National Network for Equitable Library Service

For all of her days, Reta Winters has enjoyed the useful monotony of happiness: a loving family, good friends, growing success as a writer of light fiction novels "for summertime." This placid existence cracks open one fearful day when her beloved oldest daughter, Norah, drops out of life to sit on a gritty street corner, silent but for the sign around her neck that reads "goodness." Reta's search for what drove her daughter to such a desperate statement turns into an unflinching and surprisingly funny meditation on where we find meaning and hope.

Lydia is dead. But they don't know this yet ...

It is 2013 and Calgary's Bow river is beginning to rise. Two homeless men stand by the bank and contemplate the death of another friend?an accident? Taking cover downtown that night, Shermeto intervenes in the attack on a bar patron, and finds himself laid up in the hospital. Outside, as the city reels from an unthinkable disaster, Shermeto finds himself away from the swelling river and face-to-face with a part of the past he is trying to hide from: his daughter Kendra.

Ever since her neighbor William cornered her in the barn, Misty must figure out how to get back to the Misty she was before, in this beautifully honest exploration of healing and of hope.

Determined to escape distractions and avoid the holiday season, Kaylee borrows a cabin in Virgin River. She knows the isolation will help her writing, and as she drives north through the mountains and the majestic redwoods, she immediately feels inspired. Until she arrives at a building that has just gone up in flames. Devastated, she heads to Jack's Bar to plan her next steps. The local watering hole is the heart of the town, and once she crosses the threshold, she's surprised to be embraced by people who are more than willing to help a friend, or a stranger, in need.

Antoinette and Gabrielle "Coco" Chanel set out with a determination to prove themselves. Their journey propels them out of poverty and into extravagance. But when World War I breaks out, their lives are irrevocably changed, and the sisters must gather the courage to fashion their own places in the world, even if apart from each other.

For sisters Samantha and Ella Mitchell, Christmas is their most precious time of the year. But this year, they'll be buying presents for the most unexpected guest of all, their estranged mother.

Margot Lee's mother isn't returning her calls. It's a mystery to twenty-six-year-old Margot, until she visits her childhood apartment in Koreatown and finds her mother dead under suspicious circumstances. The discovery sends Margot digging through the past, unraveling the facts of Mina's life as a Korean War orphan and undocumented immigrant, only to realize how little she truly knew about her mother.

Michelle Turner lost everything at seventeen and fled to Seattle. But now her son is lost to her, a troubled teen on the verge of self-destruction, a boy who blames her for the absence of his father and grandfather. And then her father calls to tell her he is dying. He has only one chance to live: if she will donate a kidney to save him.

To cheer up her recently widowed gran, Cassie Fitzgerald, visiting from Canada, persuades Lissbeg Library to set up a Skype book club, linking readers on Ireland's Finfarran Peninsula with the US town of Resolve. But when the club chooses a detective novel, old conflicts on both sides of the ocean are exposed and hidden affairs come to light.