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Summer fiction at its page-turning best for fans of Elin Hilderbrand, Holly Chamberlin, and Nancy Thayer! Colleen French, acclaimed author of The Summer I Found Myself , brings readers to Albany Beach, Delaware, where one woman must decide whether to seek out the daughter she gave up for adoption. Each year, the start of summer brings bustle and much-needed tourist dollars to the little town of Albany Beach, Delaware. For Natalie Sullivan, this season is proving more stressful than others. It’s make-or-break time for the Irish pub her husband, Conor, recently bought with his brothers. Their two children are thriving, but she’s experiencing pangs of loss at the end of her childbearing years. When sixteen-year-old McKenzie starts gushing about Bella, the new coworker at her summer job, Natalie suddenly finds her past and present in conflict. Bella, two years older than McKenzie, looks so similar that a customer remarks that they could be sisters. And when Natalie learns that Bella was adopted, she is propelled back into a heartbreaking decision. As a college student, Natalie became pregnant and put her baby up for adoption. Now, the more McKenzie talks about Bella, the more Natalie wonders: could Bella be her daughter? Conor insists it’s a mistake to pursue the matter. Natalie’s child belongs to another family now; that was the agreement in the closed adoption. Still, Natalie can’t resist spending time with Bella. As their bond deepens, McKenzie accuses her mother of caring more for a stranger than for her, and Natalie begins imagining what it would be like to have Bella as a second daughter. What will the impact be if Bella really is her biological child? And if she isn’t, can Natalie embrace the joy and potential in her own family, without always wondering about what could have been?

Ayahuasca is a powerful tool for transformation, that more and more Westerners are flocking to drink in a quest for greater self-knowledge, healing and reconnection with the natural world. This formerly esoteric, little-known brew is now a growth industry. But why? Ayahuasca is a psychoactive tea that has a long history of ritual use among indigenous groups of the Upper Amazon. Made from the ayahuasca vine and the leaves of a shrub, ayahuasca is associated with healing in collective ceremonies and in more intimate contexts, generally under the direction of specialist – an ayahuasquero . These are experienced practitioners who guide the ceremony and the ‘drinkers’ experience. Ayahuasca has gained significant popularity these days in cities around the world. Ceremonies happen nightly and Hollywood stars, Wall Street players and Silicon Valley entrepreneurs now drink the brew. Why? What effect might ayahuasca be having on our culture? Could it be the LSD of our time? Does the brew, which seems to inspire environmental action, simplified lifestyles and more communitarian behaviour, act as an antidote to frenzied consumerist culture? In When Plants Dream , Pinchbeck and Rokhlin explore the economic, social, political, cultural and environmental impact that ayahuasca is having on society. Part 1 covers the background; what ayahuasca is, where it is found, and its cultural origins. Part 2 explores the role and practices of the ayahuasquero in both Amazonian and Western cultures. Part 3 examines the medicinal plants of the Amazon, looking particularly at the ingredients in ayahuasca and their therapeutic qualities, covering the most up-to-date biomedical research, psychedelic science and psychopharmacology. Part 4 looks more closely at how ayahuasca is perceived and used today, covering law, the drug wars, media and money. Lastly in Part 5 Pinchbeck and Rokhlin question the future of ayahuasca. When Plants Dream is the first book of its kind to look at the science and expanding culture of ayahuasca, from its historical use to its appropriation by the West and the impact it is having on cultures beyond the Amazon.

Autumn Willow is a grad student at MIT. In her spare time, she co-pilots her grandfather’s B-17, a restored WWII bomber. Sasha Brezhnev is a pilot for the Russian Air Force flying the SU-57 fighter jet. She’s assigned seek-and-destroy missions over the Safandel Desert in central Anddor Shallau, where terrorists are covertly working to destroy the country’s democratic government. Rigger Entime is an engineer working on a CIA project to develop a tiny drone aircraft to be used in surveillance and possibly carry out assassinations of terrorist leaders.

A short collection of surreal tales with a strong emotional impact.<br><br>A short collection of surreal tales with a strong emotional impact. A constant remembrance to the inner ghosts of our lives, painted with intensity and delicacy.

The lucky occasion with Sabrina, a beautiful girl known by chance at Gaeta on a hot August day, transforms Paki's life. Thanks to her, Paki goes to a flea market. There he meets a wardrobe who, attracted by his sympathy, decides to give him a typewriter. At first Paki refuses, but given his insistence, he is forced to accept. That book reveals to him a great mystery. As soon as he start reading it, Paki is faced with extraordinary events, events that in a certain sense will change his life. Sometimes in life you are faced with things or facts really inexplicable.

This diary is my fourth book, a collection of twenty compositions representing the thought and certainties of our modern age. Tales about a not very distant past that could be identified with today's reality, the present not reviewed journalistically, people who do not have common public representations, too busy in a certain sense to think what they could never do, until what was taken away from them to not understand a contemporary good or evil. You also tell autobiographical stories like personal experiences with others or possessions, peace and pain, miracles, love and friendships.<br><br>This diary is the fourth book written by me, a collection of twenty compositions representing the thought and certainties of our modern age. Tales about a not very distant past that could be identified with today's reality, the present not reviewed journalistically, people who do not have common public representations, too busy in a certain sense to think what they could never do, until what was taken away from them to not understand a contemporary good or evil. You also tell autobiographical stories like personal experiences with others or possessions, peace and pain, miracles, love and friendships. Do you declare yourself and the world as a hobby or sport or? You need to declare yourself and the world according to your own experiences in concrete human and material relationships. It is a diary written in a simple way, a phenotype of Christian and present feelings, it wants to represent a door to the future, a new party. The period of letters reaches from August 2010 to May 2013.

The night was dark. Suddenly, a great glow came through the window and such clarity flooded the room that woke me up. Amazed, I looked everywhere. What was going on? I rubbed my eyes and I really didn´t know if I was still asleep and that was a dream. I sat up in bed. I had to see what was happening because I did not understand what had happened. Trying to wake up a bit, I put my feet on the floor and the coldness of the tiles ended up waking me up. I saw that I was in my bedroom and was still at night. Through the window, nothing could be seen, only darkness, not a single star in the sky could be seen. But in my head, still dazed, I remembered what had woken me up. Although I didn´t know what it had been, a feeling came to my mind, something like a great light, or a glow, maybe it would be a flash light.  

Two youths, Sam and Stacie, live College years in full symbiosis. Year in and year out, circumstances and ambitions change. The two main characters separate and live two parallel lives. After some time, coincidentally, their fates will cross again but the background is no longer the carefree time of the College.

A historical novel set in Tuscany in the 18th century, during the enlightened government of Pietro Leopoldo of Hapsburg Lorraine. Autobiographical memories of the Grand Duchess Maria Luisa, his wife and confidante.<br><br>“Vienna 1792. Maria Ludovica of Bourbon, the Spanish Infanta, for many years Grand Duchess of Tuscany and now Empress of the Holy Roman Empire, watches impotently the sudden death of her beloved consort, Pietro Leopoldo of Hapsburg, and from that moment begins almost frenetically to rekindle, one after the other, her innumerable memories of a life, still short, but intensely lived, beside the man who, since their first meeting had fascinated and conquered her, and to whom she had been a discrete and faithful companion. Public facts are weaved together with private feelings, with joys and suffering, in a sequence of urgent events. The Empress unconsciously knows, has always known, that she cannot survive for long (Editor’s note: she will in fact die just two months later) after the death of her husband and therefore must hurry to organise her memories, to finally manage to give an answer to the most important question for her: what did she really mean to him? Only a political and dynastic link, the mother of his children, friend and confidante or the woman he loved notwithstanding everything?”

No one could have told me, and if they had, I would not have believed them, that I would be a writer, considering how difficult it was for me to read as a child. Despite this, circumstances had forced me to this profession, since having as much time as I had now, locked up for life, I wouldn't have much else to do. It is true that some prisoners were engaged in exercising in the yard, and besides studying in the library, the weakest of them took training courses, but all of them have something that I do not have, an ideal to fight for and move forward. With a sentence of a few months or even years, it is easy to think that the preparation will serve them well for something, and that it will be easier to make a living outside this prison, but in my case, with the certainty that I will never step outside again, what's the point of getting ready?