Thomas G. Alexander’s "Brigham Young and the Expansion of the Mormon Faith" is a complex, reflective portrait of Brigham Young, the nineteenth-century Mormon leader who brought his flock to Utah, where they found a permanent and... Read More

Julia Bricklin’s "Blonde Rattlesnake" is the true crime account of the 1933 spree of robberies and assaults committed by Tom White and his wife, Burmah. The couple terrorized the Los Angeles area for eight weeks, springing out of... Read More

In JoAnn Franklin’s novel "Bring the Rain", Dart Sommers has an established career as a psychology professor at a North Carolina university. She is also the founder of The Raindrop Institute, a think tank dedicated to ending poverty.... Read More

Abbigail N. Rosewood’s compelling "If I Had Two Lives" begins in 1990s Vietnam as a young girl is brought to a military camp. The girl’s mother—an ambitious reformer who is thwarted by the corrupt Vietnamese power structure—has... Read More

David Elias’s "Elizabeth of Bohemia" brings Elizabeth Stuart, the daughter of England’s King James I, to life. Elizabeth was married at age sixteen to Prince Frederick of the Palatinate. Her intelligence, candor, and strong will... Read More

Audrey J. Whitson’s haunting "The Death of Annie the Water Witcher by Lightning" is set in western Canada’s Majestic, Alberta—a town plagued by drought and a bleak economy, hardly able to live up to its imposing name. Elderly... Read More

Kathleen Sprows Cummings’s thorough and spirited "A Saint of Our Own" looks at the Catholic community in the United States and its desire for an American saint. Well-researched in historical and religious context, the book conveys the... Read More

In Aatif Rashid’s witty and dissolute "Portrait of Sebastian Khan", a Muslim American college student is conflicted by his love for free-spirited pleasure and the more conventional realities of accomplishment, commitment, and... Read More