Finding Me

Michelle was a young single mother when she was kidnapped by a local school bus driver named Ariel Castro. For more than a decade afterward, she endured unimaginable torture at the hand of her abductor. In 2003 Amanda Berry joined her in captivity, followed by Gina DeJesus in 2004. Their escape on May 6, 2013, made headlines around the world.

Barely out of her own tumultuous childhood, Michelle was estranged from her family and fighting for custody of her young son when she disappeared. Local police believed she had run away, so they removed her from the missing persons lists fifteen months after she vanished. Castro tormented her with these facts, reminding her that no one was looking for her, that the outside world had forgotten her. But Michelle would not be broken.

In Finding Me, Michelle will reveal the heartbreaking details of her story, including the thoughts and prayers that helped her find courage to endure her unimaginable circumstances and now build a life worth living. By sharing both her past and her efforts to create a future, Michelle becomes a voice for the voiceless and a powerful symbol of hope for the thousands of children and young adults who go missing every year.

The Last Bride

Of her Old Order parents' five daughters, Tessie Miller is the last to marry. She has her heart set on Amishman Marcus King, but Tessie's father opposes the match.

Impetuously, Tessie and Marcus elope to the English world, then return to Hickory Hollow to live as singles, trusting they'll convince the Millers to give their love a chance over time. But when the unthinkable happens, Tessie faces the almost-certain censure of the People. Will she find a reason for hope in spite of her desperate plight?

Power Play

Even though Harvard-educated Fiona Carson has proven herself under fire as CEO of National Technology Advancement, a multibillion-dollar high-tech company based in Palo Alto, California, she still has to meet the challenges of her world every day. Devoted single mother, world-class strategist, and tough negotiator, Fiona weighs every move she makes, and reserves any personal time for her children. Isolation and constant pressure are givens for her as a woman in a man’s world.
 
Miles away in Marin County, Marshall Weston basks in the fruits of his achievements. At his side is his wife, Liz, the perfect corporate spouse, who has gladly sacrificed her own law career to raise their three children and support Marshall at every step. Smooth, shrewd, and irreproachable, Marshall is a model chief executive, and the power he wields only enhances his charisma and is his drug of choice. And to maintain his position, he harbors secrets that could destroy his life at any moment. His world is one of high risks.
 
Like many women in her position, Fiona has sacrificed her personal life for her career, while Marshall dances dangerously close to the edge and flirts with scandal every day. Both must face their own demons, and fight off those who are jealous of their success. Their lives as CEOs of major companies come at a high price. And just how high a price are they willing to pay? Who are they willing to sacrifice to stay on top? Those they love, or themselves?
 
Danielle Steel’s gripping, emotionally layered novel explores the seductive and damaging nature of power. Success and greed, trust and deception, love and loss—all come to a head in this compelling drama of family, careers, infidelity, and the sacrifices some people make to hold on to power . . . or to let it go.

The Fault in Our Stars

Make sure you read the book BEFORE going to the theatre this summer to see this classic love story. Your experience will be filled with tears and laughter and you will not be able to put this one down.

Despite the tumor-shrinking medical miracle that has bought her a few years, Hazel has never been anything but terminal, her final chapter inscribed upon diagnosis. But when a gorgeous plot twist named Augustus Waters suddenly appears at Cancer Kid Support Group, Hazel’s story is about to be completely rewritten.

Insightful, bold, irreverent, and raw, The Fault in Our Stars is award-winning author John Green’s most ambitious and heartbreaking work yet, brilliantly exploring the funny, thrilling, and tragic business of being alive and in love.

The Invention of Wings

From the celebrated author of The Secret Life of Bees, a magnificent novel about two unforgettable American women

If you need that book you can't put down, this is the one for you. I found myself lost in the story of Handful and Sarah. What would their fate be? Check this winner out and find out for yourself.

Writing at the height of her narrative and imaginative gifts, Sue Monk Kidd presents a masterpiece of hope, daring, the quest for freedom, and the desire to have a voice in the world—and it is now the newest Oprah’s Book Club 2.0 selection.

Hetty “Handful” Grimke, an urban slave in early nineteenth century Charleston, yearns for life beyond the suffocating walls that enclose her within the wealthy Grimke household. The Grimke’s daughter, Sarah, has known from an early age she is meant to do something large in the world, but she is hemmed in by the limits imposed on women.

Kidd’s sweeping novel is set in motion on Sarah’s eleventh birthday, when she is given ownership of ten year old Handful, who is to be her handmaid. We follow their remarkable journeys over the next thirty five years, as both strive for a life of their own, dramatically shaping each other’s destinies and forming a complex relationship marked by guilt, defiance, estrangement and the uneasy ways of love.

As the stories build to a riveting climax, Handful will endure loss and sorrow, finding courage and a sense of self in the process. Sarah will experience crushed hopes, betrayal, unrequited love, and ostracism before leaving Charleston to find her place alongside her fearless younger sister, Angelina, as one of the early pioneers in the abolition and women’s rights movements.

Inspired by the historical figure of Sarah Grimke, Kidd goes beyond the record to flesh out the rich interior lives of all of her characters, both real and invented, including Handful’s cunning mother, Charlotte, who courts danger in her search for something better.

This exquisitely written novel is a triumph of storytelling that looks with unswerving eyes at a devastating wound in American history, through women whose struggles for liberation, empowerment, and expression will leave no reader unmoved.

Libraries Are Dying? Think again.

Think libraries are dying off ?  Think again. Read more.

100 Books To Read in Your Lifetime

Amazon released its newly curated list of 100 Books to Read in a Lifetime on Tuesday.

Books on the list include Jane Austen's "Pride and Prejudice" (1813), F. Scott Fitzgerald's "The Great Gatsby" (1925) and Kate Atkinson's "Life After Life" (2013).

The list spans 200 years of literature, along with a wide range of genres and intended audiences; authors include David Sedaris, Salman Rushdie, J.D. Salinger, Michael Pollan and Shel Silverstein.

Sara Nelson, editorial director of print and Kindle books at Amazon.com, said the list was created through taxing months of deliberation among her team, though no mathematical algorithms were used. Read More

DiCamillo Wins Newbery

Kate DiCamillo's "Flora & Ulysses," a comic superhero tale featuring a deadly vacuum cleaner and a mighty squirrel, has won the John Newbery Medal for the year's best work of children's literature. Brian Floca won the Randolph Caldecott Medal for his illustrations in "Locomotive," a story of the early years of train travel that Floca also wrote.

The awards, the most prestigious in children's publishing, were announced Monday by the American Library Association. DiCamillo, a popular and acclaimed author, won the Newbery a decade ago for "The Tales of Despereaux." The Library of Congress recently named her National Ambassador for Young People's Literature. Read more

Perfect

Depicting with humor and insight the pressure to be outwardly perfect, this novel for ages 10-13 shows how one girl develops compassion for her own and others’ imperfections.

For 13-year-old Isabelle Lee, whose father has recently died, everything's normal on the outside. Isabelle describes the scene at school with bemused accuracy--the self-important (but really not bad) English teacher, the boy that is constantly fixated on Ashley Barnum, the prettiest girl in class, and the dynamics of the lunchroom, where tables are turf in a all-eyes-open awareness of everybody's relative social position.

But everything is not normal, really. Since the dealth of her father, Isabelle's family has only functioned on the surface. Her mother, who used to take care of herself, now wears only lumpy, ill-fitting clothes, cries all night, and has taken every picture of her dead husband and put them under her bed. Isabelle tries to make light of this, but the underlying tension is expressed in overeating and then binging. As the novel opens, Isabelle's little sister, April, has told their mother about Isabelle's problem. Isabelle is enrolled in group therapy. Who should show up there, too, but Ashley Barnum, the prettiest, most together girl in class.