Seymour Petrillo, Constance Powers and Irving Hanhart. Three protagonists from vastly different backgrounds intimately share a very public secret. One therapist who impacts them all. From Steubenville, Ohio (Petrillo) to Boardman, Ohio (Powers), to Brookline, Massachusetts (Hanhart) - the three protagonist ́s imaginative and individual experiences are detailed. From humorous to outrageous to tragic, the reader is taken on a journey that finds its ending in New York City. The Organ Grinder and the Monkey is a highly original and complex novel. Sam Moffie ́s never ending imagination is once again hard at work. The Organ Grinder and the Monkey was just named a finalist in visionary fiction 2008 USA best book awards.
From a searing new literary voice, a raw, compulsively readable memoir about a young man seeking hope, community, and ultimately recovery from addiction in a series of halfway houses and boys’ homes—the first book to so vividly capture this world. In his late teens Tom Macher rebelled against a world that seemed stacked against him. Raised in a broken family and estranged from an absentee father suffering with AIDS, Macher turned to alcohol to escape the painful loneliness of his reality. In quick succession, he is kicked out of school, and then his mother’s house, sent to a boys’ home in Montana, and later, a halfway house in a truck-stop town of Louisiana. It was there that Macher encounters a community of young men struggling to survive—outcasts and thieves, liars and ex-cons, men seeking redemption, men running from the past. As he moves further away from boyhood and embraces a hard-won sobriety, these men—the broken, the hardscrabble, the near gone—become his salvation. Macher captures the trials of sobriety—suicide, death, recovery—and the unusual beauty that forms in the bonds of those who suffer. In visceral, striking prose, he introduces the unforgettable characters he meets along the way, from a former child actor, a young teen struggling with schizophrenia, a tough-love addiction counselor, a sex-addicted social worker, to Matt O, who became Macher’s loyal friend and wingman. Raw, disarming, frenetic, and subversive, Halfway is a brutally honest portrait of the world of down-and-out recovering alcoholics, and a story of how, in their darkest hour, these men create the bonds that form a family.
Who killed the economy? A page-turning, true-crime exposé of the subprime salesmen and Wall Street alchemists who produced the biggest financial scandal in American history "It's hard to have a guilty conscience if you don't have a conscience. Anything that benefited production - that benefited me and benefited my wallet - I'd do it." The sales force at Ameriquest Mortgage took this philosophy to heart. They watched the Hollywood white-collar-crime flick "Boiler Room" as a training tape, studying how to pitch overpriced deals to unsuspecting home owners. They learned how to forge signatures on mortgage paperwork and create fake documents in "cut-and-paste" operations they dubbed "The Lab" or "The Art Department." In this stunning narrative, award-winning reporter Michael W. Hudson reveals the story of the rise and fall of the subprime mortgage business by chronicling the rise and fall of two corporate empires: Ameriquest and Lehman Brothers. As the biggest subprime lender and Wall Street's biggest patron of subprime, Ameriquest and Lehman did more than any other institutions to create the feeding frenzy that emboldened mortgage pros to flood the nation with high-risk, high-profit home loans. It's a tale populated by a remarkable cast of the characters: a shadowy billionaire who created the subprime industry out of the ashes of the 1980s S&L scandal; Wall Street executives with an insatiable desire for product; struggling home owners ensnared in the most ingenious of traps; lawyers and investigators who tried to expose the fraud; politicians and bureaucrats who turned a blind eye; and, most of all, the drug-snorting, high-living salesmen who tell all about the money they made, the lies they told, the deals they closed. Provocative and gripping, The Monster is a searing exposé of the bottom-feeding fraud and top-down greed that fueled the financial collapse.
"A snarky lifestyle guide inspired by the most underrated character on Sex and the City, from the creators of the Instagram sensation @everyoutfitonSATC"--
The author of the critically acclaimed Wife 22 has written a captivating novel about a love that transcends time—perfect for readers of The Time Traveler’s Wife, Time and Again, and the novels of Alice Hoffman. San Francisco, 1975. A single mother, Lux Lysander is overwhelmed, underpaid, and living on the edge of an emotional precipice. When her adored five-year-old son goes away to visit his grandparents, Lux takes a solo trip to Sonoma Valley—a chance to both lose herself and find herself again. Awakened at midnight, Lux steps outside to see a fog settled over the Sonoma landscape. Wandering toward a point of light in the distance, she emerges into a meadow on a sunny day. There she meets a group of people whose sweetly simple clothing, speech, and manners almost make them seem as if they are from another time. And then she realizes they are. Lux has stumbled upon an idyllic community cut off not only from the rest of the world but from time itself. The residents of Greengage tell a stunned and disoriented Lux that they’ve somehow been marooned in the early twentieth century. Now that she has inexplicably stepped into the past, it is not long before Lux is drawn in by its peace and beauty. Unlike the people of Greengage, Lux discovers that she is able to come and go. And over the years, Lux finds herself increasingly torn between her two lives. Her beloved son is very much a child of the modern world, but she feels continually pulled back to the only place she has ever truly felt at home. A gorgeous, original, and deeply moving novel about love and longing and the power that time holds over all of us, Valley of the Moon is unforgettable. Praise for Valley of the Moon “The literary equivalent of a farm-to-table delicacy: lovingly handcrafted, delectable and transcendent, becoming more than just a tasty appetizer but a full-course experience of love and time and all the mystical beauty that the region has to offer.”—San Francisco Chronicle “Beautifully written . . . [Valley of the Moon is] a wonderful story about belonging, love and the aching certainty that there’s something more out there . . . sure to appeal to fans of Time and Again or The Time Traveler’s Wife.”—Shelf Awareness (starred review) “With lovely shades of The Time Traveler’s Wife, Valley of the Moon is a magical, cinematic novel, breathlessly romantic and alive with the love of language.”—Sarah Addison Allen “An enjoyable magic carpet ride . . . Two narrators, separated by nearly a century, tell a tale of old-time charm and contemporary agita.”—Kirkus Reviews “Captivating.”—Booklist “Gripping . . . This update of Brigadoon is recommended because of its well-crafted twists and thought-provoking insights into different times and cultures.”—Historical Novels Review “A propulsive and at times deeply suspenseful novel . . . [Valley of the Moon] offer[s] powerful and perceptive considerations about the passage of time, the shape of our lives and the often unintended effects our actions have on the people and communities around us.”—Bookreporter
When Bradford T. Young found himself at the epicenter of Florida's overheated real estate market, he plunged into the universal greed trap - a craving quest for piles of money, corrupting power and seductive women. But that was before his guilty nightmares began . . . and before Amanda "Mandy" Grant, a tabloid investigative reporter, unwittingly placed a mystical spell over him. Brad is soon forced to make a life-altering choice - slide further into an abyss of greed or pursue a fleeting opportunity to earn Mandy's love which he also covets. Brad's quandary intensifies when Mandy's investigation uncovers and exposes the illicit inner workings of the corrupt organization he now works for. As Mandy garners the wrath of a New York mobster and his evil empire, only Brad as a "company insider" can save her from the unfathomable terror that follows. In a cunning cat and mouse gambit, Brad must race to beat organized crime at its own wicked game, as David pitted against Goliath with death or love hanging in the balance.
Travel through the life of an inner-city youth turned small-time gangster, suicide survivor, bipolar alcoholic/addict who survived the mean streets of Kensington, the Philadelphia section made famous by the Rocky movies. This real-life Rocky story shows the "roller-coaster ride" life of George McDermott as he squandered a pro soccer career twice before dealing with the demons of his addictions as well as the haunting memories of his mother's suicide. After returning from New York with a contract
The Gold family learns that the relatively peaceful period of the seventies is just as dangerous as wartime, when they face industry changes that threaten the existence of the powerful Gold Aviation empire.
"This is the story of Joey Bianco, a bastard child brought into this world February 1943 by Sarifino Fucelli an eighteen year old unmarried Sicilian girl. Rose and Joe Fucelli her parents are proud Sicilians suffering the stigma, embarrassment, and humiliation their daughter visited on their family. Sarifino had the misfortune of bearing Joseph Joey Boy Carluchi son. Joey Boy is a married man with children he is also the brutal under boss of his father in-laws powerful Mafia Family. Sarifino is suffering severe abdominal pain after giving birth; Rose found her the following morning in a pool of blood dead. The neighborhood gossip accused Joey Boy of being the father he vehemently denied it. Absent love, compassion, or concern for the well being of his offspring he decided to remove the evidence. He sent his son to an orphanage in Washington DC thinking that will stop the gossip and calm his wife down. This story chronicles the anthology of Joey Bianco. Due to his indomitable spirit and tenacity he managed to overcome a Catholic orphanage and a snake pit the State calls an orphanage. Surviving brutal inhumane totatalarian treatment received in countless foster homes, told every day of his life he is not wanted, worthless, stupid, and will never amount to anything. He ran away at an early age embracing the street, his only options survive or die. He chose his destiny with a single minded purpose relentlessly perusing that destiny allowing nothing to stand in his way making no apologies for the path he chose. Apollo Dante"
A serial killer targets a relationship columnist in this mesmerizing tale of romantic suspense from New York Times bestselling–author Meryl Sawyer Dubbed the “Final Call Killer” because he strangles his victims with a telephone cord, Troy Avery is waiting for his next victim to come along. He’s angry, vengeful, and unstoppable. Known as the “Love Doctor,” Jessica Crawford is the San FranciscoHerald’s popular relationship expert. Ironic, since her own love life is practically nonexistent, with the exception of a recent fling with an Adonis-like extreme surfer in Hawaii. Jessica has her own ideas about what drives the Final Call Killer to brutally strangle successful women and profiles him in her column. Hired by the Herald to cover the murders, investigative reporter Cole Rawlings isn’t broadcasting his Kauai tryst with Jessica, but he’s also not hiding his hard feelings toward her for the way she deceived him at his brother’s surfing resort. Still, with Jessica provoking a psychopath whose rage is growing, Cole believes she’ll be the next victim—unless he gets close enough to her to protect her night and day.
