Title Recommendations based on Tami Taylor
Everybody loves Mother Paula's pancakes. Everybody, that is, except the colony of cute but endangered owls that live on the building site of the new restaurant. Can the awkward new kid and his feral friend prank the pancake people out of town? Or is the owls' fate cemented in pancake batter?
Emma is a busy doctor who sets up a seemingly perfect arrangement when she offers her best friend Adam a relationship with one rule: No strings attached. But when a fling becomes a thing, can sex friends stay best friends?
The Borgias tells the story of Rodrigo Borgia, the future Pope Alexander VI and his family. It follow events from 1492 when Rodrigo is elected pope and concludes in 1507 with Cesare's violent death.
Hailsham seems like a pleasant English boarding school, far from the influences of the city. Its students are well tended and supported, trained in art and literature, and become just the sort of people the world wants them to be. But, curiously, they are taught nothing of the outside world and are allowed little contact with it. Within the grounds of Hailsham, Kathy grows from schoolgirl to young woman, but it's only when she and her friends Ruth and Tommy leave the safe grounds of the school (as they always knew they would) that they realize the full truth of what Hailsham is. Never Let Me Go is a gripping mystery, a beautiful love story, and also a scathing critique of human arrogance and a moral examination of how we treat the vulnerable and different in our society. In exploring the themes of memory and the impact of the past, Ishiguro takes on the idea of a possible future to create his most moving and powerful book to date.
Lina is just like any other fifteen-year-old Lithuanian girl in 1941. She paints, she draws, she gets crushes on boys. Until one night when Soviet officers barge into her home, tearing her family from the comfortable life they've known. Separated from her father, forced onto a crowded and dirty train car, Lina, her mother, and her young brother slowly make their way north, crossing the Arctic Circle, to a work camp in the coldest reaches of Siberia. Here they are forced, under Stalin's orders, to dig for beets and fight for their lives under the cruelest of conditions. Lina finds solace in her art, meticulously-and at great risk-documenting events by drawing, hoping these messages will make their way to her father's prison camp to let him know they are still alive. It is a long and harrowing journey, spanning years and covering 6,500 miles, but it is through incredible strength, love, and hope that Lina ultimately survives. Between Shades of Gray is a novel that will steal your breath and capture your heart.
As head of Pope and Associates, Olivia and her team of lawyers are "fixers" and "gladiators in suits." They use the media and other extralegal means to right the wrongs perpetrated by and against America's political and social elite. But keeping her moral standing becomes difficult as she becomes more personally involved in the scandals that occur.
The Mindy Project centers on Mindy Lahiri, who is an OB/GYN at Shulman & Associates. Mindy is a well respected doctor, but her personal life is not as successful. Because she's watched one too many romantic comedies, she may have unrealistically high romantic expectations. In sum, she just wants to find her "Kanye."
Selina Meyer is Vice President of the U.S. It's one of the strangest jobs; she's a heartbeat away from being the Leader of the Free World, but until then she has little political power. Her job mostly consists of symbolic acts and photo-ops—and even those are rarely executed successfully, like the time she tried to set up the Clean Jobs Task Force. The memory of it makes her shudder.
Laia is a slave. Elias is a soldier. Neither is free. Under the Martial Empire, defiance is met with death. Those who do not vow their blood and bodies to the Emperor risk the execution of their loved ones and the destruction of all they hold dear. It is in this brutal world, inspired by ancient Rome, that Laia lives with her grandparents and older brother. The family ekes out an existence in the Empire's impoverished backstreets. They do not challenge the Empire. They've seen what happens to those who do. But when Laia's brother is arrested for treason, Laia is forced to make a decision. In exchange for help from rebels who promise to rescue her brother, she will risk her life to spy for them from within the Empire's greatest military academy. There, Laia meets Elias, the school's finest soldier—and secretly, its most unwilling. Elias wants only to be free of the tyranny he's being trained to enforce. He and Laia will soon realize that their destinies are intertwined—and that their choices will change the fate of the Empire itself.
Mike, an experienced stripper, takes a younger performer called The Kid under his wing and schools him in the arts of partying, picking up women, and making easy money.
Jenna Hamilton just had her heart broken and received a scathing letter listing her shortcomings. A random series of unfortunate events then gets completely out of control. Suddenly everyone is looking her way, and Jenna realizes that sometimes, if you can't beat them, you might as well join them.
When literature student Anastasia Steele goes to interview young entrepreneur Christian Grey, she encounters a man who is beautiful, brilliant, and intimidating. The unworldly, innocent Ana is startled to realize she wants this man and, despite his enigmatic reserve, finds she is desperate to get close to him. Unable to resist Ana's quiet beauty, wit, and independent spirit, Grey admits he wants her, too—but on his own terms. Shocked yet thrilled by Grey's singular erotic tastes, Ana hesitates. For all the trappings of success—his multinational businesses, his vast wealth, his loving family—Grey is a man tormented by demons and consumed by the need to control. When the couple embarks on a daring, passionately physical affair, Ana discovers Christian Grey's secrets and explores her own dark desires. This book is intended for mature audiences.
A hard-partying high school senior's philosophy on life changes when he meets the not-so-typical "nice girl."
Everyone deserves a chance to follow their dreams, but some people only get one shot. Tyler Gage is a rebel from the wrong side of Baltimore's tracks and the only thing that stands between him and an unfulfilled life are his dreams of one day making it out of there. Nora is a privileged ballet dancer attending Baltimore's ultra-elite Maryland School of the Arts.
Having thought that monogamy was never possible, a commitment-phobic career woman may have to face her fears when she meets a good guy.
