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beautiful disaster description: Beautiful Disaster Signed Limited Edition Jamie McGuire, 2012-11-27 Abby Abernathy is re-inventing herself as the good girl as she begins her freshman year at college, which is why she must resist lean, cut, and tattooed Travis Maddox, a classic bad boy. |
beautiful disaster description: Beautiful Disaster Jamie McGuire, 2012-07-12 Now a major motion picture! The “deliciously intense” (USA TODAY) New York Times bestselling phenomenon follows a good girl drawn to a very bad boy... The new Abby Abernathy is a good girl. She doesn’t drink or swear and has the appropriate number of cardigans in her wardrobe. With the darkness of her past behind her, she believes her freshman year at college is the start of a new beginning. But then she meets Travis Maddox. Lean, cut, and covered in tattoos, Eastern University’s Walking One-Night Stand is exactly what Abby needs to avoid. Intrigued by her resistance to his appeal, Travis tricks her with a simple bet. If he loses, he must remain abstinent for a month. If Abby loses, she must live in his apartment for the same amount of time. Either way, Travis has no idea that he has met his match in this “beautifully sexy, beautifully intense, and beautifully perfect” (Jessica Park, New York Times bestselling author). |
beautiful disaster description: Walking Disaster Jamie McGuire, 2013-04-02 The highly anticipated follow-up to the New York Times bestseller Beautiful Disaster—now a major motion picture! Can you love someone too much? Travis Maddox learned two things from his mother before she died: Love hard. Fight harder. In Walking Disaster, the life of Travis is full of fast women, underground gambling, and violence. But just when he thinks he is invincible, Abby Abernathy brings him to his knees. Every story has two sides. In Beautiful Disaster, Abby had her say. Now it’s time to see the story through Travis’s eyes. |
beautiful disaster description: Walking Disaster Jamie McGuire, 2013-04-02 Set in the same time-frame as Beautiful Disaster, now we hear the story from Travis' point of view. Travis lost his mother at a very young age, but before she died she taught him two important rules... Love hard. Fight harder. Growing up in a family of men who like to gamble and fight, Travis Maddox is a tough guy. Known for his bad reputation with women, and feared for his incredible fighting skills, all the boys want to be him, and the girls simply want him... Abby Abernathy is the first girl to treat him the way he feels he should be treated, with dislike and disinterest. It is her lack of interest that sparks his determination to win her round. Will the invincible Travis 'Mad Dog' Maddox be defeated by a girl? |
beautiful disaster description: The Promise of Rain Shana Abe, 1998 From the author of A Rose in Winter comes an unforgettable new tale that follows the adventures of a woman who flees King Henry's court for a deserted island, where a handsome enforcer ignites her deepest desires. |
beautiful disaster description: A Beautiful Wedding Jamie McGuire, 2014-11-25 You know that Abby Abernathy unexpectedly became Mrs. Maddox. But what do you really know? Why did Abby pop the question? What secrets were shared before the ceremony? Where did they spend their wedding night? Who else knew about it . . . and didn't tell? Everything about Abby and Travis's elopement was top-secret . . . until now. Fans of Beautiful Disaster and Walking Disaster will get all of their questions answered in this whirlwind tale of the wedding day (and night)...--Provided by publisher. |
beautiful disaster description: A Beautiful Disaster Marlena Graves, 2014-06-10 Interweaving biblical insights and personal narratives, this eloquently written book shows how God often uses suffering and desert experiences to form us into Christ's image. Marlena Graves shares her experiences of growing up poor in a house plagued by mental illness as a means to explore the forces God uses to shape us into beautiful people in the midst of brokenness. This book offers a window into suffering through the motif of desert spirituality, revealing how God can use our painful experiences to show himself faithful. While no one welcomes suffering, God often uses desert experiences--those we initially despise and wouldn't wish on anyone--to transform us into beautiful souls who better resemble Jesus. Graves shows how God can bring life out of circumstances reeking of death and destruction, whether those circumstances are crises or daily doses of quiet desperation. Readers who have experienced suffering and question God's purpose for it will benefit from this book, as will counselors, pastors, professors, and mentors. It includes a foreword by John Ortberg and Laura Ortberg Turner. |
beautiful disaster description: The Most Beautiful Disaster Hope Carpenter, 2021-05-04 Hope Carpenter opens up about her personal struggles that nearly destroyed her family, her church, and her ministry, but then God did something miraculous—out of her brokenness, He made something beautiful. As co-pastor of one of the nation's largest megachurches, Hope Carpenter had perfected the roles of supportive wife, good mother, devoted worship leader, and dutiful homemaker. But inside, she was secretly ashamed, sad, and afraid. She didn't know who she was, and she didn't know how to ask for help without bringing down the whole façade. A series of bad choices led to multiple affairs; her husband kicked her out and announced from the pulpit of their church that their marriage was over. Hope was sure her life was done. But in her lowest moments, something beautiful happened. God met her there, and, with a lot of hard work, time, and mountains of therapy, she started to understand the pain that had caused her to act out. She and her family faced their brokenness together, and in powerful acts of forgiveness only God could have arranged, they all found real breakthrough and healing. Ron and Hope rebuilt their marriage and their family, and their ministry thrives today. In The Most Beautiful Disaster, Hope helps readers understand the lasting impact of childhood trauma and gives readers practical steps to uncovering the root of pain in their own lives. She shows how small decisions can lead to big changes, and helps readers find healing and wholeness in Scripture and prayer. Ultimately, readers will be led to hope, reconciliation, and true freedom. |
beautiful disaster description: Beautiful Oblivion Jamie McGuire, 2014-07 Series information from the author's website. |
beautiful disaster description: Diary of a Beautiful Disaster Kristin Bartzokis, 2017 Life can be messy, but it is always beautiful. Born with Treacher Collins syndrome, Kristin Bartzokis has never looked or lived like everyone else. Her strength and her spirit empower readers to embrace their own uniqueness. |
beautiful disaster description: Apolonia Jamie McGuire, 2014 “They killed me, but I survived.” Three years after Rory Riordan foiled her own murder, she still trusts no one. Not Dr. Z, the eccentric college professor who has taken her under his wing, not Benji, the endearing, attractive classmate who insists on following her around, and certainly not Cy, the beautifully dark and mysterious boy who sits on the first row in Dr. Z’s Astrobiology class and asks far too many questions. When Rory witnesses Cy being abducted by soldiers in the middle of the night, she finds herself submersed in a world that holds even more secrets than she could imagine--even darker secrets than her own. From #1 New York Times Bestseller Jamie McGuire, experience the perfect combination of her bestselling books Providence & Beautiful Disaster. This New Adult Sci-Fi Romance is an action-packed, whiplash-inducing roller coaster ride. Page after page, this unpredictable, dark and sexy nail biter will keep readers guessing until the very end! |
beautiful disaster description: The Bright Side of Disaster Katherine Center, 2008-04-08 A new mother must adjust to a life she never asked for in this spirited novel from the New York Times bestselling author of The Bodyguard and The Rom-Commers “Charming . . . cleverly told and uncommonly appealing.”—People Sometimes the worst thing that can happen is exactly what you’ve been waiting for. Very pregnant and not quite married, Jenny Harris doesn’t mind that she and her live-in fiancé, Dean, accidentally started their family a little earlier than planned. But Dean is acting distant, and the night he runs out for cigarettes and doesn’t come back, he demotes himself from future husband to sperm donor. And the very next day, Jenny goes into labor. In the months that follow, Jenny plunges into a life she never anticipated: single motherhood. At least with the sleep deprivation, sore boobs, and fits of crying (both hers and the baby’s), there’s not much time to dwell on her broken heart. Then things start looking up: Jenny learns how to do everything one-handed, makes friends in a mommy group, and even gets to know a handsome, helpful neighbor. But Dean is never far from Jenny’s thoughts or, it turns out, her doorstep, and in the end she must choose between the old life she thought she wanted and the new life she’s been lucky to find. |
beautiful disaster description: Privilege Kate Brian, 2008-12-30 After Ariana Osgood is arrested for mudering Thomas Pearson, she spends two years in jail plotting her escape to return to the glamorous life she left behind. |
beautiful disaster description: A Paradise Built in Hell Rebecca Solnit, 2010-08-31 The author of Men Explain Things to Me explores the moments of altruism and generosity that arise in the aftermath of disaster Why is it that in the aftermath of a disaster? whether manmade or natural?people suddenly become altruistic, resourceful, and brave? What makes the newfound communities and purpose many find in the ruins and crises after disaster so joyous? And what does this joy reveal about ordinarily unmet social desires and possibilities? In A Paradise Built in Hell, award-winning author Rebecca Solnit explores these phenomena, looking at major calamities from the 1906 earthquake in San Francisco through the 1917 explosion that tore up Halifax, Nova Scotia, the 1985 Mexico City earthquake, 9/11, and Hurricane Katrina in New Orleans. She examines how disaster throws people into a temporary utopia of changed states of mind and social possibilities, as well as looking at the cost of the widespread myths and rarer real cases of social deterioration during crisis. This is a timely and important book from an acclaimed author whose work consistently locates unseen patterns and meanings in broad cultural histories. |
beautiful disaster description: Beautiful Creatures Kami Garcia, Margaret Stohl, 2012-11-20 Living in a small South Carolina town, sixteen-year-old Ethan is powerfully drawn to Lena, a new classmate with whom he shares a psychic connection and whose family hides a dark secret that may be revealed on her sixteenth birthday. |
beautiful disaster description: Disasters Without Borders John Hannigan, 2013-04-17 Dramatic scenes of devastation and suffering caused by disasters such as the 2011 Japanese earthquake and tsunami, are viewed with shock and horror by millions of us across the world. What we rarely see, however, are the international politics of disaster aid, mitigation and prevention that condition the collective response to natural catastrophes around the world. In this book, respected Canadian environmental sociologist John Hannigan argues that the global community of nations has failed time and again in establishing an effective and binding multilateral mechanism for coping with disasters, especially in the more vulnerable countries of the South. Written in an accessible and even-handed manner, Disasters without Borders it is the first comprehensive account of the key milestones, debates, controversies and research relating to the international politics of natural disasters. Tracing the historical evolution of this policy field from its humanitarian origins in WWI right up to current efforts to cast climate change as the prime global driver of disaster risk, it highlights the ongoing mismatch between the way disaster has been conceptualised and the institutional architecture in place to manage it. The book’s bold conclusion predicts the confluence of four emerging trends - politicisation/militarisation, catastrophic scenario building, privatisation of risk, and quantification, which could create a new system of disaster management wherein 'insurance logic' will replace humanitarian concern as the guiding principle. Disasters Without Borders is an ideal introductory text for students, lecturers and practitioners in the fields of international development studies, disaster management, politics and international affairs, and environmental geography/sociology. |
beautiful disaster description: Sweet Nothing Jamie McGuire, Teresa Mummert, 2015-11 Tells the story of Josh and Avery's relationship, alternating between their individual points of view. Josh : It is enough to break any man: watching what could have been my future slip away before it was ever in my grasp. The possibility of losing someone I loved, before she was even mine, is something I never would have imagined. Certainly nothing I'd ever wish on anyone. I go to her every day and wait. Wait for the impossible, for a sign, for her to look at me ... hoping sinners are granted miracles, too. Avery : Just one glimpse of him was all it took. In the next lane, at a stop light, was the man I would fall in love with and marry. People talk about the kind of love that takes time - love you fall in to. We were more like a crash and burn, and when our lives intertwined I would never be the same. He was the man I would cherish the rest of my life, who would father my children. In an instant our life together began, and in an instant it would end. The late nights; the excuses; the lies. And in the blink of an eye, it was like we never were. |
beautiful disaster description: A Girl Named Disaster Nancy Farmer, 1996 While journeying to Zimbabwe, eleven-year-old Nhamo struggles to escape drowning and starvation and in so doing comes close to the luminous world of the African spirits. |
beautiful disaster description: Paris 1919 Margaret MacMillan, 2003-09-09 National Bestseller New York Times Editors’ Choice Winner of the PEN Hessell Tiltman Prize Winner of the Duff Cooper Prize Silver Medalist for the Arthur Ross Book Award of the Council on Foreign Relations Finalist for the Robert F. Kennedy Book Award For six months in 1919, after the end of “the war to end all wars,” the Big Three—President Woodrow Wilson, British prime minister David Lloyd George, and French premier Georges Clemenceau—met in Paris to shape a lasting peace. In this landmark work of narrative history, Margaret MacMillan gives a dramatic and intimate view of those fateful days, which saw new political entities—Iraq, Yugoslavia, and Palestine, among them—born out of the ruins of bankrupt empires, and the borders of the modern world redrawn. |
beautiful disaster description: From Here to You Jamie McGuire, 2018-08-21 One woman must decide whether she can trust a complete stranger to protect her and unborn child from the threats of her past in this touching modern romance from the author of the #1 New York Times bestseller Beautiful Disaster (Library Journal). Named one of the Best Romance Books of 2018 by Bookbub! As Darby Dixon sits in a tiny Texas church bathroom on her wedding day holding a positive pregnancy test, she realizes that marrying her fiance would be the worst decision of her life. She's never been very good at standing up for herself, but she'll sure as hell stand up for her baby. With very little cash and a ton of courage, she flees town to take a new name and start a new life. As a Marine, Scott Trex Trexler worked in the most treacherous, corrupt, war-torn places on earth. With his new top-secret security job, he finally has a chance to return to the one place he's felt at peace: Colorado Springs, Colorado. The moment Trex checks in at the hotel where she's working, Darby knows he's dangerous. He may want her to think he's another hotshot firefighter, along with all the others battling the nearby mountain blaze, but something doesn't add up. No way will she get involved with another man she can't fully trust - and Trex clearly isn't telling her everything. As Darby's ex gets closer and closer to finding her, both she and Trex will soon find out that what you don't know really can hurt you. This love story is raw, brilliant, and gives women hope in the impossible. Nothing is more precious than that. --Audrey Carlan, #1 New York Times bestselling author Jamie McGuire writes with no holds barred ... real and addictive. --USA Today Heartfelt emotions, serious social concerns and exceptional character development result in a touching modern romance with inspirational overtones; a sure winner. --Library Journal |
beautiful disaster description: A Beautiful Funeral Jamie McGuire, 2016-08-02 Losing has never been easy for a Maddox, but death always wins. Eleven years to the day after eloping in Vegas with Abby, Special Agent Travis Maddox delivers his own brand of vigilante justice to mob boss Benny Carlisi. Vegas's oldest and most violent crime family is now preparing for vengeance, and the entire Maddox family is a target. The secret Thomas and Travis have kept for a decade will be revealed to the rest of the family, and for the first time the Maddoxes will be at odds. While none of them are strangers to loss, the family has grown, and the risk is higher than ever. With brothers against brothers and wives taking sides, each member will make a choice-let the fear tear them apart, or make them stronger. |
beautiful disaster description: Beautiful Sacrifice: A Novel Jamie McGuire, 2015-05-31 Falyn Fairchild can walk away from anything. Already leaving behind her car, her education, and even her parents, the daughter of the next governor of Colorado is back in her hometown, broke and waiting tables for the Bucksaw Café. After every shift, Falyn adds to her shoebox of cash, hoping to one day save enough to buy her a plane ticket to the only place she can find forgiveness: Eakins, Illinois. The moment Taylor Maddox is seated in Falyn’s section at the Bucksaw, she knows he’s trouble. Taylor is charming, breaks promises, and gorgeous even when covered in filth—making him everything Falyn believes a hotshot firefighter to be. Falyn isn’t interested in becoming another statistic, and for a Maddox boy, a disinterested girl is the ultimate challenge. Once Falyn learns where Taylor calls home, everything changes. In the end, Maddox persistence is met with Falyn’s talent for leaving, and for the first time, Taylor may be the one to get burned. |
beautiful disaster description: The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao (Pulitzer Prize Winner) Junot Díaz, 2008-09-02 Winner of: The Pulitzer Prize The National Book Critics Circle Award The Anisfield-Wolf Book Award The Jon Sargent, Sr. First Novel Prize A Time Magazine #1 Fiction Book of the Year One of The New York Times’s 100 Best Books of the 21st Century One of the best books of 2007 according to: The New York Times, San Francisco Chronicle, New York Magazine, Entertainment Weekly, The Boston Globe, Los Angeles Times, The Washington Post, People, The Village Voice, Time Out New York, Salon, Baltimore City Paper, The Christian Science Monitor, Booklist, Library Journal, Publishers Weekly, New York Public Library, and many more... Nominated as one of America’s best-loved novels by PBS’s The Great American Read and named one of The Atlantic’s Great American Novels of the Past 100 Years Oscar is a sweet but disastrously overweight ghetto nerd who—from the New Jersey home he shares with his old world mother and rebellious sister—dreams of becoming the Dominican J.R.R. Tolkien and, most of all, finding love. But Oscar may never get what he wants. Blame the fukú—a curse that has haunted Oscar’s family for generations, following them on their epic journey from Santo Domingo to the USA. Encapsulating Dominican-American history, The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao opens our eyes to an astonishing vision of the contemporary American experience and explores the endless human capacity to persevere—and risk it all—in the name of love. |
beautiful disaster description: Leave the World Behind Rumaan Alam, 2020-10-06 SOON TO BE A MAJOR GLOBAL NETFLIX ADAPTATION STARRING JULIA ROBERTS, KEVIN BACON, ETHAN HAWKE AND MAHERSHALA ALI *A THE TIMES #1 BESTSELLER* *THE NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER* *A BARACK OBAMA SUMMER READING PICK 2021* 'Easily the best thing I have read all year' KILEY REID, AUTHOR OF SUCH A FUN AGE 'Intense, incisive, I loved this and have still not quite shaken off the unease' DAVID NICHOLLS 'I was hooked from the opening pages' CLARE MACKINTOSH 'Simply breathtaking . . . An extraordinary book, at once smart, gripping and hallucinatory' OBSERVER _______ A magnetic novel about two families, strangers to each other, who are forced together on a long weekend gone terribly wrong Amanda and Clay head to a remote corner of Long Island expecting a holiday: a quiet reprieve from life in New York City, quality time with their teenage son and daughter and a taste of the good life in the luxurious home they've rented for the week. But with a late-night knock on the door, the spell is broken. Ruth and G. H., an older couple who claim to own the home, have arrived there in a panic. These strangers say that a sudden power outage has swept the city, and - with nowhere else to turn - they have come to the country in search of shelter. But with the TV and internet down, and no phone service, the facts are unknowable. Should Amanda and Clay trust this couple - and vice versa? What has happened back in New York? Is the holiday home, isolated from civilisation, a truly safe place for their families? And are they safe from one another? _______ FINALIST FOR THE NATIONAL BOOK AWARD 2020 FINALIST FOR THE ORWELL PRIZE 2021 A DAILY TELEGRAPH, GUARDIAN, OBSERVER, IRISH TIMES AND TIME BOOK OF THE YEAR Everyone is talking about LEAVE THE WORLD BEHIND 'You will probably need to read it in as close to one sitting as possible' Sunday Times 'A page-turner taking in themes of isolation, race and class' Guardian 'A book that could have been tailor-made for our times' The Times 'A literary page-turner that will keep you awake even after it ends' Mail on Sunday 'An exceptional examination of race and class and what the world looks like when it's ending' Roxane Gay 'A thrilling book - one that will speak to readers who have felt the terror of isolation in these recent months and one that will simultaneously, as great books do, lift them out of it' Vogue 'Explores complex ideas about privilege and fate with miraculous wit and grace' Jenny Offill 'For the reader, the invisible terror outside in Leave the World Behind echoes the sense of disquiet today in a world convulsed by the pandemic' Financial Times 'Alam's achievement is to see that his genre's traditional arc, which relies on the idea of aftermath, no longer makes sense. Today, disaster novels call for something different' New Yorker 'Read it with the lights on' Jenna Bush Hager, October Book Club pick |
beautiful disaster description: Everyone Is Beautiful Katherine Center, 2021-05-04 A hugely entertaining, poignant, and charming novel about what happens after happily ever after—from the New York Times bestselling author of The Bodyguard and The Rom-Commers “Everyone Is Beautiful is for every woman who has ever struggled to find, hold on to, and nurture authenticity in the midst of that wild, messy, wonderful thing called motherhood.”—Brené Brown Lanie Coates’s life is spinning out of control. She’s piled everything she owns into a U-Haul and driven with her husband, Peter, and their three little boys from their cozy Texas home to a multiflight walkup in Boston. She’s left behind family and friends—all so her husband can realize his dream of becoming a professional musician. But somewhere in the eye of her personal hurricane, it hits Lanie that she once had dreams too . . . if only she could remember what they were. These days, Lanie always seems to prioritize herself last—and when another mom accidentally assumes she’s pregnant, it’s the final straw. Fifteen years, three babies, and more pounds than she’s willing to count since the day she said “I do,” Lanie longs desperately to feel like her old self again. It’s time to rise up, fish her moxie out of the diaper pail, and find the woman she was before motherhood consumed her entire existence. Lanie sets change in motion—joining a gym, signing up for photography classes, and finding a new best friend. But she also creates waves that come to threaten her whole life. Balancing motherhood and me-time, marriage and independence, and supporting loved ones while also realizing her own dreams, Lanie must figure out once and for all how to find herself without losing everything else in the process. |
beautiful disaster description: Red Hill Jamie McGuire, 2013-10-01 When the world ends, can love survive? For Scarlet, raising her two daughters alone makes fighting for tomorrow an everyday battle. Nathan has a wife, but can't remember what it's like to be in love; only his young daughter Zoe makes coming home worthwhile. Miranda's biggest concern is whether her new VW Bug is big enough to carry her sister and their boyfriends on a weekend escape from college finals. When reports of a widespread, deadly outbreak begin to surface, these ordinary people face extraordinary circumstances and suddenly their fates are intertwined. Recognizing they can't outrun the danger, Scarlet, Nathan, and Miranda desperately seek shelter at the same secluded ranch, Red Hill. Emotions run high while old and new relationships are tested in the face of a terrifying enemy-an enemy who no longer remembers what it's like to be human. Set against the backdrop of a brilliantly realized apocalyptic world, love somehow finds a way to survive. But what happens when the one you'd die for becomes the one who could destroy you? Red Hillgrabs you from page one and doesn't let go until its stunning conclusion. This is number 1 New York Timesbestselling author Jamie McGuire at her unforgettable best. |
beautiful disaster description: The Beautiful Music All Around Us Stephen Wade, 2012-08-10 The Beautiful Music All Around Us presents the extraordinarily rich backstories of thirteen performances captured on Library of Congress field recordings between 1934 and 1942 in locations reaching from Southern Appalachia to the Mississippi Delta and the Great Plains. Including the children's play song Shortenin' Bread, the fiddle tune Bonaparte's Retreat, the blues Another Man Done Gone, and the spiritual Ain't No Grave Can Hold My Body Down, these performances were recorded in kitchens and churches, on porches and in prisons, in hotel rooms and school auditoriums. Documented during the golden age of the Library of Congress recordings, they capture not only the words and tunes of traditional songs but also the sounds of life in which the performances were embedded: children laugh, neighbors comment, trucks pass by. Musician and researcher Stephen Wade sought out the performers on these recordings, their families, fellow musicians, and others who remembered them. He reconstructs the sights and sounds of the recording sessions themselves and how the music worked in all their lives. Some of these performers developed musical reputations beyond these field recordings, but for many, these tracks represent their only appearances on record: prisoners at the Arkansas State Penitentiary jumping on the Library's recording machine in a rendering of Rock Island Line; Ora Dell Graham being called away from the schoolyard to sing the jump-rope rhyme Pullin' the Skiff; Luther Strong shaking off a hungover night in jail and borrowing a fiddle to rip into Glory in the Meetinghouse. Alongside loving and expert profiles of these performers and their locales and communities, Wade also untangles the histories of these iconic songs and tunes, tracing them through slave songs and spirituals, British and homegrown ballads, fiddle contests, gospel quartets, and labor laments. By exploring how these singers and instrumentalists exerted their own creativity on inherited forms, amplifying tradition's gifts, Wade shows how a single artist can make a difference within a democracy. Reflecting decades of research and detective work, the profiles and abundant photos in The Beautiful Music All Around Us bring to life largely unheralded individuals--domestics, farm laborers, state prisoners, schoolchildren, cowboys, housewives and mothers, loggers and miners--whose music has become part of the wider American musical soundscape. The hardcover edition also includes an accompanying CD that presents these thirteen performances, songs and sounds of America in the 1930s and '40s. |
beautiful disaster description: This Is Chance! Jon Mooallem, 2021-03-16 The thrilling, cinematic story of a community shattered by disaster—and the extraordinary woman who helped pull it back together “A powerful, heart-wrenching book, as much art as it is journalism.”—The Wall Street Journal “A beautifully wrought and profoundly joyful story of compassion and perseverance.”—BuzzFeed (Best Books of the Year) In the spring of 1964, Anchorage, Alaska, was a modern-day frontier town yearning to be a metropolis—the largest, proudest city in a state that was still brand-new. But just before sundown on Good Friday, the community was jolted by the most powerful earthquake in American history, a catastrophic 9.2 on the Richter Scale. For four and a half minutes, the ground lurched and rolled. Streets cracked open and swallowed buildings whole. And once the shaking stopped, night fell and Anchorage went dark. The city was in disarray and sealed off from the outside world. Slowly, people switched on their transistor radios and heard a familiar woman’s voice explaining what had just happened and what to do next. Genie Chance was a part-time radio reporter and working mother who would play an unlikely role in the wake of the disaster, helping to put her fractured community back together. Her tireless broadcasts over the next three days would transform her into a legendary figure in Alaska and bring her fame worldwide—but only briefly. That Easter weekend in Anchorage, Genie and a cast of endearingly eccentric characters—from a mountaineering psychologist to the local community theater group staging Our Town—were thrown into a jumbled world they could not recognize. Together, they would make a home in it again. Drawing on thousands of pages of unpublished documents, interviews with survivors, and original broadcast recordings, This Is Chance! is the hopeful, gorgeously told story of a single catastrophic weekend and proof of our collective strength in a turbulent world. There are moments when reality instantly changes—when the life we assume is stable gets upended by pure chance. This Is Chance! is an electrifying and lavishly empathetic portrayal of one community rising above the randomness, a real-life fable of human connection withstanding chaos. |
beautiful disaster description: Beautiful Redemption: A Novel Jamie McGuire, 2015-01-25 The Maddox Brothers Series is sexy, addictive, and full of surprises -- just like the Maddox boys. -- Kami Garcia, #1 New York Times, USA Today, and international bestselling coauthor of the Beautiful Creatures novels & author of The Lovely Reckless The second of four novels chronicling the exciting, romantic, and sometimes volatile road to love for the Maddox brothers. The loves and loss of Thomas Maddox, the eldest Maddox brother, is told from the point-of-view of Liis Lindy, a no-nonsense agent of the FBI. |
beautiful disaster description: The Last Book in the Universe (Scholastic Gold) Rodman Philbrick, 2013-03-01 This fast-paced action novel is set in a future where the world has been almost destroyed. Like the award-winning novel Freak the Mighty, this is Philbrick at his very best.It's the story of an epileptic teenager nicknamed Spaz, who begins the heroic fight to bring human intelligence back to the planet. In a world where most people are plugged into brain-drain entertainment systems, Spaz is the rare human being who can see life as it really is. When he meets an old man called Ryter, he begins to learn about Earth and its past. With Ryter as his companion, Spaz sets off an unlikely quest to save his dying sister -- and in the process, perhaps the world. |
beautiful disaster description: The Beautiful Things That Heaven Bears Dinaw Mengestu, 2007-03-01 Seventeen years ago, Sepha Stephanos fled the Ethiopian Revolution for a new start in the United States. Now he finds himself running a failing grocery store in a poor African-American section of Washington, D.C., his only companions two fellow African immigrants who share his bitter nostalgia and longing for his home continent. Years ago and worlds away Sepha could never have imagined a life of such isolation. As his environment begins to change, hope comes in the form of a friendship with new neighbors Judith and Naomi, a white woman and her biracial daughter. But when a series of racial incidents disturbs the community, Sepha may lose everything all over again. Watch a QuickTime interview with Dinaw Mengestu about this book. |
beautiful disaster description: Cat's Cradle Kurt Vonnegut, 1998-09-08 “A free-wheeling vehicle . . . an unforgettable ride!”—The New York Times Cat’s Cradle is Kurt Vonnegut’s satirical commentary on modern man and his madness. An apocalyptic tale of this planet’s ultimate fate, it features a midget as the protagonist, a complete, original theology created by a calypso singer, and a vision of the future that is at once blackly fatalistic and hilariously funny. A book that left an indelible mark on an entire generation of readers, Cat’s Cradle is one of the twentieth century’s most important works—and Vonnegut at his very best. “[Vonnegut is] an unimitative and inimitable social satirist.”—Harper’s Magazine “Our finest black-humorist . . . We laugh in self-defense.”—Atlantic Monthly |
beautiful disaster description: Cloud Atlas (20th Anniversary Edition) David Mitchell, 2010-07-16 #1 INTERNATIONAL BESTSELLER • A timeless, structure-bending classic that explores how actions of individual lives impact the past, present and future—from a postmodern visionary and one of the leading voices in fiction Featuring a new afterword by David Mitchell and a new introduction by Gabrielle Zevin, author of Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow One of the New York Times’s 100 Best Books of the 21st Century • Shortlisted for the International Booker Prize Cloud Atlas begins in 1850 with Adam Ewing, an American notary voyaging from the Chatham Isles to his home in California. Ewing is befriended by a physician, Dr. Goose, who begins to treat him for a rare species of brain parasite. The novel careens, with dazzling virtuosity, to Belgium in 1931, to the West Coast in the 1970s, to an inglorious present-day England, to a Korean superstate of the near future where neocapitalism has run amok, and, finally, to a postapocalyptic Iron Age Hawaii in the last days of history. But the story doesn’t end even there. The novel boomerangs back through centuries and space, returning by the same route, in reverse, to its starting point. Along the way, David Mitchell reveals how his disparate characters connect, how their fates intertwine, and how their souls drift across time like clouds across the sky. As wild as a video game, as mysterious as a Zen koan, Cloud Atlas is an unforgettable tour de force that, like its incomparable author, has transcended its cult classic status to become a worldwide phenomenon. |
beautiful disaster description: The Dominator DD Prince, 2024-03-16 An arranged marriage dark mafia romance. My life is about to be twisted up in knots. I've been ripped from my life and handed over as a payment for my father's debt. I'm now engaged to a dark, dominating, terrifying man who has three rules for me. Rule number one: Obey. Rule number two: Tell no one anything about him. Rule number three gives me a peek into just how dark, depraved, and possessive my new fiancé really is. This dark mafia story has explicit, mature, dark themes and situations that may upset those who are sensitive to common themes in dark romance. Standalone, no cliffhanger, but more books available in this series.2024 edition. First edition published in 2015. |
beautiful disaster description: Titanic Deborah Hopkinson, 2012 Tells the tale of the sinking of the Titanic using the narratives of the witnesses and survivors to the disaster. |
beautiful disaster description: The Ice Seduction S. K. Quinn, 2014-03-05 Promo priced NOW - the hot new romance from bestselling author, SK Quinn If you loved Fifty Shades of Grey (E.L. James), Bared to You (Sylvia Day), This Man (Jodi Ellen Malpas) and Beautiful Disaster, you'll love The Ice Seduction ... BOOK DESCRIPTION The Nanny. The master of the house. A forbidden love … When Seraphina Harper accepts a nanny position at Mansfield Castle, she's intrigued to learn that her new boss is Lord Patrick Mansfield – a young, wealthy ex-army officer who is as tough as he is handsome. Strong and disciplined, Patrick believes that in his cold woodland castle, what he says goes. But Seraphina isn't a girl who likes following orders – especially from a man as arrogant as Patrick. Before long, the pair fall into a forbidden, obsessive love affair that breaks all the rules … LOOK INSIDE this book to see why readers are loving this new romantic suspense novel … Other books like the Ice Seduction: Bared to You, Sylvia Day This Man, Jodi Ellen Malpas Beautiful Disaster by Jamie Mcguire |
beautiful disaster description: A Fortune for Your Disaster Hanif Abdurraqib, 2019-09-24 “When an author’s unmitigated brilliance shows up on every page, it’s tempting to skip a description and just say, Read this! Such is the case with this breathlessly powerful, deceptively breezy book of poetry.” —Booklist, Starred Review In his much-anticipated follow-up to The Crown Ain't Worth Much, poet, essayist, biographer, and music critic Hanif Abdurraqib has written a book of poems about how one rebuilds oneself after a heartbreak, the kind that renders them a different version of themselves than the one they knew. It's a book about a mother's death, and admitting that Michael Jordan pushed off, about forgiveness, and how none of the author's black friends wanted to listen to Don't Stop Believin'. It's about wrestling with histories, personal and shared. Abdurraqib uses touchstones from the world outside—from Marvin Gaye to Nikola Tesla to his neighbor's dogs—to create a mirror, inside of which every angle presents a new possibility. |
beautiful disaster description: Crabbe William Bell, 1997 Crabbe is published by Fitzhenry and Whiteside. |
beautiful disaster description: The Damned Renée Ahdieh, 2020-07-07 Instant New York Times bestselling sequel to The Beautiful Following the events of The Beautiful, Sébastien Saint Germain is now cursed and forever changed. The treaty between the Fallen and the Brotherhood has been broken, and war between the immortals seems imminent. The price of loving Celine was costly. But Celine has also paid a high price for loving Bastien. Still recovering from injuries sustained during a night she can't quite remember, her dreams are troubled. And she doesn't know she has inadvertently set into motion a chain of events that could lead to her demise and unveil a truth about herself she's not ready to learn. Forces hiding in the shadows have been patiently waiting for this moment. And just as Bastien and Celine begin to uncover the danger around them, they learn their love could tear them apart. The Damned, Renée's latest installment in The Beautiful series is just as decadent, thrilling, and mysterious as her last, as she continues her most potent fantasy series yet. |
beautiful disaster description: Beautiful Disaster C. J, Christine Elizabeth Johnson, 2018-09-02 Beautiful Disaster is a humorous commercial novel featuring Maggie Penny, a brilliant part-time inventor and full-time hot-tempered professor of biochemistry at the University of Missouri. Maggie gives her boyfriend, Danny, her latest formula to analyze at Lexi, Corp., the cosmetics company where he works, clueless that she has set in motion a chain of events that will bring the world dangerously close to Armageddon. Maggie and her friends have to contend with an unusual group of government accountants, mercenaries, and one unstoppable psychopathic corporate spy from Human Resources. |
BEAUTIFUL Synonyms: 265 Similar and Opposite Words | Merriam-Webster ...
Some common synonyms of beautiful are comely, fair, handsome, lovely, and pretty. While all these words mean "exciting sensuous or aesthetic pleasure," beautiful applies to whatever …
BEAUTIFUL Definition & Meaning | Dictionary.com
Beautiful definition: having beauty; possessing qualities that give great pleasure or satisfaction to see, hear, think about, etc.; delighting the senses or mind.. See examples of BEAUTIFUL used …
BEAUTIFUL | English meaning - Cambridge Dictionary
Jun 11, 2015 · BEAUTIFUL definition: 1. very attractive: 2. very pleasant: 3. very kind: . Learn more.
Beautiful - Definition, Meaning & Synonyms - Vocabulary.com
The adjective beautiful describes a thing that is pleasing to the senses. A field of wildflowers, a colorful sunset, and an abstract sculpture could all be considered beautiful.
BEAUTIFUL definition in American English | Collins English …
If you describe something as beautiful, you mean that it is very attractive or pleasing.
Beautiful - definition of beautiful by The Free Dictionary
If you say that someone is beautiful, you are implying that they are nicer to look at than if you said they were attractive, good-looking, handsome, or pretty. If you say that someone is gorgeous …
Beautiful Definition & Meaning - YourDictionary
Beautiful definition: Having qualities that delight or appeal to the senses and often the mind.
BEAUTIFUL Definition & Meaning - Merriam-Webster
Our evidence shows that when beautiful is used to describe physical beauty, it is overwhelming used of women or a physical aspect of a woman (such as her hair or skin). This hasn't always …
BEAUTIFUL - Definition & Translations | Collins English Dictionary
Discover everything about the word "BEAUTIFUL" in English: meanings, translations, synonyms, pronunciations, examples, and grammar insights - all in one comprehensive guide.
BEAUTIFUL - 62 Synonyms and Antonyms - Cambridge English
These are words and phrases related to beautiful. Click on any word or phrase to go to its thesaurus page. Or, go to the definition of beautiful.
BEAUTIFUL Synonyms: 265 Similar and Opposite Words | Merriam-Webster …
Some common synonyms of beautiful are comely, fair, handsome, lovely, and pretty. While all these words mean "exciting sensuous or aesthetic pleasure," beautiful applies to whatever …
BEAUTIFUL Definition & Meaning | Dictionary.com
Beautiful definition: having beauty; possessing qualities that give great pleasure or satisfaction to see, hear, think about, etc.; delighting the senses or mind.. See examples of BEAUTIFUL used …
BEAUTIFUL | English meaning - Cambridge Dictionary
Jun 11, 2015 · BEAUTIFUL definition: 1. very attractive: 2. very pleasant: 3. very kind: . Learn more.
Beautiful - Definition, Meaning & Synonyms - Vocabulary.com
The adjective beautiful describes a thing that is pleasing to the senses. A field of wildflowers, a colorful sunset, and an abstract sculpture could all be considered beautiful.
BEAUTIFUL definition in American English | Collins English …
If you describe something as beautiful, you mean that it is very attractive or pleasing.
Beautiful - definition of beautiful by The Free Dictionary
If you say that someone is beautiful, you are implying that they are nicer to look at than if you said they were attractive, good-looking, handsome, or pretty. If you say that someone is gorgeous …
Beautiful Definition & Meaning - YourDictionary
Beautiful definition: Having qualities that delight or appeal to the senses and often the mind.
BEAUTIFUL Definition & Meaning - Merriam-Webster
Our evidence shows that when beautiful is used to describe physical beauty, it is overwhelming used of women or a physical aspect of a woman (such as her hair or skin). This hasn't always …
BEAUTIFUL - Definition & Translations | Collins English Dictionary
Discover everything about the word "BEAUTIFUL" in English: meanings, translations, synonyms, pronunciations, examples, and grammar insights - all in one comprehensive guide.
BEAUTIFUL - 62 Synonyms and Antonyms - Cambridge English
These are words and phrases related to beautiful. Click on any word or phrase to go to its thesaurus page. Or, go to the definition of beautiful.