National Network for Equitable Library Service

Fifteen-year-old Cat's new town in rural Michigan is lonely and off-kilter, until she meets her neighbor, the manic, beautiful, pill-popping Marlena. Within the year, Marlena is dead, drowned in six inches of icy water. Decades later, Cat still must work to forgive herself and move on.

Julie and James settle into a house in a small town outside the city where they met. The move--prompted by James' penchant for gambling, his inability to keep his impulses in check--is quick and seamless; both Julie and James are happy to leave behind their usual haunts and start afresh. But this house, which sits between lake and forest, has plans for the unsuspecting couple.

Mary is a young New Yorker, crippled with pain. To pay for treatment, she applies for the "Girlfriend Experiment," where an eccentric man seeks a perfect relationship by paying women to fill different roles. Mary is hired as the "emotional girlfriend" and is pulled into his messy effort to connect.

When a policeman is shot in the dead of night, Ari Thór must solve a murder involving tangled local politics, a compromised new mayor, and someone held against their will in an asylum.

Perfectly poised to exploit the criminal justice system she knows so well, single mom Kristy Tucker sets out to permanently rid herself of Lance, the abusive monster she's become shackled to.

Edgar Roy--an alleged serial killer held in a secure, fortress-like federal supermax facility--is awaiting trial. He faces almost certain conviction. Sean King and Michelle Maxwell are called in by Roy's attorney, Sean's old friend and mentor Ted Bergin, to help work the case. But their investigation is derailed before it begins--en route to their first meeting with Bergin, Sean and Michelle find him murdered.

Sage Singer befriends Josef Weber, a beloved Little League coach and retired teacher. But then Josef asks Sage for a favor she never could have imagined--to kill him. After Josef reveals the heinous act he committed, Sage feels he may deserve that fate. But would his death be murder or justice?

The story of Nora Hammond, a woman blessed with the perfect life: a charming husband, two bright teenage children, a successful career in the family's newspaper business, and an esteemed role in the charity work of her New England town. But Nora's comfortable existence threatens to unravel when she learns of her husband's longtime affair--and when the specter of a sordid incident from her youth returns with terrifying force.

A sleepy rural town in South Carolina. The end of summer and a baby about to be born. But in the midst of hope and celebration comes unexpected tragedy, and Dylan Styles must come to terms with how much he's lost. Will the music of his heart be stilled forever--or will he choose to dance with life once more, in spite of sorrow and heartbreak? The Dead Don't Dance is a bittersweet yet triumphant love story--a tale of one man's spiritual journey through the darkness of despair and into the light of hope.

Scrappy tough guy and three-time loser Johnny Keough seizes an unexpected "clean slate" opportunity as a sign from above and embarks on an epic hitchhiking journey across Canada to deliver his girlfriend's ashes to a fabled beach on the outskirts of Vancouver. This is the story of one man's kicking-and-screaming attempt to recuperate from a life of petty crime and shattered relationships, and somehow accept and maybe even like the new man emerging from within, the one he so desperately needs to become.