The Selfies Book Awards U.S

Dr. Waycross knows bleeding and blistering, the best scientific medicine of 1822. He arrives in the Georgia mountains to bring his modern methods to the superstitious masses. But the local healers, the Winter sisters, claim to treat yellow fever, consumption, and the hell-roarin' trots just as well as he can. Some folks call the sisters herb women; some call them witches. Waycross calls them quacks. But when the threat of rabies--incurable and fatal--comes to town, Dr. Waycross and the Winter sisters must combine their science and superstition in a desperate search for a remedy. Can they find a miracle cure, or has the age of miracles passed?

On a mid-morning ride to Pumpkin Hill, Elizabeth and Jane discover a lady injured in an abandoned carriage. Her coachman, grooms and horses are gone, along with the lady’s jewels. The lady in question happens to be Lady Castlereagh, arbiter of Almacks, wife of the much-maligned foreign secretary and owner of such things as a kangaroo and a bad-tempered tiger. The lady’s injuries dictate that she must not travel for at least a month and she will stay at Longbourn for the foreseeable future. Determined to discover what has happened to her, Lady Castlereagh summons her dear friends Darcy and Bingley, and Bow Street man Horatio Quinn to Hertfordshire. Longbourn’s drawing room is given over to Mr. Quinn as he directs all involved in their efforts to solve the mystery. Who stole the jewels? What has happened to the coachman and grooms? Was it the coachman who executed the scheme? Could it have been highwaymen? Perhaps it was the lady’s errant maid and the butler she ran off with? Or maybe the mysterious Mr. Cratchet? As the party follows clues, Elizabeth and Darcy circle each other warily. She thinks he’s handsome and has a certain wit when he is not so serious. He thinks she’s uncommonly pretty and happily devoid of the coldness of a London lady. But he is too reserved and judgmental for her and she is too carefree and flouting convention for him. They are not at all suited. And yet… Hertfordshire is a hive of activity as proposals are made, proposals are rejected, theories are floated, red herrings are chased, a clergyman bumbles, a stern lady miscalculates, a devious miss is the architect of her own undoing and one Bennet daughter pays the piper.

St. Paul, Minnesota, 1946: As little girls, the Malone sisters relied on each other for companionship and affection as their mother remained distant, beating back the demons of her own mysterious childhood. Now, as young women ready to embrace promising futures, Eliza plans for a life of intellectual fulfillment beginning with college at nearby St. Catherine's, while far simpler hopes for family and happiness occupy Shannon. Instead, the closely-knit sisters endure two life-changing tragedies and their powerful bonds of love and loyalty threaten to break under the weight of trauma and loss, secrets and misunderstandings. One sister leaves, possibly forever. Heartbroken and scarred from a battle with tuberculosis, the other vows to never let go of the invisible thread that runs between them - and in the course of her journey, discovers the true meaning of family.

The ancient Indian art of tracking is his greatest strength? And also his biggest weakness. Fish and Wildlife State Trooper Gabriel Hawke believes he?s chasing poachers. However, he comes upon a wildlife biologist standing over a body that is wearing a wolf tracking collar. He uses master tracker skills taught to him by his Nez Perce grandfather to follow clues on the mountain. Paper trails and the whisper of rumors in the rural community where he works, draws Hawke to a conclusion that he finds bitter. Arresting his brother-in-law ended his marriage, could solving this murder ruin a friendship?

Athena Vosh lives just like any other teenager from the year 2099. She watches reality shows with her friends, eats well, and occasionally wonders to herself, what would like be like if men were still alive? It has been almost 50 years since an experimental virus accidentally killed all the men on earth. However, a controversial project is currently underway to bring men back. There's just one catch. The project has been sabotaged. When the police of 2099 are tasked with finding the saboteur, they receive a mysterious command to investigate the otherwise innocuous Athena Vosh. After it becomes clear that the young girl might know more than she lets on, Athena is brought in to participate in the official investigation. Simultaneously, the girl begins to experience a series of cryptic dreams featuring a ruined library and an old book containing the saboteur's true identity. As the police close in on their prize, Athena finds herself on a journey of her own. Her clue-filled dreams and incorruptible spirit bring her face-to-face with a pair of forgotten truths about happiness and gender. The world waits to see if men will return as Athena fights a separate battle all on her own, culminating in the choice that will define her and other's lives forever.

In 1866, maverick French artist Gustave Courbet painted one of the most iconic images in the history of art: a sexually explicit portrait of a woman’s exposed genitals. Audaciously titled L’Origine du monde (The Origin of the World), the scandalous painting was kept hidden for a century and a half. Today, it hangs in the world-renowned Orsay Museum in Paris, viewed by millions of visitors a year. As the first artist authorized by the Orsay Museum to re-create Courbet’s The Origin of the World, author Lilianne Milgrom was thrust into the painting’s intimate orbit, spending six weeks replicating every fold, crevice, and pubic hair. The experience inspired her to share her story and the painting’s riveting clandestine history with readers beyond the confines of the art world. L’Origine is an entertaining and superbly researched work of historical fiction that traces the true story of the painting’s unlikely tale of survival, replete with French revolutionaries, Turkish pashas, and nefarious Nazi captains.

A foreign county. Five days to catch a killer. While teaching a tracking class at a Search and Rescue conference in Iceland, Oregon State Trooper Gabriel Hawke discovers a body in a boiling mud pool. The body is the young man Hawke's class is tracking. Unable to walk away from the gruesome death without helping to find the killer, Hawke follows the clues and discovers the victim had few enemies, and all of them have alibis. The killer is cunning like the fox, but Hawke is determined to solve the homicide before the conference attendees head home in five days.

Three fierce women. A ghost ship's treasure. And a bone chilling Caribbean warlord. World War I rages. US marines storm Haiti's Banque Nationale, loot $26 million in gold, then vanish. A century later, clues surface during the demolition of a Chicago racetrack, pointing to the Corazon Santo - the notorious triangle of Havana, Kingston, and Port-au-Prince. Three fierce, vibrant women reunite to hunt the treasure, hoping it will buy their survival from a long-buried, catastrophic misjudgment. They conscript a streetwise Chicago horseplayer's help, then risk a return into the Caribbean's mangrove jungles and mountains that have tried to kill them before. The uneasy partners are quickly swallowed in a terrifying labyrinth of shadow government and modern piracy where a final choice will be forced upon them : gold, survival, or redemption?

Set against the backdrop of the Newark riots in 1967, a teenage Benjamin Baum leaves the city to spend the summer at an idyllic lake in northern New Jersey. While fishing from his grandparents? dock, the dead body of a beloved neighbor floats to the water?s surface?a loss that shakes this Jewish community and reveals cracks in what appeared to be a perfect middle-class existence. Haunted by the sight of the woman?s corpse, Ben stubbornly searches for clues to her death, infuriating friends and family who view his unwelcome investigation as a threat to the comfortable lives they?ve built. As Ben?s suspicions mount, he?s forced to confront the terrifying possibility that his close-knit community is not what it seems to be? That, beneath a faðcade of prosperity and contentment, darker forces may be at work.

Jennifer Sylvester made her deal with the devil . . . and now they're engaged! But all is not well in Green Valley. A chicken choker is on the loose, 61 dead birds most "fowl" need plucking, and no time remains for Jennifer and her devilish fiancé. Desperate to find a spare moment together, Jenn and Cletus's attempts to reconnect are thwarted by one seemingly coincidental disaster after another. It's not long before Cletus and Jenn see a pattern emerge and the truth becomes clear. Sabotage! Will an undercover mission unmask the culprit? Or are these love-birds totally plucked?

Years after a harrowing war experience, ex-mercenary Jespar Dal'Varek has taken to drifting. It's a lonely existence, but barring the occasional bout of melancholia, he has found the closest thing to peace a man like him deserves. Life is 'all right.' Or so he believes. Hoping to turn the page, Jespar accepts a mysterious invitation into the beautiful but dangerous archipelago of Kilay--and everything changes. Plagued by boiling social tensions and terrorism, the tropical empire is edging ever closer to civil war. Kilay's merchant king is the only person able to prevent this catastrophe, but he has fallen into a preternatural coma--and it's Jespar's task to figure out what or who caused it. As the investigation takes him across the archipelago and into the king's nightmares, unexpected events not only tie Jespar's own life to the mystery but also unearth inner demons he believed to be exorcised long ago. Battling old trauma while fighting for his life, his sanity, and the fate of Kilay, the line between dream and reality blurs until only one question remains: If your mind is the enemy, where do you run?"