"Christmas should be celebrated with family, but for Vera Swanson, that's not an option this year. Widowed and recently relocated, she is lonely in her condo-for-one--until little Fiona Albright knocks on her door needing help. With her mother seriously ill and her father out of town Fiona enlists Vera's aid, and when she finds out her new neighbor is a quilter, she has special request--a Christmas quilt for Mama. Vera will have to get a ragtag group...

It was the indifferent shrug and callous inertia that this 'optimism' concealed which so angered Voltaire, who found the 'all for the best' approach a patently inadequate response to suffering, to natural disasters - such as the recent earthquakes in Lima and Lisbon - not to mention the questions of illness and man-made war. Moreover, as the rebel whose satiric genius had earned him not only international acclaim, but two stays in the Bastille, flogging...

"The Summer King rarely missed his Mother's court. Keenan had been born as the child of Summer and Winter. He chose sunlight, that was the secret no one seemed to realize: He could have chosen ice. Sometimes he thought he could have been happier in the Winter Court, but he had a duty to the leaderless Summer Court. Summer had needed him, and Keenan wanted to matter."--Back cover.

"An irresistibly accessible yet startlingly bold book of short stories and a novella, inspired by Black lives in America and featuring the gripping eponymous work "My Monticello.""-- Johnson's characters traverse Virginia's landscapes, still stained by some of America's most heinous acts, in pursuit of a place to call home. In each story, she reveals intimate moments within the nation's multitudes, featuring unforgettable characters who struggle...

"The Secret Wish, Jodi Thomas: The little town of While-a-Way, Texas, may as well be named Last Chance as far as Avery Cleveland is concerned. Running her late great-grandmother's quilt shop is the only way to build back her life after losing her dancing career. But local sheriff Daniel Solis is stunned by Avery's beauty and spirit--and hopes to show her how to stitch brand-new dreams together ... Wish Upon a Wedding, Lori Wilde: Ellie Winter's sister...

"With the rest of her family on a cruise, Lindsay Calhoun will be spending her first Christmas alone, so she volunteers to plan an especially festive holiday party for her company. Her coworkers are grateful--except for tall, quiet Jack Taylor. Jack has always been a loner, but something about Christmas puts him in an unusually foul mood. Despite Jack's Scrooge-like complaints, the party is a success, ending only with a sudden snowstorm. As Lindsay...

In a London flat, two young boys face the unbearable sadness of their mother's sudden death. Their father, a Ted Hughes scholar and scruffy romantic, imagines a future of well-meaning visitors and emptiness. In this moment of despair they are visited by Crow - antagonist, trickster, healer, babysitter. This sentimental bird is drawn to the grieving family and threatens to stay until they no longer need him. As weeks turn to months and the pain of...

There are three ways up to Castle View from the town of Castle Rock: Route 117, Pleasant Road, and the Suicide Stairs. Every day in the summer of 1974, twelve-year-old Gwendy Peterson has taken the stairs, which are held by strong, if time-rusted, iron bolts and zig-zag up the cliffside. Then one day when Gwendy gets to the top of Castle View, after catching her breath and hearing the shouts of kids on the playground below, a stranger calls to her....

"Richard Rahl and Kahlan Amnell are fighting on all fronts. The Golden Goddess, Collector of Worlds, has infiltrated the People's Palace, able to insinuate herself into the minds of those without the gift of magic. Richard can trust no-one but the gifted. So, when Vika, one of his sworn Mord-Sith bodyguards is abducted, he has to get her back. His determination will lead him and Kahlan deep into the labyrinthine heart of the People's Palace - the...

In this collection of stories set in the world of the best-selling Darkest Minds trilogy, a desperate young man is forced to make a terrible choice; a spark of light brightens a brutal world when a girl named Sam encounters her childhood best friend at the government-run "rehabilitation" camp; and, even though Sam is thrown into a terrifying and uncertain new life, her survival at stake, the time has come to fulfill a promise she made.