Last Train to Istanbul


Ayşe Kulin - 2002
    Yet the spirited young beauty only has eyes for Rafael Alfandari, the handsome Jewish son of an esteemed court physician. In defiance of their families, they marry, fleeing to Paris to build a new life.But when the Nazis invade France and begin rounding up Jews, the exiled lovers will learn that nothing—not war, not politics, not even religion—can break the bonds of family. For after they learn that Selva is but one of their fellow citizens trapped in France, a handful of brave Turkish diplomats hatch a plan to spirit the Alfandaris and hundreds of innocents, many of whom are Jewish, to safety. Together, they must traverse a war-torn continent, crossing enemy lines and risking everything in a desperate bid for freedom. From Ankara to Paris, Cairo, and Berlin, Last Train to Istanbul is an uplifting tale of love and adventure.

The Mountaineer's Painting: A Ghost Story


David Francis Curran - 2021
    For some reason the glass in the frame is painted over. Upon uncovering the painting beneath he finds a haunting mountainscape. That night he begins to dream about the painter's fatal climb. And when he wakes he finds the painting has changed. This is a ghost story, a love story, and a murder mystery. If you loved the Demi Moore, Patrick Swayze movie 'Ghost,' you'll love this suspenseful book.

People We Love


Jenny Harper - 2015
    Jenny Harper is a most gifted storyteller." Alexander McCall Smith‘Thoroughly entertaining’ Katie FfordeFor readers of Jojo Moyes, Jodi Picoult, David Nicholls - you'll love Jenny Harper's "People We Love".Her life is on hold – until an unlikely visitor climbs in through the kitchen window.A year after her brother’s fatal accident, Lexie’s life seems to have reached a dead end. She is back home in small-town Hailesbank with her shell-shocked parents, treading softly around their fragile emotions.As the family business drifts into decline, Lexie’s passion for painting and for her one-time mentor Patrick have been buried as deep as her unexpressed grief, until the day her lunch is interrupted by a strange visitor in a bobble hat, dressing gown and bedroom slippers, who climbs through the window.Elderly Edith’s batty appearance conceals a secret and starts Lexie on a journey that gives her an inspirational artistic idea and rekindles her appetite for life. With friends in support and ex-lover Cameron seemingly ready to settle down, do love and laughter beckon after all?

The Taste of Ginger


Mansi Shah - 2021
    All she did was fall in love with a white Christian carnivore instead of a conventional Indian boy. Years later, with her parents not speaking to her and her controversial relationship in tatters, all Preeti has left is her career at a prestigious Los Angeles law firm.But when Preeti receives word of a terrible accident in the city where she was born, she returns to India, where she’ll have to face her estranged parents…and the complicated past they left behind. Surrounded by the sights and sounds of her heritage, Preeti catches a startling glimpse of her family’s battles with class, tradition, and sacrifice. Torn between two beautifully flawed cultures, Preeti must now untangle what home truly means to her.

The Old World


Roy M. Griffis - 2011
    Original ISBN: 1492731420Lieutenant Robert Fitzgerald has managed to retain his sanity, his humanity, and his honor during the hell of WWI's trench warfare. Charlotte Braninov fled the shifting storm of the impending Russian Revolution for the less-threatening world of field camp medicine, serving as a nurse in the most hopeless of fronts. Their friendship creates a sanctuary both could cling to in the most desperate of times. Historical fiction about life, loss, and love, By the Hands of Men explores the power that lies within each of us to harm - or to heal - all those we touch.

Davenport House


Marie Silk - 2016
    She lives isolated in the Pennsylvania countryside with her affluent and secretive family. When her father dies suddenly, Mary becomes pained with grief and increasingly suspicious of those around her. A humble servant girl has the chance of a lifetime to become a lady's companion. Costly dresses, exquisite rooms, and fine dinners are pleasant distractions from what is really happening in the house.

Theodora


Christina McKnight - 2017
    With her sharp wit and skill on the archery field, Theo is far more interested in winning a large purse prize than securing a husband. But when she is unmasked on the tourney grounds, her face exposed to all, she fears her identity and days spent gallivanting around London will cause not only her undoing, but the downfall of her friends as well. Loyalty… Mr. Alistair Price, heir to the elderly Viscount Melton, arrived in London with his eight younger siblings in tow. He is charged with keeping his family name above reproach until the Season starts and his sister, Miss Adeline Price, is presented to society—though that proves far more difficult than Alistair ever expected when he discovers his rebellious sister climbing down the side of their townhouse and scurrying off to Whitechapel for an archery tournament. His focus remains on saving his family from the certain ruin and disgrace Adeline’s actions invited—until Alistair catches sight of another female archer, her arrow connecting with far more than the center of her target. And honor above all… With Theodora’s future—and that of her friends—in jeopardy, will she agree to a marriage devoid of affection, or risk everything for the man who won her heart?

Vada Faith


Barbara A. Whittington - 2012
    She's always wanted to be known as "somebody.” Somebody besides a high school beauty queen in the small town of Shady Creek, West Virginia. Somebody besides the wife of football hero, John "Wasper" Waddell. More than the mother of twins. More than the town’s most sought after beautician, in the shop she owns with her twin sister, Joy Ruth. She's tired of living in the run down Victorian home her husband inherited from his Grandma Belle, even if Eleanor Roosevelt might have once sat in the wicker chair still on their front porch. Vada Faith longs for a new home in the fancy subdivision of Crystal Springs. Then, Roy and Dottie Kilgore swoop into town, wanting a child of their own, and bringing money to burn.In going after her own dreams, Vada Faith nearly destroys the lives of those she loves.

Only the Truth


Pat Brown - 2012
    Life changes little for him from day to day until he brings home a young drifter he meets at the railroad tracks, the mysterious Charlene, whose last name he never asks. He becomes her Sweet Billy Ray and his love for Charlene is steady and uncomplicated until the sheriff shows up to take her away in handcuffs. With the only woman he has ever loved behind bars for cold-bloodedly murdering the old man across the road, a confused and devastated Billy Ray sets out on a quest to find the truth, only the truth, whether it leads him to be able to save his Charlene from a death sentence or it frees him from her spell.

Armageddon Heights


D.M. Mitchell - 2014
    Two men, two stories, one breathtaking conclusion. The first man is Samuel Wade, an ex-soldier, on the run and blamed for the murder of his beloved wife and daughter. But he’s on the trail of the real murderer and is seeking revenge. He boards a coach bound for Edinburgh, hot on the heels of his one-time friend and army colleague John Travers – a man who was kidnapped and brutally tortured by insurgents. A man who blamed Wade for allowing it to happen. The man who killed his family. What happens next is totally unexpected and bizarre. Trying to sleep during a storm, Wade wakes to discover that the coach and its ten remaining passengers is no longer headed to Edinburgh. Impossibly, it’s in the middle of a vast, unknown and hostile desert, abandoned by its driver. Are they asleep, is it a dream? Are they all dead? So their nightmare begins. The second man is Robert Napier, second-in-command at Lindegaard Software, a company run by the powerfully wealthy Dale Lindegaard. Dale took over the business when his brother Jeremy and niece Melissa were brutally gunned down by an activist group known as CSL. Jeremy died, and Melissa was reduced to a vegetative state, and all because of Lindegaard’s complete control of a controversial new drug called tremethelene, used by millions worldwide. CSL was duly crushed, their leaders now in jail. But CSL has come back from the dead with a new leader called Charlie Sharland, threatening Dale Lindegaard’s tremethelene monopoly all over again. Lindegaard is determined to stamp them out for good and urges Robert Napier to do whatever it takes to rid him of them. Even murder. As Samuel Wade’s living nightmare in the desert grows ever more bizarre and terrifying, Robert Napier is forced to work with Dean Villiers, a cold, calculating and violently ambitious man. He is drawn ever deeper into the dark underbelly of a multi-billion dollar corporation, where violence and greed are the norm and nothing is as it first appears. Who is the mole known as Cobalt? Who and where is Charlie Sharland? Does he even exist? And what exactly is motivating the scheming Dean Villiers? Both men are out for revenge. Wade because of his family’s murder, Napier because of what happened to the vegetative Melissa Lindegaard, his wife-to-be. Both men’s lives are irrevocably intertwined. Both their stories will come crashing together in the terrifying, surprising, jaw-dropping climax of D. M. Mitchell’s undeniably original and most imaginative thriller to date. Dare you take a journey into nightmare?

Shanghai Story


Alexa Kang - 2018
    Enter the Paris of the East, where one man and one woman strive to hold on to their dreams as the Communists rise and the shadow of Japan closes in. His country stood on the verge of a new beginning and the gate of hell. The Kuomintang promises the dawn of democracy, but the Communists threaten civil war while Japan's unbridled ambitions loom. All Clark Yuan wants is to see his fellow countrymen's lives improve. He joins the KMT, hoping to play his part to make China a better place. He vows to Eden, the beautiful Jewish girl he admires from afar, Shanghai would be her forever home. But power and money are at stake. The line of good and evil shifts. To achieve his ends, he must bargain with the devils. How much of his soul would he sacrifice to reach the greater good? * Fleeing the rise of the Nazis, Eden Levine came with her family to Shanghai, hoping to build a new life. The dazzling city made her swoon. From the pinnacle of luxury, big band jazz, to a safe haven for Jewish refugees, the country that turns no one away is the beacon of hope. But behind the glitz and glamour, the darkness of human nature lurks. A heinous crime shocks the international community. Would she defend an innocent Nazi soldier and risk the ire of her own people? With only her new friend Clark by her side, could she defy the clutch of racial strife to see justice prevail? "I dream of a day when all nations' flags would fly in unity of peace. I dream of a world where no law or human divide would stop two people from falling in love." - - - From the author of the Rose of Anzio series, don't miss this sweeping WWII tale of love, loss, and hope during one of the world's darkest hours. *** One of Hidden Gems' Best Books of 2018 *** Third place winner of the Asian Book Blog's Book of the Year of the Dog 2018

Blizzard Ball


Dennis Kelly - 2011
    The jackpot has run up to a red-hot $750 million, the world's richest prize. A bungled convenience store heist triggers a happenstance theft of winning lottery tickets and trips up an insider's scheme to rig the results.Agent Kirchner, an old-school cop reluctantly teams up with a young tech-savvy analyst on an investigation that propels them into the world of numerical probability, conspiratorial politics, international ticket scalpers, counterfeiters, disgruntled players, and illegal immigrants looking to grab the brass ring. Caught in the crosscurrents of those in deadly pursuit of the winning ticket, the investigators are buffeted by unsolved murders, a bomb blast-and the curious giveaway of winning lottery tickets: acts of charity or criminal subterfuge?The whereabouts and redemption of the $750 million jackpot lottery ticket remains a mystery throughout, stirring anger and resentment among the lottery-playing public. The winning ticket, finally, surfaces but before the prize can be claimed a Faustian bargain puts Kirchner's job on the line.

The Viking


Marti Talbott - 2010
    Yet, the battle was not at all what he expected and he soon found himself alone and stranded in Scotland. Thirteen-year-old Kannak’s problem was just as grave. Her father deserted them and the only way to survive, she decided, was to take a husband over her mother‘s objections. Suddenly she was helping a hated Viking escape. Could Kannak successfully hide a Viking in the middle of a Scottish Clan? And why was someone plotting to kill the clan's beloved laird?

The Haunting of the Holloway Family: A Riveting Paranormal Mystery Boxset


James Hunt - 2018
     James Hunt brings you the complete collection of the highly-rated "The Haunting of the House on Cypress Lane and Dead in the Desert" Series. A job opportunity has brought the Holloway family to a small desert town on the Arizona/California border in the middle of nowhere. But what is thought as a godsend soon devolves into a parent’s worst nightmare. The Haunting of the House on Cypress Lane There sits a large house on Cypress Lane in the small town of Ocoee, Louisiana, and its history is intertwined with the town itself. A feud was born within its walls, and it is there where it will die. The Cooley family finds themselves in the middle of a fight that started long before they arrived. Will they make it out alive, or will they become another casualty in the fight between the living and the dead?

If These Trees Could Talk


Brian W. Smith - 2011