Monica Parker tops today’s Buffet with Getting Waisted, an entertaining book that bridges the divide between serial dieter’s survival guide and memoir, taking readers on a hilarious yet bumpy ride from chubby baby to chunky adult. It’s a book that speaks to everyone who can identify with having struggled over and over to lose weight only to gain it back time after time.
Monica was born and raised in Glasgow, Scotland, until the age of 13, when she immigrated with her parents to Toronto, Canada. Her television career began when she created, wrote and starred in an outrageous exercise show for an independent TV station. She went on to write for numerous television series and appear on stage and in film and television both in Canada and the United States, working with such notable talents as Anthony Hopkins, Michael Douglas and Kirstie Alley. As a producer, she’s focused on socially relevant television movies such as “Hunger Point” (about anorexia) starring Barbara Hershey and Mad Men’s Christina Hendricks; and “The Party Never Stops,” a story about the deadly results of binge drinking, which garnered a Prism award nomination for its star, Nancy Travis.
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Getting Waisted
Memoirs > Self-Help > Eating Disorders
Author: Monica Parker
In Getting Waisted, Monica begins every chapter with a diet she committed to and reveals how much weight, money, and self-esteem she lost, then she tells how much weight she gained when she fell off the wagon. After all, “no one tells a short person to get taller, or a tall person to get shorter, but fat people hear about their bodies all the time.” From Living Large in a size zero world to jumping into the dating pool without causing a tidal wave of angst, Monica learns that when you stop buying what the diet-devils are selling and start liking yourself, life is far more rewarding. When Mr. Right appears out of thin air, will she run back to the catalogue of Mr. Wrongs out of fear? Readers will laugh and cry as she realizes that while she thought it was her body that was in the way, it was really what she kept in her head that needed adjusting.
Ultimately, Getting Waisted is an inspirational look at life through society’s warped fun-house mirror, but Monica’s reflection tells the real tale: everyone is always under construction and we are all flawed, chipped, and dented, but that doesn’t mean we’re not interesting, vital, and sexy.
Broken At Love (Whitman University Book 1)
Romance > New Adult & College
Author: Lyla Payne
When a knee injury ends twenty-year-old Quinn Rowland’s pro tennis career, he’s not only dumped by his hot Russian girlfriend but ordered to attend college by his disinterested billionaire father. A rich kid who’s not used to being disappointed by life, Quinn and his sociopathic half-brother Sebastian create a frat house game intended to treat girls how they see them—as simple game pieces to be manipulated for their pleasure.
College sophomore Emilie Swanson knows Quinn’s reputation—after all, he did send one of her sorority sisters into therapy earlier in the semester—but the game and his charm bring them closer together and soon she starts to believe there’s more to Quinn than people think.
But what if the more is something darker than a game of toying with emotions and breaking hearts?
After Math (Off the Subject Book 1)
Romance > Coming of Age
Author: Denise Grover Swank
Before she agreed to tutor Tucker Price, college junior Scarlett was introvert, struggling with her social anxiety disorder and determined to not end up living in a trailer park like her mother and her younger sister. A mathematics major, she goes to her classes, to her job in the tutoring lab, and then hides in the apartment she shares with her friend, Caroline.
After junior Tucker Price, Southern University’s star soccer player enters the equation, her carefully plotted life is thrown off its axis. Tucker’s failing his required College Algebra class. With his eligibility is at risk, the university chancellor dangles an expensive piece of computer software for the math department if Scarlett agrees to privately tutor him. Tucker’s bad boy, womanizer reputation makes Scarlett wary of any contact, let alone spending several hours a week in close proximity.
a Touch of Ice: The Everly Gray Adventures
Romantic Comedy
Author: L. J. Charles
Everly Gray’s fingers are a magnet for trouble.
When she touches photographer Mitchell Hunt and sees the image of a dead body, she dives into the murder fingertips first. Life takes a turn for the dangerous when she discovers the body is related to a small-time crime family that accidentally stepped on the toes of notorious criminal, Delano West. Caught in a web of intrigue where nothing is as it seems, El discovers an aptitude for breaking and entering, the pain of an up close and personal meeting with a bullet, and the terror of facing a cold blooded killer. What she doesn’t learn–to keep her fingers to herself.
Let Me Go (The Let Me Go Series Book 1)
Psychological Thrillers
Author: L.L. Akers
The pasts of three sisters and their mother collide head-on with a mysterious present in thissurreal and gripping family drama. One of these women finds herself trapped. Alone. In a box. She battles to survive the terrifying darkness. With long hours of nothing to do but wait in terror for her captor to return, she grapples through obscure dreams and memories of a painful family past, painting the story of the dragonfly tattoo–once meant to be a beautiful, family mark of freedom–but destined to become a prophetic brand of survival shared by the four women who wear it.
Identical twins, Gabby and Olivia, and their little sister, Emma, flee their less-than-perfect childhoods, and find they take more of their mother with them than her long chocolate-colored hair and her startling blue eyes.
Wanting to just get away… Olivia marries her first love–at age 17–and realizes later he’s not what he’d first seemed to be. She falls victim to his fury when his mask finally slips, and she attempts to break free.
One Foot In Heaven, Journey of a Hospice Nurse
Self-Help > Death & Grief
Author: Heidi Telpner
People die everyday. While most people in America die in a hospital, many families choose hospice for end of life care. Death, as experienced by hospice nurses, can be beautiful, peaceful, humorous, touching, tragic, disturbing, and even otherworldly. Hospice nurses act as midwives to dying people every day. Death transforms not just the patient and family, but the hospice nurse as well. The stories in this book are presented with the hope that their transformation extends to you, too. Heidi Telpner, R.N.
The Hazards of Skinny Dipping
Romance > New Adult & College
Author: Alyssa Rose Ivy
This isn’t a deep book about first loves or self-discovery. If you want a book like that, I’d be happy to recommend one, but I don’t have that kind of story to tell. Instead my story is about rash decisions and finding out that your dream guy is bad in bed. It’s the story of when I finally went skinny dipping, and how my life was never the same again. Oh, and it’s also the story of my freshman year of college and realizing Mr. Right might have been there all along.
Prelude (The Rhapsody Quartet)
Young Adult > Science Fiction & Fantasy
Author: A.M. Hodgson
Sarah Mills is an endangered species— she just doesn’t know it.
Then she turns sixteen and ‘transitions.’ One magical hangover later, she’s awakened as a gorgeous adult siren— a species the other magical races thought went extinct thirteen years ago. Most girls might adore the attention Sarah’s suddenly getting, but all she wants to do is become invisible for the remainder of her high school career.
Unfortunately, Sarah can’t seem to turn off her siren compulsion. People hang on her every word. They do whatever she asks them to. The best looking guy in school wants to date her. Sarah just wants to go unnoticed, but it seems all she can do is make mistakes.
After she shatters the minds of her foster parents with her first siren song, Sarah has no choice but to move in with the class diva. It’s the foster system all over again, but this time her host is a mermaid princess, backed by a council of magical creatures.
TODAY’S BARGAINS……………What’s this?
True Evil: A Novel
Thrillers & Suspense > Crime
Author: Greg Iles
Regularly $9.99, Today $1.99
Dr. Chris Shepard is thirty-six years old, newly married, and well on his way to a perfect life. Or so he believes. But that future is forever cast into doubt the day Special Agent Alexandra Morse walks into his office and drops a bombshell: Dr. Shepard’s beautiful new wife is plotting his murder. Shepard is so shocked that he almost throws Agent Morse out of his office. Yet once he is alone, doubt begins to gnaw at him. Paranoia magnifies the small cracks in his marital relationship, and soon he can have no peace unless he knows the truth. When Agent Morse reappears, Chris agrees to act as bait to help her unravel the divorce lawyer’s scheme, which may already have cost nine unsuspecting spouses their lives.
At the center of the mystery lies a maddeningly simple question: If these people really were murdered, why can’t the FBI prove it? Rigorous autopsies have uncovered no forensic evidence of foul play, and the police believe no crimes have occurred. As Dr. Shepard and Agent Morse struggle against an invisible adversary, Shepard realizes that he’s working with a desperate woman. The reason: the killer’s last known victim was Alex Morse’s sister, who from her deathbed accused her husband of murder and extracted a vow that Alex save her ten-year-old nephew from his father. This has driven Alex to risk both her life and her career to fulfill that vow. But Chris Shepard soon feels desperation of his own. As he probes his wife’s hidden past, he is confronted by the probability that the woman he loves wants him dead.
Through the Smoke
Romance > Gothic
Author: Brenda Novak
Regularly $3.99, Today $1.99
A shocking betrayal… Riches. Power. An ancient heritage of pride. The Earl of Druridge wanted only for an heir. So when he learned that his wife was carrying another man’s child, he was filled with a thirst for vengeance.
But he wasn’t the one who caused Katherine’s death. Or was he? To his horror, he remembers nothing of that dreadful night, when their last shocking confrontation ended in scorching flame and cold blood.
A forbidden love… Rachel McTavish, the beautiful daughter of a coal miner, knows something about the fire that took Lady Katherine’s life. In secret, the strong-willed girl strikes a bargain with the desperate earl: he must send his physician to help her dying mother or he may go to the scaffold—and the devil. The earl agrees, but Rachel is still unsure that her revelation will be enough to save him when so many wish him dead.
Passionately drawn to the nobleman, despite all the doubt and mystery that shrouds him, Rachel wonders if he can really be a murderer. Or if he is the only man who will ever own her heart…
Blades of the Old Empire: Book I of the Majat Code
Romance > Fantasy
Author: Anna Kashina
Regularly $6.99, Today $1.99
Kara is a mercenary – a Diamond warrior, the best of the best, part of the Majat Guild. When her tenure to Prince Kythar comes to an end, he wishes to retain her services, but must accompany her back to her Guild to negotiate her continued protection.
When they arrive they discover that the prince’s sworn enemy, the Kaddim, have already paid the Guild to engage her services – to capture and hand over the prince (who she has grown very fond of).
A warrior brought up to respect both duty and honour, what happens when her sworn duty proves dishonourable?
56: Joe DiMaggio and the Last Magic Number in Sports
Sports > Biographies
Author: Kostya Kennedy
Regularly $16.95, Today $0.99
Seventy baseball seasons ago, on a May afternoon at Yankee Stadium, Joe DiMaggio lined a hard single to left field. It was the quiet beginning to the most resonant baseball achievement of all time. Starting that day, the vaunted Yankee center fielder kept on hitting-at least one hit in game after game after game.
In the summer of 1941, as Nazi forces moved relentlessly across Europe and young American men were drafted by the millions, it seemed only a matter of time before the U.S. went to war. The nation was apprehensive. Yet for two months in that tense summer, America was captivated by DiMaggio’s astonishing hitting streak. In 56, Kostya Kennedy tells the remarkable story of how the streak found its way into countless lives, from the Italian kitchens of Newark to the playgrounds of Queens to the San Francisco streets of North Beach; from the Oval Office of FDR to the Upper West Side apartment where Joe’s first wife, Dorothy, the movie starlet, was expecting a child.
EMBRYO
Thrillers > Medical
Author: J.A. Schneider
Regularly $3.99, Today $0.99
“Maria Moran’s first inkling of trouble was the coppery taste in her mouth. It came suddenly, a rushing whoosh of something that made her gag, and when she reached to wipe her mouth, her hand came away smeared with blood.”
So begins this thriller about a young intern, Jill Raney, determined to investigate tragedies and terror at a famous fertility and genetic engineering hospital. When two pregnant women die and a fetus is delivered with severe chromosomal abnormalities, Jill’s superiors – including handsome, smitten-with-her resident David Levine – insist there’s no common link.
But her suspicions deepen with the grotesque murder near the hospital of another pregnant woman – her belly drained of amniotic fluid. And when a woman miscarries in the hospital and then disappears, Jill frantically searches for her – following a terrifying path that seems to link all the victims: Is someone playing with life…and the structures of human life itself?
… See the rest of today’s Editor’s Picks here on page 2