One Day in December

One Day in December
Author: Josie Silver
Publisher: Ballantine Books
Total Pages: 530
Release: 2020-11-10
Genre: Fiction
ISBN: 0593160320

#1 NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • “Get ready to be swept up in a whirlwind romance. It absolutely charmed me.”—Reese Witherspoon (A Reese Witherspoon Book Club Pick) “The perfect book to get lost in . . . Josie Silver’s characters sneak their way into your heart and stay.”—Jill Santopolo, author of The Light We Lost Two people. Ten chances. One unforgettable love story. Laurie is pretty sure love at first sight doesn't exist anywhere but the movies. But then, through a misted-up bus window one snowy December day, she sees a man who she knows instantly is the one. Their eyes meet, there's a moment of pure magic...and then her bus drives away. Certain they're fated to find each other again, Laurie spends a year scanning every bus stop and cafe in London for him. But she doesn't find him, not when it matters anyway. Instead they "reunite" at a Christmas party, when her best friend Sarah giddily introduces her new boyfriend to Laurie. It's Jack, the man from the bus. It would be. What follows for Laurie, Sarah and Jack is ten years of friendship, heartbreak, missed opportunities, roads not taken, and destinies reconsidered. One Day in December is a joyous, heartwarming and immensely moving love story to escape into and a reminder that fate takes inexplicable turns along the route to happiness.

Alienated

Alienated
Author: David O. Russell
Publisher: Simon and Schuster
Total Pages: 310
Release: 2009-10-06
Genre: Juvenile Fiction
ISBN: 1416996869

Aliens are among us, and eighth-graders Gene and Vince regularly report on their existence via the Globe, their weekly tabloid. Most readers don’t take the articles seriously, but when the pair outs the school guidance counselor as a closet alien, their story gets a lot of attention—of the wrong kind. Gene and Vince are suddenly at the center of an intergalactic conflict, one that could be the death of their friendship—and of the boys themselves. Ample humor and inventive storytelling make for a hilarious, surprising adventure that will keep readers glued to every page.

We Are the Ants

We Are the Ants
Author: Shaun David Hutchinson
Publisher: Simon and Schuster
Total Pages: 464
Release: 2016-01-19
Genre: Young Adult Fiction
ISBN: 1481449656

A Time Best YA Book of All Time (2021) From the “author to watch” (Kirkus Reviews) of The Five Stages of Andrew Brawley comes an “equal parts sarcastic and profound” (Kirkus Reviews, starred review) novel about a teenage boy who must decide whether or not the world is worth saving. Henry Denton has spent years being periodically abducted by aliens. Then the aliens give him an ultimatum: The world will end in 144 days, and all Henry has to do to stop it is push a big red button. Only he isn’t sure he wants to. After all, life hasn’t been great for Henry. His mom is a struggling waitress held together by a thin layer of cigarette smoke. His brother is a jobless dropout who just knocked someone up. His grandmother is slowly losing herself to Alzheimer’s. And Henry is still dealing with the grief of his boyfriend’s suicide last year. Wiping the slate clean sounds like a pretty good choice to him. But Henry is a scientist first, and facing the question thoroughly and logically, he begins to look for pros and cons: in the bully who is his perpetual one-night stand, in the best friend who betrayed him, in the brilliant and mysterious boy who walked into the wrong class. Weighing the pain and the joy that surrounds him, Henry is left with the ultimate choice: push the button and save the planet and everyone on it…or let the world—and his pain—be destroyed forever.

Even

Even
Author: Andy Gutman
Publisher: Dog Ear Publishing
Total Pages: 36
Release: 2018-09-20
Genre: Juvenile Fiction
ISBN: 1457564564

It’s not easy for parents to say goodbye to their children when they leave for work. This father is no exception. Even when father and daughter are apart, however, their thoughts are never far from each other. This pair knows the truth in their hearts: that their relationship is special. Even offers a sweet lesson in the eternal love between a father and his daughter, written in a lyrical style amidst vibrant illustrations.

Mors Britannica

Mors Britannica
Author: Douglas J. Davies
Publisher: Oxford University Press
Total Pages: 437
Release: 2015-11-12
Genre: Religion
ISBN: 0191040002

A people's lifestyle is one thing, their death-style another. The proximity or distance between such styles says much about a society, not least in Britain today. Mors Britannica takes up this style-issue in a society where cultural changes involve distinctions between traditional religion, secularisation, and emergent forms of spirituality, all of which involve emotions, where fear, longing, and a sense of loss rise in waves when death marks the root embodiment of our humanity. These world-orientations, evident in older and newer ritual practices, engage death in the hope and desire that love, relationships, community, and human identity be not rendered meaningless. Yet both emotions and ritual have an uneasiness to them because 'death' is a slippery topic as the twenty-first century gets under way in Britain. In this work, Douglas J. Davies draws from a largely anthropological-sociological perspective, with consideration of history, literature, philosophy, psychology, and theology, to provide a window into British life and insights into the foundation links between individuals and society, across the spectrum of traditionally religious views through to humanist and secular alternatives. He considers memorial sites (from churchyards to roadside memorials); forms of corporeal disposal (from cremation to composting); and death rites in a range of religious and secular traditions.

David and Andrew Book 1: One Night in December

David and Andrew Book 1: One Night in December
Author: Terry O'Reilly
Publisher: JMS Books LLC
Total Pages: 127
Release: 2011-12-04
Genre: Fiction
ISBN: 1611522234

David Bennett is a widower. He had a wonderful relationship with his wife, but now she's gone. He decides he's done with relationships -- he has no sex drive and no interest in life in general. Andy Barnes is a homeless man who often stands at the end of an exit ramp begging for help. For some unfathomable reason, David is always tempted to pick him up on his way home. One wretched night in December, fate intervenes and David finds himself bringing the man home and into his life. Much to his surprise, he begins to fall in love with this down and out young man. As love returns, David realizes he does have a reason to go on with life after all. Over the next few years, the two face life as a partnered gay couple with humor and courage. Each year brings with it happiness, tragedy, joy, and sorrow; the stuff life is made of. Along the way, the love the two share for each other helps them to overcome all obstacles and face all challenges.

Thank You for Your Service

Thank You for Your Service
Author: David Finkel
Publisher: Macmillan + ORM
Total Pages: 272
Release: 2013-10-01
Genre: History
ISBN: 0374710961

Now a Major Motion Picture Directed by American Sniper Writer Jason Hall and Starring Miles Teller No journalist has reckoned with the psychology of war as intimately as David Finkel. In The Good Soldiers, his bestselling account from the front lines of Baghdad, Finkel embedded with the men of the 2-16 Infantry Battalion as they carried out the infamous “surge”. Now, in Thank You for Your Service, Finkel tells the true story of those men as they return home from the front-lines of Baghdad and struggle to reintegrate--both into their family lives and into American society at large. Finkel is with these veterans in their most intimate, painful, and hopeful moments as they try to recover, and in doing so, he creates an indelible, essential portrait of what life after war is like--not just for these soldiers, but for their wives, widows, children, and friends, and for the professionals who are truly trying, and to a great degree failing, to undo the damage that has been done. Thank You for Your Service is an act of understanding, and it offers a more complete picture than we have ever had of two essential questions: When we ask young men and women to go to war, what are we asking of them? And when they return, what are we thanking them for? “Finkel sketches a panoramic view of postwar life....A book that every American should read.” —Jake Tapper, Los Angeles Times Finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award, the Los Angeles Times Book Prize, and the New York Public Library Helen Bernstein Award for Excellence in Journalism. One of Ten Favorite Books of 2013 by Michiko Kakutani (The New York Times), a Washington Post Top Ten Book of the Year, and a New York Times Book Review Notable Book of the Year

The Sum of No Equation

The Sum of No Equation
Author: Sabine Freyling
Publisher: Peter Lang
Total Pages: 484
Release: 2008
Genre:
ISBN: 9783631579107

Starting with the social and psychological side of the person Naipaul, one can summarise some reasonably simple discoveries that can be extracted from both his autobiographical pieces and his seemingly fictional books, published within a period of more than fifty years. Naipaul suggested that the way to approach the author is not through finding out as much as possible about the man and one could easily argue that the idea shall simply be used in conversion. One can learn more about the person when taking into account all that has been produced by the author, who is part of the person. By this means, one can extract valuable information about both person and author and thus can easily uncover some mysteries that have been established by the author/person to conceal the reality behind a fixed idea that has always played a significant role in Naipaul's life. Having studied English, Naipaul was aware of all the tools available and of the aims of literary critics and seems to have challenged these established routes for his own sake and to serve his purpose.