Small Life

Welcome to Magnolia. Fiona is waiting for her court date to come around. In the meantime, she's determined to find a job to help out her mother's struggling coffee shop. As luck would have it, Maggie has heard of a recluse on the far end of the island who is looking for a housekeeper-slash-chef. Even though Fiona isn't the greatest homemaker, she'd determined to give it a shot. Until she meets Jackson. He's dark. He's broody. And he has a secret that she can't quite figure out. As much as she wants to walk away from him, she discovers that there is more to him that he lets on.

Pearce Oysters, a lush, evocative, finely drawn debut novel set on the Louisiana coastline during the historic 2010 oil spill, follows the Pearce family, local oyster farmers whose business, family, and livelihood are all on the brink of collapse. Macro factors beyond their control are slaying them. Eye-opening, eco-fiction at its best, Pearce Oysters highlights the grit and beauty of lives lived in an overlooked corner of the American South and the interdependence of nature and man.

In Crowdfunded, Mark Pecota breaks down the step-by-step system he and his team have used to launch thousands of products in dozens of categories. In the process, LaunchBoom has driven more than $100 million in revenue through Kickstarter, Indiegogo, and other e-commerce platforms.

The scent of flowers and change is in the air for the Wingate sisters. With her husband gone for weeks at a stretch, Rose's unwavering enthusiasm is tested, forcing her to remove her famous rose-colored glasses and face a family crisis. While Susannah plans an anniversary surprise for Rex, Chloe finds the courage to try one more career path, with help coming from the one constant in her life, her precious furbaby, Lady Bug.

When Marina Moore’s life blows up on national television, she seeks refuge at her grandmother’s beach house called the Coral Cottage. Now in her mid-forties with children in college, Marina is in dire need of her grandmother's gutsy advice to a well-lived life. Marina meets an old friend, Ivy Bay, proprietor of the Seabreeze Inn, who encourages her to share her love of food at the local farmer’s market. Soon Marina’s sister Kai arrives on a summer break from her musical theater troupe.

Orphaned cousins Jane and Lucilla, both 19, receive the exciting news that their guardian is at last allowing them to leave boarding school. But their rosy future is thwarted when they find he has made some bad investments and fled, leaving them with a cottage in the English countryside and a modest bank account.

What would you be willing to do for the rest of your life? It's a question most of us consider only hypothetically - opting instead to "do what we have to do" to earn a living. But in the critically acclaimed best seller The Monk and the Riddle, entrepreneurial sage Randy Komisar asks us to answer it for real.

In Trinidad, in 1796, teenage Rosa Rendon quietly but purposefully rebels against typical female roles and behavior. Bright, competitive, and opinionated, Rosa sees no reason she should learn to cook and keep house - it is obvious her talents lie in running the farm she expects to be her birthright, despite her two older siblings. But as her homeland goes from Spanish to British rule, it becomes increasingly unclear whether its free black property owners - Rosa's family among them - will be allowed to keep their assets, their land, and ultimately, their freedom.

December 1965. ‘Tis the season once again in the cozy Irish village of Ballybucklebo, which means that Doctor Fingal Flahertie O’Reilly, his young colleague Barry Laverty, and their assorted friends, neighbors, and patients are enjoying all their favorite holiday traditions: caroling, trimming the tree, finding the perfects gifts for their near and dear ones, and anticipating a proper Yuletide feast complete with roast turkey and chestnut stuffing. There’s even the promise of snow in the air, raising the prospect of a white Christmas.

The Real Jane Austen: A Life in Small Things offers a startlingly original look at the revered writer through a variety of key moments, scenes, and objects in her life and work. Going beyond previous traditional biographies which have traced Austen's daily life from Steventon to Bath to Chawton to Winchester, Paula Byrne's portrait - organized thematically and drawn from the most up-to-date scholarship and unexplored sources - explores the lives of Austen's extended family, friends, and acquaintances.

For years, Isobel Latimer has composed serious novels for serious people, but to dwindling acclaim and ever-more dwindling gain. Now her husband is ill and she must carry their financial burden alone, and in secret. But if the public don’t want careful moral fables any longer, why not provide an outrageous tale of sex and satanism, and an author to match? The incomparable, uncontrollable Zelda de Vere is born.

Faced with uncontrollable circumstances, from a change in market demand to a global pandemic, being self-employed can sometimes feel less like you're running the show, and more like the show is running you. But it doesn't need to be that way. Small business consultant, entrepreneur coach, and acclaimed portrait photographer Jeffrey Shaw - TEDx speaker and host of the popular The Self-Employed Life podcast - offers the essential manual on everything you need to be successful as a self-employed business owner.

Cecilia Lapthorne always vowed she’d never go back to Dune Cottage. So no one is more surprised than Cecilia to find herself escaping her own seventieth birthday party to return to the remote but beautiful cottage on Cape Cod—a place filled with memories. Some are good—especially memories of the early days with her husband, volatile artist Cameron, before his fame eclipsed their marriage. But then there are the memories she has revealed to no one. Especially not her daughter, Kristen, who hero-worshipped her father.

The international best seller - don't compete without it! A major best seller in Japan, Financial Times top-ten book of the year, Book-of-the-Month Club best seller, and required reading at the best business schools, Thinking Strategically is a crash course in outmaneauvering any rival. This entertaining guide builds on scores of case studies taken from business, sports, the movies, politics, and gambling. It outlines the basics of good strategy-making and then shows how you can apply them in any area of your life.

Set against the backdrop of an eerie island town in the dead of winter, The Wife and the Widow is an unsettling thriller told from two perspectives: Kate, a widow whose grief is compounded by what she learns about her dead husband’s secret life; and Abby, an island local whose world is turned upside when she’s forced to confront the evidence of her husband’s guilt. But nothing on this island is quite as it seems, and only when these women come together can they discover the whole story about the men in their lives.

The start of everything is critically important - and every truly successful product or business starts with a successful launch. Unfortunately most entrepreneurs put all their focus into "getting the doors open" without giving much thought to creating a great launch. However, since 1996, Jeff Walker has been obsessed with creating hugely successful launches in our increasingly digital world. During those years Jeff created an unbroken string of amazing successes for himself and his clients.

While renovating an old beach house, Ivy and her sister, Shelly, suddenly have full occupancy after fire forces Summer Beach residents from their homes. Even the mayor, Bennett Dylan, who was Ivy’s high school crush, moves in. As the summer heats up, attractions simmer and feuds erupt. Living in the house Bennett had hoped could be a community center, he finds himself at odds with Ivy’s campaign for a bed-and-breakfast zoning change. And when valuable items disappear from the inn, Bennett’s friend Mitch, who owns the popular Java Beach coffee shop, is the prime suspect.

After a long and lonely silence from Cody Coleman, Bailey Flanigan begins to spend more and more time with her Hollywood co-star Brandon Paul. Nights on the town in New York City and long talks on the balcony of Brandon's Malibu Beach home make Bailey dizzy with new feelings and cause her to wonder if her days with Cody are over forever. Meanwhile, Cody's work coaching a small-town football team has brought him and his players national attention. In the midst of the celebration and success, Cody finds himself much closer to a woman who seems to better understand him and his new life.

After nearly two hundred years of housing retardants, as they were once known, the Beechwood Institute is closing the doors on its dark history, and the complicated task of reassigning residents has begun. Ella Jules, having arrived at Beechwood at the tender age of eight, must now rely on the state to decide her future. Ella’s aging parents have requested that she be returned to her childhood home, much to the distress of Ella’s siblings, but more so to Lynetta, her beloved caretaker who has been by her side for decades.

She’s 43 years old…and starting over from scratch. How did this happen? She had it all together. A stable marriage of two decades. Two grown daughters. And now she and her husband, empty nesters, were moving to a beach house. Until he showed up late one night and tore their marriage apart. A secret life. A different woman. Another family. Left alone, she has to begin again. And then her estranged sister and mother get thrown into the mix. When she buys a house on a small South Carolina island, will she learn what life is really about?