In 1944, twenty-three-year-old Tess DeMello abruptly ends her engagement to the love of her life when she marries a mysterious stranger and moves to Hickory, North Carolina, a small town struggling with racial tension and the hardships imposed by World War II. Tess’s new husband, Henry Kraft, is a secretive man who often stays out all night, hides money from his new wife, and shows no interest in making love. Tess quickly realizes she’s trapped in a strange and loveless marriage with no way out.

Lydia Walcott is on the run. With a broken arm and a wounded spirit, she is escaping the hands of her cruel brother and the marriage he has arranged. She's running to the unknown, praying God will lead her steps. Seeking shelter from an ice storm in a livery stall, Lydia goes to sleep, hoping that in this small town of Cottonwood she'll find a job, a place to live, and friends.

One wrong move can undercut your message. Believe it or not, our bodies speak louder than our words. Postures, gestures, and expressions convey reams of information - and often not what you'd expect. A smile, for example, is usually considered welcoming. But crook one corner of your mouth higher, and you project superiority, subconsciously chasing other people away. Without Saying a Word explains how even the subtlest motions have meaning.

Returning to her Midwest roots, award-winning author Jane Kirkpatrick draws a page from her grandmother's photo album to capture the interplay between shadow and light, temptation and faith that marks a woman's pursuit of her dreams. She took exquisite photographs, but her heart was the true image exposed. Fifteen-year-old Jessie Ann Gaebele loves nothing more than capturing a gorgeous Minnesota landscape when the sunlight casts its most mesmerizing shadows.

In 1906 I was barely over 14 years old, and it was my wedding day. My older sister, Helen, came to my room, took me by the hand, and sat me down on the bed. She said, "You've always been a good girl, Maude, and done what I told you. Now you're going to be a married woman, and he will be the head of the house. When you go home tonight after your party, no matter what he wants to do to you, you have to let him do it. Do you understand?"

After the tragic death of his wife, Alec Riley struggles to put his life back together. He and his three children are lost in their grief...until Sophie walks unexpectedly into their lives. Having left her native Czechoslovakia, she has discovered that this land that had seemed so bright with promise is far from her dream. A highly educated woman, she now finds herself keeping house for Alec and his family. How can Sophie find peace in her new job? Will God use her gentle spirit to help heal Alec's broken heart?

Elizabeth Thatcher is young, pretty, cultured, and educated. But when she journeys west to teach school in the foothills of the Canadian Rockies, she's completely unprepared for the conditions she encounters. Still, she's determined to succeed at the formidable task of fitting in with the locals and shaping the hearts and minds of the schoolchildren in her care.

Elise Sontag is a typical Iowa 14-year-old in 1943 - aware of the war but distanced from its reach. Then her father, a legal US resident for nearly two decades, is suddenly arrested on suspicion of being a Nazi sympathizer. The family is sent to an internment camp in Texas, where behind the armed guards and barbed wire, Elise feels stripped of everything beloved and familiar, including her own identity. The only thing that makes the camp bearable is meeting fellow internee Mariko Inoue, a Japanese-American teen from Los Angeles.

In A Measure of Mercy by acclaimed author Lauraine Snelling, 18-year-old Astrid Bjorklund’s opportunity for formal medical study in Chicago doesn’t arrive until shortly after her heartthrob Joshua Landseer returns to Blessing, North Dakota. They agree to exchange letters while she’s in Chicago. And, for a time, love blossoms—until the letters from Joshua stop coming. Convinced he no longer loves her, Astrid makes an impetuous and heart-wrenching decision.

Bill is a dedicated young lawyer working at his family’s prestigious New York firm, who leaves everything he trained for to follow his dream and become a minister in rural Wyoming. Jenny, his wife, is a stylist whose heart and soul are invested in fashion. She leaves the milieu and life she loves to join him. The certainty they share is that their destinies are linked forever.

While their men fight, America's women produce what's necessary for victory. In a Michigan shipyard, four female co-workers forge a strong bond of friendship that, combined with faith, helps them to overcome oppression, despair, and tragedy - and find love in unlikely places.

Tony Kavanagh had been Allison’s dream-come-true. They were in love within days, engaged within weeks, married and pregnant within a year. Her cup bubbled over with joy...but years later, that joy was extinguished by unexpected trials. The day Allison issued her husband an ultimatum, she thought it might save him. She never expected he would actually leave. She was certain God had promised healing - but it became clear she’d misunderstood. Now, living in the quiet mountain cabin she inherited from her Great Aunt Emma, Allison must come to terms with her grief.

It is 1950 in glittering, vibrant New York City. Lucia Sartori is the beautiful twenty-five-year-old daughter of a prosperous Italian grocer in Greenwich Village. The postwar boom is ripe with opportunities for talented girls with ambition, and Lucia becomes an apprentice to an up-and-coming designer at chic B. Altman’s department store on Fifth Avenue.

Ellen Lambright mourned when her best friend, Mandy, moved from Indiana to Hawaii. But now Ellen has received the Amish church’s permission to go to Hawaii and help Mandy through challenging times. Rob Smith works on the Williams family’s organic farm, far from his past mistakes and burning regrets. When Ellen befriends Rob, the attraction is mutual, but her commitment to the Amish faith stands between them.

Wealthy heiress Jessica McCarthy desperately wants to be married and have a family. A rogue and a scoundrel, Zachary Belk is the only one who has proposed. Even though her father warns her that Zachary won't make a good husband, she marries him. She soon discovers that her father was right. When the stock market crashes and both families are left penniless, Zachary seeks a new fortune on a property he owns in another Manhattan, in Kansas. They are only there a short time before he deserts her.