Lucky Strike is the story of a young widow who is prospecting uranium with her children in Utah in 1954. Zafris’ characters, all mildly desperate, are searching less for ore than for themselves—for redemption, connection, even hope. Jean has sped west with her young children to give her seriously ill son one last adventure and to escape from the weight of too many failed relationships; camp neighbor, Jo, is struggling to endure marriage to a hateful man; and Harry, a salesman, is alienated from his Mormon heritage.
Only Jean’s daughter, Beth, recognizes the epic that is their common search for a thread of ore and riches in the desert Southwest.
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In The Sweet Life, Lynn York catches up with the good people of Swan’s Knob, North Carolina for another poignant, funny, and beautifully realized glimpse of small-town life.
It’s been eight years since Roy Swan successfully won the hand of the piano teacher and resident choir director, Miss Wilma, and their lives have settled into a state of happy predictability. All that changes with the arrival Miss Wilma’s teenage granddaughter and Harper, the girl’s father. When Harper convinces Roy to let him stage a “small” country and bluegrass concert in his pasture, it draws thousands of screaming fans,
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When Martin Grace enters the hip Philadelphia coffee shop Cornelia Brown manages, her life changes forever. Charming and debonair, the spitting image of Cary Grant, Martin sweeps Cornelia off her feet, but, as it turns out, Martin Grace is more the harbinger of change than change itself.
Meanwhile, on the other side of town, eleven-year-old Clare Hobbs must learn to fend for herself after her increasingly unstable mother has a breakdown and disappears. Taking inspiration from famous orphans (Anne Shirley, Sara Crewe, Mary Lennox, and even Harry Potter) Clare musters the courage to seek out her estranged father.
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Ellie thinks she’s marrying into the ideal family but soon realizes that her perfect mother-in-law, Linda, can be a perfect monster. What Linda thinks is generous and affectionate, Ellie sees as manipulative and invasive; from commandeering the wedding to crowding the vacation plans, Ellie can’t escape her mother-in-law’s meddling. To make matters worse, her husband, Dan, offers little support in the escalating struggles between mother- and daughter-in-law. With a nuanced eye for detail and expression, Green reveals not only the frustrations and compromises involved with family life, but also the ever-evolving nature of female friendship. As Ellie navigates through marriage and motherhood,
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Set against the drama and danger of fifteenth-century Florence, I, Mona Lisa is an intricately drawn tale, painted in many layers of fact and fiction. And through it all rings the captivating voice of Mona Lisa, immortalized by da Vinci but with the truth always hidden behind her smile…until now.
Florence, April 1478: The handsome Giuliano de’ Medici is brutally assassinated in Florence’s magnificent Duomo. The shock of the murder is felt throughout the great city, from the most renowned artists like Leonardo da Vinci and Michelangelo to a wealthy wool merchant and his extraordinarily beautiful daughter,
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On what may be the last day of his life, Captain Frederick Benteen — the man who saved portions of Custer’s Seventh Cavalry from almost certain death at Little Bighorn — receives a letter from an ambitious boy offering to “restore” his reputation. Over the twenty-three long years since that battle, watching Custer’s legend grow, Benteen has brooded silently on the past. His General has been dead for more than twenty years, killed in action, considered a hero, while the public has never forgiven Benteen for surviving. Now, at last, he begins to put down some account of those two horrific days pinned down on a ridge.
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