THOUGHTS ON THIS 'n THAT

  OPRAH’S BOOK CLUB • “For all those who crave a good page-turner, this is one wild ride of a story that carries equal parts wit and wisdom. I learned so much about Stoicism—I laughed out loud for real. And underneath the humor there was always something tender . . . a quiet truth about relationships, identity, and what it means to find peace with yourself.”—OPRAH WINFREY Adora Hazzard has it all figured out. A Stoic philosopher and divorcée, she lives a contented life on New York City’s Upper West Side. Having discovered that the secret to happiness is to desire only what you have, she’s applied this insight to blissful effect: relishing her teenage daughter, the freedom of being solo, and her job as a moral tutor for the twin boys of an old-money family. She’s even assembled a "coven"—like-minded women who live on the same floor in the legendary Ansonia—and is making active efforts to grow its membership. Adora’s carefully curated life is humming along brilliantly until a c...

  An unputdownable novel of loves lost and found, shocking secrets―and the power of female friendship. 1956: On idyllic Balboa Island, just off the California coast, life seems peaceful and welcoming. But when the lives of three women begin to unravel in shockingly different ways, an unlikely friendship―and the game of tennis―may be the only thing that can save them. Milly Kinkaid's plan to fix her crumbling marriage seems to be falling apart before it even begins. She believed that moving her young family from Hollywood to Balboa Island might entice her increasingly distant husband to come home earlier after work. Instead, he's barely coming home at all. Society matriarch Sylvia Johnson and her husband have been pillars of their community for decades, and have just recently begun a new business venture: The Island Club, a place for members to swim, play tennis, and dine in style. But when she learns that he has been risking their financial security and putting their family...

  Once again brilliantly combining the lyrical observation of F. Scott Fitzgerald with the laser-bright social satire of Evelyn Waugh, Jay McInerney gives us the stunningly accomplished and profoundly affecting final volume in the tetralogy charting the marriage of Russell and Corrinne Calloway, now in their sixties, against the backdrop of various crises that have bedeviled our society in the past forty years. The celebration of the thirty-fifth wedding anniversary of Russell Calloway’s best friend, Washington Lee—the least likely monogamist of his acquaintance, who somehow has become over the years a model husband and father—at the Odeon in the Spring of 2020 sparks an at once funny and moving autumnal reckoning with mortality as the specter of the Covid-19 virus spreads. In this moment of unprecedented upheaval—frantic and fraught real-time response, piercing personal and political impact—the Calloways find themselves and their marriage tested in ways they could never have antic...

  EXCITING OPPORTUNITY: Caretaker urgently needed. Three days of work. Competitive pay. Serious applicants ONLY. Macy Mullins can’t say why the job posting grabbed her attention—it had the pull of a fisherman’s lure, barbed hook and all—vaguely ominous. But after an endless string of failed job interviews, she's not exactly in the position to be picky. She has rent to pay, groceries to buy, and a younger sister to provide for. Besides, it’s only three days’ work… Three days, cooped up in a stranger’s house, surrounded by Oregon Coast wilderness. What starts as a peculiar side gig soon becomes a waking nightmare. An incomprehensible evil may dwell on this property—and Macy Mullins might just be the only thing standing between it and the rest of humanity. Follow the Rites... Follow the Rites... Follow the Rites... ..--- / ..... / ---.. Marcus Kliewer is a writer and stop-motion animator. His debut novel, We Used to Live Here, began life as a serialized short story on Reddit, where it...

  Mebel, a doting Chinese Indonesian trophy wife, is 63 and completely unprepared for life’s next act: her husband of 40 years, Henk, leaving her for their much-younger private chef.  But rather than wallow, Mebel does what any self-respecting almost-divorcée would do: she enrolls in culinary school. After all, any good wife knows that the way to a man’s heart is through his stomach. Take that, Henk’s mistress! Henk will be running back to Mebel in no time!  Except, instead of kicking off her plans for revenge in a fabulous culinary institute in Paris, Mebel accidentally enrolls in a tiny program in the rainy English countryside.  Amid culture shock, kitchen disasters, and unexpected friendships, Mebel begins to realize that maybe this escapade isn’t about getting her husband back. Maybe it’s about finding herself for the first time. Hullooos! Jesse here! Thank you so much for dropping by my website. I spent a heck of a long time trying to make it not-terrible. There...

  Faeries disappeared over one hundred years ago, as suddenly as slipping through a doorway. It was only the very foolish, or the very determined, who held out hope for their return. Welcome to Thistlemarsh—a ramshackle estate where an impoverished orphan and a beguiling Faerie collide in an enchanting novel of love, revenge, and ruin. In the wake of World War I, the world is a decidedly unmagical place for Mouse Dunne. She once dreamed of becoming a Faerie anthropologist, but with one telegram, her world shattered. At the Battle of the Somme, her cousin’s body disappeared into the mud, and her brother was left with debilitating shell shock. It was time, she knew, to put aside childish dreams. When Mouse receives news that her uncle has left her the Faerie-blessed Thistlemarsh Hall, a dilapidated manor in the English countryside, she must leave her brother’s side and return to her childhood home to claim her birthright. But there is a catch in her uncle’s. If Mouse does not rehabil...

  In this delightfully heartwarming novel, an elderly dog named Harold is determined to help his grieving owner, Miguel, find a reason to go on after loss. Now if only Miguel would stop getting in Harold’s way by being so very . . . human. Harold may be an aging mutt—but Amelia May, the romance novelist who adopted him, taught him a thing or two about the human heart before she died. And she left Harold with a final task: to help her partner, Miguel, find love again. Trouble is, the grief-ridden recluse rarely goes out, not even to the bookstore he and Amelia owned together. Now it’s in danger of going under, and when a renowned author doesn’t show up for his event, it pushes the store’s already precarious finances into the red. In a final attempt to save the bookstore, Miguel and Harold set out to find the no-show and insist he fulfill his obligation. But instead, they’re greeted by Fiona, his sunny yet secretive sister. Fiona is intent on protecting her brother’s privacy—and to H...

A brutal string of ritualistic killings terrorizes a city already shaken by economic and political turmoil in this chilling new historical mystery from C. S. Harris,  USA Today  bestselling author of  Who Will Remember. London, 1816:  When a notorious young aristocrat is burned alive on a windswept hill popular with neo-Druids, former cavalry officer Sebastian St. Cyr, Viscount Devlin, finds himself plunged into a murder investigation shadowed by tales of ancient human sacrifices and long-buried secrets.  The victim, Marcus Toole, was the only son and heir of a prominent nobleman. His closest friend—Sebastian’s own nephew, Bayard—claims to have passed out drunk before the attack and remembers nothing. But when Sebastian and his brilliant wife, Hero, delve deeper into the sordid activities of Bayard and his friends, they come to realize that Bayard may not be as innocent as he pretends. Following a tangled trail that leads from a disaffected former sold...

  #1  New York Times  bestselling author Rainbow Rowell returns with a breathtakingly honest novel about a woman who lost everything — and isn't sure she wants it back. Everybody knows that Cherry's husband, Tom, is in Hollywood making a movie . . . Almost nobody knows that he isn't coming home. Tom is the creator of  Thursday —a semi-autobiographical webcomic that's become an international phenomenon. Semi-autobiographical . That means there's a character in this movie based on Cherry . . . "Baby." Wide-hipped, heavy-chested, double-chinned Baby. Cherry never wanted this. No fat girl wants to see herself caricatured on the page—let alone on the big screen. But there's no getting away from it. Baby looks so much like Cherry that strangers recognize her at the grocery store. While her soon-to-be ex-husband is in Los Angeles getting rich and famous and being the internet's latest boyfriend, Cherry is stuck in Omaha taking care of the dog he always wa...

  The lives of four sleepless strangers intersect late at night as they attempt to solve not just their own anxieties but also the mysterious disappearance of one of their own, from New York Times bestselling author Allison Winn Scotch. In the city that never sleeps, it’s not always easy to share what’s on your mind with the people who know you best. Huddled in an all-night diner over coffee and pancakes, a lonely middle-aged mom, an injured baseball pro, an elusive retiree, and a young waitress examine the thoughts that plague them in the middle of the night. Empty-nester Sybil does what she does best: rolls up her sleeves and spearheads the efforts to turn this group of strangers into friends. Aimless after an injury threatens to ruin his career, Zeke finds genuine connection among the unlikely group. Tight-lipped Julian, who’s seemingly adrift in retirement and attempting to rebuild a relationship with his daughter, expands their circle when he takes their cagey diner waitress, ...

When the  American Fantasy  cruise ship sets sail for a four-day themed voyage, aboard are all five members of a famous, nineties-era boy band and three thousand screaming women who have worshipped them since childhood. Feeling slightly out of place amid this crowd is Annie, here on a lark to appease her sister. Yet when the lights come up, and the idols of her youth begin to sing, something is unlocked. Call it memory. Call it nostalgia. Call it the chemical reaction of hormones, hope, and sexual reawakening. Between the slushy alcoholic drinks, the familiar music, and the throngs of middle-aged women acting like lovesick teenagers, Annie finally reconnects to a long-submerged part of herself. By the time she meets one of the band members—not just a celebrity but someone in need of a friend—she has accessed a new sense of possibility. In a smart and incisive book packed with laugh-out-loud reflections on fame, aging, and marriage, Emma Straub delivers a richly textured story ...

  For fans of Dolly Alderton and HBO’s  Hacks , a whip-smart, laugh-out-loud funny debut novel about faking it (and “making it”) as a writer in Hollywood. TV writer Caroline Neumann is thirty-four and mired in professional envy and self-hatred. Even Harry, her usually supportive therapist husband, thinks it’s time for her to press pause on her career ambitions and focus on getting pregnant, despite Caroline’s serious ambivalence about having children. When Caroline accidentally stumbles on Harry’s patient session notes and offhandedly mentions what she finds in a meeting with a producer, the momentum of Hollywood takes over. Before she knows it—and unbeknownst to Harry—Caroline finds herself pitching a TV show about the deepest, darkest secrets of her husband’s favorite patient, a woman known to Caroline only as the Teacher. Amid the indignities of the Hollywood development process, Caroline must balance her burning desire for professional validation against her own morality a...

  As a sensational celebrity libel trial unfolds, a young woman at the periphery secretly wields the power to make or break the case. But with her own hidden past, will she dare to speak up? Everyone is watching. Only one person knows the truth. The whole country has been riveted by the trial: Beloved TV star and national treasure Anna Finbow, standing in court, accusing her daughter’s therapist, Jean Guest, of brainwashing her daughter, Mary, for her own financial gain. Jean insists Mary’s traumatic memories arise from her upbringing and her time studying at a prestigious art school in Rome; wounds only Jean’s therapy can heal. But as the trial unfolds, it’s Augusta “Gus” Bird, Anna’s former employee—a seemingly insignificant bystander, a nobody—who holds the key to unraveling the tangled web of lies and deceit. What really happened to Mary in Rome? And if her memories can’t be trusted, how will they ever uncover the truth behind her estrangement? Twisty and propulsive,  In H...