Fiction A to Z
May 2025
New Arrivals!
All the Other Mothers Hate Me
by Sarah Harman

Florence Grimes is a thirty-one-year-old party girl who always takes the easy way out. Single, broke and unfulfilled after the humiliating end to her girl band career, she has only one reason to get out of bed each day: her ten-year-old son Dylan. But then Alfie Risby, her son's bully and the heir to a vast frozen food empire, mysteriously vanishes during a class trip, and Dylan becomes the prime suspect. Florence, for once, is faced with a task she can't quit: She's got to find Alfie and clear her son's name, or risk losing Dylan forever. The only problem? Florence has no useful skills, let alone investigative ones, and all the other school moms hate her. Oh, and Florence has a reason to suspect Dylan might not be as innocent as she'd like to believe.
The Dream Hotel
by Laila Lalami

Sara has just landed at LAX, returning home from a conference abroad, when agents from the Risk Assessment Administration pull her aside and inform her that she will soon commit a crime. Using data from her dreams, the RAA's algorithm has determined that she is at imminent risk of harming the person she loves most: her husband. For his safety, she must be kept under observation for twenty-one days. The agents transfer Sara to a retention center, where she is held with other dreamers, all of them women trying to prove their innocence from different crimes. With every deviation from the strict and ever-shifting rules of the facility, their stay is extended. Months pass and Sara seems no closer to release. Then one day, a new resident arrives, disrupting the order of the facility and leading Sara on a collision course with the very companies that have deprived her of her freedom.
Death of the Author
by Nnedi Okorafor

Disabled, disinclined to marry, and more interested in writing than a lucrative career in medicine or law, Zelu has always felt like the outcast of her large Nigerian family. Then her life is upended when, in the middle of her sister's lavish Caribbean wedding, she's unceremoniously fired from her university job and, to add insult to injury, her novel is rejected by yet another publisher. With her career and dreams crushed in one fell swoop, she decides to write something just for herself. What comes out is nothing like the quiet, literary novels that have so far peppered her unremarkable career. It's a far-future epic where androids and AI wage war in the grown-over ruins of human civilization. She calls it Rusted Robots. When Zelu finds the courage to share her strange novel, she does not realize she is about to embark on a life-altering journey--one that will catapult her into literary stardom, but also perhaps obliterate everything her book was meant to be. From Chicago to Lagos to the far reaches of space, Zelu's novel will change the future not only for humanity, but for the robots who come next.
Firebird
by Juliette Cross

A conqueror captivated… A witch prophesied to save them all… A world where dragons rule Rome. From the moment Roman general and nephew to the emperor Julianus Dakkia laid eyes on Malina, he was enthralled by the Dacian dancer. Years later, the fierce beauty stands before him on a scarred battlefield, her life in danger. He instinctively shifts into his fierce dragon form to save her, an action that may mean his head on the imperial gate. But he and his dragon know one thing: she belongs to them. Malina can’t believe that the centurion who had once bestowed a secret talisman on her is the Roman general of legendary brutality. His prowess as a warrior cannot be denied, yet they don’t reveal the secret he hides. All Malina knows is his protection and gentle touch. And she cannot deny how her soul has always seemed to answer his. As they navigate a world where flying deathriders conquer and burn, their love will ignite a firestorm that can only end in heartbreak or death. Or both.
Gifted & Talented
by Olivie Blake

Three telepathic and electrokinetically gifted children of a recently-deceased tech mogul: a biotech fraud, a struggling congressman and a former ballerina, each vie for control of his groundbreaking business empire in a ruthless inheritance war.
Heartwood
by Amity Gaige

In the heart of the Maine woods, an experienced Appalachian Trail hiker goes missing. She is forty-two-year-old Valerie Gillis, who has vanished 200 miles from her final destination. Alone in the wilderness, Valerie pours her thoughts into fractured, poetic letters to her mother as she battles the elements and struggles to keep hoping. At the heart of the investigation is Beverly, the determined Maine State Game Warden tasked with finding Valerie, who leads the search on the ground. Meanwhile, Lena, a seventy-six-year-old birdwatcher in a Connecticut retirement community, becomes an unexpected armchair detective. Roving between these compelling narratives, a puzzle emerges, intensifying the frantic search, as Valerie's disappearance may not be accidental.
Into the Gray Zone
by Brad Taylor

Pike Logan uncovers a geopolitical scheme that has spiraled out of control in India in this latest pulse-pounding thriller from New York Times bestselling author and former special forces officer Brad Taylor.
Land of Milk and Honey
by C Pam Zhang
 
A smog has spread. Food crops are rapidly disappearing. A chef escapes her dying career in a dreary city to take a job at a decadent mountaintop colony seemingly free of the world's troubles. There, the sky is clear again. Rare ingredients abound. Her enigmatic employer and his visionary daughter have built a lush new life for the global elite, one that reawakens the chef to the pleasures of taste, touch, and her own body. In this atmosphere of hidden wonders and cool, seductive violence, the chef's boundaries undergo a thrilling erosion. Soon she is pushed to the center of a startling attempt to reshape the world far beyond the plate.
The Perfect Divorce
by Jeneva Rose

It's been eleven years since high-powered attorney Sarah Morgan defended her husband, Adam, against the charge of murdering his mistress. Sarah has long since moved on, starting a family with her new husband, Bob Miller, and changing careers. After discovering Bob engaged in a one-night stand, Sarah wastes no time filing for divorce. However, amid their ugly separation, new DNA evidence is uncovered in the case against Adam, forcing the police to reopen the investigation and putting Sarah right back in the spotlight. When the woman Bob slept with is reported missing, he and Sarah start to fight dirty, and a high-stakes game of cat and mouse ensues.
Really Good, Actually
by Monica Heisey

Maggie is fine. She's doing really good, actually. Sure, she's broke, her graduate thesis on something obscure is going nowhere, and her marriage only lasted 608 days, but at the ripe old age of twenty-nine, Maggie is determined to embrace her new life as a Surprisingly Young Divorcée. Now she has time to take up nine hobbies, eat hamburgers at four a.m., and 'get back out there' sex-wise. With the support of her tough-loving academic advisor, Merris; her newly divorced friend, Amy; and her group chat (naturally); Maggie barrels through her first year of single life--intermittently dating, occasionally waking up on the floor, and asking herself tough questions along the way.
Saltwater
by Katy Hays

From the New York Times bestselling author of The Cloisters comes an electrifying thriller about an opulent family retreat to Italy that's shattered by the resurfacing of a decades-old crime. In 1992, Sarah Lingate is found dead below the cliffs of Capri, leaving behind her three-year-old daughter, Helen. Despite suspicions that the old-money Lingates are involved, Sarah's death is ruled an accident. And every year, the family returns to prove that's true. But on the thirtieth anniversary of Sarah's death, the Lingates arrive at the villa to find a surprise waiting for them--the necklace Sarah was wearing the night she died. Haunted by the specter of that night, the Lingates find their legendary unity pushed to a breaking point. 
Upon a Starlit Tide
by Kell Woods

Saint-Malo, Brittany, 1758. To Lucinde Leon, the youngest daughter of a wealthy French shipowner, the high walls of Saint-Malo are more hindrance than haven. While her sisters are busy trying to secure advantageous marriages, Luce spends her days secretly being taught to sail by Samuel, her best friend--and an English smuggler. Only he understands how the waves call to her. Then one stormy morning, Luce rescues a drowning man from the sea. Immediately drawn in by the stranger's charm, Luce is plunged into a world of glittering balls and faerie magic, seduction and brutality. Secrets that have long been lost in the shadowy depths of the ocean begin to rise to the surface, but as Luce wrestles with warring desires, she finds that her own power is growing brighter and brighter, shining like a sea-glass slipper--or the scales of a sea-maid's tail.
When Cicadas Cry
by Caroline Cleveland

Zach Stander, a lawyer with a past, and Addie Stone, his indomitable detective and lover, find themselves entangled in secrets, lies, and murder in a small Southern town. A high-profile murder case: A white woman has been bludgeoned to death with an altar cross in a rural church on Cicada Road in Walterboro, South Carolina. Sam Jenkins, a Black man, is found covered in blood, kneeling over the body. In a state already roiling with racial tension, this is not only a murder case, but a powder keg. A haunting cold case: Two young women are murdered on quiet Edisto Beach, an hour southeast of Walterboro, and the killer disappears without a trace. Thirty-four years later the mystery remains unsolved. Could there be a connection to Stander's case? A killer who's watching: Stander takes on Jenkins's defense, but he's up against a formidable solicitor with powerful allies. Worse, his client is hiding a bombshell secret. When Addie Stone reopens the cold case, she discovers more long-buried secrets in this small town. Would someone kill again to keep them?
Contact your librarian for more great books!
Handley Regional Library System
100 W Piccadilly St
Winchester, VA 22601
(540) 662-9041

https://www.handleyregional.org/
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