Gimmicks And Glamour

Ashly Harris has a secret she’s been keeping all her life. To everyone else, she’s just a seventeen-year-old party girl and problem senior at Hackley High School. She has always felt alone, and not just because she’s biracial and openly bisexual. Ashly sees faeries all around her, all the time. She has learned to hide her Sight, but that doesn’t change the fact that she is constantly taking the blame for the havoc that the faeries wreak. The only person who knows about Ashly’s ability is her eccentric, yet level-headed best friend, Caris, who might be playing along while also playing with Ashly’s feelings. As Ashly speeds toward graduation with few future prospects on the horizon, she must protect the classmates she claims to hate from an evil that no one else sees.

It all began with trying to fly. After jumping off the roof of his house in the middle of the night, Daniel Kim wakes up far from Neverland, his reprieve from the real world. Thrust into a mental health hospital and then into a brand-new high school, he struggles to hold on to reality while haunted by both his very-present past and his never-present parents. But when he joins Cranbrook Preparatory’s cross-country team, he starts to feel like he’s walking on his own two feet once again. He meets Jiwon Yoon—another cross-country runner, who may be the first person to join Daniel in his Neverland daydreams. Or maybe Jiwon is the one who will finally break Daniel free. Content warning: Emotional trauma, attempted suicide, mental illness.

Rites and customs of the Vedic Sanatan religion are not orthodox—as propagated by some rationalists—but are full of scientific knowledge and wisdom that have helped preserve nature and society until recent times. But both of these are now deteriorating very quickly. The concept of all pervading BRAHMAN in the Vedic Sanatan religion is quite similar to the concept of the Quantum Field of Energy in modern science as both are formless, infinite and omnipresent. There are many similar scientific connotations in the tenets and rites of the religion. Furthermore, if some elements of nature such as wells/rivers and plants/trees are regarded as deities and worshipped, it is not orthodoxy but helps create strong social awareness for the protection of nature through religion. If people worship something, they will not destroy it; it is a simple psyche. No such awareness exists anywhere in the modern scientific world, and the result is severe degradation of water and forest resources these days. Can rationalists understand such underlying philosophies in religious rites and customs? So, this book is a must-read for nature lovers to understand how ancient science in the Vedic Sanatan religion helped protect our environment, which is now falling apart at an alarming rate.

Brooks Boseman, born into privilege in an old New Orleans plantation home, could have opted for an easy life just like her siblings, but after a broken heart, she escapes to New York where no one knows her name. A call from the family matriarch changes everything. Her brother Curtis is getting married, and Brooks needs to be at the engagement party. Only she can’t possibly go, not with Curtis set to marry the secret love of her youth, Fallon Goodwin. Unable to find a way to refuse, Brooks returns to discover the family business is in jeopardy. In the face of her father’s struggles with Alzheimer’s and her brother’s well-intentioned blunders, she’s forced to step in to save the family fortune. As far as Brooks and Fallon are concerned, romance is for storybooks, but as hard as they try to resist, neither can deny their feelings still linger. Family ties have never been more binding as they fight for the business, and maybe even for each other.

When Sabine Rowan moves home to New Orleans after a family tragedy, she escapes into her theater career as she cares for her mother, a pampered former actress with a flair for the dramatic. Thoughts of finding love start to fade until her favorite aunt passes away and leaves Sabine with the equivalent of a ticking time bomb and a nearly impossible choice—to gain her inheritance she must leave New Orleans within three hours and board a flight across the Atlantic. Everyone in the tiny village of Muir Rothesay, in the Highlands of Scotland, turns to Alden Wallace when they need an expert to help restore their historic homes. Still reeling from her latest romantic disaster, Alden barely notices the most recent American tourist to swan into their village. Until she buys an abandoned lighthouse and Alden is the only one who can save the crumbling disaster from disappearing into the sea. Can the windswept shores of Scotland weave enough magic to bring them together?

Elementary school teacher Cary Smith thinks she has finally outrun her secrets. She’s avoided attention all her life, but the moment beautiful Tina Flores joins the faculty, Cary wants to be noticed. Although the school has a zero-tolerance policy toward anything “immoral,” Cary dares to pursue Tina, and they begin a relationship nobody can know about—not Cary’s friends, co-workers, or ex-girlfriend. But then strange things begin to happen, and before long, Cary isn’t sure who she can trust. When someone begins leaving ominous messages and finally breaks into her apartment, Cary fears losing her job or even her life. With her stalker inching closer to the truth, she’s forced to face the past she’s tried desperately to forget.

Josie Sanchez is the head winemaker at Cadieux Vineyards, and all her dreams ride on the upcoming crush. If she can produce a gold medal pinot noir, the owner will give Josie her own wine label. Finally. She’s worked years for this opportunity, and nothing will stand in her way. Not even Mac, the owner’s annoyingly beautiful niece who doesn’t know anything about wine, but whom Josie’s forced to hire as her only harvest intern. Josie can’t imagine a more ill-suited partner for the most important harvest of her life. After a lackluster start in her marketing career, Mackenzie Layton is eager to jump headfirst into the illustrious Willamette Valley wine industry. Thanks to her uncle, her first harvest job is with one of the most prestigious wineries in town. But when she meets Josie, it’s clear her presence is a nuisance, even if she does occasionally catch Josie’s gaze lingering on her. Mac has a proclivity for misadventure, and she is unable to resist the one person who is off limits. This crush will be a messy one, indeed.

Ghosts are rising at Oak Springs farm, and supernatural detective Tony Carson is facing her deepest mystery yet. Tony and her Trinidadian best friend, Jade, unravel clues searching for a woman who doesn’t want to be found. Red and Chris are the last lesbians living on the women’s land farm, oblivious to the secrets buried around them. If developers start digging before Tony finds the missing woman, Red and Chris are in trouble. When an old enemy returns to the village, will the rural community of Wooly Mill side with Oak Springs, or will homophobic history repeat itself? And while Tony and Jade are rallying the women’s group, a devious plan is spinning around them. The supernatural detective needs to watch her step. The past has long fingernails, and they’re clawing at the ground beneath Tony’s feet.