Based on little-known history, this timely book will strike a chord with readers of Fiona Davis, Tracey Lange, and Marie Benedict.Based on the true story of America’s only leper colony, The Second Life of Mirielle West brings vividly to life the Louisiana institution known as Carville, where thousands of people were stripped of their civil rights, branded as lepers, and forcibly quarantined throughout the entire 20th century. For Mirielle West, a 1920’s socialite married to a silent film star, the isolation and powerlessness of the Louisiana Leper Home is an unimaginable fall from her intoxicatingly chic life of bootlegged champagne and the star-studded parties of Hollywood’s Golden Age. When a doctor notices a pale patch of skin on her hand, she’s immediately branded a leper and carted hundreds of miles from home to Carville, taking a new name to spare her family and famous husband the shame that accompanies the disease.At first she hopes her exile will be brief, but those sent to Carville are more prisoners than patients and their disease has no cure. Instead she must find community and purpose within its walls, struggling to redefine her self-worth while fighting an unchosen fate.As a registered nurse, Amanda Skenandore’s medical background adds layers of detail and authenticity to the experiences of patients and medical professionals at Carville – the isolation, stigma, experimental treatments, and disparate community. A tale of repulsion, resilience, and the Roaring ‘20s, The Second Life of Mirielle West is also the story of a health crisis in America’s past, made all the more poignant by the author’s experiences during another, all-too-recent crisis.

    Even my parents mention him in hushed, angry whispers, fearful he’s going to shatter my brother’s records and destroy the legacy left behind when he died.However, I avoid Vince Novak at all costs, hiding from him and the rest of the world behind my camera lens. But my best laid plans—and photos—are nearly ruined when my tangible disinterest in his existence intrigues him.The more time we spend together, the more his little flaws peek out beneath the layers of perfection and break down the walls I’ve built around my heart.

    I want nothing to do with the ones who play on the same team as my brothers, and I certainly avoid the ones who spend more time in strip clubs than kids’ clubs.So why do I suddenly find myself faking a relationship with Ben Olson, the bad boy tight end who fits every descriptor on my naughty list?He’s in a tight spot, and I’m intrigued by the illicit under the dinner table action that proved to me he’s nothing but trouble. He’s hot and I’m bored. He doesn’t do relationships, and I’m just looking for some fun.Except fun is taking a quick turn into real feelings, and now I’m in a tight spot of my own.

    The Calder family patriarch is known throughout Montana as a formidable adversary—a force no one in his right mind would cross. But sometimes love can make a man do crazy things . . . Ambition drove Joe Dollarhide across the parched plains from Fort Sam Houston to Dodge City. One day, he was determined to have a spread every bit as vast and impressive as his employers’. But when a wild stampede separates him from the cattle drive, it is survival that keeps him going when most would have given up. Survival and a burning need to settle the score with Benteen Calder, the cattle boss he used to worship, the man who’d left him for dead… Hope buoyed Sarah Foxworth when she had just five dollars to her name, traveling the dusty rails where Joe first rescued her from a violent attack, then won her heart as a cowboy in need of redemption. With dreams of becoming a doctor herself one day, she uses all her wits to save her uncle’s medical practice and his reputation. But it’s her own reputation that suffers when she gives birth to an illegitimate baby. Years later, when Sarah walks into Joe’s world once more, he’s shaken to the core. Her dreams of becoming a doctor are dashed; her only hope is to find a better life for herself and her son—a child there’s no denying is his own. Now a prosperous rancher, Joe yearns to finally make a home with Sarah and their boy. Only Joe’s own road to riches has been strewn with obstacles, some looming even larger than the demons he still struggles against. But life has also shown Joe that nothing worth having ever comes easy. And that Sarah is a woman worth fighting for…

    One chance to escape. Who will pay the price? 13 August 1961.Nationale Volksarmee soldiers roll barbed wire across a war-torn city—families are separated, livelihoods destroyed, and death comes easily as crippling fear paralyzes the occupants of both sides of the Berlin Wall. In one fate driven moment, Fifteen-year-old Ella Kühn must make the agonizing decision to remain with her dying father or flee with her brother and best friend to the West.Caught in the crossfire of duty and survival, Ella’s enforced occupation exposes her to the evil workings of the secret police and the deadly plans of a destructive regime. Torn between loyalty and temptation, she seeks comfort in the belief she will be reunited with one man, while another challenges her heart.Will Ella risk her life for freedom? Or will her restless soul find comfort in the shadows of East Berlin?Ensnare, the first book in the "Berlin Butterfly" series, is a story of life, love, survival, and the struggle of living through the early years of the Berlin Wall. Readers will be captivated with Ella's strength, determination, and vulnerability as she opens her heart amidst a dangerous and terrifying journey.Fans of Historical and German war fiction will love this extraordinary twentieth-century political drama.

    Klepto. Spectacular failure to launch. Nicole Wood’s sticky fingers have earned her many names, but it’s not that she’s stealing—some objects just need to be moved elsewhere, and the universe has chosen her to do it. Still, being a relocator of objects isn’t easy. With her marriage on the rocks, no real-world skills, and the threat of prison hanging over her head, Nicole is determined to change her ways.Things seem to be looking up, thanks to a godsent job with her sister’s housecleaning business—until she encounters a seemingly harmless paperback that insists on moving from one client’s home to another’s. Nicole hopes no one will notice, but the action stirs up long-hidden secrets and triggers a series of fateful events that threatens to destroy the life she’s creating and hurt those closest to her. She’ll need to embrace her unwieldy gift and take a chance on love in order to unravel the mystery and fix what’s gone wrong.

    Now a small-town cop, the past catches up with Kate when the body of a fellow Army veteran is left along a backcountry road...in meticulously severed pieces. Four years earlier, Kate spent eleven hours as a prisoner of war in Afghanistan. According to her Silver Star write-up, she singlehandedly took down eleven terrorists to avoid staying longer.But Kate has no memory of the deaths, or the events that led up to them. And now, bizarre clues are cropping up in and around that crime scene—and others. Clues that appear to connect to that fateful day. Is the killer trying to tell her something?Or is Kate finally losing her grip on reality?As the body count rises, Kate is forced to confront the guilt that caused her to bolt from the Army...along with the realization that, if she'd faced her demons sooner, her fellow vets might still be alive—and she wouldn't be in the killer's crosshairs.The Garbage Man is Book 1 in the Hidden Valor Military Psychological Suspense Series. If you like strong, female protagonists with gripping, complex suspense that twists and turns all the way to The End, you'll love Candace Irving's 107,000-word military mystery/suspense featuring Braxton Police Deputy Kate Holland.Grab your copy of The Garbage Man today and find out what happened to Kate during those eleven hours she spent as a POW...and why she must remember.

    He’s hungry, wet, and tired. He’s run afoul of the assassin’s guild, lost a bag of stolen goods, and bet his last penny on the local darts champion when he should have bought bread for his kids. Maybe fate needs a little help . . . As a pastiche of Sword and Sorcery, “Darts” represents the core fantasy characters and archetypes that enthusiasts love (and hate), explores their deeper motivations, and reminds us that best friends are hard to come by.

    A human body draped over the limbs of a cactus. Sand scouring the naked flesh every time the wind blows.A shocking death launches Special Agent Victor Loshak on a new investigation with an ominous message: They know everything. He heads to Tucson, Arizona, where a recent murder spree seems to be linked to the human trafficking conspiracy he's been working in secret for months.Loshak still has dreams about the Kansas City case. Nightmares about the team of techs peeling up the floorboards in a suburban home. Finding the rotting bodies face down in the muddy earth of the crawlspace. A grisly discovery that ultimately led to more questions than answers.Now he may be closer than ever to solving the puzzle.If you follow the conspiracy rabbit hole all the way down, you eventually reach the bottom.The task force working the desert murders seems oblivious to the conspiracy link, and Loshak must tread lightly. He doesn't know who to trust, what information to share.The tendrils of the human trafficking ring lead in all directions outward from that Kansas City crawlspace. Their influence reaches the highest levels of government and law enforcement. They have eyes and ears everywhere.Even with the complications, the Tucson case slowly unravels the web of connections behind the crimes, both the murders and the conspiracy.Questions get answered. Names and faces are laid bare. Puzzle pieces snapping into place at long last.But the revelations bring about the gravest danger yet.

    Irrealis moods are also known as counterfactual moods and include the conditional, the subjunctive, the optative, and the imperative--all best expressed in this book as the might-be and the might-have-been. One of the great prose stylists of his generation, Andr� Aciman returns to the essay form in Homo Irrealis to explore what time means to artists who cannot grasp life in the present. Irrealis moods are not about the present or the past or the future; they are about what might have been but never was but could in theory still happen. From meditations on subway poetry and the temporal resonances of an empty Italian street to considerations of the lives and work of Sigmund Freud, C. P. Cavafy, W. G. Sebald, John Sloan, �ric Rohmer, Marcel Proust, and Fernando Pessoa and portraits of cities such as Alexandria and St. Petersburg, Homo Irrealis is a deep reflection on the imagination's power to forge a zone outside of time's intractable hold.

    With compassion and biting wit, Laurie Colwin has created a new sort of comedy of manners.

    This could change everything, and it does. . .in the worst possible way.   Surgeon Graham Lambert has suspicions about the doctor he’s gone into practice with, but he can’t stop him from operating on Amelia’s brother. Will he be too late to prevent the man’s death? Or to reveal his true feelings for Amelia before she sails to Cairo?

    So essentially, without the struggle, it never flies.”From the USA Today bestselling author of The Beach House comes a story about family bonds, second chances, and finding out who we really are. Butterfly Sisters is the perfect escape for fans of Susan Wiggs, RaeAnne Thayne, and Susan Mallery.About to land her biggest deal yet, Leigh Henderson is on her game. She’s prepared for this, and nothing can get in her way. Except Rebecca Mayer, who’d sashayed in a few weeks ago with a former client list that would fill the entire hallway to Leigh’s office if she laid it out end to end. When her boss unexpectedly offers the deal to Rebecca and tells Leigh he’s letting her go, Leigh finds herself without a job.But that’s the least of her worries. Her mother has some news that will change everything. She’s asked Leigh and her sister Meredith to meet her at the family cabin on Old Hickory Lake. Not only has Leigh been unable to pin her sister down in years, but going back to the cabin would mean dealing with the loss of her beloved grandmother and also chance running into her old flame Colton Harris, the one love she’s never been able to completely let go of.Will confronting her grief, speaking to her estranged sister, and being forced to face the love she’d left behind help Leigh to learn who she really is? A heartwarming story that will have you laughing, crying, and rushing to those you hold dear. If you loved the Christmas movies based on Jenny’s books and are looking for more feel-good, small-town romance, look no further!

    His attempts to achieve this monumental goal are constantly thwarted. And when his former girlfriend returns from Europe with a handsome fiancé in tow, his life becomes even more complicated. A sliver of hope appears in the form of a local TV cooking competition. Winning would offer the solution to all his problems: money for his mission and the chance to impress the girl he loves. But to win this competition, Eshaan first must face a secret that has the potential to destroy his life and his dreams. Can a young life that has been defined by a crisis ever really thrive? Will Eshaan’s pain-filled spirit ever hear the songs of salvation that the Universe sings for him, or will his demons ultimately win? Celebrated food writer Monica Bhide dishes up a page-turning story of sacrifice, determination, and an honest exploration of the human spirit. Set in contemporary India and seasoned with gentle love, dramatic loss, enchanting poetic verse, and exotic food, Karma and the Art of Butter Chicken will take you to a place where past and present keep uneasy yet delicious company. The cover photograph is by the talented and award-winning photographer, Simi Jois.

    There, hidden in the mountains and woods, dense with fog and the cold of winter, Evelyn grapples with the guilt of what she’s done, and as she attempts to reconcile her wild independence with the responsibilities of parenthood, she reconnects with the two women who raised her—her foster mother, Nan, and her biological mother, Jubilee. But by coming home, she has set in motion a series of events that will revive the decades-old tragedy that haunts Cormorant Lake—and lead her to confront the high cost of protecting her secret.At once fantastical and deeply rooted in the natural world, Faith Merino’s deeply affecting and spirited debut novel explores the shape of family, the enduring bonds of friendship, and the imperfections of motherhood—messy and beautiful, instinctive and learned, temporal but permanently life-altering.