Love can be contagious in this infectiously fun romance by debut author Katie Cicatelli-Kuc. Oliver wants a girlfriend, and there's a girl back home who might be interested in him. The problem is, he has to spend his spring break on a volunteer trip in the Dominican Republic. Flora, on the other hand, isn't really looking for a boyfriend. She just wants to end a miserable spring break visiting her dad and her new stepmom in the D.R.The solution to both their problems? Get back home to New York ASAP. Sadly, they won't be getting there anytime soon. Their hopes are dashed when Flora's impulsiveness lands them in quarantine -- just the two of them. Now, the two teens must come together in order to survive life in a bubble for 30 days. In that time, love will bloom. But is it the real thing, or just a placebo effect? In her debut novel, Katie Cicatelli-Kuc delivers an introspective and witty story about finding love in the most unexpected place.

When Claire Draper's fictional love story goes viral in the wake of a pandemic, the line between reality and fiction is blurred. But will she be able to tell the difference? Claire is a junior in high school when a worldwide pandemic strikes, and she's in the epicenter of it all in New York City. Suddenly, Claire is forced to isolate with her family indefinitely, which means she won't be able to see her friends or even her girlfriend, Vanessa, in person for a long time. At first it's not so bad, but the longer the pandemic lasts, the more Claire feels her priorities changing. That's when she looks outside her bedroom window and notices something new: A girl who lives in the building across the street sitting on her fire escape. So Claire starts writing a story online about a girl who falls for the girl across the street. To Claire's surprise, the story goes viral-and it seems people think true. But how true is true? And what if Vanessa finds out? Will Claire be able to manage her newfound internet fame before everything spirals out of control?

Wine is traditionally the symbol for transformation... Whenever you feel crushed, under pressure, or pressed, you're in a great space for transformation to take place. During this recent pandemic, relationships and marriages were tested beyond measure. In this book, Quarantine Wine, A Love Story, you will discover through our personal love story how your marriage can stand through any test and trial, and still come out better than before. Written in an easy-to-read, inspiring style, complete with biblical marriage nuggets that can be related to today's marriages. In Quarantine Wine, you will see how your marriage at any stage can relate to the author's and the marriages in the Bible. This book is designed to inspire, challenge, and reveal your own uniqueness in your marriage. No marriage is perfect, but it should be progressing daily. I hope after reading Quarantine Wine, you will see just like wine, your marriage can last for ages.

"Brutalities is electric with insight, riveted by its commitments—to love and bewilderment, to bearing witness—and utterly propulsive." —Leslie Jamison, author of The Empathy Exams A searing, vivid memoir that investigates the dynamics of violence, power, desire, and a body pushed to the brink. Quarantined in a southwestern desert city in the midst of her high-risk pregnancy, Margo Steines felt her life narrow around her growing body, compelling her to reckon with the violence entangled in its history. She was a professional dominatrix in New York City, a homestead farmer in a brutal relationship, a welder on a high-rise building crew, and a mixed martial arts enthusiast; each of her many lives brought a new perspective on how power and masculinity coalesce—and how far she could push her body toward the brink. With unflinching candor, Steines searches for the roots of her erstwhile attraction to pain while charting the complicated triumph of gentleness and love.

The Quarantine Files: 10 short stories of the Covid 19 lockdown, is a work of fiction by the author M Anzar. It tells 10 fantastic and unknown episodes of the Coronavirus shutdown. These stories cover vivid genres. They provide a soul-stirring experience and a blend of emotions to the reader.

Gilmore Girls fans! Pour yourselves a hot cup of tea and get ready to fall in love with this cozy YA romance that will have you dreaming of autumn all year long. Fall is a big deal in Briar Glen, a quaint and charming village in New England. That’s when tourists from all over the country descend upon this picturesque town to see the babbling brooks and colorful leaves while sipping hot chocolate or pumpkin spice lattes. But sixteen-year-old Lucy Kane hates the uber-popular PSL. She finds it overrated -- especially when you consider the fact that there isn’t even pumpkin in it! -- which is bad because she works at Cup o’ Jo, the local coffee shop her mom owns. Business at Cup o' Jo hasn't been great in the off-season, but that's okay because it always picks up during the fall ... Until Java Junction, a multinational coffee chain, opens across the street and makes things harder for the small shop. And to make matters worse, it turns out Jack Harper, the new kid in school and Lucy's secret crush, is the son of the owner. Suddenly, fall doesnt seem like it'll be all it's cracked up to be. Will Lucy find a way to save her mom's coffee shop?

A Chicago summer weekend. No air conditioning, few fans. Ragged screens let fly gangs descend on overflowing garbage cans. Since there are not enough nurses, most patients haven't bathed in days. Used bed linen intersperses with uncollected dinner trays. In the early 1990s, thousands of people - patients, doctors, nurses, families - struggle to get through each day as Cook County Hospital literally crumbles around them. County follows a new doctor as she hesitantly steps into this chaos. By turns funny and heart-breaking, the story introduces us to Lu, a sexy nurse with HIV, Eugene, adept at avoiding the authorities who want to treat his drug-resistant tuberculosis, and Lunelle, a patient who offers to riot when the hospital administration threatens to close the doctor's clinic. In time, the doctor learns the meaning of courage, loss, and - especially - love. Written as a narrative poem to impose structure on this pandemonium, County is a tour de force of rhyme, meter, and storytelling.

"Presto! No More Pests!" proclaimed a 1955 article introducing two new pesticides, "miracle-workers for the housewife and back-yard farmer." Easy to use, effective, and safe: who wouldn't love synthetic pesticides? Apparently most Americans did—and apparently still do. Why—in the face of dire warnings, rising expense, and declining effectiveness—do we cling to our chemicals? Michelle Mart wondered. Her book, a cultural history of pesticide use in postwar America, offers an answer. America's embrace of synthetic pesticides began when they burst on the scene during World War II and has held steady into the 21st century—for example, more than 90% of soybeans grown in the US in 2008 are Roundup Ready GMOs, dependent upon generous use of the herbicide glyphosate to control weeds. Mart investigates the attraction of pesticides, with their up-to-the-minute promise of modernity, sophisticated technology, and increased productivity—in short, their appeal to human dreams of controlling nature. She also considers how they reinforced Cold War assumptions of Western economic and material superiority. Though the publication of Rachel Carson's Silent Spring and the rise of environmentalism might have marked a turning point in Americans' faith in pesticides, statistics tell a different story. Pesticides, a Love Story recounts the campaign against DDT that famously ensued; but the book also shows where our notions of Silent Spring's revolutionary impact falter—where, in spite of a ban on DDT, farm use of pesticides in the United States more than doubled in the thirty years after the book was published. As a cultural survey of popular and political attitudes toward pesticides, Pesticides, a Love Story tries to make sense of this seeming paradox. At heart, it is an exploration of the story we tell ourselves about the costs and benefits of pesticides—and how corporations, government officials, ordinary citizens, and the press shape that story to reflect our ideals, interests, and emotions.

An intensely personal narrative of loss, hope, and longing for a child. In this brave and lucid account, Julia Leigh broaches a challenging life event often left undiscussed: how the struggle to have a child can take an agonizing toll. Leigh’s experience at the vanguard of medical science is acutely rendered, physically and emotionally, transmitting what it feels like to so desperately wish for a child while knowing that the odds are stacked against you. From the daily shots she puts herself through at home, to hopes raised and dashed, and finally to the decision to stop treatment, Avalanche bears witness to Leigh’s raw desire, suffering, strength, and, in the end, transformation—a shift to a different kind of love. The reader looks behind the scenes of a clinic and discovers how things really work: reality is a far cry from the slick marketing of the billion-dollar infertility industry. As for so many women, Leigh’s treatment failed, but her ghost child lingers in memory.

The novel portrays three main characters in pursuit of their dreams. The main character is Molly, a woman that becomes a jockey and pursues her dream to win the Triple Crown derbies trophy. As the story evolves she proves to have an enormous resilience in the face of a disabling illness that affects her life and her career. What becomes predominant in Molly’s quest for glory is the tie between her and the champion horse. Their love for each other – either in good fortune or in tragedy - reaches further than their aspirations to achieve glory. The next character in line is Uncle Bill, who comes to realize one day that his life lacks a higher purpose. To make up for it he designs an ultimate adventure for himself which he calls “Project Everest”. Eventually Uncle Bill goes and climbs Mt. Everest and never returns from there. Reaching that peak becomes an end in itself. Did Uncle Bill succeed to arrive at that peak? Later on, a salvage team finds on the mountain peak Uncle Bill’s watch, hidden under a rock. What belongs to a larger than life story is that Uncle Bill’s preparation for climbing Mt. Everest becomes a vital activity at all population levels. It looks as if each life prepares itself to help Uncle Bill triumph over defiance. What Uncle Bill’s project proves to others is that conquering the impossible is a human trait that belongs to all of us, an aspiration of all of us to overcome the impossible. The third character that gathers attention is the teen author that lives though those events and discovers what love is. The background of the story is made up of farmlands, a bunch of neighboring farms on which the principal activity is growing animals like pigs, burrows and thoroughbred studs. It is not difficult to interpret the motives interleaved by the story as being symbolic. Molly’s desire to win the Triple Crown begins with a fortunate chance and ends with another chance – an unfortunate one, an accidental chance. Uncle’s Bill’s climbing of Mt. Everest is the result of a careful planning that ends in an illusive victory. Both fates described above are metaphors. The sense implied here is that the pursuit of fame, success, and victory is beyond life. That is, happiness is doomed to failure in the quest of the impossible; also that the boundaries of what is given to us to live are finite, prone to chance and accident.