Nathan Lesperance is used to being different. He's the first Native attorney in Vancouver, and welcome neither with white society nor his sometime tribe. Not to mention the powerful wildness he's always felt inside him, too dangerous to set free. Then he met Astrid Bramfield and saw his like within her piercing eyes...
Dubai native Gargash weaves an enticing tale of a fiery, independent woman struggling to live the life she has been assigned in the 1950s in the area outside modern Dubai. Noora Al-Salmi is 17. Her mother has died, her father has since gone mad, and her brother, Sager, is trying to provide for her. When Sager hears of a rich pearl merchant looking for a new wife, Noora, unhappy with this plan, escapes to a nearby village where she quickly becomes involved with a man who, unbeknownst to her, is promised to another woman. She returns home to find that Sager has married her off to the merchant.
A family's conflict becomes a battle for life and death in this gripping and original first novel based on family history from a descendant of a condemned Salem witch. After a bout of smallpox, 10-year-old Sarah Carrier resumes life with her mother on their family farm in Andover, Mass., dimly aware of a festering dispute between her mother, Martha, and her uncle about the plot of land where they live. The fight takes on a terrifying dimension when reports of supernatural activity in nearby Salem give way to mass hysteria, and Sarah's uncle is the first person to point the finger at Martha.
For everyone who has received an invitation to their high-school reunion and broken out in a cold, clammy sweat, Berg nails the experience: the dread that morphs into downright fear; the bouts of self-doubt that coalesce into prolonged periods of self-loathing; the internal inventory that comes up short in the bragging-rights column. Of course, there’s just as much potential for life-affirming and life-altering revelations. Glory days can be relived, damaged reputations repaired, lapsed friendships restored, lost loves rekindled.
