pre-k teacher

August 1945. As Stefano, an Italian POW, heads toward home across war-ravaged Germany, he encounters a young child beside his dead mother. Unable to leave him to an unknown fate, Stefano takes the boy with him, finding refuge in a seemingly abandoned house in a secluded woodland. But the house is far from vacant. Stefano wakes at the arrival of its owner, Erich, a former German soldier, who invites the travelers to stay until they can find safe passage home. Stefano cautiously agrees, intrigued by the disarming German, his reclusive neighbor Rosalind, and her traumatized husband.

At the end of the Second World War, Cyril Conroy combines luck and a single canny investment to begin an enormous real estate empire, propelling his family from poverty to enormous wealth. His first order of business is to buy the Dutch House, a lavish estate in the suburbs outside of Philadelphia. Meant as a surprise for his wife, the house sets in motion the undoing of everyone he loves. The story is told by Cyril’s son Danny, as he and his older sister, the brilliantly acerbic and self-assured Maeve, are exiled from the house where they grew up by their stepmother.

It all began with the theft of the Orb that protected the West from the evil God Torak. Before that, Garion had been a simple farm boy. Afterward, he discovered he's a sorcerer. Now, at last, the Orb has been regained and the quest nears its end. Of course, the questors must still escape from a crumbling enemy fortress, flee across a desert filled with Murgo soldiers, and avoid the Grolim Hierarchs seeking to destroy them with dark magic.

Ryland Grace is the sole survivor on a desperate, last-chance mission - and if he fails, humanity and the Earth itself will perish. Except that right now, he doesn't know that. He can't even remember his own name, let alone the nature of his assignment or how to complete it. All he knows is that he's been asleep for a very, very long time. And he's just been awakened to find himself millions of miles from home, with nothing but two corpses for company.

Kelson Haldane is King of Gwynedd, the first liege of magical Deryni heritage in centuries. But the priesthood of the Eleven Kingdoms has no intention of ceding its power - even if it means inciting civil war.