A Case of You

A Case of You
Author: Rick Blechta
Publisher: Dundurn
Total Pages: 296
Release: 2008-04-01
Genre: Fiction
ISBN: 1459713885

"She had a voice like an angel, smooth and complex as a twenty-year-old single malt, rich as thick cream. Everyone who heard Olivia sing felt as if she could see right into their souls, that her songs were meant for them alone. This was the magic her artistry conjured. In earlier times, she wouldhave been put to death as a witch. Such was the talent of Olivia Saint." Meet Andy Curran, drummer in a struggling jazz trio. When a distinctly odd street person sings at an open mic night at the club where they work, it’s clear they’ve found their salvation: a vocalist of incredible talent. After she departs as abruptly as she’d arrived, Andy sets out to discover where Olivia Saint has gone and who she really is. That knowledge soon proves to be deadly indeed. In A Case of You, a crime novel that sweeps from the jazz clubs of Toronto, to New York City and Northern California, Rick Blechta has created a compelling story, rich in detail and compassion, and populated with characters not easily forgotten.

A Case of You

A Case of You
Author: Pamela Burford
Publisher: Radical Poodle Press
Total Pages: 265
Release: 2021-07-09
Genre: Fiction
ISBN: 1939215935

“Everything from dangerous passions to deadly chills. Take heart, romantic suspense fans, Pamela Burford has arrived!” — New York Times best-selling author Maggie Shayne “An imaginative tale of reincarnation that will leave you anxious for future works from this talented author.” — RT Book Reviews (4 stars) “Talk about a trip into the Twilight Zone! And you will love every minute of this chilling story of a fear-love relationship that walks the finest edge of danger.” — Affaire de Coeur (4½ stars) “Ms. Burford has crafted an intriguing psychological suspense! A hero who keeps you guessing… A clever story, where pieces are revealed detail by detail! Starts with a bang and picks up steam right through to the finish!” — The Literary Times ◊ Kit wants to trust the handsome small-town doctor. Little does she know he harbors a dangerous secret. Doctor Noah Stewart is the first person Kit Roarke trusts when she travels to the small town of Pratte, Vermont, to investigate her best friend’s murder—a murder that mysteriously mirrors the town’s only other one thirty years before. The more Kit learns about the handsome young physician, however, the more she wonders if her trust is misplaced. Noah harbors a dark secret. Despite his attraction to Kit, he wishes she’d go back home and leave the investigation in the less-than-capable hands of local law enforcement. Since she’s determined to stay and look into the murder, he has no choice but to stick close and monitor her progress, in the guise of helping her. If she strays too near to the truth, he’ll have no choice but to stop her. A Case of You was a finalist in both Romance Writers of America’s RITA Awards and RT Reviewers Choice Best Book Awards. Originally published as His Secret Side.

Reckless Daughter

Reckless Daughter
Author: David Yaffe
Publisher: Sarah Crichton Books
Total Pages: 443
Release: 2017-10-17
Genre: Biography & Autobiography
ISBN: 0374715602

"She was like a storm." —Leonard Cohen Reckless Daughter is the story of an artist and an era that have left an indelible mark on American music. Joni Mitchell may be the most influential female recording artist and composer of the late twentieth century. In Reckless Daughter, the music critic David Yaffe tells the remarkable, heart-wrenching story of how the blond girl with the guitar became a superstar of folk music in the 1960s, a key figure in the Laurel Canyon music scene of the 1970s, and the songwriter who spoke resonantly to, and for, audiences across the country. A Canadian prairie girl, a free-spirited artist, Mitchell never wanted to be a pop star. She was nothing more than “a painter derailed by circumstances,” she would explain. And yet, she went on to become a talented self-taught musician and a brilliant bandleader, releasing album after album, each distinctly experimental, challenging, and revealing. Her lyrics captivated listeners with their perceptive language and naked emotion, born out of Mitchell’s life, loves, complaints, and prophecies. As an artist whose work deftly balances narrative and musical complexity, she has been admired by such legendary lyricists as Bob Dylan and Leonard Cohen and beloved by such groundbreaking jazz musicians as Jaco Pastorius, Wayne Shorter, and Herbie Hancock. Her hits—from “Big Yellow Taxi” to “Both Sides, Now” to “A Case of You”—endure as timeless favorites, and her influence on the generations of singer-songwriters who would follow her, from her devoted fan Prince to Björk, is undeniable. In this intimate biography, drawing on dozens of unprecedented in-person interviews with Mitchell, her childhood friends, and a cast of famous characters, Yaffe reveals the backstory behind the famous songs—from Mitchell’s youth in Canada, her bout with polio at age nine, and her early marriage and the child she gave up for adoption, through the love affairs that inspired masterpieces, and up to the present—and shows us why Mitchell has so enthralled her listeners, her lovers, and her friends.

Any Way the Wind Blows

Any Way the Wind Blows
Author: Rainbow Rowell
Publisher: Wednesday Books
Total Pages: 450
Release: 2021-07-06
Genre: Young Adult Fiction
ISBN: 1250254345

New York Times bestselling author Rainbow Rowell's epic fantasy, the Simon Snow trilogy, concludes with Any Way the Wind Blows. In Carry On, Simon Snow and his friends realized that everything they thought they understood about the world might be wrong. And in Wayward Son, they wondered whether everything they understood about themselves might be wrong. Now, Simon and Baz and Penelope and Agatha must decide how to move forward. For Simon, that means choosing whether he still wants to be part of the World of Mages — and if he doesn't, what does that mean for his relationship with Baz? Meanwhile Baz is bouncing between two family crises and not finding any time to talk to anyone about his newfound vampire knowledge. Penelope would love to help, but she's smuggled an American Normal into London, and now she isn't sure what to do with him. And Agatha? Well, Agatha Wellbelove has had enough. Any Way the Wind Blows takes the gang back to England, back to Watford, and back to their families for their longest and most emotionally wrenching adventure yet. This book is a finale. It tells secrets and answers questions and lays ghosts to rest. The Simon Snow Trilogy was conceived as a book about Chosen One stories; Any Way the Wind Blows is an ending about endings—about catharsis and closure, and how we choose to move on from the traumas and triumphs that try to define us.

Morning Glory on the Vine

Morning Glory on the Vine
Author: Joni Mitchell
Publisher: Houghton Mifflin
Total Pages: 137
Release: 2019
Genre: Art
ISBN: 0358181720

A gorgeous compendium of Joni Mitchell's handwritten lyrics and drawings, originally handcrafted as a gift for a select group of friends in 1971 and now available to the public for the first time In 1971, as her album Blue topped charts around the world, Joni Mitchell crafted one hundred copies of Morning Glory on the Vine as a holiday gift for her closest friends. For this stunningly beautiful book, Joni hand-wrote an exquisite selection of her own lyrics and poems and illustrated them with more than thirty of her original pictures. Handcrafted, signed, and numbered in Los Angeles, the existing copies of this labor of love have rarely been seen in the past half-century. Now, during Joni's seventy-fifth birthday year, Morning Glory on the Vine: Early Songs and Drawings will be widely available for the first time. In this faithfully reproduced edition, Joni's best-loved lyrics and poems spill across the pages in her own elegant script. The lively, full-color drawings depict a superb array of landscapes, still lifes, portraits of friends, self-portraits, innovative abstractions, and more. All the artwork from the original book is included, along with several additional pictures that Joni drew of her friends from the same period. Finally, the refreshed volume features an original introduction written by Joni. Morning Glory on the Vine is a gorgeous and intimate keepsake and an invitation to explore anew the dazzling, visionary world of Joni Mitchell.

The Case for Heaven

The Case for Heaven
Author: Lee Strobel
Publisher: Zondervan
Total Pages: 321
Release: 2021-09-14
Genre: Religion
ISBN: 0310358434

Bestselling and award-winning author Lee Strobel interviews experts about the evidence for the afterlife and offers credible answers to the most provocative questions about what happens when we die, near-death experiences, heaven, and hell. We all want to know what awaits us on the other side of death, but is there any reliable evidence that there is life after death? Investigative author Lee Strobel offers a lively and compelling study into one of the most provocative topics of our day. Through fascinating conversations with respected scholars and experts--a neuroscientist from Cambridge University, a researcher who analyzed a thousand accounts of near-death experiences, and an atheist-turned-Christian-philosopher--Strobel offers compelling reasons for why death is not the end of our existence but a transition to an exciting world to come. Looking at biblical accounts, Strobel unfolds what awaits us after we take our last breath and answers questions like: Is there an afterlife? What is heaven like? How will we spend our time there? And what does it mean to see God face to face? With a balanced approach, Strobel examines the alternative of Hell and the logic of damnation, and gives a careful look at reincarnation, universalism, the exclusivity claims of Christ, and other issues related to the topic of life after death. With vulnerability, Strobel shares the experience of how he nearly died years ago and how the reality of death can shape our lives and faith. Follow Strobel on this journey of discovery of the entirely credible, believable, and exhilarating life to come.

The Case for God

The Case for God
Author: Karen Armstrong
Publisher: Knopf Canada
Total Pages: 432
Release: 2009-09-22
Genre: Religion
ISBN: 0307372952

From the bestselling author of A History of God and The Great Transformation comes a balanced, nuanced understanding of the role religion plays in human life and the trajectory of faith in modern times. Why has God become incredible? Why is it that atheists and theists alike now think and speak about God in a way that veers so profoundly from the thinking of our ancestors? Moving from the Paleolithic Age to the present, Karen Armstrong details the lengths to which humankind has gone to experience a sacred reality that it called God, Brahman, Nirvana, Allah, or Dao. She examines the diminished impulse toward religion in our own time when a significant number of people either want nothing to do with God or question the efficacy of faith. With her trademark depth of knowledge and profound insight, Armstrong elucidates how the changing world has necessarily altered the importance of religion at both societal and individual levels. And she makes a powerful, convincing argument for structuring a faith that speaks to the needs of our dangerously polarized age.

Broken Horses

Broken Horses
Author: Brandi Carlile
Publisher: Crown
Total Pages: 338
Release: 2021-04-06
Genre: Biography & Autobiography
ISBN: 0593237242

#1 NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • The critically acclaimed singer-songwriter, producer, and six-time Grammy winner opens up about faith, sexuality, parenthood, and a life shaped by music in “one of the great memoirs of our time” (Glennon Doyle, author of Untamed). NAMED ONE OF THE BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR BY NPR AND AUTOSTRADDLE • “The best-written, most engaging rock autobiography since her childhood hero, Elton John, published Me.”—Variety Brandi Carlile was born into a musically gifted, impoverished family on the outskirts of Seattle and grew up in a constant state of change, moving from house to house, trailer to trailer, fourteen times in as many years. Though imperfect in every way, her dysfunctional childhood was as beautiful as it was strange, and as nurturing as it was difficult. At the age of five, Brandi contracted bacterial meningitis, which almost took her life, leaving an indelible mark on her formative years and altering her journey into young adulthood. As an openly gay teenager, Brandi grappled with the tension between her sexuality and her faith when her pastor publicly refused to baptize her on the day of the ceremony. Shockingly, her small town rallied around Brandi in support and set her on a path to salvation where the rest of the misfits and rejects find it: through twisted, joyful, weird, and wonderful music. In Broken Horses, Brandi Carlile takes readers through the events of her life that shaped her very raw art—from her start at a local singing competition where she performed Elton John’s “Honky Cat” in a bedazzled white polyester suit, to her first break opening for Dave Matthews Band, to many sleepless tours over fifteen years and six studio albums, all while raising two children with her wife, Catherine Shepherd. This hard-won success led her to collaborations with personal heroes like Elton John, Dolly Parton, Mavis Staples, Pearl Jam, Tanya Tucker, and Joni Mitchell, as well as her peers in the supergroup The Highwomen, and ultimately to the Grammy stage, where she converted millions of viewers into instant fans. Evocative and piercingly honest, Broken Horses is at once an examination of faith through the eyes of a person rejected by the church’s basic tenets and a meditation on the moments and lyrics that have shaped the life of a creative mind, a brilliant artist, and a genuine empath on a mission to give back.

Not an Alphabet Book: The Case of the Missing Cake

Not an Alphabet Book: The Case of the Missing Cake
Author: Eoin McLaughlin
Publisher: Candlewick
Total Pages: 41
Release: 2020-08-11
Genre: Juvenile Fiction
ISBN: 1536212679

Follow Bear from A to Z as he hunts for a cake thief in a hilarious alphabet book crossed with a whodunit. There has been a terrible crime, Bear tells us. Someone has STOLEN a delicious chocolate cake! Bear sets off to find the culprit, questioning characters and compiling clues from A to Z. Among the suspects: a gingerbread man (G) with a bite out of his head, a kite (K) that may be above the law, and an octopus (O) with grabby tentacles. But — hold on — are those crumbs on Bear’s page? Is that frosting on his face? Looks like our narrator is a little unreliable! And it appears our culprit might be the one that Bear wants readers to suspect the least of all. . . . Author Eoin McLaughlin’s sly, cheeky humor takes the alphabet book to inventive new heights, while best-selling illustrator Marc Boutavant’s smart and striking graphic-style art matches the irreverent tone. Young ABC learners and older fans of funny stories will laugh out loud at Bear’s uproarious “investigation” and his anything-but-usual suspects.

A Bad Case of Stripes

A Bad Case of Stripes
Author: David Shannon
Publisher: Scholastic Inc.
Total Pages: 38
Release: 2016-08-30
Genre: Juvenile Fiction
ISBN: 1338113151

It's the first day of school, and Camilla discovers that she is covered from head to toe in stripes, then polka-dots, and any other pattern spoken aloud! With a little help, she learns the secret of accepting her true self, in spite of her peculiar ailment.