Bus driver Rory Fine has a gift. With selfless thought, he uses his unique power to relieve others troubles with a mere touch. This brings him great joy, until one rain-swept night when he offers to lift every passenger’s spirits. He asks them to play a game by tapping his palm when they disembark and leave their worries behind with him. Someone aboard, though, hides a deadly and dangerous secret, and this kind act will drag Rory into a perilous battle with a powerful, evil entity.

What if all that stood between us and hell was a match? An ordinary couple stand accused of a heinous crime. They're the last people you'd expect to save the world. Are they criminals, heroes, or completely insane? Or maybe all three? Inspired by true-life headlines, revealed in Susan May's fascinating postscript From the Imagination Vault, Behind the Fire is an engrossing novelette of the random appearances of frightening black things, and one couple's battle to protect their town from these dangerous and hellish creatures.

This was not the first-time that rookie cop Michael Chambers had found himself stuck in this broken-down police vehicle while the rain bucketed down outside. In fact, this kind of "bad luck" had happened almost every time he’d been assigned car 291. Usually, he’d get a flat, or the locks would jam, or the damned on-board computer would freeze. 291, though, had a bloody and tragic history, which might explain why this piece of metallic crap seemed so intent on driving him crazy - excuse the pun.

The terror begins in a suburban café with seven people brutally murdered by an axe-wielding maniac. The killer is left dead at the scene and that should have been the end of a rare tragedy. But within days, in the very same city, more mass killings occur. Ten eldercare facility residents die in an arson-lit blaze. Then a mother attending a family gathering embarks on a terrifying gun rampage. All the killers are now dead, leaving behind unanswerable questions.

Ten-year-old Nem has just witnessed her mother's brutal murder and her life appears destined for tragedy. Until, that is, she finds her mother‘s old green journal which holds an incredible secret. This innocent looking book seems to contain the power over luck. As she uses it, Nem discovers the diary keeps a strange kind of karmic balance, that in gifting someone good fortune she must steal another's first. All it takes is a simple entry. There's dangers though, and not just for others but also for Nem.

In Beatrice Prior's dystopian Chicago, society is divided into five factions, each dedicated to the cultivation of a particular virtue - Candor (the honest), Abnegation (the selfless), Dauntless (the brave), Amity (the peaceful), and Erudite (the intelligent). On an appointed day of every year, all sixteen-year-olds must select the faction to which they will devote the rest of their lives. For Beatrice, the decision is between staying with her family and being who she really is - she can't have both. So she makes a choice that surprises everyone, including herself.

Refusing to believe that she would be abandoned as a young child, Jenna searches for her mother regularly online and pores over the pages of Alice's old journals. A scientist who studied grief among elephants, Alice wrote mostly of her research among the animals she loved, yet Jenna hopes the entries will provide a clue to her mother’s whereabouts. Desperate to find the truth, Jenna enlists two unlikely allies in her quest.

Alice Love is 29, crazy about her husband, and pregnant with her first child. So imagine Alice’s surprise when she comes to on the floor of a gym and is whisked off to the hospital, where she discovers the honeymoon is truly over - she’s getting divorced, she has three kids, and she’s actually 39 years old. Alice must reconstruct the events of a lost decade and find out whether it’s possible to reconstruct her life at the same time.

Meredith and Nina Whitson are as different as sisters can be. One stayed at home to raise her children and manage the family apple orchard; the other followed a dream and traveled the world to become a famous photojournalist. But when their beloved father falls ill, Meredith and Nina find themselves together again, standing alongside their cold, disapproving mother, Anya, who even now, offers no comfort to her daughters.

Clare and Henry have known each other since Clare was six and Henry was 36. They were married when Clare was 23 and Henry was 31. Impossible but true, because Henry is one of the first people diagnosed with Chrono-Displacement Disorder: periodically his genetic clock resets and he finds himself misplaced in time, pulled to moments of emotional gravity from his life, past and future. His disappearances are spontaneous, his experiences unpredictable, alternately harrowing and amusing.

Jodi Picoult's poignant number one New York Times best-selling novels about family and love tackle hot-button issues head on. In The Storyteller, Sage Singer befriends Josef Weber, a beloved Little League coach and retired teacher. But then Josef asks Sage for a favor she never could have imagined - to kill him. After Josef reveals the heinous act he committed, Sage feels he may deserve that fate. But would his death be murder or justice?

England, 1959: Laurel Nicolson is 16 years old, dreaming alone in her childhood tree house during a family celebration at their home, Green Acres Farm. She spies a stranger coming up the long road to the farm and then observes her mother, Dorothy, speaking to him. And then she witnesses a crime.

To five-year-old Jack, Room is the entire world. It is where he was born and grew up; it's where he lives with his Ma as they learn and read and eat and sleep and play. At night, his Ma shuts him safely in the wardrobe, where he is meant to be asleep when Old Nick visits. Room is home to Jack, but to Ma, it is the prison where Old Nick has held her captive for seven years. Through determination, ingenuity, and fierce motherly love, Ma has created a life for Jack. But she knows it's not enough...not for her or for him.

When she was 9 years old, Melody Browne's house burned down, and it took all of her childhood memories with it. Now she's a single mother of a teenage boy living in Central London. She hasn't seen her parents since she left home at 15, but she doesn't mind. She's better off on her own. She works as a dinner lady at her son's school and has no idea where her humdrum life is heading. But one summer's night, a hypnotist inadvertently unlocks memories of her childhood, and her whole life is turned upside down.

One Sunday afternoon in Southern California, Bert Cousins shows up at Franny Keating's christening party uninvited. Before evening falls, he has kissed Franny's mother, Beverly - thus setting in motion the dissolution of their marriages and the joining of two families.

When Lizzie’s car crashes with her two daughters inside, she faces a terrible choice. And when she recovers from her injuries, she must deal with the impact of that tragedy and the police investigation into it. As Lizzie and her family struggle to come to terms with the events of that night, things take an even darker turn. What exactly happened on that remote country road? Who is responsible? And can the family get through this together…or will the truth finally tear them apart?

While his successful wife goes off to her law office each day, Simon Connolly takes care of their kids, Jake and Laney. Now that they are in high school, the angst-ridden father should feel more relaxed, but he doesn't. He's seen the statistics, read the headlines. And now, his darkest fear is coming true. There has been a shooting at school.

In her career as a photojournalist, free-spirited Jessie Ryder has seen the world through her camera lens. But she's never traveled far enough to escape a painful moment that has haunted her for the past 16 years: the day she gave her baby daughter away. Now, facing a life-altering crisis, she's decided to fix the broken pieces of her heart and seek out Lila, even if it means she has to upset the world of Lila's adoptive mother...her very own sister, Luz.

He performs his profane ceremony in a wooded Minneapolis park, anointing his victims, then setting the bodies ablaze. He has already claimed three lives, and he won't stop there. Only this time there is a witness. But she isn't talking. Enter Kate Conlan, former FBI agent turned victim/witness advocate. Not even she can tell if the reluctant witness is a potential victim or something more troubling still.

Kari Baxter Jacobs is furious, hurt, and confused. Her husband, Tim, a respected professor of journalism, is having an affair with a student. Stunned, Kari returns home to the Baxter family to sort things out. But when an old flame comes back into her life, she is more confused than ever.

"Something is murdering my men." Thus reads the message received from a Nazi commander stationed in a small castle high in the remote Transylvanian Alps. Invisible and silent, the enemy selects one victim per night, leaving the bloodless and mutilated corpses behind to terrify its future victims. When an elite SS extermination squad is dispatched to solve the problem, the men find something that's both powerful and terrifying. Panicked, the Nazis bring in a local expert on folklore - who just happens to be Jewish - to shed some light on the mysterious happenings.

When Jessica marries David, he is everything she wants in a family man: brilliant, attentive, ever youthful. Yet she still feels something about him is just out of reach. Soon, as people close to Jessica begin to meet violent, mysterious deaths, David makes an unimaginable confession: More than 400 years ago, he and other members of an Ethiopian sect traded their humanity so they would never die, a secret he must protect at any cost.

Violet Ambrose is grappling with two major issues: Jay Heaton and her morbid secret ability. While the 16-year-old is confused by her new feelings for her best friend since childhood, she is more disturbed by her "power" to sense dead bodies or at least those that have been murdered. Since she was a little girl, she has felt the echoes the dead leave behind in the world . . . and the imprints that attach to their killers.

Six months ago, Charlotte almost lost everything. Now, she’s determined to keep her daughter, Elle, safe. So when local girls close to Elle in age and appearance begin to go missing, it’s her worst nightmare. Charlotte’s fears are confirmed when a frantic search becomes a shocking murder investigation. The girls’ bodies have been found - half-buried, and with traces of mud and wildflowers under their fingernails. As Charlotte’s obsession with keeping her daughter close pushes her marriage to the brink, local DI Madeleine Wood embarks on a gruelling search for the killer.

On the day she was abducted, Annie O’Sullivan, a 32-year-old Realtor, had three goals: sell a house, forget about a recent argument with her mother, and be on time for dinner with her ever-patient boyfriend. The open house is slow, but when her last visitor pulls up in a van as she’s about to leave, Annie thinks it just might be her lucky day after all.

When Joy Came to Stay illustrates the miraculous power of faith to overcome even the most debilitating suffering. Maggie Stovall has a successful career and a happy marriage, but she also bears the crippling weight of a secret from her past. As she slips farther and farther into depression, her only hope lies in God's loving forgiveness.

Just a second. That was all it took. In that second Anita Sherwood sees the face of the young boy in the window of the bus as it stops at the curb...and she knows it is her son. The son who had been kidnapped two years before. The son who had never been found and who had been declared legally dead. But now her son is alive. Anita knows it in her heart. She is certain that the boy is her son, but how can she get anyone to believe her?

Abby Davis isn't wearing a skimpy bikini or sipping umbrella drinks, not when she's busy chasing around four little ones. And Matt McKinney isn't looking for fun - he's a Navy SEAL, a grown man with a long list of missions and fallen brothers. Abby has brought her children to this beach to start over, to give them the enjoyable memories they deserve. Matt has been sidelined by a combat injury, and he is haunted by the loss of his best friend and the promise he made: to remain a SEAL - focused and dedicated.

From the moment Martha and her husband, John, conceived their second child, all hell broke loose. They were a couple obsessed with success. After years of matching IQs and test scores with less driven peers, they had two Harvard degrees apiece and were gunning for more. But the dream had begun to disintegrate. Then, when their unborn son, Adam, was diagnosed with Down syndrome, doctors, advisers, and friends in the Harvard community warned them not to keep the baby.

It starts with a simple wish, and Emma Davies hardly notices when it comes true. She’s too preoccupied with a life she isn’t happy in - the spark in her marriage has fizzled, her career is headed nowhere and her boss is a misogynist. Her teenage daughter has grown distant, and her heart breaks daily for her teenage son with cerebral palsy. But soon Emma discovers her wishes are coming true, and she realizes that she has been given the power to change her life. Either that, or she’s going insane.