By the end of the 15th century, the beauty and creativity of Italy is matched by its brutality and corruption, nowhere more than in Rome and inside the Church. When Cardinal Rodrigo Borgia buys his way into the papacy as Alexander VI, he is defined by his blood: He is a Spanish Pope in a city run by Italians. If the Borgias are to triumph, this charismatic, consummate politician must use papacy and family --- in particular, his eldest son, Cesare, and his daughter Lucrezia --- in order to succeed.

Along the Mississippi River, in a Depression-era stadium, young prospects from all over the world compete for a chance to move up through the baseball ranks to the major leagues. Award-winning essayist Lucas Mann turns his eye on the players, the coaches, the fans, the radio announcer, the town, and finally on himself, a young man raised on baseball, driven to know what still draws him to the stadium.

DAMAGE CONTROL displays Amber Dermont's remarkable gift for portraying characters at crossroads. In “Damage Control,” a young man works at an etiquette school while his girlfriend is indicted for embezzlement. A widow rents herself to elderly women and vacations with them as a “professional grandchild” in “Stella at the Winter Palace.” And in “The Language of Martyrs,” a couple houses a mail-order bride on behalf of the husband’s Russian mother.

Professor David Ullman doesn’t believe in demons, though his extensive knowledge of the literature of the demonic --- especially Milton’s PARADISE LOST --- has won him wide acclaim. When he is lured to Venice on a mysterious journey, he loses his 12-year-old daughter to an ancient evil that will force him to come face to face with all he knows about the underworld and the faith required to defeat it.

It has been 20 years since Philip McBride's body was found along the riverbank in the dark woods known as Happy Hollow. His death was ruled a suicide. But three people have carried the truth ever since --- Philip didn't kill himself that day. He was murdered. Each of them have wilted in the shadow of their sins. Yet what cannot be laid to rest is bound to rise again. These three will be drawn together for a final confrontation between life and death, between truth and lies.

In 1962, two students meet one evening during their senior year at Harvard --- Ed, a Jewish kid on scholarship, and Hugh, a Boston Brahmin with the world at his feet. Ed is ambitious and girl-crazy, while Hugh pines for the one girl he's ever loved. An immediate, intense friendship is sparked that night between these two opposites, which ends just as abruptly, several years later, although only one of them understands why.

When the story opens on May 11, 2011, Sara’s son, Jason, has been missing for nine days from a Special Operations Forces mission on the same night as the Bin Laden raid. Through letters Jason writes home from his training and early missions, we get a picture of a strong, compassionate leader. His exceptional abilities will give him the chance to participate in a wholly different level of assignment, the most important and dangerous of his career. At the end, Sara will find herself on an unexpected journey full of surprises.

For 25 years, millions of Americans watched Jack Perkins on NBC News as a correspondent, commentator and anchorman. Yet at the age of 52 and at the height of his career, Jack disappeared from the public eye and moved with his wife, Mary Jo, to a bare-necessities cabin on an uninhabited island off the coast of Maine. This isolated home they came to call Moosewood was the setting for Jack and Mary Jo’s spiritual awakening.

Drawing from the voices and experiences of the women who lived and worked in the top-secret World War II town of Oak Ridge, Tennessee, THE GIRLS OF ATOMIC CITY rescues a remarkable, forgotten chapter of World War II from obscurity. Denise Kiernan captures the spirit of the times through these women: their pluck, their desire to contribute, and their enduring courage.

Vice Questore Patta asks Brunetti to look into a minor shop-keeping violation committed by the mayor’s future daughter-in-law. Then Brunetti’s wife, Paola, comes to him with a request of her own. The mentally handicapped man who worked at their dry cleaner has just died of a sleeping pill overdose, and Paola loathes the idea that he lived and died without anyone noticing him, or helping him. Brunetti begins to investigate and is surprised when he finds nothing on the man. As far as the Italian government is concerned, he never existed.

Unable to control his racing thoughts, Ben is consumed by his obsessions --- especially Diana Hotchkiss, who Ben knows he can never have. When Diana is found dead outside her apartment, his infatuation drives him on a hunt to find out what happened to the love of his life. Ben soon discovers that the woman he pined for was hiding a shocking double life. And now someone is out to stop Ben from uncovering the truth about Diana's illicit affairs.

PEN/Faulkner Award finalist and New York Times bestselling author Ron Rash turns again to Appalachia to capture lives haunted by violence and tenderness, hope and fear, in stories that span from the Civil War to the present day. In the title story, two drug-addicted friends return to the farm where they worked as boys to steal their former boss's gruesomely unusual war trophies.

With chapters that cover the importance of literary elements such as characters, setting, backstory and conflict, Debbie Macomber uses the structure of a story to illustrate God’s hand in our lives. Each chapter has a storytelling prompt --- a searching question that will help frame our story --- and a sidebar that pulls an idea out of the chapter and expands it with practical tips.

Twelve-year-old William Eng has lived at Seattle’s Sacred Heart Orphanage ever since his mother’s listless body was carried away from their small apartment five years ago. On his birthday --- or rather, the day the nuns designate as his birthday --- William and the other orphans are taken to the historical Moore Theatre, where William glimpses an actress on the silver screen who goes by the name of Willow Frost. Struck by her features, William is convinced that the movie star is his mother.
 

Domenica Ruta grew up with her mother, a drug dealer and user who raised Domenica on a steady diet of Oxycontin. She knew she was far smarter and worse dressed than everyone else she knew, but found solace in writing and reading. As her mother's behavior grew increasingly outrageous and her home life increasingly untenable, Domenica fled her hometown only to become ensnared by the demons of addiction.