Chances

"Dr. Eldon Chance is a man primed for spectacular ruin. His wife has left him for a dyslexic fitness instructor, his teenaged daughter is disappearing into drugs; he owes the IRS untold sums; his neuro-psychiatry practice has been reduced to analyzing people with brain injuries on behalf of insurance companies. He drinks too much. His work is repetitive, disturbing, and devoid of emotional satisfaction. And things are about to get worse. Into Dr. Chance's blighted life walks Jaclyn Blackstone, the abused, attractive wife of an Oakland homicide detective, a violent and jealous man. To say that Chance is smitten is one thing, to say that he has no idea who he is really dealing with is quite another. Jaclyn appears to be suffering from an apparent dissociative identity disorder. In time, he will fall into bed with her--or it is with her alter ego, the voracious and volatile Jackie Black? The not-so-good doctor, despite his professional training, isn't quite sure--and thereby hangs his fascination with her. She unnerves him. He likes being unnerved. But when you get Jaclyn, you get her husband Raymond, a formidable and dangerous adversary. Meanwhile, Chance also meets a young man named "D," a self-styled Samurai and street-wise philosopher skilled in the art of the blade. It is around this trio of unique and dangerous individuals that long guarded secrets begin to unravel, obsessions grow in intensity, and the doctor's carefully arranged life comes to the brink of implosion. Amid San Francisco's fluid, ever-shifting fog, in the cool, gray city of love, Dr. Chance will at last be forced to live up to his name"--

Evil had to be defeated and he had a responsibility to help. Now it was too late to do anything but spend the lives of millions of young men to defeat this new Dark Age. The mountains were witness to Sidney's determination to stand tall against the darkness. "Those mountains have always been there. They can be my memorial if I don't come back." This family story spans five generations through the Indian Wars of the Dakotas and Montana, both world wars and Vietnam. It speaks to the heartbreak war often brings when young men roll the dice to answer the call of duty. The story weaves tales of separation, unrequited love, intense romance and devotion to promises and honour. At it's heart, this is an anti war story that illustrates how family can be devastated by conflict while also speaking to the healing of spirit that passes from one generation to the next.

Thirteen-year-old Dale Melnyk finds himself stuck in an iron lung, desperately fighting for breath -- and wishing he could die. It is the worst outbreak of polio in the history of Winnipeg, and Dale is one of the many young victims being treated in the early 1950s. Second Chances follows Dale's slow and often agonizing struggle to regain his life, first of all to breathe on his own and then to regain the use of his limbs. Will he ever be able to play hockey again, he wonders? Dale comes to realize that he is doing better than a number of the other patients including Charlene, a young Métis girl confined to a wheelchair but always trying to help their fellow patients. When Dale discovers his younger brother Brent is also in the polio ward because their father rejected the school program vaccine, a confrontation with his father becomes inevitable. Brent is not getting better and will be dealing with paralysis indefinitely. When Dale finally emerges from his recovery he must reassess what is most important in life -- a life that has been changed forever.

"Contains... all the goodies that make today’s bestsellers." – New York Post In the internationally bestselling first book of the iconic Lucky Santangelo series, smart, sexy and savvy Lucky Santangelo finds running her family’s criminal empire exhilarating. She will do whatever it takes to ensure her self-made mob boss father, Gino, doesn’t return from his self-imposed exile. But of course, Gino has other plans. Lucky tries to enlist the help of Costa Zennocotti, her father’s right-hand man but quickly learns his loyalty lies only with Gino. . . at least for now. As Lucky impressively plots to keep control, suspense builds through a series of interwoven stories, past and present, that create a rich tantalizing tapestry of intrigue involving an unforgettable cast of characters. There’s Lucky’s younger brother, Dario, who’s being terrorized by his manipulative male lover. There’s Steven Berkely, the charismatic lawyer Lucky gets trapped with in an elevator during the New York City blackout of 1977. And then there’s Steven’s mother, Carrie, the elegant society wife, who’s being blackmailed to keep the shocking events of her past concealed—and by an adversary that may hit too close to home. As secrets old and new are revealed, Jackie Collins’s masterful storytelling sweeps readers from the height of the family’s power in the 1970s, to the streets of 1920s New York City, where the crime enterprise first originated, from the playgrounds of Europe to the glittering gambling palaces of Las Vegas, in a steamy, sensual, page-turning epic saga that builds to a stunning climax and leaves you yearning for more. Adapted in the 90s into a highly successful NBC mini-series, the Santangelo novels are currently being developed for TV once again by Working Title Productions and the updated series is set to be compulsive, sexy and totally binge-worthy! hr "Chances should be called The Godfather goes to bed.” – CNN "Chances starts out with a bang – and never lets up for over 600 sex-packed pages." – Variety hr Read the whole Lucky Santangelo series! 1. Chances 2. Lucky 3. Lady Boss 4. Vendetta: Lucky's Revenge 5. Dangerous Kiss 6. Drop Dead Beautiful 7. Poor Little Bitch Girl 8. Goddess of Vengeance 9. Confessions of a Wild Child - Lucky: The Early Years 10. The Santangelos 11. A Santangelo Story hr

One beautiful September day, three sixty-six-year old men convene on Martha's Vineyard, friends ever since meeting in college in the sixties. They couldn't have been more different then, or even today - Lincoln's a commercial real estate broker, Teddy a tiny-press publisher, and Mickey a musician beyond his rockin' age. But each man holds his own secrets, in addition to the monumental mystery that none of them has ever stopped puzzling over since a Memorial Day weekend right here on the Vineyard in 1971. Now, forty-four years later, as this new weekend unfolds, three lives and that of a significant other are displayed in their entirety while the distant past confounds the present like a relentless squall of surprise and discovery. Shot through with Russo's trademark comedy and humanity, Chances Are ... also introduces a new level of suspense and menace that will quicken the reader's heartbeat throughout this absorbing saga of how friendship's bonds are every bit as constricting and rewarding as those of family or any other community. For both longtime fans and lucky newcomers, Chances Are ... is a stunning demonstration of a highly acclaimed author deepening and expanding his remarkable achievement.

You’ve Got Mail meets Morgan Matson in this smart, banter-filled romcom with a bookish twist. Nothing will stop Madeline Moore from taking over her family’s independent bookstore after college. Nothing, that is—until a chain bookstore called Prologue opens across the street and threatens to shut them down. Madeline sets out to demolish the competition, but the guy who works over at Prologue seems intent on ruining her life. Not only is he taking her customers, he has the unbelievable audacity to be… extremely cute. But that doesn’t matter. Jasper is the enemy and he will be destroyed. After all—all’s fair in love and (book) war.

"What are the odds against winning the Lotto, The Weakest Link, or Who Wants to be a Millionaire? The answer lies in the science of probability, yet many of us are unaware of how this science works. Every day, people make judgements on a wide variety of situations where chance plays a role, including buying insurance, betting on horse-racing, following medical advice - even carrying an umbrella. In Taking Chances, John Haigh guides the reader round common pitfalls, demonstrates how to make better-informed decisions, and shows where the odds can be unexpectedly in your favour. This new edition has been fully updated, and includes information on top television shows, plus a new chapter on Probability for Lawyers."--BOOK JACKET.

Winner, 2023 William James Book Award, American Psychological Association Division 1 in General Psychology Most of us, no matter how rational we think we are, have a lucky charm, a good-luck ritual, or some other custom we follow in the hope that it will lead to a good result. Is the idea of luckiness just a way in which we try to impose order on chaos? Do we live in a world of flukes and coincidences, good and bad breaks, with outcomes as random as a roll of the dice—or can our beliefs help change our luck? What Are the Chances? reveals how psychology and neuroscience explain the significance of the idea of luck. Barbara Blatchley explores how people react to random events in a range of circumstances, examining the evidence that the belief in luck helps us cope with a lack of control. She tells the stories of lucky and unlucky people—who won the lottery multiple times, survived seven brushes with death, or found an apparently cursed Neanderthal mummy—as well as the accidental discoveries that fundamentally changed what we know about the brain. Blatchley considers our frequent misunderstanding of randomness, the history of luckiness in different cultures and religions, the surprising benefits of magical thinking, and many other topics. Offering a new view of how the brain handles the unexpected, What Are the Chances? shows why an arguably irrational belief can—fingers crossed—help us as we struggle with an unpredictable world.