Thunder & Lightning
The Scent of Rain & Lightning by Nancy Pickard (2010)
Twenty-six years ago, when she was only three months old, Jody Linder's father was murdered as she
slept in her cot. Her mother vanished, presumed dead. Local trouble-maker Billy Crosby confessed to
the murder and was locked up, leaving his wife and son to face the consequences in the small Kansas
town of Rose. But his son Collin, now a lawyer, has successfully petitioned for a retrial, which means
that - for now - Billy is back in town. Jody is horrified - the man who tore her family apart is living just
a few streets away. So why does she find herself wondering if Collin is right? What if Billy was
innocent, and her close-knit family has been hiding a terrible secret all these years?
The Handbook for Lightning Strike Survivors by Michele Young-Stone (2010)
On a sunny day in Chapel Hill, North Carolina, eight-year-old Becca Burke was struck by lightning. No
one believed her—not her philandering father or her drunk, love-sick mother—not even when her
watch kept losing time and a spooky halo of light appeared overhead in photographs. In rural
Arkansas, Buckley R. Pitank’s world seemed plagued by disaster. Ashamed but protective of his obese
mother, fearful of his scathing grandmother, and always running from bullies (including his pseudoevangelical stepfather), he needed a miracle to set him free. At thirteen years old, Buckley witnessed
a lightning strike that would change everything.
The Color of Lightning by Paulette Jiles (2009)
Searching for a life and future in the aftermath of the Civil War, freed Kentucky slave Britt Johnson
ventures west into unknown territory with his wife Mary and their three children. Settling on the
Texas plains, the Johnson family hopes to build upon the dreams that carried them from the
Confederate South to this new land of possibility. But while Britt is away establishing a business, these
dreams are abruptly shattered by a brutal Indian raid upon the settlement. Britt returns to face the
unthinkable: his friends and family gone, all slain or captured. He vows he will not rest until his family
is whole again. As he embarks on a journey of faith and courage, Britt finds himself embroiled in the
battle between the U.S. government and the native Americans whose land, freedom, and culture are
threatened.
The Ice Queen by Alice Hoffman (2005)
A woman is struck by lightning and finds her frozen heart suddenly burning. Be careful what you wish
for. A woman touched by tragedy as a child lives a quiet life, keeping others at a distance. She wants
it that way. Then she utters an idle wish and, while standing in her house, is struck by lightning. But
she survives. Now the chill in her spirit starts to have physical manifestations. She feels frozen from
the inside out, and everything red looks colorless. Hearing of another lightning strike survivor - a man
who was dead for forty minutes before reawakening - she goes in search of him. He is her perfect
opposite, a man whose breath can boil water and whose touch scorches. As an affair begins between
them, both hide dangerous secrets-the incidents that turned one to ice and the other to fire.
The Stormchasers by Jenna Blum (2010)
As a teenager, Karena Jorge had always been the one to look out for her twin brother Charles, who
suffers from bipolar disorder. But as Charles begins to refuse medication and his manic tendencies
worsen, Karena finds herself caught between her loyalty to her brother and her fear for his life.
Always obsessed with the weather - enraptured by its magical unpredictability that seemed to mirror
his own impulses - Charles starts chasing storms, and his behavior grows increasingly erratic .... until a
terrifying storm chase with Karena ends with deadly consequences, tearing the twins apart and
changing both of their lives forever.
Rolling Thunder by Chris Grabenstein (2010)
Memorial Day weekend in Sea Haven, New Jersey finds Danny and his partner, John Ceepak, working
crowd control at the grand opening of the Rolling Thunder roller coaster. “Big Paddy” O’Malley, owner
of the Rolling Thunder, his family, and assorted town dignitaries are also on hand to be the first to
experience the seaside town’s newest attraction.
They get more than they bargained for when Mrs. O’Malley has a heart attack and dies during the
coaster’s initial run. Though the death appears on the surface to be nothing more than an unfortunate
tragedy, Ceepak and Boyle are bothered by the lack of distress exhibited by several members of the
family and begin looking into the workings of the O’Malley clan. As they are doing so another death,
this one unquestionably a murder, confirms their suspicion that something is fishy in Sea Haven.
A Sound like Thunder by Sonny Brewer (2006)
Set in the small gulf town of Fairhope, Alabama, this coming-of-age tale begins in the winter of 1941.
Rove is a strong-shouldered and self-reliant sixteen-year-old, an uneven match for his volatile father,
Captain Dominus MacNee. Though he sometimes wishes the whiskey-soaked man would be lost at sea,
Rove himself is in danger of sinking in the troubled waters of his home life.
Navigating between memoir and memory, past and present, Rove reflects upon the people and
pursuits that have influenced his life: his passion for fishing; his much-loved grandmother; and Anna
Pearl Anderson, “the prettiest girl on the Eastern shore,”. Yet his greatest treasure, perhaps, is his
twenty-five-foot sloop, the Sea Bird. Given to him as a gift, the Sea Bird brings with it both the
possibility of salvation and the threat of disaster. As Rove dreams of escaping his tumultuous surroundings, it becomes
apparent that he can never truly shake the hold of his seaside home unless he confronts, head on, a startling truth.
The Storm by Margriet de Moor (2010)
On the night of January 31, 1953, a mountain of water, literally piled up out of the sea by a freak winter
hurricane, swept down onto the Netherlands, demolishing the dikes protecting the country and wiping
a quarter of its landmass from the map. It was the worst natural disaster to strike the Netherlands in
three hundred years.
The morning of the storm, Armanda asks her sister, Lidy, to take her place on a visit to her godchild in
the town of Zierikzee. In turn, Armanda will care for Lidy's two-year-old daughter and accompany
Lidy’s husband to a party. The sisters, both of them young and beautiful, look so alike that no one may
even notice. But what Armanda can’t know is that her little comedy is a provocation to fate: Lidy is
headed for the center of the deadly storm.
Summer of Storms by Judith Kelman (2001)
Anna Jameson was only three when her older sister was murdered—while her family slept through a
violent, hurricane-tossed night.
For thirty years, strange visions of that unsolved murder have haunted Anna's dreams. Now, as a
successful photojournalist she has returned to the scene of the horrendous crime to make sense of
the visions, to rid herself of the nightmares, and to discover the truth of what really happened during
the "summer of storms."
But what she exposes will be far worse than what she remembers.
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