Some Engrossing and Consuming Fiction

When racecar driver Sara Hackett arrives home from a desert road race, she finds her niece and another girl have been kidnapped and a dead man has turned up in her bed. The kidnappers want a million dollars she doesn't have or they say they'll kill the kids.

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Plain Truth

By Jodi Picoult

Ellie Hathaway decides to defend an unmarried Amish woman against the charge of the murder of her own child.

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Red River

By Lalita Tademy

The lives of three generations of two African-American families intertwine in the aftermath of the Civil War as newly freed slaves struggle to build new lives in The Bottom, a poor settlement just down Red River from Colfax, Louisiana.

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Cold Rock River

By J. L. Miles

Set in the early Vietnam era, a young white mother uncovers connections between her friendship with a black midwife and her discovery of a century-old slave girl's diary.

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Arlington Park

By Rachel Cusk

Publisher description

Him, Her, Him Again, the End of Him

By Patricia A. Marx

Sample Text

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A Bride Most Begrudging

By Deeanne Gist

When Lady Constance Morrow ?nds herself held against her will aboard a ship bound for the American colonies--a ship ?lled with "tobacco brides" and felons--she is quite sure that as soon as she arrives she will ?nd a reasonable man who will believe her father is an earl and send her back on the next ship to England. Instead she meets Drew O'Connor, a determined Colonial farmer who is nearly as headstrong as she is. Drew wins Constance as his bride but soon realizes he has taken on much more than he bargained for

The Secret Life of Bees

By Sue Monk Kidd

The multi-million bestselling novel about a young girl's journey towards healing and the transforming power of love, from the award-winning author of The Invention of Wings and The Book of Longings Set in South Carolina in 1964, The Secret Life of Bees tells the story of Lily Owens, whose life has been shaped around the blurred memory of the afternoon her mother was killed. When Lily's fierce-hearted Black "stand-in mother," Rosaleen, insults three of the deepest racists in town, Lily decides to spring them both free. They escape to Tiburon, South Carolina—a town that holds the secret to her mother's past. Taken in by an eccentric trio of Black beekeeping sisters, Lily is introduced to their mesmerizing world of bees and honey, and the Black Madonna. This is a remarkable novel about divine female power, a story that women will share and pass on to their daughters for years to come.

Tangerine Dream

By Ken Douglas

Best friends Haley and Taylor must deal with a terrible loss when Taylor's twin sister, Dylan, is killed in a car crash. Meanwhile, Taylor and Dylan's father, a senator running for president and supposedly somewhere on the campaign trail, can't be reached because he is in the arms of a prostitute. While the girls and the twins' mother try to recover and avoid the press in New Zealand, Nick Nesbitt, a television news reporter, senses a story and will stop at nothing to get it.

The Shadow of the Wind

By Carlos Ruiz Zafon

The New York Times bestseller “The Shadow of the Wind is ultimately a love letter to literature, intended for readers as passionate about storytelling as its young hero.” —Entertainment Weekly (Editor's Choice) “One gorgeous read.” —Stephen King Barcelona, 1945: A city slowly heals in the aftermath of the Spanish Civil War, and Daniel, an antiquarian book dealer’s son who mourns the loss of his mother, finds solace in a mysterious book entitled The Shadow of the Wind, by one Julián Carax. But when he sets out to find the author’s other works, he makes a shocking discovery: someone has been systematically destroying every copy of every book Carax has written. In fact, Daniel may have the last of Carax’s books in existence. Soon Daniel’s seemingly innocent quest opens a door into one of Barcelona’s darkest secrets--an epic story of murder, madness, and doomed love.

Silent In The Grave

By Deanna Raybourn

These ominous words, slashed from the pages of a book of Psalms, are the last threat that the darling of London society, Sir Edward Grey, receives from his killer. Before he can show them to Nicholas Brisbane, the private inquiry agent he has retained for his protection, Sir Edward collapses and dies at his London home, in the presence of his wife, Julia, and a roomful of dinner guests. Prepared to accept that Edward's death was due to a long-standing physical infirmity, Julia is outraged when Brisbane visits and suggests that Sir Edward has been murdered. It is a reaction she comes to regret when she discovers the damning paper for herself, and realizes the truth. Determined to bring her husband's murderer to justice, Julia engages the enigmatic Brisbane to help her investigate Edward's demise. Dismissing his warnings that the investigation will be difficult, if not impossible, Julia presses forward, following a trail of clues that lead her to even more unpleasant truths, and ever closer to a killer who waits expectantly for her arrival.

The Sidewalk Artist

By Gina Buonaguro

"Alternating between contemporary and historical Italy, The Sidewalk Artist follows two parallel, intertwined romances, offering readers a unique view of the creative force that has inspired artists and writers for generations."--BOOK JACKET.

Cotton Song

By Tom Bailey

"Baby Allen, a courageous social worker, is assigned to Sally's case, and gradually coaxes the young girl out of hiding, wins her trust, and secures her protection. But once Sally is safe, Baby is left with the greater mission of uncovering the truth about who is responsible for the infant's death - a shocking revelation that will change the ways and attitudes of a town that has been long in need of changing."--BOOK JACKET.

The Dogs of Babel

By Carolyn Parkhurst

In Paul's fantastic and even perilous search for the truth about his wife's death, he abandons his everyday life to embark on a series of experiments designed to teach his dog Lorelei to communicate. Could she really give him the answers he is looking for?

The Madonnas of Leningrad

By Debra Dean

In this sublime debut novel, set amid the horrors of the siege of Leningrad in World War II, a gifted writer explores the power of memory to save . . . and betray.

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The Last of Her Kind

By Sigrid Nunez

Georgette George does not know what to make of her brilliant, idealistic roommate, Ann Drayton, and her obsessive disdain for the ruling class into which she was born. A decade later, Ann is convicted of murder, and Georgette finds more complicated and mysterious forces at work.

Haweswater

By Sarah Hall

The village of Marsdale is a quiet corner of the world, cradled in a remote dale in England's lovely Lake District. The rhythm of life in the deeply religious, sheltered community has not changed for centuries. But in 1936, when Waterworks representative Jack Ligget from industrial Manchester arrives with plans to build a new reservoir, he brings the much feared threat of impending change to this bucolic hamlet. And when he begins an intense and troubled affair with Janet Lightburn—a devout local woman of rare passion and strength of spirit—it can only lead to scandal, tragedy, and remarkable, desperate acts. From Sarah Hall, the internationally acclaimed author of the Man Booker Prize finalist The Electric Michelangelo, comes a stunning and transcendent novel of love, obsession, and the passing of an age.

Everything Must Go

By Elizabeth Flock

Henry Powell, a thirty-one-year-old salesman at a men's clothing store, spends his days fantasizing about an exciting life away from his small New England town, but when the store goes out of business on September 10, 2001, Henry experiences drastic changes.

Augusta Locke

By William Haywood Henderson

The story of one woman's struggles to raise her daughter in the deserts and lonely ranges of Wyoming during the 20th century.

The Rules of Perspective

By Adam Thorpe

On April 3, 1945, the advancing American army shells the historic town of Lohenfelde, and the Kaiser-Wilhelm museum. Within the museum's vaults, Heinrich Hoffer is hiding from the bombardment, and trying to keep a priceless Van Gogh from falling into the hands of a rogue Nazi. After the shelling, an American corporal, Neal Parry, finds a beautiful eighteenth-century oil painting in the rubble, and must confront both its beauty, and the morality of stealing it. The stories of Herr Hoffer, Parry, and their paintings unfold simultaneously in this gripping, brilliantly structured novel about art and war.

The Teahouse Fire

By Ellis Avery

This sweeping debut novel drawn from a history shrouded in secrets follows two women--one American, one Japanese--whose fates become entwined in the rapidly changing world of late-19th-century Japan.

Hot and Bothered

By Annie Downey

Struggling to come to terms with her new life and her new identity now that her husband has left her, a late-thirties mother of two living in Cambridge, Massachusetts, deals with continual visitors to her home--including her ex, currently attending Sex Addicts Anonymous, as well as her hippie mother, alcoholic best friend, God-fearing grandmother, and the Perfect Guy, who also has a gorgeous doctor girlfriend. Original. First serial, Hip Mama.

The World Made Straight

By Ron Rash

In an Appalachian community haunted by the legacy of a Civil War massacre, a rebellious young man struggles to escape the violence that would bind him to the past in this vivid, harrowing, yet ultimately hopeful new novel by the author of "Saints at the River."

When Crickets Cry

By Charles Martin

A man with a painful past. A child with a doubtful future. And a shared journey toward healing for both their hearts. It begins on the shaded town square in a sleepy Southern town. A spirited seven-year-old has a brisk business at her lemonade stand. Her latest customer, a bearded stranger, drains his cup and heads to his car, his mind on a boat he's restoring at a nearby lake. But the little girl's pretty yellow dress can't quite hide the ugly scar on her chest. The stranger understands more about it than he wants to admit. And the beat-up bread truck careening around the corner with its radio blaring is about to change the trajectory of both their lives. Before it's over, they'll both know there are painful reasons why crickets cry...and that miracles lurk around unexpected corners.

Vanishing Acts

By Jodi Picoult

From the bestselling author of "My Sister's Keeper" and "Second Glance" comesthe shocking story of a woman caught between a past she cannot recall and thelife she cannot lead without it.

Alphabet Weekends

By Elizabeth Noble

Natalie and Tom have been best friends forever, but Tom wants them to be much more. When Natalie's longtime boyfriend walks out on her just when she thinks he's going to propose, Tom offers her a different and wildly romantic proposition. He suggests that they spend twenty-six weekends together, indulging in twenty-six different activities from A to Z, and at the end of that time Tom's convinced they'll be madly in love. Natalie, however, is not so sure. As Natalie's touring the alphabet with Tom, her mother's going through her own romantic crisis—while Tom's unhappily married sister-in-law, Lucy, struggles with temptation. And over the course of six amazing months, three generations of passionate dreamers are going to discover that, no matter how clever they are, love—and life—is never as easy as A, B, C . . .

The Belles of Charleston

By Steve Brown

Set in Charleston during the years leading up to the War Between the States, The Belles of Charleston is a coming-of- age story about two sets of cousins: one set indentical twin boys, one set indentical twin girls. One male cousin attends West Point, the other the Citadel, and of the two twin sisters, one sister can do sums in her head, consequently, she cannot be a true Southern belle.