How To Join A Bookish Club Near Me?

After my mom, Margaret Hale, dies of a heart attack, she starts appearing in my sister Claire Dawson's dreams. In a dream, Mom tells Claire to climb Mount Mistwood before sunrise and burn the entrance ticket for her, or the other ghosts will bully her. Claire doesn't tell me anything. She packs a bag in the middle of the night and forces herself to the summit. While she's gasping her way up that mountain, I'm asleep at home when I suddenly go into cardiac arrest. I wake up in the emergency room with doctors shouting over me. I barely survive before Mom appears in Claire's dreams again. This time, she says skydiving is her last wish. If Claire doesn't do it for her, she won't rest in peace. Claire signs up right away, ignoring everything I say. But then, her parachute refuses to open, and she plummets toward the ground. Luckily, she gets snagged in a tree and walks away without a scratch. Meanwhile, I miss a step going downstairs, tumble to the bottom, end up covered in bruises, and break five ribs. While I'm recovering in the hospital, Mom shows up in Claire's dreams again. Now, she wants Claire to go to the South Pole for her, saying she can finally move on and be reincarnated once Claire completes the trip. Claire doesn't hesitate and books a tour on the spot. While she's taking pictures with penguins, I freeze to death back home during a 104-degree heatwave. Only after I die does it finally hit me that Mom's missions for Claire always end with me on death's doorstep. What I don't understand is how Mom keeps shifting the danger meant for Claire onto me instead. The next time I open my eyes, I'm back on the morning after Mom first appeared in Claire's dream.

I'm a nationally certified animal trainer running the Lion King, Caesar's final assessment. I've barely stepped into the enclosure corridor when the steel guillotine door slams down behind me. My wife's laughter crackles over the loudspeaker. "Everyone, we're doing the ultimate challenge today! We're locking the so-called number-one animal trainer in the Lion King's enclosure and taking bets on whether he wets himself in ten minutes!" Caesar crouches low and rumbles a warning. I reach for my tranquilizer gun but stop cold. The liquid isn't the right color. In a phony sing-song voice, the veterinarian, Hugh Archer, says, "Lucian, I forgot to mention, I swapped your tranquilizer darts for pepper spray so you won't hurt Caesar by mistake. "You two are so close. Just win him over with love!" I look at Caesar, his eyes bloodshot from the stimulant, and it clicks. Hugh still resents that I stopped him from touching a tiger with his bare hands a few days ago. I tune out the trash blaring over the loudspeaker, pull a remote from my pocket, and hit the button. It's the master switch for the electric fence gates around every predator enclosure in the zoo. If I don't make it out, no one does.

Justin Ramos is a simple boy with a simple dream: to read, write, and count numbers easily. Due to his inborn disorder called dyslexia and dyscalculia, he can never fulfill that. He always wanted to be normal for other people, but he is an outcast. Justin always blames his biological mother and his father, whom he never saw since the day he turned into a 3-year-old boy, for living his hard life. When he met Marian Aguinaldo, an elementary teacher, his whole world changed. He builds the desire to learn, not about his lifelong dream for the alphabet, but he wants to know how to love. How can Justin learn the alphabet and count numbers when he is totally in love with Marian? Will Marian teach him how to love?

She asked her best friend to take her virginity. He said no—at first. Eighteen-year-old Wren Sinclair has always played the good girl—smart, responsible, careful. But a month to her birthday, she asks her best friend for the one thing no one would expect from her: sex. Just once. Just to get it over with. Except Kai Anderson—gorgeous, cocky, and maddeningly protective—doesn’t play by simple rules. Saying yes might wreck the most important relationship in his life. Saying no? That only makes the fire between them burn hotter. As stolen touches, whispered lessons, and forbidden fantasies begin to blur the lines between friendship and something far more dangerous, Wren finds herself spiraling. Her body wants everything Kai offers. Her heart is starting to want even more. Because falling for your best friend? That was never part of the plan. A sizzling slow burn filled with banter, heartbreak, and back-to-back sexual tension.

When Camille moved into Summer Valley with her mother, she decided to keep things on a low since it would only be a matter of time before they moved again whenever her mother’s past would come to haunt them. This plan completely crumbles when she falls into the bad side of Aiden, the mysterious and dangerous boy at her school. He begins to target her and make her the butt of his bullying. One school day changes everything, when she gives him a sign without knowing and she gets into an entanglement she never expected, but can’t seem to want to get out of. What happens when she gets to find out the real boy beyond the indifferent mask? Will he let her in, or will he push her away like he does everyone else? How will she cope when the people she trusts betray her? What happens when trouble returns and her mother wants them to move out from the town, just when she has finally found home?

Studying abroad can be incredibly lonely at times. That night, I was in my room, indulging in a little treat for myself, when my best friend suddenly burst through the door. "Doing it yourself is no fun. Come on. There's a super cool cabaret show going on. Let's go see it together!" On stage, my friend was reclining in a chair behind the curtain, with two strong-looking men on top of her. "Come on. Join us for a group dance..."