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Hate Follow A Novel [electronic resource] : by Quinn-Kong, Erin.aut; cloudLibrary;
"A rich and witty story with two complicated women at its heart, Hate Follow is a beautiful debut. Quinn-Kong's story of an influencer mom sued by her resentful daughter is of the moment, but its exploration of female power and privilege is timeless."   — Amanda Eyre Ward, New York Times bestselling author of Lovers and Liars This riveting, thought-provoking novel pulls back the curtain on influencer culture to reveal a story of a mother and daughter grappling with what they owe one another as they struggle to navigate life in the glaring public eye. Influencer Whitney Golden has it all: beautiful, photogenic children; a handsome new boyfriend; a gorgeous house; and designer clothes and beauty products that arrive on her doorstep every day. After spending years building her brand as a widowed mother of four (including twins!) to over a million followers, the thirty-seven-year-old is at the peak of her career. But it all comes to a screeching halt when Mia, her teenaged daughter, announces she’s tired of the social media life. She wants nothing more to do with her mother’s online brand—and demands that not just she, but her siblings and their deceased father be removed from Whitney’s Instagram, blog, and just about everywhere else on the internet. When Whitney doesn’t agree, Mia does the unthinkable: She sues her mother. What started as a family spat turns into a monumental case about child privacy, individual agency, and modern parenting that shatters Mia and Whitney’s relationship and wreaks havoc on both their lives. As the case ignites a media firestorm and unrelenting online bashing from a Greek chorus of internet snarkers, Whitney has to decide whether she’s willing to risk everything she’s built to win back her daughter.
Subjects: Electronic books.; Contemporary Women; Family Life;
© 2024., HarperCollins,
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Past Crimes A Van Shaw Novel: An Edgar Award Winner [electronic resource] : by Hamilton, Glen Erik.aut; cloudLibrary;
When his estranged grandfather is shot and left for dead, an Army Ranger plunges into the criminal underworld of his youth to find a murderer . . . and uncovers a shocking family secret From the time he was six years old, Van Shaw was raised by his Irish immigrant grandfather Donovan to be a thief—to boost cars, beat security alarms, crack safes, and burglarize businesses. But at eighteen, Dono's namesake and protégé suddenly broke all ties to that life and the people in it. Van escaped into the military, serving as an elite Army Ranger in Iraq and Afghanistan. Now, after ten years of silence, Dono has asked his grandson to come home to Seattle. "Tar abhaile, más féidir leat"—Come home, if you can. Taking some well-earned leave, Van heads to the Pacific Northwest, curious and a little unnerved by his grandfather's request. But when he arrives at Dono's house in the early hours of the morning, Van discovers the old thief bleeding out on the floor from a gunshot to the head. The last time the two men had seen each other Dono had also been lying on the floor—with Van pointing a gun at his heart. With a lifetime of tough history between him and the old man, the battle-tested Ranger knows the cops will link him to the crime. To clear his name and avenge his grandfather, Van must track down the shooter. Odds are strong that Dono knew the person. Was it a greedy accomplice? A disgruntled rival? Diving back into the illicit world he'd sworn to leave behind, Van reconnects with the ruthless felons who knew Dono best. Armed with his military and criminal skills, he follows a dangerous trail of clues that leads him deeper into Dono's life—and closer to uncovering what drove his grandfather to reach out after years of silence. As he plummets back into this violent, high-stakes world where right and wrong aren't defined by the law, Van finds that the past is all too present . . . and that the secrets held by those closest to him are the deadliest of all. Edgy and suspenseful, rich with emotional resonance, gritty action, and a deep-rooted sense of place, Past Crimes trumpets the arrival of a powerful new noir talent.
Subjects: Electronic books.; Military; Suspense; Crime;
© 2015., HarperCollins,
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Lapvona / by Moshfegh, Ottessa,author.;
"In a village in a medieval fiefdom buffeted by natural disasters, a motherless shepherd boy finds himself the unlikely pivot of a power struggle that puts all manner of faith to a savage test, in a spellbinding novel that represents Ottessa Moshfegh's most exciting leap yet Little Marek, the abused and delusional son of the village shepherd, never knew his mother; his father told him she died in childbirth. One of life's few consolations for Marek is his enduring bond with the blind village midwife, Ina, who suckled him when he was a baby, as she did so many of the village's children. Ina's gifts extend beyond childcare: she possesses a unique ability to communicate with the natural world. Her gift often brings her the transmission of sacred knowledge on levels far beyond those available to other villagers, however religious they might be. For some people, Ina's home in the woods outside of the village is a place to fear and to avoid, a godless place. Among their number is Father Barnabas, the town priest and lackey for the depraved lord and governor, Villiam, whose hilltop manor contains a secret embarrassment of riches. The people's desperate need to believe that there are powers that be who have their best interests at heart is put to a cruel test by Villiam and the priest, especially in this year of record drought and famine. But when fate brings Marek into violent proximity to the lord's family, new and occult forces upset the old order. By year's end, the veil between blindness and sight, life and death, the natural world and the spirit world, will prove to be very thin indeed"--
Subjects: Historical fiction.; Novels.; Fiefs; Middle Ages; Midwives; Shepherds;
Available copies: 1 / Total copies: 1
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The wife's tale : a personal history / by Aida Edemariam,author.;
"One remarkable woman--caught in the tumult of an extraordinary century in Ethiopia's history. Told by her granddaughter, Canadian journalist Aida Edemariam, Yetemegnu's story is of courage, struggle and survival. The wife's tale has the sweep and lyrical power that captivated readers of Abraham Verghese's Cutting for Stone, and of Michael Ondaatje's Running in the Family. Born in the northern Ethiopian city of Gondar in about 1916, and a child bride at eight years old, Aida Edemariam's grandmother once stood, shaking, as fascists searched her home for guns she knew were there; in the late 1930s and early 1940s she fled both Italian and Allied bombardment. When her husband was imprisoned, in the 1950s, Yetemegnu--a woman who had hardly left her own compound for three decades--managed to gain audiences with Emperor Haile Selassie I in Addis Ababa, to argue for justice, for revenge, and for the futures of her seven children. Widowed, she fought for thirteen years through courts unaccustomed to a woman determined to defend her assets. A feudal landlord herself, she felt the first tremors of the coming revolution, then, in the early 1970s, watched it burst into flower: night after night she listened, praying desperately, to the firing squads of the Red Terror doing their work next door, and endured yet more soldiers tramping through her home. In her sixties she learned to read, and eventually made a longed-for pilgrimage to Jerusalem. Told from Yetemegnu's own point of view, The wife's tale features a rich cast of characters--emperors and empresses, archbishops and slaves, priests and scholars, monks and nuns, Marxist revolutionaries and wartime double agents. But above all, there is Yetemegnu herself, grand and haughty and sometimes difficult but also vulnerable and incredibly generous and who, despite everything--the toil, the deaths, the cruelties and the many, many tears--retains an infectious sense of mischief and joy."--
Subjects: Biographies.; Yetemegnu Mekonnen.; Women;
Available copies: 1 / Total copies: 1
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A season in Chezgh'un : a novel / by McLeod, Darrel J.,author.;
"A subversive novel by acclaimed Cree author Darrel J. McLeod, infused with the contradictory triumph and pain of finding conventional success in a world that feels alien. James, a talented and conflicted Cree man from a tiny settlement in Northern Alberta, has settled into a comfortable middle-class life in Kitsilano, a trendy neighbourhood of Vancouver. He is living the life he had once dreamed of--travel, a charming circle of sophisticated friends, a promising career and a loving relationship with a caring man--but he chafes at being assimilated into mainstream society, removed from his people and culture. The untimely death of James's mother, his only link to his extended family and community, propels him into a quest to reconnect with his roots. He secures a job as a principal in a remote northern Dakelh community but quickly learns that life there isn't the fix he'd hoped it would be: His encounters with poverty, cultural disruption and abuse conjure ghosts from his past that drive him toward self-destruction. During the single year he spends in northern BC, James takes solace in the richness of the Dakelh culture--the indomitable spirit of the people, and the splendour of nature--all the while fighting to keep his dark side from destroying his life."--
Subjects: Psychological fiction.; Novels.; Friendship; Gay men; Indigenous children; Indigenous men; School principals; Teachers;
Available copies: 1 / Total copies: 1
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Better to have gone : love, death, and the quest for utopia in Auroville / by Kapur, Akash,author.;
Includes bibliographical references."A spellbinding story about love, faith, the search for utopia-and the often devastating cost of idealism. It's the late 1960s, and two lovers converge on an arid patch of earth in South India. John Walker is the handsome scion of a powerful East Coast American family. Diane Maes is a beautiful hippie from Belgium. They have come to build a new world-Auroville, an international utopian community for thousands of people. Their faith is strong, the future bright. So how do John and Diane end up dying two decades later, on the same day, on a cracked concrete floor in a thatch hut by a remote canyon? This is the mystery Akash Kapur sets out to solve in Better to Have Gone, and it carries deep personal resonance: Diane and John were the parents of Akash's wife, Auralice. Akash and Auralice grew up in Auroville; like the rest of their community, they never really understood those deaths. In 2004, Akash and Auralice return to Auroville from New York, where they have been living with John's family. As they reestablish themselves, along with their two sons, in the community, they must confront the ghosts of those distant deaths. Slowly, they come to understand how the tragic individual fates of John and Diane intersected with the collective history of their town. Better to Have Gone is a book about the human cost of our age-old quest for a more perfect world. It probes the underexplored yet universal idea of utopia, and it portrays in vivid detail the daily life of one utopian community. Richly atmospheric and filled with remarkable characters, spread across time and continents, this is narrative writing of the highest order-a heartbreaking, unforgettable story"--
Subjects: Maes, Diane.; Walker, John.; Utopias;
Available copies: 1 / Total copies: 1
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The beautiful people : a novel / by Gable, Michelle,author.;
Includes bibliographical references."It's 1961, and for Margo Hightower, everything is about to change. True, her engagement is off, her family has fallen in scandal, and she's completely broke. But she's just been hired as an assistant to photographer Slim Aarons--famous for his vibrant pictures of high society, royalty, and Hollywood stars--and she knows this opportunity is her ticket to something better. From the bright beaches of Acapulco to glitzy parties in New York, Margo is thrown headfirst into the glamorous jet-set world she so covets, observing its ways from behind the camera as Slim's sidekick. There's Jackie Kennedy, Truman Capote and his Swans, a host of Vanderbilts. Beautiful people in beautiful places. But when they land in Palm Beach, a scene with few rules and many riches, the lines between work and play begin to blur. As Margo becomes swept up in the city's social circle--and into a friendship with heiress and rising fashion designer Lilly Pulitzer--the golden life seems increasingly in reach. Until she finds herself entangeled in a complicated web of loyalties and secrets that could bring it all crashing down ... "--
Subjects: Historical fiction.; Novels.; Celebrities; Man-woman relationships; Nineteen sixties; Photographers; Photography; Secrecy; Women photographers;
Available copies: 2 / Total copies: 2
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Reagan : an American journey / by Spitz, Bob,author.;
"From New York Times bestselling biographer Bob Spitz, a full and rich biography of an epic American life, capturing what made Ronald Reagan both so beloved and so transformational. More than five years in the making, based on hundreds of interviews and access to previously unavailable documents, and infused with irresistible storytelling charm, Bob Spitz's Reagan stands fair to be the first truly post-partisan biography of our 40th President, and thus a balm for our own bitterly divided times. It is the quintessential American triumph, brought to life with cinematic vividness: a young man is born into poverty and raised in a series of flyspeck towns in the Midwest by a pious mother and a reckless, alcoholic, largely absent father. Severely near-sighted, the boy lives in his own world, a world of the popular books of the day, and finds his first brush with popularity, even fame, as a young lifeguard. Thanks to his first great love, he imagines a way out, and makes the extraordinary leap to go to college, a modest school by national standards, but an audacious presumption in the context of his family's station. From there, the path is only very dimly lit, but it leads him, thanks to his great charm and greater luck, to a solid career as a radio sportscaster, and then, astonishingly, fatefully, to Hollywood. And the rest, as they say, is history. Bob Spitz's Reagan is an absorbing, richly detailed, even revelatory chronicle of the full arc of Ronald Reagan's epic life - giving full weight to the Hollywood years, his transition to politics and rocky but ultimately successful run as California governor, and ultimately, of course, his iconic presidency, filled with storm and stress but climaxing with his peace talks with the Soviet Union that would serve as his greatest legacy. It is filled with fresh assessments and shrewd judgments, and doesn't flinch from a full reckoning with the man's strengths and limitations. This is no hagiography: Reagan was never a brilliant student, of anything, and his disinterest in hard-nosed political scheming, while admirable, meant that this side of things was left to the other people in his orbit, not least his wife Nancy; sometimes this delegation could lead to chaos, and worse. But what emerges as a powerful signal through all the noise is an honest inherent sweetness, a gentleness of nature and willingness to see the good in people and in this country, that proved to be a tonic for America in his time, and still is in ours. It was famously said that FDR had a first-rate disposition and a second-rate intellect. Perhaps it is no accident that only FDR had as high a public approval rating leaving office as Reagan did, or that in the years since Reagan has been closing in on FDR on rankings of Presidential greatness. Written with love and irony, which in a great biography is arguably the same thing, Bob Spitz's masterpiece will give no comfort to partisans at either extreme; for the rest of us, it is cause for celebration"--
Subjects: Biographies.; Reagan, Ronald.; Presidents; Governors; Motion picture actors and actresses;
Available copies: 1 / Total copies: 1
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The ancients / by Larison, John,author.;
"A richly imagined, sweeping novel set in the climate-changed world of our own descendants, by the acclaimed author of WHISKEY WHEN WE'RE DRY. A young boy and his older sisters find themselves suddenly and utterly alone, orphaned in an abandoned fishing village. Their food supplies dwindling, they set out across a breathtaking yet treacherous wilderness in search of the last of their people. Down the coast, raiders deliver the children's mother, along with the rest of their human cargo, to the last port city of a waning empire. Determined to reunite with her family, she plots her escape - while her fellow captives plan open revolt. At the center of power in this crumbling city, a young scholar inherits his father's business and position of privilege, along with the burden of his debts. As the empire's elite prepare to flee to new utopia across the sea, he must decide where his allegiance lies. With a rapidly changing climate shifting the sands beneath their feet, these three paths converge in a struggle for the future of humanity - who will inherit what remains and who gets to tell its story. At once a sweeping survival story; an epic of the distance future; and a post-apocalyptic vision of hope and optimism, THE ANCIENTS weaves a multilayered narrative about human resilience, hope, and stewardship of our world for future generations."--
Subjects: Science fiction.; Apocalyptic fiction.; Novels.; Climatic changes; Orphans; Regression (Civilization); Siblings; Survival;
Available copies: 0 / Total copies: 1
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Paradise of the damned : the true story of an obsessive quest for El Dorado, the legendary city of gold / by Thomson, Keith,1965-author.;
Includes bibliographical references and index.The transporting account of an obsessive quest to find El Dorado, set against the backdrop of Elizabethan political intrigue and a competition with Spanish conquistadors for the legendary city's treasure. As early as 1530, reports of El Dorado, a city of gold in the South American interior, beckoned to European explorers. Whether there was any truth to the stories remained to be seen, but the allure of unimaginable riches was enough to ensnare dozens of would-be heroes and glory hounds in the desperate hunt. Among them was Sir Walter Raleigh: ambitious courtier, confidant to Queen Elizabeth, and, before long, El Dorado fanatic. Entering the Elizabethan court as an upstart from a family whose days of nobility were far behind them, Raleigh used his military acumen, good looks, and sheer audacity to scramble into the limelight. Yet that same swagger proved to be his undoing, as his secret marriage to a lady-in-waiting enraged Queen Elizabeth and landed him in the Tower of London. Between his ensuing grim prospects at court and his underlying lust for adventure, the legend of El Dorado became an unwavering siren song that hypnotized Raleigh. On securing his release, he journeyed across an ocean to find the fabled city, gambling his painstakingly acquired wealth, hard-won domestic bliss, and his very life. What awaited him in the so-called New World were endless miles of hot, dense jungle packed with deadly flora and fauna, warring Spanish conquistadors and Indigenous civilizations, and other unforeseen dangers. Meanwhile, back at home, his multitude of rivals plotted his demise. Paradise of the Damned, like Keith Thomson's critically acclaimed Born to Be Hanged, brings this story to life in lush and captivating detail. The book charts Raleigh's obsessive search for El Dorado -- as well as the many doomed expeditions that preceded and accompanied his -- providing not only an invaluable history but also a gripping narrative of traveling to the ends of the earth only to realize, too late, that what lies at home is the greatest treasure of all.
Subjects: Biographies.; Raleigh, Walter, Sir, 1552?-1618.; El Dorado.; Explorers;
Available copies: 1 / Total copies: 1
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