Bridgeworks: 30 books

Blindside, written by a former Navy legal officer, is the story of Commander Neal Olen, 44, an intelligence officer who faces charges of adultery and possibly leaking secrets. It is an insider's look at the archaic and potentially crushing machinery of military justice. Olen's troubles begin in 1999...

Set in a blue-collar Long Island suburb in the 1970's, this is a story of the awkwardness and agony of childhood. An eleven-year-old Catholic school student writes a Passion play, ends up in the role of Christ, and develops his own Messiah complex.

This book is the story of the struggle for reconciliation by three men who return to their changed hometown along very different paths—Cappy Giberson from journalism school, Drayton Hunt, his biological father, from prison, and Tick Giberson from a traveling evangelist's life.

The short stories in this collection are about contemporary women, the frontiers they must cross to sustain close relationships, and their struggles to balance society's expectations with their own needs. The relationships examined in these stories are with husbands, lovers, parents, children, friends....

A witty tale of marriage and midlife longing, as a taked-for-granted-wife pursues a fantasy love via e-mail.

This novel is set against the backdrop of Iran's turbulent modern history, is a saga of an indentured servant's devotion and love for his masters during the years 1928 to 1981.

Abou Ben Adhem, a Palestinian, copes by day with village political intrigue, Arab-Israeli violence and his own family turmoil, interspersed with nightly conversations with an angel named Cohen about the roots of mankind's behavior through the ages, in this poignant and ironic novel set in Gaza in 2001.

JP Griffin buys a small cabin cruiser and plans a carefree summer of boating on the waters surrounding Wisconsin's Door County peninsula, to escape the pain of a failed marriage. He learns the boat he purchased previously was owned by a respected Green Bay cop who had just been killed in a car crash, and learns the boat is full of dark secrets.

In this moving first novel, a Korean-American family faces not only intergenerational cultural conflicts between immigrant parents and their Americanized daughters, but also the results of a terrible prophecy, made by a fortune-teller 20 years earlier to Chinhominey, the long-estranged grandmother.

A tavern mistress in 1777 unravels a puzzle that involves stolen diplomatic letters, spies and avaricious traitors, while trying to find the killer of an overnight guest.

This is the story of the emotional awakening of a perceptive and precocious 14-year-old English girl, Tatum, while on vacation with her family in Tanzania.

When a land developer is found floating face down in a water hazard on the golf course of an exclusive Long Island country club, local homicide detective Karl Kanopka is called in to investigate.

Diane Morris, 33, a divorced single parent, balances work and home responsibilities as she drives Louisiana's rural highways to negotiate oil-drilling rights with a feisty widow, a black farmer and a self-important autocrat—neighboring landowners whose conflicting claims embroil Diane in intrigue and intimidation, mystery and arson.

A New York Times Notable Book of the Year.A Barnes & Noble Discover Great New Writers selection. A story of love and loss, and the evolution of farm life as the 20th century unfolded, narrated by a feisty farm woman as she reflects on her life.