Service Alert
Website maintenance April 24 10pm ET
On Wednesday April 24 at 10pm ET the CELA website will be unavailable for about 15 minutes for planned maintenance.
On Wednesday April 24 at 10pm ET the CELA website will be unavailable for about 15 minutes for planned maintenance.
Showing 16061 - 16080 of 19542 items
By R. A. Aliev, Nodirbek Rustambekovich Yusupbekov, Janusz Kacprzyk, Witold Pedrycz, M. B. Babanli, Fahreddin M. Sadikoglu, S. M. Turabdjanov. 2024
This book presents the proceedings of the 12th World Conference "Intelligent systems for industrial automation", WCIS-2022 held in Tashkent, Uzbekistan,…
on November 25-26, 2022. It includes contributions from diverse areas of intelligent industrial systems design, intelligent information systems, decision making under imperfect information and others.The topics of the papers include hybrid control systems, pattern recognition, industry 4.0, information security, neural computing, fuzzy computation, decision making and support systems, and others.By Ama Asantewa Diaka. 2024
“Delightfully assertive, subversive and vibrant... an original voice.” ––Imbolo Mbue, author of the New York Times bestseller and PEN/Faulkner Award for fiction…
winner Behold the Dreamers • "A compelling delight"—BooklistA visceral and candid portrait of today’s Ghanaian youth, told in interconnected short stories by acclaimed spoken-word artist and author of the poetry collection Woman, Eat Me Whole Ama Asantewa Diaka.In this startling collection of short fiction, Ama Asantewa Diaka creates a vibrant portrait of young Ghanaians’ today, captured in the experiences of characters whose lives bump against one other in friendship, passion, hope, and heartache. Men like Opoku Sr., not yet forty and struggling to keep his family’s cocoa business afloat after his father’s unexpected passing. Opoku strains under the burden of caring for his eight younger siblings and the child whose mother ran off. When his new girlfriend tells him she’s pregnant, he knows he has nothing left to give.Years later, that girlfriend’s son, Opoku Jr., now faces his own troubles, including his girlfriend Boatemaa, who (correctly) suspects he is sneaking around, and Amoafoa, the woman he’s seeing on the side. And there is John, who confides to his crush Baaba about a surprising encounter with a male friend over a game of FIFA; Baaba, who falls into a whirlwind romance with her professor that ends in violence; and their friend Ayeley, who is learning to accept pleasure after being raised to believe it is sinful.Diaka charts this constellation of interconnected lives in thirteen stories, exploring themes which run through the collection like a current: corruption and economic hardship, trauma and infidelity, shame, neglect, and the tribulations of the female body. In telling their stories, Diaka illuminates hope, freedom, and triumph that can be found in the everyday—the bonds between women, the joys of love and sex and art and dancing, the possibility of repair and redemption.Renowned for her spoken word artistry, Ama Asantewa Diaka demonstrates her lyrical brilliance in this emotionally rich work that unveils profound truths about her country, its inhabitants, and the universality of human experience.By Don Winslow. 2024
Sometimes you have to become what you hate to protect what you love. Danny Ryan is rich. Beyond…
his wildest dreams rich. The former dock worker, Irish mob soldier and fugitive from the law is now a respected businessman – a Las Vegas casino mogul and billionaire silent partner in a group that owns two lavish hotels. Finally, Danny has it all: a beautiful house, a child he adores, a woman he might even fall in love with. Life is good. But then Danny reaches too far. When he tries to buy an old hotel on a prime piece of real estate with plans to build his dream resort, he triggers a war against Las Vegas power brokers, a powerful FBI agent bent on revenge and a rival casino owner with dark connections of his own. Danny thought he had buried his past, but now it reaches up to him from the grave to pull him down. Old enemies surface, and when they come for Danny they vow to take everything – not only his empire, not just his life, but all that he holds dear, including his son. To save his life and everything he loves, Danny must become the ruthless fighter he once was – and never wanted to be again. Ranging from the gritty back rooms of Providence, RI to the power corridors of Washington, DC and Wall Street to the golden casinos of Las Vegas, City in Ruins is an epic crime novel of love and hate, ambition and desperation, vengeance and compassion. New York Times BestsellerBy Piper Huguley. 2024
In the vein of America’s First Daughter, Piper Huguley’s historical novel delves into the remarkable friendship of Portia Washington and…
Alice Roosevelt, the daughters of educator Booker T. Washington and President Teddy Roosevelt.At the turn of the twentieth century, in a time of great change, two women—separated by societal status and culture but bound by their expected roles as the daughters of famed statesmen—forged a lifelong friendship. Portia Washington’s father Booker T. Washington was formerly enslaved and spent his life championing the empowerment of Black Americans through his school, known popularly as Tuskegee Institute, as well as his political connections. Dedicated to her father’s values, Portia contributed by teaching and performing spirituals and classical music. But a marriage to a controlling and jealous husband made fulfilling her dreams much more difficult. When Theodore Roosevelt assumed the presidency, his eldest daughter Alice Roosevelt joined him in the White House. To try to win her father’s approval, she eagerly jumped in to help him succeed, but Alice’s political savvy and nonconformist behavior alienated as well as intrigued his opponents and allies. When she married a congressman, she carved out her own agendas and continued espousing women’s rights and progressive causes. Brought together in the wake of their fathers’ friendship, these bright and fascinating women helped each other struggle through marriages, pregnancies, and political upheaval, supporting each other throughout their lives. A provocative historical novel and revealing portrait, Piper Huguley’s American Daughters vividly brings to life two passionate and vital women who nurtured a friendship that transcended politics and race over a century ago.By Julia Alvarez. 2024
La inigualable Julia Alvarez, autora de En el tiempo de las mariposas y De cómo las muchachas García perdieron el acento, regresa con…
una extraordinaria e íntima novela que nos recuerda que las historias de vida jamás están realmente acabadas. Ni siquiera cuando llega el final.**Uno de los libros más esperados del año según el New York Times, Washington Post, Today.com, Goodreads, Literary Hub, BookPage, BBC.com, and Zibby Mag**Alma Cruz ha decidido ponerle punto final a su carrera de escritora, pero teme acabar como su amiga, una exitosa novelista arrastrada a la locura por un libro que jamás terminó de escribir. Por eso, cuando hereda un modesto terreno en República Dominicana, se le ocurre sepultar allí sus decenas de manuscritos inconclusos. Quiere que descansen en paz en la misma tierra donde yacen sus raíces.Pero a diferencia de Alma, los protagonistas de sus relatos aún tienen mucho por decir, y encuentran en Filomena, la reservada cuidadora del cementerio, una interlocutora empática y atenta. Al compartir sus historiasBienvenida, la exesposa olvidada del dictador Rafael Trujillo; Manuel Cruz, un médico exiliado durante el régimen, y la misma Filomena convertirán el cementerio en un lugar mágico.Un santuario donde quienes han sido silenciados hallarán el sentido que anhelan en la vitalidad imperecedera de los cuentos que aún quedan por contar.Y colorín colorado...——Literary icon Julia Alvarez, bestselling author of In the Time of the Butterflies, shares an inventive and emotional novel about storytelling and her homeland—the Dominican Republic—that Kirkus Reviews calls a "rich and moving saga" and Shelf Awareness calls "a lyrical thought-provoking meditation on truth, complicated family narratives, and the question of whose stories get told." **Named a Most Anticipated Book of the Year by the New York Times, Washington Post, Today.com, Goodreads, Literary Hub, BookPage, BBC.com, and Zibby Mag**Alma Cruz has decided to end her writing career, but she fears she'll end up like her friend, a successful novelist driven to madness by a book she never finished writing. So when she inherits a modest plot of land in the Dominican Republic, she decides to bury her dozens of unfinished manuscripts there. She wants them to rest in peace in the same land where her roots are. But unlike Alma, the protagonists of her stories still have plenty to say, and they find in Filomena, the reserved caretaker of the cemetery, an empathetic and attentive interlocutor. By sharing their stories, Bienvenida, the forgotten ex-wife of dictator Rafael Trujillo; Manuel Cruz, a doctor exiled during the regime, and Filomena herself will turn the cemetery into a magical place, a sanctuary where those who have been silenced will find the meaning they yearn for in the imperishable vitality of the untold stories.Y colorín colorado..."Hell Put to Shame is a powerfully unsettling portrait of the single most savage episode in the long decades of…
savagery inflicted by white southerners on their Black neighbors in the 20th century—and the methodical process that followed to erase those crimes from America’s collective memory." —Douglas A. Blackmon, author of Slavery by Another Name, winner of the Pulitzer PrizeFrom the acclaimed New York Times bestselling author of Chesapeake Requiem comes a gripping new work of narrative nonfiction telling the forgotten story of the mass killing of eleven Black farmhands on a Georgia plantation in the spring of 1921—a crime that exposed for the nation the existence of “peonage,” a form of slavery that gained prominence across the American South after the Civil War.On a Sunday morning in the spring of 1921, a small boy made a grim discovery as he played on a riverbank in the cotton country of rural Georgia: the bodies of two drowned men, bound together with wire and chain and weighted with a hundred-pound sack of rocks. Within days a third body turned up in another nearby river, and in the weeks that followed, eight others. And with them a deeper horror: all eleven had been kept in virtual slavery before their deaths. In fact, as America was shocked to learn, the dead were among thousands of Black men enslaved throughout the South in conditions nearly as dire as those before the Civil War.Hell Put to Shame tells the forgotten story of that mass killing and of the revelations about peonage, or debt slavery, that it placed before a public self-satisfied that involuntary servitude had ended at Appomattox more than fifty years before.By turns police procedural, courtroom drama, and political exposé, Hell Put to Shame also reintroduces readers to three Americans who spearheaded the prosecution of John S. Williams, the wealthy plantation owner behind the murders, at a time when white people rarely faced punishment for violence against their Black neighbors. The remarkable polymath James Weldon Johnson, newly appointed the first Black leader of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, marshaled the organization into a full-on war against peonage. Johnson’s lieutenant, Walter F. White, a light-skinned, fair-haired, blue-eyed Black man, conducted undercover work at the scene of lynchings and other Jim Crow atrocities, helping to throw a light on such violence and to hasten its end. And Georgia governor Hugh M. Dorsey won the statehouse as a hero of white supremacists—then redeemed himself in spectacular fashion with the “Murder Farm” affair.The result is a story that remains fresh and relevant a century later, as the nation continues to wrestle with seemingly intractable challenges in matters of race and justice. And the 1921 case at its heart argues that the forces that so roil society today have been with us for generations..By Helly Acton. 2023
Have you ever wanted to change the past and discover the result of choices not taken? Now, in this brilliantly…
fun novel of what-ifs, missed chances, and new beginnings, Frankie McKenzie discovers what starting over might bring…Despite living firmly in her comfort zone, Frankie McKenzie feels unsettled. She can’t help feeling something’s missing. Is it a home to call her own? Travel? A more rewarding job? A relationship? Before she can work it out, she dies in a freak kebab-related accident after what she sees as yet another dud of a first date.But life isn’t over for Frankie. Instead, she is miraculously offered a second chance: Frankie can revisit key moments from her past to see if different choices will lead her to the fulfilling life she’s always dreamt of. And there are so many opportunities! Should she decide to languidly lounge by warm Mexican waters with sexy Raphael? Or say yes to the proposal of earnestly reliable university-sweetheart Toby? Perhaps a worry-free gilded cage with Callum is the solution! Or what about that high-powered media career she thought that she wanted? Soon, Frankie will see what her life would have been if only she’d caught that one-way flight, accepted the marriage proposal, or attended the intimidating job interview. Will she finally find her Mr. Right? Or discover she already had? Which way should she turn? And over and over she asks herself the question…What would she change if she could begin again?By Crystal Hana Kim. 2018
“It is a privilege to read Crystal Hana Kim’s fiction, which both edifies and enlightens.” —Min Jin LeeA hauntingly poetic…
family drama and coming-of-age story that reveals a dark corner of South Korean history through the eyes of a small community living in a reformatory center—a stunning work of great emotional power from the critically acclaimed author of If You Leave Me.In 2011, Eunju Oh opens her door to greet a stranger: a young Korean American woman holding a familiar-looking knife—a knife Eunju hasn’t seen in thirty years, and that connects her to a place she’d desperately hoped to leave behind forever.In South Korea in the 1980s, young Eunju and her mother are homeless on the street. After being captured by the police, they’re sent to live within the walls of a state-sanctioned reformatory center that claims to rehabilitate the nation’s citizens but hides a darker, more violent reality. While Eunju and her mother form a tight-knit community with the other women in the kitchen, two teenage brothers, Sangchul and Youngchul, are compelled to labor in the workshops and make increasingly desperate decisions—and all are forced down a path of survival, the repercussions of which will echo for decades to come.Inspired by real events, told through alternating timelines and two intimate perspectives, The Stone Home is a deeply affecting story of a mother and daughter’s love and a pair of brothers whose bond is put to an unfathomably difficult test. Capturing a shameful period of history with breathtaking restraint and tenderness, Crystal Hana Kim weaves a lyrical exploration of the legacy of violence and the complicated psychology of power, while showcasing the extraordinary acts of devotion and friendship that can arise in the darkness.By April Gibson. 2024
With echoes of Audre Lorde’s The Cancer Journals and Susan Sontag’s Illness as Metaphor, an extraordinary debut collection from a…
prize-winning poet that chronicles a Black woman’s journey through disability, the byzantine healthcare system, life-giving, taking, and sacrifice.With breathtaking lyricism and a vulnerability that pierces the heart, April Gibson journeys through the emotional abysses, the daily pleasures, the frustrations, and the joys of being a Black woman living with chronic illness. Gibson offers a unique perspective on “the body,” viewing disability and healthcare through both feminist and socio-economic lenses filtered by race and faith. Through gorgeous sensory language that migrates memories, from carefree innocence to the ravages formed in its absence, Gibson bears witness to grief, courage, and resistance to redefine herself on her own terms. Gibson presents her body as a “looking glass” that re-envisions illness, womanhood, motherhood, religious relics and collective loss through her physicality, through her lamenting, through her unearthing, reckoning and rebirth. Not only do we see her, but see the “we” in her. The Span of a Small Forever is both testimony and transformation—heart-shattering in its honesty, it ultimately offers us transcendent beauty, nourishment, and the strength we need to go on in our lives.By Andrew McDowell. 2024
Each year in India more than two million people fall sick with tuberculosis (TB), an infectious, airborne, and potentially deadly…
lung disease. The country accounts for almost 30 percent of all TB cases worldwide and well above a third of global deaths from it. Because TB's prevalence also indicates unfulfilled development promises, its control is an important issue of national concern, wrapped up in questions of postcolonial governance. Drawing on long-term ethnographic engagement with a village in North India and its TB epidemic, Andrew McDowell tells the stories of socially marginalized Dalit ("ex-untouchable") farming families afflicted by TB, and the nurses, doctors, quacks, mediums, and mystics who care for them. Each of the book's chapters centers on a material or metaphorical substance—such as dust, clouds, and ghosts—to understand how breath and airborne illness entangle biological and social life in everyday acts of care for the self, for others, and for the environment. From this raft of stories about the ways people make sense of and struggle with troubled breath, McDowell develops a philosophy and phenomenology of breathing that attends to medical systems, patient care, and health justice. He theorizes that breath—as an intersection between person and world—provides a unique perspective on public health and inequality. Breath is deeply intimate and personal, but also shared and distributed. Through it all, Breathless traces the multivalent relations that breath engenders between people, environments, social worlds, and microbes.China's rise and its importance to international relations as a discipline-defining phenomenon is well recognized. Yet when scholars analyze China's…
foreign relations, they typically focus on Beijing's military power, economic might, or political leaders. As a result, most traditional assessments miss a crucial factor: China's Ministry of Foreign Affairs (MOFA). In China's Rising Foreign Ministry, Dylan M.H Loh upends conventional understandings of Chinese diplomacy by underlining the importance of the ministry and its diplomats in contemporary Chinese foreign policy. Loh explains how MOFA gradually became the main interface of China's foreign policy and the primary vehicle through which the idea of 'China' is produced, articulated, and represented on the world stage. This theoretically innovative and ambitious book offers an original reading of Chinese foreign policy, with wide-ranging implications for international relations. By shedding light on the dynamics of Chinese diplomacy and how assertiveness is constructed, Loh provides readers with a comprehensive re-appraisal of China's foreign ministry and the role it performs in China's re-emergence.By Laikwan Pang. 2024
The concept of sovereignty is a crucial foundation of the current world order. Regardless of their political ideologies no states…
can operate without claiming and justifying their sovereign power. The People's Republic of China (PRC)—one of the most powerful states in contemporary global politics—has been resorting to the logic of sovereignty to respond to many external and internal challenges, from territorial rights disputes to the Covid-19 pandemic. In this book, Pang Laikwan analyzes the historical roots of Chinese sovereignty. Surveying the four different political structures of modern China—imperial, republican, socialist, and post-socialist—and the dramatic ruptures between them, Pang argues that the ruling regime's sovereign anxiety cuts across the long twentieth century in China, providing a strong throughline for the state–society relations during moments of intense political instability. Focusing on political theory and cultural history, the book demonstrates how concepts such as popular sovereignty, territorial sovereignty, and economic sovereignty were constructed, and how sovereign power in China was both legitimized and subverted at various times by intellectuals and the ordinary people through a variety of media from painting and literature to internet-based memes. With the possibility of a new Cold War looming large, globalization disintegrating, and populism on the rise, Pang provides a timely reevaluation of the logic of sovereignty in China as power, discourse, and a basis for governance.By Emily Dickinson. 2024
The definitive edition of Emily Dickinson’s correspondence, expanded and revised for the first time in over sixty years.Emily Dickinson was…
a letter writer before she was a poet. And it was through letters that she shared prose reflections—alternately humorous, provocative, affectionate, and philosophical—with her extensive community. While her letters often contain poems, and some letters consist entirely of a single poem, they also constitute a rich genre all their own. Through her correspondence, Dickinson appears in her many facets as a reader, writer, and thinker; social commentator and comedian; friend, neighbor, sister, and daughter.The Letters of Emily Dickinson is the first collected edition of the poet’s correspondence since 1958. It presents all 1,304 of her extant letters, along with the small number available from her correspondents. Almost 300 are previously uncollected, including letters published after 1958, letters more recently discovered in manuscript, and more than 200 “letter-poems” that Dickinson sent to correspondents without accompanying prose. This edition also redates much of her correspondence, relying on records of Amherst weather patterns, historical events, and details about flora and fauna to locate the letters more precisely in time. Finally, updated annotations place Dickinson’s writing more firmly in relation to national and international events, as well as the rhythms of daily life in her hometown. What emerges is not the reclusive Dickinson of legend but a poet firmly embedded in the political and literary currents of her time.Dickinson’s letters shed light on the soaring and capacious mind of a great American poet and her vast world of relationships. This edition presents her correspondence anew, in all its complexity and brilliance.By Jo Piazza. 2024
From bestselling author and award-winning journalist Jo Piazza, comes a transporting novel rooted in the author&’s own family history about…
a long-awaited trip to Sicily, a disputed inheritance, and a family secret that some will kill to protect . . .Sara Marsala barely knows who she is anymore after the failure of her business and marriage. On top of that, her beloved great-aunt Rosie passes away, leaving Sara bereft with grief. But Aunt Rosie&’s death also opens an escape from her life and a window into the past by way of a plane ticket to Sicily, a deed to a possibly valuable plot of land, and a bombshell family secret. Rosie believes Sara&’s great-grandmother Serafina, the family matriarch who was left behind while her husband worked in America, didn&’t die of illness as family lore has it . . . she was murdered. Thus begins a twist-filled adventure that takes Sara all over the picturesque Italian countryside as she races to solve a mystery and learn the story of Serafina—a feisty and headstrong young woman in the early 1900s thrust into motherhood in her teens, who fought for a better life not just for herself but for all the women of her small village. Unsurprisingly the more she challenges the status quo, the more she finds herself in danger. As Sara discovers more about Serafina, she also realizes she is coming head-to-head with the same menacing forces that took down her great-grandmother. At once an immersive multigenerational mystery and an ode to the undaunted heroism of everyday women, The Sicilian Inheritance is an atmospheric, page-turning delight.By Freya Sampson. 2024
Nothing brings neighbors together like someone else&’s secrets… At Shelley House, the walls have ears, and they&’re attached to a…
ragtag duo of busybodies ready to pry, snoop, and generally annoy their neighbors into solving a crime. Seventy-seven-year-old Dorothy Darling has lived in Shelley House longer than any of the other residents, and if you take their word for it, she&’s as cantankerous as they come. But Dorothy has her reasons for spying. And none of them require justifying herself to Kat Bennett. Twenty-five-year-old Kat has never known a place where she felt truly at home, and crumbling Shelley House is no different. Her neighbors find her prickly and unapproachable, but beneath her tough exterior, Kat&’s plagued by a guilty secret from her past. When their apartments face demolition, sworn enemies Kat and Dorothy agree on just one thing: they must save their historic building. But when someone plays dirty—and one of the residents is viciously taken down—Dorothy and Kat seek justice. The police close the investigation too soon, leaving it up to the unlikely amateur sleuths—with a playful Jack Russell terrier at their side—to restore peace in their community.By Kirsten Anderson, Who Hq. 2024
Learn how a young girl who lived on a Christmas tree farm grew up to become one of the most…
celebrated musical artists of the twenty-first century in this addition to the #1 New York Times bestselling series.Taylor Swift always knew she wanted to be a country music artist, so at age thirteen, she convinced her parents to move their family out of Pennsylvania to Nashville.As a singer, songwriter, and guitarist, Taylor wrote songs about teenage heartbreak and fitting in with her peers, and she performed these and other tunes at open mic nights and karaoke events. Breaking into the music industry took longer than she expected because record executives thought there was no place in country music for her songs. But Taylor was fearless and proved them wrong.Since the release of her self-titled debut album in 2006, Taylor Swift has dominated the music charts, reinvented her sound, won numerous awards, shaken off public criticism, and spoken up for herself and others. Whether you're a lifelong Swiftie or someone who just loves learning about musicians, this enchanting book will teach you all about the experiences that helped Taylor Swift become the successful superstar many kids and adults looks up to.By Brooke Archer. 2024
Gripping, romantic, and impossible to put down, this dark and immersive post-apocalyptic debut novel is about two teen girls who…
loved each other before the end of the world — and before one of them became infected with the virus that turned her into a monster. Perfect for fans of Krystal Sutherland, Adam Silvera, and the darkly human side of the HBOMax horror-drama, The Last of Us.Seventeen-year-old Mara is dead—mostly. Infected with a virus that brought the dead back to life and the world to its knees, she wakes up in a facility to learn a treatment for the disease has been found. No longer a Tick, Mara is placed in an experimental resettlement program. But her recovery is complicated by her destination: she&’s sent to live with the best friend she hasn&’t seen since the world ended—and since their first and only kiss.Seventeen-year-old Rory is alive—barely. With impaired mobility from an injury and a dead sister, Rory&’s nightmares are just as monstrous as the Ticks that turned her former best friend. Even after the Island—one of a handful of surviving communities—rebuilds itself, Rory is prepared for the Ticks to return at any time. She never expected them to come in the form of the only girl she&’s ever loved.As the girls struggle with their pasts and the people they&’ve become, and with the Island&’s fragile peace in the balance, Rory and Mara must lean on each other to survive—or risk losing the girl they love all over again.By Cat Patrick. 2024
Award-winning author Cat Patrick returns with a charming tale full of first crushes and new friendships, as one girl learns…
a little more about who she is and who she wants to be all while on the road trip of lifetime.It&’s the summer of 1985, when air guitar, jelly bracelets, and huge hair are all the rage, and twelve-year-old Stevie is finally old enough to go on her performing troupe&’s annual cross-country tour. Twenty-six teen cast members will lip-synch and dance their way through more than twenty cities, and Stevie and her best friend, Wes, can&’t wait—for more reasons than one!By Adib Khorram. 2024
Love is more complicated than &“boy meets boy&” in bestselling author Adib Khorram&’s sharply funny new romantic comedy, set in…
the sordid world of high school theaterJackson Ghasnavi is a lot of things—a techie, a smoothie afficionado, a totally not obsessive list-maker—but one thing he&’s not is a romantic. And why would he be? He&’s already had a front row seat to his parents&’ divorce and picked up the pieces of his sister Jasmine&’s broken heart one too many times.No, Jackson is perfectly happy living life behind the scenes—he is a stage manager, after all—and keeping his romantic exploits limited to the breakup lists he makes for Jasmine, which chronicle every flaw (real or imagined) of her various and sundry exes.Enter Liam: the senior swim captain turned leading man that neither of the Ghasnavi siblings stop thinking about. Not that Jackson has a crush, of course. Jasmine is already setting her sights on him and he&’s probably—no, definitely—straight anyway.So why does the idea of eventually writing a breakup list for him feel so impossible?By Sarah Hogle. 2024
Fibs and squabbles and spells . . . oh my!A small, magical town tucked away in rural Ohio, Moonville is…
the perfect place for floral witch Romina Tempest to use the language of flowers to help the hopeful manifest love in their lives. After giving up on her own big romance eleven years ago, at least she can bask in others' happily ever afters.When the shop&’s potential financier shares news of his wedding, Romina jumps at the opportunity to discuss the business . . . even if it means she has to fake-date her chaotic colleague Trevor to get an invitation. But all hell breaks loose when she discovers Trevor&’s soon-to-be stepbrother is none other than Alex King: her high school sweetheart. Her greatest love. The boy who broke her heart.What starts as an innocent misunderstanding becomes a weeklong fake-dating scheme, as Romina quickly finds out she can&’t deny her connection with Alex. Caught between her livelihood and her heart, Romina must decide if taking a second chance on first love is worth the risk.