Geraldine Brooks
March

From Louisa May Alcott's beloved classic, Little Women, Geraldine Brooks has taken the character of the absent father, March, who has gone off to war, leaving his wife and daughters to make do in mean times. To evoke him, Brooks turned to the journals and letters of Bronson Alcott, Louisa May's father - a friend and confidant of Emerson and Thoreau. In Brooks' telling, March emerges as an idealistic chaplain in the little known backwaters of a war that will test his faith in himself and in the Union cause as he learns that his side, too, is capable of acts of barbarism and racism. As he recovers from a near mortal illness, he must reassemble his shattered mind and body and find a way to reconnect with a wife and daughters who have no idea of the ordeals he has been through.

Craig Holden
Narcissist's Daughter

Meet Syd Redding, a gruff, ambitious working-class young man and pre-med student. Syd passes the stultifying hours of 1978 in Ethics class fantasising about the destruction of the Kesslers, his boss's well-to-do Ohio family. As he steps onto the doorstep of their grand mansion in the estate section of their city, Syd has no detailed plan in mind, only vague delicious dreams of vengeance. But when he meets the boss's daughter, he soon finds himself caught in the sexual machinations of this magnetic family. A simple affair leads from obsession through rage to a revenge plot that will transform the lives of everyone involved.

MelanieVargas is a hardworking, hotshot Latina federal prosecutor. Her home life is a bit chaotic, since she just caught her husband in an affair, although she's still trying to work things out, if only for her baby daughter. One evening she takes the child out on an innocent stroll and walks right into a crime scene: a wealthy former fellow prosecutor has been murdered. Melanie knows that with her personal problems she should stay away from what promises to be a demanding, high-profile case.Yet it's a career-making case and she aggressively signs on, only to be led into a race for her life against a dark, sadistic killer who seems to be always one step ahead of her.