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Such a Sunny Christmas (A Parkers’ Christmas in July Novel Book 1) (affiliate link)
I invest in businesses, not women.
My silver tongue gets me what I want, and my last name seals the deal.
My current fixation?
A ski lodge on the brink.
It’s a big undertaking, but I’m up for the challenge.
And the reward.
The curvy young owner has me questioning my own commitment.
Is she worth giving it all up?
Or is she just a distraction on the path to more millions?
Either way, she’s making me sweat despite the Christmas chill.
I’m ready to burn.
So long as she’s striking the match.
Some people would kill for coffee…
Olivia Rickard would kill to keep everything just the way it is. She’s got a gorgeous boyfriend who loves her, a supportive sister to lean on, and a dog walking business that’s briskly barking away. But just as she’s getting comfortable her sister suddenly wants to buy an entire brownstone with her and her boyfriend looks like he’s going to pop the question at every opportunity. Changing the status quo has always been disastrous for Olivia and now everything is changing at once…
What Olivia needs is a distraction and she’s found one in stumbling upon Yvette Dunn dead in her coffee foodtruck—drowned in a vat of fresh coffee. Olivia starts out as an unlucky bystander to the crime, but she’s forced to dig in deeper when it looks like her sister could be involved in Yvette’s death.
Area 51: Interstellar: An Epic Series of History, Aliens, War and the Truth of Mankind (affiliate link)
Many millennia ago, humans, including us, were seeded on fifteen worlds by an alien race, the Airlia.
We believe we evolved, but the reality is we were bred as cannon fodder for the Airlia’s interstellar war against the Swarm, a viral race whose only mission appears to be the obliteration of sentient life wherever encountered. On some worlds, humans realized the truth about their origins, uncovered their hidden alien overlords and rebelled. On one world they succeeded, but in the process destroyed their planet. They sent teams to the other worlds to foment uprisings.
Our Earth is one. Earth15 is also one of those worlds. One of those teams, Bren and her mate Markus, have been leading a revolution on Earth15 off and on for thousands of years, slowly eroding the power of the Airlia who rule as gods. But today she encounters Arcturus, a man who claims the impossible: he was on the planet before the Airlia. If this blasphemy is true, what other truths need to be uncovered about the history and origin of mankind and our place among the stars?
Dirty Kisses (The Lion and Mouse series Book 1) (affiliate link)
I knew one thing. He was the boss.
He walked like one, like he owned the ground his feet stepped on.
Like he owned the air that we all breathed in.
Like he could eat up the universe, if he wanted to.
Someone killed Rumi, the Russian Mafia’s top washer in New York. Kazimir, the head of the Bratva, has come to NY to find the murderer. They call him The Russian Lion, known for having over two hundred kills. By the age of twenty, the FBI placed him ten steps away from Usama Bin Laden on the Most Wanted List. To kill his washer begins a dark and deadly war.
Unfortunately, Emily falls on Kazimir’s radar. Her brother is suspected of being involved in the murder. To save her brother, she is forced to launder Kazimir’s money; but she’s a perfect fit for the job. Known as a con to others, called a hustler by many, she’s the best washer in Harlem, keeping low-key gangsters on their toes.
Claus for Concern (Aurora Aspen Book 1) (affiliate link)
It’s Christmastime in Shady Corners, and Aurora “Rory” Aspen is ready to sleigh the season with her fabulous holiday parties.
Rory has known she was a witch since toddlerhood. And it’s been all good—she has a knack for enhancing the natural magic surrounding holidays and uses that to its full advantage to spruce up her parties. She has a great life, with a supportive dad and a sweet but zany best friend.
But then the small-town sheriff keels over into the Christmas tree at one of her events. Rory’s ex-boyfriend, Cam, whom she absolutely has not been pining over . . . much . . . is accused of the murder. Unable to resist his pleas for help, Rory branches out to find the real killer and get Cam released.
As if that wasn’t enough to do, Rory’s absent mom pops up like the ghost of Christmas past. And she’s got news that could change Rory’s life forever. Add to that a strangely knowledgeable Santa with a sack full of dubious advice, a missing corgi, and a sweet but trouble-making German shorthaired pointer, and it looks like Rory’s in a jolly big pile of trouble!
Duke of Rath (Seven Dukes of Sin Book 1) (affiliate link)
Beauty tames the beast when a marriage of convenience becomes anything but convenient for a duke with dark secrets.
Haunted by a dark secret, Dorian, the Duke of Rath, is consumed by wrath and guilt. The powerful lord will endure any torture to atone for his sins, even marry a perfect stranger—his victim’s little sister—to save her family from ruin.
He vows not to touch her and to protect the innocent girl from his depraved sensual pleasures. But she must stay for one year and follow his strict rules.
When botanist Miss Patience Rose walks down the aisle in her simple dress, with garden soil permanently embedded under her short nails, she lets a little sunlight into Rath’s blackened heart.
Above Suspicion (affiliate link)
Two married academics are recruited to search for a missing spy in this bestselling espionage thriller that takes readers into the heart of Nazi Germany just before World War II
Richard and Frances Myles are preparing for their annual European summer vacation in 1939 when they are visited at their Oxford college by old friend Peter Galt, who has a seemingly simple job for them. But in the heightened atmosphere of pre-war Europe, nobody is above suspicion. In fact, it seems the husband and wife are being carefully monitored by shadowy figures . . .
Above Suspicion was MacInnes’ breakthrough book, a bestseller published in 1941 and released as a movie in 1943, directed by Richard Thorpe and starring Joan Crawford and Fred MacMurray.
Sin City (affiliate link)
Jack “Lucky” Riordan is anything but lucky. The illegitimate son of Howard Hughes, he and his mother are cast out of Las Vegas when Hughes learns of the pregnancy, only for Jack to return years later to make his fortune.
Jack might not have luck. But he has an eye for a quick con. His skills soon allow him to climb the ladder as head of security for one of Glitter Gulch’s most ruthless casinos, where cheating will get you jail, if you’re not crippled by security first.
Jack sees it all: the corruption of fast money, the ways his friends will stab him in the back for a shot at a jackpot, and the allure of women who will do anything to hit the big time.
But the big time in Vegas always comes at a cost . . . and Jack is about to learn the price of life in Sin City.
Learn to Paint in Acrylics with 50 More Small Paintings: Pick Up the Skills, Put on the Paint, Hang Up Your Art (affiliate link)
Actively learn all you need to know about acrylic painting as you create these all-new projects following the illustrated step-by-step instructions.
Like the first book, the prospect and promise are both exciting and addictive. This book explains a range of painting techniques, including creating complex scenes, varying brush strokes, negative space, rendering multiple planes, reflections on metal, and color and how to use it. Each fun project teaches a different technique and adds another piece of art to your own mini art collection.
Projects vary from abstracts and simple color-mixing exercises to figurative subjects—a flower, a sunset, a busy street scene—and many more. These can be mounted, exhibited, collected in a portfolio, or given away as gifts for friends to cherish. Each project adds skills to your repertoire, leaving you primed to dive into more complex theory and practice.
Journey to the Center of the Earth (affiliate link)
Jules Verne’s classic science fiction novel, Journey to the Center of the Earth, takes readers deep below the world’s surface and inside the author’s inventive, visionary mind.
The story revolves around Professor Otto Lidenbrock, an eccentric German scientist who decodes the cryptic notes of a famous medieval scholar, discovering a map which describes a method to access a tunnel leading directly to the earth’s core. The adventurous geology professor can’t resist the opportunity to investigate, and persuades his sixteen-year-old nephew Axel to travel with him on the most remarkable human quest ever taken.
Epitomizing the subterranean fiction genre, one of the best storytellers who ever lived, Verne takes readers on an incredible journey through a prehistoric world incorporating well-researched Victorian science with some of literature’s most unforgettable characters.
And How Are You, Dr. Sacks?: A Biographical Memoir of Oliver Sacks (affiliate link)
Lawrence Weschler began spending time with Oliver Sacks in the early 1980s, when he was profiling the neurologist for The New Yorker. Almost a decade earlier, Dr. Sacks had published Awakenings—the account of his long-dormant patients’ miraculous return to life. Over the ensuing four years, the two men worked closely together until, for personal reasons, Sacks asked Weschler to abandon the profile. The two remained close friends over the next thirty years and then, just as Sacks was dying, he urged Weschler to take up the project once again. This book is the result of that entreaty.
Weschler sets Sacks’s brilliant personality in vivid relief. We see Sacks rowing and ranting and caring deeply; composing the essays that would form The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat and waging intellectual war against a medical and scientific establishment that failed to address his greatest concern: the spontaneous specificity of the individual human soul. Here is the definitive portrait of Sacks, whose entire practice revolved around the single fundamental question he asked each of his patients: How are you? Which is to say, How do you be?
Bourbon Curious: A Tasting Guide for the Savvy Drinker with Tasting Notes for Dozens of New Bourbons (affiliate link)
In Bourbon Curious: A Tasting Guide for the Savvy Drinker, award-winning whiskey writer and Wall Street Journal best-selling author Fred Minnick creates an easy-to-read interactive tasting journey that helps you select barrel-aged bourbons based on your flavor preferences. Using the same tasting principles he offers in his Kentucky Derby Museum classes and as a judge at the San Francisco World Spirits Competition, Minnick cuts to the chase, dismissing brand marketing and judging only the flavor of this all-American whiskey.
Bourbon Curious groups bourbon into four main flavor profiles—grain, nutmeg, caramel, and cinnamon. While many bourbons boast all four flavor notes, one delicious sensation typically overpowers the rest. This book reveals more than 50 bourbon brands’ predominate tastes and suggests cocktail recipes to complement them. In addition, Minnick spends some time busting bourbon’s myths; unraveling its mysteries; and exploring distiller secrets, disclosing the recipes you won’t find on a bottle’s label.
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