Adult

It's a late-summer night in Berlin and notorious criminal Ragnar Desche isn't too happy. He's just found his brother, Oskar, dead, frozen stiff and sitting in his home next to a swimming pool full of marijuana plants. Someone's flooded the pool and stolen a Range Rover, but what's worse is that Ragnar's huge cache of drugs is missing-and he's going to want it back. Meanwhile, nearby, a group of teenage girls are out at the movies. Thinking about boys and worrying about acne, they notice that the prettiest member of their clique is missing. She hasn't been seen for days, and the trouble she's found herself in is about to set all of the girls on a collision course with the Desche gang and drag them into a fight for their lives --- a fight that might turn out to be more evenly matched than it first appears.

Sergeant Lester Ferris, who is about to be retired, is serving out his time on the backwater island of Mancreu, a former British colony in legal limbo, belching toxic clouds of waste and facing imminent destruction by an international community concerned for their own safety. The perfect place for Lester is also the perfect location for a multinational array of shady businesses. Meanwhile, he befriends a brilliant, Internet-addled street kid with a comic-book fixation who will need a new home when the island dies.

The six members of the Bradley family have always been close. But in the wake of a tragedy that leaves a hole in the very center of their lives, they suddenly find themselves coming apart. Claire, a convert to the Mormon faith, is so shattered by what's happened that she can't even bring herself to get out of bed. Meanwhile, her husband, Ian, is utterly consumed with ministering to his congregation, even as his family falls to pieces all around him.

Summer is a busy season at the Rose Harbor Inn, so proprietor Jo Marie Rose and handyman Mark Taylor have spent a lot of time together keeping the property running. Jo Marie knows surprisingly little about Mark’s life, due in no small part to his refusal to discuss it. She’s determined to learn more about his past, but first she must face her own --- and welcome three visitors who, like her, are setting out on new paths.

If you are crazy about French painting and picturesque villages, then Susan Vreeland’s latest novel should be right up your cobblestoned street. LISETTE’S LIST focuses on Post-Impressionists Cézanne and Pissarro, as seen through the eyes of a young, art-loving Parisian woman who has come with her husband to a new world: Provence.

On July 8, 1879, the USS Jeannette set sail from San Francisco to cheering crowds in the grip of "Arctic Fever." The ship sailed into uncharted seas, but soon was trapped in pack ice. Two years into the harrowing voyage, the hull was breached. Amid the rush of water and the shrieks of breaking wooden boards, the crew abandoned the ship. Thus began their long march across the endless ice --- a frozen hell in the most lonesome corner of the world --- as they desperately strove for survival.

Gail Gutradt was at a crossroads in her life when she learned of the Wat Opot Children's Community. Begun with just fifty dollars in the pocket of Wayne Dale Matthysse, a former Marine Corps medic in Vietnam, Wat Opot, a temple complex nestled among Cambodia's verdant rice paddies, was once a haunted scrubland that became a place of healing and respite where children with or orphaned by HIV/AIDS could live outside of fear or judgment, and find a new family-a place that Gutradt calls "a workshop for souls."

FitzChivalry --- royal bastard and former king's assassin --- has left his life of intrigue at Buckkeep far behind. As far as the rest of the world knows, FitzChivalry Farseer is dead. Masquerading as Tom Badgerlock, Fitz is now married and leading the quiet life of a country squire with his beloved Molly. The only problem is the disappearance of his beloved childhood friend, the Fool. But for a former royal assassin, a quiet life is hard to maintain when old allegiances keep trying to pull him back and new enemies come calling.

It’s October 1962, and the Soviet Union has smuggled missiles into Cuba. Kennedy and Khrushchev are in the midst of a military face-off that could lead to nuclear conflagration. The only way for the two leaders to negotiate safely is to open a “back channel” --- a surreptitious path of communication hidden from their own people. They need a clandestine emissary nobody would ever suspect. If the secret gets out, her life will be at risk…but they’re careful not to tell her that.

Claire Díaz-Ortiz went to Kenya to climb a mountain. But God had other plans. HOPE RUNS is the emotional story of an American tourist, a Kenyan orphan, and how one day became one year that would change the course of both of their lives forever. It's about opening your heart to outrageous possibilities. It's about what it means to hope for the things you cannot see. It's about how God can change your life in the blink of an eye.