Frank Carlson Library

In 1980 Pass Christian, Mississippi, salvage diver Bobby Western, after a plane crash, discovers that the pilot's flight bag, the plane's black box and the tenth passenger are missing, submerging him in a conspiracy beyond his understanding as he is shadowed in body and spirit by the past and present. Pass Christian, Mississippi, 1980. It is three in the morning when Bobby Western zips up the jacket of his wet suit and plunges from a Coast Guard...

Robbed of the powerful object she needed to save her mother, time traveler Etta Spencer is stranded far from home and the privateer she loves before resolving to destroy the astrolabe, a mission that is challenged by a shattering revelation.

The best new writing, photography, art, and reportage from and about California-in the "rich and engrossing" series for travelers and armchair travelers (Times Literary Supplement). From the Gold Rush to Hollywood's golden age to the rise of Silicon Valley, California has long stood as the brightest symbol of the American dream. In recent years, however, the country's mainstream media has been declaring with increasing frequency-and thinly veiled...

Since its earliest interactions with the West, India has been the object of a gross misinterpretation, a vague association with ideas of peace, spiritualism, the magic of the fakirs. Constantly reframed and mythologized by Westerners fleeing their supposedly rationalist societies, India continues to fascinate with its millennia-old history, shrines on every street corner, ancient beliefs and rituals, and unique linguistic and cultural diversity. Today...

The best new writing, photography, art, and reportage from and about Rome-in the series that's "like a literary vacation" (Publishers Weekly). If you believe recent chatter about Rome-in the media and by its residents-the city is on the verge of collapse. Each year, it slips further down the ranking of the world's most livable cities. To the problems faced by all large capitals-hit-and-run tourism, traffic, the divide between elegant, Airbnb-dominated...

Explore Japanese society in the lively series that collects the best new writing, photography, art, and reportage from around the world. Visitors from the West look with amazement, and sometimes concern, at Japan's social structures and unique, complex culture industry; the gigantic scale of its tech corporations and the resilience of its traditions; the extraordinary diversity of the subcultures that flourish in its "post-human" megacities. The...

Turkish culture and history is explored in the wide-ranging series that is "like a literary vacation" (Publishers Weekly). The birth of the "New Turkey," as the country's President Recep Tayyip Erdogan has called his own creation, is an exemplary story of the rise of "illiberal democracies" through the erosion of civil liberties, press freedom, and the independence of the judicial system. Turkey was a complex country long before the rise of its new...

Jane's time aboard the ship grows short as questions and answers rush at her. The dark shadow that stalks the halls makes its demands, and Archer makes his vows to her. She is torn between her love for the man and her lust for the book, but a surprise awaits her as she finally learns the truth about her time as a passenger aboard this strange cruise. ** The Passenger's Pleasure series is an episodic serial with cliffhangers and sensual fun. **

Jane Johnson is Plain Jane to everyone in her life, even herself. She longs for some excitement to penetrate her life with the full thrust of change. Her wish is granted when she wins a contest she doesn't remember entering and finds herself aboard a fashionable cruise liner with a rich, handsome neighbor in the next suite. He's in possession of a most unusual book that fills her with a deep, sensual longing she can't overcome. A desire that threatens...

Jane's terrifying ordeal grows more mysterious. The shadow that haunts the halls of the ship stalks her, as well, and she finds herself torn in her trust of Max Archer. Accusations swirl around him and the captain is forced to take action, but against all the evidence Jane believes him to be innocent. Through all the doubt the book is a lighthouse of happiness for her, granting her delicious delights in the night even as her life in the day becomes...