My Wartime Italian Roots and My Canadian Dream

THE RIGHT PHRASE FOR EVERY SITUATION . . . EVERY TIME

The ability to craft an employee review that is meaningful and change-driven is what separates average supervisors from great managers. How often, though, have you struggled to find the most appropriate words for your needs?

This completely revised and updated second edition of Perfect Phrases for Performance Reviews provides hundreds of ready-made phrases you can use to clearly communicate any employee's performance in 74 different skill areas. Learn the most effective language for:

• Crafting an accurate, carefully worded assessment
• Documenting behaviors and accomplishments
• Guiding and developing promising workers
• Conducting face-to-face interviews

A mother faces her greatest fear

One afternoon in May, Zoe Duncan's thirteen-year-old daughter goes missing from her own backyard. The police think Samantha ran away because she's unhappy about her mother's upcoming marriage-but Zoe doesn't believe it. In fact, she's willing to do anything to bring Sam home, even if it means losing her job, her beautiful home, her fiancé. Even if it means divulging all her secrets to a private investigator.

A detective faces his hardest case

Jonathan Stivers is a P.I. who donates his time to The Last Stand, a victims' charity in Sacramento. He's good at what he does, the best. But never has he had fewer leads to work with-or been more attracted to a client. Jonathan's sure of only one thing: Sam was taken by someone close to the family. He doesn't know how close until he realizes that the "perfect" couple next door is anything but….

The Reverend Lee Barker went missing nineteen years ago…

And the people of Stillwater, Mississippi, believe they know why. They're convinced he was murdered-by his stepson, Clay Montgomery. But only Clay-and his mother and sisters-can say for sure. They were the only ones there that fateful night, the only ones who know what really happened. And they're not talking.

Allie McCormick is a cold-case detective from Chicago. After a particularly difficult divorce, she's returned to Stillwater with her six-year-old daughter to find the peace she once knew in her hometown, and to work for the local police force while she's starting over. But when Clay's powerful enemies join forces to put him behind bars, Allie feels duty bound to uncover the truth. Her instincts tell her he didn't murder the Reverend Lee Barker.

Maybe Clay's a dark and brooding man with more than his share of secrets, but he was just sixteen at the time. And he's not a cold-blooded killer. At least, that's what Allie believes-until she finds proof that behind the preacher's pious demeanor lurked the heart of a monster.

Then she has to ask herself whether justice has already been done….

Early on the morning of her eleventh birthday, on the beach beside her North Carolina home, Daria Cato receives an unbelievable gift from the sea-an abandoned newborn baby. When the infant's identity cannot be uncovered, she is adopted by Daria's loving family. But her silent secrets continue to haunt Daria.

Now, twenty years later, Shelly has grown into an unusual, ethereal young woman whom Daria continues to protect. But when Rory Taylor, a friend from Daria's childhood and now a television producer, returns at Shelly's request to do a story about the circumstances surrounding her birth, something precarious shifts in the small town of Kill Devil Hills.

The more questions Rory asks, the more unsettled the tiny community becomes, as closely guarded secrets and the sins of that long-ago summer begin to surface. Piece by piece, the mystery of summer's child is being exposed, a mystery that no one involved-not Shelly, Daria, not even Rory-is prepared to face.

Barbara Delinsky

Silken Sands

It sounds too good to be true—housesitting for three months, by herself, on a small island off the coast of Maine. Associate professor Cynthia Blake couldn’t ask for a better place to finish her dissertation. No phone. No television. No distractions. At least, that’s what she thinks—until she meets Jonathan Roaman. The tall, tanned, impossibly tempting owner of the island, Jonathan is nothing like the “old miser” she expected. And Cynthia is more than Jonathan could have ever hoped for…When the surf hits the sand, all bets are off: How can they resist each other? Sometimes a summer fling is all it takes to find true love…

A Father's Dying Wish. A Husband's Shocking Suicide. A Daughter's Inexplicable Silence.

Laura Brandon's promise to her dying father was simple: to visit an elderly woman she'd never heard of before. A woman who remembers nothing-except the distant past. Visiting Sarah Tolley seemed a small enough sacrifice to make.

But Laura's promise results in another death. Her husband's. And after their five-year-old daughter, Emma, witnesses her father's suicide, Emma refuses to talk about it-to talk at all.

Frantic and guilt ridden, Laura contacts the only person who may be able to help. A man she's met only once-six years before. A man who doesn't know he's Emma's real father.

Guided only by a child's silence and an old woman's fading memories, the two unravel a tale of love and despair, of bravery and unspeakable evil. A tale that's shrouded in silence…and that unbelievably links them all.