Smile Like You Mean It

After Charlotte's father died, her mother changed. She became cold and distant, and Charlotte slowly withdrew into herself. She spent years feeling lonely and insignificant, and rarely spoke more than a few words to anyone. One night, after a traumatic incident instigated by her mother, Charlotte is arrested and taken to juvie.A year later, Charlotte's being released from juvie for the second time. Instead of an awful group home, her social worker brings a welcome surprise: Charlotte's long-forgotten uncle, Arthur, who is all too eager to help her after everything she's been through. When Charlotte learns that Arthur has a step-son her age, she's even more apprehensive. How could he not resent having a stranger thrust into his home and family?To her surprise and relief, Sebastian is kind and friendly. He and his four best friends-Grayson, Remy, Liam, and Elliot-make Charlotte feel welcome. They never make Charlotte feel badly about her past or her anxiety. They make her feel seen. As she gets to know the boys, she realizes they each have their own issues and demons they're fighting, and she forms a unique bond with their group.It doesn't help that they're ridiculously attractive. How could Charlotte not fall in love with all five of them?

Renée Nichols returned to Summer Lake because she had nowhere left to turn. Her marriage, the charity she spent her life building, her entire life—they were all shattered when her husband was arrested. She’s getting by, even if barely standing on her own two feet. She has a job, even if it’s not the greatest. She has her childhood home to live in, even if it’s barely livable. Gabe Morgan is back in town, too—even if he’s only visiting. Every time she gets around him her heart rate and her temperature soar, but that’s just her overactive imagination, isn’t it? He might be even hotter now than he was in high school, but he’s still the town’s golden boy. He’s the town doctor’s son, she’s the town drunk’s daughter. He’s one of life’s good guys, he’ll help her out because it’s what he does. But that’s all. Gabe Morgan has been spending as much time as he can back in Summer Lake—though he couldn’t tell you why. He’s a partner in a successful firm of trial attorneys in New York City. He’s gone out and conquered the world as he always knew he would. So why is it every time he comes home to the lake, he feels like a failure? He’s achieved so much, but he hasn’t found happiness. Running into Renée again has made him question everything. She told him that love, family, and happiness are the most important things in life. He’s starting to agree—but will she be the one to help him find them? This book is intended for adult readers 18+ ************************* Each Summer Lake Romance can be read as a stand alone book – no cliff hangers here! Each book contains one couple's story. However, they are best read in order to get full enjoyment of the underlying story and friendships. Love Like You've Never Been Hurt - Emma and Jack Work Like You Don't Need the Money - Pete and Holly Dance Like Nobody's Watching - Missy and Dan Fly Like You've Never Been Grounded - Smoke and Laura Laugh Like You've Never Cried - Michael and Megan Sing Like Nobody's Listening - Kenzie and Chase Smile Like You Mean It - Gabe and Renée The Wedding Dance - Missy and Dan's Wedding Chasing Tomorrow - Ben's backstory with Charlotte Dream Like Nothing's Impossible - April and Eddie Ride Like You've Never Fallen - Nate and Lily Live Like There's No Tomorrow - Ben's story The Wedding Flight – Smoke and Laura’s Wedding Fight Like You've Never Lost - Leanne and Ryan Remington Ranch series Meet the sexy brothers of Remington Ranch! Just like in SJ's Summer Lake Romance series you can expect a story that is both sweet and steamy! Mason Shane Carter Beau Four Weddings and a Vendetta A Chance and a Hope trilogy These are NOT meant to be read as standalone stories and need to be read in order. Chance Encounter Finding Hope Give Hope a Chance The Hamiltons Series This series follows the Hamilton family in California wine country. If you recognize the name Hamilton it’s because this is Smoke’s family who own one of the largest wine growing and distribution businesses in the country. Red Wine and Roses Champagne and daisies Marsala and Magnolias Prosecco and Peonies Milkshakes and Mistletoe Cognac and Cornflowers Bourbon and Bluebells Whiskey and Willow The Davenports Series This series featuring Hope’s cousins, the sexy brothers, of the Billionaire Davenport family. Oscar TJ Reid Spider Summer Lake Seasons Angel and Luke in Take These Broken Wings Maria and Zack in Too Much Love to Hide Logan and Roxy in Sunshine Over Snow Ivan and Abbie in Chase the Blues Away Colt and Cassie in Forever Takes a While Austin and Amber in Tell the Stars to Shine Donovan and Elle in Please Don’t Say Goodbye

“Full of revealing, instantly applicable ideas for leveraging your strengths and overcoming your weaknesses.” —Adam Grant, author of Think Again and Originals, and host of the TED podcast WorkLife For many of us, listening is simply something we do on autopilot. We hear just enough of what others say to get our work done, maintain friendships, and be polite with our neighbors. But we miss crucial opportunities to go deeper—to give and receive honest feedback, to make connections that will endure for the long haul, and to discover who people truly are at their core. Fortunately, listening can be improved—and Ximena Vengoechea can show you how. In Listen Like You Mean It, she offers an essential listening guide for our times, revealing tried-and-true strategies honed in her own research sessions and drawn from interviews with marriage counselors, podcast hosts, life coaches, journalists, filmmakers, and other listening experts. Through Vengoechea’s set of scripts, key questions, exercises, and illustrations, you’ll learn to: • Quickly build rapport with strangers • Ask the right questions to deepen a conversation • Pause at the right time to encourage vulnerability • Navigate a conversation that’s gone off the rails Now more than ever, we need to feel heard, connected, and understood in a world that keeps turning up the volume. Warm, funny, and immensely practical, this book shows you how.

Raina Telgemeier's #1 New York Times bestselling, Eisner Award-winning graphic memoir based on her childhood! Raina just wants to be a normal sixth grader. But one night after Girl Scouts she trips and falls, severely injuring her two front teeth. What follows is a long and frustrating journey with on-again, off-again braces, surgery, embarrassing headgear, and even a retainer with fake teeth attached. And on top of all that, there's still more to deal with: a major earthquake, boy confusion, and friends who turn out to be not so friendly.

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.

In the mid-1950s C.P. Snow began his campaign against the 'two cultures' - the debilitating divide, as he saw it, between traditional 'literary intellectual' culture, and the culture of the sciences, urging in its place a 'third culture' which would draw upon and integrate the resources of disciplines spanning the natural and social sciences, the arts and the humanities. Murray Smith argues that, with the ever-increasing influence of evolutionary theory and neuroscience, and the pervasive presence of digital technologies, Snow's challenge is more relevant than ever. Working out how the 'scientific' and everyday images of the world 'hang' together is no simple matter. In Film, Art, and the Third Culture, Smith explores this question in relation to the art, technology, and science of film in particular, and to the world of the arts and aesthetic activity more generally. In the first part of his book, Smith explores the general strategies and principles necessary to build a 'third cultural' or naturalized approach to film and art - one that roots itself in an appreciation of scientific knowledge and method. Smith then goes on to focus on the role of emotion in film and the other arts, as an extended experiment in the 'third cultural' integration of ideas on emotion spanning the arts, humanities and sciences. While acknowledging that not all of the questions we ask are scientific in nature, Smith contends that we cannot disregard the insights wrought by taking a naturalized approach to the aesthetics of film and the other arts.

The Grass is Green is a satire that attacks the institution of psychiatry, America's obsession with normality, and the fabled one dose cure-all. The satire also attacks presidents, celebrities, established religions and a host of other targets, issues, and ills of society--all while simultaneously telling the story of Arthur Gray, a twenty-something man who just wants to know what's wrong with him. His search introduces the reader to a host of characters, all of them searching for answers and solutions just beyond their grasp.

"I want to make you smile like you mean it." The day Cole Lannington says those words to me, I already know I'm falling. Hard. For a man I can never have. Because there's no way in hell I'll ever deserve a man like him. Annie: All I need to do is keep my head above water. Push a little harder. Keep that smile plastered on my face for my son as we try to wade through the new life that's threatening to drown us both. But on the first day I can't seem to hold it all together, I meet him. And for some reason, he comes to my aid. Before I know it, Cole steps in and becomes an important part of my life. Our lives. Fills a void left vacant by a man who never wanted to fill it in the first place. Too bad he can never be more than a friend. Cole: All I need to do is be a nice guy to my new neighbor. Make her smile a little bit. Find space in my tidy, structured life to ease the burden she carries so she and her son can enjoy life without the bastard who treated them like they were insignificant. I don't expect to talk and laugh and feel a warmth in my chest I didn't know was missing until she showed up at my door. Somehow I end up caring about her more deeply than I should. But my friendship with Annie opens my eyes to what it could be like to have something deeper. To feel something stronger. To fall in love like I mean it.