I Should Have Just Stayed Home

Yes, the co-pilot on this morning's flight moonlights as a barber. There was a little explosion outside the lobby of your hotel. One wall of your hotel room just disappeared. The maitre d' was just arrested under the Patriot Act. And there's a gumball flasher showing up in your rear view mirror. Chill, baby. Just sit back, relax and be glad you weren't with...

ONE FLIGHT CAN CHANGE EVERYTHING. Airplane pilot Isobel LaFleur escaped small-town life a long time ago. Living in Dallas now, she enjoyed the city life and had no desire to spend time in a small town. Not for any reason. When baseball player Matthew Rodgers tore his calf muscle, life as he knew it came to a screeching halt. But he kept his promises to family. Even if it meant going home. Surely he could endure one weekend in the country. Neither Isobel nor Matthew could have predicted what happened that weekend. Would they welcome the unexpected events or would both go back to their familiar lives? Will Isobel and Matthew change their lives in the name of true love? This is a sweet/clean contemporary romance with a happily ever after in the spirit of your favorite Hallmark movie.

Michael Hiebert's remarkable debut novel tells the riveting story of a small southern town haunted by tragedy, one brave woman's struggle to put a troubling mystery to rest--and its impact on the sensitive boy who comes of age in the midst of it all. . . Abe Teal wasn't even born when Ruby Mae Vickers went missing twelve years ago. Few people in Alvin, Alabama, talk about the months spent looking for her, or about how Ruby Mae's lifeless body was finally found beneath a willow tree. Even Abe's mom, Leah, Alvin's only detective, has avoided the subject. But now, another girl is missing. Fourteen-year-old Mary Ann Dailey took the bus home from school as usual, then simply vanished. Townsfolk comb the dense forests and swampy creeks to no avail. Days later, Tiffany Michelle Yates disappears. Abe saw her only hours before, holding an ice cream cone and wearing a pink dress. Observant and smart, Abe watches his mother battle small-town bureaucracy and old resentments, desperate to find both girls and quietly frantic for her own children's safety. As the search takes on a terrifying urgency, Abe traverses the shifting ground between innocence and hard-won understanding, eager to know and yet fearing what will be revealed. Dream with Little Angels is by turns lyrical, heartbreaking, and shocking--a brilliantly plotted novel of literary suspense and of the dark shadows, painful secrets, and uncompromising courage in one small town. "One of the best books I've read in a long, long while." --Lisa Jackson, New York Times bestselling author

Mary Cheever called Kathleen O’Connor’s fiction “funny, sad, and utterly convincing.” These fifteen stories possess all those qualities. They also remind us of the importance of the connections between family, friends, and neighbors. The title story, Water’s Edge, details how an alienated young woman forges a bond with her grieving grandmother. In Through the Woods an elderly man reconnects with a troubled foster child. And the young boy in With Harry’s Help survives through his bond with a fictional character. The constant in all of O’Connor’s stories is the hope that comes from our need and love for each other.

A New York Times Best Thriller of 2021 A Washington Post Best Thriller of 2021 A New York Public Library Best Book of the Year An Amazon Editors’ Pick ''Bloody good.'' —The New York Times ''Timely, surprising, emotionally alive, this is about as good as suspense fiction gets.'' —Washington Post No one even knew they were together. Now one of them is dead. 56 DAYS AGO Ciara and Oliver meet in a supermarket queue in Dublin and start dating the same week COVID-19 reaches Irish shores. 35 DAYS AGO When lockdown threatens to keep them apart, Oliver suggests they move in together. Ciara sees a unique opportunity for a relationship to flourish without the scrutiny of family and friends. Oliver sees a chance to hide who—and what—he really is. TODAY Detectives arrive at Oliver’s apartment to discover a decomposing body inside. Can they determine what really happened, or has lockdown created an opportunity for someone to commit the perfect crime?

Absurdity, social realism, and the indepth examination of the human condition are but a few of the themes that comprise the contents of the seventythree short stories breathing menacingly between the covers of this book. Humor attacks surrealism on a landscape sun-saturated with saintly thought and intense clarity creations first simple act of pure effervescence getting drowned.

Robert Louis Stevenson's classic adventure tale tells of the kidnapping of David Balfour. After the death of David's parents, he is sent to an uncle he's never heard of to find his fortune. Uncle Ebenezer doesn't want to part with his money, but he will pay to have his nephew kidnapped and put into slavery! Discover the betrayal, adventure, and friendship David finds on his struggle home in the Calico Illustrated Classics adaptation of Stevenson's Kidnapped. Calico Chapter Books is an imprint of Magic Wagon, a division of ABDO Group. Grades 3-8.

DIVMcCoy’s classic, slyly funny novel about a pair of young actors trying to make it in a pitiless Hollywood/divDIV For aspiring actor Ralph Carston, all roads lead to Hollywood—but none seem to be direct or easy. The handsome Georgia native immediately finds that his Southern accent is one strike against him, though he manages to eke out a living as an extra alongside his pretty roommate Mona Matthews. But the big break for these two young hopefuls finally arrives in a curious way. When their third roommate is sentenced to three years in prison for shoplifting, Mona’s emotional courtroom outburst wins her and Ralph notoriety—and entrée into new social circles. Ralph becomes the self-loathing plaything of Ethel Smithers, a wealthy widow who promises much but has no interest in delivering. Mona faces romantic nightmares of her own while also being blacklisted for joining a union. A precursor to Sunset Boulevard, and reminiscent of Nathanael West, I Should Have Stayed Home is a fantastically hardboiled portrait of Tinseltown in the thirties./divDIV /divDIVThis ebook features an extended biography of Horace McCoy./div