World Family

When a successful New York lawyer suddenly disappears without a trace, neither his wife nor his daughter Julia has any idea where he might be - until they find a love letter he wrote many years ago to a Burmese woman they have never heard of. Intent on solving the mystery and coming to terms with her father’s past, Julia decides to travel to the village where the woman lived. There she uncovers a tale of unimaginable hardship, resilience, and passion that will reaffirm the listener’s belief in the power of love to move mountains.

As an Indian wedding gathers a family back together, parents Rafiq and Layla must reckon with the choices their children have made. There is Hadia, their headstrong eldest daughter, whose marriage is a match of love and not tradition. Huda, the middle child, determined to follow in her sister’s footsteps. And lastly, their estranged son, Amar, who returns to the family fold for the first time in three years to take his place as brother of the bride.

Lilach has it all: a beautiful home in the heart of Silicon Valley, a successful husband and stable marriage, and a teenage son, Adam, with whom she has always felt a particular closeness. Israeli immigrants, the family has now lived in the U.S. long enough that they consider it home. But after a brutal attack on a local synagogue shakes their sense of safety, Adam enrolls in a self-defense class taught by a former Israeli Special Forces officer. There, for the first time, he finds a sense of confidence and belonging. Then, tragedy strikes again.

Just weeks before Christmas, severe wintry weather damages the church hall hosting the Christmas Boutique - an annual sale of handcrafted gifts and baked goods that supports the county food pantry. Determined to save the fundraiser, Sylvia Bergstrom Compson offers to hold the event at Elm Creek Manor, her ancestral family estate and summertime home to Elm Creek Quilt Camp.

Taking place three years after The Bean Trees, Taylor is now dating a musician named Jax and has officially adopted Turtle. But when a lawyer for the Cherokee Nation begins to investigate the adoption, their new life together begins to crumble. Depicting the clash between fierce family love and tribal law, poverty and means, abandonment and belonging, Pigs in Heaven is a morally wrenching, gently humorous work of fiction that speaks equally to the head and to the heart.

Dr. Elisabeth Kubler-Ross created her classic seminal work, On Death and Dying, to offer us a new perspective on the terminally ill. It is not a psychoanalytic study, nor is it a "how-to" manual for managing death. Rather, it refocuses on the patient as a human being and a teacher, in the hope that we will learn from him or her about the final stages of life.

Flor has a gift: she can predict, to the day, when someone will die. So when she decides she wants a living wake—a party to bring her family and community together to celebrate the long life she’s led—her sisters are surprised. Has Flor foreseen her own death, or someone else’s? Does she have other motives? She refuses to tell her sisters, Matilde, Pastora, and Camila.

Barrie Anne Blythe and her aunt Charlotte have always known that the other residents of their small coastal community find them peculiar - two women living alone on the outskirts of town. It is the price of concealing their strange and dangerous family secret. But two events threaten to upend their lives forever. The first is the arrival of a mysterious abandoned baby with a hint of power like their own. The second is the sudden reappearance of Barrie Anne's long-lost husband - who is not quite the man she thought she married.

As kids grow up, they hear many conflicting messages about how they can define themselves. For example, they are told that they can define themselves by their achievements, popularity, sexuality, morality, or gender, or by how they feel. This warm, realistic, and sympathetic book, written by father of three and founder of Faith in Kids, Ed Drew, provides much needed biblical help for parents on this topic. It shows parents how to encourage their kids to find their identity in the fact that they are made and loved by Jesus, and it explores the implications and applications of this truth.

In 1944, British bomber pilot Hugo Langley parachuted from his stricken plane into the verdant fields of German-occupied Tuscany. Badly wounded, he found refuge in a ruined monastery and in the arms of Sofia Bartoli. But the love that kindled between them was shaken by an irreversible betrayal. Nearly 30 years later, Hugo's estranged daughter, Joanna, has returned home to the English countryside to arrange her father's funeral. Among his personal effects is an unopened letter addressed to Sofia. In it is a startling revelation.

It's 1969, and 16-year-old Lucy is about to run away with a much older man to live off the grid in rural Pennsylvania, a rash act that will have vicious repercussions for both her and her older sister, Charlotte. As Lucy's default caretaker for most of their lives, Charlotte's youth has been marked by the burden of responsibility, but never more so than when Lucy's dream of a rural paradise turns into a nightmare.

A delightfully funny and moving novel about the singular life of a cantankerous Jewish-American writer and anarchist troublemaker, as remembered by his daughter. In 1972, sixty-four-year-old Ezra Slavin's heart gives out at an anti-war rally. A contentious and irascible Jewish-American writer, anarchist, and inadvertent guru to discontented youth, he leaves behind a large extended family of ex-wives, lovers, and children, most of whom had cut all ties with the infuriating intellectual provocateur years earlier.

Journalist Zoie Crawford had to leave New Orleans to finally make her own life. Her grandmother, Claudia, inspired her to follow her dreams - just as her mother, Rose, held on too tight. But with Claudia's passing, Zoie reluctantly returns home, where the past is written in the lonely corners of the bayou and the New South's supercharged corridors of power. And there she discovers a stunning, painstakingly kept secret - one that could skyrocket her career but destroy another woman's...and change both their vastly different lives for better or for much worse.

Tita is the youngest daughter of Mama Elena, the tyrannical owner of the De la Garza ranch. As the youngest, she is expected to remain single and stay at home to care for her mother. So when Tita falls in love, Mama Elena arranges for Tita's older sister to marry Tita's young man.

How to Win Friends and Influence People for Teen Girls, based on the beloved classic by Dale Carnegie, has become the go-to guidebook for girls during the difficult teenage years. Presented by Donna Dale Carnegie, daughter of the late motivational author and teacher Dale Carnegie, this new edition brings her father’s time-tested lessons to the newest generation of young women on their way to becoming self-assured friends and leaders.

In spring 2011, Syrian President Bashar al-Assad turned to his friend and army commander, Manaf Tlass, for advice about how to respond to Arab Spring-inspired protests. Tlass pushed for conciliation but Assad decided to crush the uprising - an act which would catapult the country into an eight-year long war, killing almost half a million and fueling terrorism and a global refugee crisis. Assad or We Burn the Country examines Syria's tragedy through the generational saga of the Assad and Tlass families, once deeply intertwined and now estranged....

They may be twins, but Lizzie and Penny Berry are complete opposites. Penny is the life of the party, while quiet and thoughtful Lizzy is often left out of the crowd. The one trait they do share is a longing to do something spectacular with their lives, and as far as these two are concerned, there’s no better place to make their dreams come true than London. Presented with a once-in-a-lifetime house-sit at their grandmother’s home in a desirable London neighborhood, it finally seems Lizzie and Penny are a step closer to the exciting cosmopolitan life they’ve always wanted.

Nineteen-year-old Irma Voth lives in a Mennonite community in northern Mexico, surrounded by desert and both physically and culturally isolated from the surrounding towns and cities. It’s been six years since her family left Canada to escape the prying eyes of the government and preserve their religious freedom, but Irma still misses the minor freedoms she had in their small town.

When Hisham Matar was a 19-year-old university student in England, his father was kidnapped. One of the Qaddafi regime's most prominent opponents in exile, he was held in a secret prison in Libya. Hisham would never see him again. But he never gave up hope that his father might still be alive. "Hope," as he writes, "is cunning and persistent." Twenty-two years later, after the fall of Qaddafi, the prison cells were empty, and there was no sign of Jaballa Matar. Hisham returned with his mother and wife to the homeland he never thought he'd go back to again.

After the death of her mother, Rebecca is sorting through her empty flat. Starting with the letters piling up on the doormat, she finds an envelope postmarked from Cornwall. In it is a letter that will change her life forever. A desperate plea from her mother’s elderly cousin, Olivia, to help save her beloved home. Rebecca arrives at Chynalls to find the house crumbling into the ground and Olivia stuck in hospital with no hope of being discharged until her home is made habitable.