D. Macneill Parker0.0 When two murders strain the police force of a remote Alaskan fishing port, veterinarian Maureen McMurtry is tapped by Dutch Harbor's police chief for forensic assistance. The doctor's got a past she'd rather not discuss, a gun in her closet, and a retired police dog that hasn't lost her chops. All come in handy as she deciphers the cause and time of death of a local drug addict washed ashore with dead sea lions and an environmentalist found in a crab pot hauled from the sea in the net of a fishing vessel. When her romantic relationship with a boat captain is swamped by mounting evidence that he's the prime suspect in one of the murders, McMurtry struggles with her own doubts to prove his innocence. But can she? McMurtry's pals, a manager of the Bering Sea crab fishery and another who tends Alaska's most dangerous bar assist in unraveling the sinister truth.
Rebecca T Holbrook0.0 Omie Silar and her mamma Kate were descended from a line of women with the Sight-a knowing of things to come, of secrets hidden beneath life's surface. Midwives and healers, they used their gifts to lessen the suffering of those living and those spirits hovering between. Had Omie been able to read the portents at the bottom of her own teacup, she might have borne less suffering herself. Perhaps when she saw, as her mother predicted, the face of the man she was to marry, she only sensed the sweetness that overlaid the sorrows to come.
Nate Silar ran away from an abusive father at a young age, finding his way to Omie and the fate awaiting them. Frank and Kate Lee bring the troubled boy into their family, giving him the home he'd never had. Omie's love and Nate's bottled demons struggle for his soul, leaving them to choose what to do with both their gifts and their burdens.
Set in the early 1900's near Savannah, Georgia, Omie's Well captures the rich flavor of the south, its humor, the strength of its people, and the challenges a changing world brings to their doorstep.
Susan Bloch0.0 Witty, yet wise with intimate insights, this is a unique journey of sensuous delights, a beautiful and compelling series of adventures that capture the insecurities, pain and ultimate joy of a middle-aged woman facing life and embracing life on her own. When Susan Bloch lost her partner John far too early, she faced her grief with courage - and what many would term a moment of madness. Giving up her successful career in the UK, she moved overnight to India, facing not just the uncertainties and worries of a new life in a strange land - and being one of the only white women in a high-powered corporate role - but coping with her own very real grief at the death of her husband. Susan's brave - and some might say unconventional - approach to tackling her grief provides a compelling and very human insight into loss of a loved one, and at the same time delivers a beautifully written love letter to India in all its vibrant, chaotic, life-affirming glory. Refreshingly honest and highly emotive, Travels with My Grief is as engaging as it is inspiring, and is more than a simple self-help manual or travelogue.
H.W. Buzz Bernard0.0 A legendary WWII airlift mission cuts through the snaggletoothed Himalaya Mountains, where both the terrain and weather prove uncommonly savage. And American airmen leave a trail of blood and mangled aircraft across northern Burma. “I would rather fly a fighter against the Japs three times a day than a transport over the Hump once.” Aviator Major Rod Shepherd, a C-46 pilot and Army Air Forces weather officer, flings his aircraft into the tumultuous skies to fly critical missions over the Hump. He braves not only the extreme—even impossible—flying conditions, but commanders who believe weather support is useless and a flight nurse who, for reasons unknown to Rod, dislikes him intensely. Rod risks incredible danger with every flight. But when a mission of grave importance is imperiled at high altitude, Rod faces an unthinkable dilemma. In The Roof of the World, former Air Force officer H.W. "Buzz" Bernard sweeps readers into some of the most dangerous flying of WWII. Join Major Rod Shepherd in the cockpit to experience history firsthand.
Anna Collins0.0 How do you ask forgiveness for the unforgivable?
When Annie Wolff’s ex-husband dies unexpectedly, she breaks her self-imposed exile and returns home to Snohomish, Washington. Annie hasn’t seen her children, Grace and Connor, in eight years, and now, her in-laws are making a bid to adopt them. She only hopes the depression that once sent her running will remain in check.
Annie is quickly drawn back into the lives of her now-teenage kids, under the skeptical supervision of their aunt. While Connor welcomes his estranged mother with open arms, Grace wants nothing to do with her. Annie is determined to be patient, even though her daughter’s behavior raises red flags.
As Annie sets out on this new, treacherous road, she stumbles into the path of Wic Dubray—the handsome but annoyingly honest woodworker who leases her a room. Not used to anyone caring for her, she finds his presence is both an unanticipated gift and a complication.
Annie must navigate old memories, hostile relatives, her wavering mental health, and a growing fondness for Wic. Only then will she have a chance to win back her children and her life and maybe find love.
Joan H. Cabreza0.0 She left searching for adventure, her country and herself, and found all three, but along the way she also discovered her life’s passion and her faith.
Part travelogue, part wildlife encounters and part dangerous, risk-filled adventure, this compelling memoir follows the journey of a female 1950s biologist frustrated by the conservative gender and social confines of the Midwest and disillusioned with the country. She leaves for two decades of real-world adventures in the Costa Rican Jungle, Hawaii, Asia, the Philippines and Guam, before finding her way back to the United States and home in Seattle.
Along the way, she battles family opposition, the frustrations of working in a male-dominated field, and the challenges of an interracial/intercultural marriage in an era when this was very unconventional. The adventures and dangers she faced helped her rediscover her country, find her life’s passion, and eventually discover her faith. She also provides a valuable message of how going against what is considered “normal” allowed her to discover a world far greater than she could ever have imagined.
Eliana West0.0 A letter from the past will transform their future…
Taylor Colton always loved the crumbling plantation house passed down through his family for generations. Now he’s bringing his popular renovation reality show to the small town of Colton, Mississippi, so he can bring the plantation house known as Halcyon back to life for the cameras.
After an ugly breakup, Josephine Martin needs a new start to heal her broken heart in peace. A hidden letter reveals a family secret that leads her to Colton to protect her family’s history and honor a promise made before the Civil War…and to a house she didn’t know was hers.
Suddenly, Josephine must decide if she’s ready for the challenge of restoring a run-down mansion and its history, and Taylor’s facing a challenge he can’t charm away. Together, they must untangle a tragic history, a rocky relationship, and risk everything they love. Can they overcome the past to find their way home?
Tavi Taylor Black0.0 Alex Evans, a thirty-six-year-old touring electrician, discovers through an accidental pregnancy and then the pain of miscarriage that she truly wants a family. But to attempt another pregnancy, she’ll have to change both her career and her relationship; her partner Connor, ten years her senior, isn’t prepared to become a father again. When Alex is implicated in an accident involving the female pop star she works for, she and three other women on tour rent a house together in Tuscany. While the tour regroups, confessions are made, secrets are spilled: the guitar tech conceals a forbidden love, the production assistant’s ambition knows no limits, and the personal assistant battles mental issues. Through arguments and accidents, combating drug use and religion, the women help each other look back on the choices they’ve made, eventually buoying each other, offering up strength to face tough decisions ahead.
Corky Parker0.0 Many people fantasize about leaving the rat race behind for a tropical island. That's what Corky Parker did . . . sort of.
At age forty, Parker surrendered to her Swept Away meets Swiss Family Robinson fantasy of running an inn far from her home in the Pacific Northwest. She bought a group of cabins built by women in the hills of a small island in the Caribbean, and for the next twenty-plus years she and her family split their time between Seattle, where they operated a thriving media business, and what became La Finca Caribe, their eco-lodge in Vieques, Puerto Rico.
Over the years La Finca Caribe, or "the Caribbean farm," grew into a paradise of fruit trees, mockingbirds, and ocean breezes enjoyed by guests from around the world. Sketchbook in hand, Parker began to write, draw, doodle, paint, and collage a chronicle of her daily experiences as she learned from the land and from local Puerto Ricans, all while working to overcome her cultural naivete. The result is a lively, fully illustrated graphic memoir about a woman creating a new life amid wild animals, political upheaval, environmental challenges, the dot-com bust, divorce, and hurricanes, especially the destruction wrought by Hurricane Maria, which led Parker to reconsider everything.
Ultimately La Finca is a classic, unique story about trusting oneself, self-discovery, accepting disappointment and loss, and falling in love with a place.
Richard J. Cass0.0 Rasmussen Carter is grooming Lily Miller, a young jazz singer, to be a star. She’s singing at the Greenwood—the new incarnation of the Esposito—now owned and managed by Baron Loftus, the nephew of Sweetie Bogan, an aging jazz singer. The night Lily debuts, Carter is stabbed in a fight by Sweetie Bogan’s lover. Lily abandons Rasmussen Carter for Edward Dare, who promises to make her a real star.
Carter is killed in the hospital, and Marina asks Elder Darrow, now retired from the bar business, to investigate—since his pal and Marina’s soon-to-be husband, Boston Police detective Dan Burton, is still jealous of Carter and Marina’s brief fling. Alfonso Deal-Jones, Sweetie Bogan’s lover, is then found beaten to death. Burton discovers Alfonso was setting up a cocaine deal with Edward Dare, the lieutenant to a major New Orleans gangster, who also happens to be “death” on drug dealing.
On their own time, Elder and Burton must solve the murders of the low-rent impressario and the New Orleans gangster’s right-hand man. Burton is sure there’s a connection. And in the process, Elder discovers he may not be cut out for a life of leisure just yet…
R.L. Spada0.0 “A man who desires revenge should dig two graves.” Anonymous The gated mansion on Orcas Island was built as a refuge for a timber baron's family. The Temples enjoy insulating barriers of wealth for generations. But the heirs sense of security is brutally shattered when a mysterious madman stalks family members stoking defensiveness and fear. Enter Detective Brock Thompson with the Seattle Police Department who strives to track down and stop the perpetrator as threats against the family escalate. Along the way the detective unearths Temple family secrets that were never meant to see the light of day. Detective Thompson struggles to overcome his own phobias while investigating a darkness that nearly envelopes the Temples.
Cecilia Aragon0.0 The daughter of a Chilean father and a Filipina mother, Cecilia Rodriguez Aragon grew up as a shy, timid child in a small midwestern town during the 1960s. Targeted by school bullies and dismissed by many of her teachers, she worried that people would find out the truth: that she was INTF. Incompetent. Nerd. Terrified. Failure. This feeling stayed with her well into her twenties when she was told that girls can t do science or women just don t know how to handle machines.
Yet in the span of just six years, Cecilia became the first Latina pilot to secure a place on the United States Unlimited Aerobatic Team and earn the right to represent her country at the Olympics of aviation, the World Aerobatic Championships. How did she do it?
Using mathematical techniques to overcome her fear, Cecilia performed at air shows in front of millions of people. She jumped out of airplanes and taught others how to fly. She learned how to fund-raise and earn money to compete at the world level. She worked as a test pilot and contributed to the design of experimental airplanes, crafting curves of metal and fabric that shaped air to lift inanimate objects high above the earth. And best of all, she surprised everyone by overcoming the prejudices people held about her because of her race and her gender.
Flying Free is the story of how Cecilia Aragon broke free from expectations and rose above her own limits by combining math and logic with her passion for flying in unexpected ways. You don t have to be a math whiz or a science geek to learn from her story. You just have to want to soar.
Daniel J Waters0.0 In the Year 1969.... ...as the August sun beats down, things in Surf City, NJ are heating up. Police Chief Mickey Cleary is ready to put another hectic tourist season on Long Beach Island behind her. But just as the days of Summer and the events of her own past seem ready to slip further away, old ghosts and new monsters are on their way their way "Down the Shore" - and heading straight for her.
Johanna Flynn0.0 Gordon Carlson's Chicagoland neighbors know a sweet old man with a green thumb and a big heart. His pain and shame live in the hidden, ragged corners of his self-imposed solitude. One morning in 1996 begins like no other. A whirlwind of despair, desperation, and deceit forces him from the comfort of his lonely routine. Sorting truth from lies can help him solve other people's problems, but he'll have to face his own past to do it. A past he'd much sooner forget. Hidden pictures hold the key if Gordon has the courage to find the lock.
Chris Fagan0.0 Meet Chris and Marty—a married couple working on their careers, raising their only child, and chasing big adventures. At midlife, they suddenly find themselves weighing the responsibility of parenthood against the possibility of one more grand adventure, before their aging bodies and the warming continent of Antarctica further degrade. They ultimately decide it’s time to pursue their biggest Ski 570 miles from the edge of Antarctica to the South Pole. With no guide or resupply.
From the lush Pacific Northwest to the barren landscape of Antarctica, Chris and Marty embark on one of the hardest challenges on the planet. After three years of intense planning and training, including meticulous preparations for the care of their twelve-year-old son, they are ready.
Experience a boundless white wonderland like no other on earth. Encounter life-threatening dangers lurking in the bitter cold. Feel the intensity of 220-pound sleds, relentless wind, 40-below temperatures, and mind-numbing isolation. This is not an average couples getaway. Chris and Marty go where few others have dared on the way to making history—stretching their bodies, minds, and marriage to the limit in the process. Riveting and inspiring, The Expedition is about the power of family and community, the adventurous spirit that dwells within us all, and breaking through to feel fully alive.
Peter Curtis0.0 After a perilous journey from Prague, the penniless and exhausted KOHUT family—Willy, Sophie and Pavel—reach Paris. They are desperate to find a way to join relatives in London but with Germany threatening to invade Holland and Belgium, routes across the Channel are blocked. France starts to mobilize her army and strengthen defenses. The Allies declare war on Germany. Hoping to earn some money and find an escape route, Willy signs up with the reconstituted Czechoslovak army based in the south of France, under French military command. Sophie, still with Pavel in Paris finds part-time work at CAFÉ BUDAPEST, run by an old Hungarian baker and his wife. A few weeks later, Pavel and Sophie flee south only to be swept up in the panic when France surrenders. In an emergency evacuation, the Kohut family along with thousands of Czechoslovak soldiers and refugees are evacuated by the British Navy to Gibraltar. Britain faces the Axis powers alone. The future is uncertain.
Susan Welch0.0 Can love for a secret child heal old wounds?
"In A THREAD SO FINE, Susan Welch has written a beautiful story of sisters, history and love. The Malone sisters remind us a of a time – not so long ago – when a woman’s autonomy and self-realization often came at a price. Shannon and Eliza grabbed hold of my heart and carried it with them until the final, satisfying pages." Tara Conklin, NYT Bestselling Author of 'The House Girl' and 'The Last Romantics.'
Introspective and artistic Shannon Malone and her more popular sister Eliza are Irish twins and best friends. In the summer of 1946 as womanhood approaches, both look forward to promising--but different-futures. When tragedy strikes and rocks the Malone family to the core, one sister leaves, possibly forever. The other, physically and emotionally scarred, vows to hold the invisible thread that runs between them. In the course of her journey, she discovers a secret child and the true meaning of family, but is it enough to bring her sister home?
Karen Treiger0.0 Sam and Esther Goldberg met in the Polish forest – just outside of the Treblinka Death Camp. It was August 3, 1943, just one day after Sam escaped the Camp during a prisoner uprising. With 870,000 murdered at Treblinka, Sam was one of approximately 65 to survive and live until the end of the war. Esther had been hiding in that patch of forest for a year and was out that morning, looking for mushrooms to eat. They met and after hearing of the prisoner revolt, she took him to the Righteous Gentiles who, at great danger to themselves, hid them in their barn for three days while the Nazis, Ukrainians and Poles scoured the area looking for escapees. Deciding to stay and hide with Esther, they dug a forest pit where they “lived” when it was not freezing. They subsisted in the pit and the barns – hungry, cold, and scared – for another year until they were liberated by the Red Army in July of 1944.
This is only one piece of their harrowing story of survival. This book tells the story of Sam and Esther, Holocaust survivors, who lost their entire families because of Hitler’s Final Solution. After four years in Displaced Person’s Camps, they arrived in New York Harbor to build a new life.
The author, Karen Treiger, is Sam and Esther’s daughter-in-law, and with in-depth research and a bit of luck was able to find the three surviving children of the Styś families – those Righteous Gentiles who helped Sam and Esther during that dark time. She and her family traveled to Poland to walk in Sam and Esther’s footsteps and to meet the Styś children. It was intensely emotional, and the family heard some of what Sam and Esther lived through from those who helped them survive. Also, with the help of a Polish Priest, she was able to locate and meet a Goldberg cousin they never knew they had.
My Soul is Filled with Joy: A Holocaust Story brings to life the horror of the Nazis’ actions and the toll that it exacted on so many Jewish families. This is also a story of hope, love and determination; of a family rediscovering the path taken by their parents to find life and freedom in a new world. Sam and Esther’s story is one of love and the will to live no matter what they had to endure. It reminds us that we are still learning the lessons of the Holocaust.
Halie Fewkes0.0 Ebby didn’t know she was the new Human Epic until the day she was captured, stuck with the new Escali Epic, Vack, and told to be friends with him. They’re the two most powerful kids in the world, destined to be enemy combatants like every Epic before them, but they've been imprisoned together in hopes they might resolve some of their differences. Unfortunately, Vack would rather push Ebby out a window than befriend her, while Ebby thinks Vack is a barbarian who might eat her, and the result is chaos.
Allie and Archie are thrown into the fray when they’re asked to help a team of brutal hunters find and rescue Ebby. Archie makes recovering the Epic a priority, but Allie couldn’t be pulled any harder in the opposite direction. Rescuing a little girl sounds like the right thing to do, but leaving Ebby in the hands of the Escalis has a different appeal. If Ebby and Vack existed to do more than fight one another, they could change the course of the entire Human Escali war.
Nan Rossiter0.0 New York Times and USA Today bestselling author Nan Rossiter brings together characters from her acclaimed novel Nantucket in a powerful, heartwarming love story that bridges past and present.
When Liam Tate was seven years old, his uncle Cooper opened his heart and his Nantucket home to him. In the intervening decades, Liam has found both love and loss on the island, and since learning of his son Levi's existence, a new kind of happiness. Yet one piece of his family history remains elusive--the long-ago romance between his uncle and Sally Adams. Now Sally has a revelation that sets the whole town abuzz: She's publishing a book about what happened during the summer when she and Cooper first met, painting a picture so vivid it feels like yesterday . . .
In 1969, Winston Ellis Cooper III lands on Nantucket with only a duffel bag and a bottle of Jack Daniels. He finds a sparsely furnished beach cottage, about as far from Vietnam as he can get. But even here, Cooper can't withdraw from the world entirely. Especially once his eyes meet Sally's in the flickering lights of a summer dance. The effects of that fiery affair can still be felt decades later. And as the story unfolds, there are new lessons for all to learn about life's triumphs and heartaches, and about loving enough to let go.
Kristin Jarvis Adams0.0 Recognized by the Wall Street Journal , the Washington Post , and NBC News , this award-winning, laugh-out-loud, reach-for-the-tissues story of an autistic boy's desperate struggle to survive a deadly illness and the backyard chicken who transforms his life into a tale of improbable hope and miraculous healing is nothing short of remarkable .
World-renowned author and autism spokesperson TEMPLE GRANDIN calls The Chicken Who Saved Us "Heartbreakingly beautiful."
Eight-year-old Andrew is autistic and bilingual. He speaks English and Chicken. With words limited by autism, Andrew lives in a fantastic world where chickens talk and superheroes come alive. But when he tells his pet chicken Frightful that his body is trying to kill him, it launches Andrew's family and an entire medical community into a decade-long quest for answers. This beautiful, fierce, and refreshingly honest memoir takes readers on a mother's journey through the complex landscape of modern medicine to discover the healing bond between a boy and Frightful, the chicken who saves them all.
"This book is proof that the transcendent human-animal bond can offer a genuine kind of salvation." - Julie Barton , New York Times Bestselling Author of Dog Medicine, How My Dog Saved Me from Myself
"A lovely tale that shows us how human thoughts and words are not always necessary to form great friendships and unbreakable bonds." - John Elder Robison , New York Times Bestselling Author of Look Me in the My Life with Asperger's
Nancy Pearl Book Award Winner, Independent Publishers Award Winner, Eric Hoffer Grand Prize Finalist, Washington State Book Award Finalist
Эшли Суини0.0 After the tragic death of her husband and son on a remote island in Washington’s San Juan Islands, Eliza Waite joins the throng of miners, fortune hunters, business owners, con men, and prostitutes traveling north to the Klondike in the spring of 1898. When Eliza arrives in Skagway, Alaska, she has less than fifty dollars to her name and not a friend in the world―but with some savvy, and with the help of some unsavory characters, Eliza opens a successful bakery on Skagway’s main street and befriends a madam at a neighboring bordello. Occupying this space―a place somewhere between traditional and nontraditional feminine roles―Eliza awakens emotionally and sexually. But when an unprincipled man from her past turns up in Skagway, Eliza is fearful that she will be unable to conceal her identity and move forward with her new life. Part diary, part recipe file, and part Gold Rush history, Eliza Waite transports readers to the sights, sounds, smells, and tastes of a raucous and fleeting era of American history.
Lori Tobias0.0 **Winner of the 2017 Nancy Pearl Book Award for Best Book of Fiction (Literary/Mainstream) from the Pacific Northwest Writer's Association Set in the 1980s in the rural community of Bidarkee Bay, Alaska, a fictional area the size of a small state with a population of barely 20,000, Wander is the story of Patrice “Pete” Nash, a young broadcast reporter who finds herself facing the winter alone after her husband, Nate, accepts a job on “the slope.” As Pete pursues the next big breaking news story, she strikes up a friendship with the new guy in town, the Ivy League-educated Ren, who recites poetry and lives in the family-owned, vacant inn. Their friendship offers a glimpse of a different kind of life – one that seems to Pete to offer everything marriage to the country-raised Nate does not. But unbeknown to Pete, Ren has come to Alaska for his own dark reasons – to end his life. By the time, Nate returns home, their lives have been irrevocably changed. One man is dead, two others missing and a third forever lost to them.
"The Girl Who Wrote in Silk is a beautiful story that brought me to tears more than once, and was a testament to the endurance of the human spirit and the human heart. A powerful debut that proves the threads that interweave our lives can withstand time and any tide, and bind our hearts forever."-Susanna Kearsley, New York Times bestselling author
Inspired by true events, Kelli Estes's brilliant and atmospheric novel serves as a poignant tale of two women determined to do the right thing, and the power of our own stories.
The smallest items can hold centuries of secrets...
Inara Erickson is exploring her deceased aunt's island estate when she finds an elaborately stitched piece of fabric hidden in the house. As she peels back layer upon layer of the secrets it holds, Inara's life becomes interwoven with that of Mei Lein, a young Chinese girl mysteriously driven from her home a century before. Through the stories Mei Lein tells in silk, Inara uncovers a tragic truth that will shake her family to its core ― and force her to make an impossible choice.
"A touching and tender story about discovering the past to bring peace to the present."― Duncan Jepson, author of All the Flowers in Shanghai
Nicholas John Briejer0.0 Arrested on October 6,1943, Dr. Pieter Schoorl listened to the heavy iron doors of a basement cell in the Gestapo's Amsterdam headquarters close behind him. It had been easy for him to hide the first Jew—a blonde-haired, blue-eyed three-year-old. And had Dr. Schoorl and his wife Anne helped only the one child, this would be a far simpler story. But the pleas for help never ended. Dutch commandoes met at the Schoorls' kitchen table, and shot-down Allied pilots shared breakfast with their five children. Jews continually arrived at the Schoorls' farm unannounced in the dark of night. The couple eventually filled their two homes with “guests.” When there was no room left, they searched the countryside for more hiding places. Nearly seven decades later their American grandson, Nicholas Briejer, travels to Europe in search of the grandparents he did not know. Through the memories of Piet and Anne’s elderly children, he discovers not only their secluded farm, but the qualities of the heart that drove the couple to—in the words of his grandfather—do “what any man should.”
Jennifer Murphy0.0 One man, three wives, the perfect murder. A scintillating novel of betrayal and conspiracy.
Picasso Lane is twelve years old when her father, Oliver, is murdered at their summer beach house. Her mother, Diana, is the primary suspect—until the police discover his second wife, and then his third. The women say they have never met—but Picasso knows otherwise. Picasso remembers the morning beautiful Jewels showed up at their house, carrying the same purse as her mother, and a family portrait featuring her father with two strange boys. Picasso remembers lifting the phone, listening to late night calls with Bert, a woman heavily pregnant with Oliver's fourth child. As the police circle and a detective named Kyle Kennedy becomes a regular fixture in their home, Picasso tries to make sense of her father's death, the depth of his deceit, and the secrets that bind these three women. Cunningly paced and plotted, I Love You More is a riveting novel of misplaced loyalty, jealousy, and revenge.
Greg Michaels0.0 Loosely based on the life of Jacques Casanova, The Secrets of Casanova is a rich, lush novel of love, sex, family, ambition, intrigue, and adventure. Set in Paris of 1755, Casanova's luck is fading and his past is shoving up against his present with potentially disastrous consequences. What price must he pay to uncover a treasure of inestimable value? What hearts must he break along the way? Casanova's will and destiny collide again and again in this riveting historical fiction that brings to light a man of great passion and not a few secrets.
