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Fiction Finds January 2026
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The Black Wolf
by Louise Penny
Several weeks ago, Chief Inspector Armand Gamache of the Sãuretâe du Quâebec and his team uncovered and stopped a domestic terrorist attack in Montrâeal, arresting the person behind it--a man they called the Black Wolf. But their relief is short-lived. In a sickening turn of events, Gamache has realized that plot, as horrific as it was, was just the beginning--perhaps even a deliberate misdirection. One he fell into. Something deeper and darker, more damaging, is planned. Did he in fact arrest the Black Wolf, or are they still out there? Armand is appalled to think his mistake has allowed their conspiracy to grow, to gather supporters. To spread lies, manufacture enemies, and feed hatred and division. Still recovering from wounds received in stopping the first attack, Armand is confined to the village of Three Pines, leading a covert investigation from there.
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An Unquiet Peace
by Shaina Steinberg
Mr. and Mrs. Smith meets Code Name Verity in this cinematic, quick-witted mystery set in late-1940s Los Angeles, as former WWII spy Evelyn Bishop and LA noir detective Nick Gallagher team up as an unconventional duo... A propulsive tour through post-WWII Los Angeles for readers of Allison Montclair, Jacqueline Winspear, Ashley Weaver, and Susan Elia MacNeal. As an undercover operative for the Office of Strategic Services during World War II, Evelyn Bishop routinely embarked on deadly missions. By contrast, civilian life should be simple. Yet Evelyn, now back in Los Angeles, struggles with the responsibility of being the new president of Bishop Aeronautics, when people see her as nothing more than a beautiful socialite. With Nick Gallagher, at least, Evelyn can be entirely herself. Once a fellow spy, now her fiancé, Nick works as a private investigator. But the mission that first brought them together isn't over. Evelyn receives a call from her former commanding officer, who is overseeing the Berlin Airlift. He's concerned that the Soviets are trying to recruit Kurt Vogel, a scientist Evelyn and Nick smuggled out of Nazi Germany. After six long years, there's word his wife and daughter may have survived the war. Is this a chance for a long-promised reunion--or a Russian ploy to lure Vogel to their side? Past and present collide again when a routine case offers Nick a reunion with a childhood friend who runs a high-class gentleman's club. The clientele includes everyone from Hollywood royalty to mobsters--to a hidden enemy who will draw both Evelyn and Nick into a web as twisted and treacherous as any they have ever faced . . .
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Kagurabachi, Vol. 5
by Takeru Hokazono
Chihiro's cursed past sends him down a quest of bloody vengeance! Chihiro Rokuhira's father, Kunishige, is the most famous swordsmith in the land. Thanks to his six enchanted blades, the war that has been gripping the nation ends, and peaceful days follow. After the war, he retrieves all six blades and hides them in the cellar of his workshop--but sorcerers raid his home and leave Kunishige dead in front of Chihiro. Many years later, Chihiro wields Kunishige's seventh and final enchanted blade on a mission to retrieve the stolen swords! Chihiro sacrifices the enchanted blade Cloud Gouger to seize back the Enten, the seventh blade. While attempting to rescue prisoners inside the Storehouse, he struggles against Kyora's ability to manipulate the entire space. As the ferocious battle reaches its peak, a desperate Kyora, driven into a corner, unleashes a bit of the Shinuchi's power...
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Lucky Seed
by Justinian Huang
A USA TODAY BESTSELLERLucky Seed is a family saga, a romance, a bodice ripper--a crotch ripper too--a diasporic Asian American family novel, and a thriller. A family story for a family like this could never have just one genre and Huang knows it and has fun with it. The result is thrilling to read, addictive, and full of heart and hijinks. Reader, I cackled. --Alexander Chee, author of How to Write an Autobiographical NovelSuccession meets Crazy Rich Asians in this chaotic, darkly funny romp about the lengths a wealthy family will take to ensure the birth of a male heir from the gay black sheep of their clan.The billionaire Sun Clan of Greater Los Angeles is your typical American family, with power-struggling aunties, emasculated uncles, scheming cousins, scandalous secrets and a fortune teller on retainer. But at the end of each combative day, the Suns are chained together with golden handcuffs, whether they like it or not.Yet strange storms are a-brewing. Their matriarch, Roses Sun, is grappling with an existential crisis: she must produce a male heir that bears the clan's surname. She fears that if her generation is the one in which their esteemed lineage ends, they will be punished as hungry ghosts in the afterlife--an ancient but very real Asian superstition.Faced with this terrifying fate, Roses summons her favorite nephew, Wayward. Believing him to possess the lucky seed, Roses presents Wayward with a mandatory suggestion: to father a baby boy who will inherit everything. When the other members of the Sun Clan catch wind of Roses's plot, all hells break loose. Wayward's family will now clash like never before in an epic war over the future of the Suns...if there is a future at all.Yet through the chaos, Wayward sees opportunity. What if he can leverage all the conflict into a solution for his problematic family? What if he can reunite the Sun Clan by healing them? And what if the tumultuous Suns can finally learn how to love each other for the first time?
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The Forget-Me-Not Library
by Heather Webber
Juliet Nightingale is lucky to be alive. Months after a freak accident involving lightning, she's fully recovered but is left feeling that something is missing from her life. Something big. Impulsively, she decides to take a solo summer road trip, hoping that the journey will lead her down a path that will help her discover exactly what it is that she's searching for. Newly single mom Tallulah Byrd Mayfield is hanging by a thread after her neat, tidy world was completely undone when her husband decided that their marriage was over. In the aftermath of the breakup, she and her two daughters move in with her eighty-year-old grandfather. Tallulah starts a new job at the Forget-Me-Not Library, where old, treasured memories can be found within the books-and where Lu must learn to adapt to the many changes thrown her way. When a road detour leads Juliet to Forget-Me-Not, Alabama, and straight into Tallulah's life, the two women soon discover there's magic in between the pages of where you've been and where you still need to go. And that happiness, even when lost, can always be found again.
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Brigands & Breadknives
by Travis Baldree
Now in paperback, return to the cozy fantasy world of the #1 New York Times bestselling Legends & Lattes series with an adventure featuring fan-favorite, foul-mouthed bookseller Fern. Fern has weathered the stillness and storms of a bookseller's life for decades, but now, in the face of crippling ennui, transplants herself to the city of Thune to hang out her shingle beside a long-absent friend's coffee shop. What could be a better pairing? Surely a charming renovation montage will cure what ails her! If only things were so simple... It turns out that fixing your life isn't a one-time prospect, nor as easy as a change of scenery and a lick of paint. A drunken and desperate night sees the rattkin waking far from home in the company of a legendary warrior, an imprisoned chaos-goblin with a fondness for silverware, and an absolutely thumping hangover. As together they fend off a rogue's gallery of ne'er-do-wells trying to claim the bounty the goblin represents, Fern may finally reconnect with the person she actually is when nothing seems inevitable.
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Clive Cussler Quantum Tempest
by Mike Maden
Juan Cabrillo and the crew of the Oregon face a ghost ship, deadly assassins and a threat from Cabrillo's own past in their race to stop the launch of the world's deadliest machine in this electrifying new entry in the #1 New York Times bestselling series. There's a tempest brewing in Central America. A government crackdown on cartels leaves most of the drug lords locked up in an impregnable prison. In response, Amador Fierro, a brilliant, tech-savvy crime boss forges the seven largest cartels into an allegiance called La Liga. If they are to defeat the U.S. led offensive, they will need a powerful weapon. Thus is born Project Q: an Artificial General Intelligence computer that, when finished, will grant Fierro such overwhelming control of America. Chairman Juan Cabrillo and the crew of the Oregon are the only ones standing in his way, but they have their own problems. While two members of the team are unreachable in the Darien Gap searching for an Iranian Quds Force base, the Oregon crew have a mole in their midst. Meanwhile, other dark forces are at play, competing for the all consuming power at hand. The race to stop the launching of Project Q will come down to the wire, but it's a race neither Juan Cabrillo, nor the western world, can afford to lose.
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Brimstone
by Callie Hart
Saeris Fane doesn't want power. The very last thing she needs is her name whispered on an entire court's lips, but now that she's been crowned queen of the Blood Court, she's discovering that a queen's life is not her own. A heavy weight rests upon her shoulders. Her ward--and her brother--need her back in her homeland, but the changes that have strengthened Saeris have also made her weak. Born under blazing suns, Saeris will surely die if she makes her way home through the Quicksilver. Which means that, once again, she must send someone else in her stead.
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The Color of Hope
by Danielle Steel
Following the unexpected death of her beloved husband, art gallery owner Samantha Thompson finds herself adrift in their Malibu beach house. Her three adult children--scattered from New York to London to Milan--are concerned for her well-being and encourage her to take a trip to Paris. Once abroad, an impulsive day trip from Paris to Biarritz leads Samantha to discover the charming medieval village of Arcangues in the Basque countryside, with its unique and iconic blue shutters and historic chãateau. The chãateau is the ancestral home of Xavier de Bonport, who is trapped in a loveless marriage and trying to dig himself out financially after a business failed due to the pandemic. He needs rental income as urgently as Samantha needs a refuge. With Xavier living in a smaller house on the property, Samantha begins to transform the chãateau into a temporary home.
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The Picasso Heist: A Thriller
by James Patterson
The art world ignites with the discovery of a previously unknown Picasso painting. After being hidden away for fifty years in the attic of a French villa, it's valued at $100 million and put up for auction. Echelon, the Upper East Side auction house brokering the sale, is flooded with interest. ... None of the interested parties has a chance at winning the Picasso without the help of Halston Graham. The young auction-house employee graduated second in her class at Columbia, but she's a first-rate art thief--and an expert gambler who knows how to calculate the odds and play her considerable leverage against all sides. To complete the Picasso heist, she must stay one step ahead of the truth before the gavel falls.
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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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