Download or read book Sitting Pretty written by Rebekah Taussig and published by HarperCollins. This book was released on 2020-08-25 with total page 220 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A memoir-in-essays from disability advocate and creator of the Instagram account @sitting_pretty Rebekah Taussig, processing a lifetime of memories to paint a beautiful, nuanced portrait of a body that looks and moves differently than most. Growing up as a paralyzed girl during the 90s and early 2000s, Rebekah Taussig only saw disability depicted as something monstrous (The Hunchback of Notre Dame), inspirational (Helen Keller), or angelic (Forrest Gump). None of this felt right; and as she got older, she longed for more stories that allowed disability to be complex and ordinary, uncomfortable and fine, painful and fulfilling. Writing about the rhythms and textures of what it means to live in a body that doesn’t fit, Rebekah reflects on everything from the complications of kindness and charity, living both independently and dependently, experiencing intimacy, and how the pervasiveness of ableism in our everyday media directly translates to everyday life. Disability affects all of us, directly or indirectly, at one point or another. By exploring this truth in poignant and lyrical essays, Taussig illustrates the need for more stories and more voices to understand the diversity of humanity. Sitting Pretty challenges us as a society to be patient and vigilant, practical and imaginative, kind and relentless, as we set to work to write an entirely different story.

Download or read book Perfect Embrace written by Kaylee Ryan and published by Kaylee Ryan. This book was released on 2021-07-13 with total page 326 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The day he walks into my bookstore with his adorable twin daughters, I know my life is going to change forever. The chemistry is tangible, the tragedy his truth, and my schoolgirl crush, even after all of these years, is still alive. Home is where the heart is, and Mason Creek is mine. Laken Until Grayson walked into my bookstore, I thought happily ever afters were just fairy-tale endings. Looking every bit the handsome hero, his intensity creates sparks I've never dared to dream about. The single dad of adorable twin girls doubles as a firefighter by day. But there's more. Grayson is also my old high-school crush. My feelings for Grayson haven't changed, but everything else has. Grayson Having lost my wife three years ago, my world revolves around raising my daughters. Then one day, I look up and see past my grief, and there stands Laken. This beautiful, kind-hearted woman has been under my nose my entire life, and now, just when I need her most, she's here- loving my daughters like her own. But guilt can't be reasoned with, especially when finding love again. I've learned the hard way that second chances don't happen often. So, when I'm lucky enough to get mine, I'm going to embrace it with everything I have.

Download or read book City of Bones written by Martha Wells and published by Tordotcom. This book was released on 2023-09-05 with total page 338 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Before Martha Wells captured the hearts of MILLIONS with her Murderbot series, there was Khat, Sagai, and Elen, and a city risen out of death and decay... The city of Charisat, a tiered monolith of the Ancients’ design, sits on the edge of the vast desert known as the Waste. Khat, a member of a humanoid race created by the Ancients to survive in the Waste, and Sagai, his human partner, are relic dealers working in the bottom tiers of society, trying to stay one step ahead of the Trade Inspectors. When Khat is hired by the all-powerful Warders to find relics believed to be part of one of the Ancients' arcane engines, he, and his party, begin unravelling the mysteries of an age-old technology. This they expected. They soon find themselves as the last line of defense between the suffering masses of Charisat and a fanatical cult, bent on unleashing an evil upon the city with an undying thirst for bone. That, they did not expect. This updated and revised edition is the author’s preferred text. At the Publisher's request, this title is being sold without Digital Rights Management Software (DRM) applied.

Download or read book Before I Wake written by Rachel Vincent and published by Harlequin. This book was released on 2012-07-01 with total page 305 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: I died on a Thursday—killed by a monster intent on stealing my soul. The good news? He didn't get it. The bad news? Turns out not even death will get you out of high school… Covering up her own murder was one thing, but faking life is much harder than Kaylee Cavanaugh expected. After weeks spent "recovering," she's back in school, fighting to stay visible to the human world, struggling to fit in with her friends and planning time alone with her new reaper boyfriend. But to earn her keep in the human world, Kaylee must reclaim stolen souls, and when her first assignment brings her face-to-face with an old foe, she knows the game has changed. Her immortal status won't keep her safe. And this time Kaylee isn't just gambling with her own life….

Download or read book Steal Away Home written by Lois Ruby and published by Simon and Schuster. This book was released on 2014-03-11 with total page 212 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: When Dana uncovers a skeleton hidden in the wall of her home, she also uncovers a dark secret that stretches back years. When twelve-year-old Dana Shannon starts to strip away wallpaper in her family’s old house, she’s unprepared for the surprise that awaits her. A hidden room—containing a human skeleton! How did such a thing get there? And why was the tiny room sealed up? With the help of a diary found in the room, Dana learns her house was once a station on the Underground Railroad. The young woman whose remains Dana discovered was Lizbet Charles, a conductor and former slave. As the scene shifts between Dana’s world and 1856, the story of the families that lived in the house unfolds. But as pieces of the puzzle begin to fall into place, one haunting question remains—why did Lizbet Charles die?

Download or read book The Great Hunt written by Robert Jordan and published by Macmillan. This book was released on 1991-10-15 with total page 743 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Wheel of Time turns and Ages come and pass. What was, what will be, and what is, may yet fall under the Shadow. For centuries, gleemen have told of The Great Hunt of the Horn. Now the Horn itself is found: the Horn of Valere long thought only legend, the Horn which will raise the dead heroes of the ages. And it is stolen. THE WHEEL OF TIME Book One: The Eye of the World Book Two: The Great Hunt Book Three: The Dragon Reborn Book Four: The Shadow Rising Book Five: The Fires of Heaven Book Six: Lord of Chaos Book Seven: A Crown of Swords Book Eight: The Path of Daggers Book Nine: Winter's Heart Book Ten: Crossroads of Twilight

Download or read book Circus Galacticus written by Deva Fagan and published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt. This book was released on 2011 with total page 305 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Trix's life in boarding school as an orphan charity case has been hard but when an alluring young Ringmaster invites her, a gymnast, to join Circus Galacticus she gains an entire universe of deadly enemies and potential friends, along with a chance to unravel secrets of her own past.

Download or read book Maddy Yip s Guide to Life written by Sue Cheung and published by Andersen Press Limited. This book was released on 2021-08-05 with total page 193 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A madcap new story from Sue Cheung, winner of the Diverse Book Award, filled with belly-laughs and packed with drawings! Perfect for fans of Tom Gates and Sam Wu. Maddy Yip is perfectly happy in life, until she realises that everyone she knows has a talent – except for her! Maddy is determined to change that, with the help of her brothers, bewildered grandad and her best friend Dev. There are disastrous attempts at breakdancing and playing the recorder, revolting cakes, and a magic disappearing trick that ends up with an escaped guinea pig. Will Maddy ever find her true calling?

Download or read book How We Fall Apart written by Katie Zhao and published by Bloomsbury Publishing USA. This book was released on 2021-08-17 with total page 236 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In a YA thriller that is Crazy Rich Asians meets One of Us is Lying, students at an elite prep school are forced to confront their secrets when their ex-best friend turns up dead. Nancy Luo is shocked when her former best friend, Jamie Ruan, top-ranked junior at Sinclair Prep, goes missing, and then is found dead. Nancy is even more shocked when word starts to spread that she and her friends--Krystal, Akil, and Alexander--are the prime suspects, thanks to "the Proctor," someone anonymously incriminating them via the school's social media app. They all used to be Jamie's closest friends, and she knew each of their deepest, darkest secrets. Now, somehow the Proctor knows them, too. The four must uncover the true killer before The Proctor exposes more than they can bear and costs them more than they can afford, like Nancy's full scholarship. Soon, Nancy suspects that her friends may be keeping secrets from her, too. Katie Zhao's YA debut is an edge-of-your-seat drama set in the pressure-cooker world of academics and image at Sinclair Prep, where the past threatens the future these teens have carefully crafted for themselves. How We Fall Apart is the irresistible, addicting, Asian-American recast of Gossip Girl that we've all been waiting for.

Download or read book Beneath a Meth Moon written by Jacqueline Woodson and published by Penguin. This book was released on 2013-02-07 with total page 241 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Hurricane Katrina took her mother and granmother. And even though Laurel Daneau has moves on to a new life--one that includes a new best friend, a spot on the cheerleading squad, and dating the co-captain of the football team--she can't get past the pain of that loss. Then her new boyfriend introduces her to meth, and Laurel is instantly seduced by its spell, the way it erases, even if only temporarily, her memories. Soon Laurel is completely hooked, a shell of her former self, desperate to be whole again, but lacking the strength to break free. But with the help of a new friend--and the loyalty of an old one--she is able to rewrite her own story and move on with her own life. Dreamlike in quality and weaving flashbacks to the hurricane in with Laurel's present-day struggles, this is a stunning novel that readers won't want to miss.

Download or read book You Are Not Too Much Love Notes on Heartache Redemption Reclamation written by Jeanette LeBlanc and published by . This book was released on 2018-08-03 with total page 186 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A love letter to those in the midst of the breakdown or a reckoning or a rise. A love letter to the wild ones, to the lost souls, to the free. To the seekers and the lovers of leaving and those intent on finding themselves amidst the rubble. Love letters to you. And always, in the end love letters to myself.

Download or read book Good Neighbors written by Sarah Langan and published by Atria Books. This book was released on 2021-02-02 with total page 304 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: “A modern-day Crucible….Beneath the surface of a suburban utopia, madness lurks.” —Liv Constantine, bestselling author of The Last Mrs. Parrish “Sarah Langan is a phenomenal talent with a wicked sense of wry humor. Good Neighbors knocked me out. Like Shirley Jackson, Langan’s work blends a bleak streak with an underlying sense of the humane that wrung my heart.” —Victor LaValle, author of The Changeling Celeste Ng’s enthralling dissection of suburbia meets Shirley Jackson’s creeping dread in this propulsive literary noir, when a sudden tragedy exposes the depths of deception and damage in a Long Island suburb—pitting neighbor against neighbor and putting one family in terrible danger. Welcome to Maple Street, a picture-perfect slice of suburban Long Island, its residents bound by their children, their work, and their illusion of safety in a rapidly changing world. Arlo Wilde, a gruff has-been rock star who’s got nothing to show for his fame but track marks, is always two steps behind the other dads. His wife, beautiful ex-pageant queen Gertie, feels socially ostracized and adrift. Spunky preteen Julie curses like a sailor and her kid brother Larry is called “Robot Boy” by the kids on the block. Their next-door neighbor and Maple Street’s Queen Bee, Rhea Schroeder—a lonely community college professor repressing her own dark past—welcomes Gertie and family into the fold. Then, during one spritzer-fueled summer evening, the new best friends share too much, too soon. As tensions mount, a sinkhole opens in a nearby park, and Rhea’s daughter Shelly falls inside. The search for Shelly brings a shocking accusation against the Wildes that spins out of control. Suddenly, it is one mom’s word against the other’s in a court of public opinion that can end only in blood. A riveting and ruthless portrayal of American suburbia, Good Neighbors excavates the perils and betrayals of motherhood and friendships and the dangerous clash between social hierarchy, childhood trauma, and fear.

Download or read book California Go Math written by and published by . This book was released on 2015 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Download or read book Holy the Firm written by Annie Dillard and published by Harper Collins. This book was released on 2009-10-13 with total page 41 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "[This] is a book of great richness, beauty and power and thus very difficult to do justice to in a brief review. . . . The violence is sometimes unbearable, the language rarely less than superb. Dillard's description of the moth's death makes Virginia Woolf's go dim and Edwardian. . . . Nature seen so clear and hard that the eyes tear. . . . A rare and precious book." — Frederick Buechner, New York Times Book Review A profound book about the natural world—both its beauty and its cruelty—from Pulitzer Prize-winning author Annie Dillard In 1975 Dillard took up residence on an island in Puget Sound, in a wooden room furnished with "one enormous window, one cat, one spider, and one person." For the next two years she asked herself questions about time, reality, sacrifice, death, and the will of God. In Holy the Firm, she writes about a moth consumed in a candle flame, about a seven-year-old girl burned in an airplane accident, about a baptism on a cold beach. But behind the moving curtain of what she calls "the hard things—rock mountain and salt sea," she sees, sometimes far off and sometimes as close by as a veil or air, the power play of holy fire. Here is a lyrical gift to any reader who has ever wondered how best to live with grace and wonder in the natural world.

Download or read book Big Sky written by Kate Atkinson and published by Little, Brown. This book was released on 2019-06-25 with total page 377 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Iconoclastic detective Jackson Brodie returns in a triumphant new novel about secrets, sex, and lies. Jackson Brodie has relocated to a quiet seaside village, in the occasional company of his recalcitrant teenage son and an aging Labrador, both at the discretion of his ex-partner Julia. It's picturesque, but there's something darker lurking behind the scenes. Jackson's current job, gathering proof of an unfaithful husband for his suspicious wife, is fairly standard-issue, but a chance encounter with a desperate man on a crumbling cliff leads him into a sinister network -- and back across the path of his old friend Reggie. Old secrets and new lies intersect in this breathtaking novel by one of the most dazzling and surprising writers at work today. "Thank goodness the long Jackson Brodie hiatus is over." --Janet Maslin, New York Times

Download or read book Her Dark Curiosity written by Megan Shepherd and published by Harper Collins. This book was released on 2014-01-28 with total page 260 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Inspired by The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, this tantalizing sequel to Megan Shepherd's gothic suspense novel The Madman's Daughter explores the hidden natures of those we love and how far we'll go to save them from themselves. Perfect for fans of Libba Bray. Back in London after her trip to Dr. Moreau's horrific island, Juliet is rebuilding the life she once knew and trying to forget her father's legacy. But soon it's clear that someone—or something—hasn't forgotten her, as people close to Juliet start falling victim to a murderer who leaves a macabre calling card of three clawlike slashes. Has one of her father's creations also escaped the island? As Juliet strives to stop a killer while searching for a serum to cure her own worsening illness, she finds herself once more in a world of scandal and danger. Her heart torn in two, her past bubbling to the surface, and her life threatened by an obsessive killer—Juliet will be lucky to escape alive.

Download or read book A Richard Selzer Reader written by Kevin Kerrane and published by Rowman & Littlefield. This book was released on 2017-07-31 with total page 377 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A Richard Selzer Reader: Blood and Ink is a career-spanning collection, including major short stories and essays by the renowned doctor-author. In the 1960s, while practicing as a general surgeon and teaching surgery at the Yale School of Medicine, Richard Selzer began publishing unique creative work in magazines such as Harper’s and Esquire. By 1985, when he retired as a physician to devote himself completely to writing, Selzer was already recognized as a pioneer in the field of medical humanities. When he died in 2016, as the author of 13 books, his influence was acknowledged by a younger generation of doctor-writers like Abraham Verghese and Atul Gawande. Selzer’s unusual style fuses scientific and poetic language. Drawing on favorite readings, from the King James Bible to the tales of Edgar Allen Poe, he used this style to convey a sense of awe at the beauty and complexity of the human body, even in the midst of suffering. While describing himself as an atheist, Selzer always searched for “sacramental” moments of courtesy, courage, and grace in medical encounters. Because he often looked critically at the failure of doctors to regard the full humanity of their patients, Selzer’s work has become required reading in many medical training programs. A Richard Selzer Reader includesseveral of the author’s most famous essays and stories, as well as two dozen selections that have not been collected in his previous books. Chronologically, the material ranges from apprenticeship stories (as far back as a high-school composition) to two odd self-portraits that remained unpublished at the time of Selzer’s death.Topically, the material ranges from meditations on the body, and on human mortality, to reflections on both medicine and writing as serious vocations. Along the way, Selzer celebrates the work of other doctor-writers, like Thomas Browne and Anton Chekhov, and in a series of previously unpublished diary entries he discusses the joys of nature, art, and family as bulwarks against the difficulties of growing old.