Cabot, author of the wildly popular Princess Diaries, delivers another charmer, this time taking on the misadventures of a college girl looking for Mr. Right in Europe. Fresh out of the Univ. of Michigan with a B.A. in history of fashion, Lizzie Nichols sets off across the pond to spend the summer with British boyfriend Andrew, whom she barely knows. When Lizzie learns that Andrew isn't the man she imagined, she changes direction and heads for France, where her best friend Shari is working at Château Mirac in the Dordogne wine country. En route, she meets Jean-Luc de Villiers, a French-American hottie whose father owns the château, and who would be so easy to fall in love with if he weren't already taken. Lizzie discovers sixteenth-century wineries, kir royals and vintage Givenchy dresses stored in the attic, while matching wits with Jean-Luc's ambitious girlfriend. Although blunt dialogue about oral sex adds a titillating edge, the book is sweet to the core.
Download: Queen of Babble (pdf)
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MaryJanice Davidson- Undead and Unappreciated
What's a vampire queen to do? Betsy Taylor has a lot on her plate-operating a nightclub for vampires and searching for essential fashion items consume her and allow little time for socializing. When she learns that she has a long-lost half sister, alleged to have been fathered by Satan, she remembers a prophecy predicting she and this person will rule the world together. Her satanic sibling turns out to be a sweet, unaware college girl with a clergyman father. Betsy tells the story, which poses a problem for narrator Wu, who describes events and filters other characters' dialog through her own flat, terminally hip, and world-weary delivery. This monotonous tone makes it difficult for the uninitiated to follow without serious concentration. Davidson's Undead series has gained a loyal group of fans who will be eager for all the dish from the queen herself. Turns out sibs will be sibs, dead or undead. They've just been around a little longer, can only go out at night, but nevertheless manage to have hot vampire sex.
Download: Undead and Unappreciated (pdf)
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Naomi Neale - Calendar Girl
Download: Calender Girl (pdf)
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Lisa Cach - A Babe in Ghostland
Megan Barrows has retired from a brief career as a ghostbusting psychic and now uses her sixth sense to fill her Seattle antiques store with objects with happy pasts. After once nearly having the soul sucked out of her by a malevolent spirit, she prefers a quiet life.
Case Lambert is a real estate prospector who restores old houses, then sells them for profit. He has just bought a dilapidated mansion so amazing that he wants to keep it for himself, but the house appears to be haunted. Seriously haunted. A few inquiries lead him to Megan Barrows.
Megan at first refuses to help, but Case is a master of persuasion. Moving into the mansion, they discover that one of the ghosts has a thing for Case -- and there may be even more amorous spirits inside this veritable paranormal vortex. But it soon becomes clear that no one -- dead or alive -- can stop Megan and Case from ending up in each other's arms. . . .
Download: A Babe in Ghostland (pdf)
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Neil Gaiman - Stardust
Stardust is an utterly charming fairy tale in the tradition of The Princess Bride and The Neverending Story. Neil Gaiman, creator of the darkly elegant Sandman comics and author of The Day I Swapped My Dad for Two Goldfish, tells the story of young Tristran Thorn and his adventures in the land of Faerie.
One fateful night, Tristran promises his beloved that he will retrieve a fallen star for her from beyond the Wall that stands between their rural English town (called, appropriately, Wall) and the Faerie realm. No one ever ventures beyond the Wall except to attend an enchanted flea market that is held every nine years (and during which, unbeknownst to him, Tristran was conceived). But Tristran bravely sets out to fetch the fallen star and thus win the hand of his love. His adventures in the magical land will keep you turning pages as fast as you can--he and the star escape evil old witches, deadly clutching trees, goblin press-gangs, and the scheming sons of the dead Lord of Stormhold. The story is by turns thrillingly scary and very funny. You'll love goofy, earnest Tristran and the talking animals, gnomes, magic trees, and other irresistible denizens of Faerie that he encounters in his travels. Stardust is a perfect read-aloud book, a brand-new fairy tale you'll want to share with a kid, or maybe hoard for yourself. (If you read it to kids, watch out for a couple of spicy sex bits and one epithet.)
Download: Stardust (pdf)
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Nicholas Sparks - A Bend in the Road
Sweet, accessible, uplifting and predictable, the latest love story from Sparks leaves the reader with just one burning question: Why is this consummate beach book being published in the fall? The nearly thwarted but eventually triumphant romance of deputy sheriff Miles Ryan and second-grade teacher Sarah Andrews goes down as easily as marshmallow fluff and offers about as much real nourishment. Miles's high school sweetheart, Missy, was killed in an unsolved hit and run accident, leaving him to raise their son, Jonah, in New Bern, N.C. Sarah's politically ambitious husband, Michael, dumped her when her ovaries proved inactive, and she fled to New Bern to teach, and love, other people's kids. Miles and Sarah meet at a parent-teacher conference, and the sparks fly. But there's a fly in the ointment as well; an italicized voice threaded among the happy chapters alerts us that Missy's death was caused by someone whose identity, if revealed, could destroy Miles and Sarah's newfound joy. In Sparks's heaven, clouds exist to make silver linings look the brighter. As tough truth shadows their landscape, Miles and Sarah find depths within themselves, and their rekindled light illumines all. New Bern becomes a city of the reborn. Charlie Curtis, Miles's stickler boss, learns to bend; Missy's aimless killer morphs into a healer; and Jonah once again knows a mother's love. The opposite of edgy, with simple sentences and soft-pedaled sex, Sparks's plain vanilla morality will doubtless sell like ice cream on a steamy day.
Download: A Bend in the Road (pdf)
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Meg Cabot - Queen of Babble Gets Hitched
When last seen, the irrepressible Lizzie Nichols was canoodling with Chaz after she and Luke, Chaz's best friend, broke up (Queen of Babble in the Big City, 2007). Now—shocker alert—Luke returns to New York and slips a three-carat diamond engagement ring on her finger. Lizzie accepts even though she's still all googly over Chaz, who bluntly warns Lizzie that Luke's all about Luke and couldn't love her the way he does.
Lizzie, a wedding dress restorer and budding designer specializing in wedding garb, faces a hives-inducing decision: dump rich Luke, who wants to be an investment banker in Paris, and hook up with Chaz, who wants to teach? Or should she marry Luke and ditch New York for Paris? And then there's the matter of her burgeoning design business, helped along by Ava Geck, a Paris Hilton–like celebrity heiress. Cabot takes full advantage of the material, delivering her trademark wit, sharp banter and lively antics from the first page. Fans of the series have another one to savor.
Download: Queen of Babble Gets Hitched (pdf)
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Meg Cabot - Jinx
From Wikipedia:Jinx is a 2007 young adult novel by American author Meg Cabot. The novel has darker themes than Cabot's earlier best-selling The Princess Diaries series of novels.
Jean "Jinx" Honeychurch is a sixteen-year-old girl from Iowa. Believing she was born with bad luck, she goes to stay with her Aunt Evelyn and Uncle Ted in Manhattan, New York, to escape the most recent bout of it. However, the truth is that Jean had cast a love spell on her crush (Dylan) which turned out wrongly and caused him to become stalker-ish. Her cousin, Tory, is convinced that Jean must join her coven of "witches". Jean denies being a witch, and refuses to join them. This angers Tory, causing her to seek revenge against her. Tory is also jealous of Jean's relationship with Zack Rosen, a hot-looking boy who lives next door. However, it is revealed that Jean might actually be the witch with special powers.
Download: Jinx (pdf)
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Lani Diane Rich - Ex and the Single Girl
From Publishers Weekly:
When Portia Fallon's boyfriend, Peter, dumps her on Valentine's Day, she realizes she's "four cats and a Reader's Digest subscription away from being totally irredeemable." Maybe that explains why she lets her mother trick her into quitting her Syracuse apartment to summer down in Truly, Ga., home of the irrepressible Miz Fallons (Portia's mother, Mags; her aunt Vera; and her grandmother Bev).
"Men just don't stick to Miz Fallons," Mags likes to say; Portia calls the Fallons' eternal singlehood the "Penis Teflon Effect." Portia's meddling kin aim to find her a "Flyer"—a fling—to take her mind off Peter, and Ian Beckett, a British novelist, is chosen. Portia spends her days renovating a farmhouse with Ian and her nights reliving memories of her father, digging into her family's past to learn the secret of his abandonment. Just as she's falling for Ian, Peter shows up with a ring. "Penis Teflon wasn't a curse, but rather a learned behavior," Portia realizes, so she sets out to open the Miz Fallons' hearts, search for her father and find the true love of her life. Rich way overplays the frankly inexcusable Penis Teflon idea, but this is a sweet, readable book about following your dreams (and your dream man).
Download: Ex and the Single Girl (pdf)
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Lauren Weisberger - The Devil Wears Prada: A Novel
Amazon.com Review:
It's a killer title: The Devil Wears Prada. And it's killer material: author Lauren Weisberger did a stint as assistant to Anna Wintour, the all-powerful editor of Vogue magazine. Now she's written a book, and this is its theme: narrator Andrea Sachs goes to work for Miranda Priestly, the all-powerful editor of Runway magazine. Turns out Miranda is quite the bossyboots. That's pretty much the extent of the novel, but it's plenty. Miranda's behavior is so insanely over-the-top that it's a gas to see what she'll do next, and to try to guess which incidents were culled from the real-life antics of the woman who's been called Anna "Nuclear" Wintour. For instance, when Miranda goes to Paris for the collections, Andrea receives a call back at the New York office (where, incidentally, she's not allowed to leave her desk to eat or go to the bathroom, lest her boss should call). Miranda bellows over the line: "I am standing in the pouring rain on the rue de Rivoli and my driver has vanished. Vanished! Find him immediately!"
For the most part, The Devil Wears Prada focuses on the outrageous Miranda Priestly, and she's an irresistible spectacle.
Download: The Devil Wears Prada (pdf)
