In love we find out who we want to be.
In war we find out who we are.

FRANCE, 1939 — In the quiet village of Carriveau, Vianne Mauriac says goodbye to her husband, Antoine, as he heads for the Front. She doesn’t believe that the Nazis will invade France…but invade they do, in droves of marching soldiers, in caravans of trucks and tanks, in planes that fill the skies and drop bombs upon the innocent. When a German captain requisitions Vianne’s home, she and her daughter must live with the enemy or lose everything. Without food or money or hope, as danger escalates all around them, she is forced to make one impossible choice after another to keep her family alive.

Vianne’s sister, Isabelle, is a rebellious eighteen-year-old girl, searching for purpose with all the reckless passion of youth. While thousands of Parisians march into the unknown terrors of war, she meets Gäetan, a partisan who believes the French can fight the Nazis from within France, and she falls in love as only the young can…completely. But when he betrays her, Isabelle joins the Resistance and never looks back, risking her life time and again to save others.

With courage, grace and powerful insight, bestselling author Kristin Hannah captures the epic panorama of WWII and illuminates an intimate part of history seldom seen: the women’s war. The Nightingale tells the stories of two sisters, separated by years and experience, by ideals, passion and circumstance, each embarking on her own dangerous path toward survival, love, and freedom in German-occupied, war-torn France–a heartbreakingly beautiful novel that celebrates the resilience of the human spirit and the durability of women. It is a novel for everyone, a novel for a lifetime.

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THE LONGEST RIDE by Nicholas Sparks

In the tradition of his beloved first novel, The Notebook, #1 New York Times bestselling author Nicholas Sparks returns with the remarkable story of two couples whose lives intersect in profound and surprising ways.

ABOUT THE FILM: 

The Longest Ride centers on the star-crossed love affair between Luke, a former champion bull rider looking to make a comeback, and Sophia, a college student who is about to embark upon her dream job in New York City’s art world.

As conflicting paths and ideals test their relationship, Sophia and Luke make an unexpected connection with Ira, whose memories of his own decades-long romance with his beloved wife deeply inspire the young couple.  Spanning generations and two intertwining love stories, it explores the challenges and infinite rewards of enduring love.

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AFTER DARK — EXCERPT

Releasing March 24, 2015.

In the great room, in the dark, I pressed her against the wall.

“Here,” I said, “now, always like it’s the last time.”

We moved from the wall to the couch and from the couch to the floor.

“Breathe,” she said as I moved against her. She lay under me, on the rug in front of the fireplace, and I was inside her. “Breathe . . .”

Excitement practically closed my throat. I shuddered and slowed, gulping air.

It was good to be like that—so exposed to her, excited and desperate—and good to see her undressed and blushing, so exposed to me.

When I became frantic again, pushing us both to the edge, she grasped my thigh and back and let me feel the bite of her nails.

This happiness, I thought. Here, now, always.

This happiness, no matter the cost.

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_______________________________

FULL TRILOGY: READING ORDER

Note: the eBook and Paperback covers are different. Books are the same.

#1 — NIGHT OWL
Buy for Kindle (SALE) | Buy in Paperback | My Review

#2 — LAST LIGHT
Buy for Kindle | Buy in Paperback

#3 — AFTER DARK
Buy for Kindle (SALE) | Buy in Paperback

— SYNOPSIS —

From #1 New York Times bestselling author Colleen Hoover, a new novel about risking everything for love — and finding your heart somewhere between the truth and lies.

At age twenty-one, Auburn Reed has already lost everything important to her. In her fight to rebuild her shattered life, she has her goals in sight and there is no room for mistakes. But when she walks into a Dallas art studio in search of a job, she doesn’t expect to find a deep attraction to the enigmatic artist who works there, Owen Gentry.

For once, Auburn takes a chance and puts her heart in control, only to discover that Owen is keeping a major secret from coming out. The magnitude of his past threatens to destroy everything important to Auburn, and the only way to get her life back on track is to cut Owen out of it.

To save their relationship, all Owen needs to do is confess. But in this case, the confession could be much more destructive than the actual sin.

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— EXCERPT —

He loosens his grip from around me and makes a tremendous effort to roll toward me so that we’re facing each other. One could argue that his eyes are hazel, but they aren’t. They are layers of greens and browns, touching but never blending, creating the most intense, define pair of eyes that have ever looked in my direction. Eyes that were once the brightest part of him but are now too defeated by an untimely fate that is slowly draining the color right out of him.

“I’m referring specifically to how we’re both so pissed at Death for being such a greedy bastard. But I guess I’m also referring to our parents, for not understanding this. For not allowing me to have the one and only thing I want here with me.”

He’s right. I’m definitely pissed about both of those things. But we’ve been over it enough times in the last few days to know that we lost and they won. Right now I just want to focus on him and soak up every last ounce of his presence while I still have it.

“You said you have so many things to thank me for. What’s the next one?”

He smiles and brings his hand up to my face. His thumb brushes over my lips and it feels as if my heart lunges toward him in a desperate attempt to remain here while my empty shell is forced to fly back to Portland. “I want to thank you for letting me be your first,” he says. “And for being mine.”

His smiles briefly transforms him from a sixteen-year-old boy on his deathbed into a handsome, vibrant, full-of-life teenagy boy who is thinking about the first time he had sex.

His words, and his own reaction to his words, force an embarrassed smile to cross my face as I think back to that night. It was before we knew he would be moving back to Texas. We knew his prognosis at that point and we were still trying to accept it. We spent an entire evening discussing all the things we could have experience together if we had a possibility of forever. Traveling, marriage, kids (including what we would have named them), all the places we would have lived, and of course, sex.

We predicted that we would have had a phenomenal sex life, if given the change. Our sex life would have been the envy of all our friends. We would have made love every morning before we left for work and every night before we went to bed and sometimes in between.

We laughed about it, but the conversation soon grew quiet as we both realized that this was the one aspect of our relationship that we still had control over. Everything else about the future, we had no voice in, but we could possible have this one private thing that death could never take from us.

We didn’t even discuss it. We didn’t have to. As soon as he looked at me and I saw my own thoughts mirrored in his eyes, we began kissing and didn’t stop. We kissed while we undressed, we kissed while we touched, we kissed while we cried. We kissed until we were finished, and even then, we continued to kiss in celebration of the fact that we had won this one small battle against life and death and time. And we were still kissing when he held me afterward and told me he loved me.

Just like he’s holding and kissing me now.

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