Small Life

Vera Violet O'Neel's home is in the Pacific Northwest - not the glamorous scene of coffee bars and craft beers, but the hardscrabble region of busted pickups and broken dreams. Vera's mother has left, her father is unstable, and her brother is deeply troubled. Against this gritty background, Vera struggles to establish a life of her own, a life fortified by her friends and her hard-won love. But the relentless poverty coupled with the twin lures of crystal meth and easy money soon shatter fragile alliances. Her world violently torn apart, Vera flees to St. Louis, Missouri.

Daniel Green makes crop circles. As a member of a secret organization, he travels across the country creating strange works of art that leave communities mystified. He's always been alone; in fact, he prefers it. But when a dying farmer hires him in a last-ditch effort to bring publicity to a small Vermont town, Daniel finds himself at odds with his heart. It isn't long before he gets drawn into a family struggling to stitch itself back together, and the consequences will change his life forever.

An unlikely criminal, Andy Durant is robbing gas stations to buy back land once connected to his wife's farm in upstate New York. But when he's shot and killed during a robbery, he leaves his wife, Grady, and their three children to fend for themselves. Moving back to the debt-laden farm, Grady ignites a plan that involves getting in the middle of an adjoining neighbor's marriage. Meanwhile, one by one the whole family is charmed by Royal Provo, a young and charismatic orphan working on the property.

In Trinidad, in 1796, teenage Rosa Rendon quietly but purposefully rebels against typical female roles and behavior. Bright, competitive, and opinionated, Rosa sees no reason she should learn to cook and keep house - it is obvious her talents lie in running the farm she expects to be her birthright, despite her two older siblings. But as her homeland goes from Spanish to British rule, it becomes increasingly unclear whether its free black property owners - Rosa's family among them - will be allowed to keep their assets, their land, and ultimately, their freedom.

Seventeen-year-old Riggle is living in rural Indiana with his uncle and uncle's girlfriend after the death of both of his parents. Now his uncle has gone missing, probably on a drug binge. It's Monday, and $800 in rent is due Friday. Riggle, who's been suspended from school, has to either find his uncle or get the money together himself. His mission exposes him to a motley group of Opioid locals - encounters by turns perplexing, harrowing, and heartening. Meanwhile, Riggle marks each day by remembering the mythology his late mother invented for him about how the days got their names.

From shyness to charisma. Do you consider yourself to be an introvert? Ever felt shy at a meeting? Have you felt anxious about interacting with others? Gotten cold feet before making a speech? Would you like to socialize more? Be the center of attention at a party? Or maybe push sales through the roof or be the favorite employee at work?

Joe Goffman was 15 years out from his sleepy hometown when he wrote Bush Falls, a searing critique of its people and institutions. The book was a runaway best seller, and led to an even more successful movie. Now, however, Joe's got a problem. His father has suffered a stroke, and that means that Joe has to go back to his birthplace after having successfully antagonized every person living there. Can Joe survive the reservoirs of hatred that have been waiting to pour down upon him? Just maybe.

It's Holy Week in the small town of Las Penas, New Mexico, and 33-year-old unemployed Amadeo Padilla has been given the part of Jesus in the Good Friday procession. He is preparing feverishly for this role when his 15-year-old daughter, Angel, shows up pregnant on his doorstep and disrupts his plans for personal redemption. With weeks to go until her due date, tough, ebullient Angel has fled her mother's house, setting her life on a startling new path.

Here’s what’s happened...you’ve become the bottleneck in your business, wondering why it isn’t growing and why you’re not making the money you want to make, working too many hours with no freedom. Overwhelmed at six figures, you wonder whether it’s even worth it to keep going, let alone try to grow to seven figures. It doesn’t have to be this way! By following these proven strategies that leverage all aspects of your business, you can remove yourself from the day-to-day grind and experience the freedom and joy you set out to create when you first opened your company.

In nine interlinking stories, the town of Abbot Falls reacts as Ernie Whitten, a pipefitter, builds a giant ark in his backyard. Ernie was weeks away from a pension-secured retirement when the union went on strike. Now his wife Marie is ill. Struck with sudden inspiration, Ernie builds the ark as a work of art for his wife to see from the window; a vessel to carry them both away; or a plea for God to spare Marie, come hell or high water.

It’s the late 1980s, and Matthew Carnap is awake most nights, afflicted by a potent combination of insomnia and undiagnosed ADHD. Sometimes he gazes out his bedroom window into the dark; sometimes he wanders the streets of his small Southern Minnesota town. But more often than not, he crosses the hall into his stepfather Russ’ roller rink to spend the sleepless hours lost in music. Russ’s record collection is as eclectic as it is extensive, and he and Matthew bond over discovering new tunes and spinning perfect skate mixes. Then Matthew’s mother divorces Russ.

In a small seaside city on the Jersey Shore, three half-siblings confront the death of a distant and bullying patriarch. They now have the chance to imagine new relationships and new futures, ones that would have been near-unthinkable while their father was alive. Caught in their crossfire are the conservative religious communities that border Asbury Park, the longtime locals who have been pushed to the fringe by the shore’s revitalization, and the legendary town upon which the whole world seems to converge.

In the first line of Ocean State, we learn that a high school student was murdered, and we find out who did it. The story that unfolds from there with incredible momentum is thus one of the buildup to and fallout from the murder, told through the alternating perspectives of the four women at its heart. The murderer Angel, her mother Carol, and the victim Birdy, all come alive on the page as they converge in a climax both tragic and inevitable. Watching over it all is the retrospective testimony of Angel’s younger sister, Marie.

There’s a world of difference between making a living and having a life. Balancing the demands you face every day can feel like being trapped in a frustrating maze, but there is a way out: you can take control and live the life you want to live - and love your work at the same time.Live Life, Love Work, from bestselling NLP expert and coach Kate Burton, is full of ideas for reviewing your priorities and re-charging your energy levels.

This is not a story about failure, but it might as well be. When we don't define success in our own terms, finding our purpose, and carving our own path becomes impossible. How do you break the cycle so that you can be better at work and life? In this audiobook, Laura Gassner Otting teaches you how to ignore the rules that created your limits, align your energies and your actions, and do work that really matters so that you can live your best life.

Jonathan Evison’s Small World is an epic novel for now. Set against such iconic backdrops as the California gold rush, the development of the transcontinental railroad, and a speeding train of modern-day strangers forced together by fate, it is a grand entertainment that asks big questions. The characters of Small World connect in the most intriguing and meaningful ways, winning, breaking, and winning our hearts again.

July knows 18 things about her mother. But not the truth. Summer, 1995. On her tenth birthday, July's teacher sets the class a project to find out about a relation they don't know. It's easy for July to choose her subject. She doesn't remember her mother, who died when she was small, and her father refuses to talk about her. Ever. The only memories she has of her are flashbacks from the accident that claimed her mother's life. But then she receives the note: 'She didn't die in a car accident.'

History is recorded in many ways. According to author James Deetz, the past can be seen most fully by studying the small things so often forgotten. In his completely revised and expanded edition of In Small Things Forgotten, Deetz has added new sections that more fully acknowledge the presence of women and African Americans in Colonial America.

Win at both! On a tandem bicycle, two riders with different strengths can ride together and cover a lot of ground efficiently—if they have the same destination in mind and communicate effectively. Sounds a lot like marriage, doesn’t it? If you are an entrepreneur who has experienced the frustration of trying to balance your work life with your marriage life, only to fall behind in both areas, you’re far from alone. You can achieve greater balance simply by taking action together, in tandem, as outlined in this book.

For Ruthie, the frozen town of Waitsfield, Massachusetts, is all she has ever known. Once home to the country’s oldest and most illustrious families—the Cabots, the Lowells: the “first, best people”—by the tail end of the twentieth century, it is an unforgiving place awash with secrets. Forged in this frigid landscape Ruthie has been dogged by feelings of inadequacy her whole life. Hers is no picturesque New England childhood but one of swap meets and factory seconds and powdered milk. Shame blankets her like the thick snow that regularly buries nearly everything in Waitsfield.