National Network for Equitable Library Service

"I hate Samurais, I hate Samurais,' I muttered to myself as I made my way back to the little temple. The words made a chant that I could not keep in step with. 'I hate Samurais.I hate Samurais,' I kept singing until I was home. Suddenly I realized that I was whole, that I hadn't lost my head, that Saru was still Saru ."-from The Boy and the Samurai With feudal wars raging through the Japanese countryside, it is no place for children, particularly homeless orphans like six-year-old Saru, who grow up fast and hard in the cold city.

In 1892, New Fiddleham, New England, things are never quite what they seem, especially when Abigail Rook and her eccentric employer, R. F. Jackaby, are called upon to investigate the supernatural. First, a vicious species of shape-shifters disguise themselves as a litter of kittens, and a day later, their owner is found murdered with a single mysterious puncture wound.

Colorado, 1880. Gracy Brookens has delivered hundreds, maybe thousands, of babies in her lifetime. The only midwife in a small mining town tucked in the Tenmile Range, Gracy is a gifted and important resource for the women of her hardscrabble community. For years, she has advised expectant mothers through their pregnancies, guided them through the tortures of labor, and then helped them heal. To Gracy, every baby who survived its birth in the Colorado mountains was a miracle, though of course not all of them did, nor did the mothers.

1945: When the critically wounded Captain Cooper Ravenal is brought to a private hospital on Manhattan's Upper East Side, young Dr. Kate Schuyler is drawn into a complex mystery that connects three generations of women in her family to a single extraordinary room in a Gilded Age mansion. Who is the woman in Captain Ravenel's portrait miniature who looks so much like Kate? And why is she wearing the ruby pendant handed down to Kate by her mother? In their pursuit of answers, they find themselves drawn into the turbulent stories of Gilded Age.

November, 1815. The Battle of Waterloo has left the British economy in shreds; Henry Austen, Jane's favorite brother, is about to declare bankruptcy. The crisis destroys Henry's health, and Jane flies to his London bedside. While she is there, the Reverend James Stanier Clarke, chaplain to His Royal Highness the Prince Regent, invites Jane to Carlton House, the Prince's fabulous London home. Jane only accepts because many of Henry's bad loans were given by the Prince Regent's cronies.

In the latest from the bestselling author of Murder on St. Nicholas Avenue, former police sergeant Frank Malloy and his wife adjust to life in New York high society as they investigate a death in the field of higher learning... After spending his first few weeks as a private detective by investigating infidelities of the wealthy, Frank has a more serious case at hand. Abigail Northrup of Tarrytown, New York, was her parents' pride and joy. After graduating from a prestigious women's college in Morningside Heights, she took a job there as an instructor.

1890s New England, finds Dr. John Shepherd working at a remote women's mental hospital. There Shepherd tries to solve the mystery of amnesiac patient Jane Dove. But when his own dark past catches up with him, Jane becomes his only hope for escape- and he hers.

Mack McAsh burns with the desire to escape his life of slavery in Scottish coal mines, while Lizzie Hallim is desperate to shed a life of sheltered subjugation to her spineless husband. United in America, their only chance for freedom lies beyond the western frontier- if they're brave enough to take it.

Deep in Lakota Sioux territory in 1878, a torched farmstead is discovered by American soldiers. Hidden in the cellar is Laina Gray- delirious and pregnant. Nursed back to health by a woman who trusts God's healing hand, Laina recovers but continues to closely guard her terrible secrets.

As a child growing up in 1920s Paris, Ida Chagall copes with her father Marc Chagall's brilliant artistic mind, overbearing ego, and the tight leash he keeps on her. But as Ida blossoms into a young woman, she begins to glimpse freedom and opportunities for herself. When she falls in love for the first time, her father paints ""The Bridal Chair"" as her wedding present, a symbol of his anger that pierces Ida to the heart.