Be Obsessed or Be Average


Book Description

From the millionaire entrepreneur and New York Times bestselling author of The 10X Rule comes a bold and contrarian wake-up call for anyone truly ready for success. One of the 7 best motivational books of 2016, according to Inc. Magazine. Before Grant Cardone built five successful companies (and counting), became a multimillionaire, and wrote bestselling books... he was broke, jobless, and drug-addicted. Grant had grown up with big dreams, but friends and family told him to be more reasonable and less demanding. If he played by the rules, they said, he could enjoy everyone else’s version of middle class success. But when he tried it their way, he hit rock bottom. Then he tried the opposite approach. He said NO to the haters and naysayers and said YES to his burning, outrageous, animal obsession. He reclaimed his obsession with wanting to be a business rock star, a super salesman, a huge philanthropist. He wanted to live in a mansion and even own an airplane. Obsession made all of his wildest dreams come true. And it can help you achieve massive success too. As Grant says, we're in the middle of an epidemic of average. The conventional wisdom is to seek balance and take it easy. But that has really just given us an excuse to be unexceptional. If you want real success, you have to know how to harness your obsession to rocket to the top. This book will give you the inspiration and tools to break out of your cocoon of mediocrity and achieve your craziest dreams. Grant will teach you how to: · Set crazy goals—and reach them, every single day. · Feed the beast: when you value money and spend it on the right things, you get more of it. · Shut down the doubters—and use your haters as fuel. Whether you're a sales person, small business owner, or 9-to-5 working stiff, your path to happiness runs though your obsessions. It's a simple choice: be obsessed or be average.




Fortune Smiles


Book Description

The National Book Award–winning story collection from the author of The Orphan Master’s Son offers something rare in fiction: a new way of looking at the world. “MASTERFUL.”—The Washington Post “ENTRANCING.”—O: The Oprah Magazine “PERCEPTIVE AND BRAVE.”—The New York Times Throughout these six stories, Pulitzer Prize winner Adam Johnson delves deep into love and loss, natural disasters, the influence of technology, and how the political shapes the personal, giving voice to the perspectives we don’t often hear. In “Nirvana,” a programmer whose wife has a rare disease finds solace in a digital simulacrum of the president of the United States. In “Hurricanes Anonymous,” a young man searches for the mother of his son in a Louisiana devastated by Hurricanes Katrina and Rita. “George Orwell Was a Friend of Mine” follows a former warden of a Stasi prison in East Germany who vehemently denies his past, even as pieces of it are delivered in packages to his door. And in the unforgettable title story, Johnson returns to his signature subject, North Korea, depicting two defectors from Pyongyang who are trying to adapt to their new lives in Seoul, while one cannot forget the woman he left behind. WINNER OF THE STORY PRIZE • A NEW YORK TIMES NOTABLE BOOK NAMED ONE OF THE TEN BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR BY The Miami Herald • San Francisco Chronicle • USA Today AND ONE OF THE BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR BY The Washington Post • NPR • Marie Claire • St. Louis Post-Dispatch • BuzzFeed • The Daily Beast • Los Angeles Magazine • The Independent • BookPage • Kirkus Reviews “Remarkable . . . Adam Johnson is one of America’s greatest living writers.”—The Huffington Post “Haunting, harrowing . . . Johnson’s writing is as rich in compassion as it is in invention, and that rare combination makes Fortune Smiles worth treasuring.”—USA Today “Fortune Smiles [blends] exotic scenarios, morally compromised characters, high-wire action, rigorously limber prose, dense thickets of emotion, and, most critically, our current techno-moment.”—The Boston Globe “Johnson’s boundary-pushing stories make for exhilarating reading.”—San Francisco Chronicle




The Hazards of Good Fortune


Book Description

“An entertaining tale rich in schadenfreude as bad things happen to a hapless billionaire” (Kirkus Reviews, starred review). Jay Gladstone was born to privilege. He is a civic leader and a generous philanthropist, as well as the owner of an NBA team. But in today’s New York, even a wealthy man’s life can spin out of control, no matter the money or influence he possesses. Jay sees himself as a moral man, determined not to repeat his father’s mistakes. He would rather focus on his unstable second marriage and his daughter, Aviva, than worry about questions of race or privilege. However, he moves through a sensitive and aware world: that of Dag Maxwell, the black star forward, and white police officer Russell Plesko, who makes a decision that has resonating consequences—particularly for a DA whose hopes for a future in politics will rest on an explosive prosecution. Set during Barack Obama’s presidency, this artful novel illuminates contemporary America and does not shy away from questions about our scalding social divide—why is conversation about race so fraught, to what degree is the justice system impartial, and does great wealth inoculate those who have it?—and explores the aftermath of unforgivable errors and the unpredictability of the court of public opinion. “Greenland takes a Dickensian delight in letting the plot sprawl with parallels, digressions, false leads, and twists.” —Kirkus Reviews (starred review) “A wild and funny page-turner of a novel that grabs you and doesn’t let go.” —Larry David




The Alchemist of Fire and Fortune


Book Description

The fifth book in the award-winning Accidental Alchemist Mystery Series by USA Today bestselling author Gigi Pandian. A blackmailer obsessed with gold. A boyfriend who’s more than he seems. And a treasure hidden on the Oregon coast. Alchemist Zoe Faust’s mentor Nicolas Flamel is back in her life, but catching up with him will have to wait. An elusive blackmailer has threatened to expose a dangerous alchemical secret. Zoe’s boyfriend is out of town protecting secrets of his own. So when rumors of a treasure map reach Zoe, she turns her back on what sounds like no more than a game. Zoe’s mischievous living gargoyle best friend Dorian, who thinks of himself as a modern-day Poirot, is convinced the map is real—and that it’s the key to proving himself as valuable to Zoe as her human family. With the help of the neighborhood teenagers, Dorian sets out to find the treasure, risking more than he planned in the process. Rumors, treasures, and secrets intersect to unearth more than Zoe could have dreamed—and could leave her family changed forever. Can Zoe stop the threat to the family unit she’s created?




Fortune is a Woman


Book Description




Every Summer After


Book Description

"A radiant debut."—Emily Henry, #1 New York Times bestselling author of Book Lovers THE NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER! Named One of the Hottest Reads of Summer 2022 by Today ∙ Parade ∙ PopSugar ∙ USA Today ∙ SheReads ∙ BuzzFeed ∙ BookBub ∙ Bustle ∙ and more! Six summers to fall in love. One moment to fall apart. A weekend to get it right. They say you can never go home again, and for Persephone Fraser, ever since she made the biggest mistake of her life a decade ago, that has felt too true. Instead of glittering summers on the lakeshore of her childhood, she spends them in a stylish apartment in the city, going out with friends, and keeping everyone a safe distance from her heart. Until she receives the call that sends her racing back to Barry’s Bay and into the orbit of Sam Florek—the man she never thought she’d have to live without. For six summers, through hazy afternoons on the water and warm summer nights working in his family’s restaurant and curling up together with books—medical textbooks for him and work-in-progress horror short stories for her—Percy and Sam had been inseparable. Eventually that friendship turned into something breathtakingly more, before it fell spectacularly apart. When Percy returns to the lake for Sam’s mother’s funeral, their connection is as undeniable as it had always been. But until Percy can confront the decisions she made and the years she’s spent punishing herself for them, they’ll never know whether their love might be bigger than the biggest mistakes of their past. Told over the course of six years and one weekend, Every Summer After is a big, sweeping nostalgic story of love and the people and choices that mark us forever.




Love Fortunes and Other Disasters


Book Description

Love is real in the town of Grimbaud and Fallon Dupree has dreamed of attending high school there for years. After all, generations of Dupree's have successfully followed the (100% accurate!) love fortunes from Zita's famous Love Charms Shop to happily marry their high school sweethearts. It's a tradition. So she is both stunned and devastated when her fortune states that she will NEVER find love. Fortunately, Fallon isn't the only student with a terrible love fortune, and a rebellion is brewing. Fallon is determined to take control of her own fate—even if it means working with a notorious heartbreaker like Sebastian. Will Fallon and Sebastian be able to overthrow Zita's tyranny and fall in love?




Fortune Is a Woman


Book Description

A runaway heiress . . . a legacy of shame . . . an empire built on blood and revenge . . . The three met in the aftermath of San Francisco's devastating 1906 earthquake—the Mandarin Lai Tsin, a runaway American heiress, and a young Englishwoman. Against all odds they made their dreams come true, building one of the world’s largest trading companies and most luxurious hotels. . . . They had only each other—and bloody secrets to bury even as they rose to dizzying heights, wary of love yet vulnerable to passion in its most dangerous forms. . . . The Mandarin would pass his multi-billion-dollar empire only to the women in the Lai Tsin dynasty—along with one last devastating truth. . . . Sweeping from the turn of the century through the 1960’s, from the Orient to San Francisco and New York, Elizabeth Adler has written a magnificent novel of new wealth and old privilege, family passions and secret shame, of women surviving, triumphant, in the riveting saga of romantic intrigue.




My Vast Fortune


Book Description

"This book will make you rich. Filthy stinking rich. You will never need to work again. You will spend the rest of your life on the Riviera sipping piña coladas and listening to Sinatra. And even if this doesn't happen, Andrew Tobias will provide you with such a wealth of wit that you will retire with a vast fortune of laughter. " --Christopher Buckley, author of Wry Martinis As Newsweek put it, "Andrew Tobias remains the funniest of the financial writers." Forbes identified him as "one of the financial community's most pithily perceptive observers." In My Vast Fortune, the bestselling author of The Only Investment Guide You'll Ever Need tells the amusing and illuminating story of how he amassed dizzying (well, to him) wealth. Then, he describes the unusual ways he's put it to work. Among his more famous money adventures are: His personal campaign against smoking in Russia, which began when he spotted an opportunity to buy cheap TV airtime for commercials. "Excuse my pronunciation, " he told ninety million Russians night after night, "but I have something important to tell you." His decision to buy real estate in Miami over the phone, without ever seeing it. For the price of a swank two-bedroom apartment in New York, Tobias realized he could buy most of a neighborhood--so he did. Oops. The tragicomic story of liberal as slumlord. His crusade to fix the auto insurance mess, which pitted him against--of all people--his onetime hero Ralph Nader. After spending $250,000 of his vast fortune on a referendum in California (where he has never lived), Tobias came to two conclusions: 1) "Each of us has a calling and--though appallingly boring--auto insurance seemed more and more to be mine" ; and 2) "Ralph Nader is a big fat idiot." Finally, Tobias addresses your vast fortune and offers his wisest tips on how to make it and how to spend it. Witty and compassionate, Andrew Tobias is a plutocrat for the nineties, a capitalist with a heart. If you enjoyed The Only Investment Guide You'll Ever Need, you'll love My Vast Fortune.




The Fortune of War


Book Description

Aubrey and Maturin are caught in the outbreak of the War of 1812.