"In Amy Suiter Clarke's brilliant sophomore thriller, a young woman returns to her rural Minnesota hometown for the funeral of her ex boyfriend-her first love-who died suspiciously, only to confront the ways a radical pastor's warped evangelical beliefs have poisoned the whole town"--

"Sixteen-year-old Vivian Apple returns home after the alleged 'Rapture' to find her devout parents gone and two mysterious holes in the roof. Vivian never believed in the Rapture, or the uber powerful Church of America. Now that she has been left behind, Vivan's quest for the truth begins"--

In Persian folklore, Syngue Sabour is the name of a magical black stone, a patience stone, which absorbs the plight of those who confide in it. It is believed that the day it explodes, after having received too much hardship and pain, will be the day of the Apocalypse. But here, the Syngue Sabour is not a stone but rather a man lying brain-dead with a bullet lodged in his neck. His wife is with him, sitting by his side. But she resents him for having...

When Abdi's family is kidnapped by a ruthless CIA agent, he's forced to become a child soldier with the ruthless jihadi group Al Shabaab-- embedded as a spy within the militia's ranks and to send dispatches on their plans to the Americans. Training and witnessing atrocity after atrocity, Abdi soon wonders if he's even pretending anymore. Forced into a suicide bomber's vest, he is left with stumps where two of his fingers used to be. He escapes, but...

Kadija is the music-loving daughter of a guardian of the library in the ancient city of Timbuktu, Ali is a former shepherd boy, trained by Islamist militants--and both are caught up in the war in Mali and on opposite sides of the stuggle to save the sacred Sufi manuscripts that the militants want to destroy.

After her father is arrested for the crime of having a foreign education, Parvana must transform herself into a boy and earn money for her family in Afghanistan.