NOW A NETFLIX ORIGINAL FILM STARRING SANAA LATHAN What happens when you toss tradition out the window and really start living for yourself? Venus Johnston has a great job, a beautiful home, and a loving live-in boyfriend named Clint, who happens to be a drop-dead gorgeous doctor. She also has a weekly beauty-parlor date with Tina, who keeps Venus's long, processed hair slick and straight. But when Clint--who's been reluctant to commit over the past four years--brings home a puppy instead of an engagement ring, Venus decides to give it all up. She trades in her long hair for a dramatically short, natural cut and sends Clint packing. It's a bold declaration of independence--one that has effects she never could have imagined. Reactions from friends and coworkers range from concern to contempt to outright condemnation. And when Clint moves on and starts dating a voluptuous, long-haired beauty, Venus is forced to question what she really wants out of life. With wit, resilience, and a lot of determination, she finally learns what true happiness is--on her own terms. Told with style, savvy, and humor, Nappily Ever After is a novel that marks the debut of a fresh new voice in fiction.

To help her chances for a college scholarship, Em participates in a speech compeitition and decides to use her flirting skills to throw off her rival and nemesis, Kris Lambert, never suspecting that her own feelings might interfere with the plan.

In this indispensable guide for anyone who must communicate in speech or writing, Schwartzberg shows that most of us fail to convince because we don't have a point-a concrete contention that we can argue, defend, illustrate, and prove. He lays out, step-by-step, how to develop one. In Joel's Schwartzberg's ten-plus years as a strategic communications trainer, the biggest obstacle he's come across-one that connects directly to nervousness, stammering, rambling, and epic fail-is that most speakers and writers don't have a point. They typically have just a title, a theme, a topic, an idea, an assertion, a catchphrase, or even something much less. A point is something more. It's a contention you can propose, argue, defend, illustrate, and prove. A point offers a position of potential value. Global warming is real is not a point. Scientific evidence shows that global warming is a real, human-generated problem that will have a devastating environmental and financial impact is a point. When we have a point, our influence snaps into place. We communicate belief, conviction, and urgency. This book shows you how to identify your point, leverage it, stick to it, and sell it and how to train others to identify and successfully make their own points.

To high school senior Grace, life is an equation where everything can be perfectly calculated to ensure maximum success and the perfect future, including having the perfect girlfriend and being accepted into a first-choice university, but life has a funny way of getting in the way of plans.

When sixteen-year-old Phoebe learns that a cute guy might have a crush on her, she uses the heroines in her favorite books as examples of how to improve her own personality.

Pretending to be engaged to a sexy, billionaire, single dad? Easy! Not falling in love…much, much harder! Nick Newton’s billionaire partying lifestyle was turned upside down when he unexpectedly became a single father. No one is as surprised as Nick to see that he’s completely fallen in love with the little girl and when his baby’s custody situation is threatened, he will do everything in his power to protect her. The last thing Charlotte Davis expected when she walked into the bakery was to snuggle the sweetest baby girl and lie to a case worker that she’s engaged to be married to her father, it just happened. It’ll all be worth it if it helps Nick win custody of his daughter. And her growing feelings for the sexy single dad? Well, that does complicate things a little. Sexy, smart, and amazing with babies…his fake fiancée has got it all. Including his heart. Nick is falling in love with both the women in his life, and for a while everything is perfect. But when real life—and the truth—catches up to them, everything goes wrong and it’s not just their love on the line, but their lives.

Written by Barry Singer—one of contemporary musical theater's most authoritative chroniclers—Ever After was originally published in 2003 as a history of the previous twenty-five years in musical theater, on and off Broadway. This new edition extends the narrative, taking readers from 2004 to the present. The book revisits every new musical that has opened since the last edition, with Barry Singer once again as guide. Before Ever After appeared in 2003, no book had addressed the recent past in musical theater history—an era Singer describes as "ever after musical theater's many golden ages." Derived significantly from Singer's writings about musical theater for the New York Times, New York Magazine, and The New Yorker, Ever After captured that era in its entirety, from the opening of The Act on Broadway in October 1977 to the opening of Avenue Q Off-Broadway in March 2003. This new edition brings Ever After up to date, from Wicked, through The Book of Mormon, to Hamilton and beyond. Once again, this the first book to cover this new, pre-pandemic age of the Broadway musical. And, once again, utilizing his recent writing about musical theater for HuffPost and Playbill, Barry Singer's viewpoint is comprehensive and absolutely unique.