Barb Froman (writing as Kris Knorr) tops today’s Buffet with Plucking One String, the first installment in her “The Lutheran Ladies’ Circle” comedies.
The series is inspired by the peppery, smart church ladies Kris has known. And even though it’s about Lutherans, she’s found these stalwart women across all denominations. She appreciates their elbowing me in the ribs when she needed it, making her remember conflicts are softened by humor, and mentoring her as they kicked bumps in their own lives. Church is a place for people who realize they aren’t finished products, Kris concludes.
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The Lutheran Ladies’ Circle: Plucking One String
What happens when strong-willed women get tired of one person running everything?
A sparkling, comic disregard for change.
The Lutheran Ladies are sassy, have “strong-spine” opinions, and have stepped out of your office, your kid’s soccer club, or your church to live on these pages. They deal with change–sometimes poorly–but with humor and heartache; they’re on life’s journey.
In Book One: Vera Henley has pulled the strings of the Lutheran Ladies Circle for years; now everything is unraveling. Traditions are changing. Even the annual rummage sale can’t escape modernization. And the independent Circle women are cheering the changes–all except for Vera. Her humorous efforts to stop time time are often heart-breaking. And when her high-maintenance, crazy aunt introduces even more rebellion and upheaval, Vera is forced to pick through the chaos and choose: Which threads of change should she pluck–or can she bend others to do it her way?
Fred 2.0: New Ideas on How to Keep Delivering Extraordinary Results
Nine years ago, bestselling author and business consultant Mark Sanborn introduced the world to Fred, his postman, who delivered extraordinary service in simple but remarkable ways. Fred’s story inspired millions. Companies—even, cities—were inspired to turn the ordinary into the extraordinary each day.
Today, with stiff competition from the networked global economy, delivering extraordinary results is more important than ever. With Fred 2.0, Mark not only revisits the original Fred to gain new insights, but also equips all of us with new strategies to achieve more. You’ll not only be inspired by Fred 2.0, you’ll also have the tools and strategies to aim higher and achieve the extraordinary.
Hearts Afire
A jilted bride, a sexy fireman, a tropical island, a fear of the ocean, a fear of commitment, a new neighbour, an old flame, a secret identity – this is the story of HEARTS AFIRE.
Cassie Callahan is not having a great day. First her fiancé jilts her hours before the wedding and then her sister sets off the alarm and sprinklers at her catering business, flooding the premises, soaking the wedding banquet and bringing the fire department.
When Jack Urquhart the cute fireman offers her a shoulder to cry on they both feel an instant attraction but they each know the other is not what they are looking for. She isn’t looking for a player and he is definitely not looking for the marrying kind.
Hearts Afire takes them on a journey from Sydney’s inner-west to Tropical North Queensland, and back, in search of and avoidance of love.
Will either of them realise that there is no risk at all in trusting your heart to the right person?
PLEAD FORGIVENESS: Betrayed Once, Betrayed Twice
Banished from her highland clan, Isabel Mackenzie endured a harsh existence under the false identity as Lady Ella. That is, until fate intervened.
Laird Gavin Macleod and his savage blackguard journey to England, hell-bent on destroying the English baron who dared kidnap his nephew. When they find baron’s ward riding amid the darkening shadows of night, their strategy drastically changes. In hopes of exchanging the hellion for his nephew, the powerful laird forces her to return with him to the Highlands of Scotland.
.
Captivated by her beauty and enthralled by her courageous spirit, Gavin is determined to keep Ella from her dire fate.
Yet, unbeknownst to him, she is the youngest child and hated daughter of his greatest ally
Fractured Steel (Imperfect Metal Series Book 1)
Karen Barnes’s life is simple, just the way she likes it, surrounded by horses and the mountains of Laramie, Wyoming. She is well aware the longing for adventure can lead to blood and death, a hard lesson taught during her one, and only, tour in Iraq almost a decade ago.
A stranger approaches Karen about boarding a famous horse foaled in her stables, making her instincts go on high alert. She knows for a fact the stallion’s owner would never sell Five Alarm, the US Reining champion worth a hefty ten million dollars. In ten minutes the stranger confirms her worst fears, launching her into weeks of torment at the hands of her kidnappers.
Armed with a spine of steel, she escapes, but the ordeal is far from over. It was a cover up for espionage. Trusted contacts join the fray, and in the end, pay for their loyalty by dying for her safety. Others aren’t so trustworthy, and as the truth is brought to light, she is betrayed yet again.
Safety and freedom come with their own emotional shackles. She had the courage to fight the battle, but can she live with the aftermath of the carnage, or survive the fractures to her mind?
Dynamite Fishermen
Beirut, 1982. Conrad Prosser is a skilled Arabist, expert agent handler, prolific intelligence reporter, and a connoisseur of Beirut’s underground nightlife. But, as his two-year tour at the U.S. Embassy nears its end, Prosser’s intelligence career is in jeopardy because he has not recruited an agent while in Lebanon, a sine qua non requirement for promotion.
Surveying his many contacts, Prosser selects an attractive Lebanese doctoral student and her idealistic brother as candidates for development. At the same time, he holds clandestine meetings by day and night with his string of Lebanese and Palestinian agents, pressing them to discover who is behind the latest wave of car bombings that has terrorized Muslim West Beirut. But when one of his agents supplies information used to capture a Syrian-backed bombing team, Prosser sets off a cycle of retaliation that threatens more than his career and cherished way of life.
Blades Of Magic: Crown Service #1
It is not a peaceful time in the Algardis Empire. War is raging between the mages and seventeen-year-old Sara Fairchild will be right in the middle of it.
She just doesn’t know it yet.
Sara is the daughter of a disgraced imperial commander, executed for desertion. Sara is also the best duelist and hand-to-hand combatant in Sandrin. She lives quietly with her family’s shame but when challenged about her family’s honor, her opponent inevitably loses.
On the night she finds out her father’s true last actions, she takes the Mercenary Guilds’ vows to serve in the emperor’s army. Using her quick wits and fierce fighting skills, she earns a spot in the first division.
Mansfield Ranch (The Jane Austen Diaries Book 5)
Does true love really prevail?
All Lilly Price has ever known is living in the shadow of her widely successful foster family. But when a twist of fate deals Lilly the hand of Harrison Crawford, the most popular guy in Bloomfield, NM, everything flips upside down.
Sean Benally is a hard worker, he’s funny, he’s generous, and he’s kind. He’s also the most amazing guy Lilly has ever known. And she’s totally fallen in love with him. But he’s her foster brother…
Now she must choose between the unavailable love of her life—or the guy who promises to be available forever.
The Child Thief: A Novel
Luka is a war veteran who now wants only to have a quiet life with his family. His village has, so far, remained hidden from the advancing Soviet brutality. But everything changes the day the stranger arrives, pulling a sled bearing a terrible cargo. When the villagers’ fear turns deadly, they think they have saved themselves. But their anger has cursed them: in the chaos, a little girl has vanished. Luka is the only man with the skills to find out who could have stolen a child in these frozen lands—and besides, the missing girl is best friend to Luka’s daughter. He swears he will find her.
Minerva (The Six Sisters Series, Vol. 1)
Poor Minerva. Prudish, self-righteous, and incredibly beautiful, she is to be sent to London to capture a wealthy husband. But Minerva doesn’t know the first thing about flirting. The London dandies find her moralizing appalling and concoct a plan to assault her virtue—an assault that will scandalize all London society. Meanwhile. Lord Sylvester Comfrey, whom she met earlier through her father, has been keeping a careful eye on the girl. A fact which she resents. She dislikes Lord Sylvester. There is something about him that disturbs her. Now the plan to destroy Minerva’s reputation begins to unfold. And Minerva stumbles headlong into the trap. But the plotters have reckoned without Lord Sylvester….
Welcome to the Monkey House
This short-story collection Welcome to the Monkey House (1968) incorporates almost completely Vonnegut’s 1961 “Canary in a Cathouse,” which appeared within a few months of Slaughterhouse-Five and capitalized upon that breakthrough novel and the enormous attention it suddenly brought.
Drawn from both specialized science fiction magazines and the big-circulation general magazines (Saturday Evening Post, Colliers, etc.) which Vonnegut had been one of the few science writers to sell, the collection includes some of his most accomplished work. The title story may be his most famous–a diabolical government asserts control through compulsory technology removing orgasm from sex–but Vonnegut’s bitterness and wit, not in his earlier work as poisonous or unshielded as it later became, is well demonstrated.
Two early stories from Galaxy science fiction magazine and one from Fantasy & Science Fiction (the famous “Harrison Bergeron”) show Vonnegut’s careful command of a genre about which he was always ambivalent, stories like “More Stately Mansions” or “The Foster Portfolio” the confines and formula of a popular fiction of which he was always suspicious. Vonnegut’s affection for humanity and bewilderment as its corruption are manifest in these early works.
I Am Spartacus!: Making a Film, Breaking the Blacklist
The Candidate’s Daughter
The plan is simple: kidnap the daughter of Senate candidate Richard McClaine, take the money and run. Nobody gets hurt, the kid goes home alive.
Twenty-two-year-old car thief Kelsey Money thinks it’s the worst idea Matt and his drug-fueled brother have ever come up with. But Matt’s the planner. He’s the one Kelsey has always depended on.
Then she discovers the part of the plan she wasn’t told – that six-year-old Holly McClaine has only twenty-four hours to live. So Kelsey makes a decision. To save Holly she’ll have to betray Matt. It’s a dangerous move. Especially when she finds out Holly isn’t the only one that’s now surplus to Matt’s requirements.
Across town, Elizabeth McClaine has no idea what her daughter was wearing when she disappeared. When Holly was born with Down syndrome and a cleft palate, Elizabeth placed her only child in the care of a nanny while she fought postpartum depression.
… See the rest of today’s Editor’s Picks here on page 2