Fragile Smile Book I


Book Description

Fragile Smile Book I




Fragile Beginnings


Book Description

This is a gripping medical narrative that brings readers into the complex world of newborn intensive care, where brilliant but imperfect doctors do all they can to coax life into their tiny, injured patients. Dr. Adam Wolfberg--journalist, physician specializing in high-risk pregnancies, and father to a child born weighing under two pounds--describes his daughter Larissa's precipitous birth at six months, which left her tenuously hanging on to life in an incubator. Ultrasound had diagnosed a devastating hemorrhage in her brain that doctors reasoned would give her only a 50 percent chance of having a normal IQ. With the knowledge that their daughter could be severely impaired for life, Adam and his wife, Kelly, consider whether to take Larissa off life-support. As they make decisions about live-saving care in the first hours of a premature infant's life, doctors and parents must grapple with profound ethical and scientific questions: Who should be saved? How aggressively should doctors try to salvage the life of a premature baby, who may be severely neurologically and physically impaired? What will that child's quality of life be like after millions of dollars are spent saving him or her? Wolfberg explores the fits and starts of physicians, government policy makers, and lawyers who have struggled over the years to figure out the best way to make these wrenching decisions. Through Larissa's early hospital course and the struggle to decide what is best for her, Wolfberg examines the limitations of newborn intensive-care medicine, neuroplasticity, and decision making at the beginning of life. Featuring high-profile scientific topics and explanatory medical reporting, this is the first book to explore the profound emotional and ethical issues raised by advancing technology that allows us to save the lives of increasingly undeveloped preemies.




I Smile Back


Book Description

"Powerful. Koppelman's instincts help her navigate these choppy waters with inventiveness and integrity." —Los Angeles Times Now a major motion picture starring Sarah Silverman in her dramatic-acting debut, and Josh Charles, I Smile Back tells the affecting tale of Laney Brooks, a mother and wife on a self-destructive streak. She takes the drugs she wants, sleeps with the men she wants, disappears when she wants. Lurking beneath Laney's seemingly composed surface is the impulse to follow in her father's footsteps, to leave and topple her family's balance in the process. “This crushing novel by the author of A Mouthful of Air is a shocking portrait of suburban ennui gone horribly awry. Koppelman’s prose style is understated and crackling; each sentence is laden with a foreboding sense of menace. Like a crime scene or a flaming car wreck, it becomes impossible not to stare.” —Publishers Weekly




The Nature of Fragile Things


Book Description

April 18, 1906: A massive earthquake rocks San Francisco just before daybreak, igniting a devouring inferno. Lives are lost, lives are shattered, but some rise from the ashes forever changed. Sophie Whalen is a young Irish immigrant so desperate to get out of a New York tenement that she answers a mail-order bride ad and agrees to marry a man she knows nothing about. San Francisco widower Martin Hocking proves to be as aloof as he is mesmerizingly handsome. Sophie quickly develops deep affection for Kat, Martin's silent five-year-old daughter, but Martin's odd behavior leaves her with the uneasy feeling that something about her newfound situation isn't right. Then one early-spring evening, a stranger at the door sets in motion a transforming chain of events. Sophie discovers hidden ties to two other women. The first, pretty and pregnant, is standing on her doorstep. The second is hundreds of miles away in the American Southwest, grieving the loss of everything she once loved. The fates of these three women intertwine on the eve of the devastating earthquake, thrusting them onto a perilous journey that will test their resiliency and resolve and, ultimately, their belief that love can overcome fear. From the acclaimed author of The Last Year of the War and As Bright as Heaven comes a gripping novel about the bonds of friendship and mother love, and the power of female solidarity.




714 Lyrics Book I


Book Description

LYRICS FOR ALL TIMES. TIME REVEALS / TIME HEALS Being is best felt in a song.




The Vampires of Vegas Books I-III With Extras


Book Description

Included in this omnibus package are books 1-3 with 2 extra bonus short novellas. A highly imaginative post-apocalyptic series that is not your usual dystopian read. All packaged together to keep the action and adventure nonstop! Together, these 3 books and 2 short stories have 373+ Amazon reviews! A highly anticipated and loved series which packs a punch and is made to devour, literally! Reign of Blood Book#1: "Never tease anything that wants to eat you. My name is April Tate and my blood is the new gold. Vampires and hybrids have overrun my world, once vibrant with life, but now a graveyard of death shrouded in shadows. I fight to survive; I fight for my mother and brother. The journey is full of turns that I am quite unprepared for. And I'm just hoping to make it to the next Vegas sunrise..." In a post-apocalyptic world, a viral epidemic has wiped out most of the earth’s population, leaving behind few humans but untold numbers of mutated vampires. April is a seventeen-year-old girl who lives in the remains of Las Vegas one year after the outbreak. She has become a ferocious vampire killer and after her family is abducted, she goes searching for them. What she finds is a new breed of vampire, unlike any she has seen before. Unsure of whom she can trust, she discovers that her view of the world is not as black and white as she once thought, and she's willing to bend the rules to rescue her family. But in trying to save them, she may only succeed in bringing her fragile world crashing down around her. Disarming Book #2: The world has changed. One must adapt to survive or hold on to the crumbling shards of humanity. April continues to hold her fragile world together, but the ties that hold her family together are quickly unraveling. Rumors of a massive human underground settlement draw her to the shadows of the city once more in search of other survivors more like her, even with the hybrid vampires opposing her every move. The darkness hides secrets along with the continued threat the Feral Vampires create, but a greater evil hides within the city. Something tells April that the humans will be less than welcoming of her, and that's if she can find them before the Vampires do. Joining sides with the enemy might be the only choice she has left. Amplified Book #3: Who wants to be the prey in a world full of hunters? In the aftermath of the end of her world, April Tate decides that it's high time to leave the city that never sleeps, Las Vegas. After learning the origins of a Zompire Plague remedy, she risks her life to steal the antidote, makes the decision to separate from Jeremy for a while, and joins a small band of new and old comrades on a trip to the Pacific Coast. There they search out a legendary hive of vampires who are more than just wild, blood drinking creatures, they could be the very people she needs to help her. On a mission to save the last of humanity, April will use the antidote to save some from eternal damnation, but will her decision bring hope for the future or create an ever bigger, unforeseen devastation? Resonant (Prequel) Surviving is worse than death… As the first days of the end of humanity tumble across the city of Las Vegas in the form of an overwhelming viral infection, turning almost everyone into vampire-like creatures, April Tate will find out what it really means to survive. What does it take to make it out alive in a place where everything is but a withered echo of its former self, and death does not come willingly? Elijah: The Miel Chronicles (A Vampires of Vegas Companion Story) These are the journeys of Miel, the Keeper of the journal. The workings of heaven are shrouded in mystery and myth, leaving us to only theorize as to what awaits us when we pass. There are those among us however, that are special cases. These are good people that have committed a horrendous crime, such as murder.




Into the Storm


Book Description

A captain and his crew journey out of time and into battle in the first novel in New York Times bestselling author Taylor Anderson’s alternate history Destroyermen saga. Pressed into service when World War 2 breaks out in the Pacific, USS Walker—a Great War–era destroyer—finds itself in full retreat from pursuit by Japanese battleships. Its captain, Lieutenant Commander Matthew Patrick Reddy, heads Walker into a squall for cover. They emerge somewhere else... Familiar landmarks appear, but the water teems with vicious, monstrous fish—and there appear to be dinosaurs grazing onshore. Matt and his crew have entered an alternate world...and they are not alone. Humans have not evolved, but two other species have. And they are at war. Reddy and the crew of the Walker have the power and weaponry capable of turning a primitive war into a genocidal Armageddon. Now they must decide which species they will support, because the side they choose will be victorious...




The Royal Cleaner: Books 4-6


Book Description

The Underworld may be the best place for Caroline to heal, but it is torture without her wife... After being kidnapped and tortured by genetically engineered humans for days, Caroline knows that her fellow demons are the ones best equipped to heal her, but her human wife and step-daughter aren't welcome in the Underworld. Mina isn't exactly happy to lose her wife, either, but with her sister who had a hand in Caroline's kidnapping now asking for her help, she has more than enough to keep her busy on Earth. Mina and Caroline's lives are only getting more complicated, but they have a dream for their future that they are ready to fight for... The Royal Cleaner: Books 4-6 collects together the second trilogy of L.C. Mawson's fast-paced Royal Cleaner urban fantasy series.




The Perfect Smile (A Jessie Hunt Psychological Suspense Thriller—Book Four)


Book Description

In THE PERFECT SMILE (Book #4), criminal profiler Jessie Hunt, 29, fresh from the FBI Academy, is assigned a disturbing new case: a woman in her 30s has been murdered after using a dating website for her affairs with married men. Had she gotten too close to one of the married men? Was she the victim of blackmail? Of a stalker? Or was there some far more nefarious motive at stake? The list of suspects takes Jessie into wealthy, manicured neighborhoods, behind the veil of seemingly perfect lives, lives which are actually rotten to the core. The killer, she realizes, must lie behind one of these fake, plastic smiles. Jessie must plumb the depths of his psychosis as she tries to both catch a killer and hold her own fragile psyche together—with her own murderous father on the loose, willing to stop at nothing until he kills her. A fast-paced psychological suspense thriller with unforgettable characters and heart-pounding suspense, THE PERFECT SMILE is book #4 in a riveting new series that will leave you turning pages late into the night. Books #5-#24 are also available!




The Cosmopolitan


Book Description