Maybe We Ll Have You Back

“I don’t know why Fred was never a regular on a show. Maybe because he’s annoying . . . just kidding!” —Ray Romano Fred Stoller has played the annoying schnook in just about every sitcom you’ve seen on TV—Friends, Everybody Loves Raymond, Scrubs, Hannah Montana, My Name Is Earl—and was even a staff writer for Seinfeld, but he’s never found a solid gig. When it comes to Hollywood, it’s a case of always the bridesmaid and never the bride, except in his case he’s always the snarky waiter, the mopey cousin, or Man #2. This hilarious and bittersweet rags to rags story of the hardest-working guy in showbiz follows Fred, who started his career as a stand-up comic, from set to set as he tries to find a permanent home for his oddball character. With candor, Fred shares stories of his great adventures pounding the Hollywood pavement, including a humiliating encounter with Billy Crystal, a disastrous one-night stand with Kathy Griffin, and plenty of awkward run-ins at craft service tables. And he always shares his ups and downs with his skeptical, yet loving, mother waiting by the phone in Brooklyn. Everyone can relate to searching for a dream job or waiting for the next big break, and will root for Fred as he weaves his way through the cutthroat world of Tinseltown.

After being diagnosed with terminal cancer, a professor shares the lessons he's learned—about living in the present, building a legacy, and taking full advantage of the time you have—in this life-changing classic. "We cannot change the cards we are dealt, just how we play the hand." —Randy Pausch A lot of professors give talks titled "The Last Lecture." Professors are asked to consider their demise and to ruminate on what matters most to them. And while they speak, audiences can't help but mull over the same question: What wisdom would we impart to the world if we knew it was our last chance? If we had to vanish tomorrow, what would we want as our legacy? When Randy Pausch, a computer science professor at Carnegie Mellon, was asked to give such a lecture, he didn't have to imagine it as his last, since he had recently been diagnosed with terminal cancer. But the lecture he gave—"Really Achieving Your Childhood Dreams"—wasn't about dying. It was about the importance of overcoming obstacles, of enabling the dreams of others, of seizing every moment (because "time is all you have . . . and you may find one day that you have less than you think"). It was a summation of everything Randy had come to believe. It was about living. In this book, Randy Pausch has combined the humor, inspiration and intelligence that made his lecture such a phenomenon and given it an indelible form. It is a book that will be shared for generations to come.

Discover the perfect recipe for friendship this Christmas... On the first Monday of December, every year, twelve friends gather in the evening with batches of homemade cookies wrapped in beautiful packages. They drink wine, they eat and they take turns telling the story of the cookies they have baked. Somehow these stories are always emblematic of the year that has just passed, as complicated and rich as our own lives. Lives full of sisterly love and conflict, yearning for babies and grandchildren, passion and disillusionment with men, a secret decade long affair, the loss of a job, the death of a child... These women are as imperfect as real women, made heroic by their ability to resolve conflict, to endure and support each other. The Cookie Club is as involving, heartwarming and uplifting a story as you'll ever read.

Claire Eppington feels unfinished. Her mother died when Claire was young. Her father raised her in a home suffused with grief and loneliness. When she was an adult, her father left her with a gift from her mother: a journal full of memories, hopes, and regrets. Claire can barely bring herself to open the porcelain-encrusted memorial. She is full of resentment, a fear of death, and a nagging sense of incompletion. It is ironic, then, that Claire chooses a career overseeing the final rites of people whose families want their ashes spread at exotic or distant locales. On a trip to Colombia to bring the remains of a client to a remote village on the Rio de Magdalena, Claire finds that her job may be more deadly than she expected. Her assignment allows her to work with Manny Villareal, a handsome and rugged photographer. What Claire does not know is that Manny used to work as a security chief for his family's cartel. When Manny's brother becomes threatened, Claire becomes a pawn in a dangerous game. Pursued by an assassin and pressed by military groups, a rogue DEA agent, and a greedy relative seeking to overthrow the cartel, Manny is forced to make a choice. Does he save his family, or the woman he is beginning to love? Claire is faced with her mother's legacy, a dangerous assignment in a country full of beauty and romance, and the possibility that her greatest fear may become a reality.

Follow New York Times bestselling author Diana Palmer to Medicine Ridge, Montana, and meet Police Chief Theodore Graves—a man as rugged as the land he passionately wants to claim as his own. Only one thing stands in his way, a feisty woman who is prepared to meet his challenge. Sparks fly as they go toe-to-toe, but can the man with a will of steel finally learn what it means to bend?

Now an original movie on Prime Video starring Anne Hathaway and Nicholas Galitzine! When Solène Marchand, the thirty-nine-year-old owner of a prestigious art gallery in Los Angeles, takes her daughter, Isabelle, to meet her favorite boy band, she does so reluctantly and at her ex-husband’s request. The last thing she expects is to make a connection with one of the members of the world-famous August Moon. But Hayes Campbell is clever, winning, confident, and posh, and the attraction is immediate. That he is all of twenty years old further complicates things. What begins as a series of clandestine trysts quickly evolves into a passionate relationship. It is a journey that spans continents as Solène and Hayes navigate each other’s disparate worlds: from stadium tours to international art fairs to secluded hideaways in Paris and Miami. And for Solène, it is as much a reclaiming of self, as it is a rediscovery of happiness and love. When their romance becomes a viral sensation, and both she and her daughter become the target of rabid fans and an insatiable media, Solène must face how her new status has impacted not only her life, but the lives of those closest to her.

In the summer of 1945, as World War II is ending, Abby Ryan is studying to become a nun. On the serene grounds of the convent in Kettle Falls, Washington, she is assaulted by trespassers and rescued by Sinclair Mellington, a handsome army captain attending a retreat at the institution. Decades later, in the fall of 2008, Isaiah Mellington, a middle-aged unemployed attorney, receives a letter written years earlier by his now deceased father, asking him to wrap up loose ends in the wake of Sister Abby’s passing. He travels to Kettle Falls, expecting to only be there for a weekend; instead, Isaiah discovers that Sister Abby’s loose ends are connected to a life she lived outside the convent. Eight days after his arrival, he is still in Kettle Falls with four women—an aging former nun who is the keeper of Abby’s secrets, a romantic interest of his own, and two others whose lives are being hijacked by Sister Abby’s past. As betrayal encroaches upon Isaiah as well, a half century of lies slowly unravels, shredding the fabric of everything he has ever known and everyone he has ever loved.

As complex, turbulent and spectacular as the gas giant on which it is set, this novel from Iain M. Banks is space opera on a truly epic scale. “An enormously enjoyable book, full of wonderful aliens, a sense of wonder and subtle political commentary on current events.” –Publishers Weekly (Starred Review) It is 4034 AD. Humanity has made it to the stars. Fassin Taak, a Slow Seer at the Court of the Nasqueron Dwellers, will be fortunate if he makes it to the end of the year. The Nasqueron Dwellers inhabit a gas giant on the outskirts of the galaxy, in a system awaiting its wormhole connection to the rest of civilization. In the meantime, they are dismissed as decadents living in a state of highly developed barbarism, hoarding data without order, hunting their own young and fighting pointless formal wars. Seconded to a military-religious order he's barely heard of - part of the baroque hierarchy of the Mercatoria, the latest galactic hegemony - Fassin Taak has to travel again amongst the Dwellers. He is in search of a secret hidden for half a billion years. But with each day that passes a war draws closer - a war that threatens to overwhelm everything and everyone he's ever known. “Banks is a phenomenon...writing pure science fiction of a peculiarly gnarly energy and elegance.” –William Gibson “Banks writes with a sophistication that will surprise anyone unfamiliar with modern science fiction.” –The New York Times For More from Iain M. Banks, check out: The Culture series: Consider Phlebas The Player of Games Use of Weapons The State of the Art Excession Inversions Look to Windward Matter Surface Detail The Hydrogen Sonata