Only daughter

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Nancy Pickard

One beautiful summer afternoon, from her bedroom window on the second floor, Jody Linder is unnerved to see her three uncles parking their pickups in front of her parents' house--or what she calls her parents' house, even though Jay and Laurie Jo Linder have been gone almost all of Jody's life. "What is this fearsome thing I see?" the young high school English teacher whispers, mimicking Shakespeare. Polished boots, pressed jeans, fresh white shirts, Stetsons--her uncles' suspiciously clean visiting clothes are a disturbing sign. The three bring shocking news: The man convicted of murdering Jody's father is being released from prison and returning to the small town of Rose, Kansas. It has been twenty-six years since that stormy night when, as baby Jody lay asleep in her crib, her father was shot and killed and her mother disappeared, presumed dead. Neither the protective embrace of Jody's uncles nor the safe haven of her grandparents' ranch could erase the pain caused by Billy Crosby on that catastrophic night. Now Billy Crosby has been granted a new trial, thanks in large part to the efforts of his son, Collin, a lawyer who has spent most of his life trying to prove his father's innocence. As Jody lives only a few doors down from the Crosbys, she knows that sooner or later she'll come face-to-face with the man who she believes destroyed her family.What she doesn't expect are the heated exchanges with Collin. Having grown up practically side by side in this very small town, Jody and Collin have had a long history of carefully avoiding each other's eyes. Now Jody discovers that underneath their antagonism is a shared sense of loss that no one else could possibly understand. As she revisits old wounds, startling revelations compel her to uncover the dangerous truth about her family's tragic past.Engrossing, lyrical, and suspenseful, The Scent of Rain and Lightning captures the essence of small-town America--its heartfelt intimacy and its darkest secrets--where through struggle and hardship people still dare to hope for a better future. For Jody Linder, maybe even love.From the Hardcover edition.

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Matthew Klein

A dark and gripping thriller about one man caught in an ever-tightening vice of his own making - Timothy Van Bender leads a charmed life: his hedge-fund business has made him extremely wealthy; he adores his beautiful wife, Katherine; his secretary Tricia is a charming flirt. Then everything changes. His hedge fund loses millions on a bad bet, and his wife seemingly commits suicide. Timothy can?t believe it? and nor, it seems, can the police. But his troubles have just begun. For soon Tricia shows up on his doorstep, claiming to be his dead wife and knowing secrets that only Katherine could know ...

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Anthony Quinn

In Northern Ireland's darkest corner, the Troubles have never ended. Though bombs no longer rock Belfast, for some the fight goes on. Retired Special Branch agent David Hughes disappears after looking into the previously closed case of Oliver Jordan, who went missing at the hands of the IRA decades ago. Soon after, a former spy is found bludgeoned to death, the day after placing his own obituary in the newspaper. Beneath Northern Ireland's modern calm, ancient jealousies threaten to rend the country asunder once more. A Catholic detective in a Protestant nation, Celcius Daly knows too well the agonies of sectarian strife. To solve this string of murders, he must reach decades into the past, confronting a painful history that Ireland would prefer to forget.

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Conlan Brown

A cold car. A gun. Horror. Pain. Grief. Screaming. A windshield blistering with holes. Darkness. It all came over her like a flood. A pouring out of pictures in her mind. But then there was one more thing. Not an image, but a feeling--that half a continent away someone else had felt it all happening too. The Firstborn--three ancient religious orders gifted with the ability to see past, present, and future--have been divided since the death of Christ. But today, in an era of terrorism and globalization, it has become clear there is an atrocity coming that they must unite to prevent because it is one of them who will perpetrate it.