Regina Moore and Karen Jackson, lifelong best friends, are living the kind of life most women only fantasize about. With beautiful homes, fulfilling careers, and two adoring husbands, their joy could not be greater, their worlds could not be richer. But suddenly, shattering truths about the loving men they thought they knew turn happiness into anguish and rage. For Karen and Regina, nothing they believed in or cherished can ever be the same as it was.Yet, in the painful process of starting over, new doors will open, and two women who once had it all will rediscover the power of honesty and friendship ... and learn the true scope and meaning of love.

Forty-one-year-old school nurse Kate Cypher has returned home to rural Vermont to care for her mother who's afflicted with Alzheimer's. On the night she arrives, a young girl is murdered—a horrific crime that eerily mirrors another from Kate's childhood. Three decades earlier, her dirt-poor friend Del—shunned and derided by classmates as "Potato Girl"—was brutally slain. Del's killer was never found, while the victim has since achieved immortality in local legends and ghost stories. Now, as this new murder investigation draws Kate irresistibly in, her past and present collide in terrifying, unexpected ways. Because nothing is quite what it seems . . . and the grim specters of her youth are far from forgotten.More than just a murder mystery, Jennifer McMahon's extraordinary debut novel, Promise Not to Tell, is a story of friendship and family, devotion and betrayal—tautly written, deeply insightful, beautifully evocative, and utterly unforgettable.

"Travel light and you can sing in the robber's face" was the best advice Summer Zwolenick ever received from her father, though she didn't recognize it at the time. Three years after the accident that ended her career as a ballerina, she is back in the familiar suburbs of Dayton, Ohio, teaching at a local high school. But it wasn't nostalgia that called Summer home. It was her need to spend quality time with her brother, Todd, and his devoted partner, Jacob. Todd, the golden athlete whose strength and spirit encouraged Summer to nurture her own unique talents and follow her dream, is in the final stages of a terminal illness. In a few short months, he will be dead—leaving Summer only a handful of precious days to learn all the lessons her brother still has to teach her . . . from how to love and how to live to how to let go.Traveling Light is the deeply moving debut novel from Katrina Kittle, the acclaimed author of The Kindness of Strangers—an unforgettable story of love, bonds, and promises that endure longer than life itself.

Prudence Burns, a well-intentioned New Yorker full of back-to-the-land ideals, just inherited Woefield Farm—thirty acres of scrubland, dilapidated buildings, and one half-sheared sheep. But the bank is about to foreclose, so Prudence must turn things around fast! Fortunately she'll have help from Earl, her banjo-playing foreman with a family secret; Seth, the neighbor who hasn't left the house since a high school scandal; and Sara Spratt, an eleven-year-old who's looking for a home for her prize-winning chickens. Home to Woefield is about learning how to take on a challenge, face your fears, and find friendship in the most unlikely of places.

In Firebird, Mark Doty tells the story of a ten-year-old in a top hat, cane, and red chiffon scarf, interrupted while belting out Judy Garland's "Get Happy" by his alarmed mother at the bedroom door, exclaiming, "Son, you're a boy!"Firebird presents us with a heroic little boy who has quite enough worries without discovering that his dawning sexuality is the Wrong One. A self-confessed "chubby smart bookish sissy with glasses and a Southern accent," Doty grew up on the move, the family following his father's engineering work across America-from Tennessee to Arizona, Florida to California. A lyrical, heartbreaking comedy of one family's dissolution through the corrosive powers of alcohol, sorrow, and thwarted desire, Firebird is also a wry evocation of childhood's pleasures and terrors, a comic tour of American suburban life, and a testament to the transformative power of art.

For fans of Broadchurch, Louise Penny, and Peter Robinson comes a spellbinding new novel from internationally bestselling author Stephen BoothWelcome to the picturesque English village of Shawhead, where there's one road in and one road out. And on that road this morning is an abandoned vehicle...with an ominous bloodstain inside.It's a mystery. It could be a murder. Where—and who—is the driverWhose blood has been discoveredWhy are the people of Shawhead so hostile toward Detective Ben Cooper, sent in to take charge of the investigation?As Cooper peels back layers of lies and exposes dark secrets to the light, he draws ever closer to a killer hiding in plain sight. Packed with atmosphere, suspense, and surprises, The Murder Road is Stephen Booth's most unforgettable novel yet.

"The first time I saw Marian Ballantine she looked like a burst of bittersweet among the winter branches . . ." And so begins a tale of love lost and found, the rekindling of a passion for life that two people discover with each other, and the complex dynamics of family and friendship.Geoffrey Tremont is untroubled by his neat, contented bachelor life in bustling New York City, filled with sophisticated friends, an undemanding lover devoted to her own career, and his wise brother, a psychiatrist who is the only one who sees and understands him completely—just the way Geoffrey wants it. On an ordinary day, Geoffrey arrives home to find a letter awaiting him with a postmark from an unfamiliar town: Shady Grove, New York. An old friend has named him the executor of her estate. Twenty years ago, in college, Geoffrey and Laura Welles had been each other's confidant; as their lives diverged, they went their separate ways. Now, she's reached out of the past to ask him a final favor. Laura's death has also brought her brother, Simon, to Geoffrey's doorstep. With his sister gone, Simon has no one but her old friend Geoffrey with whom to settle past grievances.With Simon in tow, Geoffrey travels up to Laura's hometown—the place she chose to live her final years—where he meets Marian Ballantine. A widow living in the shadow of an idyllic marriage, and now grieving the loss of her best friend, Marian knows a lot about Geoffrey. Laura often spoke of him, she tells him, and though he's flattered, he's also thrown off balance. From the moment he first sees her, Geoffrey instinctively knows this attractive, plainspoken woman has the power to upend his cool, compartmentalized life. What Marian knows is that life comes with no guarantees, no promises of lasting happiness, and although she finds herself unsettled by this persistent, compelling man, she's unwilling to trade her hard-won, quotidian existence for an indefinite future. Faced with the decision to embrace the unknown or retreat to the safety of the familiar, they will both have to discover the courage it takes to tumble into the abyss of love.The First Warm Evening of the Year is a gripping and evocative novel that resonates on every page with the joys and pains of being alive. It is a novel that more than satisfies the promise of the author's debut, Light of Day, about which the Indianapolis Star said, "Saul's ability to create deep and interesting characters is a strength that no doubt will surface time and again in future works," and prompted Bookreporter.com to praise Saul's "sensitivity and rare understanding of the human psyche."

By turns uproarious and touching, the memoir of a young woman's search for an orgasm and for the elusive connections between sex and love Twenty-six-year-old Mara Altman wanted to know what all the screaming was about. She'd lost her virginity at seventeen; grown up in southern California with sexually free parents; had lovers in India, Burma, and Peru; and spent a year in Bangkok observing all manner of depravity. And yet she was an attractive, successful, single woman in New York who'd never had an orgasm.And so she embarked on a wildly funny, emotionally resonant odyssey a journey both inside and outside herself only to discover that, for Mara, orgasm was connected to a part of her that no vibrator could reach. Thanks for Coming is one woman's look at our obsession with and anxiety over the female orgasm. Her quest to get her own yields poignant results that will surprise even the sexually awakened among us. From sex shows to sex conventions, from a therapist's couch to her own couch, from the bedroom to the bar, Mara Altman proves to be a guide as hilarious as she is investigative.

The classic coming-of-age story set during World War II about the enduring spirit of youth and the values in life that count.

In New York City's Spanish Harlem, Julio and Maritza are each searching for a path that will give their lives meaning, even if it's shadowed by controversy. Julio is an arsonist for hire, pocketing thousands of dollars from investors eager to capitalize on more expensive real estate. But when he has reason to stop setting his neighborhood ablaze and vows to change his ways, Julio's employers threaten his life -- and the lives of those close to him. Maritza, meanwhile, has become the pastor of a progressive Pentecostal church -- the perfect cover for the scam she's running. For the right price, she'll make anyone an American citizen. With a cast of characters as colorful as the city itself, Ernesto Qui?onez brings to life a landscape we can all recognize.

It has been a difficult year for the ladies of Hope Springs, North Carolina, who bid a final farewell to a good friend. But Beatrice Newgarden Witherspoon, Jessie Jenkins, and Louise Fisher are ready to take on a new project: find a husband for their young, single pastor friend Charlotte Stewart, who is too busy running a shelter in New Mexico to look for a suitable companion herself. The search for Charlotte's perfect lifemate is turning up many unexpected things—Beatrice's daughter has special news, the last person Louise would ever expect to see turns up on her doorstep, and Jessie's husband wishes to recommit to her forever. So one way or another, there will be a wedding, and perhaps more than one . . . with cake!

Thirty years ago, ecstasy and torment took hold of John Rivers, shocking him out of “half-baked imbecility into something more nearly resembling the human form.” He had an affair with the wife of his mentor, Henry Maartens—a pathbreaking physicist, winner of the Nobel Prize, and a figure of blinding brilliance—bringing the couple to ruin. Now, on Christmas Eve while a small grandson sleeps upstairs, John Rivers is moved to set the record straight about the great man and the radiant, elemental creature he married, who viewed the renowned genius through undazzled eyes.

Kevin Sampsell always thought he was part of a normal family growing up in the Pacific Northwest. He never wondered why his older siblings had different last names or why one of them was black. But when his estranged father passed away in 2008, his mother revealed to him some of the family's mysterious and unsettling history. A history of betrayal, madness, and incest. A Common Pornography is a uniquely crafted, two-pronged "memory experiment": a collection of sweet and funny snapshots from his childhood, and an unsensational portrait of a family in crisis. Sampsell blends the catastrophic with the mundane and the humorous with the horrific. From his mother's first tumultuous marriages and his father's shocking abuse of his half sister to Kevin's own memories of first jobs, first bands, and first loves, here is a searing, intensely honest memoir that exposes the many haunting shades of a family both its tragedy and its resiliency.

Medium Concetta Bertoldi answers all your questions about life after life. . . from the irreverent: (If the dead are always with us, do they have a XXX view of my bedroom?). . . to the poignant: (Will my deceased father be with me when I walk down the aisle on my wedding day?) . . . to the heartfelt: (When loved ones leave this life too early or under tragic circumstances, are they eternally heartbroken or can they find peace in heaven?)Concetta Bertoldi has been communicating with the "Other Side" since childhood. In Do Dead People Watch You Shower?, the first-ever book of its kind, she exposes the naked truth about the fate and happiness of our late loved ones with no-holds-barred honesty and delightfully wry humor, answering questions that range from the practical to the outrageous. In addition she shares with us her own intimate secrets, revealing with refreshing candor how her miraculous gift has affected her life, her marriage, her friendships, and her career, as well as the myriad ways she has used it to help others.

The Civil War was the first "modern war." Because of the rapid changes in American society, Abraham Lincoln became president of a divided United States during a period of technological and social revolution. Among the many modern marvels that gave the North an advantage was the telegraph, which Lincoln used to stay connected to the forces in the field in almost real time.No leader in history had ever possessed such a powerful tool to gain control over a fractious situation. An eager student of technology, Lincoln (the only president to hold a patent) had to learn to use the power of electronic messages. Without precedent to guide him, Lincoln began by reading the telegraph traffic among his generals. Then he used the telegraph to supplement his preferred form of communication meetings and letters. He did not replace those face-to-face interactions. Through this experience, Lincoln crafted the best way to guide, reprimand, praise, reward, and encourage his commanders in the field.Mr. Lincoln's T-Mails tells a big story within a small compass. By paying close attention to Lincoln's "lightning messages," we see a great leader adapt to a new medium. No reader of this work of history will be able to miss the contemporary parallels. Watching Lincoln carefully word his messages and follow up on those words with the right actions offers a striking example for those who spend their days tapping out notes on computers and BlackBerrys.An elegant work of history, Mr. Lincoln's T-Mails is an instructive example of timeless leadership lessons.

Ever since his astonishing victory in the 1991 PGA Championship, John Daly, known affectionately on the PGA Tour as "Big 'Un," has enthralled fans with his big drives, bigger personality, and "Grip It and Rip It" approach to golf -- and to life.Long John, usually seen with a Marlboro Light dangling from his lip, is the unchained, unpredictable, unapologetic bad boy of professional golf. "The only rules I follow," JD likes to say, "are the Rules of Golf."Daly's play-it-as-it-lays approach drives My Life in and out of the Rough, a thrillingly -- and sometimes shockingly -- candid memoir of a larger-than-life athlete battling assorted addictions (alcohol, gambling, chocolate, sex), his weight, and, perhaps worst of all, divorce lawyers. (He's been married four times.)A two-time major winner before he turned thirty, John Daly is one of the most popular athletes in the world. Taking readers with him off the fairway and into his $1.5-million motor home for a rollicking ride through his life -- an ever-churning world of booze, burgers, casinos, country music, and breathtaking moonshots -- Daly reveals how a down-home Everyman from Arkansas managed to rise to the peak of the golf world, escape from the depths of abject depression, and, finally, take control of his life. Well, sort of.

All loved, and were loved by, their artists, and inspired them with an intensity of emotion akin to Eros.In a brilliant, wry, and provocative book, National Book Award finalist Francine Prose explores the complex relationship between the artist and his muse. In so doing, she illuminates with great sensitivity and intelligence the elusive emotional wellsprings of the creative process.

Meet Ariel. Her glass is half empty . . . and leaking. If someone tells her everything will be okay, she asks: How do you knowIf there's a wrong thing to say, she'll say it. If there's a downside to see, she'll see it. She lives in a permanent fear of what's to come. But at least she's prepared.In these witty and entertaining tales from the front lines of woe, Ariel highlights the humor in our everyday anxieties and delivers insight that will ring hilariously true if you are inclined to view the world through gray-tinted glasses.So whether you've been dumped by the love of your life, lost your job to the guy in the cubicle next to you, said the wrong thing at the party, or weren't invited to the party at all, Ariel is here to remind you that it could be worse, you could be her.

Fanciful dreams of gold-medal glory led Jennifer Sey to the local gymnastics club in 1976. A natural aptitude and a willingness to endure punishing hard work took her to the elite ranks by the time she was eleven years old. Jennifer traveled the country and the world competing for the U.S. National team, but the higher she set her sights the world championships, the 1988 Olympics the more she began to ignore her physical and mental well-being. Jennifer suffered devastating injuries, developed an eating disorder, and lived far from family and friends, all for the sake of winning. When her parents and coaches lost sight of her best interests, Jennifer had no choice but to redefine her path into adulthood. She had to save herself.Chalked Up delivers an unforgettable coming-of-age story that will resonate with anyone who has ever felt not good enough and has finally come to accept who they were meant to be.

The romance of Casablanca ... the gripping narrative of Eye of the Needle ... both come together in this enthralling true story of World War II resistance fighters and the airmen they saved. As war raged against Hitler's Germany, an increasing number of Allied fliers were shot down onmissions against Nazi targets in occupied Europe. Many fliers parachuted safely behind enemy lines only to find themselves stranded and hunted down by the Gestapo. The Freedom Line traces the thrilling and true story of Robert Grimes, a twenty-year-old American B-17 pilot whose plane was shot down over Belgium on October 20, 1943. Wounded, disoriented and scared, he was rescued by operatives of the Comet Line, a group of tenacious young women and men from Belgium, France and Spain who joined forces to recover Allied aircrews and take them to safety. Brought back to health with their help, Grimes was pursued by bloodhounds, the Luftwaffe security police and the Gestapo. And on Christmas Eve 1943, he and a group of fellow Americans faced unexpected danger and tragedy on the border between France and Spain. The road to safety was a treacherous journey by train, by bicycle and on foot that stretched hundreds of miles across occupied France to the Pyrenees Mountains at the Spanish border. Armed with guile and spirit, the selfless civilian fighters of the Comet Line had risked their lives to create this underground railroad, and by this time in the war, they had saved hundreds of Americans, British, Australians and other Allied airmen. Led by an elegant young Belgian woman, Dédée de Jongh, the group included Jean-Fran?ois Nothomb, an army veteran who became the group's leader after Dédée was captured; Micheline Dumont, code-named Lily, who wore bobby sox to appear as a teenage girl; and Florentino, the tough Basque guide who, when necessary, carried exhausted refugees on his back over the mountains to save them from the Nazis. All the while, the Gestapo and Luftwaffe police were on their trail. If caught, the airmen faced imprisonment, but their helpers would be tortured and killed. Based on interviews with the survivors and in-depth archival research, The Freedom Line is the story of a group of friends who chose to act on their own out of a deep respect for liberty and human dignity. Theirs was a courage that presumed to take on a fearfully powerful foe with few defenses.

The teacher probes the Western problems of conformity and loss of personal values while offering a fresh approach to self-understanding and the meaning of personal freedom and mature love.