Empfehlungen basierend auf "Hard Line"

"He stared at himself in the mirror, wondering how he'd managed to lose track of time. Complacency had managed to set in again. . . A decent job, warm home, food on the table, and a body to curl up next to at night; he'd made the mistake of getting comfortable. Comfort fooled him into thinking it was all good when it wasn't. Damn nightmares had a way of reminding him of that."Ever since he was fifteen, John King has been on the run from the ghosts of his past, always drifting, never settling down in one place or with one woman, though more than one has certainly made the offer of forever-after. But every time his memories of life back in Texas start to haunt him too deeply into the night, John realizes that it's time to move on. That is, until he rolls into Denver, Colorado, grooving to Marvin Gaye's "Let's Get It on," and meets Connie Rodgers, a woman who grew up on the mean streets and has the pain and the battle scars to prove it. And yet, she inspires him to think "If indeed there were a home for the perfect kiss, it would be on her lips." John is reluctant to admit that here is a woman who just may understand his very soul, even if she does have some baggage of her own. But both must face their pasts if they ever hope to be free to live and love.Filled with completely unforgettable characters, One Day I Saw a Black King is a stunningly powerful story that explores the power of the past over the present, the search for love and belonging and the healing gift of an extraordinary love.

Arthur Drams works for a secret government security agency, but all he really does is spend his days in a cubical writing reports no one reads. After getting another “lateral promotion” by a supervisor who barely remembers his name, it’s suggested that Arthur try to ‘make friends’ and ‘get noticed’ in order to move up the ladder. It’s like high school all over again: his attempts to be friendly come across as awkward and creepy, and no one wants to sit at the same table with him at lunch. In a last-ditch attempt to be seen as friendly and outgoing, he decides to make friends with The Alien, aka Agent Martin Grove, known for his strange eating habits, unusual reading choices, and the fact that no one has spoken to him in three years.Starting with a short, surprisingly interesting conversation on sociology books, Arthur slowly begins to chip away at The Alien’s walls using home-cooked meals to lure the secretive agent out of his abrasive shell. Except Martin just might be something closer to an actual secret agent than paper-pusher Arthur is, and it might be more than hearts at risk when something more than friendship begins to develop.Please note this book has a Heat Rating of zero.

Random Family tells the American outlaw saga lurking behind the headlines of gangsta glamour, gold-drenched drug dealers, and street-corner society. With an immediacy made possible only after ten years of reporting, Adrian Nicole LeBlanc immerses the reader in the mind-boggling intricacies of the little-known ghetto world. She charts the tumultuous cycle of the generations, as girls become mothers, mothers become grandmothers, boys become criminals, and hope struggles against deprivation.Two romances thread through Random Family: the sexually charismatic nineteen-year-old Jessica's dizzying infatuation with a hugely successful young heroin dealer, Boy George, and fourteen-year-old Coco's first love with Jessica's little brother, Cesar, an aspiring thug. Fleeing from family problems, the young couples try to outrun their destinies. Chauffeurs whisk them to getaways in the Poconos and to nightclubs. They cruise the streets in Lamborghinis and customized James Bond cars. Jessica and Boy George ride the wild adventure between riches and ruin, while Coco and Cesar stick closer to the street, all four caught in a precarious dance between life and death. Friends get murdered; the DEA and FBI investigate Boy George's business activities; Cesar becomes a fugitive; Jessica and Coco endure homelessness, betrayal, the heartbreaking separation of prison, and throughout it all, the insidious damage of poverty. Together, then apart, the teenagers make family where they find it. Girls look for excitement and find trouble; boys, searching for adventure, join crews and prison gangs. Coco moves upstate to dodge the hazards of the Bronx; Jessica seeks solace in romance. Both find that love is the only place to go.A gifted prose stylist and a profoundly compassionate observer, Adrian Nicole LeBlanc has slipped behind the cold statistics and sensationalism surrounding inner-city life and come back with a riveting, haunting, and true urban soap opera that reveals the clenched grip of the streets. Random Family is a compulsive read and an important journalistic achievement, sure to take its place beside the classics of the genre.

Australia, 1983Life is pretty tough right now for twelve-year-old Eli - what with his mute brother, a convicted murderer for a babysitter, a drug-dealing stepfather, an incarcerated mother and a long-lost father - surely it can't get any worse?Think again. He's about to fall in love, break into prison and cross paths with one of the most notorious criminals Brisbane has ever seen.A coming-of-age story like no other, Boy Swallows Universe is the most exhilarating novel you'll read all year.

Chris faced up to the fact that he was gay young man in spite of all the stories he read where he didn't fit the profile-his family wasn't loaded, he didn't drive an incredible road machine, and he was neither effeminate nor the super?jock. He didn't hate himself, and while he didn't exactly bolt out of the closet, he wasn't in a state of painful denial either. So, what did he want?Chris wanted love but that's tough to find. But that didn't matter anyway, because everything he heard and saw told him all gay men wanted was sex-and that he knew how to find.Looking for it one night he met Jamie Levesque, and with stars in his eyes he had to change his mind... The way Chris saw it, once he had a boyfriend, everything was going to be different. Just like in the stories, life with Jamie was going to be sunshine and lollipops forever-right?Uh?huh. Right.Read about it in a story that's told by Chris in his own words and in his own special way.

Hilarious and true-to-life, witty, compassionate, and impossible to put down, Straight Man follows Hank Devereaux through one very bad week in this novel from the Pulitzer Prize-winning author of Empire Falls. • Now the AMC Original Series Lucky Hank.William Henry Devereaux, Jr., is the reluctant chairman of the English department of a badly underfunded college in the Pennsylvania rust belt. Devereaux's reluctance is partly rooted in his character—he is a born anarchist—and partly in the fact that his department is more savagely divided than the Balkans.In the course of a single week, Devereaux will have his nose mangled by an angry colleague, imagine his wife is having an affair with his dean, wonder if a curvaceous adjunct is trying to seduce him with peach pits, and threaten to execute a goose on local television. All this while coming to terms with his philandering father, the dereliction of his youthful promise, and the ominous failure of certain vital body functions. In short, Straight Man is classic Russo—side-splitting, poignant, compassionate, and unforgettable.Look for Richard Russo's new book, Somebody's Fool, coming soon.

Seventeen-year-old Phil has felt like an outsider as long as he can remember. All Phil has ever known about his father is that he was Number Three on his mother’s long list—third in a series of affairs that have set Phil’s family even further apart from the critical townspeople across the river. As for his own sexuality, Phil doesn’t care what the neighbors will think; he’s just waiting for the right guy to come along.But Phil can’t remain a bystander forever. Not when he’s surrounded by his mother, Glass, who lives by her own rules and urges Phil to be equally strong; his sister, Dianne, who is abrupt and willful, with secrets to share; his uncle Gable, a restless mariner, defined by his scars; his best friend, Kat, who is generous but possessive. And finally, there is distant Nicholas, with whom Phil falls overwhelmingly in love—until he faces the ultimate betrayal and must finally find his worth . . . and place in the world.

At forty, Lan Davis is looking for his damned picket fence and 2.5 kids. What he doesn't expect is instead of a wife in the picture, his mind keeps conjuring up images of two men. One, his partner in the force, who is as straight as they came, the other an ex, who he'd hurt but never forgot.After an incident leaves Lan injured, the two men rally around him... only maybe they shouldn't have. It seems a medicated Lan is a truthful one.Parker Wilding is pissed at the world. His anger builds when his partner refuses medical care after an attack. Instead, Lan entrusts his neighbour to take care of him--a guy Parker doesn't trust. While he's aware they share a history,when the past is revealed, the truth shocks the hell out of him.Being emotionally crushed ten years ago, Easton Ravel hoped he would never have to see the man who broke him again. Hope is a fickle b*itch. And now he's not sure how to handle being face-to-face with the man he once loved. Add in the mix the annoying, testy Parker, and Easton finds his limits are pushed.Just not in the way he thought they would be.What happens next sure does come out of the blue.

“Wise and heartbreaking” (Ann Napolitano), this captivating epic weaves the intimate lives of two Midwestern families across generations, from World War II to the late twentieth century.In the small Ohio town of Bonhomie, a stolen moment of passion, sparked in the exuberant aftermath of the Allied victory in Europe, binds Cal Jenkins, a man wounded not in war but by his inability to serve in it, to Margaret Salt, a woman trying to obscure her past. Cal’s wife, Becky, has a spiritual gift: she is a seer who can conjure the dead, helping families connect with those whom they’ve lost. Margaret’s husband, Felix, is serving on a Navy cargo ship; she will soon learn that he may have perished in a predawn attack in the Philippine Sea.As the country reconstructs during the postwar boom, a secret grows in Bonhomie—but nothing stays buried forever in a small town. Against the backdrop of some of the most transformative decades in modern America, the consequences of that long-ago encounter ripple through the next generation of both families, compelling them to re-examine who they thought they were, and what the future might hold.Sweeping yet intimate, rich with piercing observation and the warmth that comes from profound understanding of the human spirit, Buckeye captures the universal longing for love, and for goodness.

While reluctantly staying with her biological father, a member of a motorcycle club, sheltered seventeen-year-old Emily falls for the youth her father asked to protect her from a rival club with a score to settle.