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Abbie Rose Stone’s acquired wisdom runs deep, and so do her scars. She has successfully navigated the shoals of a long marriage, infertility, challenging children, and a career. Now it’s her turn to realize her dream: producing hard apple cider along the northern shores of Lake Michigan that she loves. She manages to resist new versions of the old pull of family dynamics that threaten to derail her plan―but nothing can protect her from the shock a lovely young stranger delivers when she exposes a long-held secret. In the wake of this revelation, Abbie must overcome circumstances that severely test her self-determination, her loyalties, and her understanding of what constitutes true family. Author: Barbara Stark-Nemon Publication Date: September 18, 2018 -
Arizona Territory, 1899. Ruby Fortune faces an untenable choice: murder her abusive husband or continue to live with bruises that never heal. One bullet is all it takes. Once known as “Girl Wonder” on the Wild West circuit, Ruby is now a single mother of four boys in her hometown of Jericho, an end-of-the-world mining town north of Tucson. Here, Ruby opens a roadside inn to make ends meet. Drifters, grifters, con men, and prostitutes plow through the hotel’s doors, and their escapades pepper the local newspaper like buckshot. An affair with an African American miner puts Ruby’s life and livelihood at risk, but she can’t let him go. Not until a trio of disparate characters—her dead husband’s sister, a vindictive shopkeeper, and the local mine owner she once swindled—threaten to ruin her does Ruby face the consequences of her choices; but as usual, she does what she needs to in order to provide for herself and her sons. Set against the breathtaking beauty of Arizona’s Sonoran Desert and bursting with Wild West imagery, history, suspense, and adventure, Hardland serves up a tough, fast-talking, shoot-from-the-hip heroine who goes to every length to survive and carve out a life for herself and her sons in one of the harshest places in the American West. Author: Ashley E. Sweeney Publication Date: September 13, 2022 -
Sarah Golden and Jackie Larsen promised their partners they were out of the detective business. They declared “game over” after both of them almost lost their lives trying to solve their last medical mystery, and they’re happy with that decision: Sarah has finally allowed love and romance into her life, Jackie’s marriage is solid, and Jackie’s son, Wyatt, is still doing great with his year-old kidney transplant. So when they go on their dream trip to Cuba, they are not looking for trouble. But all their plans go out the window when a desperate plea from a Cuban transplant surgeon puts the duo in serious danger with the Cuban government on the same day the four most prominent immunologists in the world—doctors who were on the verge of solving the huge rejection issues that have plagued the transplant community for over fifty years—are killed in a car accident in Chicago. Soon, Sarah and Jackie find themselves dragged into the bowels of investigating venture capitalists and corporate greed—a terrain they know nothing about. As they uncover suspect clinical trials at major US transplant centers, including Sarah’s, their usual friends Biker Bob and Officer Handsome aren’t able to help them much, but they do receive assistance from an unlikely source: Sergio, who they helped to land in prison in Florida (and who is trying to win back his girlfriend), offers his help from the inside. Sarah and Jackie are armed with smarts, humor, and enough persistence to help them face the white-collared demons of corporate America—but with dangerous players gunning for them and death threats being made against their families, will they be able to solve this mystery before someone else gets hurt? Author: Amy S. Peele Publication Date: October 4, 2022 -
What happens when a seemingly ordinary woman with a passion for the arts falls in love with a Hollywood star known for his bachelor status and quick temper with the paparazzi? Something extraordinary. Dee Schwartz is a writer and arts researcher. Ryder Field is a famous actor descended from Hollywood royalty. On the night they meet outside a bar, their connection is palpable. Ryder’s mother—legendary actress Rebecca Field, half of Hollywood’s golden couple when she died—was kidnapped and murdered by a crazed fan in a shocking event that forever tarnished Tinseltown. Dee’s mother, too, died when she was young. Bonded by this loss, the two embark on a love story that explores their search for magic—or “gold dust”—in their lives. Everything changes, however, when Dee mysteriously disappears after an awards ceremony. Is history repeating itself? Can there truly be a happily ever after in Hollywood? Set against the backdrop of contemporary Los Angeles, Hollyland is a poignant novel that moves fluidly between romance, humor, suspense, and joy. Pub Date: April 4, 2023 Author: Patricia Leavy -
A fictional diary set in interwar Germany and Spain allows us to peek into the life of Klara Philipsborn, the only Communist in her merchant-class, German-Jewish family.Klara’s first visit to Seville in 1925 opens her eyes and her spirit to an era in which Spain’s major religions, Judaism, Christianity, and Islam, shared deep cultural connections. At the same time, she is made aware of the harsh injustices that persist in Spanish society. By 1930, she has landed a position with the medical school in Madrid. Though she feels compelled to hide her Jewish identity in her predominantly Christian new home, she finds that she feels less “different” in Spain than she did in Germany, especially as she learns new ways of expressing her opinions and desires. And when the Spanish Civil War erupts in 1936, Klara (now “Clara”) enlists in the Fifth Regiment, a step that transports her across the geography of the embattled peninsula and ultimately endangers a promising relationship and even Clara’s life itself. A blending of thoroughly researched history and engrossing fiction, Home So Far Away is an epic tale that will sweep readers away. Author: Judith Berlowitz Pub Date: June 21, 2022 -
2016 International Book Awards - Winner in Addiction & Recovery 2016 NIEA Awards - Winner in Addiction & Recovery 2016 Indie Excellence- Winner in Addiction and Recovery Randall Grange has been tricked into admitting herself into a treatment center and she doesn’t know why. She’s not a party hound like the others in her therapy group—but then again, she knows she can’t live without pills or booze. Raised by an abusive father, a detached mother, and a loving aunt and uncle, Randall both loves and hates her life. She’s awkward and a misfit. Her parents introduced her to alcohol and tranquilizers at a young age, ensuring that her teenage years would be full of bad choices, and by the time she’s twenty-three years old, she’s a full-blown drug addict, well acquainted with the miraculous power chemicals have to cure just about any problem she could possibly have—and she’s in more trouble than she’s ever known was possible. Author: J.A. Wright Publication Date: November 3, 2015 -
When Ida and her daughter Bessie flee a catastrophic pogrom in Ukraine for America in 1905, they believe their emigration will ensure that their children and grandchildren will be safe from harm. But choices and decisions made by one generation have ripple effects on those who come later—and in the decades that follow, family secrets, betrayals, and mistakes made in the name of love threaten the survival of the family: Bessie and Abe Weissman’s children struggle with the shattering effects of daughter Ruby’s mental illness, of Jenny’s love affair with her brother-in-law, of the disappearance of Ruby’s daughter as she flees her mother’s legacy, and of the accidental deaths of Irene’s husband and granddaughter. A sweeping saga that follows three generations from the tenements of Brooklyn through WWII, from Woodstock to India, and from Spain to Israel, How to Make a Life is the story of a family who must learn to accept each other’s differences—or risk cutting ties with the very people who anchor their place in the world. Author: Florence Reiss Kraut Publication Date: October 13, 2020 -
2015 American Library Association: Winner, Over the Rainbow Book “Coffey has created a stimulating interpretation of the Freud family through Anna’s eyes.” —Kirkus Reviews “Mental health journalist Coffey’s (Unspeakable Truths and Happy Endings) effective creation of Anna’s cool, somewhat clinical voice will hold the attention of readers already curious about the Freuds or psychoanalytic theory.” —Library Journal There are several serviceable biographies about child psychoanalyst Anna Freud, who lived from 1895 to 1982. But as a fictional memoir, Hysterical is the first novel to reveal Anna’s secrets—and two are blockbusters: 1) At around the time that the young Anna began having intense “friendships” with other women, her father Sigmund began psychoanalyzing her—dissecting her dreams, memories, and, most disturbingly, her sexual fantasies, and writing about them; 2) While Anna publicly supported her father’s “wisdom” about lesbianism and remained his favorite family member, she enjoyed a monogamous relationship with Tiffany fortune heiress Dorothy Burlingham for fifty-four years. Weaving a good story out of a pile of crazy facts, Hysterical lets Anna freely examine the forces that shaped her. Author: Rebecca Coffey Publication Date: May 13, 2014 -
In the middle of a perilous drought in the Northwest, an arsonist begins setting fires all around. It gives Zoe Penney nightmares about her home—seated right next to tinder-dry woods—rising up in explosions of fire, as well as haunting dreams of a little boy deep in the forest. Winter brings the longed-for rains but also a cancer diagnosis for Zoe’s husband, Jay, which plunges the family into disbelief and fear. The children lean in close to their parents, can’t stop touching them. As Jay’s treatment begins, nature lets loose with strange and startling encounters, while a shadowy figure hovers about the corners of the house. First, Zoe’s fear turns to anger: How can I love you if I am to lose you? How can I live in joy when the sky is falling? But she gradually learns that it’s possible to love anything, even terrible things—if you can love them for what they are teaching you. Pub Date: May 9, 2023 Author: Ann Putnam -
Francesca Bodin has a near-perfect life as an accomplished music teacher and professional flautist living in the country with her husband, Ben and their four-year old daughter, Addie. This ends suddenly when a snowmobiling accident traps the three of them in a frozen lake. Ben gets out, leaving her and Addie to die. Francesca believes she sees their dog pull Addie from the lake and drag her into the nearby woods. Desperate to help her daughter, she struggles to emerge from the icy waters, and follows them. Once she enters the forest, however, she finds herself trapped in a sinister dream-like world where night never ends, where Addie’s whereabouts remain hidden from her and where she encounters a group of women who, like Francesca, have been left to die and now seek to unleash their revenge on those who have harmed them. When they have Ben in their sights, Francesca realizes that if she is ever to escape this nightmare and save her daughter, she must first save the husband who abandoned them. Author: Susan Speranza Pub Date: May 24, 2022 -
2016 Best Book Awards: Fiction: Multicultural Finalist “In a Silent Way offers a moving portrayal of a committed, young teacher-activist, Jeanna, who is determined to effect change in her urban school and community. Jeanna's culturally relevant and inclusive pedagogy, and her determination to never give up on her students, ultimately wins their respect and admiration. All the while, Hetzel makes sure to shine a much needed light on undemocratic practices and unequal gendered power dynamics in social and racial justice movements.” ―Jonathan Kozol, education activist and award-winning author of Death at an Early Age and Savage Inequalities: Children in American Schools In a Silent Way chronicles the coming of age in the late sixties of young Jeanna Kendall as she quietly facilitates a close-knit community of learners in a progressive urban school, grapples with racism and sexism within her community activist group, and experiences the extreme highs and lows of her first intimate relationship—which happens to be with a revered and powerful community leader. Jeanna encounters all the same issues we confront today: youth of color demeaned and destroyed, wise community elders discounted by leaders who “know better,” and the “sexploitation” of women in the movement. Gradually overwhelmed by the mounting challenges she faces on all fronts, and on the verge of a breakdown, a crisis emerges within her movement group that transforms everything and everyone and opens up a new world of possibilities—ones deeply relevant to us today. Author: Mary Jo Hetzel Publication Date: October 18, 2016 -
When David Herron—overwhelmed and despairing, his family’s business and finances in ruin due to the bursting lending bubble of 2008—takes his own life one chilly spring morning, he has no idea the ripple effect his decision will set into motion. Two years later, his widow, Jules, is now an employee of the bakery she and David used to own—and still full of bitterness over David’s lies, perceived cowardice, and ultimate abandonment of her and their now-teenage daughter, Rennie. Rennie, meanwhile, struggles socially at school, resents her work-obsessed mother, and is convinced she’s to blame for her father’s death. When Denise, the former police detective who worked (and, due to her own personal struggles at the time, mishandled) David’s case, catches sight of Rennie at her sons’ school, she’s struck by the girl’s halo of sadness—and becomes obsessed with attempting to right the wrongs she believes she perpetrated two years ago. And as all this unfolds in Boston, Daniel, the guilt-ridden young man who, in his old life as a banker, helped create the circumstances that led to David’s suicide, continues to punish himself for his sins by living half a life, working odd jobs and bouncing from one US city to another, never staying long enough to make friends or build something lasting. Ultimately, each of these very different people—all of them tied together by one tragic event—must learn in their own way how to say good-bye to the past and move into a brighter future. Author: Jane Ward Publication Date: September 21, 2021 -
2016 Best Book Award Winner, Fiction: African American “A laugh-out-loud look at growing up at any age told with honesty and warmth.” —Books & Life “Funny, smart and compulsively readable! Ginger McKnight has a hit on her hands. And Terry McMillan fans can rejoice that they can add a new favorite writer to their list!” —Heidi W. Durrow New York Times best-selling author of The Girl Who Fell From the Sky Pitched as “a poor man’s Halle Berry,” forty-one-year-old soap star Jo Randolph, has successfully avoided waiting tables since she left Midland, Texas at eighteen. But then, in the span of twenty-four hours, Jo manages to lose her job, burn her bridges in Hollywood, and accidentally burn down her lover/director’s beach house—after which she is shipped home to Texas by her agent to stay out of sight while she sorts out her situation. The more Jo reluctantly reconnects with her Texas “roots” and the family and friends she left behind, the more she regains touch with herself as an artist and with what is meaningful in life beyond the limelight. The summer of 2007 is cathartic for Jo, whose career and lifestyle have allowed her to live like a child for forty years, but who now must transition to making grown-up decisions and taking on adult responsibilities. In the Heart of Texas is a wry, humorous commentary on the complexities of race, class, relationships, politics, popular culture, and celebrity in our current society. Author: Ginger McKnight-Chavers Publication Date: October 25, 2016 -
For fans of Emma Straub and Cynthia D’Aprix Sweeny, a debut contemporary women’s fiction novel about obsession, forgiveness, and friendship between two unlikely people. Style-guru Charlotte Oakes sells beautiful lifestyles, but her mentally ill daughter is an addict, her long marriage is dead, and she is pregnant with her ex-lover’s baby. Stunned after witnessing a hit-and-run in Chicago that leaves a child dead, Charlotte thinks she sees her Prius fleeing the scene. Her troubled daughter, Libby, is the only one who could have been driving. His partner and best friend killed in a drug bust, police officer Ed Kelly learns that forensics has found that the fatal bullet came from Ed’s gun. Under internal investigation, Ed copes by filming cars at the site of the recent hit-and-run, hoping to catch the child’s killer. There, he notices Charlotte’s pilgrimages to the makeshift memorial, and over the weeks, the two become unlikely friends sharing intimate stories. But Charlotte won’t trust him with her most vulnerable secret of all: her suspicions about her daughter’s involvement in the accident. When Ed finally learns the truth about the accident, he struggles with his beliefs and duties. If he keeps quiet, he has breached his commitment to the law. But if he does the right thing as an officer, he may send Libby to jail—and lose Charlotte. Author: Karen F. Uhlmann Publication Date: May 6, 2025 -
For fans of Ruta Sepetys’s Salt to the Sea, this coming-of-age tale of one fourteen-year-old girl’s escape from early-seventeenth-century Portugal’s Inquisition, achieved with the help of a clandestine band of allies, will thrill and inspire. In early-seventeenth-century Portugal, Spain, France, and Germany, dangers are plentiful—especially for those of Jewish heritage. Non-Catholics have been expelled from Spain, and the Inquisition has now come to Portugal to impose its prohibitions. Fourteen-year-old Isabela, an obedient “New Christian” with a talent for needlework, believes she has nothing to fear from the Inquisition. But when a mysterious woman arrives with a message from Isabela’s traveling father, the girl must leave her home and embroider her way along the clandestine network of sanctuaries created to conduct Conversos, or secret Jews, to safety. A host of supporters and spirit guides, as well as one special young man, assist Isabela as she escapes the Inquisitors and makes her way across countries and cultures. Along the way, she learns of the danger and importance of her work and is shocked to discover her family’s true origins. In this enthralling coming-of-age tale of resistance, love, and danger, Isabela employs her talent and fierce determination to find her way despite the powerful forces that buffet her every step of the way. Author: Barbara Stark-Nemon Release Date: September 16, 2025 -
This contemporary novel about a woman navigating love, loss, and the whispering call of her neglected artistic dreams will appeal to fans of Lily King and Jojo Moyes. Right after Sabina watches her rock star husband walk out on their marriage, a phone call reveals that her beloved grandmother is in the ICU in Santa Cruz, CA. So, Sabina hits the road with a tear-stained face, a duffel bag of clothes, and no plan for her future. In her grandmother’s seaside world, Sabina reconnects with several old passions: ocean swimming, process painting, and a long-lost summer love named Graham—all of which force her to confront the artistic dream she abandoned to support her husband. Meanwhile, a mysterious voice keeps calling to her. Sabina wonders if it’s a Selkie, one of the mythical shape-shifting seal folk from her grandmother’s stories. As both her marriage and her grandmother’s health deteriorate, Sabina wrestles with the choices she’s made. Is it too late to reclaim her dream? Must she choose between art and love? And is the voice she’s hearing a sign she’s lost it or a key to unlocking her true self? Author: Megan Walrod Publication Date: June 10, 2025 -
Twenty-four years old and newly employed in Manhattan, Jenna McGrath agrees to place herself under the dead body of a wealthy, prominent New Yorker—her boss—to hide the identity of his real lover. But why? Because she is half in love with him herself; because her only friend at Hull Industries asked her to; because she feared everyone around her; because she had no idea how this would spin out into her own, undeveloped life; because she had nothing and no one? Or just because? Deftly told and sharply observed, Jenna Takes the Fall is the story of someone who became infamous . . . before she became anybody at all. Author: A. R. Taylor Publication Date: September 1, 2020 -
When Josie Serafini’s brother Vic loses his wife and children in a tragic accident, Josie leaves her home and beloved horses in Upstate New York to join him in Los Angeles. While helping Vic pick up the pieces of his shattered life, Josie confronts broken relationships with her estranged father and rebellious, singer-songwriter daughter. Josie and Vic each struggle to find where they belong in their changing worlds. Josie finds comfort in nature and in a budding, long-distance relationship with the empathetic equine veterinarian caring for her horses back home. Vic battles depression as he seeks purpose in his life. Josie’s three horses and a Siberian husky help open hearts to tenderness and healing—but it’s an unexpected journey to the US-Mexico border that offers this fragmented family a chance to reconnect. A story of love, loss, and forgiveness, Josie and Vic conveys hope—even in the darkest of times. Pub Date: April 11, 2023 Author: Debra Thomas -
“Jackson effectively represents the overwhelming nature of caring for a loved one with schizophrenia, which is seldom seen in fiction. She offers readers an expert understanding of the pitfalls of such a life: the revolving-door culture of caregivers, a mental health system that often leaves families at a loss, and the social stigma that constantly threatens to derail healing progress.” —Kirkus Reviews “Finally, finally, our culture is talking about mental illness and the suffering it brings to those it strikes and those who love them. In this addictively readable, well-written novel, based on her own true story, Joan Jackson humanizes―and even humorizes―the impact of schizophrenia.” ―Meredith Maran, author of The New Old Me Most of his adult life, the only place he felt at peace was at home in Silver Lake, Ohio with his parents—but after their sudden death, he is left on his own. Eager to help their brother, Steve’s siblings, Scott and Sylvia, who both live in Los Angeles, scramble to find someone reliable to live with Steve. The answer to their problem comes in the form of Sylvia’s sister-in-law, Nancy, who is desperate to find a place to live; within days, she moves in with Steve. This is the story of Steve and Nancy, who, as virtual strangers thrown together out of necessity, forge a way to live in fragile harmony. Sometimes dark, sometimes humorous, Just in Time is a hopeful, firsthand account of the day-to-day roller coaster of life with a schizophrenic. Author: Joan Jackson Publication Date: October 24, 2017
2015 Best Book Awards Finalist in Women’s Fiction 2016 International Book Award Finalist in Fiction: General 2016 Indie Excellence Finalist in General Fiction When English major Nora Plowright finds herself staring at college graduation as if at the edge of a cliff, she decides to become a newspaper reporter—and right away, she manages to get a job at a local paper (which you could still do in 1978). Although fearful by nature, Nora pursues a tip from a stranger and soon is investigating corruption at the Maryland State Highway Authority regarding the controversial placement of a major highway. The developing scandal, with its shady “players,” tests both her budding reportorial skills and her appetite for danger. Also, her passion for storytelling makes it increasingly difficult for her to stick to the facts. Honest and humorous, Just the Facts is a coming-of-age novel about finding one’s way in the real world that will resonate with anyone who has struggled with figuring out what to do when she or he grows up. Publication Date: September 8, 2015
Twenty-year-old Kate is poised to launch into a long-anticipated life of independence when Britain declares war in 1939. After that announcement, her dream of escaping the London suburb she grew up in and pursuing a singing career is quashed: she must stay put with her family and prepare for bombing and possible invasion by Germany. Living in these anxious times, Kate strives to achieve balance in her life, though a speech disability interferes with her singing and a failed romance adds to her distress. But when a young Jewish girl whose parents have been deported comes to her for help, Kate’s goals change. Taking on a responsibility she never could have imagined, she learns that freedom and survival cannot be taken for granted—and as new responsibilities outweigh earlier goals, she learns that assisting others to escape unspeakable evil requires new perspective, as well as courage she didn’t know she had. Author: Linda Stewart Henley Publication Date: April 9th, 2024
Once you've experienced the devastation of fracking, nothing but stopping it makes sense. After a year of well site visits and protests, four college student activists become determined to protect the people and the places they love. In the river-crossed northwoods of Michigan, Kate, Brett, Sonya, and Mark, mentored by their former professor Rebecca, keep watch as North American Energy (NorA) connects a corridor of frack well sites deep in the state forests. When NorA expands in unexpected directions and their awful, bigger plan becomes clear, the action begins. As grassroots activists gather and prepare to stop NorA’s dangerous superfrac, stresses other than the fracturing of the bedrock appear. Sonya is arrested, Rebecca reveals her hidden past, and the one person who knows both women’s stories arrives in camp. Love and solidarity want to win, even if most showdowns with Big Oil don’t end well for those who take a stand. Suspenseful, poignant, and galvanizing, Land Marks is a tribute to the waterways that connect us, the land that sustains us, and the moments that inspire us to rise up together to say, “No more!” Author: Maryann Lesert Publication Date: April 16th, 2024
Jeanne Bridgeton, an unmarried executive in her late forties, discovers life doesn’t begin and end on a spreadsheet when her expected menopause instead becomes an unexpected pregnancy. Though accomplished at managing risk professionally, Jeanne realizes her skills don’t extend to her personal life, where she has allowed the professional and the personal to become intertwined. She’s not even sure which of two men in her life is the father. Worse yet, a previously undisclosed family secret reveals that she may carry a rare hereditary gene for early-onset Alzheimer’s―and it’s too late to get genetic tests. This leaves Jeanne to cope with her intense fear of risk without the aid of the mountain of data she’s accustomed to relying upon. Wrestling with the question of whether her own needs, or those of her child, should prevail takes Jeanne on an intensely emotional journey―one that ultimately leads to growth and enlightenment. Author: Joan Cohen Publication Date: August 13, 2019
As the secret federal sting operation Snakehead targets the fentanyl trade, the small mill town of Stanton, Massachusetts, becomes a battlefield in the war on drugs and three mothers—newspaper reporter Laura Everett, businesswoman Mimi Sullivan, and machinist Angie Gillen—must overcome their differences and confront their pasts to keep their troubled teenagers out of the crossfire. Help comes from unexpected quarters when several Stanton cops break ranks with their superiors after learning that Snakehead’s real mission is to militarize the police and northern border. Stakes rise as the opioid crisis deepens and Mimi’s daughter sinks further into depression and heroin addiction. Laura’s and Angie’s sons try to save her, but their efforts only place her more at risk and she is forced to run away. Ultimately, the deadly violence being perpetrated all around her—by gangs, dealers, and those running the Snakehead operation—compels Laura to dig deep within herself for the power to take charge. A fast-paced, multilayered thriller that reveals the high human costs of the drug war, Last Place Called Home is also a story about love and loyalty to family, friends, and place. Stanton is a hard place to live in—but it’s an even harder place to leave. Author: Betsy Hartmann Publication Date: July 16, 2024
