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The Dark Cove Theatre Society [electronic resource] : by Riley, Sierra Marilyn.aut; CloudLibrary;
An aspiring young actor must find her place at a cutthroat arts boarding school in this gothic YA debut for fans of Ace of Spades and If We Were Villains. Violet Costantino knows she is already on thin ice this school year: her scholarship has taken a significant hit due to her panic attack during her final performance in acting class last semester—which simultaneously shattered her dreams of becoming a leading lady. This year, she is determined to keep her head down and just get through unscathed. But the school seems to have other plans for Violet: to her extreme foreboding, she is cast as one of the leads in the annual Halloween play. What’s worse, the beautiful, infuriatingly talented Frankie Lin and Violet’s ex-crush, Hunter Kinsey, are both cast as her love interests. Despite her initial reluctance, Violet is drawn in by the glamor of the Dark Cove Theatre Society, and she cautiously starts believing that maybe she is cut out for this after all. But lurking in the shadows of Violet’s fragile self-confidence is the rumor of the Society curse, which is said to cause one cast member to drop out before opening night every year, mysteriously and without reason. In this captivating YA debut, The Dark Cove Theatre Society illustrates both the intoxicating and insidious nature of success and the price we are often forced to pay for it. Passages of found text—glimpses of the school’s handbook, secret letters, and other peeks into life at the Academy—seamlessly woven into the plot will immerse readers even further into the lush, magnetic world of Dark Cove.DARK ACADEMIA WITH A TWIST: This novel offers a classic dark academia setting with a critical lens on the intense pressures and toxic faculty dynamics students face. COMPELLING QUEER LOVE TRIANGLE: Diverse, realistic characters navigating identity, attraction, and ambition in a high-stakes environment. FOR THEATER ENTHUSIASTS: A must-read for theater fans as the story weaves in dramatic performance elements and backstage intrigue. DEBUT: This is Sierra Riley’s first book. MENTAL HEALTH REPRESENTATION: Thoughtfully portrays mental health challenges, especially the impact of panic attacks and anxiety, reflecting relatable struggles in the high-pressure world of performing arts. FOUND TEXT FOR IMMERSIVE EXPERIENCE: Integrates school handbooks, letters, poems, and other "found" texts to deepen the atmospheric world, fully engaging readers in its gothic aesthetic. SOCIAL ADVOCACY NARRATIVE: A powerful story about student resilience and activism, with students challenging toxic power dynamics in an arts environment that demands change. FOR FANS OF: Ace of Spades and How We Fall Apart LEVELING INFO: Coming soonYoung adult.
Subjects: Electronic books.; LGBT; Boarding School & Prep School; Theater & Musicals; Mental Illness;
© 2025., Annick Press,

Halal sex : the intimate lives of Muslim women in North America / by Benembarek, Sheima,author.; Eltahawy, Mona,1967-writer of foreword.;
"This unprecedented and compassionate glimpse into the sex lives of seven Muslim women across North America brings a hushed conversation out into the open. Sheima Benembarek's parents never gave her the "the talk." When she left Morocco to go to university in Montreal, she was completely unprepared to navigate an open and active sex life outside of marriage, considered haram within the Muslim world. Now, many years later, she's all too aware of how common this is among immigrants and the children of immigrants living on a more sexually liberated continent. She set out to eliminate the taboo, interviewing Muslims from of a variety of locations, ethnicities, Islamic sects, and socioeconomic backgrounds about a host of topics, from masturbation and hymens to sex work and BDSM. Halal Sex is the culmination of these conversations, distilled into seven rich and compelling stories. Among the subjects are Hind, a niqabi in a polygynous marriage; Azar, a non-binary trans Sufi; Taslim, a virgin in her forties struggling to erect healthy boundaries with her family; and Eman, a lesbian stand-up comic in an interfaith marriage. With great care and thoughtfulness, Benembarek reveals a tapestry of diverse Islam and of individuals forging a path forward, each in their own way: overcoming shame, filling in educational gaps, balancing familial pressures, pushing back against sexism and patriarchy, and--ultimately--prioritizing their own happiness and pleasure."--
Subjects: Muslim women; Muslim women; Muslim women;

Vera, or faith : a novel / by Shteyngart, Gary,1972-author.;
"The Bradford-Shmulkin family is falling apart. A very modern blend of Russian, Jewish, Korean, and New England WASP, they love one another deeply but the pressures of life in an unstable America are fraying their bonds. There's Daddy, a struggling, cash-thirsty editor whose Russian heritage gives him a surprising new currency in the upside-down world of twenty-first-century geopolitics; his wife, Anne Mom, a progressive, underfunded blue blood from Boston who's barely holding the household together; their son, Dylan, whose blond hair and Mayflower lineage provide him pride of place in the newly forming American political order; and, above all, the young Vera, half-Jewish, half-Korean, and wholly original. Observant, sensitive, and always writing down new vocabulary words, Vera wants only three things in life: to make a friend at school; Daddy and Anne Mom to stay together; and to meet her birth mother, Mom Mom, who will at last tell Vera the secret of who she really is and how to ensure love's survival in this great, mad, imploding world"--
Subjects: Domestic fiction.; Novels.; Adopted children; Families; Multiracial families; Preteen girls; Geopolitics;

Ethel Rosenberg : an American tragedy / by Sebba, Anne,author.;
Includes bibliographical references and index."New York Times bestselling author Anne Sebba's moving biography of Ethel Rosenberg, the wife and mother whose execution for espionage-related crimes defined the Cold War and horrified the world. In June 1953, Julius and Ethel Rosenberg, a couple with two young sons, were led separately from their prison cells on Death Row and electrocuted moments apart. Both had been convicted of conspiracy to commit espionage for the Soviet Union, despite the fact that the US government was aware that the evidence against Ethel was shaky at best and based on the perjury of her own brother. This book is the first to focus on one half of that couple for more than thirty years, and much new evidence has surfaced since then. Ethel was a bright girl who might have fulfilled her personal dream of becoming an opera singer, but instead found herself struggling with the social mores of the 1950's. She longed to be a good wife and perfect mother to her two small boys, while battling the political paranoia of the McCarthy era, anti-Semitism, misogyny, and a mother who never valued her. Because of her profound love for and loyalty to her husband, she refused to incriminate him, despite government pressure on her to do so. Instead, she courageously faced the death penalty for a crime she hadn't committed, orphaning her two young sons. Seventy years after her trial, this is the first time Ethel's story has been told with the full use of the dramatic and tragic prison letters she exchanged with her husband, her lawyer and her psychotherapist over a three-year period, two of them in solitary confinement. Hers is the resonant story of what happens when a government motivated by fear tramples on the rights of its citizens"--
Subjects: Biographies.; Rosenberg, Ethel, 1915-1953.; Communists; Spies;

Tommy Douglas and the quest for medicare in Canada / by Marchildon, Gregory P.,1956-author.;
Includes bibliographical references and index."How and why was universal health coverage implemented so early in a poverty-stricken province in Canada? Why was its design so faithfully replicated in the national standards that ultimately shaped Medicare across the rest of Canada? Seeking to answer these questions, Tommy Douglas and the Quest for Medicare in Canada explores the history of universal health care through the life of Canadian politician Tommy Douglas, identifying the pivotal moments and decisions that led to the establishment of Medicare in Canada. The book traces the origins of Medicare back to the 1930s Depression and its devastating impact on the Prairie populations. Marchildon examines how Tommy Douglas and a new generation of reformers, radicalized by the Depression, prioritized socialized health care. The book reveals how, as the provincial party leader, Douglas leveraged support from both local and external allies to rapidly implement universal hospital insurance and lay the groundwork for a new health system. Despite strong opposition from physician and business lobbies, Douglas continued to pressure the government for federal cost-sharing of universal health coverage. Drawing on archival sources including speeches, television broadcasts, and cabinet documents, Tommy Douglas and the Quest for Medicare in Canada illuminates how Douglas's vision, leadership, and coalition-building among unions were crucial to the successful establishment of Medicare in Canada"--
Subjects: Biographies.; Personal narratives.; Douglas, T. C. (Thomas Clement), 1904-1986.; Health insurance; Medical care; Medical policy;

The last king of California / by Harper, Jordan,author.; Cosby, S. A.,writer of foreword.;
"Jordan Harper's "darkly irresistible" novel, a tragic, Hamlet-esque noir for readers of S.A. Cosby and Don Winslow, now available for the first time in the United States. Written years before Jordan Harper's breakout success, Everybody Knows, this stirring and brutal bildungsroman tells the story of young Luke Crosswhite, who after years apart from his criminal family returns to their flock deep in the California desert. Luke's father is serving time for a brutal murder that Luke himself witnessed; now, his uncle vies for power and rival biker gangs encroach on the family's various criminal enterprises. A sensitive boy grown hard man, Luke navigates the vicious pressures of "home," and the loyalties to his old friend, Cassie, who has hatched a scheme with her boyfriend Pretty Baby to escape the control of the gang, the Combine. Hanging over these desperate, lonesome parties is the gang's motto, tattooed indelibly across the heart: Blood is Love. The Last King of California is a story of the West unlike any you will read"--
Subjects: Thrillers (Fiction); Bildungsromans.; Noir fiction.; Novels.; Belonging (Social psychology); Families; Family-owned business enterprises; Gangs; Homecoming; Organized crime; Self-realization;

Vera, or faith [text (large print)] : a novel / by Shteyngart, Gary,1972-author.;
"The Bradford-Shmulkin family is falling apart. A very modern blend of Russian, Jewish, Korean, and New England WASP, they love one another deeply but the pressures of life in an unstable America are fraying their bonds. There's Daddy, a struggling, cash-thirsty editor whose Russian heritage gives him a surprising new currency in the upside-down world of twenty-first-century geopolitics; his wife, Anne Mom, a progressive, underfunded blue blood from Boston who's barely holding the household together; their son, Dylan, whose blond hair and Mayflower lineage provide him pride of place in the newly forming American political order; and, above all, the young Vera, half-Jewish, half-Korean, and wholly original. Observant, sensitive, and always writing down new vocabulary words, Vera wants only three things in life: to make a friend at school; Daddy and Anne Mom to stay together; and to meet her birth mother, Mom Mom, who will at last tell Vera the secret of who she really is and how to ensure love's survival in this great, mad, imploding world"--
Subjects: Domestic fiction.; Large print books.; Novels.; Adopted children; Families; Multiracial families; Preteen girls; Geopolitics;

When calls the heart. [videorecording] / by Loughlin, Lori,actor.; Wagner, Jack,actor.; Lissing, Daniel,1981-actor.; Krakow, Erin,actor.; Shout! Factory (Firm),publisher.;
Lori Loughlin, Jack Wagner, Daniel Lissing, Erin Krakow.Elizabeth Thatcher (Krakow) is a strong-willed teacher who has foregone the life of the big city and found a job, a home (and a bit of unexpected romance with a handsome Mountie named Jack) in the small frontier town of Hope Valley. But life on the frontier can hand you many tough turns, and so it is for Jack and Elizabeth as they face their very different upbringings, the pressures put upon them by family, rival suitors and even various criminal counterfeiters and kidnappers in their quest to find their place in this remote and rugged land.PG.DVD.
Subjects: Video recordings for the hearing impaired.; Made-for-TV movies.; Women pioneers; Teachers; Man-woman relationships; Company towns;
For private home use only.

Death interrupted : how modern medicine is complicating the way we die / by Bigham, Blair,author.;
"In Death Interrupted, ICU doctor Blair Bigham shares his first-hand experiences of how medicine has complicated the way we die and offers a road map for dying in the modern era. Doctors today can call on previously unimaginable technologies to help keep our bodies alive. In this new era, most organs can be kept from dying almost indefinitely by machines. But this unprecedented shift in end-of-life care has created a major crisis. In the widening grey zone between life and death, doctors fight with doctors, families feel pressured to make tough decisions about their loved ones, and lawyers are left to argue life-and-death cases in the courts. Meanwhile, intensive care patients are caught in purgatory, attached to machines and unable to speak for themselves. In Death Interrupted, Dr. Blair Bigham seeks to help readers understand the options facing them at the end of their lives. Through conversations with end-of-life professionals--including ethicists, social workers, and nurses and doctors who practise palliative care--and observations from his own time working in ambulances, emergency rooms, and the ICU, Bigham exposes the tensions inherent in this new era of dying and answers the tough questions facing us all. Because now, for the first time in human history, we may be able to choose how our own story ends"--
Subjects: Death.; Medicine.; Terminal care.;

Did everyone have an imaginary friend (or just me)? : adventures in boyhood / by Ellis, Jay,1981-author.;
"What to do when you're the perpetual new kid, only child, military brat hustling school-to-school each year and everyone's looking to you for answers? Make some shit up, of course! And a young Jay Ellis does just that, with help from every child's favorite co-conspirator -- their imaginary best friend. Born in the perfect storm of especially ferocious rain and a sugar-fueled imagination, Mikey, his imaginary best friend, steps in to figuratively hold Jay's hand through various youthful shenanigans. A testament to the importance of imagination, trusting oneself, and making space for your creativity, Did Everyone Have an Imaginary Friend or Just Me? is a memoir of a 90s kid who confided in his imaginary sidekick to navigate everything from parallel pop culture universes, like watching Fresh Prince alongside John Hughes movies or listening to Ja Rule and Dave Matthews, to a lifetime of birthday disappointment (being a Christmas season Capricorn will do that to you) and hoop dreams gone bad. Mikey also guides him through greater tragedies, like losing his teenage cousin in a mistaken-target drive-by and the shame and fear of being pulled over by cops almost a dozen times the year he got his driver's license. As imaginary friend morphs into adult consciousness, Ellis charts an unforgettable story of looking within yourself for guidance to some of life's biggest (and smallest) challenges, told in the roast-you-with-love voice of your closest homie"--
Subjects: Biographies.; Autobiographies.; Personal narratives.; Ellis, Jay, 1981-; Ellis, Jay, 1981-; African American actors; African American children; Imaginary companions.;