Home Fiction

Happily retired in the village of Three Pines, Armand Gamache, former Chief Inspector of Homicide with the Sûreté du Québec, has found a peace he'd only imagined possible. On warm summer mornings he sits on a bench holding a small book, The Balm in Gilead, in his large hands. "There is a balm in Gilead," his neighbor Clara Morrow reads from the dust jacket, "to make the wounded whole." While Gamache doesn't talk about his wounds and his balm, Clara tells him about hers. Peter, her artist husband, has failed to come home. Failed to show up as promised on the first anniversary of their separation. She wants Gamache's help to find him. Having finally found sanctuary, Gamache feels a near revulsion at the thought of leaving Three Pines. "There’s power enough in Heaven," he finishes the quote as he contemplates the quiet village, "to cure a sin-sick soul." And then he gets up. And joins her.

Laura Rodríguez Colón has a plan: no matter what the grown-ups say, she will live with her parents again. Can you blame her? It’s tough to make friends as the new kid at school. And while staying at her aunt’s house is okay, it just isn’t the same as being in her own space. So when Laura finds a puppy, it seems like fate. If she can train the puppy to become a therapy dog, then maybe she’ll be allowed to visit her parents. Maybe the dog will help them get better and things will finally go back to the way they should be.

When you're a pinball, life is a risky game, especially for three adolescent children placed in a foster home. Their hard-won defenses are firmly in place as these three uneasy strangers meet their foster parents. For each of these children who were failed by their families, caring for others is so scary it hurts. No one has been in control. But as their daily lives become dotted with fried chicken dinners, puppies, and birthdays, they begin to hope that even pinballs can be winners.

In the shadow of the War of 1812, a riveting tale unfolds during the pivotal Battle of Baltimore. This historical fiction novel intricately weaves the lives of several individuals against the backdrop of a nation in turmoil. Francis Scott Key, detained aboard a British ship, pens the words that would become the Star-Spangled Banner. Meanwhile, Frederick Hall, an escaped slave, bravely fights for the American side that denied him his freedom. Amidst the build up to war, young Grace Wisher, an indentured servant, pours her skill and silent hopes into the very stitches and fabric of the ...

When Karlina Richter discovers that a new shepherd will be sent to her village, she fears she'll no longer be allowed to help her father with the sheep. She'll be relegated back to kitchen work, stuck inside all day. Her fears increase when the new shepherd shows little interest in the flock - or in divulging why he's suddenly been sent to East. Is he keeping secrets that will impact Karlina's family? Dovie Cates visits the Amana Colonies to learn more about the place where her mother grew up.

After 10 years spent keeping house and raising her younger siblings, Sarah Yoder returns home to Promise Glen determined to make a fresh start. Her new job with neighbor Noah Raber's furniture business seems promising - until she and the woodworker clash over everything from the best way to reach new costumers to how to raise his mischievous six-year-old twin boys.

As the saga of the Kelly children continues, Mike Kelly is adopted by a German immigrant farm family living in Missouri. Although they are kind to him, they are mainly interested in having cheap labor. Eleven-year-old Michael Patrick Kelly from New York City is sent to a foster home, a Missouri farm with a sadistic owner, a bullying son, and a number of secrets, one of which may be murder.

Lucas knows the perfect night entails just three things: video games, wine, and pad thai. Peanuts are a must! Other people? Not so much. Why complicate things when he’s happy alone? Then one day the apartment board, a vexing trio of authority, rings his doorbell. And Lucas’s solitude takes a startling hike. They demand to see his frying pan. Someone left one next to the recycling room overnight, and instead of removing the errant object, as Lucas suggests, they insist on finding the guilty party. But their plan backfires. Colossally.

Sethe was born a slave and escaped to Ohio, but eighteen years later she is still not free. Sethe has too many memories of Sweet Home, the beautiful farm where so many hideous things happened. And Sethe’s new home is haunted by the ghost of her baby, who died nameless and whose tombstone is engraved with a single word: Beloved.

“Am I in trouble mom? If you want to tell me about skinship I’m all ears. If there are rules I’m listening. I just don’t want what’s happening between us right now to ever stop.” It's time for a lucky stepson of age to return home in the afternoon while his stay at home stepmom snoops through his bedroom to find his private journal of their forbidden exploits at home. Karen is just a concerned parent however and wants to make sure their new relationship at home is not ruining her stepson each time they practice a thing called 'skinship' in secret at home. With the man of the ...

The old trunk sat unclaimed on the depot platform for more than two decades. John Forrester 's decision to use it as an escape vehicle would result in it becoming either an untimely coffin or a way to freedom for his only nephew, Timothy. "Timothy's Home", Book V of The Nan's Heritage Series, brings the story of the trunk and the people connected to it full circle. New characters blend with beloved ones from the other books in the series giving a window into life of the 1800s in Colorado. In Elaine Littau's latest offering, "Timothy's Home", she endeavors to keep the story unpredictable as ...

Lord Stephen Carrington, the Duke of Edgewater, lost his wife, his children lost their mother. How could he know that having a governess would never fully do? What he really needs is a wife. Jenny Edgington took to her position of governess quickly and easily. Having knowing the loss of her parents herself, she was more than able to care and nurture the two children of Duke Carrington while he finished his duties overseas. Now that he is free to return home though the duty he has to his remaining family feels like an insurmountable weight. Lucky for him, Miss Edgington isn’t going ...

Born a Native American but brought up Amish, Hester Zug, at age 20, flees her Amish home. Her father's too-tender care of her has made her stepmother wildly jealous, and so Hester sets off, knowing only that she can't stay. Hester's natural instincts for navigating the forests in colonial Pennsylvania, along with the book of medicines and remedies given to her by an aged Native American woman, allow her to survive until she gets sick from drinking river water.

But sometimes the heart has a mind of its own. It falls without warning. The last thing I want to do is fall for the angry cowboy. Blair Andrews has spent the better part of her adulthood playing trophy wife to her politician husband in San Francisco. All she knows is her pampered, polished, perfect life. Until it all comes crashing down around her. After hiding out in her sister’s spare bedroom for months to avoid pitying looks on the streets, she decides it’s time to escape city life and learn to stand on her own.

Since she bought her rambling fixer-upper of a house, Jacobia Tiptree has gotten used to finding things broken. But her latest problem isn't so easily repaired. Along with the rotting floor joists and sagging support beams, there's the little matter of the dead man in Jake's storeroom, an ice pick planted firmly in his cranium. Jake's unknown guest turns out to be local boy turned billionaire Threnody McIlwaine.

A giant in American journalism in the vanguard of "The Greatest Generation" reveals his World War II experiences in this National Geographic book. More than 100 of Cronkite's letters from 1943-45 (plus a few earlier letters) survive. They reveal surprising and little-known facts about this storied public figure in the vanguard of "The Greatest Generation". They chronicle both a great love story and a great war story.

A hungry, stray dog is the last thing Cara Butter needs. Stranded in Georgia with only her backpack and a few dwindling dollars, she already has too much baggage. Like her twin sister, Hana, who has broken Cara's heart one too many times. After a lifetime of family troubles, and bouncing from one foster home to another, Cara decides to leave it all behind and strike out alone - on foot.

This funny, down-to-earth parody of Marie Kondo’s The Life-Changing Magic of Tidying Up hands listeners the most useful tools for keeping crap clean and organized without all the pressure.

On her wedding day in San Juan, Puerto Rico, in 1968, Rafaela Acuña y Daubón has mild misgivings, but she marries Peter Brennan Jr. anyway in a blaze of romantic optimism. She has no way of knowing how dramatically her life will change when she uproots her young family to start over in the American Midwest, unleashing a fleet of disappointments. In the 1980s, against the backdrop of her mother’s isolation in St. Louis, Missouri, Rafaela’s daughter, Ruth, wants only to belong. Eager to fit in, Ruth lets go of her language, habits, and childhood memories of Puerto Rico. I

When racial tension erupts in the sleepy community of Colleton County, North Carolina, Deborah is caught off guard. She is happily tending her own home fires: her simmering romance with Kidd Chapin, the house she's building on her family's land, and her campaign for reelection as district judge. But then the first black church is burned, and all of Deborah's alarms go off.