StephanieS

Difficult people can be insanely hard to deal with, and if you have to deal with them regularly, it may really be quite trying on your mental health and your overall sense of wellbeing. The main problem is that you can't avoid them - the world is full of them. That's why you need to learn how to deal with them in the most painless way possible. Also, you need to ensure that you are taking care of yourself and putting yourself first and foremost for your wellbeing.

A professor shows a colleague a painting that he has kept secret for decades. The professor swears it is a Vermeer - but why has he hidden this important work for so long? The reasons unfold in a series of stories that trace ownership of the painting back to World War II and Amsterdam, and still further back to the moment of the work's inspiration.

In a peaceful retirement village, four unlikely friends meet weekly in the Jigsaw Room to discuss unsolved crimes; together, they call themselves the Thursday Murder Club. When a local developer is found dead with a mysterious photograph left next to the body, the Thursday Murder Club suddenly find themselves in the middle of their first live case.

After their last deployment, when she got shot, her fiancé, Martinez, got killed, and his bomb-sniffing dog, Elvis, got depressed, soldier Mercy Carr and Elvis were both sent home, her late lover’s last words ringing in her ears: “Take care of my partner.” On the Fourth of July weekend, when all of Northshire celebrates with fun and frolic and fireworks, the dog alerts to explosives and they find a squalling baby abandoned near a shallow grave filled with what appear to be human bones.

A captivating exploration of human love, marriage, and the illusions upon which it is founded, Mrs. Kimble presents a fascinating psychological portrait of a mesmerizing opportunist and the women who believe in him. Beautifully wrought, stunningly original, Jennifer Haigh's sparkling debut marks the arrival of a remarkable new talent.

First published by St. Martin's in 1958, Robert Traver's Anatomy of a Murder immediately became the number one best seller in America, and was subsequently turned into the successful and now classic Otto Preminger film. It is is not only the most popular courtroom drama in American fiction, but one of the most popular novels of our time. A gripping tale of deceit, murder, and a sensational trial, Anatomy of a Murder is unmatched in the authenticity of its settings, events, and characters.

After a busted marriage kicks his drinking problem into overdrive and the LAPD unceremoniously dumps him, 35-year-old Jesse Stone's future looks bleak. So he's shocked when a small Massachusetts town called Paradise recruits him as police chief. He can't help wondering if this job is a genuine chance to start over, the kind of offer he can't refuse. Once on board, Jesse doesn't have to look for trouble in Paradise: It comes to him. For what is on the surface a quiet New England community quickly proves to be a crucible of political and moral corruption.

In school, Tom, Holly, Saffron, Paul, and Olivia were the best of friends. Twenty years later, they’re barely more than strangers. But when Tom dies in a heartbreaking instance of being in the wrong place at the wrong time, the four that remain are thrust back into each other’s lives. Quickly falling back into the intimacy of their youth, Holly, Saffron, Paul, and Olivia are forced to reexamine the choices they’ve made. As their secrets rise to the surface, Tom’s death becomes the catalyst that changes them all.

A New York Times Top 10 Book of the Year and National Book Award finalist, Pachinko is an "extraordinary epic" of four generations of a poor Korean immigrant family as they fight to control their destiny in 20th-century Japan (San Francisco Chronicle). In the early 1900s, teenaged Sunja, the adored daughter of a crippled fisherman, falls for a wealthy stranger at the seashore near her home in Korea. He promises her the world, but when she discovers she is pregnant - and that her lover is married - she refuses to be bought.

Seeking women ages 18-32 to participate in a study on ethics and morality. Generous compensation. Anonymity guaranteed. When Jessica Farris signs up for a psychology study conducted by the mysterious Dr. Shields, she thinks all she’ll have to do is answer a few questions, collect her money, and leave. But as the questions grow more and more intense and invasive and the sessions become outings where Jess is told what to wear and how to act, she begins to feel as though Dr. Shields may know what she’s thinking...and what she’s hiding.