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Cool Machine
by Colson Whitehead
From #1 New York Times bestselling author and two-time Pulitzer winner Colson Whitehead, an exuberantly entertaining novel that brings to life 1980s New York in the magnificent final volume of his Harlem Trilogy 1981. New York City is beginning to emerge from financial ruin and decline, energized by rampant real estate development and a Wall Street unchained by Reagan-era predatory capitalism. Up in Harlem, successful business owner/master fence Ray Carney has just been named Sterling Furniture's Dealer of the Month. When the banks won't give his beloved wife Elizabeth a loan for her new travel agency, however, Carney gambles on one last heist, and finds himself entangled with a legendary criminal mastermind. 1983. To some, Carney's friend and partner in crime, Pepper, is a stone-cold sociopath. To others, a top thief with questionable people skills. Either way, he's feeling his age in his troubled gut and his aching bones. When he takes on a bodyguard gig as a favor to Elizabeth, he's plunged into the alien territory of the East Village art and club scene. Luckily for him, whether you're uptown or down, everyone speaks the same language of violence--Pepper is a native speaker. 1986. Carney has always been haunted by his inability to save his cousin Freddie. Now, twenty years after Freddie's death, he has a chance to rescue Freddie's son from the violent forces of the city. But coming out of retirement and teaming up with Pepper again will mean risking the safety and security he's spent decades building for his family, with only one shot to get it right. With his usual pitch-perfect prose, Whitehead paints a portrait of a city in transition, where shimmering skyscrapers rise to the heavens as displaced people huddle in abandoned tunnels below. In a dazzling display of protean imagination, Cool Machine roves all over the city, from Windows on the World to the Meadowlands, to show that in New York, and in the lives of Whitehead's vivid characters, it's what's below the surface that reveals the truth.
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Country People
by Daniel Mason
A year in the life of a family as they strike out into the unknown (aka Vermont), leaving all the comforts of home behind--a rollicking, lyrical novel from Pulitzer Prize finalist Daniel Mason, the bestselling author of North Woods and one of America's greatest living writers Miles Krzelewski is a devoted husband, a doting father beloved for his outlandish bedtime stories, and the proud owner of a truffle-hunting dog in a land with no truffles. He is also a bit lost, twelve years late with his PhD on Russian folktales and increasingly haunted by a sense that he's become a disappointment to his family. So when his wife, Kate, accepts a visiting professorship at a prestigious college in the faraway forests of Vermont, he decides that this will be the year to finally move forward with his life. But Miles is a man of many enthusiasms, one who possesses, in Kate's words, a great capacity to fall in with anyone, anywhere. And no sooner does he arrive than he finds himself entangled with a cast of characters as colorful as those of any of his folktales, from a ghostly tree surgeon to a scythe-mad biochemist, from a Shakespearean temptress to a photographer of snowflakes obsessed with chronicling, on thousands of index cards, the world's delusions in an Inventory of Wrong Ideas. The new friends, the enchanted woods, the histories: sure, no PhD, but all good fun. Until Miles stumbles upon a bizarre--perhaps ridiculous--local legend, which, he soon suspects, might not be just a legend after all. Joyous, absurd, and life-affirming, Country People is a luminous exploration of marriage and parenthood, the nature of belief and the power of stories, and the ways in which we find connection in an increasingly fragmented world.
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A Fortune of Sand
by Ruta Sepetys
The daughter of a powerful tycoon escapes to a glamorous artists' retreat--where dark secrets and dangerous temptations await--in this gripping Prohibition-era novel from the #1 New York Times bestselling author of Salt to the Sea. Enthralling . . . While history is often molded by those in power, there are always those who can wrest control and write a new story of their own.--Marie Benedict, New York Times bestselling co-author of The Personal Librarian and The First LadiesDetroit, 1927. A city of smoke and ambition, where glittering wealth conceals a graveyard of secrets. Marjorie Lennox is the youngest daughter of a powerful Detroit dynasty--a family rich in money and poor in charm. Creative, reckless, and never quite what they wanted, Marjorie has spent her life overlooked by her controlling father and self-absorbed siblings. But when she secretly applies to an elite arts program backed by a mysterious patron, she grabs the chance to finally step out of her family's shadow. The building is grand. The talent is extraordinary. And something is deeply wrong. The program is strict in ways that feel sinister. Doors lock at strange hours. Rumors spread about women going missing. And the handsome benefactor behind it all is as magnetic as he is unsettling. As Marjorie gets pulled deeper into his world, she must fight to discover the truth before she loses herself completely. Set in the fading splendor of 1920s Detroit and inspired by real, long-buried events, A Fortune of Sand is a glittering, gothic page-turner about power, control, and the price women pay when they demand to be seen.
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Getting Away with Murder
by Shari Lapena
The tenth thriller from the New York Times bestselling author of The Couple Next Door Shari Lapena is far and away one of the best psychological thriller writers in the world. . . She is intensely bingeable. --Lisa Jewell Jill and Ted adore their New York brownstone the way others adore their children. They have carefully, expensively, made every inch of it their own. It reflects who they are, their status and tastes. With the grand mahogany staircase and state-of-the-art kitchen, it is the stuff of glossy magazines and real-estate dreams. It is their sanctuary. So when Ted's inheritance runs out and he makes a bad investment, they panic. How can they protect their beloved home and enviable lifestyle? The answer is obvious. Or at least, it is obvious to Jill and Ted. The death of one wealthy family member--from whom they stand to inherit millions--could solve all their problems. Together, they will get away with murder. As long as they trust each other.As long as neither makes a mistake.As long as there are no surprises...
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The Intrigue
by Silvia Moreno-Garcia
From the New York Times bestselling author of Mexican Gothic and Velvet Was the Night comes a sizzling noir about desire, danger, and greed, in which seduction is the ultimate con. A MOST ANTICIPATED BOOK OF THE YEAR: The New York Times, People, Book Riot, Southern Living Handsome con artist Ulises has long charmed lonely women via letters in order to steal their money, but money is hard to come by in 1940s Mexico. Ulises knows his looks won't last forever, and he's desperate to get his hands on a real fortune. He thinks he's found it when he captivates his newest correspondent, Perla, the owner of a small-town boardinghouse in picturesque Veracruz. But when he meets her, he finds something he didn't expect. The woman has a niece, In s, who is as observant as she is desperate to escape her aunt's household. When In s discovers Ulises's true intentions, she wants in on the scheme. They'll convince her aunt that Ulises is a great catch, Perla will marry him, and her money will vanish. Easy, fast, and clean. But Perla is not the desperate, silly spinster Ulises imagines. She harbors secrets. And although Ulises does not believe in true romance, In s is more alluring than he bargained for. Suddenly, a simple plan may become perilously complicated. Venture into the streets of a small town where a patina of convention and good manners conceals a cauldron of avarice and lust.
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The Last Kings of Hollywood: Coppola, Lucas, Spielberg--And the Battle for the Soul of American Cinema
by Paul Fischer
NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER Riveting, grade A smack for cinema junkies...Fischer's writing pulsates. --Steven Soderbergh, filmmaker The untold, intimate story of how three young visionaries--Francis Ford Coppola, George Lucas, and Steven Spielberg--revolutionized American cinema, creating the most iconic films in history while risking everything, redefining friendship, and shaping Hollywood as we know it. In the summer of 1967, as the old Hollywood studio system was dying, an intense, uncompromising young film school graduate named George Lucas walked onto the Warner Bros backlot for his first day working as an assistant to another up-and-coming, largely-unknown filmmaker, a boisterous father of two called Francis Ford Coppola. At the exact same time, across town on the Universal Studios lot, a film-obsessed twenty-year-old from a peripatetic Jewish family, Steven Spielberg, longed to break free from his apprenticeship for the struggling studio and become a film director in his own right. Within a year, the three men would become friends. Spielberg, prioritizing security, got his seven-year contract directing television. Lucas and Coppola, hungry for independence, left Hollywood for San Francisco to found an alternative studio, American Zoetrope, and make films without answering to corporate capitalism. Based on extensive research and hundreds of original interviews with the inner circle of these Hollywood icons, The Last Kings of Hollywood tells the thrilling, dramatic inside story of how, over the next fifteen years, the three filmmakers rivalled and supported each other, fell out and reconciled, and struggled to reinvent popular American cinema. Along the way, Coppola directed The Godfather, then the highest-grossing film of all-time, until Spielberg surpassed it with Jaws -- whose record Lucas broke with Star Wars, which Spielberg surpassed again with E.T. By the early 1980s, they were the richest, best-known filmmakers in the world, each with an empire of their own. The Last Kings of Hollywood is an unprecedented chronicle of their rise, their dreams and demons, their triumphs and their failures -- intimate, extraordinary, and supremely entertaining.
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Love You More
by Emily Giffin
A woman is newly engaged to a man she adores when she receives a call from her first love with news that shatters her carefully ordered world, in this emotionally powerful novel from the #1 New York Times bestselling author of The Summer Pact. Billie has built the perfect life. Her medical practice in New York City is thriving, and she's finally found the right partner in Dean after years spent trying to move on from her high-school sweetheart, Mick. Their young love had been intense and true, but distance and ambition pulled them apart when she left Wisconsin for medical school. Then one morning, just after she's accepted Dean's romantic marriage proposal, Billie's phone rings. It's Mick--calling for the first time in nearly a decade. His news is urgent and in a moment, everything changes. As Billie boards a plane back to Wisconsin, her past comes rushing in--her hometown friendships, the love she and Mick shared, and the choices that shaped them all. What awaits her is a reckoning with what she's lost, what she's built, and what she still wants. Gripping and deeply moving, Love You More is a story about the plot twists life throws at us--and how love, in all its forms, has the power to change everything.
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Red Verdict
by James Comey
Federal prosecutor Nora Carleton is drawn into international intrigue as she investigates the assassination of a weapons manufacturer in this latest thriller from the former director of the FBI. Nora Carleton is hitting her stride as Deputy US Attorney for the Southern District of New York when a high-stakes counterintelligence case pulls her into a deadly game with global implications. A Russian-style hit on an executive at an American drone manufacturer sends a chilling message--but what exactly is it? Was the victim a Russian mole or just a convenient target? Teaming up with her longtime friend, Special Agent Benny Dugan, Nora launches a criminal investigation that takes them from New York to Las Vegas with the hopes of prosecuting a traitor who has put their country at risk. But as they dig deeper into the tangled web of Russian intelligence and those who profit from its reach, Nora finds herself in the crosshairs of powerful forces determined to keep their secrets buried.
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The Subtle Pleasures of Indiscretion: An Isabel Dalhousie Novel (16)
by Alexander McCall Smith
In this latest installment of the beloved Isabel Dalhousie series, everyone's favorite moral philosopher and amateur sleuth takes on a new set of delicate disputes Isabel has an unwavering commitment to her principles, which means she is often asked to advise on the sensitive, personal affairs of others--even those whose business she would prefer to stay out of. When Isabel receives a surprise visit from a friend who has recently discovered the existence of a long-lost brother, she will have to face this quandary in her usual deft and thoughtful way. The friend has always held her father in high regard, and is worried that knowledge of his affair will tarnish her siblings' perception of him. Meanwhile, Isabel's husband Jamie has been offered the gig of his dreams--the opportunity to play in a series of concerts at a prestigious venue in London. After meeting the series coordinator, it becomes clear to Isabel that the woman has a massive crush on Jamie. Isabel isn't sure whether to reveal the woman's intentions. Should she tell Jamie of her suspicions, or would that mean calling his talent into question? And finally, the ever-frustrating Professor Lettuce returns, this time embroiled in a ridiculous dispute with his friend Professor Dove. Somehow, Isabel gets dragged into resolving the affair. As always, Isabel will have to use her pragmatic sensibility and kindness to navigate these tricky situations.
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Vengeance: The Last Stands of Custer, Crazy Horse, and Sitting Bull
by Tom Clavin
A dramatic new look at Custer's Last Stand in time for the 150th anniversary of the Battle of the Little Bighorn, by the #1 New York Times bestselling coauthor of The Heart of Everything That Is. On June 25-27, 1876, the Battle of the Little Bighorn, commonly referred to as Custer's Last Stand, was fought between combined forces of the Lakota Sioux, Northern Cheyenne, and Arapaho tribes and the 7th Cavalry Regiment of the United States Army. Along the Little Bighorn River in Montana Territory, the battle resulted in the devastating defeat of U.S. forces and was the most significant action of the Great Sioux War of 1876. This dramatic look at the Little Bighorn battle includes not only the Native American point of view-with two dynamic Native figures, Sitting Bull and Crazy Horse, on prominent display-but also the impact it had on the Plains Indians. It turned out to be their last stand too because a vengeful nation quashed any remaining resistance, with a conclusive massacre at Wounded Knee in 1890, almost simultaneous with the murder of Sitting Bull. In addition, Custer's character by June 1876 is at the heart of this world-famous disaster. For all his celebrated bravery, especially at Gettysburg 13 years earlier, Custer became a devout media hound, desperate to gain fame. Even, some say, his own demise was a misguided attempt at grabbing national headlines: He envisioned a massacre - just not his own. As both the camera and the tabloid came of age, George Armstrong Custer became America's first bona fide celebrity. Vengeance is a thrilling read, filled with action, legendary characters, and poignance for the impact this had on Native Americans and the shape of the American West.
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Dwight Foster Public Library 209 Merchants Ave., Fort Atkinson, Wisconsin 53538 (920) 563-7790 Social Media: @dwightfosterpubliclibrary
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