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After Midnight: Thirteen Tales for the Dark Hours
by Daphne Du Maurier
This collection brings together some of du Maurier's darkest, most haunting stories, ranging from sophisticated literary thriller to twisted love story. Alongside classics such as 'The Birds' and 'Don't Look Now,'--both of which inspired unforgettable films--are gems such as 'Monte Veritáa,' a masterpiece about obsession, mysticism, and tragic love, and 'The Alibi,' a chilling tale of an ordinary man's descent into lies, manipulation, and sinister fantasies that edge dangerously close to reality. In 'The Blue Lenses,' a woman recovering from eye surgery finds she now perceives those around her as having animal heads corresponding to their true natures. 'Not After Midnight' follows a schoolteacher on holiday in Crete who finds a foreboding message from the chalet's previous occupant who drowned while swimming at night. In 'The Breakthrough,' a scientist conducts experiments to harness the power of death, blurring the line between genius and madness
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Darkrooms
by Rebecca Hannigan
In this haunting debut crime novel, two women return to an old disappearance that still shadows their small Irish town. On the Summer Solstice in 1999, nine-year-old Roisin O’Halloran walked into the Hanging Woods, a place feared by generations of local children, and never came back. Twenty years later, her older sister Deedee, now a rookie police officer, and Caitlin, Roisin’s childhood best friend and the last person to see her alive, are pulled together in search of the truth. Caitlin has returned to Bannakilduf after her mother’s death, carrying her own troubled history, while Deedee is struggling to keep herself together under the weight of the past. As they reopen old wounds and confront long-buried suspicions, both women are forced to reckon with what they remember, what they may have missed, and what the town has chosen not to say. The novel blends grief, secrecy, and menace as the past begins to surface at last.
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Judge Stone
by James Patterson
In this legal thriller, Judge Mary Stone stands at the center of a case that could shake her small Alabama town to its core. As the most respected person in Union Springs, she is known for two things above all: her devotion to her family farm and her commitment to justice from the bench. When she is assigned the most controversial case the South has seen in years, the facts may seem straightforward, but the moral stakes are anything but. What appears criminally clear becomes ethically wrenching, forcing Judge Stone to confront a decision that feels like a choice between life and death. In a town where everyone has something to lose and no ruling will satisfy all sides, the pressure quickly becomes personal as well as public. Steady, principled, and unafraid of conflict, Judge Stone must decide how far she is willing to go to uphold justice for the people and community she loves.
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House of Day, House of Night
by Olga Tokarczuk
Nowa Ruda is a small town in Silesia, an area that has been a part of Poland, Germany, and the former Czechoslovakia in the past. When the narrator moves into the area, she ... discovers everyone--and everything--has its own story. With the help of Marta, her enigmatic neighbor, the narrator accumulates these stories, tracing the history of Nowa Ruda from the founding of the town to the lives of its saints, from the caller who wins the radio quiz every day to the tale of the man who causes international tension when he dies on the border, one leg on the Polish side, the other on the Czech side. Each of the stories represents a brick and they interlock to reveal the immense monument that is the town. What emerges is the message that the history of any place--no matter how humble--is limitless, that by describing or digging at the roots of a life, a house, or a neighborhood, one can see all the connections, not only with one's self and one's dreams but also with all of the universe.
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Maggie; Or, a Man and a Woman Walk Into a Bar
by Katie Yee
In this taut, wry debut novel, a Chinese American woman watches her life unravel in quick succession. Over dinner, she learns her husband is having an affair with a woman named Maggie. Soon after, she discovers that the pain in her breast is cancer, and she gives the tumor the same name. Told in fragments, the novel follows her through betrayal, illness, grief, and the slow work of reclaiming herself. As she navigates treatment and heartbreak, she begins talking to Maggie the tumor, imagines a sarcastically generous user’s guide for Maggie the other woman, and retells Chinese folklore to her children in an effort to keep them connected to their heritage and herself connected to something steady. Balancing humor with hurt, the novel turns private catastrophe into sharp, defiant comedy. It is a story about womanhood, loss, cultural inheritance, and the stubborn, inventive ways a person survives when everything familiar begins to break apart.
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Trigger Warning
by Jacinda Townsend
In this searing, darkly funny novel, Ruth is forced to confront the trauma she has spent years trying to outrun. As a child, she lost her little brother, then her mother, and then watched her father be killed by police outside their home. In the aftermath, she buried her past, changed her name, moved to Kentucky, and built a new life with her husband, Myron, and their child. Two decades later, that life looks stable from the outside, but Ruth remains deeply unsettled. When her marriage abruptly ends, their house burns down, and her estranged sister is diagnosed with multiple sclerosis, Ruth is pulled back toward the pain she tried to leave behind. She returns to California with her nonbinary teenager, perhaps finally ready to face what happened and reclaim herself. Through multiple perspectives, the novel explores the long aftermath of anti-Black police violence, as well as family, grief, desire, and the fragile possibility of renewal.
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My Fair Señor
by Alana Quintana Albertson
When former school sweethearts reconnect, a tequila venture stirs up old feelings and new complications. Jaime Montez, a San Diego model and influencer, is not in line to inherit his family’s Taco King empire, and he is tired of lending his image to other people’s brands. Determined to carve out his own place in the family business, he decides to launch a liquor label, even though he knows almost nothing about agave or mezcal. The one person who can teach him is Alma Garcia, his college flame, now a certified catadora and the owner of a popular mezcal bar in Marin County. When Jaime offers to promote her business at a local Cinco de Mayo festival in exchange for her guidance, the two are drawn back into each other’s orbit. As Alma introduces him to the craft and culture behind tequila and mezcal, their chemistry returns. But Jaime’s hidden motives threaten to turn this promising second chance into another heartbreak.
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Far from the A-List
by Stephanie Burns
In this sharp, fast-moving novel set against the tabloid culture of the 2000s, former child star Michaela Turner is trying to figure out who she is beyond fame. Once surrounded by cameras, rehearsals, and devoted fans, she now struggles to build a life that is not defined by the roles she played on screen or in her relationships. Staying out of the spotlight proves nearly impossible, especially with her manipulative mother pushing for a comeback regardless of the damage it causes. At the same time, Michaela’s personal life is no steadier, from a toxic ex she cannot fully break away from to a kinder man she cannot quite imagine trusting. As old wounds reopen and public attention keeps circling, Michaela begins to confront hard truths about self-worth, love, and letting go. With support from her ex-turned-best-friend Josh, she starts the slow work of rebuilding a life that finally feels like her own.
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Boy from the North Country
by Sam Sussman
When Evan, twenty-six, is suddenly called home from his life abroad to the secluded farmhouse where he was raised by his mother, June, there is so much he does not yet know. He doesn't know his mother is dying. He still doesn't know the identity of his biological father or the elusive story of his mother's creatively intense, emotionally turbulent romance with Bob Dylan, whom Evan reveres as an artist and whom strangers have long insisted he resembles. He doesn't know the secrets of his mother's life before he was born or what drove her to leave New York City for a completely different existence.--
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Before I Forget
by Tory Henwood Hoen
A funny, heartfelt, late coming-of-age story that examines the role of memory in holding us back--and in moving us forward--for fans of The Collected Regrets of Clover and Maame.
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Lady Tremaine: Reese's Book Club Pick (a Novel)
by Rachel Hochhauser
MEET LADY TREMAINE in this spellbinding reimagining of Cinderella, as told by its iconic evil stepmother, revealing a propulsive love story about the lengths a mother will go for her children.
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What a Time to Be Alive
by Jade Chang
In this moving and sharply funny novel, Lola Treasure Gold becomes an unlikely internet folk hero just as her own life is unraveling. Broke, unemployed, grieving the death of a close friend, and living back in her childhood home in the Hollywood Hills, Lola is stunned when a viral video suddenly turns her into a rising self-help figure. Encouraged by her best friend Celi, she leans into the public fascination with her supposed wisdom. But as her influence grows, so do the questions around her: is she offering real insight, or simply turning tragedy into a brand? While Lola tells others to trust themselves, she is struggling to make sense of her own grief, the accusations surrounding her rise, and the disappearance of her mother, who fled China’s one-child policy, was deported when Lola was young, and has since vanished from her life. The novel explores fame, belief, loss, and the unsettling thrill of being truly seen.
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Want to request any of these titles? Place a hold through the online catalog or call the library 831-768-3404 for assistance. |
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Watsonville Public Library
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