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A Thousand Splendid Suns, by Khaled Hosseini: Propelled by the same superb instinct for storytelling that made The Kite Runner a beloved classic, A Thousand Splendid Suns is at once an incredible chronicle of thirty years of Afghan history and a deeply moving story of family, friendship, faith, and the salvation to be found in love. Born a generation apart and with very different ideas about love and family, Mariam and Laila are two women brought jarringly together by war, by loss and by fate. As they endure the ever escalating dangers around them--in their home as well as in the streets of Kabul--they come to form a bond that makes them both sisters and mother-daughter to each other, and that will ultimately alter the course not just of their own lives but of the next generation. With heart-wrenching power and suspense, Hosseini shows how a woman's love for her family can move her to shocking and heroic acts of self-sacrifice, and that in the end it is love, or even the memory of love, that is often the key to survival.

Body Surfing (Regular and Large Print available), by Anita Shreve (an Oprah favorite author): At the age of 29, Sydney has already been once divorced and once widowed. Trying to regain her footing once again, she has answered an ad to tutor the teenage daughter of a well-to- do couple as they spend a sultry summer in their oceanfront New Hampshire cottage. But when the Edwards' two grown sons, Ben and Jeff, arrive at the beach house, Sydney finds herself caught up in a destructive web of old tensions and bitter divisions. As the brothers vie for her affections, the fragile existence Sydney has rebuilt for herself is threatened. With the subtle wit, lyrical language, and brilliant insight into the human heart that has led her to be called "an author at one with her métier" (Miami Herald), Shreve weaves a novel about marriage, family, and the supreme courage that it takes to love.

Bungalow 2, by Danielle Steel: The phone call came on a hot July day—-a day like any other for Marin County mom and freelance writer Tanya Harris. But this call—-from Tanya’s agent—-was anything but ordinary, offering a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity: the chance to write a major Hollywood screenplay, a dream she had put aside long ago to devote her energies to her family. This time, Tanya knows she cannot refuse, even though she’s torn about leaving her husband and their daughters. From the moment she steps into her lush bungalow at the fabled Beverly Hills Hotel, Tanya is thrust into an intoxicating new world where she feels reborn—-energized by the creativity swirling around her—yet the pull of her family at home is strong. Suddenly she’s working alongside A-list actors and a Hollywood legend: Oscar-winning producer Douglas Wayne, a man who always gets what he wants–and who seems to have his sights set on her. Flying home between shoots, struggling to reconnect with a family that seems to need her less and less, Tanya watches helplessly as her old life is pulled out from under her in the most crushing of ways. As her two lives collide, as one award-winning film leads to another, Tanya begins to wonder if she can be a wife, a mother, and a writer at the same time. And just as she confronts the toughest choice she has faced, she is offered another dazzling opportunity—-one that could recast her story in an amazing new direction, complete with an ending she never could have written herself.

Double Take, by Catherine Coulter: It's been more than six months since her husband's brutal death, and Julia Ransom is just beginning to breathe again. She loved her husband, renowned psychic August Ransom, but the media frenzy that followed his murder sapped what little strength she had left. Now, after dinner with friends, strolling along San Francisco's Pier 39, she realizes that she's happy. Standing at the railing, she savors the sounds around her--tourists, seals on a barge--and for a moment enjoys the sheer normalcy of it all. And then it comes to an end. Out of nowhere she's approached by a respectable-looking man who distracts her with conversation before violently attacking her and throwing her the railing. If it hadn't been for Special Agent Cheney Stone, out to stretch his legs between courses at a local restaurant, Julia would have vanished into the bay's murky depths. Not only does he save her from a watery grave, but he senses a connection between her assault and her husband's death, and sets out to serve as her protector while reopening August Ransom's murder investigation. Meanwhile, in Maestro, Virginia, Sheriff Dixon Noble--last seen in Point Blank--still mourns his wife, Christie, who vanished hree years earlier. His life, too, is just getting back to normal when he learns of a San Francisco woman named Charlotte Pallack, whose shocking resemblance to Christie sends Dix across the country. Though he knows in his heart that she can't possibly be his wife, Dix is compelled to see her with his own eyes. Once in San Francisco, Dix and Cheney's paths inevitably cross. With the help of agents Dillon Savich and Lacey Sherlock, whose San Francisco connections prove essential in unlocking the mystery behind Charlotte Pallack's identity as well as the forces behind Julia Ransom's attempted murder, Sheriff Noble and Agent Stone push deep into a complex world of psychics and poseurs. As the stakes and the body count rise, Savich, Sherlock, Dix, and Cheney fight for answers-and their lives.

Emily Dickinson: Poems, by Emily Dickinson: The poetry of Emily Elizabeth Dickinson dealt not only with issues of death, faith, and immortality, but with nature, domesticity, and the power of language to transfer emotions into written text. An obsessively private writer--only 10 of her some 1700 poems were published in her lifetime--Emily withdrew from social contact at the age of 23 and devoted herself to writing in secret. It wasn't until her death in 1866 that the scope of Dickinson's work was realized, when her sister Lavinia found her prolific collection in a dresser drawer. Since that time, Emily Dickinson's writing has had a significant influence on modern American poetry; her complex use of language and form has contributed to her reputation as one of the most innovative poets of the 19th century. This collection of some of her finest works illustrates not only Dickinson's talent as a writer, but her profound love of language, nature, and life.

For One More Day, by Mitch Albom: Mitch Albom mesmerized readers around the world with his number one New York Times bestsellers, The Five People You Meet in Heaven and Tuesdays with Morrie. Now he returns with a beautiful, haunting novel about the family we love and the chances we miss. For One More Day is the story of a mother and a son, and a relationship that covers a lifetime and beyond. It explores the question: What would you do if you could spend one more day with a lost loved one? As a child, Charley "Chick" Benetto was told by his father, "You can be a mama's boy or a daddy's boy, but you can't be both." So he chooses his father, only to see the man disappear when Charley is on the verge of adolescence. Decades later, Charley is a broken man. His life has been crumbled by alcohol and regret. He loses his job. He leaves his family. He hits bottom after discovering his only daughter has shut him out of her wedding. And he decides to take his own life. He makes a midnight ride to his small hometown, with plans to do himself in. But upon failing even to do that, he staggers back to his old house, only to make an astonishing discovery. His mother--who died eight years earlier--is still living there, and welcomes him home as if nothing ever happened. What follows is the one "ordinary" day so many of us yearn for, a chance to make good with a lost parent, to explain the family secrets, and to seek forgiveness. Somewhere between this life and the next, Charley learns the astonishing things he never knew about his mother and her sacrifices. And he tries, with her tender guidance, to put the crumbled pieces of his life back together.

Lean Mean Thirteen, by Janet Evanovich: New secrets, old flames, and hidden agendas are about to send bounty hunter Stephanie Plum on her most outrageous adventure yet. MISTAKE #1: Dickie Orr--Stephanie was married to him for about fifteen minutes before she caught him cheating on her with her archnemesis, Joyce Barnhardt. Another fifteen minutes after that, Stephanie filed for divorce, hoping never to see either one of them again. MISTAKE #2: Doing favors for super bounty hunter Carlos Manoso (aka Ranger). Ranger needs Stephanie to meet with Dickie and find out if he's doing something shady. Turns out, he is. Turns out, Dickie's also back to doing Joyce Barnhardt. And it turns out Ranger's favors always come with a price... MISTAKE #3: Going completely nutso while doing the favor for Ranger, and trying to apply bodily injury to Dickie in front of the entire office. Now Dickie has disappeared, and Stephanie is the natural suspect in his disappearance. Is Dickie dead? Can he be found? And can Stephanie Plum stay one step ahead in this new, dangerous game? Joe Morelli, the hottest cop in Trenton, New Jersey, is also keeping Stephanie on her toes—-and he may know more than he's saying about many things in Stephanie's life.

Mademoiselle Benoir, by Christine Conrad: Tim Reinhart enters a wondrous new world the moment he buys a farmhouse in the country of France, region of Quercy, department of Lot. Or, in his marvelous words, "From the moment I saw this property, I had a bead on it. I can't completely explain why, but I had an intense feeling of belonging." He has given up his teaching life in New York and begun working as the artist he's always wanted to be. Letters written to his family back home sweep the reader up in Tim's schooling in, and awakening to, the pastoral French lifestyle. From the attention to food (meals seem to Tim a semi-religious rite) to the delightfully quirky neighbors who appear to spring straight out of a Balzac novel, we share Tim's ever-growing pleasures and adventures. But his enchantment with this foreign land becomes far more complicated when his drawings--and then Tim himself--catch the eye of Mademoiselle Benoir, a beautiful, aristocratic woman twenty years his senior. Their decision to marry sets off a cluster bomb, uncovering incendiary layers of emotional and cultural complexity on both sides of the Atlantic. As his family tries to reason with him, her family declares war, and the villagers choose sides. Will tradition triumph over love? Inspired by a true story.

New England White, by Stephen L. Carter: When The Emperor of Ocean Park was published, Time Out declared: “Carter does for members of the contemporary black upper class what Henry James did for Washington Square society, taking us into their drawing rooms and laying their motives bare.” Now, with the same powers of observation, and the same richness of plot and character, Stephen L. Carter returns to the New England university town of Elm Harbor, where a murder begins to crack the veneer that has hidden the racial complications of the town’s past, the secrets of a prominent family, and the most hidden bastions of African-American political influence. At the center: Lemaster Carlyle, the university president, and his wife, Julia Carlyle, a deputy dean at the divinity school-—African Americans living in “the heart of whiteness.” Lemaster is an old friend of the president of the United States. Julia was the murdered man’s lover years ago. The meeting point of these connections forms the core of a mystery that deepens even as Julia closes in on the politically earth-shattering motive behind the murder.

Peony in Love, by Lisa See: I finally understand what the poets have written. In spring, moved to passion; in autumn only regret. For young Peony, betrothed to a suitor she has never met, these lyrics from The Peony Pavilion mirror her own longings. In the garden of the Chen Family Villa, amid the scent of ginger, green tea, and jasmine, a small theatrical troupe is performing scenes from this epic opera, a live spectacle few females have ever seen. Like the heroine in the drama, Peony is the cloistered daughter of a wealthy family, trapped like a good-luck cricket in a bamboo-and-lacquer cage. Though raised to be obedient, Peony has dreams of her own. Peony’s mother is against her daughter’s attending the production: “Unmarried girls should not be seen in public.” But Peony’s father assures his wife that proprieties will be maintained, and that the women will watch the opera from behind a screen. Yet through its cracks, Peony catches sight of an elegant, handsome man with hair as black as a cave-–and is immediately overcome with emotion. So begins Peony’s unforgettable journey of love and destiny, desire and sorrow–-as Lisa See’s haunting new novel, based on actual historical events, takes readers back to seventeenth-century China, after the Manchus seize power and the Ming dynasty is crushed. Steeped in traditions and ritual, this story brings to life another time and place-–even the intricate realm of the afterworld, with its protocols, pathways, and stages of existence, a vividly imagined place where one’s soul is divided into three, ancestors offer guidance, misdeeds are punished, and hungry ghostswander the earth. Immersed in the richness and magic of the Chinese vision of the afterlife, transcending even death, Peony in Love explores, beautifully, the many manifestations of love.

The 6th Target, by James Patterson and Maxine Paetro: When a horrifying attack leaves one of the four members of the Women's Murder Club struggling for her life, the others fight to keep a madman behind bars before anyone else is hurt. And Lindsay Boxer and her new partner in the San Francisco police department run flat-out to stop a series of kidnappings that has electrified the city: children are being plucked off the streets together with their nannies-- but the kidnappers aren't demanding ransom. Amid uncertainty and rising panic, Lindsay juggles the possibility of a new love with an unsolvable investigation, and the knowledge that one member of the club could be on the brink of death. And just when everything appears momentarily under control, the case takes a terrifying turn, putting an entire city in lethal danger. Lindsay must make a choice she never dreamed she'd face--with no certainty that either outcome has more than a prayer of success.

The Bourne Betrayal, by Eric Van Lustbader: Jason Bourne takes a mission to rescue his only friend in the CIA, Martin Lindros, who disappeared in Africa while tracking shipments of yellowcake uranium. Once safely back in America, Lindros persuades Bourne to help track the money trail of terrorists buying the nuclear material in Odessa. But once there, Bourne is hampered by confusing flashbacks of unfamiliar places and events and he wonders: Is someone brainwashing him in order to throw him off the trail? Worse, is the man he saved in Africa really Martin Lindros? Now, Bourne is alone gathering evidence while trying to stay one step ahead of the terrorists who won't let anyone stand in their way of destroying the U.S.

The Judas Strain, by James Rollins: New York Times bestselling author James Rollins returns with a terrifying story of an ancient menace reborn to plague the modern world . . . and of an impossible hope that lies hidden in the most shocking place imaginable: within the language of angels. From the depths of the Indian Ocean, a horrific plague has arisen to devastate humankind-—a disease that's unknown, unstoppable... and deadly. But it is merely a harbinger of the doom that is to follow. Aboard a cruise liner transformed into a makeshift hospital, Dr. Lisa Cummings and Monk Kokkalis—-operatives of SIGMA Force-—search for answers to the bizarre affliction. But there are others with far less altruistic intentions. In a savage and sudden coup, terrorists hijack the vessel, turning a mercy ship into a floating bio-weapons lab. A world away, SIGMA's Commander Gray Pierce thwarts the murderous schemes of a beautiful would-be killer who holds the first clue to the discovery of a possible cure. Pierce joins forces with the woman who wanted him dead, and together they embark upon an astonishing quest following the trail of the most fabled explorer in history: Marco Polo. But time is an enemy as a worldwide pandemic grows rapidly out of control. As a relentless madman dogs their every step, Gray and his unlikely ally are being pulled into an astonishing mystery buried deep in antiquity and in humanity's genetic code. And as the seconds tick closer to doomsday, Gray Pierce will realize he can truly trust no one, for any one of them could be... a Judas.

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