National Network for Equitable Library Service

New York City, 1936. In the midst of the Great Depression, the Big Apple is defiantly striving toward an era infused with art, architecture, and economic progress under dynamic Mayor La Guardia. It's been six months since Lane Sanders was appointed Mayor Fiorello "Fio" La Guardia's new personal aide, and the twenty-three-year-old is sprinting in her Mary Janes to match her boss's pace. Despite dealing with vitriol from the Tammany Hall political machine and managing endless revitalization efforts, Fio hasn't slowed down a bit during his years in office.

Amanda Doucette's cross-Canada charity tour is in for a cold snap when she organizes a winter camping trip for inner-city young people in the stunning setting of the Laurentian Mountains. With a view to bridging cultural divides, she brings along a mixture of Canadian-born and immigrant youth. Trouble begins when two of the teenagers disappear into the wilderness during the night: Luc, a French/English-Canadian with a history of drug use, and Yasmina, an adventurous young woman from Iraq who dreams of becoming a human-rights lawyer.

When a six-year-old girl disappears and calling the police isn't an option, her desperate mother, Pernilla, turns to an unlikely source for help. She finds a cryptic ad online for a private investigator: "Need help, but can't contact the police?" That's where Kouplan comes in. He's an Iranian refugee living in hiding. He was forced to leave Iran after news of his and his brother's involvement with a radical newspaper hated by the regime was discovered. Kouplan's brother disappeared, and he hasn't seen him in four years. He makes a living as a P.I.

It wasn't much of a story just an obituary, Mrs. Martha Orloff, age 62, scrub woman, death by natural causes, heart failure. But what's natural by killing yourself with a scrubbing brush. It would have only been a two-line obit if the other scrubwoman hadn't stopped him on his way out of the building.

Beth Rivers is on the run-she's doing the only thing she could think of to keep herself safe. Known to the world as thriller author Elizabeth Fairchild, she had become the subject of a fanatic's obsession. After being held in a van for three days by her kidnapper, Levi Brooks, Beth managed to escape, and until he is captured, she's got to get away. Cold and remote, Alaska seems tailor-made for her to hide out.

Alfred Wyman is a strange artist who wants to kill the wealthy Miss Gleason because she killed Vincent. Just when Randy has given up on a story for the night, he stumbles across an old man in a dispute with a taxi driver over the fare. The old man has no money so Randy pays the fare but is surprised when the gentle looking old man, Alfred Wyman, says he has to go to kill Miss Gleeson.

With a dad who disappeared years ago and a mother who's a bit too busy to parent, Emmy is shipped off to Wellsworth, a prestigious boarding school in England, where she's sure she won't fit inches. But then she finds a box of mysterious medallions in the attic of her home-medallions that belonged to her father.who may have gone to Wellsworth. When she arrives at school, she finds the strange symbols from the medallions etched into walls and books, which leads her and her new friends, Jack and Lola, to Wellsworth's secret society: The Order of Black Hollow Lane.

Detective Superintendent MacNeice is returning from a pilgrimage to his wife's grave when he's called to a crime scene of singular and disturbing beauty. A young woman in evening dress lies gracefully posed on the floor of a pristine summer cottage so that the finger of one hand regularly interrupts the needle arm of a phonograph playing Schubert's Piano Trio. The only visible mark on her is the bruise under her chin, which MacNeice recognizes: it is the mark that distinguishes dedicated violinists, the same mark that once graced his wife.

Former Army brat Molly Owens is ready to put down roots, and the picturesque seaside town of Britton Bay on the Oregon Coast seems like the perfect place for it. Especially when she lands a job as editor of the local paper. But she's got one colleague who's very bad news ... As an experienced journalist, Molly is eager to bring the struggling Britton Bay Bulletin up to speed. But when she pushes Vernon, one of her less welcoming reporters, to dig a little deeper into the story of a prominent local family, the man ends up dead.

What young reporter could resist the opportunity to be the only journalist allowed into a town on which a news blackout has been imposed? When James Maxwell is invited to the town, he discovers the entire population is suffering from a strange and unnatural plague. Is a poisoner at work?