Recent Releases
Anatomy of an Alibi by Ashley Elston
Anatomy of an Alibi
by Ashley Elston

Two women. One dead husband. And only one alibi. Elston expertly unravels a web of secrets and lies. You won't be able to put this excellent thriller down until the final shocking page. --Megan Miranda Everyone at Chantilly's Bar noticed out-of-towner Camille Bayliss. Red lips, designer heels, sipping a Negroni. But that woman wasn't Camille Bayliss. It was Aubrey Price. Camille Bayliss appears to have the picture-perfect life; she's married to hotshot lawyer Ben and is the daughter of a wealthy Louisiana family. Only nothing is as it seems: Camille believes Ben has been hiding dirty secrets for years, but she can't find proof because he tracks her every move. Aubrey Price has been haunted by the terrible night that changed her life a decade ago, and she's convinced Benjamin Bayliss knows something about it. Living in a house full of criminals, Aubrey understands there's more than one way to get to the truth--and she may have found the best way in. Aubrey and Camille hatch a plan. It sounds simple: For twelve hours, Aubrey will take Camille's place. Camille will spy on Ben, and the two women will get the answers they desperately seek. Except the next morning, Ben is found murdered. Both women need an airtight alibi, but only one of them has it. And one false step is all it takes for everything to come undone.
Antihero
by Greg Hurwitz

In the next book in this New York Times best-selling series, Evan Smoak takes on his most complex mission yet-one where he has to not only protect but also avenge, and find a way to balance vengeance with mercy. Once a black ops assassin for the government known as Orphan X, Evan Smoak broke with the program and went deep underground, using his operational rules and skills to help the truly desperate with nowhere else to turn. When Luke Devine, one of the most powerful men in the world has a psychological crisis, Evan flies to the East Coast to meet Luke. While there, he learns of a young woman who was kidnapped off the New York City subway, clearly in danger and in need of aid. With no name and few clues, Evan and his team track down the missing woman, who was assaulted and abandoned. Evan offers his help-and sets out tracking down the young men responsible. But the woman insists that Evan abandon his usual methods-no vengeance and, in particular, no killing. Which will prove no easy feat given the mounting incoming threats from all sides. In a mission that takes Evan from coast to coast, from the poorest corners of society to the richest, Orphan X must figure out a way to protect the innocent, avenge the victimized, and balance justice, with a measure of mercy.
Dear Debbie by Freida McFadden
Dear Debbie
by Freida McFadden

Sometimes, enough is enough...Debbie Mullen is losing it. For years, she has compiled all of her best advice into her column, Dear Debbie, where the wives of New England come for sympathy and neighborly advice. Through her work, Debbie has heard from countless women who are ignored, belittled, or even abused by their husbands. And Debbie does her best to guide them in the right direction. Or at least, she did. These days, Debbie's life seems to be spiraling out of control. She just lost her job. Something strange is happening with her teenage daughters. And her husband is keeping secrets, according to the tracking app she installed on his phone. Now, Debbie's done being the bigger person. She's done being reasonable and practical. It's time to take her own advice. And now it's time for payback against all the people in her life who deserve it the most.From #1 New York Times and international bestselling author Freida McFadden comes a biting, subversive thriller about what happens when women finally choose to take justice into their own hands - with killer results.
Cursed Daughters
by Oyinkan Braithwaite

Years ago, a man's first wife cursed a later wife, plus all of the women in her family for generations. Ebbing and and flowing in time, this moving Read with Jenna pick from the author of My Sister, the Serial Killer follows three of the cursed Nigerian women: Monife, who drowns herself after losing her lover; her cousin, Ebun, who has a child the day of Monife's funeral; and Ebun's child, Eniiyi, who looks and acts like Monife. Read-alike: Olufunke Grace Bankole's The Edge of Water.
 
Also available as an Audiobook on Libby
The Dark Time by Nick Petrie
The Dark Time
by Nick Petrie

At the suggestion of his girlfriend, June, Peter Ash rides to the aid of an investigative reporter who may have stumbled on a story more explosive than even he can handle in this propulsive new thriller from the bestselling and award-winning series. Katelyn Thorsen, known as KT to her friends and enemies, is an independent journalist who receives a very specific death threat. Fortunately, Peter Ash has arrived in town to protect KT at the request of his girlfriend, June Cassidy. From the moment of his arrival, he's thrown into a maelstrom of violence trying to protect KT and her daughter and discover the source of the death threat. Even after June and Peter's best friend Lewis arrive in Seattle to help, this challenge may be too much for them - with enormous consequences should they fail.
The Hard Line by Mark Greaney
The Hard Line
by Mark Greaney

Court Gentry's current family operates out of an office park in Norfolk, Virginia. Ghost Town is an off-the-books direct action team run by Matt Hanley, former CIA deputy director. They take on the jobs the Agency needs handled discreetly, and those jobs are rolling in. Somewhere at the top of the US intelligence apparatus, security experts and intelligence operations worldwide are being threatened. It starts with a blown safe house in Tunis. Then Court himself barely escapes from an ambush in the jungles of Nicaragua. Now, key members of the US counterintelligence community are being assassinated in their own neighborhoods. With the feds compromised, it's up to Court and his team to stop the hit squads. But eliminating professional kill teams may be the least of the Gray Man's worries when he finds himself targeted by the legendary assassin code-named Whetstone--a man driven out of retirement by a very personal quest to rain down hellfire on Court and everyone he's ever loved, starting with the father he hasn't seen in twenty years.
The Italian Secret by Tara Moss
The Italian Secret
by Tara Moss

Pacific Ocean, 1907. A girl embarks on a journey to begin a new life far from home. Naples, 1943. A woman shelters underground from a wartime air raid, praying her husband will return home. Sydney, 1948. Billie Walker, returned from a stint as a wartime investigative journalist, uncovers a dusty box in her father's old office whose contents--correspondence with a woman on the other side of the world--just might explain how they all are connected.
My Husband's Wife by Alice Feeney
My Husband's Wife
by Alice Feeney

Eden Fox, an artist on the brink of her big break, sets off for a run before her first exhibition. When she returns to the home she recently moved into, Spyglass, an enchanting old house in Hope Falls, nothing is as it should be. Her key doesn't fit. A woman, eerily similar to her, answers the door. And her husband insists that the stranger is his wife. One house. One husband. Two women. Someone is lying. Six months earlier, a reclusive Londoner called Birdy, reeling from a life-changing diagnosis, inherits Spyglass. This unexpected gift from a long-lost grandmother brings her to the pretty seaside village of Hope Falls. But then Birdy stumbles upon a shadowy London clinic that claims to be able to predict a person's date of death, including her own. Secrets start to unravel, and as the line between truth and lies blurs, Birdy feels compelled to right some old wrongs.
Parents Weekend by Alex Finlay
Parents Weekend
by Alex Finlay

In the glow of their children's exciting first year of college at a small private school in Northern California, five families gather over dinner and cocktails for the opening festivities of Parents Weekend. As the parents stay out way past their bedtimes, their kids--five residents of Campisi Hall--never show up to dinner. At first, everyone thinks they're just being college students, irresponsibly forgetting about the gathering or skipping out to go to a party. But as the hours tick by and another night falls with not so much as a text from the students, panic ensues. Soon the campus police call in reinforcements. Search parties are formed. Reporters swarm the small enclave. Rumors swirl and questions arise. Libby, Blane, Mark, Felix, and Stella--The Five, as the podcasters, bloggers, and TikTok sleuths soon call them--come from very different families. What drew them out on that fateful night? Could it be the sins of their mothers and fathers come to cause them peril--or a threat to the friend group from within?
The Poet Empress by Shen Tao
The Poet Empress
by Shen Tao

Wei Yin is desperate. After the fifth death of a sibling, with her family and village on the brink of starvation, she will do anything to save those she loves. Even offer herself as concubine to the cruel, dissolute heir of the blood-gutted Azalea House--where poetry magic is power, but women are forbidden to read. But in a twist of fate, the palace now stands on the knife-edge of civil war, with Wei trapped in its center--with a violent prince. To save herself and the nation, she must survive the dangers of court, learn to read in secret, and compose the most powerful spell of all. A ballad of love--and death.
Books You May Have Missed
Atmosphere
by Taylor Jenkins Reid

In 1980, physics and astronomy professor Joan Goodwin is selected to train as an astronaut at Houston's Johnson Space Center. As the astronaut candidates work together and become friends, Joan unexpectedly finds herself falling in love with one of them. This acclaimed, suspenseful tale cuts back and forth between training and a 1984 mission gone wrong. Read-alikes: Eliana Ramage's To the Moon and Back; Bonnie Garmus' Lessons in Chemistry.
 
 Also available as an eBook or Audiobook on Libby
The Buffalo Hunter Hunter
by Stephen Graham Jones

In 2012, college professor Etsy Beaucarne learns about a 100-year-old diary written by her great-great-grandfather, Lutheran minister Arthur Beaucarne, and hopes she can utilize it to secure tenure. Contained within its pages are the confessions of Good Stab, a Blackfeet vampire seeking vengeance for the massacre of his people. For fans of: The Woods All Black by Lee Mandelo; Lone Women by Victor LaValle.
 
Also available as an eBook or Audiobook on Libby
The Heart of Winter
by Jonathan Evison

This poignant portrait of a marriage begins on Abe Winter's 90th birthday. While he's uncomfortable with the attention, his 87-year-old wife, Ruth, has a tooth that's causing her problems. When Ruth's diagnosed with oral cancer, Abe tries to care for her in this novel that looks back over 70 years, from their opposites-attract college romance to marriage problems, raising kids, and more. Try these next: Jessica Soffer's This Is a Love Story; Mikki Brammer's The Collected Regrets of Clover.
 
Also available as an Audiobook on Libby
My Name Is Emilia del Valle
by Isabel Allende

Raised by her Irish former nun mother and a loving stepdad in San Francisco, Emilia del Valle never knows her Chilean aristocrat father. As a young journalist covering the Chilean Civil War of 1891, she begins a romance and also finally meets the father who abandoned her. Isabel Allende fans will relish reading about the del Valles, whose various members often appear in her work. Try this next: Kaitlyn Greenidge's Libertie.
 
Also available as an Audiobook on Libby
 
Spent
by Alison Bechdel

In this comic graphic novel, author and cartoonist Alison Bechdel -- who shares a name and striking similarities with the author of the book -- lives on a goat farm in Vermont with her partner Holly and works on her next book project that deals with late-stage capitalism while helping her sister, spending time with friends, and pitching a reality show where people try to live more ethically. Kirkus Reviews raves, "Bechdel is incisive, tender, and funny -- often at the same time."
New eBooks and Audiobooks on Libby
Fight Oligarchy by Bernie Sanders
Fight Oligarchy
by Bernie Sanders

Senator Bernie Sanders breaks down the unprecedented crises we face today in Trump's America, as Trump undermines democracy at every turn--and how we can effectively fight back. From the moment that Sanders began his Fighting Oligarchy tour in the early days of the Trump administration, it was clear that his message resonated with Americans across the political spectrum. Record-breaking crowds numbering in the tens of thousands showed up across the country. Large numbers of Americans, in red states and blue states, were prepared to stand up and fight back. In this book, he shows how we can continue that fight. In a series of short, pointed chapters, Sanders explains how the United States today is an oligarchic society in which a small handful of multibillionaires exercise enormous economic and political power. He describes what it means when the very rich get much richer, while the majority of Americans struggle to pay the rent and put food on the table. And he observes how a corrupt campaign finance system allows billionaires in both parties to increasingly control our political system. Sanders also discusses how, under Trump, we are rapidly moving toward authoritarianism-with a president who is undermining our democracy as he attacks Congress, the courts, the media, and law firms and universities in search of more and more power for himself. With relentless optimism and focused energy, Sanders reminds readers that true power rests with the people--and he presents a path forward to a reinvigorated democracy.
 
Available as an eBook or Audiobook on Libby
The Mad Wife by Meagan Church
The Mad Wife
by Meagan Church

In the 1950s, nothing is valued more than conformity, and Lulu Mayfield has spent the last five years molding herself into the ideal housewife. But after the birth of her daughter, Lulu's carefully constructed life begins to teeter. Exhausted by expectations and haunted by tragic memories, Lulu looks to her new neighbor, Bitsy. Bitsy, always the model of a perfect housewife, is not quite what she seems and Lulu knows something dark lurks beneath Bitsy's constant smile. Increasingly fixated on Bitsy and her perfectly crafted life, Lulu's mental state begins to fracture, and memories she had suppressed long ago begin to rise to the surface. Soon, Lulu is forced to confront the possibility that she might be headed down a path much darker than she could ever foresee.
 
Available as an eBook on Libby
The Primal of Blood and Bone Special Edition: A Blood and Ash Novel by Tba
The Primal of Blood and Bone: A Blood and Ash Novel
by Jennifer L. Armentrout
 
In the shadows and flames, Primals will fall... And from the blood and ash, new gods will rise. What was dreamt. Poppy was never meant to awaken, and the consequences are devastating and far-reaching, stirring ancient powers from their slumber and transforming Casteel and Kieran in ways even the Fates couldn't have foreseen. But what that means is the least of their concerns. For now. What was foreseen. The Blood Crown has fallen, but what has risen is a far greater danger than they've ever faced. From flesh and fire, the Great Conspirator has returned to the mortal realm, and he wants only one thing. They must stop the true Primal of Death before he regains his strength, and it won't be easy. Even weakened, his influence is undeniable. His power, unthinkable. Has come to be. While the future of the realms rests upon them, they won't stand alone. The gods have awakened--each harboring their own blood-soaked secrets. But they must navigate an unbalanced realm, where every choice--past and present--has the potential to not only undo everything they've fought for but also destroy the very bonds that have Joined them together. For the Harbinger and the Bringer of Death and Destruction has risen.
 
Available as an eBook on Libby
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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