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The Astral Library
by Kate Quinn
From New York Times bestselling author Kate Quinn comes a gorgeously written fantastical adventure which poses the question: Have you ever wished you could live inside a book? Welcome to the Astral Library, where books are not just objects, but doors to new worlds, new lives, and new futures.Alexandria Alix Watson has learned one lesson from her barren childhood in the foster-care system: unlike people, books will never let you down. Working three dead-end jobs to make ends meet and knowing college is a pipe dream, Alix takes nightly refuge in the high-vaulted reading room at the Boston Public Library, escaping into her favorite fantasy novels and dreaming of far-off lands. Until the day she stumbles through a hidden door and meets the Librarian: the ageless, acerbic guardian of a hidden library where the desperate and the lost escape to new lives...inside their favorite books.The Librarian takes a dazzled Alix under her wing, but before she can escape into the pages of her new life, a shadowy enemy emerges to threaten everyone the Astral Library has ever helped protect. Aided by a dashing costume-shop owner, Alix and the Librarian flee through the Regency drawing rooms of Jane Austen to the back alleys of Sherlock Holmes and the champagne-soaked parties of The Great Gatsby as danger draws inexorably closer. But who does their enemy really wish to destroy--Alix, the Librarian, or the Library itself? Includes a bonus conversation with Kate Quinn, Saskia Maarleveld, and Tessa Woodward (editor of The Astral Library).
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The Devil's Daughter
by Danielle Steel
NATIONAL BESTSELLER - Two diametrically different sisters--one calculating and egotistical, the other honorable, kind, and compassionate--clash in this compelling novel from #1 New York Times bestselling author Danielle Steel. Graduating magna cum laude from MIT is the happiest day of Billie Banks's life, although her family is not part of it. Her mother, who always supported her, died when Billie was seventeen. Since then, her father has been slowly drinking himself to death on the family farm in Iowa, and she and her younger sister, Mickie, have grown even more estranged. Growing up, the siblings could not have been more different. Billie was shy, small, bookish, more like their mother; tall, blond Mickie was boldly sexual, craving attention, and lacking empathy for anyone, like their father. Despite Billie's attempts to look after Mickie following their mother's death, her sister consistently treated her with cruelty. So when Mickie invites Billie to move in with her in Los Angeles, Billie is both wary and hopeful. Taking a leap of faith, she joins her sister on the West Coast. While Mickie lands a questionable modeling job and falls in with a fast crowd, Billie begins working at a pathology lab and starts dating a warm, supportive reporter at the Los Angeles Times. But then the siblings' difficult history once again rises to the surface. This gripping story of a sisterly bond strained to the breaking point by narcissism and temptation is an unforgettable tale of good and evil from Danielle Steel.
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One & Only
by Maurene Goo
She knows what her happily ever after looks like. And it's not him. Cassia Park believes in soul mates. Fated love stories. It's her family business, after all--for centuries, from Korea to Los Angeles, Park women have peered into clients' past lives to find their one true love, their fated. This magical secret is why One & Only Matchmaking has a 100% guarantee...for everyone but Cassia. For ten years, Cass has been searching for her fated, a man named Daniel Nam. But he's still nowhere to be found. And so, on the eve of her 40th birthday, Cass decides to do something for herself. She impulsively has a fling with Ellis. He's twenty-eight, indecently handsome, and not destined to be the love of her life. But she's surprised by their connection and their fling feels like something more--up to the moment he introduces her to his boss...Daniel Nam. As she battles between fate and chance, head and heart, a family secret is revealed that will make her question everything she's ever known. Cassia will have to decide if she'll follow her fate...or make her own.
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Skylark
by Paula McLain
1664. Alouette Voland is the daughter of a master dyer at the famed Gobelin Tapestry Works, who secretly dreams of escaping her circumstances and creating her own masterpiece. When her father is unjustly imprisoned, Alouette's efforts to save him lead to her own confinement in the notorious Salpãetriáere asylum, where thousands of women are held captive and cruelly treated. But within its grim walls, she discovers a small group of brave allies, and the possibility of a life bigger than she ever imagined. 1939. Kristof Larson is a medical student beginning his psychiatric residency in Paris, whose neighbors on the Rue de Gobelins are a Jewish family who have fled Poland. When Nazi forces descend on the city, Kristof becomes their only hope for survival, even as his work as a doctor is jeopardized.
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Vigil
by George Saunders
#1 NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER - After his spectacular Lincoln in the Bardo, Saunders returns . . . with a new novel even more spectacular than the last.--Los Angeles Times A daring (Time) novel from the #1 New York Times bestselling, Booker Prize-winning author of A Swim in a Pond in the Rain and Tenth of December, taking place at the bedside of an oil company CEO in the twilight hours of his life as he is ferried from this world into the next Vibrant, fiendishly clever . . . Vigil is pure Saunders: the death of empathy, he insists, is greatly exaggerated.--The Boston Globe Not for the first time, Jill Doll Blaine finds herself hurtling toward earth, reconstituting as she falls, right down to her favorite black pumps. She plummets towards her newest charge, yet another soul she must usher into the afterlife, and lands headfirst in the circular drive of his ornate mansion. She has performed this sacred duty 343 times since her own death. Her charges, as a rule, have been greatly comforted in their final moments. But this charge, she soon discovers, isn't like the others. The powerful K. J. Boone will not be consoled, because he has nothing to regret. He lived a big, bold, epic life, and the world is better for it. Isn't it? Vigil transports us, careening, through the wild final evening of a complicated man. Visitors begin to arrive (worldly and otherworldly, alive and dead), clamoring for a reckoning. Birds swarm the dying man's room; a black calf grazes on the love seat; a man from a distant, drought-ravaged village materializes; two oil-business cronies from decades past show up with chilling plans for Boone's postdeath future. With the wisdom, playfulness, and explosive imagination we've come to expect, George Saunders takes on the gravest issues of our time--the menace of corporate greed, the toll of capitalism, the environmental perils of progress--and, in the process, spins a tale that encompasses life and death, good and evil, and the thorny question of absolution.
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Queen Esther
by John Irving
After forty years, John Irving returns to the world of his bestselling classic novel and Academy Award-winning film, The Cider House Rules, revisiting the orphanage in St. Cloud's, Maine, where Dr. Wilbur Larch takes in Esther--a Viennese-born Jew whose life is shaped by anti-Semitism. Esther Nacht is born in Vienna in 1905. Her father dies on board the ship to Portland, Maine; her mother is murdered by anti-Semites in Portland. Dr. Larch knows it won't be easy to find a Jewish family to adopt Esther; in fact, he won't find any family who'll adopt her. When Esther is fourteen, soon to be a ward of the state, Dr. Larch meets the Winslows, a philanthropic New England family with a history of providing foster care for unadopted orphans. The Winslows aren't Jewish, but they despise anti-Semitism. Esther's gratitude for the Winslows is unending; even as she retraces her roots back to Vienna, she never stops loving and protecting the Winslows. In the final chapter, set in Jerusalem in 1981, Esther Nacht is seventy-six. John Irving's sixteenth novel is a testament to his enduring ability to weave complex characters and intricate narratives that challenge and captivate. Queen Esther is not just a story of survival but a profound exploration of identity, belonging, and the enduring impact of history on our personal lives showcasing why Irving remains one of the world's most beloved, provocative, and entertaining authors--a storyteller of our time and for all time.
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Contact your librarian for more great books!
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