How My World Turns by Eileen Fulton & Brett Bolton, 285 pages

 Eileen Fulton played Lisa on "As the World Turns" for decades. This is her story.

The Road out of Hell: Sanford Clark and the True Story of the Wineville Murders by Anthony Flacco with Jerry Clark, 285 pages

 From 1926 to 1928, Gordon Stewart Northcott committed at least 20 murders on a chicken ranch outside of Los Angeles. His nephew, Sanford Clark, was held captive there from the age of 13 to 15, and was the sole surviving victim of the killing spree. Here, acclaimed crime writer Anthony Flacco—using never-before-heard information from Sanford’s son Jerry Clark—tells the real story behind the case that riveted the nation.  

Forced by Northcott to take part in the murders, Sanford carried tremendous guilt all his life. Yet despite his youth and the trauma, he helped gain some justice for the dead and their families by testifying at Northcott’s trial–which led to his conviction and execution. It was a shocking story, but perhaps the most shocking part of all is the extraordinarily ordinary life Clark went on to live as a decorated WWII vet, a devoted husband of 55 years, a loving father, and a productive citizen.

In dramatizing one of the darkest cases in American crime, Flacco constructs a riveting psychological drama about how Sanford was able to detoxify himself from the evil he’d encountered, offering the ultimately redemptive story of one man’s remarkable ability to survive a nightmare and emerge intact.

The Curse of the Pharaohs by Elizabeth Peters, 285 pages

 Victorian Amelia Peabody continues to journal her Egypt adventures, toddler Ramses left in England. Husband Radcliffe Emerson's old friend Lady Baskerville fears a curse killed her husband Sir Henry, and soon engages the attentions of American Cyrus. The will funds continued excavation. But a lady dressed in white floats, flutters, spreads fear, and more death.

Damnation Island: Poor, Sick, Mad & Criminal in 19th-Century New York by Stacy Horn, 285 pages

Today it is known as Roosevelt Island. In 1828, when New York City purchased this narrow, two-mile-long island in the East River, it was called Blackwell’s Island. There, over the next hundred years, the city would send its insane, indigent, sick, and criminal. Told through the gripping voices of Blackwell’s inhabitants, as well as the period’s city officials, reformers, and journalists (including the famous Nellie Bly), Stacy Horn has crafted a compelling and chilling narrative.
 
Damnation Island recreates what daily life was like on the island, what politics shaped it, and what constituted charity and therapy in the nineteenth century. Throughout the book, we return to the extraordinary Blackwell’s missionary Reverend French, champion of the forgotten, as he ministers to these inmates, battles the bureaucratic mazes of the Corrections Department and a corrupt City Hall, testifies at salacious trials, and in his diary wonders about man’s inhumanity to man.
 
For history fans, and for anyone interested in the ways we care for the least fortunate among us, Damnation Island is an eye-opening look at a closed and secretive world. With a tale that is exceedingly relevant today, Horn shows us how far we’ve come—and how much work still remains.

The High King by Lloyd Alexander, 285 pages

In this magnificent finale to the chronicles of Prydain, the whole land is the stage for the ultimate clash between the forces of good and evil which determines the fate of Prydain and of Taran, the Assistant Pig-Keeper who wanted to be a hero.
The last and greatest quest of Taran and his companions begins when the sword Drnywn, the most powerful weapon in the kingdom, falls into the hands of Arawn Death-Lord, threatening Prydain with annihilation. Taran and Prince Gwydion raise an army to march against Arawn's terrible cohorts, human and inhuman, in a decisive struggle which may be their last. After a winter march filled with danger, the challenge of battle and the tragedy of defeat, love and sorrow. Taran and his army finally arrive at the very portal of Annuvin, Arawn's stronghold and, ultimately, to a decision for Taran that is the most crucial of his life.

The Sword of Pleasure by Peter Green, 285 pages

This novel is a reconstruction of the life of Lucius Cornelius Sulla, who ruled the dying Roman Republic forty years before the death of Julius Caesar, as he himself might have written it.
Sulla was born in an uneasy generation which had lost faith in the stern yet obsolete code of the old Republic, and his dilemma was one with which we are all too familiar today. Out of Peter Green's reconstruction of the historical scene Sulla emerges not as a figure in a history book but as an intensely human personality - full-blooded, hardened by disappointment, a tyrant despite himself. Through him and his friends and enemies - not to mention his four remarkable wives - the author brings the Roman Republic to life for us in all its splendor and cruelty.

Undead and Done by MaryJanice Davidson, 285 pages

It had been a well-kept secret for centuries, but now the existence of vampires is all over the news, thanks to Betsy Taylor's half sister (and the frustrated former Antichrist), Laura. Life for the undead will never be the same, and it's up to Betsy to do some damage control. But her interview on the local news doesn't exactly put out the fire. It more or less pours kerosene on it.
With all the added attention on supernatural beings, the werewolves are more than a little agitated (never a good thing) and demand that Betsy gets her interview skills, and her family, in order. And while thing go from bad to worse in the world, Hell continues to be hell-especially when Betsy's new parole program becomes about as complicated as you'd expect.
With a PR team launching a vampire-friendly campaign, the devil at large and out to make trouble, and mermaids on hand to see who falls-and how hard-the end isn't just near. It's here. And if anyone knows how to go out with a bang, it's the queen of Hell.

Rhythm & Clues by Sue Ann Jaffarian, 285 pages

Another Odelia Grey murder mystery. She and her family really are corpse magnets.