Online Reading The Unfinished World: And Other Stories by Amber Sparks

A highly anticipated collection of wildly imaginative short stories from “one of contemporary fiction’s true mad scientists” (Necessary Fiction).

In the weird and wonderful tradition of Kelly Link and Karen Russell, Amber Sparks’s dazzling new collection bursts forth with stories that render the apocalyptic and otherworldly hauntingly familiar. In “The Cemetery for Lost Faces,” two orphans translate their grief into taxidermy, artfully arresting the passage of time. The anchoring novella, “The Unfinished World,” unfurls a surprising love story between a free and adventurous young woman and a dashing filmmaker burdened by a mysterious family. Sparks’s stories―populated with sculptors, librarians, astronauts, and warriors―form a veritable cabinet of curiosities. Mythical, bizarre, and deeply moving, The Unfinished World and Other Stories heralds the arrival of a major writer and illuminates the search for a brief encounter with the extraordinary. Read Online Book The Unfinished World: And Other Stories by Amber Sparks Full Free

Review :

 “Sparks's stylish second collection is the work of a young writer whose voice feels far wiser than her years…[S]he plays with both fantasy and form. No one story sounds like another, yet her singular voice floats through the collection, tying it together with opulent prose that draws heavily on history and the macabre.” (Rachel Syme - New York Times Book Review)
“Amber Sparks uses the surreal and fantastic in stunning, surprising ways. Like Carola Dibbell's The Only Ones and Emily Mandel's Station Eleven, the book is a masterful work of speculative fiction.” (Nancy Hightower - Washington Post)
“Amber Sparks's The Unfinished World and Other Stories has all the furnishings of a twenty-first century homage to the carnally macabre Angela Carter. The collection captures an off-kilter universe of almost-fairy tales with equal parts beauty and melancholy.” (Keziah Weir - Elle)

“Fabulist authors such as Lauren Groff, Kelly Link, Karen Russell and Margaret Atwood examine monumental family sagas and twisted love affairs through [mythology and fairy tales] because these universal stories demand the profound gravity that emerges only from a distorted sense of reality. Amber Sparks' crackling, dark clutch of sharply focused short stories falls into this canon. . . . Forged in an evocative and sensual fire, these tales transcend tradition to shine new light onto timeless complications.” (Lauren LeBlanc - Minneapolis Star Tribune)

“Fascinating in its serendipity, yet alert to pangs of the ordinary, The Unfinished World…[is] lovely, brave.” (John Domini - Bookforum)

“The images tumbling from Sparks’s mind in her extraordinary second story collection (following May We Shed These Human Bodies) are fantastical and sublime…. In present-day, historical, and fantasy settings, the author is assured; her spare but colorful prose takes the reader on journeys of longing and mystery, often into uncharted territory, all the while capturing setting and character in a few words…. [T]he breadth of her imagination never ceases to amaze.” (Publishers Weekly, Starred review)

“In The Unfinished World and Other Stories, Amber Sparks is a master of the fantastic. Here are stories about fever librarians and brothers who are swans, time travelers and space janitors. With each story, Sparks defies the known world in absolutely thrilling ways.” (Roxane Gay, author of An Untamed State and Bad Feminist)

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Read Free Book: Make Me Sin (Bad Habit) from J.T. Geissinger

Chloe Carmichael’s life feels pretty sweet—she’s both maid of honor and florist for her best friend’s A-list wedding, things are getting serious with her boyfriend, and her flower shop is about to get a spread in a national magazine. But it all quickly turns sour whenever the best man, Bad Habit drummer A.J. Edwards, shows his face...his handsome, unforgettable face. A.J. is everything Chloe doesn’t want: tattooed, selfish, and all-around bad news. So why can’t she stop thinking about him?

Goody two-shoes Chloe isn’t exactly A.J.’s type, either, but the chemistry between them is undeniable. A.J. will be the first to say he isn’t a saint, but there’s something he’s not saying—something that would devastate Chloe. The only way he can protect her is to push her away, but the drummer finds he needs her now more than ever. When a wedding-day confrontation reveals secrets they’re both hiding, will Chloe and A.J. ever find their rhythm again? Read Online Book Make Me Sin (Bad Habit) from J.T. Geissinger Full Free

About The Author :

J.T. Geissinger is an award-winning author of paranormal and contemporary romance featuring dark and twisted plots, kick-ass heroines, and alpha heroes whose hearts are even bigger than their muscles. She has previously published eight novels, including Sweet as Sin, the first book in the Bad Habit series. Her work has garnered her the Golden Quill Award for Best Paranormal Romance and the Prism Award for Best First Book, and she has been a finalist for the prestigious RITA, Booksellers’ Best, National Readers’ Choice, and Daphne du Maurier Awards.

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Download Book The Lightkeepers: A Novel by Abby Geni

In The Lightkeepers, we follow Miranda, a nature photographer who travels to the Farallon Islands, an exotic and dangerous archipelago off the coast of California, for a one-year residency capturing the landscape. Her only companions are the scientists studying there, odd and quirky refugees from the mainland living in rustic conditions; they document the fish populations around the island, the bold trio of sharks called the Sisters that hunt the surrounding waters, and the overwhelming bird population who, at times, create the need to wear hard hats as protection from their attacks.

Shortly after her arrival, Miranda is assaulted by one of the inhabitants of the islands. A few days later, her assailant is found dead, perhaps the result of an accident. As the novel unfolds, Miranda gives witness to the natural wonders of this special place as she grapples with what has happened to her and deepens her connection (and her suspicions) to her companions, while falling under the thrall of the legends of the place nicknamed “the Islands of the Dead.” And when more violence occurs, each member of this strange community falls under suspicion.

The Lightkeepers upends the traditional structure of a mystery novel —an isolated environment, a limited group of characters who might not be trustworthy, a death that may or may not have been accidental, a balance of discovery and action —while also exploring wider themes of the natural world, the power of loss, and the nature of recovery. It is a luminous debut novel from a talented and provocative new writer. Read Online Book The Lightkeepers: A Novel by Abby Geni Full Free

Review :
Praise for The Lightkeepers

"Readers [...] will find themselves carried along by a sturdy, rather old-fashioned thriller ramped up by some modern, ecologically themed plot twists... The plot is structured like that of a horror film, moving from one alarming event to another, and in between, maintaining a tension around the question of how much worse the situation will get... [a] peculiar, atmospheric novel... It's become customary—the fallback consolation of the book reviewer—to say that one is eager to see what a writer will do next. But in fact that is the case here. Ultimately, what engages us in The Lightkeepers, beyond its energetic plot, is the sense of watching its author discover her ability to construct a suspenseful narrative. And we finish this novel curious to find out what sorts of stories Abby Geni will choose to tell."—New York Times Book Review

"With The Lightkeepers, Geni joins the ranks of Barbara Kingsolver and Annie Proulx—novelists for whom nature is a driving narrative force instead of a backdrop. However, Geni’s debut is a few shades darker than Prodigal Summer or Close Range, and instead of Kingsolver and Proulx’s architectural prose, Geni writes in small, perfect sentences stripped of ornamentation, often single clauses. It’s a beautiful effect; pages pass quickly and effortlessly. By the novel’s end, you’ll crave another journey with Geni to some other wild, forgotten corner of the globe."—Chicago Review of Books

“Abby Geni's sense of place will remind readers of Eowyn Ivey's Alaska in The Snow Child Geni's prose of last year's Discover Award winner (fiction) All the Birds, Singing by Evie Wyld." – Barnes & Noble Discover New Writers Announcement

“[A] dazzlingly unsettling first novel …The language is as startlingly rich as the terrain, making you look at everything as if you had never seen it before… Geni expertly propels her story into a breathtakingly shocking climax. The nature she describes has no sense of right or wrong. And what’s more frightening, neither do her characters, and in this stunning debut, both pull you in and hold you like a riptide.”—Caroline Leavitt, San Francisco Chronicle

“Part murder mystery, part psychological thriller, part ode to one of the western world's wildest landscapes, this dark, compelling tale is an astonishingly ambitious debut…Like many literary classics and novels that are destined to be classics, The Lightkeepers raises questions about humanity that are anything but light. Unlike many classics, it's an accessible page-turner whose surprises, both fictional and stylistic, unfold so satisfyingly that the novel is also a pleasure to read.” —Meredith Maran, Chicago Tribune

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Free Ebook Download: What Belongs to You: A Novel from Garth Greenwell

On an unseasonably warm autumn day, an American teacher enters a public bathroom beneath Sofia’s National Palace of Culture. There he meets Mitko, a charismatic young hustler, and pays him for sex. He returns to Mitko again and again over the next few months, drawn by hunger and loneliness and risk, and finds himself ensnared in a relationship in which lust leads to mutual predation, and tenderness can transform into violence. 

As he struggles to reconcile his longing with the anguish it creates, he’s forced to grapple with his own fraught history, the world of his southern childhood where to be queer was to be a pariah. There are unnerving similarities between his past and the foreign country he finds himself in, a country whose geography and griefs he discovers as he learns more of Mitko’s own narrative, his private history of illness, exploitation, and want.

What Belongs to You is a stunning debut novel of desire and its consequences. With lyric intensity and startling eroticism, Garth Greenwell has created an indelible story about the ways in which our pasts and cultures, our scars and shames can shape who we are and determine how we love. Read Online Book What Belongs to You: A Novel from Garth Greenwell Full Free

Review :

"In an age of the sentence fetish, Greenwell thinks and writes, as Woolf or Sebald do, in larger units of comprehension . . . Rhythm, order, music, and lucid expression: there is undeniably a mandarin quality to the way that Greenwell narrows the frame of his inquiry and then perfectly fills this reduced space. But if the novel's formal control has a rare delicacy there is nothing at all hermetic about the story the narrator tells, which has a bitter urgency . . . The novel inhabits conventional motifs in order to renovate them . . . Brilliantly self-aware . . . Greenwell's novel impresses for many reasons, not least of which is how perfectly it fulfills its intentions. But it gains a different power from its uneasy atmosphere of psychic instability, of confession and penitence, of difficult forces acknowledged but barely mastered and beyond the conscious control of even this gifted novelist." ―James Wood, The New Yorker

"In Garth Greenwell's incandescent first novel, What Belongs to You, an old tale is made new and made punishing . . . Mr. Greenwell writes long sentences, pinned at the joints by semicolons, that push forward like confidently searching vines. There's suppleness and mastery in his voice. He seems to have an inborn ability to cast a spell . . . A writer who opens chasms rather than builds substandard bridges . . . A subtle observer of human interactions. He underscores the way expressions of love are nearly always, in part, performance." ―Dwight Garner, The New York Times

"A rich, important debut, an instant classic to be savored by all lovers of serious fiction because of, not despite, its subject: a gay man's endeavor to fathom his own heart." ―Aaron Hamburger, The New York Times Book Review

"Exquisite . . .Risk and desire are the 'coterminous' elements of the book's style as well as its action, terms of engagement Greenwell makes plain from its first page . . . Breathtaking . . . It's hard to tell at times whether the narrator is the innocent abroad or an American abroad among innocents. Greenwell's insight is that the destruction of innocence is a process that never halts." ―Christian Lorentzen, New York Magazine

“[What Belongs to You] is outstanding in just about every way a novel could be.” ―Drew Nellins Smith, Los Angeles Times

“Elegant . . . [Greenwell] describes with sensuous and often unflattering precision the union of shame and desire. . . beautifully wrought.” ―Sam Sacks, The Wall Street Journal

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Free Online Reading Bottomland: A Novel by Michelle Hoover

At once intimate and sweeping, Bottomland--the anticipated second novel from Michelle Hoover--follows the Hess family in the years after World War I as they attempt to rid themselves of the Anti-German sentiment that left a stain on their name. But when the youngest two daughters vanish in the middle of the night, the family must piece together what happened while struggling to maintain their life on the unforgiving Iowa plains.

In the weeks after Esther and Myrle's disappearance, their siblings desperately search for the sisters, combing the stark farmlands, their neighbors' houses, and the unfamiliar world of far-off Chicago. Have the girls run away to another farm? Have they gone to the city to seek a new life? Or were they abducted? Ostracized, misunderstood, and increasingly isolated in their tightly-knit small town in the wake of the war, the Hesses fear the worst. Told in the voices of the family patriarch and his children, this is a haunting literary mystery that spans decades before its resolution. Hoover deftly examines the intrepid ways a person can forge a life of their own despite the dangerous obstacles of prejudice and oppression. Read Online Book Bottomland: A Novel by Michelle Hoover Full Free

Review :

PRAISE FOR BOTTOMLAND

* A March Indie Next Pick
* An Amazon Best Book of the Month

"There are many compelling things about Michelle Hoover's potent new novel, Bottomland, not least of all her austere style and its visceral punch. . . . Hoover's story, set largely in the immediate wake of World War I, has so much contemporary resonance. Bottomland is transporting, for sure, as it travels back to a world where home-heating pipes were a novelty, where poor farm families had little to eat, less to say, and even less to celebrate. But the hatred and xenophobia that mark Hoover's plot aren't distant at all . . . As much as Bottomland evokes a grim American past with enough mastery to justify comparisons to Willa Cather, it also speaks of our present tense. . . . You're in the hands of a writer who won't disappoint." —Boston Globe

"A mystery wrapped in isolation and ethnic fear. . . . [An] atmospheric and engaging tale, which turns out to be as much about sibling rivalry as about mistrust and oppression." —Minneapolis Star Tribune

“Part mystery, part tragedy, part coming-of-age narrative . . . the depth of Bottomland makes for a beautiful second novel by Hoover.” —Chicago Book Review

"Hoover skillfully interweaves many of the Hess family members' narratives. Her descriptions of the bleak rural landscape is chilling. Fans of Jim Harrison's Legends of the Fall will enjoy the plot; Willa Cather enthusiasts will relish the setting; and Theodore Dreiser readers will savor the gritty characterizations." —Library Journal (starred review)

"A lyrical, at times mysterious, and dreamy tale of family ties . . . Deftly imagined and written, Hoover's second novel offers an intriguing, modern take on a classic American landscape." —Kirkus Reviews

"Hoover vividly describes the harsh realities of life on a farm, on the battlefield, and in a Chicago sweatshop through the eyes of masterfully drawn characters. A novel as poignant as it is clear-eyed." —Booklist

"Well-formed characters propel a consistently compelling tale." —Publishers Weekly

"Bottomland is more than a literary mystery. It's a trance, a poem, a lamentation, a benediction. And it's breathtaking. As in: remind yourself to breathe." —Rebecca Makkai, author of Music for Wartime and The Hundred-Year House

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Download Book When Falcons Fall (Sebastian St. Cyr Mystery) by C.S. Harris

The much-anticipated new entrée in the Sebastian St. Cyr “simply elegant”* historical mystery series, from the national bestselling author of Who Buries the Dead and Why Kings Confess.

Ayleswick-on-Teme, 1813. Sebastian St. Cyr, Viscount Devlin, has come to this seemingly peaceful Shropshire village to honor a slain friend and on a quest to learn more about his own ancestry. But when the body of a lovely widow is found on the banks of the River Teme, a bottle of laudanum at her side, the village’s inexperienced new magistrate turns to St. Cyr for help.
 
Almost immediately, Sebastian realizes that Emma Chance did not, in truth, take her own life. Less easy to discern is exactly how she died, and why. For as Sebastian and Hero soon discover, Emma was hiding both her true identity and her real reasons for traveling to Ayleswick. Also troubling are the machinations of Lucien Bonaparte, the estranged brother of the megalomaniac French Emperor Napoleon. Held captive under the British government’s watchful eye, the younger Bonaparte is restless, ambitious, and treacherous.
 
Sebastian’s investigation takes on new urgency when he discovers that Emma was not the first, or even the second, beautiful young woman in the village to die under suspicious circumstances. Home to the eerie ruins of an ancient monastery, Ayleswick reveals itself to be a dark and dangerous place of secrets that have festered among the villagers for decades—and a violent past that may be connected to Sebastian’s own unsettling origins. And as he faces his most diabolical opponent ever, he is forced to consider what malevolence he’s willing to embrace in order to destroy a killer. Read Online Book When Falcons Fall (Sebastian St. Cyr Mystery) by C.S. Harris Full Free

Review :

Praise for When Falcons Fall
“Both an engrossing tangled mystery and astonishing tale about a tragic search for identity. An excellent choice for St. Cyr fans and readers of historical mysteries”—Library Journal

Praise for Who Buries the Dead
 
“With such well-developed characters, intriguing plotlines, graceful prose, and keen sense of time and place based on solid research, this is historical mystery at its best.”—Booklist (starred review)
 
“This riveting historical tale of tragedy and triumph, with its sly nods to Jane Austen and her characters, will enthrall you!”—Sabrina Jeffries, New York Times bestselling author of How the Scoundrel Seduces
 
“Draws Sebastian St. Cyr and his wife, Hero, into greater danger than ever before. Unbearably exciting, filled with historical details, multiple suspects and, unexpectedly, Jane Austen, the reader will not be able to put this down.”—RT Book Reviews, Top Pick
 
“The solution, one of Harris’s trickiest, will appeal both to fair-play fans and those interested in a vivid evocation of the period.”—Publishers Weekly

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Read Free Book: Chaos Choreography: An InCryptid Novel by Seanan McGuire

Verity Price is back on the West Coast and getting back into the swing of the family business: cryptozoology. She's rescuing cryptids from bad situations, protecting them from monster-hunters, and generally risking life and limb for the greater good, with her ex-Covenant partner/husband, Dominic, by her side. Her ballroom dance career is behind her...or so she thinks. 
When Verity gets the call from the producers of Dance or Die, the reality show she almost won several years before, she finds the lure of a comeback impossible to resist, and she and Dominic are off to L.A. for one last shot at the big time.
 
Of course, nothing is that simple. When two of her fellow contestants turn up dead, Verity will need every ally she can find—and a couple she wasn't looking for—in order to navigate the complicated steps of both the tango and a murder investigation without blowing her cover. It doesn't help that her official family backup is her grandmother, Alice Price-Healy, who thinks "subtle" is something that happens to other people.

Winning this competition may have just become a matter of life and death. Read Online Book Chaos Choreography: An InCryptid Novel by Seanan McGuire Full Free

About The Author :
Seanan McGuire is a California-based author with a strong penchant for travel and can regularly be found just about anyplace capable of supporting human life (as well as a few places that probably aren’t). Early exposure to a vast number of books left her with a lifelong affection for the written word, and led, perhaps inevitably, to her writing books of her own, starting somewhere around the age of eleven. The October Daye novels are her first urban fantasy series, and the InCryptid novels are her second series, both published by DAW and bother of which have put her in the New York Times bestseller list. Seanan was the winner of the 2010 John W. Campbell Award for Best New Writer; Rosemary and Rue, the first novel in the October Daye series, was named one of the Top 20 Paranormal Fantasy Novels of the Past Decade; and her novel Feed, written under the name Mira Grant, was named as one of Publishers Weekly's Best Books of 2010.

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Read Free Book: Stone Field: A Novel from Christy Lenzi

A stunning debut novel that offers a new look at a classic love story about soul mates torn apart by the circumstances of their time.

Catrina Dickinson is haunted by her past and feels caged in by life in small town Missouri. When she discovers a strange man in Stone Field where her family grows their sorghum crop, her life takes on new meaning. He has no memory of who he is or what brought him to Cat's farm, but they fall passionately in love. Meanwhile, the country is on the brink of the Civil War, and the conflict in Missouri demands that everyone take a side before the bloodbath reaches their doorstep.

A passionate and atmospheric reimagining of Emily Bronte's Wuthering Heights, Stone Field explores how violence and vengeance perverts the human spirit, and how hatred can be transcended by love. Read Online Book Stone Field: A Novel from Christy Lenzi Full Free

Review :

"A first purchase for libraries wanting mature and sizzling YA historical fiction." -School Library Journal

"Lenzi ingeniously reimagines the English moors of Wuthering Heights as the rolling hills of Missouri." -BCCB

About The Author :

Christy Lenzi grew up in the hollows of the Ozarks until her family moved to new York when she turned thirteen. She now lives in California's sunny Central Valley, not far from the mountains, the big trees, and the Pacific Ocean. Stone Field is her first novel.

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Download Now Dimestore: A Writer's Life from Lee Smith

For the inimitable Lee Smith, place is paramount. For forty-five years, her fiction has lived and breathed with the rhythms and people of the Appalachian South. But never before has she written her own story.

Set deep in the mountains of Virginia, the Grundy of Lee Smith’s youth was a place of coal miners, tent revivals, mountain music, drive-in theaters, and her daddy’s dimestore. It was in that dimestore--listening to customers and inventing adventures for the store’s dolls--that she became a storyteller. Even when she was sent off to college to earn some “culture,” she understood that perhaps the richest culture she might ever know was the one she was driving away from--and it’s a place that she never left behind.

Dimestore’s fifteen essays are crushingly honest, wise and perceptive, and superbly entertaining. Smith has created both a moving personal portrait and a testament to embracing one’s heritage. It’s also an inspiring story of the birth of a writer and a poignant look at a way of life that has all but vanished. Read Online Book Dimestore: A Writer's Life from Lee Smith Full Free

Review :

“With restrained prose and charming humor, [Smith] illuminated a way of life that has all but disappeared and explores the impulse to bear witness that underpins the storyteller in all of us.” —People, Book of the Week
 
“…heartwarming… Dimestore shares the habits that may have saved Smith from her own tendency to get too “wrought up,” one of which was to approach storytelling “the way other people write in their journals,” in order to make it through the night. Fiction became her lifelong outlet, a means of sustaining and reaffirming the connection to her work, as well as a way to preserve the rich mountain culture she so loved as a child.” —AtlantaJournal-Constitution
 
“Dimestore may prove to be a work that connects wildly with readers. Because truth is often more powerful than fiction, and because the tale she has actually lived so far to tell is rendered keenly, irrepressibly and without self-pity. Lee Smith, the person, emerges as one of nonfiction’s great protagonists.” —Raleigh News & Observer

“Now, at last, we have Dimestore: A Writer’s Life, a seasoned, open-hearted memoir….  Yes, Lee Smith is a writer, and without that, we probably would not have this engrossing memoir. But at heart, Lee Smith is a woman – openhearted, spirited, humble – and it is those qualities especially that inspire and make us glad as we read.” —Charlotte Observer
 
“…profoundly readable… Like her novels, Smith’s memoir is intimate, as though writer and reader are sitting together on a front-porch swing. She writes in the rich vernacular of her youth. Smith’s details are so piercingly remembered, so vividly set on the page, that I felt wrapped in a great blanket of familiarity. Her memoir is a warm, poignant read about a lost time and place, a love of books and a celebration of the quirks and oddities of home.” —Minneapolis Star Tribune

“Lee Smith’s memoir, Dimestore, is both a gorgeous remembrance of an Appalachian girlhood and an engrossing look at the makings of a writer. Her recollections Saturday-evening bluegrass, molded pink salad, small-town community before the age of Wi-Fi and the electrifying childhood thrill of finding a good book invite us to revisit our vanishing past.” —MORE Magazine

“This memoir is Smith at her finest. There is not one false note in the book. This wonderful memoir—filled with tenderness, compassion, love, and humor—is highly recommended for fans of Smith’s fiction, lovers of Southern writing, and readers who are interested in the changes in small-town America.” —Library Journal, starred review

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Read Online Nora & Kettle (A Paper Stars Novel) from Lauren Nicolle Taylor

Fans of Eleanor & Park and The Book Thief will love this startling and heart-warming take on Peter Pan.
 
What if Peter Pan was a homeless kid just trying to survive, and Wendy flew away for a really good reason?
 
Seventeen-year-old Kettle has had his share of adversity. As an orphaned Japanese American struggling to make a life in the aftermath of an event in history not often referred to―the internment of Japanese Americans during World War II and the removal of children from orphanages for having "one drop of Japanese blood in them"―things are finally looking up. He has his hideout in an abandoned subway tunnel, a job, and his gang of Lost Boys.
 
Desperate to run away, the world outside her oppressive brownstone calls to naïve, eighteen-year-old Nora―the privileged daughter of a controlling and violent civil rights lawyer who is building a compensation case for the interned Japanese Americans. But she is trapped, enduring abuse to protect her younger sister Frankie and wishing on the stars every night for things to change.
 
For months, they've lived side by side, their paths crossing yet never meeting. But when Nora is nearly killed and her sister taken away, their worlds collide as Kettle, grief stricken at the loss of a friend, angrily pulls Nora from her window.
 
In her honeyed eyes, Kettle sees sadness and suffering. In his, Nora sees the chance to take to the window and fly away.
 
Set in 1953, NORA AND KETTLE explores the collision of two teenagers facing extraordinary hardship. Their meeting is inevitable, devastating, and ultimately healing. Their stories, a collection of events, are each on their own harmless. But together, one after the other, they change the world. Read Online Book Nora & Kettle (A Paper Stars Novel) from Lauren Nicolle Taylor Full Free

Review :

Lyrically written, this powerful and at times painful read captures the reader and does not let go. 
(Booklist Starred Review)

A poetically written novel about two strong-willed characters who will do whatever they can to ensure the safety of the people they love. Nora and Kettle is an exhilarating read and I highly recommend it.  

(Ellen Zaccarias)

The author imbues the story with a fable-like quality through her beautiful, lyrical, and poetic prose, full of rich metaphors and similes. Best read of the year so far.

(Books Direct)

This is THE book that most people, if not everyone, should read because it actually shows us a whole new meaning to understanding POC and also the stuffs that go on behind closed doors. 

(Once Upon a Story)

I won't be forgetting this one in a long time. I love books that make me take a step back and help me appreciate just how lucky I am to have a roof over my head and a loving family. I can't wait to read more from Lauren Nicolle Taylor.

(Louisa Boath, Netgalley Reviewer)

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Online Reading The Study of Seduction (The Sinful Suitors) by Sabrina Jeffries

A marriage of convenience ignites into a passionate love affair in the hotly anticipated second novel inNew York Times and USA TODAY bestselling author Sabrina Jeffries’s addictive Sinful Suitors series!

When Edwin Barlow, the Earl of Blakeborough, agrees to help his best friend’s impetuous ward, Lady Clarissa Lindsey, in her time of need, he knows he’s in for trouble. He’s been hunting for someone to wed, and she’ll just get in the way. Although captivated by the witty, free-spirited beauty, he fears she’d be all wrong as a wife...if she would even take such a gruff cynic for her husband. Yet he wants nothing more than to have her for his own.

Clarissa has no intention of marrying anyone—not Edwin, whom she’s sure would be an overbearing husband, and certainly not the powerful French diplomat stalking her. But when matters escalate with the diplomat, she chooses Edwin’s gallant offer of a marriage between friends in hopes that it will deter her stalker. She expects nothing more than an amiable union, but their increasingly tempestuous kisses prove more than she bargained for. When her stalker’s vow to expose the lovers’ deepest secrets threatens to destroy their blossoming attraction, will their tenuous bond withstand public ruin, or will Edwin lose all that’s important to him to protect his bride? Read Online Book The Study of Seduction (The Sinful Suitors) by Sabrina Jeffries Full Free

About The Author :
Sabrina Jeffries is the New York Times and USA TODAY bestselling author of several Regency-set historical romance series, including the Royal Brotherhood, the School for Heiresses, the Hellions of Halstead Hall, the Duke’s Men, and the Sinful Suitors. Whatever time is not spent writing in a coffee-fueled haze is spent traveling with her husband and adult autistic son or indulging in one of her passions: jigsaw puzzles, chocolate, music, and costume parties. With more than eight million books in print in twenty languages, the North Carolina author never regrets tossing a budding career in academics for the sheer joy of writing fun fiction and hopes that one day a book of hers will end up saving the world. She always dreams big.

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The Study of Seduction (The Sinful Suitors) from Sabrina Jeffries

Online Reading Burn Baby Burn from Meg Medina

While violence runs rampant throughout New York, a teenage girl faces danger within her own home in Meg Medina's riveting coming-of-age novel.

Nora Lopez is seventeen during the infamous New York summer of 1977, when the city is besieged by arson, a massive blackout, and a serial killer named Son of Sam who shoots young women on the streets. Nora’s family life isn’t going so well either: her bullying brother, Hector, is growing more threatening by the day, her mother is helpless and falling behind on the rent, and her father calls only on holidays. All Nora wants is to turn eighteen and be on her own. And while there is a cute new guy who started working with her at the deli, is dating even worth the risk when the killer likes picking off couples who stay out too late? Award-winning author Meg Medina transports us to a time when New York seemed balanced on a knife-edge, with tempers and temperatures running high, to share the story of a young woman who discovers that the greatest dangers are often closer than we like to admit — and the hardest to accept. Read Online Book Burn Baby Burn from Meg Medina Full Free

Review :

Rooted firmly in historical events, Medina's latest offers up a uniquely authentic slice-of-life experience set against a hazy, hot, and dangerous NYC backdrop. Rocky and Donna Summer and the thumping beats of disco, as well as other references from the time, capture the era, while break-ins, fires, shootings, and the infamous blackout bring a harrowing sense of danger and intensity...An important story of one of New York City's most dangerous times.
—Kirkus Reviews (starred review)

Medina weaves historical context throughout Nora’s first-person narrative, expertly cultivating a rich sense of atmosphere while still keeping her characters sharply in the foreground...Powerfully moving, this stellar piece of historical fiction emphasizes the timeless concerns of family loyalty and personal strength, while highlighting important issues that still resonate today.
—Booklist (starred review)

Medina uses Nora’s story to seamlessly connect readers to an unforgettable period in history, the setting leaving readers thirsting for more information about the summer of 1977. The character development is tight and accurately constructed. Medina holds nothing back, shedding light on the characters’ flaws, which teens today will be able to relate to. Medina is on point with the teen voices, evoking their intense fear, panic, and dreams. A devastatingly intense story, this work is a must-have for all collections, especially where Ruta Sepetys’s books are popular.
—School Library Journal (starred review)

This vividly evoked coming-of-age story is set against actual events in 1977 New York City...Nora is an empathetic character, and Medina depicts her troubled family and their diverse Queens neighborhood with realistic, everyday detail. Numerous references to New York’s budget crisis, arson wave, and "Son of Sam" newspaper stories deliberately ground the story in a real time and place, while an ample sprinkling of seventies disco and funk song references creates a brighter soundtrack for the dreams and romance of teenage girls, hinting at a hopeful future for Nora.
—The Horn Book (starred review)

Nora is strong and believable, a possible romance has heat, and Medina (Yaqui Delgado Wants to Kick Your Ass) gets gritty 1977 New York City right: feminism and disco in the air, Son of Sam, and—come July—the blackout and the ensuing looting and fires...elements in this coming-of-age story are elegantly and eloquently explored.
—Publishers Weekly

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Read Online Imbeciles: The Supreme Court, American Eugenics, and the Sterilization of Carrie Buck from Adam Cohen

One of America’s great miscarriages of justice, the Supreme Court’s infamous 1927 Buck v. Bell ruling made government sterilization of “undesirable” citizens the law of the land
 
New York Times bestselling author Adam Cohen tells the story in Imbeciles of one of the darkest moments in the American legal tradition: the Supreme Court’s decision to champion eugenic sterilization for the greater good of the country. In 1927, when the nation was caught up in eugenic fervor, the justices allowed Virginia to sterilize Carrie Buck, a perfectly normal young woman, for being an “imbecile.”

It is a story with many villains, from the superintendent of the Dickensian Virginia Colony for Epileptics and Feebleminded who chose Carrie for sterilization to the former Missouri agriculture professor and Nazi sympathizer who was the nation’s leading advocate for eugenic sterilization.  But the most troubling actors of all were the eight Supreme Court justices who were in the majority – including William Howard Taft, the former president; Louis Brandeis, the legendary progressive; and Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr., America’s most esteemed justice, who wrote the decision urging the nation to embark on a program of mass eugenic sterilization.

Exposing this tremendous injustice—which led to the sterilization of 70,000 Americans—Imbecilesoverturns cherished myths and reappraises heroic figures in its relentless pursuit of the truth. With the precision of a legal brief and the passion of a front-page exposé, Cohen’s Imbeciles is an unquestionable triumph of American legal and social history, an ardent accusation against these acclaimed men and our own optimistic faith in progress. Read Online Book Imbeciles: The Supreme Court, American Eugenics, and the Sterilization of Carrie Buck from Adam Cohen Full Free

Review :

“This well-written narrative of legal history demonstrates what happens when the powerful and elite in society fail to protect the powerless and poor…Imbeciles combines an investigative journalist’s instinct for the misuse of power, a lawyer’s analytic abilities, and a historian’s eye for detail to tell this compelling and emotional story…[The book] serves as a cautionary tale about what may happen when those who have, or obtain, power use the institutions of government and the law to advance their own interests at the expense of those who are poor, disadvantaged, or of different ‘hereditary’ stock.”—Los Angeles Review of Books 

“[IMBECILES is] the story of an assault upon thousands of defenseless people seen through the lens of a young woman, Carrie Buck, locked away in a Virginia state asylum. In meticulously tracing her ordeal, Cohen provides a superb history of eugenics in America, from its beginnings as an offshoot of social Darwinism—human survival of the fittest—to its rise as a popular movement, advocating the state-sponsored sterilization of ‘feeble-minded, insane, epileptic, inebriate, criminalistics and other degenerate persons.’”—David Oshinksy, The New York Times Book Review (cover review)
 
“In this detailed and riveting study, Cohen captures the obsession with eugenics in 1920s America… Cohen's outstanding narrative stands as an exposé of a nearly forgotten chapter in American history.”—Publishers Weekly(starred review)

“IMBECILES indicts and convicts any number of villains, albeit with proper judicial restraint. Cohen mostly lets the facts speak for themselves…[and] skillfully frames the case within the context of the early 20th century eugenics movement…[The book’s] considerable power lies in Cohen’s closer examination of the principal actors…Buck v. Bell has never been overturned. But thanks to Adam Cohen, we shall never forget it.” —Boston Globe 
 
“Cohen…tells the shocking story of one of the greatest miscarriages of justice in U.S. history…and demonstrates to a fare-thee-well how every step along the way, our system of justice failed…The last chapter of the case of Carrie Buck, Cohen reveals, hasn't been written…IMBECILES leaves you wondering whether it can happen here — again.”—Minneapolis Star Tribune 

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