An arsonist, a covetous nurse, and the endearing village idiot are among the few who have ever seen Mary.Newcomers to Mill River -- a police officer and his daughter and a new fourth grade teacher -- are also curious about the reclusive old woman. But only Father Michael O’Brien knows Mary and the secret she keeps -- one that, once revealed, will change all of their lives forever.

    When the sheriff of Fergus, Idaho is murdered, Ethan is named his replacement. The women in town are scared to think a murderer is loose among them, so Gert forms the Ladies' Shooting Club to teach them how to protect themselves, their homes, and their families. Ethan didn’t ask to be named sheriff, but he accepts the position and takes on the investigation of the former lawman’s mysterious death. Now he’s between a rock and a hard place—being pressured by the town’s women to restore order and safety to Fergus, and being pressured by the men who insist Ethan disband the upstart Ladies’ Shooting Club. Another murder sends Ethan to Gert and her ladies for help in the investigation. But will the Ladies’ Shooting Club unmask the murderer before he strikes again? This e-book includes discussion questions for groups.

    She's never walked its hedge maze nor found its secret chambers; she's never glimpsed the shades that haunt it, nor hunted for lost diamonds in its walls. But all of that is about to change. After her grandmother passes away, Sarah and her friend Jackson decide to search for the diamonds--and the house comes alive. She discovers that she can see visions of the house's past, like the eighteenth-century sea captain who hid the jewels, or the glamorous great-grandmother driven mad by grief. She grows closer to both Jackson and a young man named Richard Hathaway, whose family histories are each deeply entwined with her own. But when the visions start to threaten the person she holds most dear, Sarah must do everything she can to get to the bottom of the house's secrets, and stop the course of history before it is cemented forever.

    For fans of the classics—Holmes, Dickens, and Abfab.In 1842, two drunken sisters debate their future. Business at the family chocolate shop has ground to a halt, and change is needed. For once, domineering elder sister Maggie doesn't get her way, and a month later Judy, Maggie, and Netta Walters—a medium with big hair and a bigger secret—open their séance parlor. The locals are shocked, but soon the shop is crammed with people wanting to contact the dead. Despite their change in fortune, a rift grows between the sisters, as Judy gets her gothic novel published, finds a man, and proves to be more capable of contacting spirits than Maggie, who can only read tea leaves. Spurred on by jealousy, Maggie tries harder, and soon her talents surpass those of her smug sister. She fills halls with folk wishing to witness her powers, and is even consulted by the Queen. As word spreads, the Church decides that Maggie must be stopped, and Maggie is tricked into a carriage—destination Bedlam Hospital. She then has to choose between publicly declaring herself a fake and returning to obscurity, or being incarcerated forever with the insane.

    In 1842, Tom Benton gallopes in the Red River Valley, one jump ahead of a Texas posse bent on hanging him. He feared no living thing. He loved danger and laughed at the impossible. He stole his wife from her husband, his land from its legal owner. Not content with lusty Sarah, he took a knife-slinging Cajun's daughter for a mistress. From the day Tom Benton arrived into Louisiana, he and her family ruled the bayou country. Tom sired three children. A daughter, Stormy, as wild and willful as himself. Wade, who inherited all of his father's weakness and none of his strength. And a second son not even Tom dared claim as his own -- a boy who one day would bring destruction and misery to the Benton clan. Devil's spawn they all were. Stormy ran away to the glittering life of a courtesan. Wade delivered his father over to the one man who could kill him. And in Benton's Row people watched, horrified, fascinated, and whispered -- “Every time a damned Benton is born, people should run for cover!”In 1920 his wife Sarah, aged ninety-seven, dies peacefully in her rocker on the veranda of Tom Benton’s sprawling plantation known as Broad Acres, nestled in the exotic and mysterious Louisiana river country. This is a spellbinding story of four brawling generations of Bentons, a family that comes to a violent end caused by its own illicit Negro branch.

    Now, she’s a middle-aged millionaire, grieving the loss of her family. The only living relative she has left is her smothering younger sister. May’s sanity is already threatened when tensions rise, so she sets out to find solitude in Florida. However, life has other plans for her. Animal encounters, unlikely friendships, sisterly squabbles and hilarious scenarios take May on an unforgettable journey from the depths of grief to a new life. But, will she embrace it?

    No one can hear her, just us boys. We're the dead Finnegans – Ma, Thomas, Ben and me.Ten-year-old John Finnegan can't leave his garden. Ever since they were murdered he, his brothers and his ma have been stuck there, caught between the worlds of the living and the dead. Unseen and unnoticed, he watches the events after his life unfold – including the actions of his murderer.James Stack is born dirt-poor on an Irish tenant farm and the great famine shadows his childhood. But his clever sister's lace making may save the family – until Aileen is sent to the other side of the world on a convict ship. To save her, James joins the redcoats and follows her across dangerous waters to a hopeful new land. But can he ever leave the death and hunger of his homeland behind?Based on the 1865 Otahuhu murders, Purgatory is a startling, gripping novel from an immensely talented new author.

    Marvellous Ways is a ninety-year-old woman who's lived alone in a remote creek for nearly all her life. Recently she's taken to spending her days sitting on the steps of her caravan with a pair of binoculars. She's waiting for something - she's not sure what, but she'll know it when she sees it. Freddy Drake is a young soldier left reeling by the war. He's agreed to fulfil a dying friend's last wish and hand-deliver a letter to the boy's father in Cornwall. But Freddy's journey doesn't go to plan, and sees him literally wash up in Marvellous' creek, broken in body and spirit. When Marvellous comes to his aid, an unlikely friendship grows between the two. Can Freddy give Marvellous what she needs to say goodbye to the world, and can she give him what he needs to go on?

    His only request of his daughter is to go through the long-forgotten box of memorabilia from his days as a medic on the western front. Then, among his wartime souvenirs, Beth finds a photograph of her father with an adoring and beautiful stranger—a photograph worth a thousand questions.It was 1944 when Max was drawn into the underground resistance by the fearless German wife of a Nazi officer. Together, she and Max were willing to risk everything for what they believed was right. Ahead of them lay a dangerous romance, a dream of escape, and a destiny over which neither had control.But Max isn’t alone in his haunting remembrances of war. In a nearby private care home is a fragile German-born woman with her own past to share. Only when the two women meet does Beth realize how much more to her father there is to know, all the ways in which his heart still breaks, and the closure he needs to heal it.

     MacFARLAND'S LASS by Glynnis Campbell - writing as Kira Morgan (formerly Captured by Desire) A woman on the run…a man on the hunt. He has forty days to earn her trust. She has forty days to win his heart. They have forty days to outwit their enemies. When Florie Gilder, the once-respected jeweler to Queen Mary, claims sanctuary in an abandoned church for a crime she didn't commit, huntsman Rane MacFarland, a local hero of the common folk, vows to protect her. But when his overlord charges him with preventing the fugitive lass's escape, Rane finds himself torn between duty and desire when he begins to fall for his spirited captive. And when powerful foes conspire to turn Rane and Florie against each other, they need courage, wits, and, most of all, love, to survive.

    What we cannot lose.A sweeping masterwork of love and loss, secrets and survival, On the Sickle's Edge is told through the voices of three characters who lay bare their family's saga: the endearing, scrappy South-African born Lena, transported to Latvia and later trapped in the USSR; her granddaughter Darya, a true Communist whose growing disillusionment with Soviet ideology places her family at mortal risk; and Steven, a painter from Boston who inadvertently stumbles into the tangled web of his family's past. Against the roiling backdrop of twentieth-century Russia and Eastern Europe, the novel delivers equal parts historical drama, political thriller and poignant love story.On the Sickle's Edge takes the reader on a roller-coaster ride through some of the most tumultuous events of the 20th century. Instantly immersed in seven generations of the Shtein family, we witness their exhilarating celebrations and provocative controversies, and gain an intimate understanding of the pivotal events in South Africa, Latvia and the Soviet Union. Neville Frankel's ability to combine historical insight and human passion is spellbinding. I couldn't put it down. --Pamela Katz, The Partnership: Brecht, Weill, Three Women, and Germany on the BrinkIn the hands of a masterful storyteller, On the Sickle's Edge pits the weight of an oppressive regime against individual tenacity and profound personal courage. Inspired by Frankel's own family history, this multi-generational epic holds up a mirror to a universal truth: all immigrants face the powerful tension between assimilation and cultural identity. We have--all of us--lived life on the edge of the sickle. --Rabbi Andrew Baker, Director of International Jewish Affairs, American Jewish Committee

    Determined to prove otherwise, Kate sets out on a fascinating and sometimes hilarious journey through antebellum law and medicine. Set in 1860s Nashville and told with a biting wit, determined Kate finally discovers the truth - but at what cost? Will she ruin her own life trying to defend the life of her dead father?

    No one notices. Oliver Campbell, fourteen, fanciful and funny in equal measure, struggles to unravel the knots of emotion when his little sister, Lily, falls gravely ill with a mysterious disease. Irritating and puzzling to his two older half-brothers, neglected by his self-absorbed mum and dad, and unfalleninlovewith by Poppy Teasdale, he longs to be something more than invisible. Quirky Kamal doesn't think it's weird that Ollie, his best friend, is fascinated by words and plants; he knows what it's like to be different and to be bullied; he coaches him on love, and how to clinch his dream-girl; he tickles him with his highfalutin language and aspirations; he impresses him with his fortitude despite a tragic past; he is there when his life takes a terrible turn; he is loyal to the end. Ollie's two special people throw him life jackets, but will they be enough to save him...? Readers who savoured Jenny Valentine's "Broken Soup," Frank Cottrell Boyce's "Framed," and Joe Dunthorne's "Submarine" might also approve of my novel for the 12+ age group, which I hope will appeal to boys, girls and adults alike.

    The rest was history.1777. Albany, New York. As battle cries of the American Revolution echo in the distance, servants flutter about preparing for one of New York society’s biggest events: the Schuylers’ grand ball. Descended from two of the oldest and most distinguished bloodlines in New York, the Schuylers are proud to be one of their fledgling country’s founding families, and even prouder still of their three daughters—Angelica, with her razor-sharp wit; Peggy, with her dazzling looks; and Eliza, whose beauty and charm rival that of both her sisters, though she’d rather be aiding the colonists’ cause than dressing up for some silly ball. Still, she can barely contain her excitement when she hears of the arrival of one Alexander Hamilton, a mysterious, rakish young colonel and General George Washington’s right-hand man. Though Alex has arrived as the bearer of bad news for the Schuylers, he can’t believe his luck—as an orphan, and a bastard one at that—to be in such esteemed company. And when Alex and Eliza meet that fateful night, so begins an epic love story that would forever change the course of American history.

    His story is set in the spring of 1979, when serial murder, the occult, and government conspiracy were highlighted in the news.The book will follow Mulder as he experiences life-changing events that set him on the path to becoming an FBI agent.