Wench: A Novel 
by Dolen Perkins-Valdez

Tawawa House in many respects is like any other American resort before the Civil War. Situated in Ohio, this idyllic retreat is particularly nice in the summer when the Southern humidity is too much to bear. The main building, with its luxurious finishes, is loftier than the white cottages that flank it, but then again, the smaller structures are better positioned to catch any breeze that may come off the pond. And they provide more privacy, which best suits the needs of the Southern white men who vacation there every summer with their black, enslaved mistresses. It's their open secret.

An engaging, page-turning, and wholly original novel, Wench explores, with an unflinching eye, the moral complexities of slavery.

Split Image 
by Robert B. Parker

Family ties prove deadly in the brilliant new Jesse Stone novel from New York Times-bestselling author Robert B. Parker.

The body in the trunk was just the beginning.

Turns out the stiff was a foot soldier for local tough guy Reggie Galen, now enjoying a comfortable "retirement" with his beauti­ful wife, Rebecca, in the nicest part of Paradise. Living next door are Knocko Moynihan and his wife, Robbie, who also happens to be Rebecca's twin. But what initially appears to be a low-level mob hit takes on new meaning when a high-ranking crime figure is found dead on Paradise Beach.

Stressed by the case, his failed relationship with his ex-wife, and his ongoing battle with the bottle, Jesse needs something to keep him from spinning out of control. When private investigator Sunny Randall comes into town on a case, she asks for Jesse's help. As their professional and personal relationships become intertwined, both Jesse and Sunny realize that they have much in common with both their victims and their suspects-and with each other.

Dreams That Won't Let Go 
by Stacy Hawkins Adams

"I wrestled with whether a God that I couldn’t see or touch would be willing to single me out from the millions of other people who wanted love, attention and help.” To women all over the country, from all walks of life, this uncomfortable uncertainty is all too familiar. Now—for inspiration, for affirmation, for a divine connection—women have a new place to turn … to this authentic look at what it takes to pursue God with abandon, by acclaimed author Stacy Hawkins Adams. Offering insight, inspiration, and practical ideas on how to connect more often and more deeply with God, Adams helps give women the courage to go deeper and grow deeper in God’s word to hear Him more clearly. Women young and old will be empowered and renewed by Adams’s reminder that—regardless of the labels placed on them by society, their family, their friends, and even themselves—their best and most important title is the one given by God … chosen vessel. "

Known to Evil (Leonid McGill Series #2)
by Walter Mosley

Walter Mosley and his new hero, Leonid McGill, are back with the second book in the new New York Times--bestselling mystery series that's already being hailed as a classic of contemporary noir.

His name is etched on the door of his Manhattan office:  LEONID McGILL , PRIVATE INVESTIGATOR.  It's a name that takes a little explaining, but he's used to it. "Daddy was a communist and great-great- Granddaddy was a slave master from Scotland. You know, the black man's family tree is mostly root. Whatever you see aboveground is only a hint at the real story." Ex-boxer, hard drinker, in a business that trades mostly in cash and favors: McGill's an old-school P.I. working a city that's gotten fancy all around him. Fancy or not, he has always managed to get by—keep a roof over the head of his wife and kids, and still manage a little fun on the side—mostly because he's never been above taking a shady job for a quick buck. But like the city itself, McGill is turning over a new leaf, "decided to go from crooked to slightly bent." New York City in the twenty-first century is a city full of secrets—and still a place that reacts when you know where to poke and which string to pull....

Anna In-Between 
by Elizabeth Nunez

Anna In-Between is Elizabeth Nunez’s finest literary achievement to date. In spare prose, with laserlike attention to every word and the juxtaposition of words to each other, Nunez returns to themes of emotional alienation, within the context of class and color discrimination, so richly developed in her earlier novels.

Anna, the novel’s main character who has a successful publishing career in the United States, is the daughter of an upper-class Caribbean family. While on vacation in the island home of her birth she discovers that her mother, Beatrice, has breast cancer. Beatrice categorically rejects all efforts to persuade her to go to the United States for treatment, even though it is, perhaps, her only chance of survival. Anna and her father, who tries to remain respectful of his wife’s wishes, must convince her to change her mind.

Cutting for Stone 
by Abraham Verghese

Abraham Verghese's My Own Country, an incandescent memoir of the author's early years as a doctor caring for HIV patients in rural Tennessee, was one of those books that seemed to make an indelible impression on everyone who read it.

Marion and Shiva Stone are twin brothers born of a secret union between a beautiful Indian nun and a brash British surgeon. Orphaned by their mother’s death and their father’s disappearance, bound together by a preternatural connection and a shared fascination with medicine, the twins come of age as Ethiopia hovers on the brink of revolution.
 
Moving from Addis Ababa to New York City and back again, Cutting for Stone is an unforgettable story of love and betrayal, medicine and ordinary miracles—and two brothers whose fates are forever intertwined.

How to Escape from a Leper Colony 
by Tiphanie Yanique

An enthralling debut collection from a singular Caribbean voice.   For a leper, many things are impossible, and many other things are easily done.  Babalao Chuck said he could fly to the other side of the island and peek at the nuns bathing. And when a man with no hands claims that he can fly, you listen.

The inhabitants of an island walk into the sea. A man passes a jail cell’s window, shouldering a wooden cross. And in the international shop of coffins, a story repeats itself, pointing toward an inevitable tragedy. If the facts of these stories are sometimes fantastical, the situations they describe are complex and all too real.

Lyrical, lush, and haunting, the prose shimmers in this nuanced debut, set mostly in the U.S. Virgin Islands. Part oral history, part postcolonial narrative, How to Escape from a Leper Colony is ultimately a loving portrait of a wholly unique place. Like Gabriel García Márquez, Edwidge Danticat, and Maryse Condé before her, Tiphanie Yanique has crafted a book that is heartbreaking, hilarious, magical, and mesmerizing. An unforgettable collection.