Fiction

Description: "Raised by his grandparents on a northern Wisconsin Ojibwe reservation until their passing when he is ten years old, Donovan Manypenny becomes a ward of the state of Wisconsin and enters the child welfare system--foster care, children's home, and adoption. The trauma he experiences as a result of losing his grandparents and way of life leads him to put his past behind him for over forty-three years. Then at the age of fifty-three, events in his life take him back to his childhood home, retracing the historical westward migration of his Ojibwe ancestors. Heartfelt and bittersweet, and layered with meaning, Beginnings: The Homeward Journey of Donovan Manypenny will resonate with anyone who longs to make the journey home, wherever that may be, as well those who seek or have experienced cultural or spiritual awakening, and healing"-- Amazon.com.

Description: A missing private investigator is found locked in a car hidden deep in the woods. Worse still--both for his family and the police--the body was in an area that had already been searched 10 years ago. Detective Inspector Siobhan Clarke is part of a new inquiry, combing through the mistakes of the original case. There were always suspicions over how the investigation was handled, and now--after a decade without answers--it's time for the truth. Every officer involved must be questioned, and it seems everyone on the case has something to hide--and everything to lose. None more so than Detective John Rebus.

Description: "In 1918, a fearless twenty-two-year old arrives in bohemian San Francisco from the Northeast, determined to make her own way as an independent woman. Renaming herself Dorothea Lange she is soon the celebrated owner of the city's most prestigious and stylish portrait studio and wife of the talented but volatile painter, Maynard Dixon. By the early 1930s, as America's economy collapses, her marriage founders and Dorothea must find ways to support her two young sons single-handedly. Determined to expose the horrific conditions of the nation's poor, she takes to the road with her camera, creating images that inspire, reform, and define the era. And when the United States enters World War II, Dorothea chooses to confront another injustice--the incarceration of thousands of innocent Japanese Americans. At a time when women were supposed to keep the home fires burning, Dorothea Lange, creator of the most iconic photographs of the 20th century, dares to be different. But her choices came at a steep price..."--Back cover.

Description: Old Newgate Road runs through the tobacco fields of northern Connecticut that once drove the local economy. It's where Cole Callahan spent his youth, in a historic white colonial that his family was devoted to restoring--painstakingly, relentlessly, pointlessly. But the famous claim that you can't go home again falls far short in this instance. Cole has not come back to this house, to this street, in thirty years--not since he was a teenager, when one night his father murdered his mother in a fit of rage. Now, however, he finally dares to risk it, ostensibly to collect precious material for his construction business on the west coast, and is shocked to discover his elderly father, freed from prison, living alone in their old home, and succumbing to dementia. Compelled by a sense of responsibility to a man he hates, and confronted in middle age by everything he'd left unfinished when he fled this place in his aborted childhood, he finds that the time for a reckoning has at last come. Matters grow even more complicated when his estranged wife calls to say their ultra-progressive, rabble-rousing son has run up against the law and been expelled from high school. And so Cole summons Daniel to East Granby to work in the tobacco fields--his own job growing up--and soon their lives are enmeshed with the family legacy, and with Cole's boyhood sweetheart as well as his nemesis. What unfolds over this summer surprises and challenges them all, as they contend with the sinister history they share and desperately try to invent a future that isn't doomed by it. Moving, insightful, and suspenseful, Old Newgate Road is a masterful portrait of a haunted family and successive generations of men struggling against all odds and often violent impulses to truly know one another and their loved ones, and to somehow come to terms with themselves. -- Adapted from book jacket

Description: Dr. Kate Hanson and the Unsolved Crime Unit are baffled as to motive when the body of a young man is discovered locked inside a church crypt, its throat torn out. The victim's identity is quickly established as 20-year-old Matthew Flynn, son of one of the city's leading entrepreneurs, who disappeared a year earlier. For forensic psychologist Kate Hanson, the evidence reveals careful planning but also loss of control. It makes no sense. Nor can she and her team agree as to motive. Is it drugs? Money? Sex? The only thing that's clear is that Matthew Flynn had been keeping secrets from his family and friends. Then Kate discovers that another young man is missing--Adapted from jacket flap.

Description: In the country of Ossaniul, there is a fortress that is as disproportionate as it is inaccessible: the Highest House. Its masters, the noble family of Aldercrest, reign over a veritable army of slaves. At the bottom of the ladder, young Moth performs the most thankless tasks and has little hope of living past childhood. Until the day he meets Obsidian, a mysterious prisoner of the House who whispers to him in his sleep. If Moth does what he asks, Obsidian will give him fortune and glory. And there's every indication that Obsidian can make good on his promises. Will Moth accept the offer?

Description: Meet Doris, a 96-year-old woman living alone in her Stockholm apartment. She has few visitors, but her weekly Skype calls with Jenny--her American grandniece, and her only relative--give her great joy and remind her of her own youth. When Doris was a girl, she was given an address book by her father, and ever since she has carefully documented everyone she met and loved throughout the years. Looking through the little book now, Doris sees the many crossed-out names of people long gone and is struck by the urge to put pen to paper. In writing down the stories of her colorful past--working as a maid in Sweden, modelling in Paris during the 30s, fleeing to Manhattan at the dawn of the Second World War--can she help Jenny, haunted by a difficult childhood, unlock the secrets of their family and finally look to the future? And whatever became of Allan, the love of Doris's life?

Description: In 1962, in the Soviet Union, eight-year-old Katya is bequeathed what will become the love of her life: a Blüthner piano, built at the turn of the century in Germany, on which she discovers everything that she herself can do with music and what music, in turn, does for her. Yet after marrying, she emigrates with her young family from Russia to America, at her husband's frantic insistence, and her piano is lost in the shuffle. In 2012, in Bakersfield, California, twenty-six-year-old Clara Lundy loses another boyfriend and again has to find a new apartment, which is complicated by the gift her father had given her for her twelfth birthday, shortly before he and her mother died in a fire that burned their house down: a Blüthner upright she has never learned to play. Ophaned, she was raised by her aunt and uncle, who in his car-repair shop trained her to become a first-rate mechanic, much to the surprise of some subsequent customers. But this work, her true mainstay in a scattered life, is put on hold when her hand gets broken while the piano's being moved--and in sudden frustration she chooses to sell it. What becomes crucial is who the most interested party turns out to be.

Description: The explosion of racial hate in an Alabama town is viewed by a little girl whose father defends a black man accused of rape.