The Gardener of Baghdad

Evie and Thomas experience a very different war. Frustrated by life as a privileged young lady, Evie longs to play a greater part in the conflict - but how? - and as Thomas struggles with the unimaginable realities of war, he also faces personal battles back home, where War Office regulations on press reporting cause trouble at his father's newspaper business. Through their letters Evie and Thomas share their greatest hopes and fears - and grow ever fonder from afar. Can love flourish amid the horror of the First World War, or will fate intervene?

On a beautiful summer morning at the Jersey Shore, four-year-old Sarah Carpenter wanders toward the ocean and never returns. The police think she drowned, but her babysitter Amy claims Sarah was abducted. The only other witness, 17-year-old Donnie Marcino, didn’t see a thing. A narcoleptic since birth, he was fast asleep.

Can an epic adventure succeed without a hero? Andra Watkins needed a wingman to help her become the first living person to walk the historic 444-mile Natchez Trace, as the pioneers did. She planned to walk 15 miles a day for 34 days. After striking out with everyone in her life, she was left with her disinterested 80-year-old father. And his gas. The sleep apnea machine and self-scratching. Sharing a bathroom with a man whose gut obliterated his aim.

December 1940: All that Audrey Barton wants is her family together for Christmas. But the war changes everything.... The Barton family bakery in Bournemouth has been at the heart of the town for generations: Audrey and Charlie Barton have never been rich, but their bread and cakes – and their love and advice – have enriched the lives of others in the town for many years. When war breaks out, it doesn't take long for trouble to arrive on the bakery doorstep.

In the aftermath of Sierra Leone’s 1990s civil war, British psychologist Adrian Lockheart comes to work at the Freetown hospital. There he meets a dying elderly patient who confesses to Adrian his past crimes of passion and betrayal.

After his mother, a theologian and best-selling author, dies in a fiery explosion,49-year-old Calvin Bledsoe's heretofore uninspired life is upended. A stranger shows up at the funeral, claiming to be Calvin's aunt Beatrice, and insists that Calvin accompany her on a trip to Europe, immediately. As he and Beatrice traverse the continent, it quickly becomes apparent that his aunt's clandestine behavior is leading him into danger.

Molly Thomas is a feisty, independent soul, born on the Winter Solstice. At every stage of her life, she has faced troubles... in 1896, her baby son is taken from his pram. While Molly searches the streets for little Oliver, the police are called but her baby is gone. Why does trouble seem to follow Molly? And will she ever find out what happened to her child? December Girl is a tale of family bonds, love, revenge, and murder.

With the rapidly cascading Asian Financial Crisis threatening to go global and Korea in imminent meltdown, investment banker Dae Joon finds himself back in his native Seoul as part of an international team brought in to rescue the country from sovereign default. For Dae Joon - also known by his American name of Shane, after the cowboy movie his father so loved - the stakes are personal. Raised in the US and Harvard Business School - educated, Dae Joon is a jangnam, a firstborn son, bound by tradition to follow in the footsteps of his forebears.

In the summer of 1905, Katherine Arthur's mother arrives on her doorstep, dying, forcing her to relive a past she wanted to forget. When Katherine was young, the Arthur family had been affluent city dwellers until shame sent them running for the prairie, into the unknown. Taking her family, including young Katherine, to live off the land was the last thing Jeanie Arthur had wanted, but she would do her best to make a go of it. For Jeanie's husband, Frank, it had been a world of opportunity. Dreaming, lazy Frank.

Miranda Brooks grew up in the stacks of her eccentric uncle Billy’s bookstore, solving the inventive scavenger hunts he created just for her. But on Miranda’s 12th birthday, Billy has a mysterious falling-out with her mother and suddenly disappears from Miranda’s life. She doesn’t hear about him again until 16 years later when she receives unexpected news: Billy has died and left her Prospero Books, which is teetering on bankruptcy, and one final scavenger hunt.  

Lucas is thrilled when his grandmother comes to live with him. She’s his best friend after Justin from down the street. But when she starts remembering things from her past, is he the only one who will listen? If no one else believes her, how can he fulfill her dying wish? A compelling story about the complexity and value of family as seen through the eyes of a seven-year-old boy.

Miss Burma tells the story of modern-day Burma through the eyes of Benny and Khin, husband and wife, and their daughter Louisa. After attending school in Calcutta, Benny settles in Rangoon, then part of the British Empire, and falls in love with Khin, a woman who is part of a long-persecuted ethnic minority group, the Karen. World War II comes to Southeast Asia, and Benny and Khin must go into hiding in the eastern part of the country during the Japanese occupation.

Faculty wife Emily Stockwell Turner is beautiful, rich, and principled. However, five years in a marriage devoid of passion is enough to propel Emmy, despite her principles, into an affair with silver-tongued Will Thomas, a self-confessed libertine. The shocking, unforeseen consequences of their affair shatter Emmy's most cherished delusions about friendship, romance, and the ties that bind.

Legendary fashion designer Coco Chanel is revered for her sophisticated style - the iconic little black dress - and famed for her intoxicating perfume Chanel No. 5. Yet behind the public persona is a complicated woman of intrigue, shadowed by mysterious rumors. The Queen of Paris, the new novel from award-winning author Pamela Binnings Ewen, vividly imagines the hidden life of Chanel during the four years of Nazi occupation in Paris in the midst of WWII - as discovered in recently unearthed wartime files.

When her tinsmith father and brothers head West, Polish immigrant Marie Kotlarczyk has no choice but to go along. Family, after all, is family. The Dakota Territories are anything but welcoming to the Kotlarczyks, and as the months trip by, Marie must pick up the hammers she’s secretly desired but also feared. When she faces the skeptical people of Flats Town, the demands of the local Army commander, and her public failures, her inner voice grows destructively, forcing Marie to decide exactly who she is and what it means to be a woman smith.