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Adult Services Staff Picks December 2025 |
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Alchemised
by SenLinYu
Recommended by: Kelly
Once a promising alchemist, Helena Marino is now a prisoner of war and of her own mind. Her Resistance friends and allies have been brutally murdered, her abilities suppressed, and the world she knew destroyed. In the aftermath of a long war, Paladia's new ruling class of corrupt guild families and depraved necromancers, whose vile undead creatures helped bring about their victory, holds Helena captive. According to Resistance records, she was a healer of little importance within their ranks. But Helena has inexplicable memory loss of the months leading up to her capture, making her enemies wonder: Is she truly as insignificant as she appears, or are her lost memories hiding some vital piece of the Resistance's final gambit?
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The Christmas Guest
by Peter Swanson
Recommended by: Rachel
When a last-minute invitation from fellow student Emma Chapman brings her to Starvewood Hall for the holidays, Ashley Smith, an American art student in London, discovers this seemingly charming English village’s grim history when a local girl is brutally murdered and Emma’s brother is linked to the crime.
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The Elopement
by Gill Hornby
Recommended by: Sarah V.
1820. Mary Dorothea Knatchbull is living under the sole charge of her widowed father, Sir Edward – a man of strict principles and high Christian values. But when her father marries Miss Fanny Knight of Godmersham Park, Mary’s life is suddenly changed. Her new stepmother comes from a large, happy and sociable family and Fanny’s sisters become Mary’s first friends. Her aunt, Miss Cassandra Austen of Chawton, is especially kind. Her brothers are not only amusing, but handsome and charming. And as Mary Dorothea starts to bloom into a beautiful young woman, she forms an especial bond with one Mr Knight in particular.
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The Killer Question
by Janice Hallett
Recommended by: Sarah R.
A weekly trivia night has revived Sue and Mal Eastwood's struggling rural pub, until a body is found nearby and a suspiciously successful new team arrives; five years later the pub lies derelict and the Eastwoods’ nephew Dominic is determined to discover what happened.
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Only Son
by Kevin Moffett
Recommended by: Laura
Florida, 1982. A nine-year-old watches as his dead father's possessions are hauled away: his clothes and tools, his faux-leather recliner. Twenty-five years later, adrift in suburban Southern California, married with a son of his own, he's still trying to sort through the fragments of his father's death while imparting his own sketchy education onto his son. After discovering a travel journal he didn't know his father kept, he and his son light out on a road trip, retracing the father's mystifying journey. As he strains to decipher his father's notes, his relationship with his son begins to take on new heft and shape.
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Our Last Resort
by Clémence Michallon
Recommended by: Brandee
Having grown apart after an unspeakable tragedy, Frida and Gabriel try to start fresh at the Ara Hotel in Escalante, Utah, and it feels like paradise - until the dead body of the young wife of a powerful, much older husband is discovered and suspicion falls on Gabriel.
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Sense & Sensibility
by Jane Austen
Recommended by: Colleen
To wish was to hope, and to hope was to expect. Jane Austen's first published novel, Sense and Sensibility, is an entertaining tale of flirtation and folly that revolves around two starkly different sisters, Elinor and Marianne. While Elinor is thoughtful, considerate and calm, her younger sister is emotional and wildly romantic. Both are looking for a husband, but neither Elinor's reason nor Marianne's passion can lead them to perfect happiness. Startling secrets, unexpected twists, and heartless betrayals interrupt the marriage games that follow.
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What We Can Know
by Ian McEwan
Recommended by: Joanna
2014: Poet Francis Blundy honors his wife’s birthday at a dinner by reading aloud a new poem 'A Corona for Vivien’. Little does anyone there know that in the future, people will speculate about the message of this poem, a copy of which has never been found. 2119: In the future, a nuclear accident submerges much of the western world. In England, Thomas Metcalfe, a scholar and researcher, longs for the early twenty-first century as he chases the ghost of a poem, ‘A Corona for Vivian’. When he stumbles across a clue that may lead to the poem’s discovery, a story is revealed of entangled loves and a brutal crime - destroying his assumptions about people he thought he knew intimately well.
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100 Unforgettable Dresses
by Hal Rubenstein
Recommended by: Lori
A must for all fashion enthusiasts, movie buffs, and celebrity watchers, 100 Unforgettable Dresses showcases the behind-the-scenes stories of the most memorable, influential dresses from the worlds of fashion, film, television, society, and politics.
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