Adult

Emmaline Nelson and her sister, Birdie, grow up in the Lutheran world of strict parents, strict milking times and strict morals. Though it’s 1958, southern Minnesota did not see changing roles for women on the horizon. Only when Emmy’s fiancé shows his true colors and forces himself on her does she find the courage to act. She discovers that the KKK is not only active in the Midwest but that her family is involved, and her sense of the firm rules she grew up under --- and their effect --- changes completely.

Joe Pickett had good reason to dislike Dallas Cates, even if he was a rodeo champion, and now he has even more --- Joe’s 18-year-old ward, April, has run off with him. And then comes even worse news: The body of a girl has been found in a ditch along the highway --- it is April, and the doctors aren’t sure if she’ll recover. Cates denies having anything to do with it, but Joe knows in his gut who’s responsible. What he doesn’t know is the kind of danger he’s about to encounter.

As a fierce tropical storm swirls toward the Florida coast, the state's powerful political circles are experiencing turbulence of their own. The leading candidate for governor, Diane Fairmont, has received a death threat that promises to repeat a massacre from 10 years before. Bad weather and bad blood await Detective Cab Bolton, who must withstand the malevolent cyclone in order to stop this murderous cycle.

On a ship bound for England to visit her aging father after her stepmother summons her home, Maisie Dobbs realizes she isn’t ready to return. Against the wishes of the captain, who warns her, “You will be alone in a most dangerous place,” she disembarks in Gibraltar. Days after her arrival, a photographer and member of Gibraltar’s Sephardic Jewish community is murdered, and Maisie becomes entangled in the case and renews an uneasy acquaintance in the process.

The first career-spanning collection of short fiction by Sir Terry Pratchett --- one of the most beloved and bestselling writers of our time --- A BLINK OF THE SCREEN charts the development of Pratchett’s creative vision throughout his prolific career, from his early writings in school to the dizzy mastery of the phenomenally successful Discworld series. Along the way, we are introduced to the first published pieces from Pratchett’s stint as a young journalist, the experimental stories that originated his later works, and the lyrics to the national anthem of Ankh-Morpork, among other treats.

In 1540, 12-year-old Jahan arrives in Istanbul. As an animal tamer in the sultan’s menagerie, he looks after the exceptionally smart elephant Chota and befriends (and falls for) the sultan’s beautiful daughter, Princess Mihrimah. A palace education leads Jahan to Mimar Sinan, the empire’s chief architect, who takes Jahan under his wing as they construct (with Chota’s help) some of the most magnificent buildings in history. Yet even as they build Sinan’s triumphant masterpieces, dangerous undercurrents begin to emerge, with jealousy erupting among Sinan’s four apprentices.

When Thomas Pitt is tasked with playing bodyguard to Sofia Delacruz, a young and controversial British preacher who has been living in Spain and has returned to England on a mysterious errand, he thinks it’s a waste of Special Branch’s time and resources. But when kidnappers manage to reach Sofia --- murdering two of her companions in the process --- Pitt learns that the message the lovely evangelist was meant to deliver was far more urgent than he knew.

The dark-eyed woman in the long black gown was first seen in the 1970s, standing near a fireplace. La Posada had been a grand Santa Fe home before it was converted to a hotel. Julia Schuster Staab, the wife of the home’s original owner, died nearly a century before the hauntings were first reported. In AMERICAN GHOST, Hannah Nordhaus traces the life, death and unsettled afterlife of her great-great-grandmother --- from her childhood in Germany to her years in the American West with her Jewish merchant husband.

Van Shaw was raised to be a thief, but at 18 he suddenly broke all ties to that life and joined the military --- abandoning his illicit past and the career-criminal grandfather who taught him the trade. Now, after 10 years of silence, his grandfather has asked him to come home to Seattle. But when Van arrives, he discovers his grandfather bleeding out on the floor from a gunshot to the head. Van knows he’s sure to be the main suspect, and the only way he can clear his name is to go back to the world he’d sworn to leave behind.