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The Dreaming

Barbara Wood

Set in the untamed landscape of mid-nineteenth century Australia, The Dreaming is a rich and potent tale of hidden passion and broken taboo.

Australia, 1871—Following her mother’s sudden death, Joanna Drury sets sail from India and arrives in Melbourne to claim the property left to her by her mother—and to trace the mysteries of her family’s past.

From her first steps on shore, Joanna becomes entangled with a lost boy who leads her to the fascinating Hugh Westbrook. She agrees to look after the child in exchange for Hugh’s help in finding her inheritance. But she falls deeply in love with Hugh and with life at his sheep station, Merinda.

When strange nightmares begin to plague her—the same that tormented her mother—Joanna starts to notice the Aborigines’ strange reaction to her. Delving into Australia’s past, she discovers the tragic events that have marked her family’s destiny and her own life, events that happened long ago in the time the Aborigines call “the Dreaming.”

Full of intriguing historical detail, Wood’s compelling story brings the clash of immigrant and Aboriginal cultures to stunning life, capturing the danger, mystery, and romance of an emerging country.

Helen of Pasadena

Lian Dolan

Rainbows on the Moon

Barbara Wood

“I was born for adventure. I flout convention. I am a New Woman on a holy purpose.” Newlywed Emily Stone and her husband, Isaac, are young missionaries who have traveled from New England to Honolulu to share the Gospel with the Hawaiian natives.

Gentle, adventurous, well-bred, and beautiful, Emily soon finds herself struggling with intense homesickness but remains determined to share her faith . . . and ignore her growing feelings for handsome Captain MacKenzie Farrow. Just as she begins to bond with the influential High Chiefess Pua and her daughter, Mahina, unexpected tragedy threatens to force her off the island. In a state of confusion, Emily makes a decision that could destroy everything she knows and loves―including her own sanity.

Three decades later, Sister Theresa comes to the islands as a missionary nurse and becomes acquainted with Captain Farrow’s charming son, a powerful man who is instrumental in Hawaii’s alliance with America. Theresa discovers that a dark curse is plaguing his family and the island’s inhabitants, a curse that only Emily and Mahina can help her reverse. With richly imagined characters and spellbinding scenery in the tradition of James A. Michener’s Hawaii, Rainbows on the Moon is a masterful depiction of the beauty of human emotion.

Struck: A Husband’s Memoir of Trauma and Triumph

Douglas Segal

One of life's biggest clichés becomes a horrific reality when Douglas Segal's wife and young daughter are hit head-on by a Los Angeles city bus. Miraculously, his daughter was unharmed, but his wife faced a series of life-threatening injuries, including the same one that famously left Christopher Reeve paralyzed. Following the accident, Segal began sending regular email updates to their circle of friends and family―a list that continued to grow as others heard of the event and were moved by the many emotional and spiritual issues it raised. Segal's compelling memoir is an intimate and honest chronicle built around these email updates, and is a profound example of how people show up for one another in times of crisis.

Alternatingly harrowing, humorous, heartbreaking, and hopeful, this is an uplifting tribute to love, determination, and how the compassion of community holds the power to heal, serving as an inspiring testament to the resilience of the human spirit when faced with pain and adversity.

So Happiness to Meet You

Karin Esterhammer

During the 2008 recession, Karin Esterhammer was laid off from her job as a travel writer for the Los Angeles Times. No longer able to afford their comfortable lifestyle, she and her husband sold everything they had, rented out their house, and took their young autistic son to Ho Chi Minh in Vietnam. They thought that teaching English and living cheap for a year would help get them back on their feet.
 
Boy, were they wrong . . .
 
So Happiness to Meet You is the funny, inspiring, and eye-opening true account of one family’s quest to regain their financial footing while living anything but the high life. Esterhammer tells of her family’s trials, adventures, and victories in adapting to a foreign culture, overcoming the language barrier, and enduring the kind of heat and humidity that could drive a soul insane. She also paints an endearing portrait of neighbors who unabashedly stared into windows, kept cockroaches for luck, taught Karin how to shop and cook, and ultimately helped her find joy without Western trappings.

Gilded

Deborah Davis

A beautifully written history of high society in Newport, Rhode Island, from the acclaimed author of Party of the Century.

Newport is the legendary and beautiful home of American aristocracy and the sheltered super-rich. Many of the country's most famous blueblood families?the closest thing we have to royalty?have lived and summered in Newport since the nineteenth century. The Astors, the Vanderbilts, Edith Wharton, JFK and Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis, Doris Duke, and Claus and Sunny von Bulow are just a few of the many names who have called the city home. Gilded takes you along as you explore the fascinating heritage of the Newport elite, from its first colonists to the newest of its new millennium millionaires, showing the evolution of a town intent on living in its own world. Through a narrative filled with engrossing characters and lively tales of untold extravagance, Davis brings the resort to life and uncovers the difference between rich and Newport rich along the way.

• An engrossing multigenerational saga that tells the real story of the rich and famous in Newport
• 34 evocative black-and-white photographs

Written with insight and dramatic flair, Gilded gives you a rare peek into the cloistered coastal playground of America's moneyed elite.

Street Player

Danny Seraphine

The inside story of Chicago, one of the most successful and enduring rock bands ever.

With their distinctive blending of soulful rock and horn-infused urban jazz, Chicago has thrilled music fans for more than forty years with their lyrical brilliance. In this no-holds-barred memoir, legendary rocker Danny Seraphine shares his dramatic—and often shocking—experiences as the popular supergroup's cofounder and longtime drummer. He reveals behind-the-scenes anecdotes about Chicago’s beginnings as the house band at Los Angeles's legendary Whisky A Go Go, where they were discovered by music icons Janis Joplin and Jimi Hendrix, and personal insights about the group’s many comebacks and reinventions over the years.

• Offers a lively inside account of the music and history of the perennially popular band Chicago, one of the most successful American bands ever with over 122 million albums sold, by the band’s cofounder and longtime drummer Danny Seraphine
• Includes riveting tales and rare photographs from Seraphine's time on the road touring with performers including Dennis and Carl Wilson of the Beach Boys, Janis Joplin, Jimi Hendrix, and Bruce Springsteen
• Candidly tackles many rumors about Chicago, including Mafia ties, accounting and payola scandals, and major drug abuse
• Discusses the mysterious circumstances surrounding Seraphine's 1990 firing from the band as well as his comeback with his critically acclaimed new band, California Transit Authority

Whether you're a diehard Chicago fan or just love a well-told rock-and-roll memoir, Street Player will entertain and surprise you.

Cover Your Tracks: A Novel

Daco Auffenorde

Margo Fletcher, eight months pregnant, is traveling by train from Chicago to Spokane, her childhood home. While passing through an isolated portion of the Rockies in blizzard conditions, the train unexpectedly brakes. Up ahead, deadly snow from a massive avalanche plummets down the mountain. Despite the conductor’s order for the passengers to stay seated, former Army Ranger Nick Eliot insists that survival depends on moving to the back of the train. Only Margo believes him. They take refuge in the last train car, which Nick heroically uncouples in time to avoid the avalanche. The rest of the train is hurled down the mountainside and is soon lost forever in a blanket of snow. Margo and Nick, the sole survivors, are stranded in the snowstorm without food, water, or heat. Rescuers might not arrive for days.

When the weather turns violent again, the pair must flee the shelter of the passenger car and run for their lives into the wilderness. They must fend off the deadly cold as well as predatory wild animals foraging for food. Eventually, Nick leads Margo to shelter in a watchtower atop a mountain. There, we learn that both Margo and Nick have secrets that have brought them together and threaten to destroy them.

Cover Your Tracks is a chilling story of love and hate, the devastating power of nature, and the will to survive.

Long Live the Queen!: 23 Rules for Living from Britain’s Longest-Reigning Monarch

Bryan Kozlowski

"Does this crown make me look old?” said the Queen. Never.

Her longevity, health and physical stamina are legendary. Now the longest reigning monarch in British history, Elizabeth II has spent over half a century on the throne, rarely taking a sick day and, in her tenth decade, remains amazingly comfortable in her own skin. How does one do it, Ma’am?

For the first time, step behind Palace doors to unlock the little-known strategies behind the Queen’s remarkable self-preservation. Investigating the 23 rules of her iconic resilence, you’ll learn how to channel your inner royal – at work, at play, or at the table – in this fascinating plunge into the House of Windsor’s famous fountain of youth.

Extensively researched and delightfully revelatory, it’s the story of how one strong queen can make stronger, happier, healthier subjects of us all. Long live you!

Rubble of Rubles

Josip Novakovich

From Man Booker International Prize finalist Josip Novakovich comes a satiric novel with teeth—a tale of Russia in the early aughts, perfect for fans of Dostoevsky and Gary Shteyngart.

In this picaresque novel set in the early 2000s, David, an investment banker with Eastern European roots, goes bankrupt from the Enron fiasco, and moves to Russia to do some soul-searching. In the shadow of the Khazan cathedral, he’s arrested for the murder of two Georgian wine-importers.  David is imprisoned at Kresty, bewildered and alone. One day, Putin himself visits, with a modest proposal for David: to travel to Georgia and slip plutonium into the president’s wine. This is the price of freedom: to assassinate a president. 

Told with Josip Novakovich's signature skill and satiric wit, Rubble of Rubles delves into the absurdity and menace of totalitarianism. At the crossroads of literary fiction, satire, and crime, this is a novel for modern fans of Notes from Underground and Absurdistan.

In Our Midst

Nancy Jensen

Drawing upon a long-suppressed episode in American history, when thousands of German immigrants were rounded up and interned following the attack on Pearl Harbor, In Our Midst tells the story of one family’s fight to cling to the ideals of freedom and opportunity that brought them to America.

Nina and Otto Aust, along with their teenage sons, feel the foundation of their American lives crumbling when, in the middle of the annual St. Nikolas Day celebration in the Aust Family Restaurant, their most loyal customers, one after another, turn their faces away and leave without a word. The next morning, two FBI agents seize Nina by order of the president, and the restaurant is ransacked in a search for evidence of German collusion.

Ripped from their sons and from each other, Nina and Otto are forced to weigh increasingly bitter choices to stay together and stay alive. Recalling a forgotten chapter in history, In Our Midst illuminates a nation gripped by suspicion, fear, and hatred strong enough to threaten all bonds of love―for friends, family, community, and country

Yours, Jean: A Novel

Lee Martin

“When she refused me,” Charlie says at his trial. “Well, I had that gun. What else was I to do?”

Lawrenceville, Illinois, 1952: Jean De Belle, the new high school librarian, is eager to begin the next phase of her young life after breaking off her engagement to Charlie Camplain. She has no way of knowing that in a few short hours, Charlie will arrive at the school, intent on convincing her to take back his ring.

What happens next will reverberate through the lives of everyone who crossed paths with Charlie and Jean: the hotel clerk who called him a cab, the high school boy who became his getaway driver, and the English teacher who was Jean’s landlady, her confidant, and perhaps more.

Based on a true crime and ideal for readers of The Heart Is a Lonely Hunter by Carson McCullers and Elizabeth Strout’s beloved Anything Is Possible, Pulitzer Prize finalist Lee Martin's Yours, Jean is a powerful novel about small town manners and the loneliness that drives people to do things they never imagined.