Harriet “Harry” and Desi Basantes spent sixteen years waiting to find each other again, and now they’re weeks away from a wedding and the baby they’ve planned since high school. Desi’s sister Rachel Thompson is happy for them. Rachel might wish for her own grand love affair, but her attraction to Harry’s ex Serena Ladding doesn’t exactly spell happily ever after. She’s pretty sure Serena is still in love with Harry and isn’t prepared to take the chance on a broken heart. So then why can’t she stop thinking about Serena? Angola State Penitentiary is one of the toughest prisons in the country, but when Desi’s ex-husband Byron Simoneaux sees the chance to run, he does with only one goal in mind: to finish what he started and kill Desi, Rachel, and Harry, the women who stole his life. Can you really outrun your past? For Harry, Desi, and Rachel, it’s a matter of life or death.

A Publishers Weekly Best Book Jack Lambeau is the prodigal son returned home to Lakeland, New York; the Ivy-League educated architectural visionary brought home to reinvent the dying port town and smooth over its self imposed scars. His friend, Steven Turner is the Brooklyn-born local reporter who will bear witness to the city's successes and failures. Between them come Jack's beautiful fiancee Anne--an artist with secrets of her own - and his undisciplined brother Harris, hired by Jack to remove the suspicious barrels of waste from Lakeland's broken heart. As the town struggles to find a new identity, these four characters must find their way through their own unexpected transformations and along the way attempt to answer the questions that plague us all: what is the price of loyalty, filialty, goodness and love?

Set in Dublin and Siena, with its dizzying, dare-devil Palio horse race, this is a story about taking chances, being brave and learning the best way to see the world. Some people step through a wardrobe to find adventure, but Minty follows the twisty-turny trees into Nettlebog. There she finds Ned Buckley - the moody, mysterious boy who never talks at school.

Will she be swept away?If someone had told Avery that she'd be flying to a tiny island in the Caribbean to film a reality show masquerading as her identical twin sister, she would have thought they were crazy. And yet, she finds herself in a tin can of an airplane, about to land on Siren Island where a film crew waits to document her every move for a new reality love show - Swept Away.Even though Avery has a long history of helping her sister out of trouble, this time really takes the cake. Avery promises herself that she'll push herself outside her comfort zone as she's spent the last several years focusing on her career and healing from a near-death accident. As much as self-reflection can be annoying, Avery admits she's been letting fear take the reins for too long. What she doesn't expect is for Siren Island to live up to its name, nor to actually find love. When she meets the women of the Laughing Mermaid, Avery's world tilts as everything she's ever thought to be true of herself, and of the world, gets thrown out the window. As her beliefs get tried, the producer, Roman, can't seem to stop baiting her as she does her very best to meet the challenges head-on and tries to form a connection with the bachelor, Beckett.As her reality gets rocked, Avery scrambles to not let fear dictate her future, and to emerge from the depths a new woman - ready for love and a life of adventure.If only he will give her a chance.

A stirring account of courage, hope, and victory, A Chance in the World is the extraordinary story of what is possible when you dare to believe. "Home is the place where our life stories begin. It is where we are understood, embraced, and accepted. It is a sanctuary of safety and security, a place to which we can always return. Down in the dank basement, amidst my moldy, hoarded food and beloved worm-eaten books, I dreamed that my real home, the place where my story had begun, was out there somewhere, and one day I was going to find it." Taken from his mother at age three, Steve Klakowicz lives a terrifying existence. Caught in the clutches of a cruel foster family and subjected to constant abuse, he finds his only refuge in a box of books gifted to him by a kind stranger. In these books, he discovers new worlds he can only imagine and gains hope that one day he might have a different life, that one day he will find his true home. Armed with just a single clue, Steve embarks on an extraordinary quest for his identity, only to find that nothing is as it appears. A Chance in the World is the unbelievable true story of a broken boy destined to become a man of resilience, determination, and vision. Through it all, Steve's story teaches us that no matter how broken our past, we have it in us to create a new beginning and to build a new place, where love awaits.

In simple, non-technical language, this volume explores the fundamentals governing chance and applies them to sports, government, and business. Topics includenbsp;the theory of probability in relation to superstitions, betting odds, warfare,nbsp;social problems, stocks, and other areas. "Clear and lively ...nbsp;remarkably accurate." —Scientific Monthly.

Current social and education policies directed toward children focus on improving cognition, yet success in life requires more than smarts. Heckman calls for a refocus of social policy toward early childhood interventions designed to enhance both cognitive abilities and such non-cognitive skills as confidence and perseverance. This new focus on preschool intervention would emphasize improving the early environments of disadvantaged children and increasing the quality of parenting while respecting the primacy of the family and America's cultural diversity. Heckman shows that acting early has much greater positive economic and social impact than later interventions -- which range from reduced pupil-teacher ratios to adult literacy programs to expenditures on police -- that draw the most attention in the public policy debate. At a time when state and local budgets for early interventions are being cut, Heckman issues an urgent call for action and offers some practical steps for how to design and pay for new programs.