Jaymie Shoff

In this powerful true crime memoir, an award-winning identity theft expert tells the shocking story of the duplicity and betrayal that inspired her career and nearly destroyed her family. Axton Betz-Hamilton grew up in small-town Indiana in the early '90s. When she was 11 years old, her parents both had their identities stolen. Their credit ratings were ruined, and they were constantly fighting over money. This was before the age of the Internet, when identity theft became more commonplace, so authorities and banks were clueless and reluctant to help Axton's parents.

Why we think it’s a great listen: Some books are meant to be read; others are meant to be heard – Water for Elephants falls into the second group, and is one of the best examples we have of how a powerful performance enhances a great story. Nonagenarian Jacob Jankowski reflects back on his wild and wondrous days with a circus. It's the Depression Era and Jacob, finding himself parentless and penniless, joins the Benzini Brothers Most Spectacular Show on Earth.

Stella Fain has a rule for men she likes: make them wait. But the gorgeous Jay proves an exception to the rule when he bowls Stella off her Prada wedges at a press junket on the Cote d'Azur.

Born a generation apart and with very different ideas about love and family, Mariam and Laila are two women brought jarringly together by war, by loss, and by fate. As they endure the ever escalating dangers around them, in their home as well as in the streets of Kabul, they come to form a bond that makes them both sisters and mother-daughter to each other, and that will ultimately alter the course not just of their own lives but of the next generation.

New York Times best-selling author Jodi Picoult explores a complex and troubled American family in The Tenth Circle, the tale of a broken-hearted teenage girl and the father who will do anything to protect her. High school freshman Trixie Stone comes home from a party and says the boy she loves, and who recently dumped her, sexually assaulted her. Her father never imagined anything so devastating could happen, and now he's not sure how to help his daughter.

Hot on the heels of international best sellers Confessions of a Shopaholic and Shopaholic Takes Manhattan comes the third light and funny adventure starring Becky Bloomwood, the stylish Brit with a spending problem. Luke, Becky's knight in shining armor, proposes and the real trouble begins. Becky's mom wants a backyard wedding in England. Luke's high-society mother wants a glamorous ceremony at the Plaza. Becky's facing two weddings, on two continents, on the same day!

In many ways, Carrie Parker is like any other eight-year-old: playing make-believe, dreading school, dreaming of faraway places. But even her imaginative mind can't shut out the realities of her impoverished North Carolina home or help her protect her younger sister, Emma.

In 1970, one of Mississippi's more colorful weekly newspapers, The Ford County Times, went bankrupt. To the surprise and dismay of many, ownership was assumed by a 23 year-old college dropout, named Willie Traynor. The future of the paper looked grim until a young mother was brutally raped and murdered by a member of the notorious Padgitt family. Willie Traynor reported all the gruesome details, and his newspaper began to prosper.

On paper, Bette Robinson's life is good. At 26, she's got a great deal on an apartment in Manhattan, and she's on target to become an associate at the prestigious investment bank where she works with her best friend. Her 80-hour workweeks might keep her from socializing or dating outside her office walls, but she's paying her dues on the well-trod path to wealth and happiness. So when Bette quits her job like the impulsive girl she's never been, she has no idea what to do next.

John Crawford joined the Florida National Guard to pay for his college tuition; it had seemed a small sacrifice to give up one weekend a month and two weeks a year in exchange for a free education. But one semester short of graduating, and newly married, he was called to active duty, to serve in Kuwait, then on the front lines of the invasion of Iraq, and ultimately in Baghdad. While serving in Iraq, Crawford began writing short nonfiction stories, his account of what he and his fellow soldiers experienced.