A perfect ten, Bea is a woman who knows her own worth and is willing to employ her beauty to achieve her ultimate goal—marrying not just a rich man, but a mega-millionaire. And she’s found her mark, the sweet, seemingly uncomplicated Collin Case. Sure he’s a little dull, but big bucks are big bucks and Bea has been in the game long enough that she’s getting tired of being the most beautiful woman in the room—it’s a lot of work to keep up, to ceaselessly laugh at stupid jokes, pretend the men she dates are the greatest lovers, the most scintillating, and as wonderful as they think they are.
““By the time I happened upon Collin Case,” she tells readers in “Stone Cold Fox,” “I had already dated more than my fair share of New York ‘somebodies’ with middling personalities and big-enough bank accounts. They were relatively easy to find when you looked like me. I spent hundreds of my hard-earned dollars on fresh highlights every four to six weeks. I mastered an authentic feminine titter for jokes that weren’t remotely amusing as I grazed nearly non-existent biceps with my perfectly manicured hands, an almond shape on each nail. And I regularly choked down liquid meals with organic ingredients on the regular to stave off a bloated belly and thighs that touch. I did everything I had observed as a child because ultimately it works. I watched her do it for years. But what I learned rather quickly is that dating men in that particular orbit is no picnic at all.”
But snagging Collin and getting a big sparkling diamond ring isn’t the hard part of her matrimonial quest. It’s getting his parents, the elite, snobbish, and oh-so-superior heirs to the Case family fortune, to approve of her. And then there’s the added roadblock, Collin’s longtime friend Gale. No match in the looks department, Gale has had a long-time crush on Collin and intellectually a match for Bea she’s determined to deep-six the couple’s wedding plans.
If Bea was an ordinary gold digger, it might be easy to root for Gale. But Bea was the pawn of her avaricious mother who married men and then discarded them, leaving Bea unsettled, sad, and afraid to trust. Everything is a challenging game to Bea, one that must be won. She’s afraid to forge connections, her guard is always up. She can’t help but analyze every nuance of a relationship in stark terms, planning her next parry and thrust. As she and Gale play their cat and mouse games, with Gale slowly unraveling the false identity and façade that Bea has built to protect her past—and it’s a doozy—from being discovered, Bea begins to realize she might lose Collin and her carefully created identity. She has to make choices—how much is it worth to protect what she has and hopes to have?
Author Rachel Koller Croft, a novelist and WGA award nominated screenwriter lives in Los Angeles where she has scripted projects for Blumhouse, Sony Pictures Entertainment and Comedy Central, among others. She is also a current nominee for a Writer’s Guild Award for her work on the Torn Hearts film starring Katey Sagal. Croft lives by the beach with her husband, Charles, and their rescue pitbull, Juniper. who lives in L.A., says she writes about bitches and glamour. And she sure makes it fun.
Ross Carley’s first four novels feature PI and computer hacker Wolf Ruger, an Iraq vet with PTSD. Dead Drive(2016) and Formula Murder, set in the formula racing industry (2017) are murder mysteries.
Cyberthrillers Cyberkill (2018) andCryptokill (2020) are books one and two of the Cybercode Chronicles. His fifth novel, The Three-Legged Assassin, featuring assassin Lance Garrett, was released in February 2022. Ross is an artificial intelligence and cybersecurity consultant. He and Francie split their time between Indiana and Florida.
Ross Carley, a former engineering professor who served as a military intelligence officer and was the CTO of a defense contractor, is also the author of four books in the computational intelligence area.
Didn’t get a ticket for Taylor Swift’s upcoming tour? Don’t despair. Think of all the money you saved when jamming out instead to Midnights along with a good book instead. The librarians at Libby, an app for borrowing ebooks, audiobooks, magazines, and more that let’s you borrow from your local library for free, went track by track to come up with pairings to go along with the new album, check out that list here.
The best part? Unlike a $700+ floor seat and hours of Ticketmaster torture, these books are free. So instead of a credit card, just whip out your library card.
Piper Bellinger is an Instagram wild child with a trust fund and a penchant for riling up the paparazzi. A lot of people make assumptions about her, including Brendan—at first. Both characters show that there’s more than meets the eye and they don’t give a darn what people think if they’re meant to be together.
Jokes about Jacob Black and Renesmee aside, this song captures the vibe of the franchise and the era of the books and movies so well. Whether it evokes Bella’s four-month depression (Hello, One day I’ll watch as you’re leaving / And life will lose all its meaning), Edward feeling like “a monster on the hill” and a danger to his love, or truly the “covert narcissism” disguised “as altruism” from just about every Cullen, this song has the Twilight franchise covered.
Addie makes a deal with the devil and lives forever, but is forgotten by everyone she meets. That’s until she meets a man who remembers her name. A lot of her life and loves feel like snow on the beach: weird but beautiful and, often, impossible.
With lyrics like, I didn’t choose this town, I dream of getting out and I hosted parties and starved my body / Like I’d be saved by a perfect kiss down to the repetition of You’re on your own, kid, you always have been, this song evokes so many of the feelings Jennette describes throughout her book: navigating life with her mother, being forced into Hollywood and just doing her best to survive.
Micah is the “Prince of Chicago.” He runs a popular (anonymous) Instagram filled with drawings of his numerous, imaginary boyfriends. He’s got it all, but knows he’s so much more than that. When Boy 100 turns into his very first boyfriend, he finds that love is so much more than what’s been living in his head. He has to fight the hurt as he tries to make his own name while Boy 100 is chasing the fame.
Auden spends a lot of nights reading or walking around town—basically doing anything but sleep. She runs into a fellow night owl, Eli, and they form a friendship as they both try to work through their stuff. These lyrics match perfectly:
Good girl, sad boy, big city, wrong choices. We had one thing goin’ on I swear that it was somethin’ / ‘Cause I don’t remember who I was before you painted all my nights / A color I’ve searched for since.
There are so many strong, powerful and amazing women in literature who could absolutely “draw the cat eye, sharp enough to kill a man,” but from the jump, this song evokes thoughts of sticking it to The Capitol. Whether dressing for revenge, or taking down the corrupt system from the inside, Katniss Everdeen and her crew are up to some vigilante sh*t.
Daisy has a way of capturing the attention of everyone in the room when she walks in. She shimmers and shines, but there’s more to her than meets the eye.
Isla is a hopeless romantic who might finally have a chance with Josh, a guy she’s had a crush on forever. But they have a lot of obstacles to overcome in this sweet and intense romance.
We could totally imagine “Karma” as Lily’s anthem as she navigates the tricky dynamics of her ex, Ryle, and the feelings she has for Atlas as they meet again as adults. Lily deserves her second chance at love despite the others that keep trying to bring her down.
Beach Read follows January, a romance author who doesn’t believe in love anymore, and Augustus, a literary author who’s a bit of a cynic. A romance, yes, but you’ll need the tissues ready!
All that you ever wanted from me was sweet nothin’.
This is such a magical and spooky series by Bray, filled with love and mysterious powers. There are so many moments in this book that feel like they only happen when all the stars aligned, and the love story of Theta and Memphis is surely one of them. From their chance meeting during the raid of the Hotsy Totsy club in Book 1, to discovering Theta’s past in Book 3, this pair absolutely embodies “the first night that you saw me nothing was gonna stop me.”
After you soak in the new album, head over to the Libby reading app to find the perfect book match.
About the Author
Joe Skelley has always been a lover of reading and passionate about the library. His love of libraries brought him to OverDrive where he works on the Events team, working with the Digital Bookmobile and co-hosts the Professional Book Nerds podcast. Joe loves thrillers, magical realism and the broad spectrum of YA. When he’s not working, Joe loves to listen to audiobooks and podcasts, watch YouTube, get too involved in a DIY project and (most importantly) play with his Boston Terrier, Roscoe.
Borrow ebooks, audiobooks, magazines and more from your local library for free! Libby is the newer library reading app by OverDrive, loved by millions of readers worldwide.
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Shelf Life 