|
|
|
|
|
|
The Calamity Club
by Kathryn Stockett
NAMED A MOST ANTICIPATED BOOK OF 2026 BY THE NEW YORK TIMES, GOODREADS, TOWN & COUNTRY, MINNESOTA STAR TRIBUNE, GARDEN & GUN, AARP, WOMAN'S WORLD, COUNTRY LIVING, AND OPRAH DAILYSo immersive, exciting, and downright fabulous, you never want it to end.-Oprah DailyThe multimillion-copy-selling author of The Help returns with a bold, big-hearted novel about a group of unbreakable women, fighting for what's rightfully theirs--and the power of friendship to change everything.Oxford, Mississippi, 1933.Abandoned by her mother one Christmas Eve, eleven-year-old Meg Lefleur has learned the hard way to rely on no one. Now one of the unadoptable big girls at the Lafayette County Orphan Asylum, she fights each day to keep her spirit unbowed. Birdie Calhoun, unmarried and outspoken, has come to Oxford to ask her socialite sister to help the struggling family she's left behind. But as the Depression tightens its grip, Birdie discovers her sister's seemingly charmed life is a tapestry of lies. Then, Birdie encounters Charlie, a woman running low on luck with little left to lose. When their fates--and Meg's--converge, Charlie comes up with an audacious plan to claim what's rightfully theirs. But in a place and time where hypocrisy is rife and women's freedom is fragile, even the smallest act of defiance can have dangerous consequences. The Calamity Club will make you laugh, cry, and cheer--an epic testament to underestimated women who know that calamity can be the spark of new beginnings. This is Kathryn Stockett at her most confident, heartfelt, and hilarious--the triumphant return of one of the most beloved storytellers of our time.
|
|
|
|
Caller Unknown
by Gillian McAllister
An unputdownable adventure that was both heartwarming and thrilling Everything I've come to expect from Gillian McAllister --Freida McFadden, #1 New York Times Bestselling Author Only a Gillian McAllister thriller can make your heart race and then your heart melt from one page to the next I'm a devoted fan --Liane Moriarty, #1 New York Times bestselling authorHow far would you go to rescue your child? A mother races against the clock--and finds herself on the wrong side of the law--in a desperate fight to save her teenage daughter in this pulse-pounding thriller from the author of Reese's Book Club Pick and New York Times bestseller Wrong Place Wrong Time.There is nothing that Simone won't do for her daughter, Lucy. The two have always been close, and with Lucy about to leave home for university, they depart the UK for a vacation to Texas to spend some quality time together. But when Simone awakens on their first morning in the desert, Lucy is gone, missing from their rental cabin. In her place is a cell phone, and a voice on the other line issues a shocking ransom demand. Don't tell the police. Come to this location. And be prepared to do a deal...Though Simone's husband urges her to bring in the authorities for help, she knows she can't take any chances. The kidnappers might kill Lucy if she tells anyone. No mother would take that risk. Instead, that night, she drives to the isolated meet-up.What she finds there changes everything. The mysterious kidnapper doesn't want money. They want Simone to do something. The unthinkable.A catastrophic chain of events is set in motion, with chilling consequences that extend beyond Simone and her family. What follows is a heart-pounding journey through the small towns and punishing deserts of remote Texas, in which Simone's courage--and morality--is pushed to the brink as she discovers what it truly means to be a mother.Unbearably tense, compassionately told, and full of well-crafted moral dilemmas, Caller Unknown proves once again why Gillian McAllister's thrillers are the best of the best (Lisa Jewell).
|
|
|
|
The Distance of a Shout: Selected Poems
by Michael Ondaatje
The poetry of Michael Ondaatje begins in memory: distant landscapes, myths from childhood, fleeting interactions with loved ones, and characters from history itself. In poems that are spare as often as they are fable-like-as tender as they are heart-wrenching-the poet navigates the past, looks toward the future, and unearths inevitable truths about the world. Assembling Michael Ondaatje's finest poems in one brilliant volume, Selected Poems chronicles the poet's journey-moving book to book, moment to moment, border to border-and leads the reader through the threshold of discovery itself. The Distance of a Shout is a profound and gorgeous collection by an indispensable poet of our time, and proof of why miraculous poetry endures--
|
|
|
|
A Far-Flung Life
by M. L. Stedman
From the author of the acclaimed bestseller The Light Between Oceans comes a breathtaking and epic novel set in the vast outback of Australia--about tragedy, family secrets, and the enduring power of love. When we do something that can't be undone or mended, how do we go on living? How do we find our North Star when there is no right answer? These are the questions at the center of M. L. Stedman's unforgettable and magisterial new novel, A Far-flung Life. From the author of the beloved and bestselling The Light Between Oceans, this is a sweeping and epic story of a family, a tragedy, and the aftermath that reverberates for decades. Remote Western Australia, 1958: here, for generations, the MacBrides have lived on a vast sheep station, Meredith Downs. It is a million acres, an ocean of arid land. On an ordinary day, on a lonely road, under the unending blue sky, patriarch Phil MacBride swerves to avoid a kangaroo. In seconds the lives of the entire MacBride family are shattered. And then, tragedy revisits when a twist of consequences claims the life of one sibling, and leads another to give up everything for the sake of an innocent child. Matt, the youngest MacBride, is plunged into a moral and emotional journey for which there is no map, no guide. The secrets at the heart of this gutting and beautiful story force him to choose between love and duty, sacrifice and happiness. A Far-flung Life is a tale about family and belonging, fate and time. It is about people trying to do their best, and each, for private reasons, seeking shelter from the storm of life. Can a fleeting moment unravel a whole life, mar it indelibly and irrevocably? Can compassion, resilience and forgiveness allow us to come to terms with our human imperfections? These are the questions Stedman asks in A Far-flung Life, her profoundly moving, uplifting, and luminous new novel about what the heart can endure for the sake of love.
|
|
|
|
The Foursome
by Christina Baker Kline
From #1 New York Times bestselling author Christina Baker Kline comes a boldly original reimagining of the astonishing true story of two sisters in nineteenth-century North Carolina -- Kline's own distant relatives -- who married world-famous conjoined twins from Siam. When Eng and Chang Bunker arrive in Wilkes County in 1839, they're not just a curiosity--they're a sensation. Everyone is eager to learn whether the salacious rumors about them are true. Within months, the twins have opened a general store, bought land, and begun building a plantation. Now, word has it, they're looking for wives--and in a place that thrives on gossip and legacy, their ambitions set the community on edge.Sarah and Adelaide Yates, daughters of a once-prominent local family brought low by scandal, are drawn into their orbit. Bold, beautiful Adelaide sees in the twins' fame a chance to reclaim her future. Sarah, quiet and observant, isn't so sure. When the twins' lives become entangled with theirs, they must navigate loyalty, longing, and identity in a world where everything--including race, class, and gender--is rigidly defined.Spanning five decades and unfolding against the backdrop of a fractured nation hurtling toward war, The Foursome is both intimate and epic: a story of love and constraint, identity and reinvention. With piercing insight and emotional precision, Kline brings to life a forgotten chapter of American history and the complex, boundary-defying marriages at its center.
|
|
|
|
The Hired Man
by Sandra Dallas
The Dust Bowl sweeps a handsome stranger into a small Colorado town to dangerous effect1937. It's been seven years since the dust storms started in Colorado. Folks can barely remember a time when the clouds were filled with rain instead of dirt, and when the fields were green instead of brown. High school student Martha Helen Kessler and her family are luckier than most; they still eke out a living from the land. Even so, evidence of the Dust Bowl's grim impact on families, especially on the women who bear the brunt of their husbands' frustration and their children's hunger, is everywhere. When Martha Helen's compassionate mother insists they take in Otis Hobbs, a handsome drifter who saves a local boy from a vicious storm, she quickly discovers a darker side to their rural community. Suspicion, jealousy, and prejudice grip their neighbors - and emotions reach a frenzy after Martha Helen's best friend, Frankie, disappears and is then found murdered. Ultimately, Martha Helen is forced to make sense of her conflicting feelings and loyalties in order to help find retribution and to reconcile the difference between the law and justice. Full of period detail and Sandra Dallas's trademark focus on the lives of women, The Hired Man entertains and ultimately surprises.
|
|
|
|
Ironwood: A Catalina Novel
by Michael Connelly
Sworn to protect a scenic island meant to be far from the evils of the mainland, Detective Sergeant Stilwell can feel danger closing in. Detective Sergeant Stilwell knows that his posting on Catalina Island is no paradise, but to most residents, it seems blissfully separated--by twenty-two miles of ocean--from the troubles of Los Angeles County. But now a threat is coming to his safe haven. Acting on a tip from a confidential informant, Stilwell and his deputies watch a plane land in the middle of the night at the Airport in the Sky, a remote airstrip in the mountains. A duffel bag of drugs is dropped and the deputies move in, but things quickly go sideways. While Stilwell chases the fleeing pickup man into the mountainside brush, shots are fired on the runway and the plane flies off. An internal inquiry follows, putting Stilwell on the bench until he is cleared of responsibility for the disastrous operation. But he is determined to find out who brought deadly violence to his island, and begins his own secret investigation into the drug deal gone wrong. While under orders to remain in the sheriff's substation, he finds in the lost and found a valuable backpack that was never claimed. He traces it to a woman who disappeared while hiking on the island four years ago. But then why was the pack only turned in two months back? Now thoroughly intrigued, he follows the mystery all the way to the LAPD's Open-Unsolved Unit and Detective Ren e Ballard. Stilwell and Ballard work the case from both sides of the channel, and soon realize they are on the trail of a criminal who revels in taunting the authorities. Meanwhile, frustrated at being shut out of an investigation on his own island, Stilwell risks his already shaky standing in the department to pursue a case whose reach is wider than he ever imagined. Page-turning, packed with intrigue, and bringing together an unstoppable investigative team, Ironwood continues the Catalina series with all of Michael Connelly's signature relentless narrative drive...evocative atmosphere, realistic dialogue, and well-developed characters (Washington Review of Books).
|
|
|
|
The Land and Its People: Essays
by David Sedaris
In The Land and Its People, his collection following Happy-Go-Lucky, David Sedaris reflects on what it means to be a foreigner, a brother, a lifelong friend. He tries on the role of caretaker after his boyfriend Hugh's hip-replacement surgery, and both succeeds and fails. He buys his sister a cape and discusses his brother with a jaded Duolingo bot. He walks dozens of miles with his friend Dawn and challenges her to eat a truck tire. Ever adding to his list of Countries I Have Been To, he rides a horse named Tequila in Guatemala, buys a bespoke priest's cassock in Vatican City, and goes on safari in Kenya without taking a single photo. There is sadness here--scrolling through his address book, he realizes how many dear friends are now deceased--but also delight: he revels in authors' biographies, the malapropism that becomes a decades-long inside joke, and pair of well-made cotton underpants. He is bitten by a dog. A train passenger vomits in his face. A woman on the street late at night either sexually harasses him or doesn't. Look how hard it is to be alive Throughout these essays--at once acerbic and tender, playful and profound--Sedaris shows how much there is to marvel at when you keep your head up and your eyes open, observing with warmth and curiosity this fascinating human species and the lands we inhabit.
|
|
|
|
The Midnight Train
by Matt Haig
When your life flashes before your eyes, where would you stop? No one can change the past, but the Midnight Train can take you there.The chance to re-live the moments that meant most. To see what kind of person you really were. For Wilbur his best days were with Maggie, the love of his life. On his honeymoon in Venice. Before he gave it all away. He wishes he could go back and live differently. But to do so risks everything . . . A magical, time-travelling love story, from the world of The Midnight Library.
|
|
|
|
Strangers: A Memoir of Marriage
by Belle Burden
A gorgeous memoir about the sudden end to a seemingly happy marriage--an aching, love-filled, and transcendent account of surviving betrayal and discovering joy Riveting...examines the very nature of intimacy.--Joyce Carol Oates It was a great love story, one for the ages. The speed of our beginning and the speed of our ending felt like matching bookends. They both came out of nowhere. He wanted it, he wanted me. And then he didn't. In March 2020, Belle Burden was safe and secure with her family at their house on Martha's Vineyard, navigating the early days of the pandemic together--building fires in the late afternoons, drinking whisky sours, making roast chicken. Then, with no warning or explanation, her husband of twenty years announced that he was leaving her. Overnight, her caring, steady partner became a man she hardly recognized. He exited his life with her like an actor shrugging off a costume. In Strangers, Belle revisits her marriage, searching for clues that her husband was not who she always thought he was. As she examines her relationship through a new lens, she reckons with her own family history and the lessons she intuited about how a woman is expected to behave in the face of betrayal. Through all of it, she is transformed. The discreet, compliant woman she once was--someone whose nickname was Belle the Good--gives way to someone braver, someone determined to use her voice. With unflinching honesty and profound grace, Burden charts a path through heartbreak to show the power of a woman who refuses to give up on love and rediscovers trust in herself. Strangers is a stunning, deeply moving, compulsively readable memoir heralding the arrival of a thrilling new literary talent.
|
|
|
Dwight Foster Public Library 209 Merchants Ave., Fort Atkinson, Wisconsin 53538 (920) 563-7790 Social Media: @dwightfosterpubliclibrary
|
|
|
|