Flora is not like other bees. With circumstances threatening her hive’s survival, Flora’s curiosity is regarded as a dangerous flaw, but her courage and strength are an asset. However, when she breaks the most sacred law of all --- daring to challenge the Queen’s fertility --- enemies abound. Her deepest instincts to serve and sacrifice are now overshadowed by an even deeper desire, a fierce maternal love that will lead her to unthinkable deeds.

Nombeko Mayeki was fated to grow up fast and die early in her poverty-stricken township. But she finds work as a housecleaner and eventually makes her way up to the position of chief advisor, at the helm of one of the world's most secret projects. South Africa developed six nuclear missiles in the 1980s, then voluntarily dismantled them in 1994. This is a story about the seventh missile, the one that was never supposed to have existed.

ASTORIA is the true-adventure tale of the 1810 Astor Expedition, an epic, now forgotten, three-year journey to forge an American empire on the Pacific Coast. Peter Stark offers a harrowing saga in which a band of explorers battled nature, starvation and madness to establish the first American settlement in the Pacific Northwest and opened up what would become the Oregon trail, permanently altering the nation's landscape and its global standing.

Kit Noonan has never known the identity of his father --- a mystery that his wife insists he must solve to move forward with his life. Out of desperation, Kit goes to the mountain retreat of his mother’s former husband, Jasper, a take-no-prisoners outdoorsman. There, in the midst of a fierce blizzard, Kit and Jasper confront memories of the bittersweet decade when their families were joined. Reluctantly breaking a long-ago promise, Jasper connects Kit with Lucinda and Zeke Burns, who know the answer he’s looking for.

Young Marcia Garcia, a gifted and smart-mouthed 16-year-old seamstress, lives alone, raising two small boys and guarding a family secret. When she meets Farouk Karam, an ambitious young policeman, the risks and rewards in Marcia’s life amplify forever. The novel follows Marcia and Farouk from their amusing and passionate courtship through personal and historical events that threaten Marcia’s secret, entangle the couple and their children in a scandal, and endanger the future for all of them.

Victoria Woodhull and Tennie Clafli were two sisters whose radical views on sex, love, politics and business threatened the white male power structure of the 19th century and shocked the world. Here, award-winning author Myra MacPherson deconstructs and lays bare the manners and mores of Victorian America, remarkably illuminating the struggle for equality that women are still fighting today.

Many of our most iconic, creative endeavors are not achievements but conversions, corrections after failed attempts. The gift of failure is a riddle. Like the number zero, it will always be both a void and the start of infinite possibility. THE RISE --- a soulful celebration of the determination and courage of the human spirit --- makes the case that many of our greatest triumphs come from understanding the importance of this mystery.

Much has been written about the enduring marriage of President John Adams and his wife, Abigail. But few know of the equally strong bond Abigail shared with her sisters, Mary Cranch and Elizabeth Shaw Peabody, accomplished women in their own right. Now acclaimed biographer Diane Jacobs reveals their moving story, which unfolds against the stunning backdrop of America in its transformative colonial years.

DANCING FISH AND AMMONITES traces the arc of Penelope Lively’s life, stretching from her early childhood in Cairo to boarding school in England to the sweeping social changes of Britain’s 20th century. She reflects on her early love of archaeology, the fragments of the ancients that have accompanied her journey. She also writes insightfully about aging and what life looks like from where she now stands.

CARELESS PEOPLE is a unique literary investigation: a gripping double narrative that combines a forensic search for clues to an unsolved crime and a quest for the roots of one of America’s best-loved novels. Acclaimed scholar of American literature Sarah Churchwell reconstructs the events of that pivotal autumn in 1922, revealing in the process new ways of thinking about F. Scott Fitzgerald’s masterpiece.