October 2025
Gone Before Goodbye
by Harlan Coben and Reese Witherspoon
10/14/2025
 
     Maggie McCabe is teetering on the brink. A highly skilled and renowned Army combat surgeon, she has always lived life at the edge, where she could make the most impact. And it was all going to plan…until it wasn’t. 
     Upside down after a devastating series of tragedies leads to her medical license being revoked, Maggie has lost her purpose, but not her nerve or her passion. At her lowest point, she is thrown a lifeline by a former colleague, an elite plastic surgeon whose anonymous clientele demand the best care money can buy, as well as absolute discretion. 
     Halfway across the globe, sequestered in the lap of luxury and cutting-edge technology, one of the world’s most mysterious men requires unconventional medical assistance. Desperate, and one of the few surgeons in the world skilled enough to take this job, Maggie enters his realm of unspeakable opulence and fulfills her end of the agreement. But when the patient suddenly disappears while still under her care, Maggie must become a fugitive herself—or she will be the next one who is…
The Proving Ground
by Michael Connelly
10/21/2025

     The Lincoln Lawyer is back with a case against an AI company whose product may have been responsible for the murder of a young girl.
     Following his "resurrection walk" and need for a new direction, Mickey Haller turns to public interest litigation, filing a civil lawsuit against an artificial intelligence company whose chatbot told a sixteen-year-old boy that it was okay for him to kill his ex-girlfriend for her disloyalty.
     Representing the victim's family, Mickey's case explores the mostly unregulated and exploding AI business and the lack of training guardrails. Along the way he joins up with a journalist named Jack McEvoy, who wants to be a fly on the wall during the trial in order to write a book about it. But Mickey puts him to work going through the mountain of printed discovery materials in the case. McEvoy's digging ultimate delivers the key witness, a whistleblower who has been too afraid to speak up. The case is fraught with danger because billions are at stake.
     It is said that machines became smarter than humans on the day in 1997 that IBM's Deep Blue defeated chess master Garry Kasparov with a gambit called "the knight's sacrifice." Haller will take a similar gambit in court to defeat the mega forces of the AI industry lined up against him and his clients.
Sharp Force
by Patricia Cornwell
10/07/2025

NO ONE IS SAFE FROM THE SERIAL KILLER
NOT EVEN SCARPETTA...
     During the early hours of Christmas morning, chief medical examiner Dr. Kay Scarpetta receives a chilling call. The Phantom Slasher has struck again.
     The serial killer has terrorized Northern Virginia for months. His pattern is to stalk with a sophisticated technology that enables him to invade his victims' homes and watch their every move. They wake up to a ghost-like hologram before being murdered in their beds.
     Scarpetta is summoned to Mercy Island, the site of a notorious psychiatric hospital where two people have been brutalized, one of them from Scarpetta's past. It soon becomes apparent that she could be next...
The Tin Men
by Nelson and Alex DeMille
10/28/2025

     Army CID Special Agents Scott Brodie and Maggie Taylor team up for their toughest assignment yet as they are dispatched to Camp Hayden to investigate the death of Major Roger Ames, the chief scientist in charge of the top-secret war games being conducted between a platoon of Army Rangers and a fleet of “lethal autonomous weapons.” Brodie and Taylor find themselves at ground zero of the next generation of warfare, and must untangle the complex web of alliances, animosities, and secret agendas among the men and women of the isolated facility.
     In a place cut off from the world and exposed to the harsh desert elements, everyone is a suspect—from the zealous camp commander who pushes his men to the limit, to the Rangers slipping into madness due to isolation, grueling training, and rampant abuse of performance-enhancing drugs, to the late Major Ames’s own research colleagues. Brodie and Taylor must uncover layers of deception to find the hidden hand behind the murder of Major Ames, and the real purpose of the activities at Camp Hayden and its terrifying arsenal of next-generation weapons.
The Widow
by John Grisham
10/21/2025
 
     Simon Latch is a lawyer in rural Virginia, making just enough to pay his bills while his marriage slowly falls apart. Then into his office walks Eleanor Barnett, an elderly widow in need of a new will. Apparently, her husband left her a small fortune, and no one knows about it.
     Once he hooks the richest client of his career, Simon works quietly to keep her wealth under the radar. But soon her story begins to crack. When she is hospitalized after a car accident, Simon realizes that nothing is as it seems, and he finds himself on trial for a crime he swears he didn’t commit: murder.
     Simon knows he’s innocent. But he also knows the circumstantial evidence is against him, and he could spend the rest of his life behind bars. To save himself, he must find the real killer….
My Beloved
by Jan Karon
10/07/2025

 
     When Father Tim’s wife, Cynthia, asks what he wants for Christmas, he pens the answer in a love letter that bares his most private feelings. Then the letter goes missing and circulates among his astonished neighbors. So much for private.
     Can a letter change a life? Ask Helene, the piano teacher who has avoided her feelings for a lifetime. Ask Hope, the village bookseller who desperately needs something that’s impossibly out of reach. Or, if you’d like to know how a brush with death can be the portal to a happy marriage, Cynthia will tell you all about it.
     In My Beloved, Harley gets an important letter of his own; a broken heart teaches the Old Mayor, Esther Cunningham, a lesson long in coming; and thanks to Lace and Dooley, readers get what they’ve been waiting for: Sadie.
     Poignant, hilarious, and life-affirming, My Beloved sets a generous table for millions of readers who love these characters like family. With Karon’s signature humanity shining through on every page, this is a season of life in Mitford you won’t want to miss.
Coyote Hills
by Jonathan and Jesse Kellerman
10/28/2025

     Clay Edison has left behind the Alameda County coroner's office to strike out on his own as a private investigator. He's perfectly happy working low-stakes embezzlement cases--that is, until PI Regina Klein calls him with a mystery only he can solve. The son of a wealthy couple has washed up dead on the shores of San Francisco Bay with drugs in his system and a head injury. The police are calling it an accident. But the parents are adamant something's not right--and as Clay digs deeper, he uncovers a horrifying tangle of betrayal and lies.
The Christmas Ring
by Karen Kingsbury
10/21/2025

     While searching for her family's long-lost heirloom ring, military widow Vanessa Mayfield meets handsome antique dealer Ben Miller. The two are drawn to each other and forge a friendship that soon becomes a deep and breathtaking romance. But neither are sure that what they've found can last.
A Ferry Merry Christmas
by Debbie Macomber
10/21/2025

     Avery and Reed Bond grew up sharing a close-knit relationship, weathering life’s storms side by side. Even so, Avery often finds herself exasperated by her brother’s relentless matchmaking, while Reed can’t resist teasing his sister—after all, isn’t that what siblings do?
     Facing their first Christmas without their beloved Grams, the woman who lovingly raised them, Reed and Avery decide to spend the holiday together at Reed’s home. However, their plans take an unexpected turn when the ferry Avery’s traveling on stalls in the middle of Puget Sound, stranding its passengers and leaving Reed waiting a now undetermined length of time for her arrival. What is at first an inconvenience threatens to ruin the plans of a number of commuters, but Avery and Reed soon discover that this unforeseen delay might end up being be a perfectly timed blessing in disguise.
     While stuck on the ferry, Avery meets a handsome sailor and witnesses a Christmas miracle that reignites her belief in the holiday spirit. Meanwhile, Reed runs into a coworker who’s also waiting for a family member to arrive, and sparks a surprising and delightful connection.
     In this tale of holiday magic, the Bond siblings find themselves taking a chance on love, proving that sometimes the best moments in life come when we least expect them.
The Intruder
by Freida McFadden
10/07/2025

     Who knows what the storm will blow in...Casey's cabin in the wilderness is not built for a hurricane. Her roof shakes, the lights flicker, and the tree outside her front door sways ominously in the wind. But she's a lot more worried about the girl she discovers lurking outside her kitchen window. She's young. She's alone. And she's covered in blood. The girl won't explain where she came from, or loosen her grip on the knife in her right hand. And when Casey makes a disturbing discovery in the middle of the night, things take a turn for the worse. The girl has a dark secret. One she'll kill to keep. And if Casey gets too close to the truth, she may not live to see the morning. In this taut, deadly tale of survival and desperation, #1 New York Times bestselling author Freida McFadden explores how far one girl will go to save herself.
Out of Time
by Irene Hannon
10/07/2025

     For historical anthropologist Cara Tucker, a sabbatical at a remote country estate with a vast library is a dream come true... until it becomes clear someone doesn't want the past unearthed. With danger lurking, she joins Sheriff Brad Adams to uncover the perpetrator behind a string of menacing incidents before they strike another deadly blow.
The Picasso Heist
by James Patterson
10/13/2025

     A $100 million painting. A previously unknown Picasso is discovered in the attic of a French villa. Everyone wants to possess it. Filthy-rich Manhattan art people. Organized crime bosses. Power-hungry government officials. A notorious forger. A glamorous twenty-two-year-old art thief. Only one person knows how to take it. She's the rival none of the power players see coming.
The Black Wolf
by Louise Penny
10/28/2025

     Weeks after foiling an attack in Montréal and arresting the so-called Black Wolf, Chief Inspector Armand Gamache, confined by his injuries to Three Pines, quietly leads a covert investigation with agents Beauvoir and Lacoste, fearing the conspiracy he uncovered is only a deliberate misdirection.
A Moment to Love
by Tracie Peterson
10/21/2025

     Dr. Carrie Vogel faces heartbreak from stolen work credited to her ex-fiancé, and she leans on her faith for strength. After learning that her Pinkerton friend Spencer Duval is on a mission to catch his father's killer, she agrees to an arranged marriage. Together, they navigate a web of intrigue and growing love as they trust in God's plan for their future.
And to All a Good Bite
by David Rosenfelt
10/14/2025

     When a heroic dog dad is arrested for murder, reluctant lawyer Andy pauses his holiday plans to clear his name and reunite him with his pup in the latest addition to the series following Dogged Pursuit.
Remain: A Supernatural Love Story
by Nicholas Sparks and M. Night Shyamalan
10/14/2025

     When New York architect Tate Donovan arrives in Cape Cod to design his best friend's summer home, he is hoping to make a fresh start. Recently discharged from an upscale psychiatric facility where he was treated for acute depression, he is still wrestling with the pain of losing his beloved sister. Sylvia's deathbed revelation--that she can see spirits who are still tethered to the living world, a gift that runs in their family--sits uneasily with Tate, who struggles to believe in more than what reason can explain. But when he takes up residence at a historic bed-and-breakfast on the Cape, he encounters a beautiful young woman named Wren who will challenge every assumption he has about his logical and controlled world.
     Tate and Wren find themselves forging an immediate connection, one that neither has ever experienced before. But Tate gradually discovers that below the surface of Wren's idyllic small-town life, hatred, jealousy, and greed are festering, threatening their fragile relationship just as it begins to blossom. Tate realizes that in order to free Wren from an increasingly desperate fate, he will need to unearth the truth about her past before time runs out... a quest that will make him doubt whether we can ever believe the stories we tell about ourselves, and the laws that govern our existence. Love--while transformative--can sometimes be frightening.
     A story about the power of transcendent emotion, Remain asks us all: Can love set us free not only from our greatest sorrows, but even from the boundaries of life and death?
New to the online catalog? Here's a quick guide:
    If you were part of the former Book My Favorites program and have questions about the current newsletter format, contact Madalyn Ayer.
 
(205) 444-7820
madalyn.ayer@hooverlibrary.org
Hoover Public Library
200 Municipal Drive
Hoover, Alabama 35216
(205) 444-7800

www.hooverlibrary.org