Genre Literature

War and Peace is at once an epic war chronicle and an exploration of everything that make us all human: love and hate, ambition and despair, life and death. Allow yourself to get lost in the lives of three Russian aristocratic families, whose triumphs and challenges are every bit as resonant to today’s listener as they were to original readers. Thandiwe Newton inhabits each character with such flair that it is easy to forget that you are listening to one voice.

War heroes aren't usually called out of semi-retirement and sent to the far reaches of the galaxy for a routine investigation. So when Colonel Carl Butler answers the call from an old and powerful friend, he knows it's something big - and he's not being told the whole story. A high councilor's son has gone MIA out of Cappa Base, the space station orbiting a battle-ravaged planet. The young lieutenant had been wounded and evacuated - but there's no record of him having ever arrived at hospital command.

After years of schooling, Beth Thatcher has graduated and is determined to become a teacher. But when she's assigned the position no one else wants - in the tiny mining town of Coal Valley, located in the rugged foothills of western Canada - she worries she doesn't have the courage to accept. Inspired by the diary of her aunt Elizabeth, who went west to teach school several years earlier, as well as her father's encouragement, Beth eventually decides to put her trust in God and leave behind all she's ever known.

For the first time, an epic account of a boy born into a struggle for survival on the harsh and unforgiving American frontier, the story behind the legend of Smoke Jensen.... On the eve of the Civil War, Kirby Jensen is the youngest of three children living on a hardscrabble ranch in Southwestern Missouri. But in 1861, shots were fired in Charleston harbor, and Kirby's father and brother went to war.

Enveloped in the dark inner kingdom of her schizophrenia, 16-year-old Deborah is haunted by private tormentors that isolate her from the outside world. With the reluctant and fearful consent of her parents, she enters a mental hospital where she will spend the next three years battling to regain her sanity with the help of a gifted psychiatrist. As Deborah struggles toward the possibility of the "normal" life she and her family hope for, the listener is inexorably drawn into her private suffering and deep determination to confront her demons.

Allie Kirkland has never been one to take wild risks. But when she's offered a costuming assistant's job on a docudrama in the hills near Moses Lake, she jumps at the chance. She's always dreamed of following in her director-father's footsteps, and the reenactment of the legendary frontier settlement of Wildwood is a first step. The family expectations will have to wait. But in 1861, the real Wildwood held dangerous realities. Town founder Harland Delevan held helpless residents, including young Irish schoolteacher Bonnie Rose, in an iron grip.

Clive Staples Lewis, better known as C.S. Lewis, was a respected academic, writer, and speaker. While he might be best known for his works of fantasy, especially the Chronicles of Narnia and Space Trilogy series, he also wrote many books on Christian apologetics, including Mere Christianity, Miracles, and The Problem of Pain.

Released from prison after two years for manslaughter, Iry heads to Montana for a fresh start on a ranch owned by a prison buddy's father. He also hopes to nail down a song he's been working on, unable to get quite right. But soon new troubles bring tragic consequences, and it will take a lot more than a soulful tune to ease the pain.

Summer Abernathy wakes up one morning to find her husband missing, three men in her home intent on finding him, and the life she's been living based on a lie. Which Kyle Abernathy did she marry? The computer programmer she met in line at the bank? Or the one who was apparently using that image as a cover story? The search for her husband - and answers - takes Summer ever deeper into a world of organized crime, where people are used one moment and discarded the next.

Housed in a rustic red barn, the Simple Gifts crafts shop celebrates the talents of the Amish of Willow Ridge and the faith that inspires them. For the acceptance of simplicity opens the path to love. As far as Edith Riehl is concerned, the baby twins thrust suddenly into her arms are a heaven-sent gift. Unable to conceive, she longs to be a mother with a home of her own.

Fact: Drawing under a male pseudonym, Maggie is known as Lemarc. Her (his!) favorite object of ridicule: Simon Barrett, earl of Winchester. He's a rising star in Parliament - and a former confidant and love interest of Maggie's who believed a rumor that vexes her to this day.

The Bjorklund family has received word that Augusta Bjorklund is on her way from Norway to join them in North Dakota. When the train arrives in the town of Blessing with no Augusta aboard, the worried family hopes that she will be on the train in the morning. However, only her trunk arrives, so Bridget Bjorklund insists that Hjelmer, Augusta's brother, go find her.

On the eve of the Civil War, Kirby Jensen is the youngest of three children living on a hardscrabble ranch in Southwestern Missouri. But in 1861, shots were fired in Charleston harbor, and Kirby's father and brother went to war. Smoke Jensen: The Beginning follows the Jensen clan during these volatile years, from Civil War battles to border state raids to the kind of frontier justice achieved only by bullets and blood.

People pass the word only to those they trust most: Adjustment Day is coming. They've been reading a mysterious blue-black book and memorizing its directives. They are ready for the reckoning.

FBI Special Agent Lincoln St. John is living his own personal nightmare. When the woman he loves, Allison Radcliffe, is killed, he devotes his life to tracking down the killers and making them pay for their crimes. He expected it to be a challenge. What he never expected was to find Allison very much alive shortly after her "murder." As his anger and hurt mix with relief, Linc isn't sure how he's supposed to feel. One thing he does know for sure: He and Allison will have to work together to stop a killer before she dies a second time - this time for good.

Everything has led up to this moment in Lizzie Glick's life. All of her curiosity, concern, and dreams have pointed to this time when she must make some very big decisions. Will she join the Church? Will she continue teaching? Will she marry Stephen? Questions and indecision as well as answers and certainty enter Lizzie's life in Big Decisions, the third and final novel in this series written by an Amish author and based on true-life experiences.

On his way to interview for a position at a church in the Piney Woods of Texas, Crockett Archer can't believe it when he's forced off the train by an outlaw and presented to the man's daughter as the preacher she requested for her birthday. He's determined to escape - which would be much easier if he could stop thinking about Joanna Robbins and her unexpected request. For months, Joanna had prayed for a minister. A man to breathe life back into the abandoned church at the heart of her community. A man to assist her in fulfilling a promise to her dying mother. But just when it seems her prayers have been answered, it turns out the parson is there against his will....

Award-winning, best-selling crossover author Lisa Wingate pens inspirational Southern fiction that tugs at the heartstrings. Blue Moon Bay takes Seattle architect Heather Hampton to quiet Moses Lake, Texas, where a promotion at her firm hinges on the sale of family farmland for a proposed industrial plant. Her plans hit a few snags thanks to her quirky family and a handsome banker opposing the land deal. It soon becomes clear that providence has other ideas for her future, and maybe this small town is the place where all her dreams could come true.

Grace Martindale has known more than her share of hardship. After her parents died, raising her two younger sisters became her responsibility. A hasty marriage to a minister who is heading to the untamed West seemed like an opportunity for a fresh start, but a cholera outbreak along the wagon trail has left Grace a widow in a very precarious position.

While her sister fights to hold on to the family legacy, Louisa Highwood works tirelessly to save the lives of wounded soldiers. Putting her own safety on the line, she covertly ventures behind enemy lines to procure desperately needed supplies for the army hospital in Richmond, Virginia. Meanwhile, Jesselynn Highwood and her ragtag band of freed slaves and thoroughbred horses seek refuge along the Oregon Trail, unable to imagine what awaits them.