National Network for Equitable Library Service

When Jacob is called back to Advocate, he is not only returning home again, something he knows he cannot really do; he is going to face his dying grandmother and the people of the town who turned on one of their own. Twenty years earlier, when his uncle David came home, it was to die. The response in Advocate was typical of most towns, large and small, in 1984: when his disease became known, Jacob, his grandmother, his mother, and his aunt, were shunned, turned out from school and their jobs, out of fear of an until-then unknown virus.

"The Western Light, the prequel to the international bestselling The Wives of Bath, is Susan Swan''s long-awaited return to the life of the beloved narrator Mary "Mouse" Bradford. Mouse''s world is constrained by a number of factors: her mother is dead, her father -- the admired country doctor -- is emotionally distant, her housekeeper Sal is prejudiced and narrow, and her grandmother and aunt, Big Louie and Little Louie, the only life-affirming presences in her life, live in another city.

For the last five years, Ben Allan has successfully kept dromomania the peculiar male hysteria known as the mid-life crisis at bay, even writing an award-winning essay on the subject. But when his fifteen minutes of fame become a countdown to his fiftieth birthday, Ben begins to see his own life reflected in those he has written about. Goaded by his father and colleagues, Ben begins to question why his life has turned out the way it has and what exactly is stopping him from running away from everything he feels is holding him down.

Reserved contractor Wade Sullivan never expected to fall in love with Starr Parnell or to love her three small kids as if they were his own. But that's exactly what happened. As their wedding draws near, however, tragedy strikes, and Wade must put aside his own grief in order to help Starr's children cope.

Billy Flynn always wanted to fly. An attractive young man, a patriot, he is also an artist with pencil and paint and has an abiding affinity for nature. It's 1970 and he cannot resist the call to serve in Vietnam. A year later he is the only survivor when his helicopter is shot down. A Catalog of Birds is the story of a family and a community confronted with a loss of innocence and wounds that may never heal.

A peaceful English village is thrust into chaos when a teenage girl goes missing. As the search unfolds over a span of thirteen years, the village changes in ways no one could have predicted.

Evelyn, a New Orleans Creole woman in the 1940s, comes from a family of upper-echelon blacks. When she falls for no-name Renard, she must choose between him and her life of privilege. For Evelyn, Jim Crow is an ongoing reality, but in its wake new threats haunt her descendants.

A husband and wife try to outrun long-buried secrets, sending their lives spiraling into chaos.

In search of a new home for her family, Sue Glassman's father in law, Sy, purchases a home for them in Rockaway, Queens. But he's moving in with them. And the house is a haunted.

Vermont, 1972. Carole LaPorte has a satisfying, ordinary life. She cares for her children, balances the books for the family's auto shop, and laughs when her husband slow dances her across the kitchen floor. Her tragic childhood might have happened to someone else. But now her mind is playing tricks on her. The accounts won't reconcile and the murmuring she hears isn't the television. She ought to seek help, but she's terrified of being locked away in a mental hospital like her mother, Solange.