L.jo

After marrying her college sweetheart and building a successful drug empire, life for Taylor Washington, aka Tay Tay, looked perfect. The first few years, her husband Wayne treated her like a queen and showered her with riches that the cocaine brought them, but as the years passed, his abusive nature grew, just like their bank account. Even though she was fed up, leaving Wayne wasn't even a thought in her mind...until she came home to Chicago to visit.

How far would you go to hold on to the people you love? When Olivia Brookes calls the police to report that her husband and children are missing, she believes she will never see them again. She has reason to fear the worst; this isn’t the first tragedy that Olivia has experienced. Now, two years later, Detective Chief Inspector Tom Douglas is called in to investigate this family again, but this time it’s Olivia who has disappeared. All the evidence suggests that she was in the family home that morning.

Tracy Crosswhite has spent 20 years questioning the facts surrounding her sister Sarah’s disappearance and the murder trial that followed. She doesn’t believe that Edmund House - a convicted rapist and the man condemned for Sarah’s murder - is the guilty party. Motivated by the opportunity to obtain real justice, Tracy became a homicide detective with the Seattle PD and dedicated her life to tracking down killers.

Inspired by Nigeria's folktales and war, Under the Udala Trees is a deeply searching, powerful debut about the dangers of living and loving openly. Ijeoma comes of age as her nation does; born before independence, she is 11 when civil war breaks out in the young republic of Nigeria. Sent away to safety, she meets another displaced child, and the star-crossed pair fall in love. They are from different ethnic communities. They are also both girls.

"With a bolt of lightning on my kicks... The court is SIZZLING. My sweat is DRIZZLING. Stop all that quivering. Cuz tonight I'm delivering," announces dreadlocked 12-year old Josh Bell. He and his twin brother, Jordan, are awesome on the court. But Josh has more than basketball in his blood. He's got mad beats, too, that tell his family's story in verse in this fast and furious middle grade novel of family and brotherhood from Kwame Alexander.

Dan-el Padilla Peralta has lived the American dream. As a boy he came here legally with his family. Together they left Santo Domingo behind, but life in New York City was harder than they imagined. Their visas lapsed, and Dan-el's father returned home. But Dan-el's courageous mother was determined to make a better life for her bright sons. Undocumented is a classic story of the triumph of the human spirit. It also is the perfect cri de coeur for the debate on comprehensive immigration reform.