Adult

Seventeen-year-old Morgan Monetti shocks her parents and her community with one simple act: She chooses to stand by the man everyone else believes has exploited her --- popular high school teacher TJ Hill. Quietly walking across a crowded courtroom to sit behind TJ, and not beside her parents, she announces herself as the adult she believes herself to be.

Set against the backdrop of the historic flooding of the Mississippi River, THE TILTED WORLD --- written by Tom Franklin, the acclaimed author of the New York Times bestseller CROOKED LETTER, CROOKED LETTER, and award-winning poet Beth Ann Fennelly --- is an extraordinary tale of murder and moonshine, sandbagging and saboteurs, and a man and a woman who find unexpected love.

When Meg Cole’s father dies unexpectedly, she’s forced to return home to Texas --- and to Whispering Creek Ranch --- to take up the reins of an empire she’s never wanted. Can the handsome manager of her father’s Thoroughbred farm help Meg face her fears and embrace new hopes for the future?

In this delightful and nuanced tale, young single mom Shandi Pierce stumbles into the middle of a mini-mart robbery. Although her main concern is for her three-year-old son, Natty, the actions of a stranger named William Ashe cause her to plunge irrevocably in love with him. Considering that Shandi has issues with her parents and with circumstances surrounding the birth of Natty, and that William has considerable baggage of his own, the hopeful romantic is in for quite the ride.

In 1915, Australian sisters Naomi and Sally Durance join the war effort as nurses, escaping the confines of their father’s farm and carrying a guilty secret with them. They become the friends they never were at home and find themselves courageous in the face of extreme danger. Each meets an exceptional man: the kind of men for whom they might give up some of their newfound independence --- if only they all survive.

Don Tillman, a brilliant yet socially challenged professor of genetics, designs the Wife Project to find his perfect partner: a 16-page, scientifically valid survey to filter out the drinkers, the smokers, the late arrivers. Rosie Jarman is all these things. But while Don quickly disqualifies her as a candidate, as a DNA expert Don is particularly suited to help Rosie on her own quest: identifying her biological father.

Nora de Jong returns home from work one day to find her mother has been murdered. Her infant daughter is missing. And the only clue is the body of an unknown man on the living-room floor, clutching a Luger in his cold, dead hand. The contents of a locked metal box Nora finds in her parents' attic leave her with as many questions as answers --- and suggest the killer was not a stranger.

TEATIME FOR THE FIREFLY is a charming tale of unexpected romance between two misfits in traditional Indian society. Shona Patel's debut novel is a fish-out-of-water love story told partially through letters, and set within an exotic and enchanting world where social upheaval and the threat of World War II lingers on their doorstep.

In their old age, Harold and Lucille have settled comfortably into life without their son, who died tragically at his eighth birthday party in 1966. But then one day, Jacob mysteriously appears on their doorstep --- still eight years old. All over the world, people's loved ones are returning from beyond. The Hargraves are forced to navigate a mysterious new reality and a conflict that threatens to unravel the very meaning of what it is to be human.

When prestigious plantation owner Cornelius Allen gives his daughter Clarissa’s hand in marriage, she takes with her a gift: Sarah --- her slave and her half-sister. Raised by an educated mother, Clarissa is not the proper southern belle she appears to be with ambitions of loving who she chooses, and Sarah equally hides behind the façade of being a docile house slave as she plots to escape.