Recommendations based on "Rented Heart"

Hold You Down is an edgy novel from rising star Tracy Brown about the perils of love and the ties that bind…New York City. Late 1980s to early 1990s.Mercy and Lenox Howard have always only had each other. Growing up on the mean streets of Harlem with an absentee mother meant that they had to have each other's backs. Now young, smart mothers they are determined to survive in New York City while raising their two sons, who have bright futures ahead of them.Mercy is the quiet, straight laced hospital administrator, struggling to make ends meet. At night and on weekends, she pours her heart into her cooking and her dream of owning her own restaurant. Lenox is the diva, the wild child, looking for excitement and her big come up in life and love. Their boys, Deon and Judah, have been raised more like brothers than cousins, forging a bond that is unbreakable.When Lenox heads down a path that she believes will bring success and power, it changes the entire course of her life and her family’s life forever. As a result of their mother’s choices, cousins Deon and Judah soon find themselves in uncharted territory.

Ex-Army Ranger Gabriel Vincent is a badass hero. Or he used to be. Home from Afghanistan, Gabe can't stop thinking about that one horrible night on the battlefield, a night that changed his life forever. He knows he's messed up, but with the help of a little beer and a lot more women, he's keeping it together. Madison is happily single-or so she thinks. After the tragic death of her parents, she took on the responsibility of running the family restaurant, and that's just about all she has time to worry about. Though they don't realize it at first, Gabe and Maddy will soon develop a weakness: each other. They quickly realize they need each other to be whole, but they have demons to fight-and the problem with demons is that they never die quietly.

From acclaimed author Kevin Christopher Snipes comes a moving romance about two star-crossed boys trapped in a millennium-spanning cycle of reincarnation whose only hope of escape may be a price that neither is willing to pay. Perfect for fans of Adam Silvera and Eliot Shrefer! Out and proud, Riley Iverson knows there's nothing more cringe than crushing on a straight boy. But from the moment that the handsome, sporty, and painfully heterosexual Jackson Haines walks into his life, Riley can't help but feel an instant and undeniable connection. Mainly because, as impossible as it seems, Jackson is the spitting image of the boy who's recently appeared in Riley's dreams--dreams set in another time and another place where he and Jackson were desperately in love. At first Riley tries to dismiss the coincidence as a product of his hormone-fueled, overactive imagination, but as his friendship with Jackson deepens into something more, the dreams prove harder to ignore. Especially when Jackson begins having them too. Plunged into increasingly vivid visions of the past, the boys find themselves in various eras scattered throughout history. No matter where or when their dreams take them, though, two things remain constant: Riley and Jackson are always together, and they always die at the end. As it becomes increasingly difficult to view their dreams as anything but warnings, the boys are forced to consider the possibility that their burgeoning relationship might be propelling them headfirst into their own tragic ending. But is it worth staying apart to save their lives if the price is forsaking a love that has defied not only time and space but even death itself?

Interrelated stories describe the difficulties of four friends--Eli, Meyer, Marty, and Hirsch--as they search for love in modern society

Like the game of baseball, life is quirky and unpredictable, as Shane Hunter discovers in the spring of his sophomore year. Suddenly and without warning his life of privilege is turned upside down. And just as suddenly, life begins to seem utterly without fairness or purpose to him. Exciting, well-written sports scenes transport readers right into the stands while complex issues engage their hearts and minds. For here is a novel of loss, of morality, and of the rare, redemptive power of baseball. Can speaking the truth really determine lives? Just how does one accept, move on, and begin doing the right thing?

Nathaniel Conti doesn’t feel real when he’s alone. Maybe that’s why he has a reputation as atroublemaker—he’ll do just about anything to have everyone’s eyes on him.But things are about to change. Nathaniel is in his first year of college, flung into new circumstances withnew people to meet. There are public speaking classmates, lacrosse players—and then there’s theaspiring photographer who asks Nathaniel to be their model, who’s interested in more than what’s onthe surface. Nathaniel feels like he’s moving forward—until a former friend shows up, someone whoreminds him of habits and hurts he thought he’d left behind.From the author of Icebreaker comes a deeply felt, gorgeously told story about confronting what'sburied, coming into your own, and finding your people.

Greenville County, South Carolina, a wild, lush place, is home to the Boatwright family—rough-hewn men who drink hard and shoot up each other's trucks, and indomitable women who marry young and age all too quickly. At the heart of this astonishing novel is Ruth Anne Boatwright, known simply as Bone, a South Carolina bastard with an annotated birth certificate to tell the tale. Observing everything with the mercilessly keen eye of a child, Bone finds herself caught in a family triangle that will test the loyalty of her mother, Anney. Her stepfather, Daddy Glen, calls Bone "cold as death, mean as a snake, and twice as twisty," yet Anney needs Glen. At first gentle with Bone, Daddy Glen becomes steadily colder and more furious—until their final, harrowing encounter, from which there can be no turning back.

Single parent Paige Harmer is at her wit's end about her son. Dillon’s a good kid, but he’s fallen in with a bad crowd. She’s determined to enlist the help of her next door neighbor, the extremely handsome and much younger Tommy Godsoe. Tommy is a local cop, and until he got shot recently in a police raid, was a dog handler. His injury is such that he can never go back to field work, and he refuses to be a desk jockey. All he wants is to nurse his wounds in solitude, and he’s done a great job driving his friends and colleagues away. But Paige is an unstoppable force. Before he knows it, he’s drawn into their lives. As it turns out, Paige and Dillon are going to need a cop in their corner. And Tommy needs Paige to drag him out of his self-pity and back to life. 

THE NEW NOVEL FROM THE WINNER OF THE GUARDIAN CHILDREN'S FICTION PRIZE 2016Round these ends, it's hard to hold on to your dreamsLife's a constant hustle for Mo. Her mum's boyfriend Lloyd is just another man who likes to beat down women; the South Crong streets are fraught with hazards and nasty G's; and when it comes to matters of the heart . . . she's still hung up on Sam.No wonder she's vexed so much of the time. Thank god her sistrens, Elaine and Naomi, are on her side: if one of them falls then they all fall.But when badness goes down and a life is left hanging in the balance, Mo has to face her hot urge for revenge . . . and she might end up losing more than she wins.

When Teddy Anderson’s little sister Tina is gunned down randomly in a drive-by shooting, the gangstas who rule the streets in the Anderson family’s rapidly deteriorating neighborhood dismiss the incident as just another case of RP, RT—wrong place, wrong time. According to gangsta logic, Tina doesn’t even count as a statistic.Teddy’s family is devastated. Mrs. Anderson sinks into deep depression while Pops struggles to run both the household and his declining laundry business. The Andersons are shocked still further when Teddy is arrested and thrown in prison for attempted homicide after his elaborately laid plans for revenge against his sister’s killer are foiled by the cops.Teddy soon finds himself out of prison on house arrest, and in the capable hands of Officer Mariana Diaz, the smart, tough probation officer assigned to oversee his endless hours of community service. As part of the innovative rehabilitation program Diaz runs, Teddy is assigned to tutor Micah, a twelve-year-old orphan and would-be gansta.As Teddy goes through the motions of complying with the terms of his probation, Diaz has no idea that he is using his genius-level computer hacker skills to plot his final vengeance and to defraud the state education system of hundreds of thousands of dollars. But even though Teddy thinks he knows it all, he fails to see how Micah’s desperate need for love and trust just might have the power not only to pierce all Teddy’s defenses, but to save his family.