Adult

In the wake of a harsh winter, Micah Hamilton and Charlotte Aldrich are grappling with loss and guilt after the disaster that took the lives of their loved ones. Struggling to cope with his grief, Micah abandons his father's dreams of a prosperous ranch and cuts himself off from the rest of the world. Charlotte has loved Micah her entire life and is determined not to lose him as well. With her mother's help, she begins coaxing Micah to live again. Despite their enduring heartache, the affection between them deepens. But just as Charlotte thinks her dreams may come true, a scorned suitor threatens everything she holds dear. Micah and Charlotte must embark on a journey of healing and renewal to build a life founded on faith, hope and love.

Adela Woods is 16 years old and pregnant. Her parents banish her from her comfortable upbringing in Indiana to her grandmother’s home in the small town of Padua Beach, Florida. When she arrives, Adela meets Emory, who brings her newborn to high school, determined to graduate despite the odds; Simone, mother of four-year-old twins, who weighs her options when she finds herself pregnant again; and the rest of the Girls, a group of outcast young moms who raise their growing brood in the back of Simone’s red truck. The town thinks the Girls have lost their way, but really they are finding it: looking for love, making and breaking friendships and navigating the miracle of motherhood and the paradox of girlhood.

On the ship to America, Norwegian immigrant Amalia Gunderson makes a solemn promise to a dying mother, vowing to watch over her five-year-old daughter, Ruth. Together, Amalia and Ruth trek to Iowa to claim the farm and former boardinghouse that Ruth has inherited, despite opposition from a difficult cousin. Struggling with an empty house and scarce resources, Amalia resolves to return the boardinghouse to its former purpose, aided by the kindness of strangers and the resilient spirit of her young charge. As Amalia and Ruth fight for their new home, a trail of orphans shows up on their doorstep, and Amalia makes a promising friend in Absalom Karlsson, the magistrate's son. With each challenge they face, Amalia and Ruth find hope in believing that faith and determination can overcome even the most daunting of trials.

Forensic specialist Laughton Rees is not ashamed of her checkered past, but when Gracie’s father unexpectedly turns up in their lives again, Laughton is automatically wary. Shelby Facer is a dangerous man, formerly imprisoned for his involvement in an international drug trafficking ring. But when Shelby claims that he has information about an especially difficult murder case she is working, she can’t turn him down. A body with no head or hands has recently turned up in the river Thames and the police are at a loss until Shelby identifies the man. The victim was part of a highly secretive smuggling ring Shelby was involved with, which Laughton’s father was investigating before he died. Laughton throws herself into her father’s old files to try to trace the connections between past and present, but as she and DCI Tannahill Khan circle closer to the truth, the case becomes dangerously personal. 

Traditional African/Black American cultures present the crossroads as a place of simultaneous difficulty and possibility. Black women in America are at a third crossroads: attempting to fit into notions of femininity and respectability primarily assigned to White women, while inventing improvisational strategies to combat oppression. In MISBEHAVING AT THE CROSSROADS, Jeffers explores the emotional and historical tensions in Black women’s public lives and her own private life. She charts voyages of Black girlhood to womanhood and the currents buffeting these journeys. As Jeffers shows with empathy and wisdom, naming difficult historical truths represents both Blues and transcendence, a crossroads that speaks.

It's been a year since Penny first walked through the doors of the Dallergut Dream Department Store and surviving a year at the store means one thing. She is now an official employee of the dream industry! She can finally take the express commuter train to the Company District, where all the dream-production companies are located and discover how all raw dream materials and testing equipment are produced. But the Company District is not quite what she expected. Instead it hides a secret underbelly of the magical industry. Penny discovers the Civil Complaint Center, full of people filing complaints about their dreams. She also learns about the regular customers who have stopped coming to the store. As she gets to the bottom of each complaint, she begins to expand her horizons, moving beyond the role of dreamseller to understanding what lies in the hearts of their lost regulars.

In 2012, Greece’s far-right political party the Golden Dawn were building a significant street presence in Greece. Over the previous decade, they had grown from a tiny group of neofascist brawlers to a formidable vigilante force responsible for multiple murders, street fights and shootings. On the eve of the 2012 election, one of their candidates said that the “knives will come out after the elections.” And the knives did come out. Golden Dawn became a significant parliamentary presence and used it as a platform to escalate their terror campaigns against migrants and leftists across the country. Journalist Patrick Strickland traces the antecedents of Golden Dawn to the dark years of Nazi occupation and subsequent military dictatorship, and looks at the post-2008 economic crisis that emboldened the far right.

Mrs. Blossom has a knack for blending into the background, which was an asset during her days assisting private investigator Tess Monaghan. But when she finds a winning lottery ticket in a parking lot, everything changes. When Mrs. Blossom booked her cruise through France on the MS Solitaire, she did not expect to meet Allan on her transatlantic flight. She also didn’t expect Allan to be found, dead, 24 hours later in Paris, a city he wasn’t supposed to be in. Now Mrs. Blossom doesn’t know who to trust on board the ship, especially when a mystifying man, Danny, keeps popping up around every corner, always present when things go awry. He is convinced that Allan was transporting a stolen piece of art and Mrs. Blossom knows more than she lets on, regarding both the artifact and Allan’s death. Mrs. Blossom’s questions only increase as the cruise sails down the Seine. 

Mia Crawford is responsible to a fault. She has to be. Between her high-demand job and taking care of her grandmother and her cats, she has little time for anything else. What time she does have, she pours into reading. Mysteries, romances, thrillers...books filled with women who are far more impulsive than she would ever dream of being. Now, forced into taking a long-overdue vacation, she finds herself on a luxurious private island where she just might have a chance to reinvent herself --- like a heroine in one of her favorite novels. Or she can curl up with a good book on the beach. But when gossipy notes written in the margins of an old book turn out to be clues to the disappearance of another guest, Mia finds herself diving headfirst into a dangerous adventure. With everyone at the resort hiding secrets of their own, she’ll have to solve this real-life mystery before she becomes the next target.

Amid the brutality of the Holocaust, one bright spot shone inside the Nazi death camp of Auschwitz. In the shadows of the smokestacks was a wooden hut where children sang, staged plays, wrote poetry and learned about the world. Within those four walls, brightly adorned with hand-painted cartoons, the youngest prisoners were kept vermin-free, received better food and were even taught to imagine having full stomachs and a day without fear. Their guiding light was a 27-year-old gay, Jewish athlete: Fredy Hirsch. Being a teacher in a brutal concentration camp was no mean feat. Forced to beg senior SS officers for better provisions, Fredy risked his life every day to protect his beloved children from mortal danger. But time was running out for Fredy and the hundreds in his care. Could this man find a way to teach them the one lesson they really needed to know: how to survive?