After yeras of schooling in England, Jesmond Corbett finds little has changed on her family's estate along the sea-battered coast of Tasmania. Betrothed since childhood to a wealthy neighbor, Jessie comes home determined to conform to the expectations of her family and the society in which they live. But nothing in Jessie's life has prepared her for the mysterious stranger who works in the stables, a man with searing eyes who haunts her dreams and awakens passions she never knew existed. Irishman Lucas Gallagher arrived on the island in chains, a convict sentenced to a lifetime of slave labor for the English gentry. For four yeras he has lived a dead man's existence, using every spare moment to plan his escape. But when he meets Jessie, she touches his cold, angry heart. And although their love has no future, he finds himself unable to den the longings of his battered soul -- longings that threaten to destroy what may be his last chance to reach for freedom.

The hope of tomorrow … When I first started writing my feelings down, I was doing it just for me. I felt like if I didn’t get this brutal pain out of me, I was going to just die. Time after time, I tried to express to myself this terrible pain that was consuming my life. Before my son Ryan’s death, I was always the kind of person who chose to always see the hope in tomorrow. In the very beginning of my grief journey, when I was living and breathing the pain to the point I couldn’t even catch my breath, the tomorrows came and I did not even know it. And to tell you the truth I did not want or care to know it. But tomorrow has a funny way of doing that. I hated tomorrows and wanted no part of them. And all I wanted to do was to stay in the pain of losing my child. Well, I am happy to admit I no longer see it that way at all. I love tomorrows now, and I can actually feel the joy tomorrow brings. This feeling did not happen overnight, and it was a long road to get to this place called tomorrow. I do not know if it will happen for you. I do know this—it can happen. And when it does happen, it will be in the way you choose to view it and that, my friend, is for every person to make the choice. After a few years of writing down my feelings, I realized I was actually writing a book of my pain and sorrow over Ryan’s death. Whenever I went to go buy a book to try to see myself in it, I had a hard time finding the one that said it just right for me. So I wrote the book that I wanted to read—the kind of book that said it without prettying it up with fancy words to make it more palatable for the world to see. I just wanted to write a book I would read. I wanted my book to be real and to express the many different sides of grief. And in doing that I expressed the many different sides, allowing everyone who is grieving a child to find their self-validation no matter where they choose to look.

Children often begin their faith journey with basic but big questions like How does God speak to me? This charming picture book from the best-selling author of Whisper and his daughter provides a fun and clever answer! God Speaks in Whispers helps even the youngest readers look for God's voice in the universe: in creation, as he speaks through his followers, and in the Bible as he speaks through his Word. With a charming rhyme pattern and vivid pictures, Mark and Summer Batterson invite little ones to imagine how God might be showing them love every day, by leaning in close to hear God's whisper.

There's no place like home...and no end to the nightmare... Samantha is in her last year of high school at a very exclusive all-girls school in upstate New York. It has been four years since she gave birth to her daughter and since the death of her sister, Cassie. One day, Samantha’s roommate, Ellie, convinces her to attend a fraternity party. There Samantha meets a handsome young man named Ethan. The two develop a romantic relationship, but Samantha’s memories of her rape prevent her from consummating their union, and she confesses to Ethan that she has a daughter. He is surprised, but promises to attend her graduation and meet her father and uncle. But when Ethan brings her back, Samantha discovers a wild party going on in her room, and her girlfriends, including her roommate, Ellie, mock Samantha. Thinking she’s also lost Ethan, Samantha walks out, unaware that circumstances will soon culminate in a shocking series of events—including madness, betrayal, and murder.

Timeless, beautiful, and haunting, spirals connect the four episodes of The Ghosts of Heaven, the mesmerizing new novel from Printz Award winner Marcus Sedgwick. They are there in prehistory, when a girl picks up a charred stick and makes the first written signs; there tens of centuries later, hiding in the treacherous waters of Golden Beck that take Anna, who people call a witch; there in the halls of a Long Island hospital at the beginning of the 20th century, where a mad poet watches the oceans and knows the horrors it hides; and there in the far future, as an astronaut faces his destiny on the first spaceship sent from earth to colonize another world. Each of the characters in these mysterious linked stories embarks on a journey of discovery and survival; carried forward through the spiral of time, none will return to the same place. This title has Common Core connections.

Whispers from Heaven tells the real stories about people who experienced communication from a loved one who passed on from this life. Sometimes, the whispers were subtle, and sometimes, they were profound. Often they were surprising, but all provided a sense of comfort to the person who experienced them. A law of physics states that energy is neither created nor destroyed, only transformed. It may be that energy from people who have died uses some of that energy to allow loved ones to know that they made it to the next dimension. (PLEASE NOTE: Names of the people who have shared with me their stories are altered to protect their privacy.)

When people die, are they ever truly gone? I had heard the saying “pennies from heaven” before, but my coins from heaven seemed to be dimes. Was my father actually sending me dimes to show me he wasn’t really gone? My mother seemed to be sending pennies all the time, but my dad was pretty clever. Everyone around me knew that I was sensitive, but it took me writing about a few special dimes to discover what it meant to be an empath. Along with the messages from Heaven, I share how I am listening to the positive voice inside my head. This book is about so much more than dimes, yet without them, I wouldn’t have written it.