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Tracy Flick can't win [sound recording] : a novel / by Perrotta, Tom,1961-author.; Simon & Schuster Audio (Firm),publisher.;
Read by various performers."Tracy Flick is back and, once again, the iconic protagonist of Tom Perrotta's Election-and Reese Witherspoon's character from the classic movie adaptation-is determined to take high school politics by storm. Tracy Flick is a hardworking assistant principal at a public high school in suburban New Jersey. Still ambitious but feeling a little stuck and underappreciated in midlife, Tracy gets a jolt of good news when the longtime principal, Jack Weede, abruptly announces his retirement, creating a rare opportunity for Tracy to ascend to the top job. Energized by the prospect of her long-overdue promotion, Tracy throws herself into her work with renewed zeal, determined to prove her worth to the students, faculty, and School Board, while also managing her personal life-a ten-year-old daughter, a needy doctor boyfriend, and a burgeoning meditation practice. But nothing ever comes easily to Tracy Flick, no matter how diligent or qualified she happens to be. Among her many other responsibilities, Tracy is enlisted to serve on the Selection Committee for the brand-new Green Meadow High School Hall of Fame. Her male colleagues' determination to honor Vito Falcone-a star quarterback of dubious character who had a brief, undistinguished career in the NFL-triggers bad memories for Tracy, and leads her to troubling reflections about the trajectory of her own life and the forces that have left her feeling thwarted and disappointed, unable to fulfill her true potential. As she broods on the past, Tracy becomes aware of storm clouds brewing in the present. Is she really a shoo-in for the Principal job? Is the Superintendent plotting against her? Why is the School Board President's wife trying so hard to be her friend? And why can't she ever get what she deserves? In classic Perrotta style, Tracy Flick Can't Win is a sharp, darkly comic page-turner, and a pitch-perfect reflection on our current moment. Flick fans and newcomers alike will love this compulsively readable novel chronicling the second act of one of the most memorable characters of our time"--
Subjects: Audiobooks.; Humorous fiction.; Novels.; Assistant school principals; High schools; Promotions;
Available copies: 1 / Total copies: 1
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The housemaid is watching / by McFadden, Freida,author.;
""You must be our new neighbors!" Mrs. Lowell gushes and waves across the picket fence. I clutch my daughter's hand and smile back: but the second Mrs. Lowell sees my husband a strange expression crosses her face. In that moment I make a promise. We finally have a family home. My past is far, far behind us. And I'll do anything to keep it that way ... I used to clean other people's houses - now, I can't believe this home is actually mine. The charming kitchen, the quiet cul-de-sac, the huge yard where my kids can play. My husband and I saved for years to give our children the life they deserve. Even though I'm wary of our new neighbor Mrs. Lowell, when she invites us over for dinner it's our chance to make friends. Her maid opens the door wearing a white apron, her hair in a tight bun. I know exactly what it's like to be in her shoes. But her cold stare gives me chills ... The Lowells' maid isn't the only strange thing on our street. I'm sure I see a shadowy figure watching us. My husband leaves the house late at night. And when I meet a woman who lives across the way, her words chill me to the bone: Be careful of your neighbors. Did I make a terrible mistake moving my family here? I thought I'd left my darkest secrets behind. But could this quiet suburban street be the most dangerous place of all?"--
Subjects: Thrillers (Fiction); Domestic fiction.; Psychological fiction.; Novels.; Family secrets; Neighbors; Secrecy; Spouses; Women household employees;
Available copies: 0 / Total copies: 4
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Mind Games A Novel [electronic resource] : by Roberts, Nora.aut; LaVoy, January.nrt; cloudLibrary;
"Narrator January LaVoy brings a richly layered performance to a story.... She expertly handles the large cast of multigenerational characters" —AudioFile on Hideaway The #1 New York Times-bestselling author of Identity presents a suspenseful new novel of tragedy and trauma, love and family, and the evil that awaits. As they do each June, the Foxes have driven the winding roads of Appalachia to drop off their children for a two-week stay at their grandmother’s. Here, twelve-year-old Thea can run free and breathe in the smells of pine and fresh bread and Grammie’s handmade candles. But as her parents head back to suburban Virginia, they have no idea they’re about to cross paths with a ticking time bomb. Back in Kentucky, Thea and her grandmother Lucy both awaken from the same nightmare. And though the two have never discussed the special kind of sight they share, they know as soon as their tearful eyes meet that something terrible has happened. The kids will be staying with Grammie now in Redbud Hollow, and thanks to Thea’s vision, their parents’ killer will spend his life in supermax. Over time, Thea will make friends, build a career, find love. But that ability to see into minds and souls still lurks within her, and though Grammie calls it a gift, it feels more like a curse—because the inmate who shattered her childhood has the same ability. Thea can hear his twisted thoughts and witness his evil acts from miles away. He knows it, and hungers for vengeance. A long, silent battle will be waged between them—and eventually bring them face to face, and head to head… A Macmillan Audio production from St. Martin’s Press.
Subjects: Audiobooks.; Contemporary Women;
© 2024., Macmillan Audio,
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In the darkroom / by Faludi, Susan,author.;
"'In the summer of 2004 I set out to investigate someone I scarcely knew, my father. The project began with a grievance, the grievance of a daughter whose parent had absconded from her life. I was in pursuit of a scofflaw, an artful dodger who had skipped out on so many things--obligation, affection, culpability, contrition. I was preparing an indictment, amassing discovery for a trial. But somewhere along the line, the prosecutor became a witness.' So begins Susan Faludi's extraordinary inquiry into the meaning of identity in the modern world and in her own haunted family saga. When the feminist writer learned that her 76-year-old father--long estranged and living in Hungary--had undergone sex reassignment surgery, that investigation would turn personal and urgent. How was this new parent who claimed to be "a complete woman now" connected to the silent, explosive, and ultimately violent father she had known? Faludi chases that mystery into the recesses of her suburban childhood and her father's many previous incarnations: American dad, Alpine mountaineer, swashbuckling adventurer in the Amazon outback, Jewish fugitive in Holocaust Budapest. When the author travels to Hungary to reunite with her father, she drops into a labyrinth of dark histories and dangerous politics in a country hell-bent on repressing its past and constructing a fanciful--and virulent--nationhood. The search for identity that has transfixed our century was proving as treacherous for nations as for individuals. Faludi's struggle to come to grips with her father's reinvented self takes her across borders--historical, political, religious, sexual--to bring her face to face with the question of the age: Is identity something you "choose," or is it the very thing you can't escape?"--
Subjects: Biographies.; Faludi, Susan; Authors, American; Women journalists; Fathers and daughters.; Identity (Psychology); Sex change; Male-to-female transsexuals;
Available copies: 1 / Total copies: 1
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The great state of West Florida : a novel / by Wascom, Kent,1986-author.;
"It's 2026, and Rally is thirteen years old. The long, hot Louisiana summer looms before him like a face-melting stretch of blacktop, and the country is talking civil war while his adoptive family acts more vicious than ever. Rally spends his days wondering about his dead father's people, the Woolsacks of West Florida, who long ago led a failed rebellion to carve their own state from the swamp and sugar-sand of the coast. That family might have been his too--if his mother and a crew of vigilantes hadn't tried to kill them all back when he was a baby. Rally lives in the shadow of guilt and in fear of the only other survivors: his uncle Rodney, now a professional gunfighter on the app DU3L, where would-be shooters square off in armed combat, and his mysterious cousin Destiny, whereabouts unknown, whose own violence brought the massacre to a screeching end. When the Woolsacks' legacy is co-opted by Troy Yarbrough, a far-right politician leading a movement to turn the Florida panhandle into a white Christian ethnostate, Rodney bursts into Rally's life, taking him on a journey into the wild heart of West Florida, where they join forces with a woman known only as the Governor--part prophet, part machine, with her own blazing vision for West Florida. Soon Rally will learn what West Florida means to the Woolsacks, and the lengths to which they will go to protect it, all while he falls for the machine-gun-toting, ATV-riding girl next door. An explosive, genre-redefining take on family, violence, and the costs of preserving a legacy in a sun-soaked world of megachurch magnates, suburban guerillas, and robotic warriors, The Great State of West Florida is also the tender coming-of-age story of a young man caught in the wheels of something bigger than he knows"--
Subjects: Bildungsromans.; Satirical fiction.; Novels.; Families; Generational trauma; Political violence; Teenage boys; Teenagers; White nationalism;
Available copies: 1 / Total copies: 1
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The rise and fall of Osama bin Laden / by Bergen, Peter L.,1962-author.;
Includes bibliographical references and index.The world's leading expert on Osama bin Laden delivers for the first time the definitive biography of a man who set the course of American foreign policy for the 21st century, and whose ideological heirs we continue to battle today. In The Rise and Fall of Osama bin Laden, Peter Bergen provides the first reevaluation of the man responsible for precipitating America's long wars with al-Qaeda and its descendants, capturing bin Laden in all the dimensions of his life: as a family man, as a zealot, as a battlefield commander, as a terrorist leader, and as a fugitive. The book sheds light on his many contradictions: he was the son of a billionaire, yet insisted his family live like paupers. He adored his wives and children, depending on two of his wives, both of whom had PhDs, to make important strategic decisions. Yet he also brought ruin to his family. He was fanatically religious, yet willing to kill thousands of civilians in the name of Islam. He inspired deep loyalty yet, in the end, his bodyguards turned against him. And while he inflicted the most lethal act of mass murder in United States history, he failed to achieve any of his strategic goals. The lasting image we have of bin Laden in his final years is of an aging man with a graying beard watching old footage of himself, just another dad flipping through the channels with his remote. In the end, bin Laden died in a squalid suburban compound, far from the front lines of his holy war. And yet despite that unheroic denouement, his ideology lives on. Thanks to exclusive interviews with family members and associates, and documents unearthed only recently, Bergen's portrait of Osama will reveal for the first time who he really was and why he continues to inspire a new generation of jihadists.
Subjects: Biographies.; Bin Laden, Osama, 1957-2011.; Qaida (Organization); Terrorists; Terrorists; Fugitives from justice; Terrorism;
Available copies: 1 / Total copies: 1
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The innovation delusion : how our obsession wieth the new has disrupted the work that matters most / by Vinsel, Lee,1979-author.; Russell, Andrew L.,1975-author.;
Includes bibliographical references and index."For forty years, innovation has been the hottest buzzword in business. But what if the benefits of innovation have been exaggerated, and our obsession with the new has distracted us from the work that matters most? It's hard to avoid innovation these days. Nearly every product gets marketed as being disruptive, whether it's a new technology or a new toothbrush. But in this manifesto on the state of American work, historians of technology Lee Vinsel and Andrew Russell argue that our focus on shiny new things has made us poorer, less safe, and--ironically--less innovative. Drawing on years of original research and reporting, Russell and Vinsel show how our fixation on innovation has harmed every corner of the economy. Corporations have spent millions hiring chief innovation officers while their core businesses tanked. Computer science programs have focused on programming and development even though the overwhelming majority of jobs are in IT and maintenance. Suburban sprawl has saddled cities with expensive infrastructure and piles of deferred maintenance that they can't afford to fix. And sometimes, innovation even kills--like in 2018, when a Miami bridge hailed for its innovative design collapsed onto a highway and killed six people. Vinsel and Russell tell the at-times humorous, at-times alarming story of how we devalued the work that keeps our world going--and in so doing, wrecked our economy, left our public infrastructure derelict, and lined the pockets of consultants who combine the ego of Silicon Valley with the worst of Wall Street's greed. They offer a compelling plan for how we can shift our focus in resources away from the pursuit of growth at all costs, and back toward the people and technologies underpinning so much of modern life. For anyone concerned by the crumbling state of our roads, bridges, and airports, and the direction our economy is headed, The Innovation Delusion is a deeply necessary re-evaluation of a trend we can still disrupt"--
Subjects: New products.; Social responsibility of business.; Sustainable development.; Technological innovations; Technological innovations;
Available copies: 1 / Total copies: 1
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Unrequited infatuations : odyssey of a rock and roll consigliere : (a cautionary tale) / by Van Zandt, Steve,author.; Greenman, Ben,editor.;
Uncover never-before-told stories in this epic tale of self-discovery by a Rock n Roll disciple and member of the E Street Band. What story begins in a bedroom in suburban New Jersey in the early '60s, unfolds on some of the country's largest stages, and then ranges across the globe, demonstrating over and over again how Rock and Roll has the power to change the world for the better? This story. The first true heartbeat of Unrequited Infatuations is the moment when Stevie Van Zandt trades in his devotion to the Baptist religion for an obsession with Rock and Roll. Groups like the Beatles and the Rolling Stones created new ideas of community, creative risk, and principled rebellion. They changed him forever. While still a teenager, he met Bruce Springsteen, a like-minded outcast/true believer who became one of his most important friends and bandmates. As Miami Steve, Van Zandt anchored the E Street Band as they conquered the Rock and Roll world. And then, in the early '80s, Van Zandt stepped away from E Street to embark on his own odyssey. He refashioned himself as Little Steven, a political songwriter and performer, fell in love with Maureen Santoro who greatly expanded his artistic palette, and visited the world's hot spots as an artist/journalist to not just better understand them, but to help change them. Most famously, he masterminded the recording of "Sun City," an anti-apartheid anthem that sped the demise of South Africa's institutionalized racism and helped get Nelson Mandela out of prison. By the '90s, Van Zandt had lived at least two lives--one as a mainstream rocker, one as a hardcore activist. It was time for a third. David Chase invited Van Zandt to be a part of his new television show, the Sopranos--as Silvio Dante, he was the unconditionally loyal consiglieri who sat at the right hand of Tony Soprano (a relationship that oddly mirrored his real-life relationship with Bruce Springsteen). Underlying all of Van Zandt's various incarnations was a devotion to preserving the centrality of the arts, especially the endangered species of Rock. In the twenty-first century, Van Zandt founded a groundbreaking radio show (Little Steven's Underground Garage), created the first two 24/7 branded music channels on SiriusXM (Underground Garage and Outlaw Country), started a fiercely independent record label (Wicked Cool), and developed a curriculum to teach students of all ages through the medium of music history. He also rejoined the E Street Band for what has now been a twenty-year victory lap. ​Unrequited Infatuations chronicles the twists and turns of Stevie Van Zandt's always surprising life. It is more than just the testimony of a globe-trotting nomad, more than the story of a groundbreaking activist, more than the odyssey of a spiritual seeker, and more than a master class in rock and roll (not to mention a dozen other crafts). It's the best book of its kind because it's the only book of its kind.
Subjects: Biographies.; Autobiographies.; Van Zandt, Steve.; Rock musicians;
Available copies: 1 / Total copies: 1
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Saving Sam : the true story of an American's disappearance in Syria and his family's extraordinary fight to bring him home / by Goodwin, Sam,1989-author.;
"What would you do if your son suddenly disappeared in Syria, and you had no idea what had happened to him? Would you contact the FBI? The State Department? Pray? Would you Google "What to do if your son disappears in Syria"? When the unthinkable happened, the answer, in the case of Ann Goodwin and her husband Tag, was: all of the above. Their 30-year-old son Sam, who was attempting to become one of the few people in history to travel to every single country on the planet, vanished in a supposed safe-zone run by the Kurds on the Turkish border. At first, they didn't even realize he had been abducted: maybe the phone reception had gone down, they told themselves, as had happened plenty of times before when Sam was in an off-the-beaten-path place. Just wait, he'll call back soon. But Sam never did call back, and over the coming days, the horror of their situation quickly bore down on the Goodwins, a devout Catholic family of seven living a middle-class suburban lifestyle in St. Louis, Missouri. Frustrated and increasingly terrified, the Goodwins came to realize that they couldn't rely on their government to save Sam. They were going to have to do it themselves. This is the extraordinary story of Sam's abduction by the Syrian regime, who threatened to hand him over to ISIS for beheading if he did not confess to being a CIA spy. It's also the story of a Midwestern American family who transformed themselves into their own detective agency, building up a network of journalists, hostage negotiators, Middle East experts, Russian diplomats, Vatican envoys, and shady mercenaries, until eventually -- by nothing short of a miracle -- they found a secret backdoor into the heart of the Syrian intelligence service itself. Through multiple first-person narrators, Saving Sam recounts an inspiring and unforgettable saga that includes a travel journey to every country in the world, famous celebrities, heads of state, high-stakes diplomacy and critical life lessons around curiosity, uncertainty, prayer and what it ultimately means to be free. In a genuine, straightforward and sometimes humorous style, Sam draws on his experience as a hostage to demonstrate how we can all turn our own adversities into assets, whether it be in our personal, professional or spiritual lives"--
Subjects: Biographies.; Autobiographies.; Personal narratives.; Goodwin, Sam, 1989-; Goodwin, Sam, 1989-; Prisoners; Prisoners; Travelers;
Available copies: 1 / Total copies: 1
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