All Out of Pretty


Book Description

Andrea knows what it's like to be pretty. Thanks to her gorgeous, drug-addicted mother, she also knows where pretty can lead... At 16, Andrea is yanked from the safety of her Gram's home and dropped into the backwoods of Ohio, where she's coerced into working for her mother's drug-dealing boyfriend, Judd. Unwilling to give up on her college dreams, Andrea spends her days trying to stay on the honor roll, and her nights packaging and delivering drugs. Judd is violent and manipulative, and Andrea often goes to bed with an empty stomach and a hardening heart. The one bright spot in Andrea's life is a budding friendship with a charismatic girl named Chloe and her handsome cousin, Brick. These stolen moments of teenage normalcy make Andrea yearn for a way out, but fear and a sense of responsibility to her mother pull her back in. When things with Judd take a darker turn than she can bear, Andrea devises a plan to save herself. But freedom may cost her everything—and everyone—she cares about... Gritty, heartfelt, and suspenseful, All Out of Pretty explores the complexities of self-preservation and addiction as well as the pain, and beauty, of letting go. It will appeal to fans of Sara Zarr and Sarah Dessen.




All Our Pretty Songs


Book Description

This is a story about love, but not the kind of love you think. You'll see... In the lush and magical Pacific Northwest live two best friends who grew up like sisters: charismatic, mercurial, and beautiful Aurora, and the devoted, watchful narrator. Each of them is incomplete without the other. But their unbreakable bond is challenged when a mysterious and gifted musician named Jack comes between them. His music is like nothing I have ever heard. It is like the ocean surging, the wind that blows across the open water, the far call of gulls. Suddenly, each girl must decide what matters most: friendship, or love. What both girls don't know is that the stakes are even higher than either of them could have imagined. They're not the only ones who have noticed Jack's gift; his music has awakened an ancient evil—and a world both above and below which may not be mythical at all. We have paved over the ancient world but that does not mean we have erased it. The real and the mystical; the romantic and the heartbreaking all begin to swirl together in All Our Pretty Songs, Sarah McCarry's brilliant debut, carrying the two on journey that is both enthralling and terrifying. And it's up to the narrator to protect the people she loves—if she can.




All This Could Be Different


Book Description

2022 NATIONAL BOOK AWARD FINALIST ONE OF THE LOS ANGELES TIMES' TOP 5 FICTION BOOKS OF THE YEAR ONE OF TIME AND SLATE'S TOP 10 BOOKS OF THE YEAR Named one of the BEST BOOKS OF 2022 by NPR, Vogue, Vulture, BuzzFeed, Harper's Bazaar, and more “One of the buzziest, most human novels of the year…breathless, dizzying, and completely beautiful.” —Vogue “Dazzling and wholly original...[written] with such mordant wit, insight, and specificity, it feels like watching a new literary star being born in real time.” —Entertainment Weekly From a brilliant new voice comes an electrifying novel of a young immigrant building a life for herself—a warm, dazzling, and profound saga of queer love, friendship, work, and precarity in twenty-first century America Graduating into the long maw of an American recession, Sneha is one of the fortunate ones. She’s moved to Milwaukee for an entry-level corporate job that, grueling as it may be, is the key that unlocks every door: she can pick up the tab at dinner with her new friend Tig, get her college buddy Thom hired alongside her, and send money to her parents back in India. She begins dating women—soon developing a burning crush on Marina, a beguiling and beautiful dancer who always seems just out of reach. But before long, trouble arrives. Painful secrets rear their heads; jobs go off the rails; evictions loom. Sneha struggles to be truly close and open with anybody, even as her friendships deepen, even as she throws herself headlong into a dizzying romance with Marina. It’s then that Tig begins to draw up a radical solution to their problems, hoping to save them all. A beautiful and capacious novel rendered in singular, unforgettable prose, All This Could Be Different is a wise, tender, and riveting group portrait of young people forging love and community amidst struggle, and a moving story of one immigrant’s journey to make her home in the world.




Pretty


Book Description

An electrifying debut novel from the New York Times bestselling author of Some Girls. Bebe Baker is an ex-everything: ex-stripper, ex-Christian, ex-drug addict, ex-pretty girl. It's been one year since the car accident that killed her boyfriend left her scarred and shaken. Flanked by an eccentric posse of friends, she is serving out a self-imposed sentence at a halfway house, while trying to finish cosmetology school. Amid the rampant diagnoses, over-medication, compulsive eating, and acrylic nails of Los Angeles, Bebe looks for something to believe in before something--her past, the dangerously magnetic men in her life, her own bad choices--knocks her off course again.




Throw Them All Out


Book Description

Schweizer, a research fellow at the Hoover Institution at Stanford University, discusses the state of government and the depths of its political corruption.




Pretty from the Inside Out


Book Description

You're not a little girl anymore, and you'd love to start wearing makeup and pretty clothes, getting guys to notice you... But hang on a sec, girl! Before you get all made up, you need to make sure you know what it really means to be pretty. Pretty is... the light you shine through your service the way you show gentleness, humility, and respect how you act when no one is watching Jennifer Strickland used to be a model, and she knows that real prettiness comes from the heart. Join her on a journey of discovering true beauty—the beauty of a beloved daughter of God!




A Grown-Up Kind of Pretty


Book Description

A Grown Up Kind of Pretty is a powerful saga of three generations of women, plagued by hardships and torn by a devastating secret, yet inextricably joined by the bonds of family. Fifteen-year-old Mosey Slocumb -- spirited, sassy, and on the cusp of womanhood -- is shaken when a small grave is unearthed in the backyard, and determined to figure out why it's there. Liza, her stroke-ravaged mother, is haunted by choices she made as a teenager. But it is Jenny, Mosey's strong and big-hearted grandmother, whose maternal love braids together the strands of the women's shared past -- and who will stop at nothing to defend their future.




While My Pretty One Sleeps


Book Description

A stunning tale of murder, glamour, and romance, While My Pretty One Sleeps is the most exciting novel yet from Mary Higgins Clark, the Queen of Suspense. Neeve Kearny may be the only person in New York worried about the disappearance of Ethel Lambston. Ethel, a bestselling author famous for her juicy exposés, is one of the best customers at Neeve’s exclusive Madison Avenue boutique. But Ethel’s ex-husband, her parasitical nephew, and the fashion moguls skewered in her latest article all have reason to be glad she’s no longer around. When Ethel Lambston is found with her throat cut, Neeve’s memories of her mother’s long-unsolved murder loom up once again. Now as an innocent witness in the Lambston investigation, Neeve is drawn into a new nightmare...a sinister labyrinth of greed and ambition that will lead her into mortal danger...




Pretty as a Picture


Book Description

A Wall Street Journal, Seattle Times, and CrimeReads Best Mystery Book of 2020 "Funny, fast-paced, and a pleasure to read." --The Wall Street Journal An egomaniacal movie director, an isolated island, and a decades-old murder--the addictive new novel from the bestselling author of Dear Daughter Marissa Dahl, an up-and-coming film editor with a flair for faux pas, travels to a small island off the coast of Delaware to work with the legendary--and legendarily demanding--director Tony Rees on a feature film with a familiar logline. Some girl dies. It's not much to go on, but the specifics don't concern Marissa. Whatever the script is, her job is the same. She'll spend her days in the editing room, doing what she does best: turning pictures into stories. But she soon discovers that on this set, nothing is as it's supposed to be--or as it seems. There are rumors of accidents and indiscretions, of burgeoning scandals and perilous schemes. Half the crew has been fired. The other half wants to quit. Even the actors have figured out something is wrong. And no one seems to know what happened to the editor she was hired to replace. Then she meets the intrepid and incorrigible teenage girls who are determined to solve the real-life murder that is the movie's central subject, and before long, Marissa is drawn into the investigation herself. The only problem is, the killer may still be on the loose. And he might not be finished. A wickedly funny exploration of our cultural addiction to tales of murder and mayhem and a thrilling, behind-the-scenes whodunit, Pretty as a Picture is a captivating page-turner from one of the most distinctive voices in crime fiction.




All the Pretty People


Book Description

Told through an authentic voice, the flash-memoir stories in this book bring out all of the dirt on the 1970s suburban hippies that author Ariel Gore used to know in California—the pretty people she wanted to be but never quite felt she was. At times heartrending and heartwarming, it's a queer love story with no shortage of shame, violence, and Barbie envy.