Showing results for "The Book of Firsts" in Literature & Fiction

When Malachi Baker stumbles into an offer of apprenticeship from the esteemed and powerful Occultist Orykson, he's left in shock and jumps at the chance to learn... Even if it means taking out a few loans. Unfortunately, his new teacher sees him more as a tool than a student. He has set Malachi near-impossible goals before he becomes worthy of Orykson's full attention, and Malachi's innate power is only somewhat above average. Worse, it turns out that Orykson has enemies more powerful than Malachi had ever imagined—and now their attention has landed solidly on him.

Navy Captain Wes Masters, newly posted to head the White House Medical Unit, is a physician with only one patient, but her job is twenty-four/seven. Her charge is simple - protect and preserve the well-being of the most powerful man in the world - the President of the United States. Her job gets even harder when she has to prove she is up to the task to Secret Service Agent, Evyn Daniels, a member of the elite Presidential Protection Detail, and a woman who challenges Wes on more than just the professional front...

“Gerstenblatt's distinctive tale, a triumph in storytelling, celebrates the courage and tenacity of women.” —Booklist, starred review Set against Nantucket’s Great Fire of 1846, this sweeping, emotional novel brings together three courageous women battling to save everything they hold...

“Eleanor Henderson is in possession of an enormous talent which she has matched up with skill, ambition, and a fierce imagination. The resulting novel, Ten Thousand Saints, is the best thing I’ve read in a long time.” —Ann Patchett, bestselling author of Bel Canto and State of Wonder A...

Tommy is twenty-nine, lives and loves in London, and has a morbid fear of the c word (commitment), the b word (boyfriend), and the f word (forgetting to call his drug dealer before the weekend). But when he begins to feel the urge to become a father, and the pressure from his boyfriend to make a...

Maybe the Moon, Armistead Maupin's first novel since ending his bestselling Tales of the City series, is the audaciously original chronicle of Cadence Roth -- Hollywood actress, singer, iconoclast and former Guiness Book record holder as the world's shortest woman. All of 31 inches tall, Cady is...

Jill Becket knows she's in trouble the minute a brand-new, gorgeous client walks into her practice. Amelia Shaw is suffering from a massive burnout, and has no clue of the calamitous effect she's having on her new therapist. Jill's ethical code prevents her from acting on her feelings. Falling in love is so low on Amelia's priority list, she doesn't even consider it. Her only current life goal is to feel better. Can these two women find each other despite the professional and personal obstacles they face?

The journey will be long and difficult, one thousand miles. Try not to be too obvious. Stick to the backroads. You’ ll know you’ ve arrived when you get there. Stephen Bolin leaves a bizarre note by his deathbed, asking his sisters to take his body back to his birthplace in Far North...

Three months into Ethan's transfer-in-exile in Des Moines, Iowa, the pressures of dating Jack, the president of the United States, start to wear Ethan down. His weeks are measured by the days he works in Iowa, chasing counterfeiters and financial crimes, and the weekends he manages to steal with Jack back in DC. The media stalks his every move; he's isolated by his coworkers and loneliness hammers at his heart. In DC, Jack tries to piece together a global alliance to take down the Caliphate, while the world seems focused on tearing apart his personal life.

When Gina Temple decides to go Christmas shopping for her girlfriend, Detective Sergeant Kate Brannon, in the Norfolk town of King's Lynn, it seems like an easy enough task. If only life were that simple. A split-second event, months in the planning, tips their safe world upside down.

The Lyme Letters is epistolary verse that spells out a memoir. R, a nonbinary femme character, narrates their experience of disease and recovery through recurrent letters to doctors, pets, family members, lovers, and a “Master”. R, in letter form and repurposed religious texts, also explores the paradoxical experiences of queer non-reproductivity, chronic illness and disability, and the healing that can be found in the liminal spaces between.

After two years and too many lost troops, Navy medic Max de Milles is ready to go home. Her last tour is up in four days and she will soon be catching a transport to the States. Life is looking good until she gets detailed to evacuate a humanitarian group in south Somalia. Rachel Winslow and her Red Cross team are caught in the crossfire during a vicious civil uprising, but she refuses to abandon her team members as the rebels close in on their camp. By the time Max and the Black Hawk arrive, it may already be too late.

Firefighter paramedic Mallory "Ice" James commands a crew of smokejumpers - twenty women and men who eat together, sleep together, and parachute into the face of raging forest fires together - and she has thirty days to whip the rookies into shape. Mallory isn't happy when "Hotshot" Jac Russo shows up unannounced for boot camp along with a reputation for being trouble. Mallory and Jac may not like each other much, but lust isn't something either can control - and they soon discover ice burns as fiercely as flame.

Gillian "Gem" Martin is the lead biologist at a wildlife sanctuary on the Northeast coast and head of the Wildlife Emergency Response Team called in when catastrophes, man-made or natural, threaten the endangered species she studies. Austin Germaine is a troubleshooter, the hired gun for a big oil company, whose job is to help contain leaks and prevent media coverage of a pending disaster until the danger can be eliminated. If it can be.

Family, friends, and video games. The three things that define my life. When a fourth variable gets added in the form of a smoldering detective named Rocky Hudson, suddenly everything changes. Life isn't as simple anymore, and it begins to start feeling like a new world is opening up to me. Our connection starts off on shaky ground, and my daydreams about the handsome man quickly fluctuate from me ringing his neck to him ringing my...like I said, shaky ground. Bottom line though: I couldn't stop thinking about him. And soon, I wouldn't ever want to stop.

Al of Trowbridge Rescue works a shift on a commercial ambulance on the day that Vermont experiences the first ears of sweet corn. One medic says: “I wanna eat so much corn, I’ll s--t kernels ‘til Thursday.” He partner replies, “The butter and salt will drip down my chin”. The crew of two ambulances celebrate an ersatz holiday.

Two years ago, a human pilot was taken captive by the Alder—a ruthless and savage alien race. Now, it's my team's mission to rescue him. But when I'm saved by one of those "savages" and stranded with him in the jungle, everything I thought I knew starts to unravel. My team is my family, the only home I've ever known. Failing them isn't an option. But how can I resist Kitari, this mysterious and alluring alien who claims that I'm an "omega" and offers me something I've never had—a place to truly belong?

Delightfully cheeky, unquestionably charming, and sometimes maddeningly naive, cloth mage Paul Gallagher is desperately trying to make a name for himself in a reimagined postwar London. But in a world where magic is commonplace, sewing enchanted clothes is seen as little more than a frivolous distraction. Paul is hiding a secret, however: he possesses a powerful - and illegal - innate magic. Unfortunately, Paul confides in the wrong person - his latest crush, Captain Hector Hollister - and is drawn into a sinister plot that risks reigniting the machinery of war.

Dr. Ali Torveau knows just how fragile life can be - she sees death and tragedy every day in the trauma unit. Battling the dark forces of fate is her life's work and she doesn't want or need anything else, certainly nothing as transient as love. Plenty of women try to change her mind, but she never has any trouble saying no. Not until the day firefighter Beau Cross shows up in her ER and sets Ali’s carefully ordered world aflame.

Liam loves his life as a linguist and trader on the Rownt homeworld, but he has ignored his heart and sexual needs for years. After escaping the horrors of war, he wants a boring life. He won't risk letting anyone come too close because he won't risk letting anyone see his deeply submissive nature. For him, submission comes with pain. Life burned that lesson into his soul from a young age. This fear keeps him from noticing that the Rownt trader Ondry cares for him. Ondry may not understand humans, but he recognizes a wounded soul.