Evie is different. Not just her upbringing-though that's certainly been unusual-but also her mindset. She's smart, independent, confident, opinionated, and ready to take on a new challenge: The Institution of School. It doesn't take this homeschooled kid long to discover that high school is a whole new world, and not in the way she expected. It's also a social minefield, and Evie finds herself confronting new problems at every turn, failing to follow or even understand the rules, and proposing solutions that aren't welcome or accepted.
In the quiet town of Painters Mill, an Amish family of seven has been found brutally murdered on their farm. Chief of Police Kate Burkholder and her small force have few clues, no motive, and no suspect. Formerly Amish herself, Kate is no stranger to secrets, but she can’t get her mind around the senseless brutality of the crime.
The Heat of the Day revolves around the relationship between Stella Rodney and her lover Robert Kelway, with the interfering presence of Harrison in the tense years following The Blitz in London. Harrison, a British intelligence agent who is convinced that Robert is a German spy, uses this knowledge to get between the two lovers and ultimately neutralize Robert. Stella finds herself caught between spy and counterspy, and ends up spying on Robert to find out for herself if Harrison's accusations are justified. The narrative reveals the "inextricable knitting together of the individual and the national, the personal and the political."
Kellerman bares a dark, brooding side of his appealing series' detective, child psychologist Alex Delaware ( Over the Edge ), in this complex tale of guilt, greed and expiation. Although his beloved girlfriend Robin has left him, to find herself, Delaware decides against seeing former lover Sharon Ransom, when she asks to meet.
Reeling from newly uncovered family secrets, and anger at her mother and aunt for keeping them from her, Joy runs away to Shanghai in early 1957 to find her birth father—the artist Z.G. Li, with whom both May and Pearl were once in love. Dazzled by him, and blinded by idealism and defiance, Joy throws herself into the New Society of Red China, heedless of the dangers in the communist regime.