Not As A Stranger

In these unforgettable stories, the acclaimed author of Imagine Me Gone explores lives that appear shuttered by loss and discovers entire worlds hidden inside them. The impact is at once harrowing and thrilling. An elderly inventor, burning with manic creativity, tries to reconcile with his estranged gay son. A bereaved boy draws a thuggish classmate into a relationship of escalating guilt and violence. A genteel middle-aged woman, a long-time resident of a psychiatric hospital, becomes the confidante of a lovelorn teenaged volunteer. Told with Chekhovian restraint and compassion, and conveying both the sorrow of life and the courage with which people rise to meet it, You Are Not a Stranger Here is a triumph of storytelling.

Joan Johnston sweeps readers back to the untamed American West in a tale of powerful emotions and breathtaking action. 1865: The Civil War was over, but new dangers lay in wait across the open frontier. Disguised as a boy in buckskins, pretty Rebecca Hunter wasn't afraid of any enemy who might cross her path in the Rocky Mountains. She vowed never to belong to any man...until she met city-bred Christopher Kincaid, the stranger she rescued from a fierce band of Sioux. All too quickly she learned how powerful an attraction can be between a man and a woman. No Indian ambush could scar Kincaid as deeply as the tragic loss and broken heart he suffered in the war. Now, being nursed back to health by Reb in an isolated mountain cabin, he found himself coming alive with a powerful desire for her. But how could he know that his mission for the government would jeopardize his chances of winning Reb's heart, bring down the wrath of a renegade Sioux chief, and test the lengths he'd be willing to go to convince this passionate woman to stay beside him for all time?

Traveling to be reunited with her family in the arctic, 10-year-old Margaret Pokiak can hardly contain her excitement. It’s been two years since her parents delivered her to the school run by the dark-cloaked nuns and brothers. Coming ashore, Margaret spots her family, but her mother barely recognizes her, screaming, “Not my girl.” Margaret realizes she is now marked as an outsider. And Margaret is an outsider: she has forgotten the language and stories of her people, and she can’t even stomach the food her mother prepares. However, Margaret gradually relearns her language and her family’s way of living. Along the way, she discovers how important it is to remain true to the ways of her people — and to herself. Highlighted by archival photos and striking artwork, this first-person account of a young girl’s struggle to find her place will inspire young readers to ask what it means to belong.

Parade's "10 Books Written by Women We Can't Wait to Read in 2019" | She Reads' "Most Anticipated Thillers of Summer 2019" | Pure Wow's "The Best Beach Reads of Summer 2019" | CrimeReads' "The Most Anticipated Crime Books of Summer" From bestselling author Michele Campbell comes A Stranger on the Beach, an edge-of-your seat story of passion and intrigue that will keep you guessing until the very end. Caroline Stark’s beach house was supposed to be her crowning achievement: a lavish, expensive space to showcase what she thought was her perfect family. But after a very public fight with her husband, she realizes things may not be as perfect as they seem: her husband is lying to her, the money is disappearing, and there’s a stranger on the beach outside her house. As Caroline’s marriage and her carefully constructed lifestyle begin to collapse around her, she turns to Aidan, the stranger, for comfort...and revenge. After a brief and desperate fling that means nothing to Caroline and everything to him, Aidan’s infatuation with Caroline, her family, and her house becomes more and more destructive. But who is manipulating whom in this deadly game of obsession and control? Who will take the blame when someone ends up dead...and what is Caroline hiding?

The Hugo Award-winning author offers fifteen tales ranging from contemporary fantasy and off-beat romance to science fiction and horror.

A girl discovers she has a half brother Charlotte Flannigan (Tottie, for short) leads a conventional life in a conventional family. Her father is a well-respected pediatrician, her mother a popular newspaper columnist, and her younger brother a talkative but otherwise okay kid. But on an ordinary Saturday afternoon, Tottie's comfortable life is threatened when the doorbell rings. She answers it to find a teenage boy, who looks eerily like her father, standing there. A stranger, but not quite a stranger. His name is Zachary Pearce, and he is her father's - and not her mother's - son. Told through the alternating perspectives of Tottie and Zach, Colby Rodowsky's novel explores the ramifications of a sudden change in the makeup of a family. Fear, resentment, desperation, and potential for love all surface in this honest and heartfelt story.

Harold Robbins' very first novel is also one of his most powerful. Never Love a Stranger tells the gritty and passionate tale of Francis "Frankie" Kane, from his meager beginnings as an orphan in New York's Hell's Kitchen. From that confused and belittling start, Frank works his way up, choosing the wrong side of the law to make a name for himself. At a young age, he becomes one of the city's most dangerous men, indulging in his passion for power, sex, and the best things in life-whether or not they can be purchased. First published in 1948, the novel began Robbins' prolific career after someone made him a $100 bet that he couldn't write a bestseller. Twenty-six pot-boiling novels later, he proved the power of his words. Never Love a Stranger takes an unflinching look at a New York that's long gone by-exposing life during and after the Great Depression, when the syndicate ruled the city without mercy.