The death of her doting guardian leaves Gemma Hardy under the care of her resentful aunt, and it soon becomes clear that she is nothing more than an unwelcome guest. Then she receives a scholarship to a private school, but at Claypoole she finds herself treated as an unpaid servant. When the school goes bankrupt, she takes a job as an au pair on the Orkney Islands for Mr. Sinclair, a London businessman, and his eight-year-old niece. Rich, single, flying in from London when he pleases, Hugh Sinclair fills the house with life. An unlikely couple, the two are drawn to each other, but Gemma's biggest trial is about to begin. A February 2012 Indie Next Pick.

11/9/2001: Christian fundamentalists hijack four jetliners. The United Arab States declares a War on Terror. Arabian and Persian troops invade the Eastern Seaboard and establish a Green Zone in Washington, D.C. . . . Summer, 2009: Arab Homeland Security agent Mustafa al Baghdadi interrogates a captured suicide bomber. The prisoner claims that the world they are living in is a mirage--in the real world, America is a superpower, and the Arab states are just a collection of "backward third-world countries." The president wants answers, the gangster Saddam Hussein is conducting his own investigation, and the head of the Senate Intelligence Committee--a war hero named Osama bin Laden--will stop at nothing to hide the truth. A February 2012 Indie Next Pick.

When Frederick and Jette must flee her disapproving mother in 1904, where better to go than America? At the last minute, they take a boat destined for New Orleans instead of New York, and later find themselves in the small town of Beatrice, Missouri, where they embark on their new life together. James, telling his grandparents' story, comes to realize he doesn't know his own story at all, though his family is caught up in the sweep of history. Each new generation discovers afresh what it means to be an American. A February 2012 Indie Next Pick.

To Ella Beene, happiness means living in the northern California river town of Elbow with her husband, Joe, and his two young children, until Joe is drowned in the ocean. For three years, Ella has believed that the children's biological mother, Paige, abandoned them. But when Paige shows up at the funeral, intent on reclaiming the children, Ella soon realizes there may be more to Paige and Joe's story, and Ella's in-laws' devotion quickly falters when the custody fight between mother and stepmother urgently and powerfully collides with Ella's quest for truth.

Three sisters have returned to their childhood home, reuniting the eccentric Andreas family. Here, books are a passion (there is no problem a library card can't solve) and TV is something other people watch. Their father--a professor of Shakespeare who speaks almost exclusively in verse--named them after the Bard's heroines. It's a lot to live up to. The sisters have a hard time communicating with their parents and their lovers, but especially with one another. What can the shy homebody eldest sister, the fast-living middle child, and the bohemian youngest sibling have in common? Only that none has found life to be what was expected; and now, faced with their parents' frailty and their own personal disappointments, not even a book can solve what ails them... A February 2012 Indie Next Pick. Meet the author at our Book Your Lunch event!

Forced to confront the community that she betrayed decades ago, Sister Bernard struggles to reconcile her uncertain faith with the passionate, impulsive actions of her youth. The young Sister Bernard is slow-witted, dreamy, and tormented by the voice of a judgmental God. Only when a young Nazi soldier starts showing her attention is she given a reprieve from God's voice. Illicit love leads her into a far worse betrayal, one she fully understands only when it is too late, and a horror that endures in the memories of the villagers in the decades that follow.

Hard times have forced the Wickham family of Starbrough Hall to sell an 18th-century astronomer's work, their land, and with it, the timeworn tower built as an observatory for astronomer Anthony Wickham and his daughter that lies nearby. Auction house appraiser Jude meets Euan, who lives in the gamekeeper's cottage at the foot of the tower where Jude's grandfather once lived. And a nightmare begins to haunt her six-year-old niece, the same nightmare Jude herself had years ago. Is it possible that the dreams are passed down from one generation to the next? What secrets does the tower hold? And will Jude unearth them before it's too late?

It's 1786, Jerusalem College, Cambridge. Desperate to salvage the reputation of her son, Frank, who has been locked away after seeing the ghost of a deceased woman at Jerusalem College, Lady Anne Oldershaw employs John Holdsworth to investigate. When Holdsworth, the author of a stinging argument on why ghosts are mere delusions, finds himself haunted, he becomes more determined than ever to find the deceased woman's murderer. No one will leave Jerusalem unchanged.