Finding Lyla


Book Description

Honoring your legacy can be deadly... Principal Dancer Lyla Markovik-Avery is always on the go. Grueling practices and endless performances rule her busy days—and things are about to get more hectic. Russia is rolling out the red carpet for their beloved star, despite the string of violent terrorist attacks that have rocked the nation. Bodyguard Collin Michaels’ life is falling apart. His long-time relationship has recently ended. He’s trying to start over, but that’s easier said than done. Luckily, Collin has a new assignment on the horizon: keeping a beautiful ballerina safe for the next three weeks. Collin finds comfort in Lyla’s easy friendship, but that all changes after a night out on the town. Simple feelings become complicated—something Collin can’t afford, especially when tragedy strikes and Collin realizes Lyla’s caught in the middle of a dangerous plot for revenge. Collin and Lyla are forced to flee. They need to reach the border before it’s too late, but the odds are stacked against them in a country that wants them dead. With time running out, Collin formulates a risky plan that might be their only chance of making it out alive.




Layla


Book Description

"When Leeds meets Layla, he's convinced he'll spend the rest of his life with her--until an unexpected attack leaves Layla fighting for her life. After weeks in the hospital, Layla recovers physically, but the emotional and mental scarring has altered the woman Leeds fell in love with. In order to put their relationship back on track, Leeds whisks Layla away to the bed-and-breakfast where they first met. Once they arrive, Layla's behavior takes a bizarre turn. And that's just one of many inexplicable occurrences."--




Lila (Oprah's Book Club)


Book Description

Winner of the National Book Critics Circle Award National Book Award Finalist A new American classic from the Pulitzer Prize-winning author of Gilead and Housekeeping Marilynne Robinson, one of the greatest novelists of our time, returns to the town of Gilead in an unforgettable story of a girlhood lived on the fringes of society in fear, awe, and wonder. Lila, homeless and alone after years of roaming the countryside, steps inside a small-town Iowa church-the only available shelter from the rain-and ignites a romance and a debate that will reshape her life. She becomes the wife of a minister, John Ames, and begins a new existence while trying to make sense of the life that preceded her newfound security. Neglected as a toddler, Lila was rescued by Doll, a canny young drifter, and brought up by her in a hardscrabble childhood. Together they crafted a life on the run, living hand to mouth with nothing but their sisterly bond and a ragged blade to protect them. Despite bouts of petty violence and moments of desperation, their shared life was laced with moments of joy and love. When Lila arrives in Gilead, she struggles to reconcile the life of her makeshift family and their days of hardship with the gentle Christian worldview of her husband which paradoxically judges those she loves. Revisiting the beloved characters and setting of Robinson's Pulitzer Prize-winning Gilead and Home, a National Book Award finalist, Lila is a moving expression of the mysteries of existence that is destined to become an American classic.




Finding Layla


Book Description

She survived an abduction. Now she's trying to get on with her life. But it's not easy being a university student with a challenging mental health condition. The "mean girl" voice in her head just won't leave her alone. To complicate matters, she's an heiress worth a not-so-small fortune. Enter her sexy new bodyguard, a former paramedic trained to deal with medically fragile clients. He's determined to help her live a normal life and do all the things she yearns to do. He just never counted on falling in love with her. He's honor-bound to keep things strictly professional between them, but that's hard to do when one look from her is enough to send him to his knees. Finding Layla is the first book in my new spin-off series, McIntyre Security Protectors. No cliffhanger. Just one glorious happy ending. Trigger Warning: This book contains themes of mental illness related to auditory hallucinations, anxiety, low self-esteem, and self-harm. Please be advised if you might find these topics troubling.




Lyla


Book Description

Lyla unerringly evokes the life of a troubled family and the love that grows in it. Quinn must learn how to exist in his mother's troubled world without being consumed by her selfishness. Set during the Great Depression, on the upper coast of Florida, this touching story is dripping with the sepia tones of Old-South culture. It is about growing up in an achingly anguished household and finding a way to survive. A stirring memoir that delivers the reader to a harsh world that is captivating, at times shocking, and triumphant. Written with fervor and affection for a wounded past, Sean Dietrich's newest work is an intense and heartfelt epic about the son of a restless woman, hard times, and those caught in the spurring drafts of fate.




Finding Grace


Book Description

The journey from grief to Grace Inevitably, difficult change and loss become realities for each of us, and too often, profound grief is only steps behind. Finding Grace uses the author’s personal experience as well as authentic stories of grieving parents to maintain the assertion that grace is every bit as close as grief, living fully available in every human heart during troublesome times. The soulful calls of grace, when answered through such avenues as traditional faith, spiritual mysteries, supportive community, mindful reflection and acceptance, and loving rituals serve to carve new pathways beyond life mired in a grief-filled reality. The nineteen stories and eight essays presented in Finding Grace: journeys of grief, courage and healing follow those who are moving forward, charting their own next steps toward grace.




Find Layla


Book Description

A neglected girl's chaotic coming-of-age becomes a trending new hashtag in a novel about growing up and getting away by an award-winning author. Underprivileged and keenly self-aware, SoCal fourteen-year-old Layla Bailey isn't used to being noticed. Except by mean girls who tweet about her ragged appearance. All she wants to do is indulge in her love of science, protect her vulnerable younger brother, and steer clear of her unstable mother. Then a school competition calls for a biome. Layla chooses her own home, a hostile ecosystem of indoor fungi and secret shame. With a borrowed video camera, she captures it all. The mushrooms growing in her brother's dresser. The black mold blooming up the apartment walls. The unmentionable things living in the dead fridge. All the inevitable exotic toxins that are Layla's life. Then the video goes viral. When Child Protective Services comes to call, Layla loses her family and her home. Defiant, she must face her bullies and friends alike, on her own. Unafraid at last of being seen, Layla accepts the mortifying reality of visibility. Now she has to figure out how to stay whole and stand behind the truth she has shown the world.




Guitar Notes


Book Description

On odd days, Tripp uses a school practice room to let loose on a borrowed guitar. Eyes closed, strumming that beat-up instrument, Tripp escapes to a world where only the music matters. On even days, Lyla Marks uses the same practice room. To Tripp, she's trying to become even more perfect—she's already a straight-A student and an award-winning cellist. But when Lyla begins leaving notes for him in between the strings of the guitar, his life intersects with hers in a way he never expected. What starts as a series of snippy notes quickly blossoms into the sharing of interests and secrets and dreams, and the forging of a very unlikely friendship. Challenging each other to write songs, they begin to connect, even though circumstances threaten to tear them apart. From beloved author Mary Amato comes a YA novel of wit and wisdom, both heartfelt and heart­breaking, about the power of music and the unexpected chords that draw us together.




The Inside Truth


Book Description

THE INSIDE TRUTH AN AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF A FOOT-FETISH MODEL A true story to how one woman became a fetish model. Also holds a finished full-length screenplay. A romantic comedy called FINDING CHEMISTRY. FINDING CHEMISTRY A young woman finds herself in an interesting career as a foot-fetish model and falls in love with one of her clients" Lillian Nichols leaves her verbally abusive husband and moves back home to her parents house in NJ. After being rejected from high paying jobs, Lillian decides to take a different road of financial freedom. She becomes a foot fetish model in NYC where she falls in love with one of her clients.




The Chance to Do It Again


Book Description

Lyla is just seventeen when one moment changes her life forever. Now she is spending her senior year pregnant and her boyfriend, Patrick, is working at his grandfather’s fruit market to support his new family instead of going off to college. During a difficult day, an Irish exchange student, Rowena, comes to Lyla’s rescue and tells her fascinating stories of her family’s haunted castle back home whose ghost knows how to please a woman. While Patrick rolls his eyes, Lyla is enthralled. For the next twenty years, Patrick promises Lyla he will take her to Ireland to visit Rowena and see the castle. But when he becomes ill and passes away, Lyla is left to pick up the pieces of her shattered life and contemplate what is next. After she decides to visit Ireland, Lyla touches the castle walls. As her world begins to shift, Lyla is left wondering whether grief is making her lose her mind or if is it really possible that the castle’s ghost looks just like her husband. In this romantic tale, a woman journeying through loss visits a castle in Ireland and becomes romantically entangled with a three-hundred-year-old ghost who shockingly resembles her deceased husband.