National Network for Equitable Library Service

South Africa, 1901: At the height of the Second Boer War, Sarah van der Watt and her son are taken from their farm by force to Bloemfontein Concentration Camp where, the English promise, they will be safe.Johannesburg, 2010: Sixteen-year-old outsider Willem just wants to be left alone with his books and his dog. Worried he's not turning out right, his mother and her boyfriend send him to New Dawn Safari Training Camp. Here they "make men out of boys." Guaranteed.You Will Be Safe Here is a deeply moving novel of two connected parts.

On her thirteenth birthday, Mariama leans against her favourite baobab tree and daydreams, thrilled that the time has finally come for her Sande ceremony, when she will officially pass into womanhood. But then, rough hands tear her from her daydreams and violently toss her into a nightmare reality. She is forced onto the SS Archery, a slave ship that steals her from her home in West Africa and delivers her to the British colony of Demerary on the northern coast of South America.

A work of literary historical fiction, Man Shark is based on an unusual story amid the extensive oral literature of the Marshall Islanders that uncharacteristically has no ending. Tarmalu leaves her baby in the care of others while she leads her fleet of proa from the shelter of the Wotho Atoll lagoon out into the open ocean to save their craft from the certain destruction of an oncoming typhoon. Never heard from again, her son, Ḷainjin grows up to undertake an epic search for her creating a renowned navigational chant to record the seamarks along the way. Does he ever find her?

April, 1536. Danilo del Medigo arrives incognito in Venice from Istanbul, with two assassins from Suleiman the Magnificent's court hot on his trail. Western civilization is in crisis. Jews and "New Christians" - people whose families had converted from Judaism - are threatened with expulsion, imprisonment, and death. Danilo seeks refuge in the Venetian Ghetto, and promptly falls in love with the beautiful Miriamne Hazan. But soon Danilo is blackmailed into becoming a spy for Venice, which means he must abandon Miriamne in order to save her.

Raised in post-Revolution Granville, Massachusetts, James Gould could only imagine the beauty and warmth of the lands to the south. It was there that he longed to build bridges and lighthouses from his very own designs and plans. His gripping story unfolds as Gould follows his dream to the raw settlement of Bangor on the Penobscot River, St. Simons Island off the coast of Georgia, lawless Spanish East Florida, and back-at last and finally-to St. Simons.

Reaching manhood in the tumultuous years before the Civil War, James Gould's son Horace returns to St. Simons and finds himself disheartened by the intolerance of others on his beloved island. However, he wins the heart of his lovely neighbor Deborah Abbott, who adores her Mr. Gould and becomes his wife, despite the difference in their years.

Rhys Gravenor, Great War veteran and Welsh sheep farmer, arrives in Paris in the midst of the city's liberation with a worn letter in his pocket that may have arrived years too late. As he follows the footsteps of his missing son across an unfamiliar, war-torn country, he struggles to come to terms with the incident that drove a wedge between the two of them. Joined by Charlotte Dubois, an American ambulance driver with secrets of her own, Rhys discovers that even as liberation sweeps across France, the war is far from over.

When Jill Lau receives an early morning phone call that her elderly father has fallen gravely ill, she and her sister, Celeste, catch the first flight from Toronto to Hong Kong. The man they find languishing in the hospital is a barely recognizable shadow of his old indomitable self. According to his housekeeper, a couple of mysterious photographs arrived anonymously in the mail in the days before his collapse.

Robinswood Estate, County Waterford, Ireland. 1946. Years of neglect and abandonment have left the family seat of the Keneficks almost derelict, but the new Lord Kenefick and his charming young wife Kate are determined to breathe life into the old house once more. The war is over, and they have survived, so now they must set about making a bright future for themselves and their family. But the shadows of the past are ever lurking, and there are many who are not willing to see the new Lady Kenefick as anything more than the housekeeper's daughter.

Summer 1946. World War Two has just come to an end and there's a yearning for renewal. A man in his thirties is sailing on Lake Maggiore in northern Italy, hoping to put off the inevitable return to work. Dropping anchor in a small, fashionable port, he meets the enigmatic owner of a nearby villa who invites him home for dinner with his older wife and beautiful widowed sister-in-law. The sailor is intrigued by the elegant waterside mansion, staffed with servants and imbued with mystery, and stays in a guest room previously occupied by a now deceased bishop related to his host.