Alamosa Public Library

"It can happen in the best of families--even the Fergusons. When Lynn and Robert first meet, she's bright, fresh-faced twenty-year old; he's handsome, a bit older, a charming young executive on the fast track. From the start they fall deeply in love, thrilled by the discovery of their mutual desire. But as early as their honeymoon the gold begins to tarnish, when Robert's anger erupts into a physical assault, one for which Lynn blames herself. To...

We call it domestic violence. We call it private violence. Sometimes we call it intimate terrorism. But whatever we call it, we generally do not believe it has anything at all to do with us, despite the World Health Organization deeming it a “global epidemic.” In America, domestic violence accounts for 15 percent of all violent crime, and yet it remains locked in silence, even as its tendrils reach unseen into so many of our most pressing national...

The novel starts off sweetly, with the smalltown antics of Carrie, a scrappy Scout-like eight-year-old who's always accompanied by her younger sister Emma. Carrie dreamily darts back and forth between her rough-and-tumble present (abusive stepfather, unloving mother) and the happy memories of her dead father, creating a bittersweet picture of her life in Toast, N.C., spiked with colorful Southern language and some feisty supporting characters.

As a newly minted assistant U.S. attorney in Washington, D.C., Anna Curtis has already developed a thick skin to help her deal with the unsettling brutality she encounters daily with her overflowing stack of domestic violence cases. Yet when Laprea Johnson walks into Anna's life, battered by her boyfriend on the morning after Valentine's Day, there's something about this particular case that Anna can't quite shake, something that reminds the prosecutor...

Named for a flower whose blood-red sap possesses the power both to heal and poison, Bloodroot is a stunning fiction debut about the legacies of magic and madness, faith and secrets, passion and loss, that haunt one family across the generations, from the Great Depression to today.

"Olivia McAfee knows what it feels like to start over. Her picture-perfect life-living in Boston, married to a brilliant cardiothoracic surgeon, raising a beautiful son, Asher-was upended when her husband revealed a darker side. She never imagined she would end up back in her sleepy New Hampshire hometown, living in the house she grew up in, and taking over her father's beekeeping business. Lily Campanello is familiar with do-overs, too. When she...

"The young girl tells us that her mom's new friend is just like the big bad wolf. At first the wolf is sweet and kind to her mom, though the girl notices the wolf's cold eyes from the very beginning. When her mom arrives home late one day, the wolf suddenly hurls angry words and terrible names at her. From that day on her mother doesn't smile anymore. The girl is careful to clean her room and brush her teeth and do everything to keep the peace, but...

Ten years ago, Caroline Shelby launched a career in the glamorous fashion world of Manhattan. But her success in New York imploded on a wave of scandal and tragedy, forcing her to flee to the only safe place she knows, Oysterville. And in the backseat of Caroline's car are two children who were orphaned in a single chilling moment--five-year-old Addie and six-year-old Flick. She's now their legal guardian--a role she's not sure she's ready for. Caroline...

"An instant classic, for fans of Huckleberry Finn, Peace Like a River, and Jim the Boy: when two hardscrabble young boys think they've committed a crime, they flee into the Northwoods of Wisconsin. Will the adults trying to find and protect them reach them before it's too late?"--

Kenzie and Gennaro are private investigators in the blue-collar neighborhoods and ghettos of South Boston-they know it as only natives can. Working out of an old church belfry, Kenzie and Gennaro take on a seemingly simple assignment for a prominent politician: to uncover the whereabouts of Jenna Angeline, a black cleaning woman who has allegedly stolen confidential state documents. Finding Jenna, however, is easy compared to staying alive once...