Afghanistan, 1952. Abdullah and his sister Pari live with their father and step-mother in the small village of Shadbagh. Their father, Saboor, is constantly in search of work and they struggle together through poverty and brutal winters. To Abdullah, Pari, as beautiful and sweet-natured as the fairy for which she was named, is everything; there is an unparalleled bond between these two motherless siblings. What happens to them, and the large and small...

A bright June day. A split-second distraction. A family forever changed. Life is good for Maura Corrigan. Married to her college sweetheart, Pete, raising three young kids with her parents nearby in her peaceful Chicago suburb, her world is secure. Then one day, in a single turn of fate, that entire world comes crashing down and everything that she thought she knew changes. Maura must learn to move forward with the weight of grief and the crushing...

Author Maria V. Snyder wowed readers with Poison Study, the unforgettable story of poison taster Yelena. Now she's back with a new tale of intrigue. Once, only her own life hung in the balance... Oddly enough, when Yelena was a poison taster, her life was simpler. But she'd survived to become a vital part of the balance of power between rival countries Ixia and Sitia. Now she uses her magic to keep the peace in both lands-and protect her relationship...

One late wine- and gossip-fueled night, four friends on a lark create a fateful test of friendship -- one that challenges the very principles and boundaries of their alliance. To pass it means to never, at any cost, betray one another. Twenty years later, they must face that ultimate test. We meet them at the dawn of their camaraderie in the 1980s and already each woman is distinguished from the other: Tamsin, the compassionate mother hen; Reagan,...

"In 1938, Ruby, Helen and Grace, three girls from very different backgrounds, find themselves competing at the same audition for showgirl roles at San Francisco's exclusive "Oriental" nightclub, the Forbidden City. Grace, an American-born Chinese girl has fled the Midwest and an abusive father. Helen is from a Chinese family who have deep roots in San Francisco's Chinatown. And, as both her friends know, Ruby is Japanese passing as Chinese. At times...

Rebecca goes to New Orleans to stay with her aunt and sees the destruction of Hurricane Katrina and meets a ghost girl named Lisette.

"From the best-selling author of Maine, a gorgeous, compulsively-readable novel that tells the story of the complex relationship between two women, Elisabeth, a privileged new mother and writer attempting to find her footing after childbirth, and Sam, the idealistic, working-class college student she hires to nanny her young son"--