"The kind of book I enjoy the most—sparkling characters, fast-moving plot and laugh-out-loud dialogue. A winner!" —New York Times bestselling author Susan Elizabeth Phillips on If You Only Knew


New York Times bestselling author Kristan Higgins welcomes you home in this witty, emotionally charged novel about the complications of life, love and family

One step forward. Two steps back. The Tufts scholarship that put Nora Stuart on the path to becoming a Boston medical specialist was a step forward. Being hit by a car and then overhearing her boyfriend hit on another doctor when she thought she was dying? Two major steps back.

Injured in more ways than one, Nora feels her carefully built life cracking at the edges. There’s only one place to land: home. But the tiny Maine community she left fifteen years ago doesn’t necessarily want her. At every turn, someone holds the prodigal daughter of Scupper Island responsible for small-town drama and big-time disappointments.

With a tough islander mother who’s always been distant, a wild-child sister in jail and a withdrawn teenage niece as eager to ditch the island as Nora once was, Nora has her work cut out for her if she’s going to take what might be her last chance to mend the family. Balancing loss and opportunity, dark events from her past with hope for the future, Nora will discover that tackling old pain makes room for promise…and the chance to begin again.

Something red lay in a heap on her doorstep. She crept closer, wrinkling her nose as the buzz of flies led her to a pile of animal entrails. Slick with blood, like mangled tubes from bike tyres, they stained the concrete.

Deep in the Australian bush, wildlife ranger Lisa Thomas must uncover the truth behind a giant white kangaroo and the strange deaths connected to it, while dealing with the return of her abusive ex, Ben, whose rage is quickly growing out of control.

The true story for fans of the PBS Masterpiece series Victoria, this page-turning biography reveals the real woman behind the myth: a bold, glamorous, unbreakable queen—a Victoria for our times. Drawing on previously unpublished papers, this stunning new portrait is a story of love and heartbreak, of devotion and grief, of strength and resilience.

NAMED ONE OF THE BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR BY
THE NEW YORK TIMES • ESQUIRE • THE CHICAGO PUBLIC LIBRARY

“Victoria the Queen, Julia Baird’s exquisitely wrought and meticulously researched biography, brushes the dusty myth off this extraordinary monarch.”—The New York Times Book Review (Editor’s Choice)

When Victoria was born, in 1819, the world was a very different place. Revolution would threaten many of Europe’s monarchies in the coming decades. In Britain, a generation of royals had indulged their whims at the public’s expense, and republican sentiment was growing. The Industrial Revolution was transforming the landscape, and the British Empire was commanding ever larger tracts of the globe. In a world where women were often powerless, during a century roiling with change, Victoria went on to rule the most powerful country on earth with a decisive hand.

Fifth in line to the throne at the time of her birth, Victoria was an ordinary woman thrust into an extraordinary role. As a girl, she defied her mother’s meddling and an adviser’s bullying, forging an iron will of her own. As a teenage queen, she eagerly grasped the crown and relished the freedom it brought her. At twenty, she fell passionately in love with Prince Albert of Saxe-Coburg and Gotha, eventually giving birth to nine children. She loved sex and delighted in power. She was outspoken with her ministers, overstepping conventional boundaries and asserting her opinions. After the death of her adored Albert, she began a controversial, intimate relationship with her servant John Brown. She survived eight assassination attempts over the course of her lifetime. And as science, technology, and democracy were dramatically reshaping the world, Victoria was a symbol of steadfastness and security—queen of a quarter of the world’s population at the height of the British Empire’s reach.

Drawing on sources that include fresh revelations about Victoria’s relationship with John Brown, Julia Baird brings vividly to life the fascinating story of a woman who struggled with so many of the things we do today: balancing work and family, raising children, navigating marital strife, losing parents, combating anxiety and self-doubt, finding an identity, searching for meaning.

Afghan-American Nadia Hashimi's literary debut novel is a searing tale of powerlessness, fate, and the freedom to control one's own fate that combines the cultural flavor and emotional resonance of the works of Khaled Hosseini, Jhumpa Lahiri, and Lisa See.

In Kabul, 2007, with a drug-addicted father and no brothers, Rahima and her sisters can only sporadically attend school, and can rarely leave the house. Their only hope lies in the ancient custom of bacha posh, which allows young Rahima to dress and be treated as a boy until she is of marriageable age. As a son, she can attend school, go to the market, and chaperone her older sisters.

But Rahima is not the first in her family to adopt this unusual custom. A century earlier, her great-great grandmother, Shekiba, left orphaned by an epidemic, saved herself and built a new life the same way.

Crisscrossing in time, The Pearl the Broke Its Shell interweaves the tales of these two women separated by a century who share similar destinies. But what will happen once Rahima is of marriageable age? Will Shekiba always live as a man? And if Rahima cannot adapt to life as a bride, how will she survive?

When Framboise Simon returns to a small village on the banks of the Loire, the locals do not recognize her as the daughter of the infamous woman they hold responsible for a tragedy during the German occupation years ago. But the past and present are inextricably entwined, particularly in a scrapbook of recipes and memories that Framboise has inherited from her mother. And soon Framboise will realize that the journal also contains the key to the tragedy that indelibly marked that summer of her ninth year. . . .

From Nora Roberts, the #1 New York Times bestselling author of Year One (December 2017), comes Shelter in Place—a powerful tale of heart, heroism . . . and propulsive suspense.

It was a typical evening at a mall outside Portland, Maine. Three teenage friends waited for the movie to start. A boy flirted with the girl selling sunglasses. Mothers and children shopped together, and the manager at video game store tended to customers. Then the shooters arrived.

The chaos and carnage lasted only eight minutes before the killers were taken down. But for those who lived through it, the effects would last forever. In the years that followed, one would dedicate himself to a law enforcement career. Another would close herself off, trying to bury the memory of huddling in a ladies' room, helplessly clutching her cell phone--until she finally found a way to pour her emotions into her art.

But one person wasn't satisfied with the shockingly high death toll at the DownEast Mall. And as the survivors slowly heal, find shelter, and rebuild, they will discover that another conspirator is lying in wait--and this time, there might be nowhere safe to hide.

NATIONAL BESTSELLER

NPR Best Book of 2017

“Not all superheroes wear capes, and Elizebeth Smith Friedman should be the subject of a future Wonder Woman movie.” — The New York Times

Joining the ranks of Hidden Figures and In the Garden of Beasts, the incredible true story of the greatest codebreaking duo that ever lived, an American woman and her husband who invented the modern science of cryptology together and used it to confront the evils of their time, solving puzzles that unmasked Nazi spies and helped win World War II.

In 1916, at the height of World War I, brilliant Shakespeare expert Elizebeth Smith went to work for an eccentric tycoon on his estate outside Chicago. The tycoon had close ties to the U.S. government, and he soon asked Elizebeth to apply her language skills to an exciting new venture: code-breaking. There she met the man who would become her husband, groundbreaking cryptologist William Friedman. Though she and Friedman are in many ways the "Adam and Eve" of the NSA, Elizebeth’s story, incredibly, has never been told.

In The Woman Who Smashed Codes, Jason Fagone chronicles the life of this extraordinary woman, who played an integral role in our nation’s history for forty years. After World War I, Smith used her talents to catch gangsters and smugglers during Prohibition, then accepted a covert mission to discover and expose Nazi spy rings that were spreading like wildfire across South America, advancing ever closer to the United States. As World War II raged, Elizebeth fought a highly classified battle of wits against Hitler’s Reich, cracking multiple versions of the Enigma machine used by German spies. Meanwhile, inside an Army vault in Washington, William worked furiously to break Purple, the Japanese version of Enigma—and eventually succeeded, at a terrible cost to his personal life.

Fagone unveils America’s code-breaking history through the prism of Smith’s life, bringing into focus the unforgettable events and colorful personalities that would help shape modern intelligence. Blending the lively pace and compelling detail that are the hallmarks of Erik Larson’s bestsellers with the atmosphere and intensity of The Imitation Game, The Woman Who Smashed Codes is page-turning popular history at its finest.

First published in 1963, James A. Michener’s gripping chronicle of the social and political landscape of Afghanistan is more relevant now than ever. Combining fact with riveting adventure and intrigue, Michener follows a military man tasked, in the years after World War II, with a dangerous assignment: finding and returning a young American woman living in Afghanistan to her distraught family after she suddenly and mysteriously disappears. A timeless tale of love and emotional drama set against the backdrop of one of the most important countries in the world today, Caravans captures the tension of the postwar period, the sweep of Afghanistan’s remarkable history, and the inescapable allure of the past.

BONUS: This edition includes an excerpt from James A. Michener's Hawaii.
 
Praise for Caravans
 
“Brilliant . . . an extraordinary novel . . . The old nomadic trails across the mountains spring into existence.”—The New York Times
 
“Romantic and adventurous . . . [Michener] has a wonderful empathy for the wild and free and an understanding of the reasons behind the kind of cruelty that goes with it.”—Newsday
 
“Michener has done for Afghanistan what . . . his first [book] did for the South Pacific.”—The New York Herald Tribune

Declan: I was born into this world. I am what it made me. I do things that others find disgusting. I broke many rules when I met Brooke. She showed up one night and I took advantage of that. When she kept coming back, I knew there was more to her. One fucking day changed it all. One secret from my past blew our relationship out of the water.


Brooke: Loss was all I knew. It creeps around every corner. One dare. That’s all it took. The night I met Declan, I was on the high of my life. I felt safe with him. Little did I know; his secrets were also mine. When his past is revealed, I lose it. The man he claimed to be was a man I’d known all my life.

Brigid Anderson is a second year lawyer on a fast track to making partner. With the weight of her siblings' success on her shoulders, Brigid feels like she needs to prove something–to herself and to her parents. Her life is running smoothly and all according to plan...until she meets Grady.

Grady Coughlin understands focus and ambition, having taken over his father's contracting business and building it into a successful historic preservation business on his own. After a blind date with Brigid that ends in explosive passion, they embark on a friends with benefits relationship. But as Grady establishes himself in the business world, he decides he wants more and wants it with Brigid.

On the eve of her best friend's wedding, with her promotion to partner dangling within reach, Brigid believes Grady isn't the best partner to suit her career ambition. But Grady and her heart don't agree and she must decide if she should stick to the safety of the plan or find the courage to pursue what she really wants

Absolutely nothing stands between a woman and her beloved dog… not even the malevolent force of a voodoo curse.

Kendell Summer, lead guitarist for Polly Urethane and the Strippers, has always been interested in the unexplained. So when she sets off on a paranormal research romp with Myles, a former classmate, to explore his skills in psychometry, she’s ready for a little adventure. But she gets more than she bargained for when her Lhasa apso, Cheesecake, is dognapped. Kendell will do whatever it takes to get her dog back.

While rescuing the pup, Kendell and Myles learn that the touristy glitz of New Orleans’ voodoo shops hides a dark history few understand—a truth that some in the city plan to use for their own gain.

Soon they uncover more than they ever wanted to know about New Orleans’ unsavory past and a curse that threatens to change everything. Only Kendell can prevent the evil they’ve uncovered from doing more damage, but she’ll need Myles’s support and psychometric abilities—and the vigilance of the ever-watchful Cheesecake.

DREAMTHIEF received the 2015 INDIEFAB Book of the Year Award from Foreword Reviews for fantasy and also won a RONE award for Best New Adult Romance.

Forget the fairies and unicorns, most people return from fairy world with lost memories and mental problems. Olive Kennedy knows. She's the therapist who treats patients suffering from Faythander's side effects.

Traveling back to the fairy realm wasn't on Olive's to-do list. But she has no choice. The fate of both Earth and Fairy depends on her ability to stop an ancient being called the Dreamthief. To complicate matters, she may be losing her heart to someone who can't love her in return. Saving the world, she can handle. Falling in love—not so much.

Dreamthief is the Amazon #1 bestseller in both Mythology and Fairy Tales. With over 100 five-star reviews on Amazon and Goodreads, Dreamthief is an imaginative, romantic fantasy for fans of The Dresden Files by Jim Butcher. Morgan Stamm of InD'tale magazine says, "[Dreamthief] springs to life from the very first sentence."

This imaginative read has been nominated for both the Foreword Reviews' INDIEFAB book of the year award, as well as InD'tale's prestigious RONE award.

If you love fantasy, don't miss this thrilling read!

There's no slavery in the Yorkshire Dales, not in 1887, not ever. But loving families use artful schemes to enslave the innocent. Twenty nine year-old Tizzie is such an innocent. She has worked herself down to skin and bones as a dairymaid on the farm of her dear brother, Jack, his gracious wife, Maggie, their three boys and one girl, Agnes. Expert at many things, though not in spotting conniving entrapment, Tizzie longs to see that young Agnes will not suffer her spinster fate. In trying to help Agnes find an education and avoid a life of drudgery in their male-dominated world, Tizzie begins to suspect and then uncover Jack and Maggie's treachery, and the family's plots to enslave and use up Agnes too. With only her wits to guide her, Tizzie tries to right years of wrongs and set Agnes free.

Untold miles of lawless, apocalyptic roads wait for our feet.  "This is Safe Haven Refugee Camp. Can anyone hear me? …hello? Is anyone out there?

The end of the world has given us a harsh, merciless existence, where nature tries hard to push mankind to the very brink of extinction. Everything is against us, between us... Untold miles of lawless, apocalyptic roads wait for our feet, and the future, cold and dark, offers little comfort. Without change, there can be no peace. Only survivors.”

From dangerous trips into dark, apocalyptic cities, to patriotic rescues and furious revelations, Life After War is an action-packed fantasy series where those left alive must come to terms with their mistakes in the old world, while fighting for a place in the new one. Life After War. Magic and Reality blended into a post-apocalyptic fantasy series that you won't ever forget.

From New York Times bestselling author Toni Anderson comes an electrifying novel of Romantic Suspense... 

For Stella Bled Lawrence being wealthy and stylish in 1938 is exactly what it’s cracked up to be. She’s blissfully unaware of the rising tensions in Europe even as she travels to Vienna on the eve of the Kristallnacht, The Night of Broken Glass. Stella and her husband, Nicky, witness the night’s atrocities first hand. Even as they watch the horror, they never imagine it will touch them personally, a pair of wealthy Americans on their honeymoon but touch them it does. In the chaotic aftermath, Stella finds passion and purpose in the form of a package with a Paris address. She promises to deliver it, not knowing what it contains or who wants it. Soon Stella must decide who and what she’s willing to sacrifice to keep a secret that has been quietly guarded for five hundred years.

The only thing worse than being a Hunter in the fae-ridden city of Harborsmouth, is hunting vampires in Bruges.

Being shipped off to Belgium sucks. The medieval city of Bruges is quaint, but the local Hunters' Guild is understaffed, the canals are choked with dead bodies, and there's no shortage of supernatural predators as likely suspects.

On second thought, maybe Bruges isn't so bad after all.

With a desire to prove herself, protect the innocent, and advance within the ranks of the Hunters' Guild, Jenna Lehane hits the cobbled streets of Bruges with blades at the ready. Someone, or something, is murdering tourists and dumping their bodies in the city's scenic canals. With the help of a mysterious stranger, Jenna begins to piece together clues that are dotted throughout the city like blood spatter.

Determined to stop the killings, Jenna delves into a bloody local history that only raises more questions--but some secrets are best left buried. Jenna must put her combat training to the test as she struggles to unearth the truth about an ancient enemy.

Hunting in Bruges is the first novel in the Hunters' Guild urban fantasy series set in the world of Ivy Granger. The world of Ivy Granger, including the Hunters' Guild series and the award-winning Ivy Granger Psychic Detective series, is filled with action, mystery, magic, dark humor, quirky characters, bloodsucking vampires, flirtatious demons, sarcastic gargoyles, sexy shifters, temperamental witches, psychotic faeries, and snarky, kick-butt heroines.

NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • From the author of The Eighty-Dollar Champion, the remarkable story of the heroic rescue of priceless horses in the closing days of World War II

In the chaotic last days of the war, a small troop of battle-weary American soldiers captures a German spy and makes an astonishing find—his briefcase is empty but for photos of beautiful white horses that have been stolen and kept on a secret farm behind enemy lines. Hitler has stockpiled the world’s finest purebreds in order to breed the perfect military machine—an equine master race. But with the starving Russian army closing in, the animals are in imminent danger of being slaughtered for food.

With only hours to spare, one of the U.S. Army’s last great cavalrymen, Colonel Hank Reed, makes a bold decision—with General George Patton’s blessing—to mount a covert rescue operation. Racing against time, Reed’s small but determined force of soldiers, aided by several turncoat Germans, steals across enemy lines in a last-ditch effort to save the horses.

Pulling together this multistranded story, Elizabeth Letts introduces us to an unforgettable cast of characters: Alois Podhajsky, director of the famed Spanish Riding School of Vienna, a former Olympic medalist who is forced to flee the bomb-ravaged Austrian capital with his entire stable in tow; Gustav Rau, Hitler’s imperious chief of horse breeding, a proponent of eugenics who dreams of genetically engineering the perfect warhorse for Germany; and Tom Stewart, a senator’s son who makes a daring moonlight ride on a white stallion to secure the farm’s surrender.

A compelling account for animal lovers and World War II buffs alike, The Perfect Horse tells for the first time the full story of these events. Elizabeth Letts’s exhilarating tale of behind-enemy-lines adventure, courage, and sacrifice brings to life one of the most inspiring chapters in the annals of human valor.

Praise for The Perfect Horse

“Winningly readable . . . Letts captures both the personalities and the stakes of this daring mission with such a sharp ear for drama that the whole second half of the book reads like a WWII thriller dreamed up by Alan Furst or Len Deighton. . . . The right director could make a Hollywood classic out of this fairy tale.”—The Christian Science Monitor

“Letts, a lifelong equestrienne, eloquently brings together the many facets of this unlikely, poignant story underscoring the love and respect of man for horses.”—Kirkus Reviews

 

In this coming of age Red Moon trilogy, USA Today bestseller Micah Caida turns dystopian young adult fiction on its ear with a breathtakingly fresh science fiction, fantasy story that is as much a thriller as it is a romantic tale.

Rayen’s memory is blank. Her future's in question. Her power is dangerous.

I awoke in an unknown desert landscape that I felt I should recognize, yet I have no real memory of this place or…who I am. A strange ghost told me my name and that I’m seventeen, but he disappeared just as I could have used some help. I was captured along with others my age who said the land was called Albuquerque, then I was handed over to a private school where at times things are as familiar as the nearby mountain range and as alien as seeing a reflection of my face. Everyone thinks I’m a Native American runaway, whatever that is, but the school has offered me a place to stay until they learn my true identity, or my memory returns. As if things aren’t confusing enough, while stuck with a cocky computer-savvy boy and a gifted, but oddball, girl the three of us discovered a secret that threatens the existence of this world - and the future. In the middle of all this, I'm drawn to a seventeen-year-old boy who is as deadly as he is attractive and thinks I’m the enemy.

"I was totally captivated by every scene in the first book...The imagination of Micah Caida takes the reader on an exhilarating journey…TIME TRAP is originality at its best." ~~Amelia Richard, SingleTitles

Deepak Chopra brings the Buddha back to life in this gripping New York Times bestselling novel about the young prince who abandoned his inheritance to discover his true calling. This iconic journey changed the world forever, and the truths revealed continue to influence every corner of the globe today.

A young man in line for the throne is trapped in his father's kingdom and yearns for the outside world. Betrayed by those closest to him, Siddhartha abandons his palace and princely title. Face-to-face with his demons, he becomes a wandering monk and embarks on a spiritual fast that carries him to the brink of death. Ultimately recognizing his inability to conquer his body and mind by sheer will, Siddhartha transcends his physical pain and achieves enlightenment.

Although we recognize Buddha today as an icon of peace and serenity, his life story was a tumultuous and spellbinding affair filled with love and sex, murder and loss, struggle and surrender. From the rocky terrain of the material world to the summit of the spiritual one, Buddha captivates and inspires—ultimately leading us closer to understanding the true nature of life and ourselves.