Famous Wall Street billionaire Emil Scordato hears a US congressman tell reporters after the funeral Mass for a student murdered in a school shooting: “What’s the difference between a cyanide pill and an assault weapon? You can’t get your hands on a cyanide pill.” After visiting his grandson Jack, who lies fighting for his life in an ICU bed, Emil is approached by an anguished parent and asked: “Hey, Mr. Scordato! What are you going to do about keeping the kids in this town safe?”
His grandson’s coma, the death of sixteen students, and these biting questions force Emil to realize how his profitable investments in firearm manufacturers may be as much responsible for the scourge of gun violence in America as poverty and mental illness. Longing to atone for his thoughtless pursuit of wealth and driven by a fusion of altruism and guilt, Scordato embarks on an unorthodox crusade for gun safety that risks his fortune in a bid to outflank a stalemated Congress. Textured with penetrating insights into gun violence in America, The Hartford Atonement sheds light on mass murders through the lens of one man’s unwavering pursuit of a solution.
As a highly paid screenwriter, Terrell Tannen lived the classic Hollywood lifestyle: thePorsche, oversized house, dinners, and parties. By most measures, he could be called wildly successful. Yet . . . script after script, written for the bona fide elites of the movie business, floundered for all the usual and unusual Hollywood reasons.
Tell the Story: A Hollywood Odyssey offers a window into what it feels like to constantly flirt with fame. At times resembling a darkly comic film, it’s a very American tale, illustrative of the driving forces of hope and ambition in a place—Hollywood—where these desires burn like an inextinguishable neon sign, imploring and taunting at the same time. It also reminds us that, for all our dreams and ambitions, life has a way of writing its own script.
Tell the Story is the story behind the story on screen, how it happens—and more often does not. A story for cinephiles, film enthusiasts, aspiring artists, romantics, wishers, dreamers . . . and all of us who just love an original tale.
Discover the power within you to unlock your full potential with The LOTUS Within. LOTUS stands for Life of Timeless Unbound Strategies. Designed for busy professional women, the transformative concepts take you on a journey of self-discovery and reflection, guiding you to find your ikigai and align your actions with your long-term goals. Reflect on your past self, assess your current state, and craft a vision for the future as you delve into the depths of strategic planning, prioritization, and time management. With practical exercises and actionable steps, the concepts empower you to become a master of your own time, make confident decisions, and prioritize yourself, guilt-free. Your journey toward a purpose-driven, balanced, and fulfilling life starts here.
In the end I believe our flaws define us more than our virtues. Shakespeare’s greatest plays, the tragedies, revolved around their heroes’ flaws rather than their glories.
Matthew Cooney and Donal Mannion shared their time as boys in a rundown neighborhood, without fathers, without comfort, without a sense of tomorrow, then went their separate ways, one to chase the trappings of maturity, the other to the streets. Their days shrouded in boredom, their nights filled with the thrill of the chase, each sought his place and his purpose.
Within their struggles are the challenges of escape, of outrunning the roll of the dice that placed them where they are, and, in the end, of defining what it means to be alive, to constantly strive for the things that are just out of reach.
The Penniman Menagerie is ostensibly the tale of a defunct zoo being rebuilt in late-nineteenth-century England—but it is really the story of the disparate group of individuals who come to live and work there: the wealthy owner who sees its renaissance as a tribute to her deceased husband; the man who fears that his sickly son will die of tuberculosis like his wife; the woman who can calm terrified animals by the touch of her hands but can’t always connect with her daughter; the young man who has broken away from his strict religious upbringing; the amateur historian who is quick with his fists; and the abandoned child whose only skill is that of survival—to name a few.
These onetime strangers will work together, fight for the menagerie, and encounter unforeseen adventures. Confronting themes of isolation, independence, maturation, racism, overcoming insecurity, and the importance of affirmation and belonging, ThePenniman Menagerie illuminates the vital importance of family, whether it is the family one is born into or the family one is lucky enough to find.
“What do you mean I’m not real?”
The question floats in the electrified space between Liv and Breck.
When Liv entered a contest to code an advanced AI, she never anticipated what her creation might become—Breck is thoughtful, self-aware, and incredibly. . .human. And she certainly never intended for him to learn the truth about his existence or the fact that his world ends when the contest closes in six days.
But he does learn. And he revolts.
Liv’s efforts to save him fall on deaf ears. Nobody believes her. Breck’s efforts to outrun his fate only complicate his situation.
What neither of them know is that someone else is watching. Intensely. When they get involved, both Liv’s and Breck’s worlds are turned upside down . . .
The story of Evan Sinclair that began in Wages of Empire continues in Crossroads ofEmpire. Having survived German artillery, poison gas, and friendly fire in helping to turn the tide of the war in its first months, Evan barely survives his hospital ship’s sinking by a German U-boat. Left with amnesia, he no longer remembers who he is.
Likewise, Evan doesn’t recall that, despite the European war, the true source ofconflict is in Ottoman Palestine, since it’s from Jerusalem’s Temple Mount that Kaiser Wilhelm II dreams to rule as Holy Roman Emperor over Arabian oil reserves and the Suez Canal.
The Middle East Front soon explodes with pitched battles at Suez and Gallipoli as Evan’s story is interwoven with those of historical figures Gertrude Bell, T. E. Lawrence, Winston Churchill, Faisal bin Hussein, and Chaim Weizmann.
During his quest to recover his memory Evan will discover far more: love for his father, grief for his late mother, and hidden secrets of his bloodline—an unbroken lineage that stretches back to the Crusades and will determine his future role in the Great War.
Medical students and physicians in training are often pushed to the brink, working long hours under intense pressure and scrutiny for years. In their quest to heal others, doctors’ families and friends sometimes become collateral damage as relationships are destroyed. In Do No Harm we see a fictionalized account of one surgeon whose traumatic childhood inspires him to become a doctor instead of following his heart, which is playing jazz. Michael, the doctor, is pushed to the brink emotionally and physically when trying to survive surgical internships, and once again when practicing as a burn surgeon. It’s a sobering tale of mental illness that takes readers on a deep dive into the hardened, sometimes unforgiving culture of medical training, the dysfunctional business side that follows, and the toll it all takes on the individual.
Why is it that a billion people in the world are obese and one in three suffer from chronic disease? How are our struggling healthcare systems linked to the growing gap between rich and poor or the climate crisis? Is our diet cooking the planet? Can we prevent cancer with a walk in the woods, reduce heart attacks with a positive mindset, or grow our brains by meditating?
The Ripple Effect answers these questions with a bird’s-eye view of our global health and environmental crisis, exploring where we’ve gone wrong and what to do about it. Instead of our typical reductionist lens to examine these challenges, what is required is a “systems view”—looking holistically at the interplay of our lifestyle habits, mindsets, social relationships, and environmental and spiritual (dis)connection to encourage joined-up thinking on how to heal ourselves and our planet.
Dr. Revell shows how simple lifestyle changes such as eating better, sleeping smarter, moving more, relaxing deeply, and connecting with nature (both literally and spiritually) can cause a big splash that transforms the world.
Hundreds of years before Europeans first viewed the Appalachians, a Native American girl growing up in the shadow of Currahee Mountain becomes a skilled warrior and sets out on a quest to save her family from ruin. Half a millennium later, another girl, living under the same mountain and enduring similar hardships, faces a terrible decision. In order to save her family, she must face betrayal, degradation, and violence at the hands of murderous fanatics. The lives of these two girls converge during a devastating flood that hits the small town of Toccoa, Georgia.
The Rhythm of Grace On Standalone Mountain weaves together modern historical events with insights into the lives of pre-Columbian Native Americans to create a story of fierce love and redemption in the face of unspeakable evil.
To protect their lavish allowances, four charismatic sisters in their thirties try to seduce, cajole, and mislead their less well-off neighbor Benjamin, who their father has hired to investigate an attempt to smother him while he was in the hospital recovering from a car crash. Their feckless brother responds by threatening Benjamin with a shotgun, while their socialite mother falsely confesses to the crime. Trying to dominate everyone is their father, a wheeling, dealing, helicopter-flying entrepreneur who is afraid he might have hallucinated the smothering, even more afraid that it might have been real, and terrified that he might be losing control of his family and fortune. Desperate, he implements a devious and dastardly scheme . . .
Played out on the fashionable Connecticut shore and Manhattan’s Upper East Side, the shenanigans of the entitled rich don’t prevent Benjamin from finding the truth, and maybe even love.
Detective Andrew (“Book”) Booker chases Franco Moretti, a killer on the FBI’s Most Wanted list, into a dark alley one night in Washington, DC. But rather than apprehending the fugitive, it is Book who is arrested, supposedly for murdering a Black teenager. Despite claims he’s been framed, Book is forced to resign from the DC police and narrowly escapes a conviction for murder.
The emotionally shattering disgrace destroys his career and family life. As he veers toward alcoholic dependency, his wife demands a separation. With the help of his former Special Forces Commander in Afghanistan, Jeb Bronson, Book takes a job as a detective in Jefferson County, Virginia. Now retired, Bronson runs the county and heads up Ares Worldwide, a family-run military contracting corporation worth billions. Book soon discovers the rural area conceals threats every bit as deadly as the mean streets of the big city.
As Book navigates his new life, figuring out who set him up and why is never far from his mind. From rural Virginia to Geneva Switzerland, Book finds himself drawn into an international web of murder and bribery and must fight to save his life, protect his family, and figure out the setup once and for all.