It’s tough enough defining your identity—imagine if your father was a rock legend. Blanche Kelly's dad is a famous indie rock icon, but not many people at the private school she attends on scholarship know this. Her father left when she was in the first grade, and she can’t quite forgive her mom for not understanding that an artist like her dad needs the time and space to connect to his muse. When Blanche creates an all-girl rock band, their sound captures a wide audience and the band is invited to compete at the Coachella Music Festival. Blanche feels this could be the perfect time for a reunion with her father. Won’t he be proud to hear her band? Won’t he be happy to get to know his only daughter? Author Barbara Hall sensitively explores the expectations between parents and teens, as well as the value of learning about your past to make your own future.

Haunted by a nightmare she cant remember, Krista Redding seeks the help of a professional psychologist. What he uncovers is a shocking secret that has been kept for fifteen years. Cade Sheridan is an undercover FBI agent posing as Andrew Walker. He has been after Robinson Kane for as long as he can remember. Together, he and Krista discover that her painful past is harsh reality. Can a killer be caught before it is too late?

Nora Braxton’s life is falling apart. Her husband has run off with a waitress almost young enough to be his daughter, leaving behind unpaid taxes amounting to thousands of dollars. In addition, her vindictive mother continues to criticize her, telling her how to run her life, constantly berating her with shrill choruses of “I-told-you-so.” To make matters worse, Nora’s thirteen-year-old son wants to run off to Miami to live with his freethinking, free-spending dad. So when Simone Gray, Nora’s old college friend from the University of Virginia, invites her to New Orleans for a week’s vacation, Nora jumps at the chance to get away from it all and get a fresh perspective. Once in this exotic, almost foreign city, Nora finds that she is not the only friend to be summoned by Simone. Poppy Marchand, another former schoolmate, is there as well. Almost immediately after the initial reunion, Nora and Poppy learn that Simone's invitation is not a purely social one and that she has much more in mind than a week of fun and relaxation. Simone, a prominent Los Angeles–based food critic, is a rape victim, and she has asked these old friends to be with her for moral support during the trial of the man she has charged with attacking her. A year earlier, while on assignment in New Orleans, Simone was raped after leaving a nightclub. Once model-beautiful, she is now shockingly thin—in fact, she’s anorexic. Nora, already emotionally at sea and diminished by heartache, resolves nonetheless to stand by her friend. And Poppy Marchand, a blisteringly plainspoken woman who has recently found religion and left her husband, also vows to be there for Simone, but not without her own bitter reservations. What follows—before, during, and after the trial—is an unraveling of the precepts upon which these three women have built their relationship, each struggling to come to terms with lives that haven’t worked out the way they planned. Pasts are explored, secrets are shared, and the truth of what really happened to Simone is put into question. Drawn from the author’s own experience, A Summons to New Orleans is a wonderfully written and beautifully crafted novel of three women and their fateful reunion that propels each one to search her past— and, together, their shocking revelations test the true limits of loyalty, friendship, and trust.

In the aftermath of a violent incident and near-death experience, Sarah Lange is plagued by heavenly voices and dogged by a desire to return “home.” Frightened by her desire to terminate her existence on earth, she checks into a trauma center in Malibu, California, and meets Dr. David Sutton, an intellectual, scientist, reductionist, and someone who believes in nothing beyond his immediate experience. David’s world is as divorced from mystery and magic as Sarah’s is alive with and animated by it. Their sessions open up a dialogue about the separation of worlds—one easily defined and explained and one unknowable and waiting on the other side of human experience. Even as his faith in his profession fades, David struggles to bring his disturbed patient back to the real world. In a desperate effort to define herself, Sarah “escapes,” and David must decide how far he is willing to go to save a patient, and ultimately, himself.

Resentments emerge when a woman returns to her Virginia hometown after a failed quest for stardom, in “a fine novel of manners about life in the South” (Library Journal). In an attempt to discover why her life hasn’t worked out the way she had hoped it would, Valerie Caldwell returns to the Southern town she left twelve years earlier to visit her old haunts and two friends from her school days, Tess and Mary Grace—much to their alarm and chagrin.

In the tradition of Anne Rivers Siddons and Pat Conroy comes this sensual, beautifully written novel of the South, about a world on the verge of change and the secrets it fears will be revealed When you enter the town of Fawley, you take a step back to a simpler time, back to when neighbors shared potluck dinners, church socials were the only parties decent people attended, and people knew who they were and what they valued—and didn’t tolerate outsiders who tried to change things. It is into this closed but nonetheless appealing community that Danny Crane brings his new wife, Lydia. They met at Myrtle Beach, where they spent a week in the rush and confusion of falling in love. The relationship that ensued startled them both, and the fact that they married six months later was equally disorienting. It was an act of passionate conviction and blind faith. From the outset, Lydia finds Fawley to be different from the exclusive and privileged environment in which she was raised, secure in both “name” and “position” in her family’s stately home in the Georgetown section of Washington, DC. But gradually Lydia comes to realize that few things in Fawley are as they seem, for behind the serenity and the clean-scrubbed façades, there exists a tradition of suspicion and anger, of hostility toward outsiders and fear of change of any kind. Even more disturbing is her realization that Danny, too, is not what he had seemed—that beneath the easy charm lies a darkness borne of distrust and deception, and of secrets too closely kept. In a struggle to hold on to the marriage she continues to believe in, Lydia is forced to confront the forces that have shaped her husband—the town of Fawley itself, and Danny’s family, most especially his cousin Kyle, whose personal magnetism even Lydia has to acknowledge, but whose hold on those around him becomes more and more destructive. Filled with the heat generated by passions too long suppressed and secrets too long kept buried, Close to Home is both a sensual and a literary gem.

Not a Witch By: Barbara Hall Jenna is still undecided about what she would like to be for Halloween. Since her mom will be making the costume, she is reminding Jenna that she must decide soon!

Fourteen-year-old Dutch Peyton learns about growing up as her family struggles with a crippling drought and a painful past in this ALA Best Book for Young Adults, now in paperback. This edition includes an interview with the author.

Designed to accompany the 5th Edition of Susan Raatz Stephenson and Julia Dmitrieva’s text, Workbook for Diagnostic Medical Sonography: A Guide to Clinical Practice, Obstetrics and Gynecology, 5th Edition, by Barbara Hall-Terracciano and Susan R. Stephenson, offers a full complement of self-study aids for active learning that enable you to assess and build your knowledge as you advance through the text. Most importantly, it helps you get the most out of your study time, with a variety of custom-designed exercises to help you master each objective.