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"When I look back on my childhood I wonder how I managed to survive at all. It was, of course, a miserable childhood: the happy childhood is hardly worth your while. Worse than the ordinary miserable childhood is the miserable Irish childhood, and worse yet is the miserable Irish Catholic childhood." So begins the luminous memoir of Frank McCourt, born in Depression-era Brooklyn to recent Irish immigrants and raised in the slums of Limerick, Ireland. Frank's mother, Angela, has no money to feed the children since Frank's father Malachy, rarely works, and when he does he drinks his wages. Yet Malachy does nurture in Frank an appetite for the one thing he can provide: a story. Perhaps it is a story that accounts for Frank's survival. Wearing shoes repaired with tires, begging a pig's head for Christmas dinner, and searching the pubs for his father, Frank endures poverty, near-starvation and the casual cruelty of relatives and neighbors -- yet lives to tell his tale with eloquence, exuberance and remarkable forgiveness. ANGELAS ASHES TRAILER

This book will be eagerly embraced by a reading public madly in love with the first, Angela's Ashes. Here McCourt chronicles his return to New York. A high-school dropout with a thick brogue, terrible teeth and skin, and red and infected eyes, he is easy pickings for a priest who helps him get settled, then attempts to molest him. This distressing introduction to the perversity of life in America kicks off an almost unbelievable series of humiliations and hardships as McCourt works soul-crushingly menial jobs for pittance and is confronted both with vicious anti-Irish prejudice and tedious Irish pride--nearly everyone he meets recounts their Irish genealogy and tells him to stick to his own kind. McCourt stubbornly dreams of becoming a teacher and writer but often retreats from the demands of college and work into the comforting haze of alcohol, the bane of his family. Finally, after a stint in the army and years of being mocked for his bookish ways, he succeeds in becoming a teacher, and his riveting accounts of his crazy classroom experiences in a Staten Island vocational high school at the height of McCarthyism are not to be missed.

In 2002, just months after the Taliban had been driven out of Afghanistan, Rodriguez, a hairdresser from Holland, MI, joined a small nongovernmental aid organization on a mission to the war-torn nation. That visit changed her life. In Kabul, she chronicles her efforts to help establish the country's first modern beauty school and training salon; along with music and kite-flying, hairdressing had been banned under the previous regime. This memoir offers a glimpse into a world Westerners seldom see�life behind the veil. Rodriguez was entranced with the delightful personalities that emerged when her students removed their burqas behind closed doors, but her book is also a tale of empowerment�both for her and the women. In a city with no mail service, she went door-to-door to recruit students from clandestine beauty shops, and there were constant efforts to shut her down. She had to convince Afghan men to work side by side with her to unpack cartons of supplies donated from the U.S. The students, however, are the heroines of this memoir. Women denied education and seldom allowed to leave their homes found they were able to support themselves and their families. Rodriguez's experiences will delight readers as she recounts such tales as two friends acting as parents and negotiating a dowry for her marriage to an Afghan man or her students puzzling over a donation of a carton of thongs. Most of all, they will share her admiration for Afghan women's survival and triumph in chaotic times

Beautiful and charismatic, Benazir Bhutto is not only the first woman to lead a post-colonial Muslim state, she achieved a status approaching that of a royal princess - both in her native Pakistan and around the world. But after two terms in office she was stripped of her power in another example of the bitter political in-fighting that has riven her country. Bhutto�s life has been full of drama. The daughter of one of Pakistan�s most popular leaders - Zulfikar Ali Bhutto, who was hanged by General Zia in 1979 - she grew up in one of the country�s richest families. Following an international education at Harvard and Oxford she became politicised after her father�s execution and was first elected Prime Minister in 1988 - both the youngest person and the first woman to lead the government of a Muslim state. Her riveting autobiography, first published twenty years ago and now updated to cover her own activities since then and how her country has changed since being thrust into the international limelight after 9/11, is an inspiring tale of strength, dedication and courage in the face of adversity.

Love in a Torn Land puts the life of a Kurdish woman, Joanna Al-Askari, into words Joanna grows up in the 1980�s and has to live through the Iraq-Iran war. Joanna lives a life of a freedom fighter and astonishingly survives a chemical gas attack. Joanna was not only oppressed by Saddam Hussein cruel racism acts but also by her own family, because she was a woman. It is a great story of love; the love of a companionship and the love of heritage. The book comprehends the determination that the young couple had, living in absolutely unbearable conditions for freedom. The book reveals the great effect of politics on people�s lives. Joanna and her husband dedicated everything they have for justice. The book might be seen uninspiring by some critics, but personally, it moves me a great deal. The book makes me realize how grateful I should be because even though I feel that I am being oppressed sometimes my struggle is with words and dignity, and not with my life. What I found really astonishing though, is that Joanna ended up claiming asylum in Britain. This demonstrates the greater deal of human rights that exist in the west, unlike the Middle East. Joanna�s own government was trying to kill her, Jordan would not accept her on the other hand Britain not only took Joanna and her family in, but also provided them with shelter, money and freedom. Joanna�s story is just ONE of the MANY stories were people aren�t living the life they are supposed to have. The books is a sad yet true story of what goes in our cruel world.

jean sasson

My forbidden face....Have you ever wondered what it would be like to live as an Afghan girl under the rule of the Taliban? Latifa, a young Afghan girl, discusses her struggles

Sybil....The Classic True Story of a Woman Possessed by Sixteen Personalities. Sybil ended up possessing 16 personalities that were emerged by trauma when she got abused in her childhood. Creating another self was the only way to protect herself.

Audacity to believe is the autobiography of a young British doctor worked in Chile in the 1970s, and was tortured and imprisoned because she offered medical treatment to a wounded revolutionary. Her subsequent books have all been best sellers too.

The color of water... is a book that will "make you proud to be a member of the human race". It is a testament to love. As a boy in Brooklyn, James McBride knew his mother was different. But when he asked about it, she'd simply say, "I'm light-skinned." Later he wondered if he was different too, and asked his mother if he was black or white. "You're a human being," she snapped. "Educate yourself or you'll be a nobody!" And when James asked what color God was, she said, "God is the color of water"...As an adult, McBride finally persuaded his mother to tell her story the story of a rabbi's daughter, born in Poland and raised in the South, who fled to Harlem, married a black man, founded a Baptist church, and put twelve children through college. The Color of Water is James McBride's tribute to his remarkable, eccentric, determined mother and an eloquent exploration of what family really means.

Something to declare....an honest and enlightening story that chronicles the evolution of an insecure adolescent immigrant from the Dominican Republic into a best-selling American novelist.

Butterflies....is a tale of courage and sisterhood set in the Dominican Republic during the rise of the Trujillo dictatorship. A skillful blend of fact and fiction, In the Time of the Butterflies is inspired by the true story of the three Mirabal sisters who, in 1960, were murdered for their part in an underground plot to overthrow the government.

Man's search for meaning is about Viktor Frankl's experiences as a concentration camp inmate and describes his psychotherapeutic method of finding a reason to live.

zlata's diary is about....Ten-year-old zlata's graphic, firsthand account of life in embattled Sarajevo

snow in August is about Michael, an 11-year-old Irish boy in Brooklyn who meets a rabbi. In exchange for lessons in English and baseball, Rabbi Hirsch teaches him Yiddish and tells him of Jewish life in old Prague and of the mysteries of the Kabbalah. Anti-Semitism soon rears its head in the form of a gang of young Irish toughs out to rule the neighborhood. As the gang escalates its violence, it seems that only being as miraculously powerful as Captain Marvel or a golem could stop them.

It happened to nancy.is about 14 yr old Nancy meets 18-year-old Collin, a gentle young man who appears to be the answer to her dreams--until he rapes her, leaving her HIV-infected. In spite of her rapid decline Nancy leads a full, poignantly happy life because of the loving support of both friends and family. It Happened to Nancy follows the YA-enticing diary format seen years ago in Go Ask Alice, which also was edited by Beatrice Sparks.

Sultana...In a land where Kings still rule, I am a Princess. You must know me only as Sultana, for I cannot reveal my true name for fear that harm will come to me and my family for what I am about to tell you. ..........

children who have lived before.....In this book children from all over the world remember their past lives. When the children's statements are subjected to scientific verification, they are invariably confirmed in every detail. It states visiting certain places or meeting certain people we once knew in the past often triggers past life memories...thats how "de ja vu "would be explained. Perhaps you had already been there or met those people before..... If we meet someone we once had a positive or negative connection with....that'd explain love at first sight or hate....wow.

Still me...In his new memoir, actor Christopher Reeve recounts the early days of his career, his rise to stardom on screen and on the stage, his search for a fulfilling relationship, and the true story of what happened on one day in May 1995 that changed his life forever.

Sleep Toward Heaven. In Gatestown, 29 year old Karen awaits her execution on Death Row. In New York, Franny, a doctor the same age, plans her wedding and tries to resist her urge to run. In Austin, Celia, a brassy young librarian, mourns her lost husband. Over the course of one summer, the three womens disparate lives intertwine. Karen, Franny, and Celia all struggle to find their place in a world where nothing is sure, as they move toward one night that will change them all forever.

Bastard out of Carolina... a wild, lush, place, home to the Boatwright family..rough men who drink hard and shoot up each other�s trucks, and indomitable women who marry young and age all too quickly. At the heart of this astonishing novel is Ruth Ann Boatwright, known simply as Bone, a South Carolina bastard with and annotated birth certificate to tell the tale. Observing everything with the mercilessly keen eye of a child, Bone finds herself caught in a family triangle that will test the loyalty of her mother, Anney. At first her stepfather is gentle with Bone but becomes colder and more furious until their final, harrowing encounter, from which there can be no turning back.

Memoirs of a Woman of Pleasure, also known as Fanny Hill, is a novel by John Cleland. Written in 1748 while Cleland was in debtor's prison in London, it is considered the first modern "erotic novel", and has become a byword for the battle of censorship of erotica.

In a case of need ..it-s the 60s and Dr. Art Lee is jailed for performing an illegal abortion resulting in the death of a prominent physician's daughter. Dr. John Berry, Art's friend, knows Art is innocent and sets out to prove it.

The other daughter..... in Texas a serial killer is executed, taking to his grave the identity of his only child. In Boston a nine-year-old girl is abandoned in a hospital, then adopted by a wealthy young couple. Twenty years later, this girl has no memory of her life before the adoption, and now someone wants to give it back. Even if it includes the darkest nightmare the family ever faced: the murder of their first daughter in Texas.

The distant echo...4 am and snow is smothering St Andrews. Student Alex Gilbey and his three best friends are staggering home from a party when they stumble upon the body of a young woman. Rosie Duff has been raped, stabbed and left for dead in the ancient Pictish cemetery. And the only suspects are the four young students stained with her blood. Twenty-five years later, Fife police mount a cold case review. Among the unsolved murders they're examining is that of Rosie Duff. But someone else has their own idea of how justice should be done. One of the original quartet dies in a suspicious house fire. Soon after, a second is killed in what looks like a burglary gone sour. But Alex fears the worst. Someone is taking revenge for Rosie Duff. He has to find out who it is before he becomes the next victim. And it might just save his life if he can uncover who really killed Rosie all those years ago.

100 years....may be one of the most amazing books ever (enough said)

The Rapture of Canaan is novel about the little girl Ninah who lives in a strict community lead by her grandpa. Every sin is punished with treatments such ...

Set in the isolated North Carolina mountains in the aftermath of a plane crash, Fatal Voyage finds Tempe Brennan bringing all her usual determination and spirit to her task - until accusations of professional misconduct leave Tempe excluded from the investigation she started, her career in jeopardy.

Secret life of bees by sue monk kidd... South Carolina 1964. The story of Lily Owens, whose life has been shaped around the blurred memory of the afternoon her mother was killed. When Lily's fierce-hearted "stand-in mother," Rosaleen, insults three of the town's fiercest racists, Lily decides they should both escape to Tiburon, South Carolina - a town that holds the secret to her mother's past. There they are taken in by an eccentric trio of black beekeeping sisters who introduce Lily to a mesmerizing world of bees, honey, and the Black Madonna who presides over their household. This is a remarkable story about divine female power and the transforming power of love -a story that women will share and pass on to their daughters for years to come.

The Mermaid Chair by sue monk kidd is set on a tiny island off the coast of South Carolina, where a monastery has a chair carved with mermaids and dedicated a saint who was supposedly once a mermaid. Jessie Sullivan leaves behind her husband to come back home to this island after her mother's violent and unexplained self-mutilation. Jessie finds herself relieved to be without her husband and also finds herself falling for Brother Thomas, a Benedictine monk about to take his final vows. Jessie embarks on a period of self-discovery while the secret of her father's death decades before appears to hold the key to her mother's actions. Sue Monk Kidd's second novel (after The Secret Life of Bees) has received mixed reviews with BookPage saying, "Reconciling the spiritual with the human, The Mermaid Chair is a captivating metaphorical and sensual journey into one woman's soul." (This book freaked me out..The mermaid chair from sue monkk kidd is a wonderful book and she says some incredible truths I almost fell off my chair ...well about long marraiges and when u get to thinking of someone from your past and analysing it ....like when analysing a long faithful full of routine marraige ..."its like animals taken from the wild and put in nice simulated habitats where they turned complacent knowing exactly where their next meal would come from, all the hunt and suspense drained out of it" ...The book also quotes "I used to imagine women had a lil tank of desire lodged back behind their navels somewhere a kind of erotic gas tank they are born with and that I had used it all up I had recklessly emptied it out and there was nothing I could do to refill it...mens sexual appetite comes from a faucet u can turn on whenever u like as theres an unending supply like getting water from a sink....I did beleive women had only so much libido and when it was used up it was used up....or maybe its all just faucets all connected to a bottomless erotic sea and maybe I let my faucet rust shut or something had clogged it up" (WOW)...and about the main characters past lover... she says "Our relationship had never belonged out there in the real world in a real house where u wash socks and slice onions..it belonged in the shadowed linings of the soul..u brought me deeper into life how could I regret that" ...so ya what a book what quotes!

The History of Love spans of period of over 60 years and takes readers from Nazi-occupied Eastern Europe to present day Brighton Beach. At the center of each main character's psyche is the issue of loneliness, and the need to fill a void left empty by lost love. Leo Gursky is a retired locksmith who immigrates to New York after escaping SS officers in his native Poland, only to spend the last stage of his life terrified that no one will notice when he dies. ("I try to make a point of being seen. Sometimes when I'm out, I'll buy a juice even though I'm not thirsty.") Fourteen-year-old Alma Singer vacillates between wanting to memorialize her dead father and finding a way to lift her mother's veil of depression. At the same time, she's trying to save her brother Bird, who is convinced he may be the Messiah, from becoming a 10-year-old social pariah. As the connection between Leo and Alma is slowly unmasked, the desperation, along with the potential for salvation, of this unique pair is also revealed.

Almost a woman by esmeralda santiago continues the life story that Santiago began in When I Was Puerto Rican . After her family's arrival in New York City, Santiago faced the difficult process of assimilation. As the oldest of eight children, she led her siblings in exploring the new culture and opportunities available to them. Santiago's memoir traces her personal growth through her teenage years; she describes her relationships with her family, her early dating experiences, and her first sexual encounters.

Elsewhere by gabriel levin is where fifteen-year-old Liz Hall ends up, after she has died. It is a place so like Earth, yet completely different. Here Liz will age backward from the day of her death until she becomes a baby again and returns to earth. But Liz wants to turn sixteen, get her driver's license, fall in love, go to college . . . How can she let go of the only life she has ever known and embrace a new one? Is it possible to grow up while getting younger?

The boy who saw true is about a young boy in Victorian England that can see and converse with folks who have died, and can see auras. It is believable and funny. The Victorian era British slang is a hoot, and the social pretensions and inhibited language of the grownups is absolutely fascinating.

In a break with charity by anne rinaldi Susanna desperately wants to join the circle of girls who meet every week at the parsonage. What she doesn't realize is that the girls are about to set off a torrent of false accusations leading to the imprisonment and execution of countless innocent people. Susanna faces a painful choice. Should she keep quiet and let the witch-hunt panic continue, or should she "break charity" with the group--and risk having her own family members named as witches?

Year of Wonders describes the 17th-century plague that is carried from London to a small Derbyshire village by an itinerant tailor. The villagers begin, one by one, to die. Do they flee their village in the hope of outrunning the plague or do they stay? In 1666, a young woman comes of age during an extraordinary year of love and death. "Year of Wonders" is a richly detailed evocation of a singular moment in history.

The Sinner is about how within a cloistered convent lie two nuns -one dead, one critically injured. The brutal crime appears to be without motive. Soon another woman is found murdered, her body mutilated beyond recognition. Together, medical examiner Maura Isles and homicide detective Jane Rizzoli uncover an ancient horror that connects these terrible slaughters.....

Tess Gerritsen gives chilling new meaning to the phrase "under the knife" in her latest thriller, THE SURGEON.

On the occasion of my last afternoon is a novel of the South before and after the Civil War. It describes the life of Emma Garnet, a plantation owner's daughter who grows up in a world of luxury and privilege but gradually comes to the conclusion that slavery is perverse and immoral. Torn by her love of the Old South and her hatred of the "peculiar institution" upon which its fortunes depend, she moves to the North after the devastation of the Civil War and attempts to build a new life for herself. A "New York Times" Notable Book for 1998.

Drowning Ruth is a haunting novel about the ties that bind families together and the insidious secrets that can rend them apart. Love, loss, guilt and lies are the narrative strands that run throughout this deftly woven tale of three women and a shocking turn of events that changes their lives forever.

White Oleander is an unforgettable story of mothers and daughters, burgeoning sexuality, the redemptive powers of art, and the unstoppable force of the emergent self. Written with exquisite beauty and grace, this is a compelling debut by an author poised to join the ranks of today's most gifted novelists.

Mother of pearl is set in Mississippi in the 1950s, Mother of Pearl tells the story of twenty-eight-year-old Even Grade, a black man who grew up an orphan, and Valuable Korner, a fifteen-year-old white girl who is the daughter of the town whore and an unknown father, who are both seeking the family, love, and commitment they never had.

Elegi vivir or I choose to live is the biography of a girl here in Chile who lost all her limbs in a train accident and her personal struggle to get ahead...and graduate from medical school!

Una verdad pendiente...a truth waiting to be told is about the kidnapping and murder this 6 year old boy here in Chile in the 70's

There's a little yarn shop on Blossom Street in Seattle. It's owned by Lydia Hoffman, and it represents her dream of a new life free from cancer. A life that offers a chance at love . . . Lydia teaches knitting to beginners, and the first class is "How to Make a Baby Blanket." Three women join. Jacqueline Donovan wants to knit something for her grandchild as a gesture of reconciliation with her daughter-in-law. Carol Girard feels that the baby blanket is a message of hope as she makes a final attempt to conceive. And Alix Townsend is knitting her blanket for a court-ordered community service project. These four very different women, brought together by an age-old craft, make unexpected discoveries -- about themselves and each other. Discoveries that lead to friendship and more . . .

Different Seasons (1982) is a collection of four novellas, each on the theme of a journey. The first is a rich, satisfying, nonhorrific tale about an innocent man who carefully nurtures hope and devises a wily scheme to escape from prison. The second concerns a boy who discards his innocence by enticing an old man to travel with him into a reawakening of long-buried evil. In the third story, a writer looks back on the trek he took with three friends on the brink of adolescence to find another boy's corpse. These first three novellas have been made into well-received movies: Shawshank Redemption, AptPupil, Stand by Me

Debbie Macomber tells the story of a remarkable friendship -- and tells it in a remarkable way. Between Friends is a story in which every woman will recognize herself . . . and her best friend. The friendship between Jillian Lawton and Lesley Adamski begins in the postwar era of the 1950s. As they grow up, their circumstances, their choices -- and their mistakes -- take them invirtually opposite directions. Lesley gets pregnant and marries young, living a cramped life defined by the demands of small children, not enough money, an unfaithful husband. Jillian lives those years on a college campus shaken by the Vietnam War and then as an idealistic young lawyer in New York City. Over the years and across the miles, through marriage, children, divorce and widowhood, Jillian and Lesley remain close, sharing every grief and every joy. There are no secrets between friends . . .

Where Memoirs of a Geisha ( Arthur Golden) is a novel, Geisha of Gion is an autobiographical account from one of the foremost Geiko (A Geiko in Kyoto is a Geisha elsewhere) from the post-war period.

Ali is the Somali-born member of the Dutch parliament who faced death threats after collaborating on a film about domestic violence against Muslim women with controversial director Theo van Gogh (who was himself assassinated). Even before then, her attacks on Islamic culture as "brutal, bigoted, [and] fixated on controlling women" had generated much controversy. In this suspenseful account of her life and her internal struggle with her Muslim faith, she discusses how these views were shaped by her experiences amid the political chaos of Somalia and other African nations, where she was subjected to genital mutilation and later forced into an unwanted marriage. While in transit to her husband in Canada, she decided to seek asylum in the Netherlands, where she marveled at the polite policemen and government bureaucrats. Ali is up-front about having lied about her background in order to obtain her citizenship, which led to further controversy in early 2006, when an immigration official sought to deport her and triggered the collapse of the Dutch coalition government. Apart from feelings of guilt over van Gogh's death, her voice is forceful and unbowed�like Irshad Manji, she delivers a powerful feminist critique of Islam informed by a genuine understanding of the religion.

In 1843, a 16-year-old Canadian housemaid named Grace Marks was tried for the murder of her employer and his mistress. The sensationalistic trial made headlines throughout the world, and the jury delivered a guilty verdict. Yet opinion remained fiercely divided about Marks--was she a spurned woman who had taken out her rage on two innocent victims, or was she an unwilling victim herself, caught up in a crime she was too young to understand? Such doubts persuaded the judges to commute her sentence to life imprisonment, and Marks spent the next 30 years in an assortment of jails and asylums, where she was often exhibited as a star attraction. In Alias Grace, Margaret Atwood reconstructs Marks's story in fictional form. Her portraits of 19th-century prison and asylum life are chilling in their detail. The author also introduces Dr. Simon Jordan, who listens to the prisoner's tale with a mixture of sympathy and disbelief. In his effort to uncover the truth, Jordan uses the tools of the then rudimentary science of psychology. But the last word belongs to the book's narrator--Grace herself.

In Wild Swans Jung Chang recounts the evocative, unsettling, and insistently gripping story of how three generations of women in her family fared in the political maelstrom of China during the 20th century. Chang's grandmother was a warlord's concubine. Her gently raised mother struggled with hardships in the early days of Mao's revolution and rose, like her husband, to a prominent position in the Communist Party before being denounced during the Cultural Revolution. Chang herself marched, worked, and breathed for Mao until doubt crept in over the excesses of his policies and purges. Born just a few decades apart, their lives overlap with the end of the warlords' regime and overthrow of the Japanese occupation, violent struggles between the Kuomintang and the Communists to carve up China, and, most poignant for the author, the vicious cycle of purges orchestrated by Chairman Mao that discredited and crushed millions of people, including her parents.

Fauziya Kassindja's Muslim father did not force his daughters to wear veils and encouraged their individualism. He instilled in her a distrust and fear of female circumcision, a controversial procedure still performed in many parts of the world. Tragically for Fauziya, he would die an untimely death, but his emphatic disgust at this dangerous and life-threatening operation had a remarkable effect on his daughter. She would flee the country just hours before her own circumcision, eventually arriving in the United States, where she faced an immigration nightmare.

Even readers who don't normally enjoy Arthurian legends will love this version, a retelling from the point of view of the women behind the throne. Morgaine and Gwenhwyfar struggle for power, using Arthur as a way to score points and promote their respective worldviews. The Mists of Avalon's Camelot politics and intrigue take place at a time when Christianity is taking over the island-nation of Britain; Christianity vs. Faery, and God vs. Goddess are dominant themes.

Discover the origins of one of the most feared villains of all time in Thomas Harris's Hannibal Rising, a novel that promises to reveal the "evolution of Hannibal Lecter's evil." Fans have been waiting decades to find out how the good doctor became "death's prodigy," making Hannibal Rising one of the most anticipated books of 2006

In Summer Sisters Judy Blume explores the ramifications of love--and lust--on two friends. Initially, the differences between Caitlin Somers and Victoria Leonard draw them together: privileged Caitlin is wild and outspoken, beautiful but emotionally fragile, while working-class Vix is shy, reserved, and plain in comparison. After Caitlin selects Vix to accompany her to her father's home in Martha's Vineyard for the summer, the two become inextricably connected as "summer sisters." On the Vineyard, Vix and Caitlin first find love, then sex--and lots of it. Yet Blume soon moves beyond hot fun in the summer sun, tracing the romantic and familial travails of the two from pre-adolescence to adulthood. Solid Vix evolves into Victoria, an equally solid, Harvard-educated, Manhattan public-relations exec. Unpredictable Caitlin opts out of college and travels to Europe, where she has a string of short-lived affairs with a series of intriguing (in every sense of the word) foreigners. It is only after she returns to the Vineyard that Caitlin does the unthinkable, forever changing both her friendship with Vix and their lives. Blume once again proves herself a master of the female psyche, and Summer Sisters is likely to entertain both her postadolescent and more mature readers.

Despite meeting Florida's electric chair in 1989, the subject of Rule's bestselling book continues to haunt her. Rule and Bundy were friends. They met in 1971 at a Seattle crisis clinic, where they shared the late shift answering a suicide hotline. Their subsequent conversations, meetings, and letters spanned the rest of Bundy's life as he evolved into one of the century's most notorious serial killers. It's been 20 years since Rule first penned this chilling account. But the story--and her 2000 update--will still have readers reaching for their Xanax. No gratuitous gore here; just the basic, bone-chilling evidence.

In this engrossing and hypnotic tale of witchcraft and the occult spanning four centuries, we meet a great dynasty of witches--a family given to poetry and incest, to murder and philosophy, a family that over the ages is haunted by a powerful, dangerous and seductive being.

This stunning novel begins on a winter night in 1964, when a blizzard forces Dr. David Henry to deliver his own twins. His son, born first, is perfectly healthy, but the doctor immediately recognizes that his daughter has Down syndrome. For motives he tells himself are good, he makes a split-second decision that will haunt all their lives forever. He asks his nurse, Caroline, to take the baby away to an institution. Instead, she disappears into another city to raise the child as her own. Compulsively readable and deeply moving, The Memory Keeper's Daughter is a brilliantly crafted story of parallel lives, familial secrets, and the redemptive power of love.

This is the story of Macon "Milkman" Dead, heir to the richest black family in a Midwestern town, as he makes a voyage of rediscovery, travelling southwards geographically and inwards spiritually. Through the enlightenment of one man, the novel recapitulates the history of slavery and liberation.

Michael comes from a single parent home, living with his mother. He remembers his alcoholic father as a sad, depressed man. As this story begins, his mother has just died. He is overwhelmed with bills and trying to return to school. He takes a job as an orderly/aide at a local nursing home. There he meets Esther, a resident who tends to be a loner....

Born the fifth child to an affluent Chinese family her life begins tragically. Adeline’s mother died shortly after her birth due to complications bought on by the delivery, and in Chinese culture this marks her as cursed or ‘bad luck. This situation is compounded by her father’s new marriage to a lady who has little affection for her husband’s five children. She displayed overt antagonism and distrust towards all of the children, particularly Adeline, whilst favoring her own younger son and daughter born soon after the marriage. The book outlines Adeline’s struggle to find a place where she feels she belongs.

A mystery that takes place in New York City in the late 1800's; an investigation of a serial killer in the days when Jack the Ripper was the only known serial criminal and before forensics were what they are today, when skeptics laughed at the idea of fingerprinting for evidence. Carr explains in the introduction that the term alienist once referred to psychologists: the doctors who attend to those who have become "alienated" from themselves and from society. Psychologists, themselves, were considered a bit wack-o to want to spend hours in prison cells interviewing lunatics and studying the warped personalities of criminals. Anyway, I won't give it all away in this review. Let me just say it's a page turner! Michelle, Powells.com

The Historian is about a quest, reaching through the past five centuries, for the historical Vlad the Impaler. The novel, Kostova's first, was named the 2006 Book Sense "Book of the Year" in the Adult Fiction category. It's been published in 28 languages.