Christine Williams

Kidnapping a latest victim in a string of young boys he tortures and rapes, a self-styled preacher confines the child in a small box and gradually brainwashes him over subsequent years into believing that they are father and son; while the boy's mother, who was savagely injured during the abduction, clings to hope that her son is alive.

Mildred Pierce had gorgeous legs, a way with a skillet, and a bone-deep core of toughness. She used those attributes to survive a divorce in 1940s America to claw her way out of poverty. But Mildred also had two weaknesses: a yen for shiftless men and an unreasoning devotion to her monstrous daughter.

"In 1881 Chicago, the idea of a female detective is virtually unheard of. But when famed crime buster Allan Pinkerton opens his agency's doors to a handful of women, one intrepid actress with her own troubled past is driven to defy convention and take on a new and dangerous role.... Since the age of eleven, when her mother was murdered, the life of the theater is all Lilly Long has known. Now twenty-two, she has blossomed into an accomplished Shakespearean...

Shy Sarah King seeks solace and direction from God when she falls for the community's new veterinarian, Grant Williams, and finds herself choosing between loving a man who is not Amish or staying with her devoted family.

Cranky Mary Ryan has sunk a lot of time and talent into the American Fare, San Francisco's hottest spot, while grieving over her broken marriage. At work very early, she steps on a laundry bag stuffed with the dead body of one of her employees. The investigation soon exposes all the dirty secrets that the food business would like to keep secret: the philandering chefs, the silly whims of the dining public, the hiring of illegal aliens, and the

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A dauntless heroine coming of age at the turn of the twentieth century confronts the hazards of patriarchy and prejudice, and discovers the unexpected opportunities of World War I
 
Set in rural North Carolina between the Civil War and the Great War, Love and Lament chronicles the hardships and misfortunes of the Hartsoe family.
 
Mary Bet, the youngest of nine children, was born the same year that the first...

Acclaimed scholar Marilyn Yalom distills the central tenets of the Gallic gospel of love from her reading of the great French literary works, as well as from the people she has known and her own memories of France, examining almost a thousand years of divine culture in search of the intimate moments that reveal how the particularly French concept of l'amour has endured and evolved.

"Fans of academic mysteries will savor this one."-Library Journal Karen Pelletier is about to realize her dream. After six years in the English Department at New England's exclusive Enfield College, she is up for a tenured position. But when her rival for the one available tenured spot is found dead from an overdose of Peyote buttons, Karen is first on the list of suspects. Now a homicide cop with a grudge against Lieutenant Charlie Piotrowski, the...

New York Times bestselling author Deborah Bedford sweeps readers into this compelling drama with her trademark style of beautiful, lyrical writing.

Since her divorce from Eric, Hilary has done everything she can to control life for herself and her son, Seth. Beneath a calm surface, she is terrified of failing Seth. She's worked hard to raise him on her own, and she's succeeded—he's now set to graduate from high school and enroll at

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