March Adult Reading Challenge
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Fried Green Tomatoes at the Whistle Stop Cafe
Folksy and fresh, endearing and affecting, Fried Green Tomatoes at the Whistle Stop Cafe is about two women: Evelyn, who’s in the sad slump of middle age, and gray-headed Mrs. Threadgoode, who’s telling her life story. Her tale includes two more women—the irrepressibly daredevilish tomboy Idgie and her friend Ruth—who back in the thirties ran a little place in Whistle Stop, Alabama, offering good coffee, southern barbecue, and all kinds of love and laughter—even an occasional murder. And as the past unfolds, the present will never be quite the same again.
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Broken (in the Best Possible Way)
As Jenny Lawson’s hundreds of thousands of fans know, she suffers from depression. In Broken, Jenny brings readers along on her mental and physical health journey, offering heartbreaking and hilarious anecdotes along the way.
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Must Love Flowers
Widow Joan Sample hires someone to tame her overgrown garden, joins a grief support group, and even rents out a room to a local college student, Maggie Herbert, barista and nursing student. But will Maggie’s budding attraction to one of her favorite customers ruin the harmony she’s only recently found with Joan? Meanwhile, what is Joan to make of the mysterious landscaper who’s been revitalizing her garden—a man who seems to harbor a past loss of his own? As Maggie and Joan confront difficult life choices, they draw strength from this new friendship in surprising ways.
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Animals in Translation
Why would a cow lick a tractor? Why are collies getting dumber? Why do dolphins sometimes kill for fun? How can a parrot learn to spell? How did wolves teach man to evolve? Temple Grandin draws upon a long, distinguished career as an animal scientist and her own experiences with autism to deliver an extraordinary message about how animals act, think, and feel. She has a perspective like that of no other expert in the field, which allows her to offer unparalleled observations and groundbreaking ideas. People with autism can often think the way animals think, putting them in the perfect position to translate "animal talk."
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Act Your Age, Eve Brown
Jacob Wayne's on a mission to dominate the hospitality industry and he expects nothing less than perfection. So when a purple-haired tornado of a woman named Eve Brown turns up out of the blue to interview for his open chef position, he tells her the brutal truth: not a chance in hell. Then she hits him with her car--supposedly by accident. Now his arm is broken, his B&B is understaffed, and the dangerously unpredictable Eve is fluttering around, trying to help. Sunny, chaotic Eve is his natural-born nemesis, but the longer these two enemies spend in close quarters, the more their animosity turns into something else.
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How to Build a Dinosaur
Based on new research in evolutionary developmental biology on how a few select cells grow to create arms, legs, eyes, and brains that function together, Jack Horner takes the science a step further in a plan to "reverse evolution" and reveals the awesome, even frightening, power being acquired to recreate the prehistoric past. The key is the dinosaur's genetic code that lives on in modern birds- even chickens. From cutting-edge biology labs to field digs underneath the Montana sun, How to Build a Dinosaur explains and enlightens an awesome new science.
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The Cider House Rules
The Cider House Rules is set in rural Maine in the first half of the twentieth century. The novel tells the story of Dr. Wilbur Larch—saint and obstetrician, founder and director of the orphanage in the town of St. Cloud’s, ether addict and abortionist. This is also the story of Dr. Larch’s favorite orphan, Homer Wells, who is never adopted.
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Call Us What We Carry
In Call Us What We Carry, Gorman explores history, language, identity, and erasure through an imaginative and intimate collage. Harnessing the collective grief of a global pandemic, this beautifully designed volume features poems in many inventive styles and structures and shines a light on a moment of reckoning.
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The Book Eaters
Devon is part of The Family, an old and reclusive clan of book eaters. Her brothers grow up feasting on stories of valor and adventure, and Devon—like all other book eater women—is raised on a carefully curated diet of fairy tales and cautionary stories. But real life doesn't always come with happy endings, as Devon learns when her son is born with a rare and darker kind of hunger—not for books, but for human minds.
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The Murder of Roger Ackroyd (Warbler Classics)
The sleuthing work begins when Hercule Poirot is called out of retirement by the brutal murder of his friend and neighbor, Roger Ackroyd.
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Through My Eyes
Former University of Florida star quarterback, 2010 first-round draft pick for theDenver Broncos, and devout Christian Tim Tebow tellsthe story of his faith, his life, and his career in football in Through My Eyes. Written with Nathan Whitaker, the New York Times bestsellingcoauthor of Quiet Strength, with Tony Dungy, Through My Eyes givesfans a first look into the heart of an athlete whose talent and devotion havemade him one of the most provocative figures in football.
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Kindred
Dana’s torment begins when she suddenly vanishes on her 26th birthday from California, 1976, and is dragged through time to antebellum Maryland to rescue a boy named Rufus, heir to a slaveowner’s plantation. She soon realizes the purpose of her summons to the past: protect Rufus to ensure his assault of her Black ancestor so that she may one day be born. As she endures the traumas of slavery and the soul-crushing normalization of savagery, Dana fights to keep her autonomy and return to the present.
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Superman's Not Coming
In her long-awaited book—her first to reckon with the condition of water on our planet—Erin Brockovich writes powerfully of the fraudulent science disguising our national water crisis: Cancer clusters are not being reported. People in Detroit and the state of New Jersey don’t have clean water. The drinking water for more than six million Americans contains unsafe levels of industrial chemicals linked to cancer and other health issues. The saga of PG&E continues to this day. Yet communities and people around the country are fighting to make an impact, and Brockovich tells us their stories.
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Nothing to See Here
Madison's twin stepkids are moving in with her family and she wants Lillian to be their caretaker. However, there's a catch: the twins spontaneously combust when they get agitated, flames igniting from their skin in a startling but beautiful way. Lillian is convinced Madison is pulling her leg, but it's the truth.
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Because We Are Bad
Written with the indelible power of Girl, Interrupted, Brain on Fire, and Reasons to Stay Alive, a lyrical, poignant memoir by a young woman about her childhood battle with debilitating obsessive compulsive disorder, and her hard-won journey to recovery.
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Inheritance
Graphic designer Sonya MacTavish is stunned to learn that her late father had a twin he never knew about—and that her newly discovered uncle, Collin Poole, has left her almost everything he owned, including a majestic Victorian house on the Maine coast, which the will stipulates she must live in it for at least three years. Trey, the young lawyer who greets her at the sprawling clifftop manor, notes Sonya’s unease and acknowledges that yes, the place is haunted. It’s becoming clear that Sonya has inherited far more than a house. She has inherited a centuries-old curse, and a puzzle to be solved if there is any hope of breaking it...
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Cross Down
For the first time, John Sampson is on his own. The brilliant crime-solving duo of Washington, DC's, Metro PD and the FBI has a proven MO: Detective Alex Cross makes his own rules. Detective John Sampson enforces them. When military-style attacks erupt, brutally sidelining Cross, Sampson is sent reeling. The patterns are too random--Sampson's friend, his partner, his brother--have told him. Don't trust anyone. As a shadow force advances on the nation's capital, Sampson alone must protect the Cross family, his own young daughter, and every American, including the president.
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12 Months to Live
Tough-as-nails criminal defense attorney Jane Smith is hip-deep in the murder trial of the century. Actually, her charmless client might've committed several murders. She's also fallen in love with a wonderful guy. And an equally wonderful dog, a mutt. But Jane doesn't have much time. She's just received a terminal diagnosis giving her twelve months. Unless she's murdered before her expiration date.
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The Dutch House
Set over the course of five decades, The Dutch House is a dark fairy tale about two smart siblings who cannot overcome their past. Despite every outward sign of success, Danny and Maeve are only truly comfortable when they're together. Throughout their lives they return to the well-worn story of what they've lost with humor and rage. But when at last they're forced to confront the people who left them behind, the relationship between an indulged brother and his ever-protective sister is finally tested.
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A Modern Way to Cook
Eating healthy isn't always easy when you’re coming home late at night and tired. In this genius new collection of vegetarian recipes, author Anna Jones tackles this common problem, making nourishing vegetable-centered food realistic on any day of the week.
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The Women
The Women is the story of one woman gone to war, but it shines a light on all women who put themselves in harm’s way and whose sacrifice and commitment to their country has too often been forgotten. A novel about deep friendships and bold patriotism, The Women is a richly drawn story with a memorable heroine whose idealism and courage under fire will come to define an era.
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The Secret
1992. All across the United States respectable, upstanding citizens are showing up dead. These deaths could be accidents, and they don’t appear to be connected—until a fatal fall from a high-floor window attracts some unexpected attention from the secretary of defense. All of a sudden he wants an interagency task force to investigate with Jack Reacher as the army’s representative. If Reacher gets a result, great. If not, he’s a convenient fall guy. But office politics isn’t Reacher’s thing. Three questions quickly emerge: Who’s with him, who’s against him, and will the justice he dispenses be the official kind or his own kind?
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Simply Lies
Mickey Gibson, single mother, former detective, and remote worker for ProEye gets a call from a colleague named Arlene Robinson to go inventory the vacant home of an arms dealer who cheated ProEye's clients and fled. That is, until she arrives at the mansion to discover a dead body in a secret room. Not only does the arms dealer not exist but the murder victim turns out to be Harry Langhorne, a man with mob ties who used to be in Witness Protection. What's more, no one named Arlene Robinson works at ProEye. In the blink of an eye, Gibson has become a prime suspect in a murder investigation. She's locked in a battle of wits with a brilliant woman with no name, a hidden past, and an end game is as mysterious as it is deadly.
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Random in Death
Jenna’s parents had finally given in, and there she was, at a New York club with her best friends, watching the legendary band Avenue A, carrying her demo in hopes of slipping it to the guitarist, Jake Kincade. Minutes later, Jake’s in the alley getting some fresh air, and the girl from the dance floor comes stumbling out, sick and confused and deathly pale. He doesn’t know that someone in the crowd has jabbed her with a needle. When his girlfriend Nadine arrives, she knows the only thing left to do for the girl is call her friend, Lieutenant Eve Dallas. But there are no obvious clues why this levelheaded sixteen-year-old, passionate about her music, would be targeted. If Jenna was just the random, unlucky victim of a madman consumed by hatred, there are likely more deaths to come.
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Judgment Prey
Alex Sand was spending the evening at home playing basketball with his two young sons when all three were shot in cold blood. With public pressure mounting and both the local police force and FBI hitting dead end after dead end, Lucas Davenport and Virgil Flowers are called in to do what others could not: find answers. With each potential lead flawed, Davenport and Flowers are determined to chase every theory until they figure out who killed the Sands. But when they find themselves being stonewalled by the most unlikely of forces, the two wonder if perhaps each misdirection could lead them closer to the truth.
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The Exchange
What became of Mitch and Abby McDeere after they exposed the crimes of Memphis law firm Bendini, Lambert & Locke and fled the country? It is now fifteen years later, and Mitch and Abby are living in Manhattan, where Mitch is a partner at the largest law firm in the world. When a mentor in Rome asks him for a favor that will take him far from home, Mitch finds himself at the center of a sinister plot that has worldwide implications--and once again endangers his colleagues, friends, and family. Mitch has become a master at staying one step ahead of his adversaries, but this time there's nowhere to hide.
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Dirty Thirty
Stephanie Plum, Trenton’s hardest working, most underappreciated bounty hunter, is offered a freelance assignment that seems simple enough. Local jeweler Martin Rabner wants her to locate his former security guard, Andy Manley (a.k.a. Nutsy), who he is convinced stole a fortune in diamonds out of his safe. Stephanie is also looking for another troubled man, Duncan Dugan, a fugitive from justice arrested for robbing the same jewelry store on the same day. As the body count rises and witnesses start to disappear, it won’t be easy for Stephanie to keep herself clean when everyone else is playing dirty. It’s a good thing Stephanie isn’t afraid of getting a little dirty, too.
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The Edge
When CIA operative Jenny Silkwell is murdered in rural Maine, government officials have immediate concerns over national security. Her laptop and phone were full of state secrets that, in the wrong hands, endanger the lives of countless operatives. Ex-Army Ranger Travis Devine must ingratiate himself with locals who have trusted each other their whole lives, and who distrust outsiders just as much. Dak, Jenny's brother, who's working to revitalize the town. Earl, the retired lobsterman who found Jenny's body. And Alex, Jenny's sister with a dark past of her own. There's a long history of secrets and those who will stop at nothing to keep them from being exposed, leaving Devine with no idea who he can trust and who wants him dead.
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23 1/2 Lies
23 1/2 LIES: Lindsay Boxer's estranged father is gunned down execution-style, and her investigation uncovers life-altering truths. (with Maxine Paetro). FALLEN RANGER: To Rory Yates, being a Texas Ranger means absolute loyalty to the badge. But he's put through the ultimate test when an armored car robbery suspect might be an ex-Ranger gone rogue. (with Andrew Bourelle). WATCH YOUR BACK: When a starving artist is paid to expose his client's cheating wife, can he paint the picture that will save his own life? (with Loren D. Estleman).
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I Will Find You
David Burroughs woke suddenly to discover his three-year-old son Matthew had been murdered while David was asleep just down the hall. Half a decade later, David's been wrongly convicted of the murder, left to serve out his time in a maximum-security prison. Then his sister-in-law, Rachel, visits the prison bearing a strange photograph. In the background of the photo of a bustling amusement park, just barely in frame, is a boy bearing an eerie resemblance to David's son. David just knows: Matthew is still alive. He plans a harrowing escape, determined to save his son, clear his own name, and discover the real story of what happened.