"Charlie Reade looks like a regular high school kid, great at baseball and football, a decent student. But he carries a heavy load. His mom was killed in a hit-and-run accident when he was seven, and grief drove his dad to drink. Charlie learned how to take care of himself—and his dad. When Charlie is seventeen, he meets a dog named Radar and her aging master, Howard Bowditch, a recluse in a big house at the top of a big hill, with a locked shed...

Li-yan and her family align their lives around the seasons and the farming of tea in their remote Yunnan village. Then a stranger arrives, finding the rare tea he has been seeking and a reticent Akha people. Li-yan translates for the stranger. When she has a baby outside of wedlock she wraps her daughter in a blanket, with a tea cake hidden in her swaddling, and abandons her near an orphanage. Adopted by a couple in California, Haley grows up privileged...

"Jessica Ann McKenzie—'Jam' to everyone in Honey Creek—has fulfilled her dream of owning the best restaurant for miles around. Serving candlelit dinners to every couple in town on Valentine’s Day is a reminder of another dream, one she’s just about given up on. Until, that very night, Sergeant Tucson Smith clambers out of the muddy river and onto her land, bringing the promise of something they’ve both been searching for. When McCoy Mason...

"Sage McKnight is an ambitious young architect working at her father’s firm who takes on her most challenging client in Mason Tucker. The former pro baseball player is still healing from the physical and emotional scars after a plane crash left him a wheelchair-using single dad, and he’s determined not to let anyone breach his emotional defenses. Sage knows her work on Mason’s new home in Hope’s Crossing is her best work yet, and she won’t...

"A tenacious Māori detective, Hana Westerman juggles single motherhood, endemic prejudice, and the pressures of her career in Auckland CIB. Led to a crime scene by a mysterious video, she discovers a man ritualistically hanging in a secret room and a puzzling inward-curving inscription. Delving into the investigation after a second, apparently unrelated, death, she uncovers a chilling connection to an historic crime: 160 years before, during the...

"In a United States not so unlike our own, the Department of Balance has adopted a radical new form of law enforcement: rather than incarceration, wrongdoers are given a second (and sometimes, third, fourth, and fifth) shadow as a reminder of their crime--and a warning to those they encounter. Within the Department, corruption and prejudice run rampant, giving rise to an underclass of so-called Shadesters who are disenfranchised, publicly shamed,...

"Everything has a price. Everything except her. Railway magnate Tom Severin is wealthy and powerful enough to satisfy any desire as soon as it arises. Anything, or anyone, is his for the asking. It should be simple to find the perfect wife and from his first glimpse of Lady Cassandra Ravenel, he's determined to have her. But the beautiful and quick-witted Cassandra is equally determined to marry for love, the one thing he can't give. Severin is the...

"Salina Petersheim runs her own produce booth at the Amish market and has been dating Josiah for almost a year now. Her religious parents approve of community member, Josiah, but to Salina, he feels more like a friend than a boyfriend. Then Will Zimmerman, a Mennonite chef who runs a local restaurant comes along. He wants Salina to supply the produce for his restaurant, and as they forge a business relationship, they both feel themselves falling in...

"Low Morrison is not your average teen. You could blame her hippie parents or her looming height or her dreary, isolated hometown on an island in the Pacific Northwest. But whatever the reason, Low just doesn't fit in-and neither does Freya, a once-famous social media influencer who now owns the pottery studio in town. After signing up for a class, Low quickly falls under Freya's spell. And Freya, buoyed by Low's adoration, is compelled to share her...

"Told in the voices of characters of all ages, these tales explore desire and heartache, loss and discovery, jolting violence, and the inexorable tug toward love at all costs. A bookseller's unspoken love for his employee rises to the surface, a neglected teenage boy finds much-needed nurturing from an unlikely pair of college students, a girl's loss of innocence at the hand's of her employer's son becomes a catalyst for strength and confidence, and...