Cancer
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Innocent Tears by Iris Blobel
Becoming a parent can be daunting at the best of times, but for Flynn McCormack, a business lawyer in Melbourne, it pulls the feet right out from underneath him. He’s become a father to six-year-old Nadine literally overnight. He didn’t know about her existence, and the news throws him into chaos, even more so when he is asked to take over custody.
With the help of Emma, an employee at the hotel where Nadine and her grandparents are staying, Flynn tries to do the right thing. Yet, the right thing in his eyes differs from his parents’ ideas, and Emma is voicing her opinion, too, leaving Nadine right in the middle of it all, still grieving the loss of her mother. There’s no doubt she’s afraid about where and with whom she will settle.
Will a letter Flynn receives help him decide what to do?
Leap Before You Look by S.L. Adams
A contemporary romance about the power of love.
Life is a path with many forks in the road. Every choice we make comes with some degree of risk. People that choose the safest paths, run the risk of missing out on all of the wonderful things that life has to offer.
Eighteen year old Kari Montgomery is a recent high school graduate. As she watches her friends prepare to go off to college, she contemplates the future and her decision to take a year off from school. With her dream of attending culinary school on hold until she can save thirty thousand dollars, Kari faces the daunting task of working long hours as a line cook while living at home with her parents.
Twenty-two year old Holt Bennett is heading into his final year of university. After graduation, he will be going to work in the family business. The future is bright for the young heir, with a trust fund and a job waiting for him. Holt has met his father’s requirement to learn the value of hard work, and his days as a maintenance boy at a camping park are almost behind him.
When tragedy strikes Holt’s family, he presents Kari with a life changing offer. She is flattered by the sudden attention from the boy she has had a crush for years. But how much is she willing to sacrifice to make her dreams come true?
As they embark on an adventure to save a young girl’s life, Kari is thrilled to discover that Holt has feelings for her. Can their new relationship withstand the pressures of adulthood and the unexpected challenges that arise?
The Complete X-Ray Rider: Mileposts on the Road to Childhood’s End by Wayne Kyle Spitzer
Jonesing for a drive-in theater and a hotrod El Camino?
It’s the dawn of the 1970s and everything is changing. The war in Vietnam is winding down. So is the Apollo Space Program. The tiny northwestern city of Spokane is about to host a World’s Fair. But the Watergate Hearings and the re-entry of Skylab and the eruption of Mount Saint Helens are coming…as are killer bees and Ronald Reagan.
Enter ‘The Kid,’ a panic-prone, hyper-imaginative boy whose life changes drastically when his father brings home an astronaut-white El Camino. As the car’s deep-seated rumbling becomes a catalyst for the Kid’s curiosity, his ailing, over-protective mother finds herself fending off questions she doesn’t want to answer. But her attempt to redirect him on his birthday only arms him with the tool he needs to penetrate deeper—a pair of novelty X-Ray Specs—and as the Camino muscles them through a decade of economic and cultural turmoil, the Kid comes to believe he can see through metal, clothing, skin—to the center of the universe itself, where he imagines something monstrous growing, spreading, reaching across time and space to threaten his very world.
Using the iconography of 20th century trash Americana—drive-in monster movies, cancelled TV shows, vintage comic books—Spitzer has written an unconventional memoir which recalls J.M. Coetzee’s Boyhood and Youth. More than a literal character, ‘The Kid’ is both the child and the adult. By eschewing the technique of traditional autobiography, Spitzer creates a spherical narrative in which the past lives on in an eternal present while retrospection penetrates the edges. X-Ray Rider is not so much a memoir as it is a retro prequel to a postmodern life—a cinematized “reboot” of what Stephen King calls the “fogged out landscape” of youth.
Want to go for a ride?
