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Featured Guide

Marie Benedict, author of Lady Clementine

In 1909, Clementine steps off a train with her new husband, Winston. An angry woman emerges from the crowd to attack, shoving him in the direction of an oncoming train. Just before he stumbles, Clementine grabs him by his suit jacket. This will not be the last time Clementine Churchill will save her husband. LADY CLEMENTINE is the ferocious story of the ambitious woman beside Winston Churchill, the story of a partner who did not flinch through the sweeping darkness of war, and who would not surrender either to expectations or to enemies.

Liz Moore, author of Long Bright River

In a Philadelphia neighborhood rocked by the opioid crisis, two once-inseparable sisters find themselves at odds. One, Kacey, lives on the streets in the vise of addiction. The other, Mickey, walks those same blocks on her police beat. They don't speak anymore, but Mickey never stops worrying about her sibling. Then Kacey disappears, suddenly, at the same time that a mysterious string of murders begins in Mickey's district, and Mickey becomes dangerously obsessed with finding the culprit --- and her sister --- before it's too late.

Sarah Pinborough, author of Cross Her Heart

Lisa lives for her daughter Ava, her job and her best friend Marilyn. But when a handsome client shows an interest in her, Lisa starts daydreaming about sharing her life with him, too. Maybe she’s ready now. Maybe it's time to let her terrifying secret past go. However, when her daughter rescues a boy from drowning and their pictures are all over the news, Lisa's world explodes. As she finds everything she has built threatened, and not knowing who she can trust, it's up to Lisa to face her past in order to save what she holds dear. But someone has been pulling all their strings and is determined to see Lisa and Ava suffer. Because long ago Lisa broke a promise. And some promises aren't meant to be broken.

Beatriz Williams, author of The Wicked Redhead: A Wicked City Novel

It’s 1924, and Ginger Kelly has fled south to safety in the company of disgraced Prohibition agent Oliver Anson Marshall and her newly orphaned young sister, Patsy. But then Marshall is reinstated to the agency with suspicious haste and put to work patrolling for rumrunners on the high seas, from which he promptly disappears. Gin hurries north to rescue him, only to be trapped in an agonizing moral quandary by Marshall’s desperate mother. It’s 1998, and Ella Dommerich has finally settled into her new life in Greenwich Village, inside the same apartment where a certain redheaded flapper lived long ago. Ella is eager to piece together the history of the mysterious Gin Kelly, whose only physical trace is a series of rare vintage photograph cards for which she modeled before she disappeared.

Bonnie Kistler, author of House on Fire

Divorce lawyer Leigh Huyett knows all too well that most second marriages are doomed to fail. Yet five years in, she and Pete Conley couldn’t be happier with their blended family. But one rainy Friday night, Peter and Leigh receive horrific news. Peter’s son Kip, a high school senior, has crashed his truck and been arrested for drunk driving. And Leigh’s 14-year-old daughter, Chrissy, was with him. Twelve hours later, Chrissy is dead and Kip is charged with manslaughter. Leigh does her best to rally behind Peter and Kip. That is, until Kip changes his story and claims that he wasn’t driving after all --- Chrissy was, and he swears there is a witness. As they hurtle toward Kip’s trial date, husband and wife are torn between loyalty to their children and to each other, while the mystery of what really happened that night looms large.

Mitch Albom, author of Finding Chika: A Little Girl, an Earthquake, and the Making of a Family

Chika Jeune was born three days before the devastating earthquake that decimated Haiti in 2010. She spent her infancy in a landscape of extreme poverty, and when her mother died giving birth to a baby brother, Chika was brought to the Have Faith Haiti Orphanage that Mitch Albom operates in Port Au Prince. Brave and self-assured, even as a three-year-old, she delights the other kids and teachers. But at age five, Chika is suddenly diagnosed with something a doctor there says, “No one in Haiti can help you with.” Mitch and Janine bring Chika to Detroit, hopeful that American medical care can soon return her to her homeland. Instead, Chika becomes a permanent part of their household, and their lives, as they embark on a two-year, around-the-world journey to find a cure.

Zeruya Shalev, author of Pain

Ten years after she was seriously injured in a terrorist attack, the pain comes back to torment Iris. But that is not all: Eitan, the love of her youth, also comes back into her life. Though their relationship ended many years ago, she was more deeply wounded when he left her than by the suicide bomber who blew himself up next to her. Iris' marriage is stagnant. Her two children have grown up and are almost independent; she herself has become a dedicated, successful school principal. Now, after years without passion and joy, Eitan brings them back into her life. But she must concoct all sorts of lies to conceal her affair from her family, and the lies become more and more complicated.

Lisa Jewell, author of The Family Upstairs

Shortly after her 25th birthday, Libby Jones returns home from work to find the letter she’s been waiting for her entire life. She soon learns not only the identity of her birth parents, but also that she is the sole inheritor of their abandoned mansion on the banks of the Thames, which is worth millions. But what she can’t possibly know is that others have been waiting for this day as well --- and she is on a collision course to meet them. Twenty-five years ago, police were called to 16 Cheyne Walk with reports of a baby crying. When they arrived, they found a healthy 10-month-old happily cooing in her crib in the bedroom. Downstairs in the kitchen lay three dead bodies, all dressed in black, next to a hastily scrawled note. And the four other children reported to live at Cheyne Walk were gone.

Whitney Scharer, author of The Age of Light

THE AGE OF LIGHT tells the story of Vogue model turned renowned photographer Lee Miller, and her search to forge a new identity as an artist after a life spent as a muse. "I'd rather take a photograph than be one," she declares after she arrives in Paris in 1929, where she soon catches the eye of the famous Surrealist Man Ray. Though he wants to use her only as a model, Lee convinces him to take her on as his assistant and teach her everything he knows. But Man Ray turns out to be an egotistical, charismatic force, and as they work together in the darkroom, their personal and professional lives become intimately entwined, changing the course of Lee's life forever.

Alexander McCall Smith, author of To the Land of Long Lost Friends: No. 1 Ladies' Detective Agency (20)

Mma Ramotswe has reconnected with an old friend who has been having problems with her daughter. Though Precious feels compelled to lend a hand, she discovers that getting involved in family affairs is always a delicate affair. The young woman appears to be involved with a charismatic preacher. But are his ministrations entirely of a godly nature? Elsewhere, Charlie is also struggling with a tricky matter of the heart. He wishes to propose to his girlfriend, Queenie-Queenie, but he's struggling to come up with a bride price that will impress her father. When Queenie-Queenie's brother offers to help by giving him a job, the offer may not be quite what Charlie expected.