “Extraordinary . . . an act of courage and self-invention.”—The New York Times NAMED ONE OF THE TEN BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR BY THE NEW YORK TIMES BOOK REVIEW • ONE OF PRESIDENT BARACK OBAMA’S FAVORITE BOOKS OF THE YEAR • BILL GATES’S HOLIDAY READING LIST • FINALIST: National Book Critics Circle’s Award In Autobiography and John Leonard Prize For Best First Book • PEN/Jean Stein Book Award • Los Angeles Times Book Prize Born to survivalists in the mountains of Idaho, Tara Westover was seventeen the first time she set foot in a classroom. Her family was so isolated from mainstream society that there was no one to ensure the children received an education, and no one to intervene when one of Tara’s older brothers became violent. When another brother got himself into college, Tara decided to try a new kind of life. Her quest for knowledge transformed her, taking her over oceans and across continents, to Harvard and to Cambridge University. Only then would she wonder if she’d traveled too far, if there was still a way home. “Beautiful and propulsive . . . Despite the singularity of [Westover’s] childhood, the questions her book poses are universal: How much of ourselves should we give to those we love? And how much must we betray them to grow up?”—Vogue NAMED ONE OF THE BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR BY The Washington Post • O: The Oprah Magazine • Time • NPR • Good Morning America • San Francisco Chronicle • The Guardian • The Economist • Financial Times • Newsday • New York Post • theSkimm • Refinery29 • Bloomberg • Self • Real Simple • Town & Country • Bustle • Paste • Publishers Weekly • Library Journal • LibraryReads • Book Riot • Pamela Paul, KQED • New York Public Library

Book Conversations with God for Teens

Download or read book Conversations with God for Teens written by Neale Donald Walsch and published by Hampton Roads Publishing. This book was released on 2012-10-01 with total page 250 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Suppose you could ask God any question and get an answer. What would it be? Young people all over the world have been asking those questions. So Neale Donald Walsch, author of the internationally bestselling Conversations with God series had another conversation. Conversations with God for Teens is a simple, clear, straight-to-the-point dialogue that answers teens questions about God, money, sex, love, and more. Conversations with God for Teens reads like a rap session at a church youth group, where teenagers discuss everything they ever wanted to know about life but were too afraid to ask God. Walsch acts as the verbal conduit, showing teenagers how easy it is to converse with the divine. When Claudia, age 16, from Perth, Australia, asks, "Why can't I just have sex with everybody? What's the big deal?", the answer God offers her is: "Nothing you do will ever be okay with everybody. 'Everybody' is a large word. The real question is can you have sex and have it be okay with you?" There's no doubt that the casual question-and-answer format will help make God feel welcoming and accessible to teens. Conversations with God for Teens is the perfect gift purchase for parents, grandparents, and anyone else who wants to provide accessible spiritual content for the teen(s) in their lives.

Book Slow Down

    Book Details:
  • Author : Nichole Nordeman
  • Publisher : Thomas Nelson
  • Release : 2017-08-22
  • ISBN : 0718099028
  • Pages : 208 pages

Download or read book Slow Down written by Nichole Nordeman and published by Thomas Nelson. This book was released on 2017-08-22 with total page 208 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The days are long, but the years are short. No matter if it’s your child’s first step, first day of school, or first night tucked away in a new dorm room away from home, there comes a moment when you realize just how quickly the years are flying by. Christian music artist Nichole Nordeman’s profound lyrics in her viral hit “Slow Down” struck a chord with moms everywhere, and now this beautiful four-color book will inspire you to celebrate the everyday moments of motherhood. Filled with thought-provoking writings from Nichole, as well as guest writings from friends including Shauna Niequist and Jen Hatmaker, practical tips, and journaling space for reflection, Slow Down will be a poignant gift for any mom, as well as a treasured keepsake. Take a few moments to reflect and celebrate the privilege of being a parent and getting to watch your little ones grow—and Slow Down. Nichole Nordeman has sold more than 1 million albums as a Christian music artist and has won 9 GMA Dove Awards, including two awards for Female Vocalist of the Year and Songwriter of the Year. Nichole released a lyric video for her song “Slow Down,” and it struck a chord with parents everywhere, amassing 14 million views in its first five days. She lives in Oklahoma with her two children.

Book The Man I Thought I Knew

Download or read book The Man I Thought I Knew written by E. L. Todd and published by . This book was released on 2020-09-05 with total page 316 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: All that man...just for me. But I'm an investigative reporter for the biggest newspaper in the country, so it's my job to pick up on details, to see the signs that other people miss. I'm not afraid of danger. Not even afraid of dying. And there's definitely something about this man that I'm missing.

Book When You Thought I Wasn t Looking

Download or read book When You Thought I Wasn t Looking written by Mary Korzan and published by Andrews McMeel Publishing. This book was released on 2004-03 with total page 60 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Mary Rita Schilke Korzan wrote a poem to her mother 24 years ago, thanking her for all she had done as a mother, friend, and role model. She gave the poem to her mother and, a few months later, offered it as a tribute when Mary and her husband were married. So many wedding guests asked for a copy that Mary included one in her thank-you notes.Then began the strange and heartwarming journey of Mary's poem to her mom. Friends passed it on to those they knew. A minister in her hometown couldn't recall who gave it to him, but he included the by-then "anonymously written" poem in his book about loving others. Another author picked it up from there for her compilation of heartfelt works, and Mary finally noticed her poem, now listed as "Author Unknown," in A Fourth Course of Chicken Soup for the Soul, which her husband and children gave her as a Mother's Day gift.With this new book, readers have the chance to experience When You Thought I Wasn't Looking in its entirety and from its creator. This is the special kind of book that reminds us that sometimes the little things we do "just because" mean more to someone than we can ever know. Those little things teach love, compassion, and understanding. In other words, they're priceless. This sweet gift book brings that lesson home to the heart.

Book Your Song Changed My Life

    Book Details:
  • Author : Bob Boilen
  • Publisher : HarperCollins
  • Release : 2016-04-12
  • ISBN : 0062344463
  • Pages : 207 pages

Download or read book Your Song Changed My Life written by Bob Boilen and published by HarperCollins. This book was released on 2016-04-12 with total page 207 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: From the beloved host and creator of NPR’s All Songs Considered and Tiny Desk Concerts comes an essential oral history of modern music, told in the voices of iconic and up-and-coming musicians, including Dave Grohl, Jimmy Page, Michael Stipe, Carrie Brownstein, Smokey Robinson, and Jeff Tweedy, among others—published in association with NPR Music. Is there a unforgettable song that changed your life? NPR’s renowned music authority Bob Boilen posed this question to some of today’s best-loved musical legends and rising stars. In Your Song Changed My Life, Jimmy Page (Led Zeppelin), St. Vincent, Jónsi (Sigur Rós), Justin Vernon (Bon Iver), Cat Power, David Byrne (Talking Heads), Dave Grohl (Nirvana, Foo Fighters), Jeff Tweedy (Wilco), Jenny Lewis, Carrie Brownstein (Portlandia, Sleater-Kinney), Yusuf Islam (Cat Stevens), Colin Meloy (The Decemberists), Trey Anastasio (Phish), Jackson Browne, Valerie June, Philip Glass, James Blake, and other artists reflect on pivotal moments that inspired their work. For Wilco’s Jeff Tweedy, it was discovering his sister’s 45 of The Byrds’ “Turn, Turn, Turn.” A young St. Vincent’s life changed the day a box of CDs literally fell off a delivery truck in front of her house. Cat Stevens was transformed when he heard John Lennon cover “Twist and Shout.” These are the momentous yet unmarked events that have shaped these and many other musical talents, and ultimately the sound of modern music. A diverse collection of personal experiences, both ordinary and extraordinary, Your Song Changed My Life illustrates the ways in which music is revived, restored, and revolutionized. It is also a testament to the power of music in our lives, and an inspiration for future artists and music lovers. Amazing contributors include: Jimmy Page (Led Zeppelin), Carrie Brownstein (Sleater-Kinney, Portlandia, Wild Flag), Smokey Robinson, David Byrne (Talking Heads), St. Vincent, Jeff Tweedy (Wilco), James Blake, Colin Meloy (The Decemberists), Trey Anastasio (Phish), Jenny Lewis (Rilo Kiley), Dave Grohl (Nirvana, Foo Fighters), Yusuf Islam (Cat Stevens), Sturgill Simpson, Justin Vernon (Bon Iver), Cat Power, Jackson Browne, Michael Stipe (R.E.M.), Philip Glass, Jónsi (Sigur Rós), Hozier, Regina Carter, Conor Oberst (Bright Eyes, and others), Courtney Barnett, Chris Thile (Nickel Creek, Punch Brothers), Leon Bridges, Sharon Van Etten, and many more.

Book While You Were Gone

    Book Details:
  • Author : Kate Moretti
  • Publisher :
  • Release : 2015-09-30
  • ISBN : 9781940215525
  • Pages : pages

Download or read book While You Were Gone written by Kate Moretti and published by . This book was released on 2015-09-30 with total page pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Despite Karen Caughee's intense focus on her music, her life is drifting out of its lane. Her alcoholic mother keeps calling from bars for early-morning rides, her boyfriend doesn't think she gets him, and that Toronto Symphony Orchestra position she applied for ends up going to her friend, Amy. By chance, she meets American Greg Randolf just before she's in a car accident. He pulls her from the wreckage, but after major surgery, her recovery is slow. Without her music, her life's pursuit, Karen is pushed further adrift.Greg stays by her side while she heals, and he sees her every time he's in Toronto for work. Without any other support or friendship in her life, Karen craves his enthusiastic attention, and their friendship deepens to love. Though she's fallen hard for him, he doesn't share everything with her. In one heartrending moment, Karen's life comes to a crossroads, and she must face the full truth about who Greg is, and about who she has become.

Book Normal People

    Book Details:
  • Author : Sally Rooney
  • Publisher : Crown
  • Release : 2020-02-18
  • ISBN : 1984822187
  • Pages : 305 pages

Download or read book Normal People written by Sally Rooney and published by Crown. This book was released on 2020-02-18 with total page 305 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: NOW AN EMMY-NOMINATED HULU ORIGINAL SERIES • NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • LONGLISTED FOR THE BOOKER PRIZE • “A stunning novel about the transformative power of relationships” (People) from the author of Conversations with Friends, “a master of the literary page-turner” (J. Courtney Sullivan). “[A] novel that demands to be read compulsively, in one sitting.”—The Washington Post ONE OF ENTERTAINMENT WEEKLY’S TEN BEST NOVELS OF THE DECADE TEN BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR: People, Slate, The New York Public Library, Harvard Crimson Connell and Marianne grew up in the same small town, but the similarities end there. At school, Connell is popular and well liked, while Marianne is a loner. But when the two strike up a conversation—awkward but electrifying—something life changing begins. A year later, they’re both studying at Trinity College in Dublin. Marianne has found her feet in a new social world while Connell hangs at the sidelines, shy and uncertain. Throughout their years at university, Marianne and Connell circle one another, straying toward other people and possibilities but always magnetically, irresistibly drawn back together. And as she veers into self-destruction and he begins to search for meaning elsewhere, each must confront how far they are willing to go to save the other. Normal People is the story of mutual fascination, friendship, and love. It takes us from that first conversation to the years beyond, in the company of two people who try to stay apart but find that they can’t. WINNER: The British Book Award, The Costa Book Award, The An Post Irish Novel of the Year, Sunday Times Young Writer of the Year Award BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR: The New York Times, The New York Times Book Review, Oprah Daily, Time, NPR, The Washington Post, Vogue, Esquire, Glamour, Elle, Marie Claire, Vox, The Paris Review, Good Housekeeping, Town & Country

Book I Liked You Better Before I Knew You So Well

Download or read book I Liked You Better Before I Knew You So Well written by James Allen Hall and published by . This book was released on 2017 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Literary Nonfiction. LGBTQIA Studies. Winner of the 2016 Essay Collection Competition. "Growing up queer in Florida in the 1980s, James Allen Hall's life has taken him to places that high culture rarely treads. Losing their once-thriving family business in the pre-crash 2000s, his broke and unstable parents move into a two-bedroom student apartment shared previously with just his brother. His mother routinely attempts or threatens suicide, his father is depressed. In these essays, Hall lives alongside, and empathically lives through, his family's meth addiction, mental illnesses, and incarcerations, and considers his own penchants for less than happy, equal sex with an agility, depth, and lightness that is blissfully inconclusive. I LIKED YOU BETTER BEFORE I KNEW YOU SO WELL is a tragic, funny, graceful book." --Chris Kraus "The essays collected in I LIKED YOU BETTER BEFORE I KNEW YOU SO WELL are indeed harrowing--but more powerfully, they reveal a sensibility driven to make something beautiful and worthy of the raw and the rough. Hall's work lays bare all manner of vulnerability, not to confess or shock, but to reckon into language the nearly unsayable. And who exactly is at the center of this drive toward the light? A witness, an unrelenting seeker, a survivor, someone who's earned the right to judge but who withholds that too-easy gesture in favor of a clearer sight and the hard won belief that while we are bound together by so many complex tethers, including cruelty, we are especially linked by compassion, a force abundantly evident in this moving collection." --Lia Purpura "'What I am should be extinguished, ' writes James Allen Hall about his queerness, which despite a journey through youth troubled with violence and homophobia, manages to exist and persist. Yet the personal essays in I LIKED YOU BETTER BEFORE I KNEW YOU SO WELL are more than expressions of pain, they are testaments to perseverance shaped by the acceptance of a flawed self, love for a complicated family and an unflappable wit. Thank you, James, for this extraordinary book so full of honest and compelling moments that will resonate with the aching heart inside each of us."--Rigoberto Gonzalez