The Apartment


K.L. Slater - 2020
    The woman before her tried… Freya Miller needs a miracle. In the fallout of her husband’s betrayal, she’s about to lose her family home, and with it the security she craves for her five-year-old daughter, Skye. Adrift and alone, she’s on the verge of despair until a chance meeting with the charismatic Dr Marsden changes everything. He’s seeking a new tenant for a shockingly affordable flat in a fashionable area of London.Adder House sounds too good to be true… But Freya really can’t afford to be cynical, and Dr Marsden is adamant she and Skye will be a perfect fit with the other residents.But Adder House has secrets. Even behind a locked front door, Freya feels as if she’s being watched: objects moving, unfamiliar smells, the blinking light of a concealed camera… and it’s not long before she begins to suspect that her dream home is hiding a nightmarish reality. Was it really chance that led her here—or something unthinkably dark?As the truth about Adder House starts to unravel, can Freya and Skye get out—or will they be locked in forever? Revised edition: This edition of The Apartment includes editorial revisions.

Undue Influence


Anita Brookner - 1999
    And yet Claire's tangled interior life gives the lie to that illusion. She is prone to vivid speculation about the lives of others, and to fantasies about her own fate that lead her into a courtship so strange that even she wonders at its power to compel her. Martin Gibson and his chronically ill wife Cynthia come to depend on Claire to an extent that is nothing short of baffling, and yet Claire becomes ever bolder in her pursuit of their acquaintance-and, ultimately, of Martin's elusive affections. The result, a potent tale of urban loneliness and the chance intersections that assuage it, constitutes one of Brookner's finest and most psychologically acute achievements.

The Heart of a Child


Emily D. Moon - 2010
    "It was simple, heartwarming, painful, and lovely, all in perfect doses." -Writer's Digest Nelson writes and readers respond... "A Modern Day To Kill A Mockingbird." "Inspiring. Remarkable." "It touched me in a way that I didn't know books could." "Friendship, heartbreak, life, and death. This novel has it all." "A story bound to make an impact in literary circles." "The characters were so compelling that they literally brought me to tears." "Simply put: brilliant!" "Heartbreaking and beautiful."

Hinterland


Caroline Brothers - 2011
    Only fourteen and eight years old, they have nothing but the clothes on their backs and a dwindling inheritance stitched into the lining of a belt. Their goal is a future they can no longer wait for in Afghanistan, one they hope to find in faraway England.As they travel, the older, Aryan, teaches his brother Kabir the capitals of the countries they'll pass through-a way of mapping the course in case anything should happen to separate them. Together they recite a list of cities they can't yet imagine, so as not to forget the names: Kabul-Tehran-Istanbul-Athens- Rome-Paris-London. Though their journey is filled with moments of boyish wonder and adventure, the two also confront hunger and exhaustion, cold and heat, violence and confusion, and are exploited for their labor and forced to rely on strangers who shouldn't be trusted.Caroline Brothers first met these "lost boys" of Afghanistan as a journalist in France, in makeshift refugee camps. Her report on them made the front page of the New York Times, but she wanted to go deeper, to tell their story in human terms. Hinterland, her debut novel, raises questions about the global community's responsibilities toward these children, dispensing with journalistic remove to emerge as a work of incredible empathy, beautifully written.Hinterland is a gripping journey of love and courage, the story of two resolute spirits not soon forgotten.

Six Miles From Nashville (The Nashville Series)


Elaine Littau - 2013
    Since leaving for a large Bible College in Missouri, her life has been twisted around. Not that things weren't already a challenge for her with her brother in Vietnam and her heart bleeding from a recent break up. Faced with unbearable loneliness and loss, she arrives at a diner six miles from Nashville. There, she has a chance to pick up the pieces and build a new life for herself as an independant young woman with a great future ahead of her

The Berlin Crossing


Kevin Brophy - 2012
    Brandenburg 1993: The Berlin Wall is down, the country is reunified and thirty-year-old school teacher Michael Ritter feels his life is falling apart. His wife has thrown him out, his new West German headmaster has fired him for being a socialist, former Party member and he is still clinging on to the wreckage of the state that shaped him. Disenfranchised and disenchanted, Michael heads home to care for his terminally ill mother. Before she dies, she urges him to seek out an evangelical priest, Pastor Bruck, who is the only one who knows the truth about his father. When Michael eventually tracks him down, he is taken on a journey of dark discoveries, one which will shatter his foundations, but ultimately bring him hope to rebuild them.

Tehran at Twilight


Salar Abdoh - 2014
    Recommended for espionage aficionados and for readers who enjoy international settings."-- Library Journal "A fascinating glimpse of contemporary Iran through the familiar story of childhood friends whose paths are beginning to diverge irreversibly."-- Shelf Awareness "A penetrating look into contemporary Tehran."-- Kirkus Reviews "Salar Abdoh is an acute observer of the patterns, flaws, and simple beauties of everyday life...[Tehran at Twilight is] an unpretentious, cross-cultural political thriller that rings true in the way only a skillfully crafted novel can."-- San Francisco Book Review "Abdoh's restraint with the brutality in present-day Iran in no way tamps down the adrenalin that keeps his characters in action...Goodness and mercy eventually carry the day, within limits, and this relatively new author may already have potential readers looking forward to his next novel."-- The Buffalo News "New history and a fresh take on the same old dirty tricks result in a clever and compelling tale."-- The National (UAE)"Abdoh is superb...Tehran at Twilight is an impressive work of fiction...Abdoh's talent is obvious from the first scene in the story until the bittersweet end."-- CounterPunch Magazine "Abdoh's Iran is a place where the question isn't if one has been complicit, but rather the extent of one's complicity."--What If KnitsIncluded in Library Journal's "Books That Buzzed at BEA" Roundup, the first word on titles and trends from Barbara Hoffert, Editor"Abdoh deftly captures the uneasy atmosphere of 2008 Tehran, swirling with betrayal and corruption."-- Library Journal , Books for the Masses/Editors' Picks BEA 2014The year is 2008. Reza Malek's life is modest but manageable--he lives in a small apartment in Harlem, teaches "creative reportage" at a local university, and is relieved to be far from the blood and turmoil of Iraq and Afghanistan where he worked as a reporter, interpreter, and sometime lover for a superstar journalist who has long since moved on to more remarkable men.After a terse phone call from his best friend in Iran, Sina Vafa, Reza reluctantly returns to Tehran. Once there, he finds far more than he bargained for: the city is on the edge of revolution; his friend Sina is embroiled with Shia militants; his missing mother, who was alleged to have run off with a lover before the revolution, is alive and well--while his own life is in danger.Against a backdrop of corrupt clerics, shady fixers, political repression, and the ever-present threat of violence, Abdoh offers a telling glimpse into contemporary Tehran, and spins a compelling morality tale of identity and exile, the bonds of friendship, and the limits of loyalty.

Impact


David E. Stevens - 2019
    and wakes up in a genetically perfect body. His fighter catches on fire during a routine test flight. Preventing it from hitting a neighborhood, he ejects too late. A year later, he wakes up in a city hospital looking like an omni-racial Olympic athlete. His body wasn’t repaired ... it was replaced. He's GMO, a genetic blend of humanity's best genes with one-in-a-billion abilities, but a voice in his head tells him an apocalyptic disaster will soon erase most life on earth. A Navy pilot brought back from the dead ... to save the world? The most likely explanation is paranoid schizophrenia with delusions of grandeur, but with no identity and few options, he uses his insider knowledge of classified military projects to create a fake black program. Recruiting a brilliant international team, they secretly develop the world’s most powerful weapon to ... protect humanity? The Fuzed Trilogy is Bourne Identity meets Avatar and Interstellar. A USA TODAY Bestseller, winner of the Eric Hoffer Award, Epic eBook Award and ForeWord Reviews Book of the Year, IMPACT is a true story we hope never happens. With a team of advisers that include astrophysicists, astronauts, admirals and intelligence operatives, the science behind the threats is real. These extinction level events are statistically inevitable but also preventable ... if we take action. A portion of the series profits go to non-profits working to protect humanity. Fuzed.org

Disoriental


Négar Djavadi - 2016
    Now twenty-five, with a new life and the prospect of a child, Kimiâ is inundated by her own memories and the stories of her ancestors, which reach her in unstoppable, uncontainable waves. In the waiting room of a Parisian fertility clinic, generations of flamboyant Sadrs return to her, including her formidable great-grandfather Montazemolmolk, with his harem of fifty-two wives, and her parents, Darius and Sara, stalwart opponents of each regime that befalls them.In this high-spirited, kaleidoscopic story, key moments of Iranian history, politics, and culture punctuate stories of family drama and triumph. Yet it is Kimiâ herself—punk-rock aficionado, storyteller extraordinaire, a Scheherazade of our time, and above all a modern woman divided between family traditions and her own “disorientalization”—who forms the heart of this bestselling and beloved novel.

Home Sweet Home


Kristen Brown - 2011
    Anxious to start a new life, Samantha decides to open up a business of her own, and throws herself into making the dream a reality. But along the way, there are plenty of obstacles popping up to make life a little more challenging than she expected - nosy neighbors and cranky in-laws, attractive men and pretentious sisters, a gossipy mother, mysterious hate mail, and ghosts from the past that threaten to destroy everything she's worked to achieve. And just when Sam thinks things couldn't possibly get worse, there's a murder on her property that the local detective seems mighty determined to pin on the newest resident of Peabody. Suddenly Sam is overwhelmed with troubles she never imagined, and she knows the only way to get through any of it is by keeping her sense of humor and trusting that God really does know exactly what He is doing.

A Place in Time


Carole Lehr Johnson - 2021
    Her hectic life as a gourmet chef and a string of failed relationships has left her disheartened. She longs for a simpler time of manor houses, nobility, and the romance of courtship, for history to come alive. But she never expected to be thrust into the past with her friends while in the rural village of Stanton Wake.In 1666, Lord Marcus DeGrey desires to live a quiet life at the newly renovated country manor that he inherited in ruin. He longs to raise his young daughter away from the London society that threatens to devour him and the secrets he must protect.But life in the seventeenth century is perilous in an era rife with plague, political unrest after civil war, and a looming disaster. The women struggle as servants, their modern-day independence colliding with propriety and romance. When their attempts to return home fail, they must seek to discover God’s purpose for sending them through time.

A Cup of Ambition


Cathy Bramley - 2017
    So what if she isn’t married and settled like her sister? A relationship would only get in the way of this workaholic’s hectic schedule!So when she unexpectedly finds herself at a loose end for a month, Rosie keeps busy by helping her Italian nonna serve espressos and biscotti at the Lemon Tree Café, a little slice of Italy nestled in the rolling hills of Derbyshire.Worryingly though, the café’s fortunes seem to have taken a turn for the worse since Rosie last went home. But with Nonna blind to the truth and angry at the idea of anyone interfering, the two are soon at loggerheads.However, just when Rosie decides it’s time to head back to reality, an old acquaintance suddenly reappears, and the prospect of life at the Lemon Tree Café begins to seem more appetizing . . .

All I Ever Wanted


Kristan Higgins - 2010
    and no sign of any forthcoming babies to rock in ol' Georgebury, Vermont. For Callie Grey, turning thirty means coming to grips with the fact that her boss (and five-week fling) is way overdue in his marriage proposal. And way off track because Mark has suddenly announced his engagement to the company's new Miss Perfect. If that isn't bad enough, her mom decides to throw her a three-oh birthday bash in the family funeral home. Bad goes to worse when she stirs up a crazy relationship with the town's not so warm and fuzzy veterinarian, Ian McFarland, in order to flag Mark's attention. So Ian is more comfortable with animals.... So he's formal, orderly and just a bit tense. The ever-friendly, fun-loving and spontaneous Callie decides it's time for Ian to get a personality makeover. But dang, if he doesn't shock the heck out of her, she might actually fall for Vermont's unlikeliest eligible bachelor....

99 Nights in Logar


Jamil Jan Kochai - 2019
    Eager to find an ally in this place that’s meant to be “home,” Marwand approaches Budabash the way he would any dog on his American suburban block—and the results are disastrous: Marwand loses a finger and Budabash escapes.The resulting search for the family dog is an expertly told adventure, a ninety-nine-night quest that sends Marwand and his cousins across the landscape of Logar. Moving between celebrations and tragedies, deeply humorous and surprisingly tender, 99 Nights in Logar is a vibrant exploration of the power of stories—the ones we tell each other, and the ones we find ourselves in.

Logan


Linda Lael Miller - 2009
    To put down roots, to restore his family's neglected ranch...to have kids of his own proudly bearing the Creed name.Divorced mom Briana Grant has heard the stories about her gorgeous neighbor. So Logan's kindness with her young boys is a welcome surprise, especially when her ex reappears. And when an unknown enemy vandalizes her home, Logan shows Briana--and the folks of Big Sky country--just what he's made of.