Daily Archives: September 25, 2020

12by Nolon King

What Would You Do With the Last 12 Hours of Your Life?

At 6 p.m. on a Wednesday in October, a gunman will enter Goldman’s Diner and commit one of the worst massacres the small coastal town of Palm Isles, Florida has ever seen.

Twelve hours earlier: twelve lives are on borrowed time, unaware that death is coming, or that their paths will collide in one tragic moment.

A young waitress and mother fights to protect her daughter from her violent estranged husband. Little does she know that a greater threat looms under her nose.

A cop is forced to decide between his job and his marriage.

A bullied teen with an abusive father is down to one friend when his world suddenly crumbles around him.

An old man struggles to hold onto his memories and do one last thing to honor his wife. But in doing so, he will have to reveal his darkest secret.

A cook with a shady past attempts to stay on the straight and narrow, until he gets a call which forces him to choose — his family or his honor?

A woman attempts to meet her father’s expectations, clinging to a struggling diner even as her relationship with her son falls apart.

TWELVE HOURS
TWELVE LIVES
WHO LIVES?
WHO DIES?

An Exact Replica of a Figment of My Imagination: A Memoirby Elizabeth McCracken

"This is the happiest story in the world with the saddest ending," writes Elizabeth McCracken in her powerful, inspiring memoir. A prize-winning, successful novelist in her 30s, McCracken was happy to be an itinerant writer and self-proclaimed spinster. But suddenly she fell in love, got married, and two years ago was living in a remote part of France, working on her novel, and waiting for the birth of her first child.

This book is about what happened next. In her ninth month of pregnancy, she learned that her baby boy had died. How do you deal with and recover from this kind of loss? Of course you don't — but you go on. And if you have ever experienced loss or love someone who has, the company of this remarkable book will help you go on.

With humor and warmth and unfailing generosity, McCracken considers the nature of love and grief. She opens her heart and leaves all of ours the richer for it.

The Photographby Debbie Rix

If you loved The Letter by Kathryn Hughes and The Hourglass by Tracy Rees you’ll be swept away by this stunning summer read.

Italy, 1958: Rachael is a young widow with a small child. After a lifetime of running for survival, of not knowing who to trust and where to call home, she finds herself in a place of safety. On a sun-drenched Italian island for one carefree summer the troubles of her past fade away and she falls in love. But will Rachael’s new-found happiness bring her further heartache?

England, 2017: Sophie has a handsome husband, a gorgeous house in the English countryside and a successful career as an anthropologist. But the one thing she longs for is a baby of her own. As she struggles to conceive, cracks begin to appear in her marriage. So Sophie throws herself into her work and tries to seek comfort in childhood memories of her beloved grandmother Rachael.

One afternoon, Sophie finds a forgotten letter and an exquisite silk bracelet hidden in Rachael’s old writing desk. Intrigued, she begins to unravel the extraordinary story of her grandmother’s past – and a secret that has the power to change everything…

The Photograph is an utterly beautiful and compelling story of love, loss and a family secret spanning generations.

The Burnin’by Estevan Medrano

On April 23, 1940, a fire broke out at a night club in the segregated town of Natchez, Mississippi. It remains one the deadliest building fires in U.S. history, resulting in the deaths of over two hundred men and women–all of them African American. THE BURNIN’ is a novel about the aftermath of the tragedy from the accounts of a coroner, a nurse, and an arson detective.
Herb Jones, a local black coroner, receives a call in the middle of the night from a fireman informing him that a terrible fire has occurred at a dance hall in the town’s “negro district.” Herb drives over to the charred night club where some victims are burned beyond recognition. In addition to the strenuous process of transporting and embalming the bodies, Mississippi segregation laws only permit black coroners to handle black corpses, limiting the help available to him. As the town reeks of death and the funeral firm faces bankruptcy because of its financial obligations to the dead, he attempts to identify the bodies of neighbors, friends, and even relatives.
Meanwhile, Eliza, Herb’s wife, is a nurse caring for the scores of burned and injured at the only black hospital in town. The conventional treatment for critical burns involves a meticulous skin removal process known as the “tannic acid-silver nitrate treatment.”
Julian Winters, a brilliant but smug arson detective, is sent from Jackson to determine the cause of the fire and help draft safety codes to prevent a reoccurrence of a similar disaster. When a few locals that escaped the blaze describe a drunken man threatening to burn the place down that night, he tries to determine if the fire was a terrible accident or a mass murder.

Storybook, Inc.by Parker Pace

Mica’s entry into the Program—a mysterious game put on by a company whose motto is We Fix Things that are Broken—sets into motion a bizarre series of events that finds Mica and her traveling companion, Roman, on the run for their lives, desperate to find out if the Program is all that it seems or a theatrical con game… or worse. But is Roman really watching out for Mica or is he tied to the criminals tracking her every step?