The Bitter Side of Sweet

Author: Tara Sullivan
Publisher: Penguin
ISBN: 0698184297
Category : Young Adult Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 322

Book Description
For fans of Linda Sue Park and A Long Way Gone, two young boys must escape a life of slavery in modern-day Ivory Coast Fifteen-year-old Amadou counts the things that matter. For two years what has mattered are the number of cacao pods he and his younger brother, Seydou, can chop down in a day. This number is very important. The higher the number the safer they are because the bosses won’t beat them. The higher the number the closer they are to paying off their debt and returning home to Moke and Auntie. Maybe. The problem is Amadou doesn’t know how much he and Seydou owe, and the bosses won’t tell him. The boys only wanted to make some money during the dry season to help their impoverished family. Instead they were tricked into forced labor on a plantation in the Ivory Coast; they spend day after day living on little food and harvesting beans in the hot sun—dangerous, backbreaking work. With no hope of escape, all they can do is try their best to stay alive—until Khadija comes into their lives. She’s the first girl who’s ever come to camp, and she’s a wild thing. She fights bravely every day, attempting escape again and again, reminding Amadou what it means to be free. But finally, the bosses break her, and what happens next to the brother he has always tried to protect almost breaks Amadou. The old impulse to run is suddenly awakened. The three band together as family and try just once more to escape. Tara Sullivan, the award-winning author of the astounding Golden Boy, delivers another powerful, riveting, and moving tale of children fighting to make a difference and be counted. Inspired by true-to-life events happening right now, The Bitter Side of Sweet is an exquisitely written tour de force not to be missed.

The Bitter and Sweet of Cherry Season

Author: Molly Fader
Publisher: HarperCollins Australia
ISBN: 1867202328
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 309

Book Description
Three generations of women come together at the family orchard to face secrets from the past and learn to believe in the power of hope and forgiveness. In cherry season, anything is possible… Everything Hope knows about the Orchard House is from the stories of her late mother. So when she arrives at the northern Michigan family estate late one night with a terrible secret and her ten-year-old daughter in tow, she’s not sure if she’ll be welcomed or turned away with a shotgun by the aunt she has never met. Hope’s aunt, Peg, has lived in the Orchard House all her life, though the property has seen better days. She agrees to take Hope in if, in exchange, Hope helps with the cherry harvest — not exactly Hope’s specialty, but she’s out of options. As Hope works the orchard alongside her aunt, daughter and a kind man she finds increasingly difficult to ignore, a new life begins to blossom. But the mistakes of the past are never far behind, and soon the women will find themselves fighting harder than ever for their family roots and for each other.

Cold Cold Heart

Author: Tami Hoag
Publisher: Penguin
ISBN: 1101984465
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 401

Book Description
A thrilling novel from #1 New York Times bestselling author Tami Hoag, “one of the most intense suspense writers around” (Chicago Tribune). Dana Nolan was a promising young TV reporter until a notorious serial killer tried to add her to his list of victims. Nearly a year has passed since she survived her ordeal, but the physical, emotional, and psychological scars run deep. Struggling with the torment of post-traumatic stress syndrome, plagued by flashbacks and nightmares, Dana returns to her hometown in an attempt to begin to put her life back together. But home doesn’t provide the comfort she expects. Dana’s harrowing story and her return to small-town life have rekindled police and media interest in the unsolved case of her childhood best friend, Casey Grant, who disappeared without a trace the summer after their graduation from high school. Terrified of truths long buried, Dana reluctantly begins to look back at her past. Viewed through the dark filter of PTSD, old friends and loved ones become suspects and enemies. Questioning everything she knows, refusing to be defined by the traumas of her past, Dana seeks out a truth that may prove too terrible to be believed...

The Bitter Season

Author: Tami Hoag
Publisher: Penguin Group
ISBN: 0593186206
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 417

Book Description
Kovac and Liska take on multiple twisted cases as #1 New York Times bestselling author Tami Hoag explores a murder from the past, a murder from the present, and a life that was never meant to be. As the bitter weather of late fall descends on Minneapolis, Detective Nikki Liska is restless, already bored with her new assignment to the cold case squad. She misses the rush of pulling an all-nighter and the sense of urgency of hunting a killer on the loose. Most of all she misses her old partner, Sam Kovac. Kovac is having an even harder time adjusting to Liska’s absence but is distracted from his troubles by an especially brutal double homicide: a prominent university professor and his wife, bludgeoned and hacked to death in their home with a ceremonial Japanese samurai sword. Liska’s case—the unsolved murder of a decorated sex crimes detective—is less of a distraction: Twenty-five years later, there is little hope for finding the killer who got away. Meanwhile, Minneapolis resident Evi Burke has a life she only dreamed of as a kid in and out of foster care: a beautiful home, a loving family, a fulfilling job. But a danger from her past is stalking her idyllic present, bent on destroying the perfect life she was never meant to have. As the trails of two crimes a quarter of a century apart twist and cross, Kovac and Liska race to find answers before a killer strikes again.

Prior Bad Acts

Author: Tami Hoag
Publisher: Bantam
ISBN: 0553902458
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 562

Book Description
New York Times bestselling author Tami Hoag returns with a thriller that begins with a shocking crime scene you’ll never forget and follows two relentless detectives on a manhunt that ends in a chilling confrontation with the essence of human evil. It was a crime so brutal, it changed the lives of even the most hardened homicide cops. The Haas family murders left a scar on the community nothing can erase, but everyone agrees that convicting the killer, Karl Dahl, is a start. Only Judge Carey Moore seems to be standing in the way. Her ruling that Dahl’s prior criminal record is inadmissible raises a public outcry—and puts the judge in grave danger. When an unknown assailant attacks Judge Moore in a parking garage, two of Minneapolis’ s top cops are called upon to solve the crime and keep the judge from further harm. Detective Sam Kovac is as hard-boiled as they come, and his wisecracking partner, Nikki Liska, isn’t far behind. Neither one wants to be on this case, but when Karl Dahl escapes from custody, everything changes, and a seemingly straightforward case cartwheels out of control. The stakes go even higher when the judge is kidnapped—snatched out of her own bed even as the police sit outside, watching her house. Now Kovac and Liska must navigate through a maze of suspects that includes the stepson of a murder victim, a husband with a secret life, and a rogue cop looking for revenge where the justice system failed. With no time to spare, the detectives are pulled down a strange dark trail of smoke and mirrors, where no one is who they seem and everyone is guilty of Prior Bad Acts.

Bitter

Author: Akwaeke Emezi
Publisher: Knopf Books for Young Readers
ISBN: 0593309065
Category : Young Adult Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 273

Book Description
From National Book Award finalist Akwaeke Emezi comes a companion novel to PET that explores both the importance and cost of social revolution--and how youth lead the way. Bitter is an aspiring artist who has been invited to cultivate her talents at a special school in the town of Lucille. Surrounded by other creative teens, she can focus on her painting--though she hides a secret from everyone around her. Meanwhile, the streets of Lucille are filled with social unrest. This is Lucille before the Revolution. A place of darkness and injustice. A place where a few ruling elites control the fates of the many. The young people of Lucille know they deserve better--they aren't willing to settle for this world that the adults say is "just the way things are." They are protesting, leading a much-needed push for social change. But Bitter isn't sure where she belongs--in the art studio or in the streets. And if she does find a way to help the Revolution while being true to who she is, she must also ask: what are the costs? Acclaimed novelist Akwaeke Emezi looks at the power of youth, protest, and art in this timely and provocative novel, a companion to National Book Award Finalist Pet. Praise for PET: "The word hype was invented to describe books like this." --Refinery29 NATIONAL BOOK AWARD FINALIST "[A] beautiful, genre-expanding debut. . . . Pet is a nesting doll of creative possibilities." --The New York Times "Like [Madeleine] L'Engle, Akwaeke Emezi asks questions of good and evil and agency, all wrapped up in the terrifying and glorious spectacle of fantastical theology." --NPR

The 9th Girl

Author: Tami Hoag
Publisher: Hachette UK
ISBN: 1409109615
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 370

Book Description
In THE 9th GIRL, Tami Hoag - the Sunday Times bestselling author of A THIN DARK LINE - returns with book four in the gripping Kovac & Liska detective series. A serial killer is kidnapping young women. Have they saved his 9th victim from danger? As Detectives Sam Kovac and Nikki Liska stand over the brutally disfigured remains of an adolescent girl in the early hours of New Year's Day, they suspect they've stumbled across the ninth victim of the notorious Doc Holiday. A horribly sadistic killer who kidnaps women during the holidays. But with the girl's identity obscured by her injuries, they have little to go on. Until Liska discovers that one of her son's friends - Gray - is missing... And it seems that everyone who knew Gray is telling lies. Liska and Kovac are in a race against time to discover whether this is indeed the ninth girl, or an entirely different nightmare altogether... New York Times bestseller Tami Hoag takes the reader behind the picket fences of small-town America, she finds the most gruesome killers and twisted predators. Watch out for the next book in the Kovac and Liska crime thriller series THE BITTER SEASON A middle-aged couple - hacked to death in their own home - with a samurai sword. Normal people. Who were they? And why were they targeted? Twenty years ago a policeman was murdered in his own back garden and the killer was never caught. One woman might link these mysteries. But she is being watched. Can Detectives Nikki Liska and Sam Kovac find her before it is too late? THE BITTER SEASON is the next gripping thriller in the series.

Dust to Dust

Author: Tami Hoag
Publisher: Bantam
ISBN: 0553898485
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 512

Book Description
Sorry. The single word was written on a mirror. In front of it hung the Minneapolis Internal Affairs cop. Was it suicide? Or a kinky act turned tragic? Either way, it wasn’t murder. At least not according to the powers that be. But veteran homicide detective Sam Kovac and his wisecracking, ambitious partner Nikki Liska think differently. Together they begin to dig at the too-neat edges of the young cop’s death, uncovering one motive and one suspect after another. The shadows of suspicion fall not only on the city’s elite, but into the very heart of the police department. Someone wants the case closed–quickly and forever. But neither Kovac nor Liska will give up. Now both their careers and their lives are on the line. From a murder case two months old to another case closed for twenty years, Kovac and Liska must unearth a connection the killer wants dead and buried. A killer who will stop at absolutely nothing to keep a dark and shattering secret . . .

Bitter End

Author: Jennifer Brown
Publisher: Little, Brown Books for Young Readers
ISBN: 0316134147
Category : Young Adult Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 233

Book Description
When Alex falls for the charming new boy at school, Cole -- a handsome, funny, sports star who adores her -- she can't believe she's finally found her soul mate . . . someone who truly loves and understands her. At first, Alex is blissfully happy. Sure, Cole seems a little jealous of her relationship with her close friend Zack, but what guy would want his girlfriend spending all her time with another boy? As the months pass, though, Alex can no longer ignore Cole's small put-downs, pinches, or increasingly violent threats. As Alex struggles to come to terms with the sweet boyfriend she fell in love with and the boyfriend whose "love" she no longer recognizes, she is forced to choose -- between her "true love" and herself.

The Bitter Taste of Murder

Author: Camilla Trinchieri
Publisher: Soho Press
ISBN: 1641292849
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 339

Book Description
The follow-up to Murder in Chianti finds ex-NYPD detective Nico Doyle recruited by Italian authorities to investigate the murder of a prominent wine critic. One year after moving to his late wife’s Tuscan hometown of Gravigna, ex-NYPD detective Nico Doyle has fully settled into Italian country life, helping to serve and test recipes at his in-laws’ restaurant. But the town is shaken by the arrival of wine critic Michele Mantelli in his flashy Jaguar. Mantelli holds his influential culinary magazine and blog over Gravigna’s vintners and restaurateurs. Some of Gravigna's residents are impressed by his reputation, while others are enraged—especially Nico's landlord, whose vineyards Mantelli seems intent of ruining. Needless to say, Mantelli’s lavish, larger-than-life, and often vindictive personality has made him many enemies, and when he is poisoned, the local maresciallo, Perillo, has a headache of a high-profile murder on his hands—and once again turns to Nico for help.