In the middle of the pandemic, while harvesting cherries at their Michigan farm, a family listens enraptured as the mother recounts her days in the theatre, particularly as the female lead in Our Town. Lara's tale of a famous actor with whom she shared both a stage and a romance causes her daughters to examine their own lives and reconsider the world and everything they thought they knew.

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Staff thoughts: Quaint and detailed, readers become as invested in Lara's story as her daughters. You will also feel you are there with them in the cherry groves as they make their living in an uncertain time.

In 1905, Irish immigrant Sophie will do anything for a family, and becomes a mail-order bride to be the stepmother to a troubled girl. She soon realizes that her husband is not what he seems and, in the shadow of the San Francisco earthquake of 1906, must figure out what to do next to save herself and her new family.

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Staff thoughts: A wonderful, captivating story of female friendships, motherly love, and resilience, which marries personal tragedy with a natural disaster.

Tom Hazard has a dangerous secret. He may look like an ordinary 41-year-old, but owing to a rare condition, he's been alive for centuries. Now, he just wants an ordinary life, but the Albatross Society, the secretive group which protects people like Tom, has one rule: Never fall in love. As painful memories of his past and the erratic behavior of the Society's watchful leader threaten to derail his new life, the one thing he can't have just happens to be the one thing that might save him.

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Staff thoughts: You'll travel in time with Tom through Shakespeare's London, the colonialization of the South Pacific, modern-day England, and Jazz Age Paris to name a few. This unique story shows what it's like to be a very different kind of outsider, trying to live as many normal lives as possible.

As one of the few witches in Britain, Mika Moon knows she has to hide her magic and keep her head down. Then an unexpected message arrives, begging her to travel to a remote and mysterious manor to teach three young witches how to control their magic. It breaks all of the rules, but Mika goes anyway, and is immediately tangled up in the lives and secrets of her three charges, an absent archaeologist, a retired actor, two long-suffering caretakers, and... Jamie. As Mika begins to find her place, the thought of belonging somewhere begins to feel like a real possibility. But magic isn't the only danger in the world, and Mika will need to decide whether to risk everything to protect a found family she didn't know she wanted.

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Staff thoughts: Mika's magical world and her found family provide just enough sweetness to get you through your end-of-winter blues. Try the audiobook to hear the narrator perfect quite a few British dialects.