In August 2005, Anjan Sundaram abandoned his path to a Yale Ph.D. in mathematics to travel to the Democratic Republic of the Congo and refashion himself as a journalist. He found a country that was diseased, corrupt, and poised on the cusp of war. When Sundaram is engaged as a “stringer” for the Associated Press, he becomes a chronicler for a country he’s just beginning to experience. STRINGER is his searing portrait of life in this broken, lawless place, an account of the rocky education of a reporter.

Cynthia Piantedosi lives a quiet, unassuming life outside of Boston, guided by her Catholic faith. Devoted to her elderly father and not particularly interested in dating and socializing, she develops a deep friendship with her parish priest, who encourages her to explore her faith. When he is killed in a mysterious accident, a message begins to emerge from Cynthia’s prayers: God is calling her to be the first female Catholic priest.

Susan Crandall’s latest novel takes place in the summer of 1963 and introduces readers to nine-year-old Starla Claudelle, who runs away from home to be with her mother in Nashville and is offered a ride by a black woman who is traveling with a white baby. As the two unlikely companions make their long and sometimes dangerous journey, Starla’s eyes are opened to the harsh realities of 1963 southern segregation.

Rosemary Mahoney tells the story of Braille Without Borders, the first school for the blind in Tibet, and of Sabriye Tenberken, the remarkable blind woman who founded the school. Fascinated and impressed by what she learned from the blind children of Tibet, Mahoney was moved to investigate further the cultural history of blindness. As part of her research, she spent three months teaching at Tenberken's international training center for blind adults in Kerala, India.

When a six-year battle with brain cancer ultimately stole his vision, memory, mobility and ability to continue teaching, David Menasche turned to Facebook with an audacious plan: a journey across America in hopes of seeing firsthand how his kids were faring in life. Had he made a difference? Within 48 hours of posting, former students in more than 50 cities replied with offers of support and shelter.

On October 17, 2002, David MacLean “woke up” on a train platform in India with no idea who he was or why he was there. Soon he could remember song lyrics, but not his family, his friends, or the woman he was told he loved. All of these symptoms were the result of the commonly prescribed malarial medication he had been taking. Upon his return to the States, he struggled to piece together the fragments of his former life.

FBI rising star and criminal profiler Evelyn Baine knows how to think like a serial killer. But she's never chased anyone like the Bakersville Burier, who hunts young women and displays them, half-buried, deep in the woods. As the body count climbs, Evelyn's relentless pursuit of the killer puts her career --- and her life --- at risk. And the evil lurking in the Burier's mind may be more than even she can unravel.

In her memoir, Artis Henderson not only recounts the unlikely love story she shared with her husband, Miles, and her unfathomable recovery in the wake of his death --- from the dark hours following the military notification to the first fumbling attempts at new love --- but also reveals how Miles’ death mirrored her father’s death in a plane crash, which Artis survived when she was five years old and left her own mother a young widow.

In 1943, the Nazis liquidated Warsaw’s Jewish ghetto. A year later, they threatened to complete the city’s destruction by deporting its remaining residents. As Soviet soldiers turned back the Nazi invasion of Russia and began pressing west, the underground Polish Home Army decided to act. Taking advantage of German disarray and seeking to forestall the absorption of their country into the Soviet empire, they chose to liberate the city of Warsaw for themselves. WARSAW 1944 tells the story of this brave --- and errant --- calculation.

THE HEIR APPARENT chronicles the eventful life of Queen Victoria’s firstborn son, the quintessential black sheep of Buckingham Palace, who matured into as wise and effective a monarch as Britain has ever seen. Granted unprecedented access to the royal archives, noted scholar Jane Ridley draws on numerous primary sources to paint a vivid portrait of the man and the age to which he gave his name.