Arcadia Public Library

Glory Boughton, aged thirty-eight, has returned to Gilead to care for her dying father. Soon her brother, Jack -- the prodigal son of the family, gone for twenty years -- comes home too, looking for refuge and trying to make peace with a past littered with tormenting trouble and pain.

Colleen McCullough's sweeping saga of dreams, struggles, dark passions, and forbidden love in Australian Outback has enthralled readers the world over. This is the chronicle of three generations of Clearys, ranchers carving lives from a beautiful, hard land while contending with the bitterness, frailty, and secrets that penetrate their family.

An "A" for "adultery" marks Hester Prynne as an outcast from the society of colonial Boston. Although forced by the puritanical town fathers to wear a bright red badge of shame, Hester steadfastly resists their efforts to discover the identity of her baby's father. The return of her long-absent spouse brings new pressure on the young mother, as the aggrieved husband undertakes a long-term plot to reveal Hester's partner in...

"There was a time when the world was sweeter... when the women in Beaufort, North Carolina, wore dresses, and the men donned hats. Every April, when the wind smells of both the sea and lilacs, Landon Carter remembers 1958, his last year at Beaufort High. Landon had dated a girl or two, and even once sworn that he'd been in love. Certainly the last person he thought he'd fall for was Jamie, the shy, almost ethereal daughter of the town's Baptist minister......

Olivia Lockhart-Griffin

Cedar Cove, Washington

Dear Reader,

I'm pretty shocked by something I've just heard. Emily Flemming is afraid that her husband, Dave, might be having an affair. She apparently found an earring in his pocket--and it wasn't hers. And she says he's been coming home late and acting secretive. Not only that, some jewelry was recently stolen from an old woman, and Dave (in his capacity as pastor) used

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"Annie Zook, the preacher's daughter, struggles to keep her promise to her father--to abandon her art for a full six months. Will Annie's intention to join the Amish church be derailed by the attention of a handsome Englisher?"--Provided by publisher.

Charles and Lily, James and Nan. They meet in Greenwich Village in 1963 when Charles and James are jointly hired to steward the historic Third Presbyterian Church through turbulent times. Their personal differences however, threaten to tear them apart. Charles is destined to succeed his father as an esteemed professor of history at Harvard, until an unorthodox lecture about faith leads him to ministry. How then, can he fall in love with Lily--fiercely...

Destined to become the ecumenical patriarch of the Empire of Vedessos, Rhavas witnesses the destruction of his world when civil war erupts and the Khamorth barbarians attack from across the border, forcing Rhavas to flee.

In 1851 French Bishop Latour and his friend Father Valliant are dispatched to New Mexico to reawaken its slumbering Catholicism. Moving along the endless prairies, Latour spreads his faith the only way he knows -- gently, although he must contend with the unforgiving landscape, derelict and sometimes openly rebellious priests, and his own loneliness. Over nearly 40 years, they leave converts and enemies, crosses, and occasionally ecstasy in their...