"Samantha Casey loves everything about her job as an elementary school librarian on the sunny, historic island of Galveston, Texas--the goofy kids, the stately Victorian building, the butterfly garden. But when the school suddenly loses its beloved principal, it turns out his replacement will be none other than Duncan Carpenter--a former, unrequited crush of Sam's from many years before. When Duncan shows up as her new boss, though, he's nothing like...

"Set during the Great Depression, Sarah Bird's novel is about one woman--and a nation--struggling to be reborn from the ashes. July 3. 1932. Shivering and in shock, Evie Grace Devlin watches the Starlite Palace burn into the sea and wonders how she became a person who would cause a man to kill himself. She'd come to Galveston to escape a dark past in vaudeville and become a good person, a nurse. When that dream is cruelly thwarted, Evie is swept into...

"It's 1900, and Charlie feels lucky to live in Galveston, Texas. Sure, there are storms sometimes. But nobody worries about hurricanes. Even a famous weather expert says it's impossible for a strong hurricane to strike Galveston. Which is why few people worry on the morning of September 8, when a big storm starts to brew. But Charlie watches with growing horror as monster waves rise up from the sea, as the wind starts to scream. By night, much of...

Nicole Renard returns home to Galveston, Texas, to find her father deathly ill. Though she loves him, Nicole's father has always focused on what she's not. Not male. Not married. Not able to run Renard Shipping. Vowing to find a suitable husband to give her father the heir he desires before it's too late, Nicole sets out with the Renard family's greatest treasure as her dowry: the highly coveted Lafitte Dagger. But her father's rivals come after the...

On its surface, life in Houston is as you would expect: drive-in restaurants, souped-up cars, jukeboxes, teenagers discovering their sexuality. But beneath the glitz and superficial normalcy, a class war has begun, and it is nothing like the conventional portrayal of the decade. Against this backdrop Aaron Holland Broussard discovers the poignancy of first love and a world of violence he did not know existed. When Aaron spots the beautiful and gifted...