Jon Krakauer chronicles the searing experiences of several women in Missoula --- the nights when they were raped; their fear and self-doubt in the aftermath; the way they were treated by the police, prosecutors and defense attorneys; the public vilification and private anguish; their bravery in pushing forward and what it cost them. Krakauer’s dispassionate, carefully documented account of what these ladies endured cuts through the abstract ideological debate about campus rape.

Bill Blair finds the land by accident, three wooded acres in a rustic community south of San Francisco, and buys the property on a whim. In Penny Greenway he finds a suitable wife, and they marry and have four kids. Thirty years later, the three oldest Blair children, now adults and still living near the family home, are disrupted by the return of the youngest, whose sudden presence and all-too-familiar troubles force a reckoning with who they are, separately and together, and set off a struggle over the family’s future.

Mercy Louis, the star of the championship girls’ basketball team, seems destined for greatness, but the road out of town is riddled with obstacles. At the periphery of her world floats team manager Illa Stark, who is spellbound by Mercy’s beauty and talent. But a note discovered in Mercy’s gym locker reveals that her life may not be as perfect as it appears. The last day of school brings the disturbing discovery, and as summer unfolds and the police investigate, every girl becomes a suspect.

In a split second, everything Caroline Cashion has known is proved to be a lie. A single bullet is found lodged at the base of her skull. Caroline is stunned. She has never been shot. Then, over the course of one awful evening, she learns the truth: that she was adopted when she was three years old after her real parents were murdered. She was wounded too, a gunshot to the neck. Surgeons had stitched up the traumatized little girl, with the bullet still there. Now, Caroline has to find the truth of her past.

Kitty Miller loves the bookshop she runs with her best friend, Frieda, and enjoys complete control over her day-to-day existence. But then the dreams begin. Katharyn Andersson is married to Lars, the love of her life, and they have beautiful children. It’s everything Kitty once believed she wanted. Convinced that these dreams are simply due to her overactive imagination, Kitty enjoys her nighttime forays into this alternate world. But with each visit, the more irresistibly real Katharyn’s life becomes.

In 1844, shy Missouri belle Julia Dent met Lieutenant Ulysses S. Grant, a brilliant horseman and reluctant soldier. The two fell deeply in love, but the groom’s abolitionist family refused to attend their wedding ceremony. Despite her new husband’s objections, Julia kept as her slave another Julia, known as Jule. Both women risked certain danger as they traveled to and from the field of war. Though Julia secretly taught Jule how to read, the signing of the Emancipation Proclamation inspired Jule to make a daring bid for freedom. 

OUTLINE is a novel in 10 conversations that follows a novelist teaching a course in creative writing during one oppressively hot summer in Athens. She leads her students in storytelling exercises, meets other visiting writers for dinner and discourse, and goes swimming in the Ionian Sea with her neighbor from the plane. The people she encounters speak volubly about themselves. And through these disclosures, a portrait of the narrator is drawn by contrast --- a portrait of a woman learning to face a great loss.

The year is 1853, and the Habsburgs are Europe’s most powerful ruling family. With his empire stretching from Austria to Russia, from Germany to Italy, Emperor Franz Joseph is young, rich and ready to marry. Fifteen-year-old Elisabeth, “Sisi,” Duchess of Bavaria, travels to the Habsburg Court with her older sister, who is betrothed to the young emperor. But shortly after her arrival at court, Sisi finds herself in an unexpected dilemma: she has inadvertently fallen for and won the heart of her sister’s groom.

Looking beyond the familiar Little Italys and stereotypes fostered by The Godfather and “The Sopranos,” Maria Laurino reveals surprising, fascinating lives: Italian-Americans working on sugar-cane plantations in Louisiana to those who were lynched in New Orleans; the banker who helped rebuild San Francisco after the great earthquake; and families interned as “enemy aliens” in World War II. This book is both an exploration and celebration of the rich legacy of Italian-American life.

Embittered and distrusting, Vida is harassed by Delphi’s racist sheriff and haunted by the son she lost to the world. Hazel, too, has lost a son and can’t keep a grip on her fractured life. After drunkenly crashing her car into a manger scene while gunning for the baby Jesus, Hazel is sedated and bed-ridden. Hazel’s husband hires Vida to keep tabs on his unpredictable wife and to care for his sole surviving son. Forced to spend time together, the two women find they have more in common than they thought, and together they turn the town on its head.