Hall Ways

Since childhood, Ethnobotanist Hannah Heronstone has had a passion for healing plants and their use through the centuries. Orphaned at birth, she's unaware of her connection to an ancient lineage of cunning women, healers, and yes, even witches. But they have not forgotten about her.

Texas trophy wife Claudia Grant dies after she causes an early morning car accident. In the other vehicle, Daniel Morrison, an attorney struggling with a pending divorce and pill addiction, panics and leaves the scene. The victim’s husband, congressional candidate Hayden Grant, is a corrupt politician who seizes the opportunity and places a million-dollar reward on Morrison’s capture. Dead or alive.

Ramón López was born along the US–Mexico border but is determined to get out and embrace the American dream—and he’s not sure whether his complicated family is a help or a hindrance. As the son of immigrants, as Ramón grows, his admiration for his entrepreneurial father sours as he watches his dad’s dreams of success wither on the vine. Ramón’s mother is constantly preoccupied with his younger brother, who struggles with intellectual disabilities. And the outside world is rife with danger and temptations threatening to distract Ramón from his dreams of making it to New York.

The China Riddle is an entertaining, fast-paced CIA thriller—set in Malibu, California, Washington, D.C., and Dallas, Texas—at the intersection of spy balloons, California fires, and an unresolved Presidential assassination twenty years ago. National Airlines executive Lonny Jones and former CIA operative James Gill risk everything to unravel the mystery as the conspirators close in to silence them.

Business is slow at the No. 1 Ladies' Detective Agency, so slow in fact that for the first time in her estimable career Precious Ramotswe has reluctantly agreed to take a holiday. The promise of a week of uninterrupted peace is short-lived, however, when she meets a young boy named Samuel, a troublemaker who is himself in some trouble. Once she learns more about Samuel's sad story, Mma Ramotswe feels compelled to step in and help him find his way out of a bad situation.

When the British royal family donates a beautiful bronze statue to the people of the Cayman Islands, everyone is excited to see the Christmas Eve presentation go off with a bang - especially one man with a grudge. Dive boat operators and friends AJ Bailey, Nora Sommer, Boone Fischer, and Emily Durand planned on spending Christmas together, but as the royal visit nears, they’re thrown into the middle of the festivities - and a devious plot to assassinate his royal highness.

The Dunwhitty family is flying high until their carefully choreographed life falls apart during the 2008 Great Recession. Lisa's firm goes belly-up while Michael's shuts down after selling faulty heart valves. Desperate, Lisa insists they regroup by seeking refuge in rural Central Texas on land she inherits from a distant relative she barely knows.

A veteran of the Great War, Jesse Cole is grateful for the quiet life he now leads. But when his closest friend runs afoul of local criminals Frog and Squirrel Fenley, Jesse is forced to spin his moral compass and enter a violent and volatile underworld. There he encounters corrupt lawmen, hired assassins, and a dark family secret that will upend all he once knew. Complicating matters are Texas Ranger Amon Atkins—who arrives to investigate the Fenleys just as their empire is threatened by a deadly new competitor—and the green-eyed, raven-haired Adaline, a love Jesse thought he’d lost forever.

Sorrowful widows, vengeful jezebels, innocent maidens, wronged lovers, former slaves, the odd axe-murderess—America's female ghosts differ widely in background, class, and circumstance. Yet one thing unites them: their ability to instill fascination and fear, long after death. Here are the stories behind some of the best-known among them, as well as the lesser-known—though no less powerful. A Haunted History of Invisible Women offers a unique lens on the role these ghostly legends play both within the spook-seeking corners of our minds and in the consciousness of a nation.

1918: As the Great War rages, Jessie Carson takes a leave of absence from the New York Public Library to work for the American Committee for Devastated France. Founded by millionaire Anne Morgan, this group of international women help rebuild destroyed French communities just miles from the front. Upon arrival, Jessie strives to establish something that the French have never seen—children’s libraries. She turns ambulances into bookmobiles and trains the first French female librarians. Then she disappears.