Susan Meissner

Elise Sontag is a typical Iowa fourteen-year-old in 1943--aware of the war but distanced from its reach. Then her father, a legal U.S. 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, whose friendship empowers Elise to believe the life she knew before the war will again be hers. Together in the desert wilderness, Elise and Mariko hold tight the dream of being young American women with a future beyond the fences. But when the Sontag family is exchanged for American prisoners behind enemy lines in Germany, Elise will face head-on the person the war desires to make of her. In that devastating crucible she must discover if she has the will to rise above prejudice and hatred and re-claim her own destiny, or disappear into the image others have cast upon her. The Last Year of the War tells a little-known story of World War II with great resonance for our own times and challenges the very notion of who we are when who we've always been is called into question.-- Iowa, 1943. Elise Sontag's father, a legal U.S. resident for nearly two decades, is arrested on suspicion of being a Nazi sympathizer, and the family is sent to an internment camp in Texas. 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 fellow internee Mariko Inoue, a Japanese-American teen from Los Angeles, whose friendship empowers Elise to believe the life she knew before the war will again be hers. When the Sontag family is exchanged for American prisoners behind enemy lines in Germany, will Elise be able to rise above prejudice and hatred and re-claim her own destiny? -- adapted from publisher's info.

Thoughts of a physicist and nobel laureate from India.

A newborn is found alive in a trash bin and a young, single mother insists her baby was abducted. While St. Paul police are skeptical, attorney Rachael Flynn's strange dreams lead her to believe the mother is telling the truth. But who would steal a baby only to leave it for dead?

"When her ultra-ministry-minded brother, Joshua, confesses to murder, lawyer Rachael Flynn begs him to let her represent him, certain that he is innocent. But Joshua refuses her offer of counsel. As Rachael works on the case, she begins to suspect that Josh knows who the real killer is, but she is unable to get him to cooperate with his defense."--Publisher description.

Come home to Shelter Valley where love lasts and families matter....Miranda Parsons is content with her life. She has a great job, a wonderful family, a lovely house. She has good friends. And she lives in a town where people know her, care about her. So what's missing?Passion—as she finds out when she meets Zack Foster.Zack's a veterinarian who's recently moved to Shelter Valley after the failure of a marriage he'd considered perfect. He still likes being with women, but now prefers his romances "short and sweet."Randi and Zack learn what it is to feel truly passionate about someone else—and they begin to want the passion they've discovered. But to get something, you have to give something up. Can they exchange contentment for happiness—even if greater happiness means greater risk?

Since she was a child, Meg had dreamed of visiting Florence, Italy, and stepping into the place captured in a picture at her grandmother's house. When her dad finally tells Meg to book the trip, she prays it will heal the fissures left by her parents' divorce. But when Meg arrives, her absent father has left aspiring memoir-writer Sofia Borelli to introduce Meg to the ancient city. Sofia claims to be a descendant of the Medicis, and that a Medici princess communicates with her from the great masterpieces of the Italian Renaissance.

"From the darkest hours rises life in all its glory ... From the acclaimed author of Secrets of a Charmed Life and A Bridge Across the Ocean comes a new novel set in Philadelphia during the Spanish flu epidemic of 1918, which tells the story of a family reborn through loss and love. In 1918, Philadelphia was a city teeming with promise. Even as its young men went off to fight in the Great War, there were opportunities for a fresh start on its cobblestone streets. Into this bustling town, came Pauline Bright and her husband, filled with hope that they could now give their three daughters--Evelyn, Maggie, and Willa--a chance at a better life. Their dreams are short-lived. Just months after they arrive, the Spanish Flu reaches the shores of America. As the pandemic claims more than twelve thousand victims in their adopted city, they find their lives left with a world that looks nothing like the one they knew. But even as they lose loved ones, they take in a baby orphaned by the disease who becomes their single source of hope. Amidst the tragedy and challenges that surround them, they learn what they cannot live without--and what they are willing to do about it. Under the Canopy of Heaven is the compelling story of a mother and her daughters who find themselves in a harsh world not of their making, which will either crush their resolve to survive or purify it"-- 1918. Philadelphia was a city teeming with promise. Even as its young men went off to fight in the Great War, there were opportunities for a fresh start on its cobblestone streets. Pauline Bright and her husband hope to give their three daughters-- Evelyn, Maggie, and Willa-- a chance at a better life. But just months after they arrive, the Spanish Flu pandemic claims more than twelve thousand victims in their adopted city, and the Brights find themselves in a world that looks nothing like the one they knew. They take in a baby orphaned by the disease, and the child becomes their single source of hope.

"When Oxford student Kendra Van Zant interviews 93-year-old artist Isabel MacFarland about her experience as a survivor of the London Blitz, Isabel is ready to share secrets she has kept for decades--beginning with who she really is"--

"September 1911. On Ellis Island in New York Harbor, nurse Clara Wood cannot face returning to Manhattan, where the man she loved fell to his death in the Triangle Shirtwaist Fire. Then, while caring for a fevered immigrant whose own loss mirrors hers, she becomes intrigued by a name embroidered onto the scarf he carries...and finds herself caught in a dilemma that compels her to confront the truth about the assumptions she's made. Will what she learns devastate her or free her? September 2011. On Manhattan's Upper West Side, widow Taryn Michaels has convinced herself that she is living fully, working in a charming specialty fabric store and raising her daughter alone. Then a long-lost photograph appears in a national magazine, and she is forced to relive the terrible day her husband died in the collapse of the World Trade Towers...the same day a stranger reached out and saved her. Will a chance reconnection and a century-old scarf open Taryn's eyes to the larger forces at work in her life?"--

After being left at the altar, Daisy Murien opens a secondhand wedding dress boutique, where a retired Episcopal priest blesses the tiny, blue satin heart she sews into each gown, but when the priest falls ill, Daisy begins to understand why she has never sold her own dress.