Her father Brian, a Vietnam veteran struggling with the long-term effects of the war, has been missing ever since he walked out on Beth and their two children in the dead of night twenty years ago. Matt dreams of one day finding his own path like his heroic father, as Beth’s religious fervour propagates a childhood of parental disappointment. Rachel sets before her family one last request: a journey to the exotic and the unknown. Rachel, ever the free spirit, administers a dose of her notorious wanderlust.The Happiness Jar is a story about how tightly you hold on to what you believe in; how one person’s beliefs can affect a family and tear at the already fragile folds where love hides. It’s about faith, and what can endure despite the burdens we place on ourselves and each other.Set against the red dust of the Kimberley desert, and the smoky backdrop of the holy river Ganges in India, The Happiness Jar is a novel that reminds us that we continue to live in the memories we leave behind. “The Happiness Jar will take the reader on a journey of discovery, of oneself and those whom we love, and others we may not love at all. I found this book to be a wonderful read from start to finish and was left pondering at the end, my own mortality, outlook and relationships. Samantha Tidy has penned a book that you may well want to read again and again.” Gary McKay, Author

    Caroline Cashion, a professor of French literature at Georgetown University, is stunned when an MRI reveals that she has a bullet lodged near the base of her skull. It makes no sense: she has never been shot. She has no entry wound. No scar. When she confronts her parents, they initially profess bewilderment. Then, over the course of one awful evening, she learns the truth: she was adopted when she was three years old, after her real parents were murdered in cold blood. Caroline had been there the night of the attack, and she was hit by a single gunshot to the neck. Buried too deep among vital nerves and blood vessels, the surgeons had left it, and stitched up the traumatized little girl with the bullet still inside. That was thirty-four years ago.Now, Caroline returns to her hometown to learn whatever she can about who her parents were and why they died. Along the way she meets a cop who worked the case, who reveals that even after all these years, the police do not have enough evidence to nail their suspect. The killer is still at large. Caroline is in danger: the bullet in her neck could identify the murderer, and he'll do anything to keep it out of the police hands. Now Caroline will have to decide: run for her life, or stay and fight?

    Together with three veterans of the St. Vincent’s Home for Boys, he works for small-time mobster Frank Minna’s limo service cum detective agency. Life without Frank Minna, the charismatic King of Brooklyn, would be unimaginable, so who cares if the tasks he sets them are, well, not exactly legal. But when Frank is fatally stabbed, one of Lionel’s colleagues lands in jail, the other two vie for his position, and the victim’s widow skips town. Lionel’s world is suddenly topsy-turvy, and this outcast who has trouble even conversing attempts to untangle the threads of the case while trying to keep the words straight in his head. Motherless Brooklyn is a brilliantly original homage to the classic detective novel by one of the most acclaimed writers of his generation.

    Soon, she encounters kindness, romance, and is pulled into a mystery centered on an old, abandoned church and the death of a special girl. Are the images that only she can see in the church's stained-glass windows a warning, or is someone trying to reach her, to help heal this broken community? Manchester Christmas illustrates how God often uses the most unlikely among us to spread grace and healing in a wounded world. Full of love, hope, and forgiveness, this debut novel from an Emmy-winning writer will touch your heart and have you longing for Christmas in Manchester.

    The unlikely thief, former child prodigy Benjamin Ziskind, is convinced that the painting once hung in his parents' living room. This work of art opens a door through which we discover his family's startling history--from an orphanage in Soviet Russia where Chagall taught to suburban New Jersey and the jungles of Vietnam.

    Into his life wanders Linus Steinman, nine years old and mute, who has escaped from Nazi Germany with his sole companion: an African gray parrot.What is the meaning of the mysterious string of German numbers the bird spews out - a top secret SS code? The keys to a series of Swiss bank accounts perhaps? Or something more sinister? Is the solution to this last case - the real explanation of the mysterious boy and his parrot - beyond even the reach of the once-famed sleuth?A short, suspenseful tale of compassion and wit that reimagines the classic nineteenth-century detective story.

    But these circumstances have changed their lives irreversibly, and each woman begins to look for something to satiate the cravings that she had never allowed to surface before...Joanna is dying for cake. Clare is longing to paint again. Susan want's to claw back all the time she's lost. Wendy is trying to forget the past. And Evelyn? Well, nobody knows what Evelyn wants. But how can she not want her baby back?

    In it, Mary Ellen shares her thoughts on topics from balance to the Big Bad Wolf, inviting readers to think for themselves about materialism and spontaneity and miracles and keeping promises and a host of other ideas. "I hope something I share will spark and idea in you and give you a good thinking experience," the author says. "Enjoy the Ride!"style="COLOR: black; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt"> style="COLOR: black; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt"> Author s Bio style="COLOR: black; mso-ansi-font-size: 12.0pt">Mary Ellen Edmunds style="COLOR: black; mso-ansi-font-size: 12.0pt"> has served as director of training at the Missionary Training Center and as a member of the Relief Society general board. She graduated from the College of Nursing at Brigham Young University, has been a faculty member at BYU, and has served several full-time missions. A popular speaker, she is also the author of Happiness: Finders, Keepers; Love Is a Verb; and Thoughts for a Bad Hair Day.<?xml:namespace prefix = o ns = "urn:schemas-microsoft-com:office:office" />

    This debut international thriller tangles a sordid web of love and intrigue.

    

    For the last twenty years, she thought she had gotten away with it. Now, with the case reopened, she stands to lose everything. She has only one option left: trade her freedom for the truth. It's the only way out of the mess, but it comes at a heavy price. Twenty years ago, Patti Thomas left, and didn't look back. She left her best friend to fend for herself. Trying to keep her secrets hidden, she had no choice but to start over. Now over four hundred miles away, with a family of her own, she knows she must go back to Vermont and help Cate. Together again, Cate and Patti must decide if it's time to reopen the wounds of that night or keep running from them. As evidence surfaces, the potential to destroy a once in a lifetime friendship looms. Twists, turns and murder. There's only one way out-but how much can one friendship withstand?

    Who has not wondered about old houses as they passed by? Who was the builder? Did he take pride in his work? Were the inhabitants always happy or were there hard times? How many people passed through the doors? Old House is a story about one house. It is located in a fictitious valley in the state of Montana U.S.A. Through the course of one hundred years, these are the people who lived, laughed, loved, and cried as they called this old house their home. Each chapter in the book is a story in itself. It begins with the man who built the house in the late 1860s, and it continues with the people who found lodging and refuge in it - from a young man with a bounty on his head, an old man in search of gold, to a woman seeking protection.

    His reputation and livelihood at stake, Marco confides in a close friend, who finds himself caught between the obligations of friendship and an increasingly urgent desire to uncover the truth. This unnamed friend is drawn, magnetized, into the orbit of the woman at the center of the accusation—and finds his position as the safely detached narrator turning into something more dangerous. Soon, the question of his own complicity becomes impossible to avoid.Set during the months leading up to Donald Trump’s election, with detours into the 1970s, this propulsive novel investigates the very meaning of truth at a time when it feels increasingly malleable. An atmospheric and unsettling drama from a novelist acclaimed as “the literary descendent of Dostoevsky and Patricia Highsmith” (Boston Globe), Afternoon of a Faun combines a sharply observed study of our shifting social mores with a meditation on what makes us believe, or disbelieve, the stories people tell about themselves.

    An encounter with young Sydney tattoo artist Kira leaves him with a permanent tribute to the soldier, but it is a meeting that will change the course of his life. What he isn’t expecting is a campaign of retribution from the soldiers who blame him for the ambush and threaten his career. With his marriage also on the brink, his life spirals out of control. Years later, Phelan is surprised when Kira re-enters his life seeking refuge from her own troubles and with a young son in tow. She finds a way to help him make peace with his past, but she is still on the run from her own. The War Artist is a timely and compelling novel about the legacy of war, the power of art and the possibility of redemption.

    As she uncovers layers of grime on what could prove to be a lost Flemish masterpiece, Rachel finds that layers of her own soul—layers that she would rather have kept hidden—are being stripped away.Imbued with historical and artistic detail, Unveiling will appeal to readers of A.S. Byatt’s Possession and Tracy Chevalier’s Girl with a Pearl Earring. Beautifully written, it brings the venerable city of Rome vividly to life and illuminates the power of art, imagination, and beauty to speak directly to the heart.