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Happy Medium
by Sarah Adler
Gretchen Acorn, a fake spirit medium, is hired to cleanse a skeptical goat farmer's property where she is shocked to find herself face-to-face with a very real ghost who wants to help the landowners avoid a long-standing curse.
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When I Think of You
by Myah Ariel
When her college boyfriend, now a hot shot director, offers her a job on his next production, Kaliya finally gets her chance break into the movie-making business, and as a true connection forms between them, Hollywood politics and scandal threaten everything, forcing her to make an impossible choice.
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Death of a Master Chef
by Jean-Luc Bannalec
Commissaire Georges Dupin investigates the murder of a grand chef in a local market run by another restaurateur with whom he had a very public feud, in the ninth novel of the series following The Body by the Sea.
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Truly, Madly, Deeply
by Alexandria Bellefleur
Signing on to record a podcast sharing relationship advice, best-selling romance novelist Truly Livingston finds herself bickering with a cynical divorce lawyer and walks out, but when he tracks her down, asking for a fresh start, they go from enemies to something else entirely.
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Return to Blood
by Michael Bennett
When her daughter finds a young women's skeleton in the sand dunes of New Zealand, which is linked to a long-ago murder, former Auckland CIB detective Hana Westerman is drawn into the case and risks compromising her own peace and relationships if justice is to be served.
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Mistakes We Never Made
by Hannah Brown
Frenemies Emma and Finn are reunited for a mutual friend's wedding, but when the bride goes missing, they must embark on an adventure-filled road trip in hopes of saving someone else's happily-ever-after but find themselves crossing more than just state lines as old feelings spark once more.
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A Letter to the Luminous Deep
by Sylvie Cathrall
In the wake of the mysterious disappearances of independent scholar E. Cidnosin and academic Henerey Clel, their respective siblings, Sophy and Vyerin, study the couple's correspondence in search of clues to their fate. This epistolary fantasy romance is the 1st book in the Sunken Archive series. For fans of: A.S. Byatt's Possession; Patricia A. McKillip's The Bell at Sealey Head; or Nick Bantock's Griffin and Sabine books.
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Rough Trade
by Katrina Carrasco
Alma Rosales, when two murders are linked to the opium trade, scrambles to keep lawmen away from her operation but is distracted by the appearance her first love, Bess Spencer, while deciding how far she'll go to protect her business when there could be a spy in her inner circle.
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A Lonesome Place for Dying
by Nolan Chase
The town's new chief of police, Ethan Brand, receiving threats on his first day on the job, is faced with the first homicide case Blaine, Washington, has seen in years and with no one to trust, must find the killers and bring them to justice before anyone else winds up dead.
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The Girls We Sent Away
by Meagan Church
In 1960s North Carolina, when Lorraine, the darling girl-next-door, becomes pregnant, her parents send her away to a maternity home, where she must decide if she has the agency and power to fight to keep her baby or if she must submit to the rules of the society she once admired.
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All the World Beside
by Garrard Conley
In 18th century Cana, Massachusetts, Reverend Nathaniel Whitfield, a pillar of the local community, develops a passionate relationship with physician Arthur Lyman and their families must deal with secrets, lies and judgements at the start of the Great Awakening.
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Sleeping Giants
by Rene Denfeld
A novel by the author of The Child Finder explores sibling bonds, foster children, monsters masquerading as caretakers, terrifying secrets and the power of love to right even the most egregious wrongs.
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The Sweet Blue Distance
by Sara Donati
In 1857, young midwife Carrie Ballentyne travels west to the New Mexico Territory for a nursing position, but while helping women give birth in Sante Fe, she discovers her employer is keeping secrets and must ferret out the truth to save his young daughter whom she's come to love.
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A Killing on the Hill
by Robert Dugoni
An ambitious, rookie reporter in Depression-era Seattle stumbles upon the suspicious death of a fallen prizefighter on Profanity Hill and his investigation leads him into the city's underbelly where he attracts the attention of the mobster club owner.
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Late Bloomer
by Mazey Eddings
After winning the lottery, Opal buys a failing flower farm in North Carolina to start her painting business, but when Pepper Smith claims she's the rightful owner of the farm and refuses to move out, they strike up a cohabitation agreement that, despite their constant bickering, turns into something more.
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The Book of Thorns
by Hester Fox
When Cornelia joins Napoleon's army as a traveling naturalist with the power to heal, she meets the sister she never knew existed on the opposite side of the battlefield and together, they must use the magic of flowers to solve the mystery of their mother's death, while fighting for their survival.
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| Women and Children First by Alina GrabowskiNarrated by ten women and girls in a small Massachusetts town, this "craftily constructed and deeply moving debut" (Booklist) covers events before and after a house party where a high schooler dies following a suspicious fall. Read-alikes: If the Ice Had Held by Wendy J. Fox; Ocean State by Stewart O'Nan. |
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The Last Word
by Elly Griffiths
Hired by the daughters of local writer Melody Chambers to investigate her death, believing she was murdered, Natalka and Edwin go undercover at a creative writing weekend at isolated Battle House where another murder occurs and by the time Edwin infiltrates a sinister book group, he finds himself in danger.
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Wake me Most Wickedly
by Felicia Grossman
In the clever reimaging of Snow White, a handsome businessman must decide with whom to trust his heart, but with danger looking, it's his life, not his love, at risk.
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Archangels of Funk
by Andrea Hairston
Cinnamon Jones, whom readers first encountered in Will Do Magic for Small Change, aids refugees from the Water Wars while making preparations for the Next World Festival, part of her family's legacy.
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Cold to the Touch
by Kerri Hakoda
When women are being kidnapped and murdered, including a bright young college student he bought coffee from every morning, in the dead of an Alaskan winter, Anchorage homicide detective DeHavilland Beans and his team are determined to stop a serial killer's spree before it's too late.
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Earls Trip
by Jenny Holiday
Three Regency-era Earls on an annual bachelors' weekend find their trip hijacked by a friend begging for help with a family scandal, a runaway bride and a tempting proposal from a childhood friend who had sworn off marriage.
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| All Fours by Miranda JulyStopping a solo cross-country road trip after 30 miles, a 45-year-old semi-famous California artist rethinks her life and marriage as she develops a connection with a younger man and remodels her motel room before heading home in this witty, weird, and sexy novel. Read-alikes: Milk Fed by Melissa Broder; The Dog of the North by Elizabeth McKenzie; Clover Hendry's Day Off by Beth Morrey. |
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While We Were Burning
by Sara Koffi
Hiring a personal assistant named Brianna to distract her from her obsession with her best friend's mysterious death, Elizabeth doesn't realize Brianna has her own agenda—to find out why the police killed her young Black son—and immerses herself in Elizabeth's life where the answers to her questions lie.
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| Blue Ruin by Hari KunzruYears ago, Jay left the London art scene while on the cusp of stardom and is now an undocumented, unhoused delivery driver in upstate New York during COVID. After running into his artist ex-girlfriend (now married to his artist ex-best friend), he moves to their estate, where an art gallery owner has also taken refuge. This atmospheric, lyrical novel is for fans of Memory Piece by Lisa Ko and The Hundred Waters by Lauren Acampora. |
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A Better World
by Sarah Langan
A family jumps at the chance to trade a crumbling world for a pristine utopia for the wealthy, but their discomfort mounts as sinister secrets and the terrifying truth behind the enclave's idyllic façade are revealed.
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Road to Ruin
by Hana Lee
One of the few who venture outside the domed cities on motorcycles powered by magic, magebike courier Jin-Lu rescues princess Yi-Nereen from her abusive family and the two of them flee across the wastelands, pursued by Yi-Nereen's father, her scheming betrothed and a bounty hunter with mysterious powers.
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Fake It Till You Make It
by Siera London
With his veterinary practice facing foreclosure, Eli, needing to invent an investor on the fly, asks his new assistant, bubbly and business-savvy Amarie Walker, to fake a partnership to save their furry friends, but even though their partnership is fake, their connection feels way too real.
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My Season of Scandal
by Julie Anne Long
When Lord Dominic Kirke meets Catherine Keating, a blue-eyed country girl with a cracking wit, he offers to help her find a husband during the London season, but soon realizes he wants her for himself, but loving her means setting her free for the life—and the man—she deserves.
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Every Time I go on Vacation, Someone Dies
by Catherine Mack
Bestselling mystery writer Eleanor Dash is on an Italian book tour with other authors, fans, and her greedy ex (whom one of her fictional sleuths is based on). When a murder occurs, Eleanor investigates in this series starter that features funny footnotes addressing the reader.
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A Game of Lies
by Clare Mackintosh
Detective Ffion Morgan must untangle alibis and uncover what happened when a reality show in the Welsh mountains turns into a deadly game of truth or dare after one of the participants is murdered.
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The Last Hope
by Susan Elia MacNeal
Ordered by British Intelligence to assassinate the physicist behind Nazi Germany's nuclear program, Maggie Hope teams up with couturier and spy Coco Chanel, but as the war reaches a fever pitch and the stakes keep rising, the choices she makes will reverberate around the globe and touch everyone she loves.
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Escape Velocity
by Victor Manibo
Aboard the premier luxury resort in low Earth orbit for their lavish 25th reunion to advance their applications to live in an exclusive Mars settlement—because only the best deserve to save themselves, four friends, settling scores and racking up points, will soon regret underestimating those they left behind on Earth.
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In the Shadow of the Greenbrier
by Emily Matchar
Follows the first Jewish family to move to White Sulfur Springs, West Virginia where they started a general store and ultimately opened a hotel that was used as a secret, luxury prison for German, Japanese and Italian diplomats.
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Safe and Sound
by Laura McHugh
High school seniors and sisters Amelia and Kylee, when human remains are discovered in town, search for the truth surrounding their cousin Grace's disappearance, determined to find her dead or alive, but soon find themselves not only fighting to save Grace but also for their own lives.
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The Wings Upon Her Back
by Samantha Mills
A Winged Zemolai, Zenya, after 26 years of service, is disillusioned with being an enforcer in an increasingly fascist state, and when a tragic act of mercy costs her everything, she fights for her life and begins to understand the true nature of her sect, her leader and the gods themselves.
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| Oye by Melissa MogollonColombian American high school senior Luciana deals with school stress, Hurricane Irma, her eccentric grandmother's cancer diagnosis, family secrets, and more. Written as Luciana's one-sided phone calls to her sister away at college, this humorous and moving coming-of-age debut presents a unique voice. Read-alikes: Olga Dies Dreaming by Xochitl Gonzalez; An American Immigrant by Johanna Rojas Vann. |
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Double Lives
by Mary Monroe
Depression-era, Southern identical twin sisters decide to switch places when one is being stifled in a passionless marriage and the other is heartbroken over losing her true love, in the fourth novel of the series following Love, Honor, Betray.
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A Nest of Vipers
by Harini Nagendra
Kaveri and Ramu investigate Indian street magic in 1922 Bangalore where they uncover a potential threat to the visiting Prince of Wales amidst cries for India's independence, in the third novel of the series following Murder Under a Red Moon.
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You Know What You Did
by K. T. Nguyen
When her mother, a Vietnam War refugee, dies suddenly, Annie Shaw finds her OCD coming back with a vengeance, and when the investigation zeroes in on her, her mind increasingly fractures and the only thing she knows is this: she will do anything to protect her daughter even if it means losing herself.
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Lost Ark Dreaming
by Suyi Davies Okungbowa
After the dangerous rise of the Atlantic Ocean, the survivors live inside partially submerged, kilometers-high towers where the rich rule from the top while the rest are crammed into the dark, fetid floors below sea level until the dead, reawakened by ancient power, seek vengeance on those who offered them up to the waves.
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| One Last Word by Suzanne ParkSara Chae has put everything into making One Last Word a success. But the app, which delivers personalized messages after someone's death, mistakenly sends out Sara's missives (written while drunk). She's left picking up the pieces while trying to get funding from a venture capitalist...who happens to be her crush and one of the message recipients. Read-alikes: Ali Hazelwood's romantic comedies; Better Left Unsent by Lia Louis. |
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I am Rome
by Santiago Posteguillo
Describes how a young roman lawyer named Gaius Julius Caesar accepted a job as prosecutor to defend the people of the city against the corrupt Senator Dolabella, in a novel of politics, betrayal, sprawling battles and shocking villainy.
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Wolf at the Table
by Adam Rapp
In this creepy and atmospheric family saga, award-winning playwright Adam Rapp meditates on violence, mental illness, and the nature of evil, starting with 13-year-old Myra Lee Larkin's brief run-in with a strange man who would later murder an entire family in her neighborhood in 1951, and following her uncanny connections to real-life killers like Richard Speck and John Wayne Gacy.
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The Berlin Letters
by Katherine Reay
Discovering a secret cache of letters written by the father she has long presumed dead, CIA codebreaker Luisa Voekler learns the truth about her grandfather's work and her father's identity, and with a rudimentary plan and hope, journeys to Berlin to free her father from an East German prison.
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| Sweetness in the Skin by Ishi RobinsonIn Kingston, Jamaica, 13-year-old Pumkin Patterson dreams of France. After her grandmother dies and her aunt moves to Paris, Pumkin lives with her neglectful mother and starts a baking business to earn money for French lessons. With authentic characters who sometimes speak in Jamaican dialect, this atmospheric first novel will please fans of If I Survive You by Jonathan Escoffery and Black Cake by Charmaine Wilkerson. |
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When Among Crows
by Veronica Roth
A hunter who sacrifices his soul to slay monsters, Dymitr, tasked with finding legendary witch Baba Jaga, offers Ala, a fear-eating zmora, a cure for her curse in exchange for her help, and together they fight against time and the wrath of the Chicago underworld where his secrets could destroy them both.
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| The Guncle Abroad by Steven RowleySitcom star Patrick O'Hara takes his 14-year-old niece and 11-year-old nephew traveling around Europe before heading to Lake Como, Italy, for their dad's wedding. But it's not all smooth sailing: the kids, whose mother died five years ago, oppose the marriage and Patrick is stressed about turning 50. Fans of The Guncle will enjoy this, but anyone who appreciates funny, upbeat family stories will also be charmed. |
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The Practice, the Horizon, and the Chain
by Sofia Samatar
Given the opportunity to be educated at the ship's university alongside the elite, the boy, raised as one of the Chained, forms a bond with“the professor,” and together they set off on a transformative journey to break free of the chains that fetter them both.
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The Last Note of Warning
by Katharine Schellman
During Prohibition, Vivian Kelly, a shop assistant by day and by night, joins the madcap revelry of New York's underworld, serving illegal drinks and dancing in a speakeasy called the Nightingale, finds herself a murder suspect and cashes in every favor from the criminals she calls friends to catch the real killer.
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You Should Be So Lucky
by Cat Sebastian
Ordered by the team's owner to give a bunch of interviews to reporter Mark Bailey, baseball shortstop, Eddie O'Leary, during the 1960 season, slowly gives in to the attraction between them, and when it's just them against the world, they must decide if that's enough.
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Black Shield Maiden
by Willow Smith
Yafeu, an African warrior stolen from her home in the Ghanaian Empire, ignites a revolution in the frozen north of the Vikings and forges an unlikely friendship with a timid princess as the pair fight to control their destinies.
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The Hunter's Daughter
by Nicola Solvinic
A decorated sheriff's lieutenant serving a rural county, Anna Koray, who is secretly the daughter of a notorious serial killer, finds her suppressed memories returning when a new serial killer emerges, copying her father, and must use her father's tricks to stop him before everything she's built for herself is destroyed.
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| I Hope This Finds You Well by Natalie SueJolene deals with a soul-crushing job by venting about coworkers in white text at the end of her emails to them. After she's caught, HR makes her take a sensitivity class and restricts her communications...but she's also accidentally given access to coworkers' emails and DMs, with surprising results. If you'd like more smart, witty looks at workplaces, try Help Wanted by Adelle Waldman, The Cleaner by Brandi Wells, or Then We Came to the End by Joshua Ferris. |
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A Sweet Sting of Salt
by Rose Sutherland
In a stormy village, a midwife's curiosity about a mysterious pregnant woman leads her into a web of secrets, danger and a fight for survival, in a queer retelling of the classic folktale The Selkie Wife.
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Nothing Without Me
by Helen Monks Takhar
When the body of her lead actress, who seemingly committed suicide, disappears, director April Eden, whose film is up for a major British award, wonders if this is an elaborate hoax or a publicity stunt gone wrong, especially when she starts receiving threatening messages.
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| Long Island by Colm TóibínThough she left Ireland over 20 years ago, Ellis Lacey still feels like an outsider in 1976 Long Island...especially when she discovers her husband has impregnated another man's wife. At a loss, she returns to Ireland to visit family and friends. Readers may know Ellis from the acclaimed 2009 novel Brooklyn, but this moving tale works fine as a standalone. Read-alikes: My Coney Island Baby by Billy O'Callaghan; The Ninth Hour by Alice McDermott. |
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The Brides of High Hill
by Nghi Vo
In a crumbling estate at the crossroads of dead empires, the Cleric Chih and a beautiful young bride about to marry an aging ruler are drawn into the mystery of what became of his previous wives, and as the wedding night draws to its close, Chih discovers some monsters hide in plain sight.
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You'd Look Better as a Ghost
by Joanna Wallace
Claire, an aspiring artist and part-time serial killer, realizes someone is watching her—someone who knows about her murderous hobby—and she, while attending a weekly bereavement support group after losing her father, must finish off her blackmailer before they reveal all.
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| How to Read a Book by Monica WoodViolet Powell, a 22-year-old just released from prison, visits a bookstore where she encounters the husband of the woman she killed after driving drunk and the retired volunteer who ran her prison book club. If you enjoy this heartwarming, character-driven novel about second chances, try Sara Nisha Adams' The Reading List or Lucy Gilmore's The Lonely Hearts Book Club. |
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Contact your librarian for more great books!
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Morton Grove Public Library 6140 Lincoln Ave Morton Grove, Illinois 60053 (847) 965-4220www.mgpl.org/ |
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