Lamar and Jasmine have a beautiful love story; more like love at first sight. They enjoy a charmed life until complications during the birth of their first child leave Jasmine in a coma. Lamar never imagined he'd face the possibility of losing the love of his life, but with a new baby girl to care for, he can't afford to give up hope. As months pass with no change in Jasmine's condition, loneliness and despair become Lamar's constant companion. Just when he's at his most vulnerable, temptation steps in. Lamar desperately wants to honor his vows, but how long can he resist?

BONUS: This edition contains a Staying True discussion guide. In this candid and compelling memoir, the first lady of South Carolina reveals the private ordeal behind her very public betrayal—and offers inspiration for anyone struggling to keep faith during life’s most trying times. She’s been a successful investment banker, a mother of four, and the campaign manager for one of American politics’ rising stars—her husband, Mark Sanford of South Carolina, once widely hailed as a possible candidate for president in 2012. Yet to most Americans, Jenny Sanford is best known for the one role she refused to play—that of conventional political spouse standing silently by while her husband went before the media and confessed his infidelity. Instead, she stayed true—to herself, to her faith, and to her highest ideals of parenthood and public service. She chose to let Mark Sanford deal with the embarrassment and political fallout from his own actions while focusing her own efforts privately on raising their children to be men of character, even in the face of the lies their father has told. In Staying True, Jenny Sanford recalls her shock and anguish upon discovering that her husband was having an affair with a woman in Argentina, and the further pain when she learned—just a day ahead of most Americans—that he had not ended the affair when she believed he had. She reveals the source of her determination to be honest and forthright instead of the victim in the tabloid passion play that gripped the nation in June 2009. But her story neither begins nor ends with Mark Sanford’s astounding fall from grace. Writing with uncommon candor from a deep well of spiritual strength, Sanford shares personal stories and life lessons from before and after she stepped into the public realm. She recounts the many stresses—as well as the myriad joys—that she experienced on a daily basis while living in the governmental spotlight. (Just try keeping four young boys out of mischief in the governor’s mansion!) And she describes the many ways that the seductions of power can drive apart even the most committed couples. At every step along her journey, Jenny Sanford has made choices: She gave up her career, moved far from her home state of Illinois, even changed her religious practices. Every choice was a glad concession to harmonious married life and, in some cases, to the support of her husband’s political aspirations. But the one thing she never gave up was her sense of self, her inner moral compass. Her remarkable poise and decency make her a role model for men and women alike. Her story will empower anyone who has fought to maintain independence and integrity—within a marriage or elsewhere in life.

“A groundbreaking work about race and the American landscape, and a deep meditation on nature…wise and beautiful.”—Helen Macdonald, author of H is for Hawk A Foreword Reviews Best Book of the Year and Nautilus Silver Award Winner In me, there is the red of miry clay, the brown of spring floods, the gold of ripening tobacco. All of these hues are me; I am, in the deepest sense, colored. Dating back to slavery, Edgefield County, South Carolina—a place “easy to pass by on the way somewhere else”—has been home to generations of Lanhams. In The Home Place, readers meet these extraordinary people, including Drew himself, who over the course of the 1970s falls in love with the natural world around him. As his passion takes flight, however, he begins to ask what it means to be “the rare bird, the oddity.” By turns angry, funny, elegiac, and heartbreaking, The Home Place is a meditation on nature and belonging by an ornithologist and professor of ecology, at once a deeply moving memoir and riveting exploration of the contradictions of black identity in the rural South—and in America today. “When you’re done with The Home Place, it won’t be done with you. Its wonders will linger like everything luminous.”—Star Tribune “A lyrical story about the power of the wild…synthesizes his own family history, geography, nature, and race into a compelling argument for conservation and resilience.”—National Geographic

From the first human settlements to the latest marine explorations, The Golden Shore tells the tale of the history, culture, and changing nature of California’s coasts and ocean. David Helvarg takes the reader on both a geographic and literary journey along the state’s 1,100-mile Pacific coastline, from the Oregon border to the San Diego–Tijuana international border fence and out into its whale-, seal-, and shark-rich offshore seamounts, rock isles, and kelp forests. Part history, part travelogue, part love letter, The Golden Shore captures the spirit of the California coast and its mythic place in American culture.

HISTORICAL ROMANCE. In 1863, amid the turmoil of the Civil War, the ladies of the aristocratic Middleford family flee war-torn Charleston to take refuge in their summer home in Flat Rock, North Carolina. Here, in the secluded beauty and splendor of the Blue Ridge Mountains, three sisters find their destinies in love. At the age of thirty, the eldest sister Harriott has long since put away any ideas of romance or marriage, but the possibility of both unexpectedly enter her life when she meets James Mitchell, a Confederate officer who comes to Flat Rock to convalesce from his wounds. The harsh reality of war intrudes when bushwhackers menace Flat Rock, forcing the Middleford sisters and their mother to seek safety elsewhere. They find refuge in the South Carolina upcountry for a while, but in the winter of 1865, a massive army led by General Sherman blazes a trail of destruction through the state that threatens to put an end to the happiness-and the very world-of the Middleford women and the men who love them. Author Karen Stokes is an archivist with the South Carolina Historical Society in Charleston, S.C.. BELLES was inspired by South Carolinians' Civil War letters found in the SCHS archives.

Uncovered Love is a genuine Southern love story with historical value. It is a suspenseful romance set in a small town in South Carolina, based on real events with a romantic love twist. Renee returns to her hometown to help care for her elderly father. There she meets a young man, Sam, and falls in love. The two of them spend most of their days walking along the edge of the Saluda River but their love affair involves tragedy from the past which threatens the longevity of their relationship. The story takes place during a time when the small town of Williamston is in the process of moving the graves of the founding fathers to the town's new centrally-located cemetery. As the graves are uncovered so is love as two timelines in history merge for these two lovers. After all, you can't help who you fall in love with and this is the basis of the story.