Something important I’ve learned as I’ve gotten older is that you get way more second chances than you might imagine. When I was young, I thought that every wrong decision would destroy the rest of my life. But now, as I hack my way through my sixties, I see so many surprising twists and turns my life has taken, most of them coming out of failure. In fact, the only things I truly regret are the times I played it safe. So I love books where people screw up, seem to be defeated, and then, voila, a ghost shows up! Or maybe a professional assassin. You just don’t know.
This is the ultimate second chance book. A miserable old miser—Are there no workhouses?—is visited by three ghosts over the course of Christmas Eve. He has one night to change his life or he will be doomed to a tortured eternity. Will he do it? Well, yes. How could he not save Tiny Tim? But the ride is so joyful and well-written and Scrooge is so wonderfully miserable, and as many times as I get to the end, I’m always moved by the joy he feels when he gets his second chance. This is what I hope, that no matter how miserable I become (and hopefully not too miserable), that I will always have a chance to turn it around.
Tom Baker reads Charles Dickens' timeless seasonal story.
Charles Dickens' story of solitary miser Ebenezer Scrooge, who is taught the true meaning of Christmas by the three ghosts of Christmas past, present, and future, has become one of the timeless classics of English literature. First published in 1843, it introduces us not only to Scrooge himself, but also to the memorable characters of underpaid desk clerk Bob Cratchit and his poor family, the poorest amongst whom is the ailing and crippled Tiny Tim.
In this captivating recording, Tom Baker delivers a tour-de-force performance as he narrates the story. The listener…
You would not think that a book about a sleazy (but incredibly handsome) man being chased by a hired killer would be an inspiring book about second chances, but it is. The story is set in November 1963. Frank Guidry is inadvertently involved in the Kennedy assassination and the powers that be want to shut him up. He’s running from a killer and he runs into Charlotte Roy, a young mother who, with her two daughters, is fleeing her alcoholic husband. They both have a lot of internal demons to grapple with, but along the way there’s a lot of sex and danger and some scenes that are absolutely haunting and when you get to the end, you just sit there thinking, yes. That feels exactly right.
Set against the assassination of JFK, a poignant and evocative crime novel that centers on a desperate cat-and-mouse chase across 1960s America-a story of unexpected connections, daring possibilities, and the hope of second chances from the Edgar Award-winning author of The Long and Faraway Gone.
Frank Guidry's luck has finally run out.
A loyal street lieutenant to New Orleans' mob boss Carlos Marcello, Guidry has learned that everybody is expendable. But now it's his turn-he knows too much about the crime of the century: the assassination of President John F. Kennedy.
Within hours of JFK's murder, everyone with ties to…
I do like curmudgeons. There’s something so vulnerable about them. You know that something bad happened in their life that made them that way and I automatically hope that something will heal them. Backman’s character is a classic curmudgeon, cut off from everyone. Ready to die. In fact, he keeps trying to die. The opening scene in which he goes to a store and argues with a salesperson about iPads (or as he called them, OPads) cracked me up and set the tone for the novel. And then, of course, against his will, he is drawn into the world around him and you really root for him. I love stories that make me care.
'A JOY FROM START TO FINISH' - Gavin Extence, author of THE UNIVERSE VERSUS ALEX WOODS
There is something about Ove.
At first sight, he is almost certainly the grumpiest man you will ever meet. He thinks himself surrounded by idiots - neighbours who can't reverse a trailer properly, joggers, shop assistants who talk in code, and the perpetrators of the vicious coup d'etat that ousted him as Chairman of the Residents' Association. He will persist in making his daily inspection rounds of the local streets.
Sometimes second chances come with a steep price, which, in Candace Chen’s case, means the apocalyptic annihilation of the world’s population. I wouldn’t call this book a pick-me-up, though it is funny, but it is an incredibly moving story about what it means to move on. Ling Ma moves her characters between time, writing about Candace’s parent's decision to leave behind China and her own decision to stay in New York as the deadly fever takes hold. Some of the most beautiful writing is about New York City, a place I dearly love. “New York is possibly the only place in which most people have already lived, in some sense, in the public imagination, before they ever arrive.”
Maybe it’s the end of the world, but not for Candace Chen, a millennial, first-generation American and office drone meandering her way into adulthood in Ling Ma’s offbeat, wryly funny, apocalyptic satire, Severance.
"A stunning, audacious book with a fresh take on both office politics and what the apocalypse might bring." ―Michael Schaub, NPR.org
“A satirical spin on the end times-- kind of like The Office meets The Leftovers.” --Estelle Tang, Elle
NAMED A BEST BOOK OF THE YEAR BY: NPR * The New Yorker ("Books We Loved") * Elle * Marie Claire * Amazon Editors * The Paris Review…
First of all, it’s a mystery set in England and I love anything set in England, and if I were going to start over anywhere, and leave New York, which I will not do, it would be to go to England. So immediately I’m intrigued, and the details about Long Barston, Suffolk are just wonderful. But mainly I love Kate Hamilton, the protagonist of Berry’s novel, who is a smart (the sort of person who tells Beowulf jokes if she drinks too much), good-hearted, antiques appraiser who is starting over with a new husband, new job, new mother-in-law and new life. She feels like a friend, and I’m glad to go on her second chance journey with her.
In Connie Berry’s fourth Kate Hamilton mystery, American antiques dealer Kate Hamilton uncovers a dark secret buried in Victorian England.
As Kate Hamilton plans her upcoming wedding to Detective Inspector Tom Mallory, she is also assisting her colleague Ivor Tweedy with a project at the Netherfield Sanatorium, which is being converted into luxury townhouses. Kate and Ivor must appraise a fifteenth-century paintingand verify that its provenance is the Dutch master Jan Van Eyck. But when retired criminal inspector Will Parker is found dead, Kate learns that the halls of the sanatorium housed much more than priceless art.
Maggie Dove suffered a terrible tragedy when her only child died twenty years ago. Since then, she’s been unable to move past the cold wall of grief that surrounds her. Until one day, Maggie finds her wretched neighbor’s dead body lying under the oak tree on her front lawn. The prime suspect is Peter Nelson, an angry young man who was in love with her daughter, many years ago.
Maggie loves Peter and is desperate to prove him innocent. So she forces herself back out into the world of her small Hudson Valley village, and as she investigates, she is swept up into adventure and romance. And danger. She finds herself with a second chance at life. Does she have the courage to grab it?
I’m a thrill seeker when it comes to reading, and I want to be so immersed in a story that I have to read it in one sitting and then can be completely taken by surprise by a plot twist. It was extremely hard to pick only five titles, so to narrow it down, I 1) made an attempt to pick from a few different sub-genres and, 2) stipulated that Agatha Christie could populate the entire list. All of these titles blend wonderful writing with great twists, and I hope you enjoy them. I did my best to avoid spoilers in the descriptions, although by being on this list, it’s a little bit of a spoiler…
"Dizzying . . . Audiences who wished the TV series The Bear had made room for Russian mobsters are in for a treat" - Kirkus Reviews Starred Review
Sagarine Pfister is a great cook but has been blacklisted by almost every restaurant in Chicago. She gets her chance at Louie's, a below-average restaurant, the only place that will give her a job. Things change when she finds head chef Louie Ferrar dead in the walk-in freezer of his restaurant. But instead of closing the place down, the owner, Russian gang boss Anatoly Morozov, offers not only her Louie's job but…
"Dizzying . . . Audiences who wished the TV series The Bear had made room for Russian mobsters are in for a treat" Kirkus Reviews Starred Review
Sagarine Pfister is a great cook but has been blacklisted by almost every restaurant in Chicago. She gets her chance at Louie's, a below-average restaurant, the only place that will give her a job.
Things change when she finds head chef Louie Ferrar dead in the walk-in freezer of his restaurant. But instead of closing the place down, the owner, Russian gang boss Anatoly Morzov, not only offers her Louie's job, but also…
