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The Reading List: The Best Genre Fiction of 2017
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Fierce Kingdom: A Novel
by Gin Phillips
Winner. Trapped in a closed zoo after witnessing a life-shattering event, a woman and her four-year-old son navigate the zoo's hidden pathways and under-renovation exhibits to stay ahead of a dangerous adversary who tests their survival and the limits of the mother-child bond.
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Lockdown: A Novel of Suspense
by Laurie R King
A school career day that is hosted by a range of presenters is thrown into turmoil by an anonymous enemy with a thirst for revenge in a stand-alone novel of psychological suspense by the best-selling author of the Mary Russell series.
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The Quality of Silence: A Novel
by Rosamund Lupton
A beautiful astrophysicist and her precocious hearing-disabled daughter arrive in a remote part of Alaska to discover that the girl's father has been the victim of a suspicious accident, an event that prompts their dangerous search in the storm-stricken tundra.
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This is Where It Ends
by Marieke Nijkamp
Minutes after the principal of Opportunity High School in Alabama finishes her speech welcoming the student body to a new semester, they discover that the auditorium doors will not open and someone starts shooting as four teens, each with a personal reason to fear the shooter, tell the tale from separate perspectives
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The Marsh King's Daughter
by Karen Dionne
A woman whose birth occurred as a result of her teen mother's abduction and imprisonment in an isolated marshland cabin risks the adult family that does not know her past when she uses survival skills honed in childhood to track down her murderous father.
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She Rides Shotgun
by Jordan Harper
Fresh out of jail, Nate thrusts his 11-year-old daughter into a world of robbery and violence in an effort to keep her safe from the prison gang that has put a bounty on his head and murdered her mother.
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Lola: A Novel
by Melissa Scrivner Love
Hiding her role as the true leader of a small gang in South Central Los Angeles, Lola pretends to be the submissive girlfriend of the gang's purported boss while her intelligence and leadership are increasingly tested by high-stakes betrayals and escalating violence between rival drug cartels. A first novel.
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The Force
by Don Winslow
A highly decorated NYPD detective at the head of an elite anti-gang task force risks betraying his colleagues, his city and the woman he loves when federal agents discover the corrupt activities that have enabled him to skim millions in drugs and cash.
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Down Among the Sticks and Bones
by Seanan McGuire
Winner. A stand-alone fantasy in the world of Every Heart a Doorway shares the story of Jack and Jill before they tumbled into Eleanor West's Home for Wayward Children, relating their experiences in a childhood world of monsters, mad scientists and fateful choices.
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The Book of Lost Things
by John Connolly
Taking refuge in fairy tales after the loss of his mother, twelve-year-old David finds himself violently propelled into an imaginary land in which the boundaries of fantasy and reality are disturbingly melded. By the author of The Black Angel.
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The Magicians: A Novel
by Lev Grossman
After graduating from a secret, exclusive college of magic in upstate New York, Quentin Coldwater finds that a fictional land from a series of childhood fantasy novels is real, but is darker and more dangerous than he could have imagined.
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The Witches of New York: A Novel
by Ami McKay
A tale inspired by Manhattan's 19th-century witchcraft revival finds a celebrated teahouse proprietress and a gifted medium teaming up with a dream interpreter in the aftermath of a psychic colleague's disappearance.
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The Half-Drowned King: A Novel
by Linnea Hartsuyker
Winner. Betrayed by his usurping stepfather during his return trip to his ancestral lands, a young warrior resolves to exact revenge and claim the woman he loves at the side of a strong Norse fighter rumored to be a prophesied king.
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The Last Kingdom
by Bernard Cornwell
Captured and raised by Danes in the ninth century, dispossessed nobleman Uhtred witnesses the unexpected defeat of his adoptive Viking clan by Alfred of Wessex and longs to recover his father's land.
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Vikings
Follows Viking Ragnar Lothbrok and his family as Ragnar rises to become king of the Viking tribes.
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The Confessions of Young Nero
by Margaret George
A tale inspired by the rise of the Emperor Nero follows the ascension of a youth to the head of Julius Caesar's imperial dynasty, where he navigates corruption and his mother's ruthless ambitions to pursue his ideals in the arts and athletics.
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Pachinko
by Min Jin Lee
In early 1900s Korea, prized daughter Sunja finds herself pregnant and alone, bringing shame on her family until a young tubercular minister offers to marry her and bring her to Japan, in the saga of one family bound together as their faith and identity are called into question. Reading-group guide available. By a national best-selling author. 150,000 first printing.
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Golden Hill: A Novel of Old New York
by Francis Spufford
New York, a small town on the tip of Manhattan island, 1746. One rainy evening in November, a handsome young stranger fresh off the boat arrives at a countinghouse door on Golden Hill Street: this is Mr. Smith, amiable, charming, yet strangely determined to keep suspicion shimmering. For in his pocket, he has what seems to be an order for a thousand pounds, a huge sum, and he won’t explain why, or where he comes from, or what he is planning to do in the colonies that requires so much money. Should the New York merchants trust him? Should they risk their credit and refuse to pay? Should they befriend him, seduce him, arrest him; maybe even kill him?
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Little Heaven: A Novel
by Nick Cutter
A trio of mismatched mercenaries is hired by a young woman to evaluate the safety of a boy who may have been taken against his will to a New Mexico backwoods settlement, where the mercenaries encounter paranoia, mistrust, and insanity in the shadow of a monolithic idol.
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In the Valley of the Sun: A Novel
by Andy Davidson
Deftly written and utterly addictive, this Western literary horror debut will find a home with fans of authors like Joe Hill, Cormac McCarthy, and Anne Rice. One night in 1980, a man becomes a monster. Haunted by his past, Travis Stillwell spends his nights searching out women in West Texas honky-tonks. What he does with them doesn't make him proud, just quiets the demons for a little while. But after Travis crosses paths one night with a mysterious pale-skinned girl, he wakes weak and bloodied in his cabover camper the next morning-with no sign of a girl, no memory of the night before.
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Ararat
by Christopher Golden
When an ancient relic believed to be Noah's Ark is discovered in the aftermath of an avalanche on Mount Ararat in Turkey, a team of investigating scholars, archaeologists and filmmakers find the corpse of a monster on the ship before a massive blizzard traps them on the site with a mysterious predator.
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The Dime
by Kathleen Kent
A woman from a family of take-no-prisoners police detectives relocates from Brooklyn to Dallas, where she tackles adversaries ranging from drug cartels and cult leaders to difficult vagrants and society wives before a first major investigation is challenged by unruly subordinates, a stalker, a criminal organization and an unsupportive girlfriend.
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Cop Town: A Novel
by Karin Slaughter
A standalone thriller by the best-selling author of Unseen is set in 1974 Atlanta and finds reluctant rookie cop Kate Murphy teamed with agenda-seeking Maggie Lawson in a manhunt for a cop killer.
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The Dry
by Jane Harper
Receiving a sinister anonymous note after his best friend's suspicious death, federal agent Aaron Falk is forced to confront the fallout of a 20-year-old false alibi against a backdrop of the worst drought Melbourne has seen in a century. A first novel.
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Magpie Murders
by Anthony Horowitz
Ignoring the troubling behavior of an eccentric crime writer with whom she has worked for years, editor Susan Ryeland is dismayed when a subplot hidden in the author's latest manuscript reveals a real-world murder. By the best-selling author of Moriarty.
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Midnight at the Bright Ideas Bookstore: A Novel
by Matthew Sullivan
Lydia Smith, a clerk at the Bright Ideas bookstore, must unravel a puzzle left behind by a patron who has committed suicide, an effort that is complicated by memories of her violent childhood.
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A Casualty of War: A Bess Crawford Mystery
by Charles Todd
Caring for an increasingly unstable soldier who believes his cousin is responsible for multiple injuries, battlefield nurse Bess Crawford investigates the patient's claims, only to find herself in unexpected danger.
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Wild at Whiskey Creek
by Julie Anne Long
When a betrayal threatens aspiring musician Glory Greenleaf's big break, her former lover--and the man who put her brother in jail--Sheriff Eli Barlow, will risk everything to make it right ... because the best way to love the girl from Whiskey Creek might mean setting her free forever.
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The Collapsing Empire
by John Scalzi
Winner. When humanity discovers the existence of an extra-dimensional field capable of transporting travelers to different worlds instantly, a significantly depopulated Earth is threatened by a subsequent finding that the field is unstable and may be cutting travelers off on the wrong side of Earth-friendly worlds.
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The Power: A Novel
by Naomi Alderman
In a novel of speculative fiction, an award-winning author contemplates a world where teenage girls now have immense physical power—they can cause agonizing pain and even death, drastically resetting the balance of the world.
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Paradox Bound: A Novel
by Peter Clines
Unable to forget a mysterious woman he met years earlier clad in Revolutionary War-era clothing and driving a 100-year-old car, Eli searches for answers when the woman abruptly reappears, a resolve that leads him into a dangerous search across the nation and a century of history. By the author of the Ex-Heroes series.
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The Almost Sisters
by Joshilyn Jackson
Winner. Swept off her feet by a costumed man at a comics convention, a graphic novelist discovers that she is pregnant with a biracial child and avoids telling her conventional Southern family while assisting her elderly grandmother, who has been hiding a dangerous secret linked to the Civil War.
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June: A Novel
by Miranda Beverly-Whittemore
Learning that she is the sole heir to the fortune of a legendary Hollywood movie star, Cassie Danvers investigates the truth in her late grandmother's past and discovers secrets involving blackmail, murder, betrayal, and broken hearts.
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Six of One
by Rita Mae Brown
Perched right on the Mason-Dixon line, tiny Runnymede, Maryland, is ripe with a history almost as colorful as the women who live there—from Celeste Chalfonte, headstrong and aristocratic, who murders for principle and steals her brother’s wife, to Fannie Jump Creighton, who runs a speakeasy right in her own home when hard times come knocking. Then of course, there’re Louise and Julia, the boldly eccentric Hunsenmeir sisters. Wheezie and Juts spend their whole lives in Runnymede, cheerfully quibbling about everything from men to child-rearing to how to drive a car. But they never let small-town life keep them from chasing their biggest dreams—or from being true to who they really are.
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Fried Green Tomatoes at the Whistle Stop Cafe
by Fannie Flagg
Mrs. Threadgoode's tale of two high-spirited women of the 1930s, Idgie and Ruth, helps Evelyn, a 1980s woman in a sad slump of middle age, to begin to rejuvenate her own life.
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Eleanor Oliphant is Completely Fine
by Gail Honeyman
A socially awkward, routine-oriented loner teams up with a bumbling IT guy from her office to assist an elderly accident victim, forging a friendship that saves all three from lives of isolation and secret unhappiness. A first novel.
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Lillian Boxfish Takes a Walk
by Kathleen Rooney
Embarking on a walk across the unsafe landscape of Manhattan on New Year's Eve in 1984, 85-year-old Lillian Boxfish recalls her long and eventful life, which included a brief reign as the highest-paid advertising woman in America, whose career was cut short by marriage and loss.
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Michigan City Public Library 100 E. 4th Street Michigan City, Indiana 46360 219-873-3044mclib.org/ |
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