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The Amateur
by Chris Bohjalian
When a young woman, a golf prodigy, kills a caddy with a stray ball at the country club, the investigation of this freak accident reveals a dark and shocking tale of secret affairs and predatory men, and suddenly a teenager is on trial in this spellbinding novel from the #1 New York Times bestselling author of Midwives and The Flight Attendant. 1978: It is the first Thursday in August and temperatures are flirting with ninety when Mira Winston, eighteen years old, drives a golf ball from her tee toward the practice net near the clubhouse and caddy shack. The golf ball, weighing 1.6 ounces, tears through the net, traveling 150 miles per hour, and slams, with sickening force, into the temple of a high school junior named Kenny Foster, rupturing an artery and unleashing a torrent of blood. Kenny brings his hand to the side of his head, then topples onto his side. He's dead before the ambulance even arrives. In the wake of this terrible accident--and everyone, at first, agrees it was an accident--Mira looks for comfort in all the wrong places: In her lover, Theo Catton, a married man three decades her senior. In her mother, a well-kept woman with secrets of her own. In the dead caddy's little sisters, girls bewildered by grief. But when the investigators look more closely at the torn net, when a detective recalls Mira's history of recklessness, and when Kenny's father spies Mira with her married lover, the affluent and mannered community turns on this once-promising young woman. A gripping story that takes the reader from the sun-soaked greens of a tony Westchester country club to the fluorescent-lit stand of a county courtroom, The Amateur asks: What happens when one small moment--a swing, a ball, a piece of string--changes the course of an entire life?
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Sunlight Finds You: A Read with Jenna Pick by Laura MoriartyIt's 1949, early in the Cold War, but St. Petersburg, Florida is warm, lush, and booming with newcomers seeking sunshine and opportunity. For seventeen-year-old Nora, St. Pete feels like paradise, especially after she meets and wins over Leonard, the shy, brilliant son of transplanted New Yorkers. Nora and Leonard are soon spending balmy days and evenings together, and in her adoring, encouraging company, he grows more confident, even as he remains tender and caring. Leonard's sophisticated mother welcomes Nora into their lives, but his father distrusts her motives. When his suspicions are seemingly confirmed, Nora is forced to cut contact. In her longing and fear, she takes a chance that changes her life, exiling her from the family she loves and setting off a chain of secrets and betrayals that will follow her into adulthood. It is a mature Nora who tells the story of her turbulent past. Wiser and more worldly, she commits to an honest but compassionate account, and to a future based on trusting, first and foremost, herself.Sunlight Finds You is, ultimately, a love story set in the past that has much to say about our present. Richly layered and propulsive, it's a book about extending forgiveness--for ourselves, and for others--and about refusing to settle for a life that is less than full.
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The Unknown by Riley SagerIn 1926, five women disappeared from a remote island in Vermont. Now, one hundred years later, it's happening again. Struggling actress Marin Keane is shocked when she lands a role in a major motion picture about the unsolved mystery of New Avalon, an island on sprawling Lake Faraday in Vermont. She's even more surprised when she learns that the role requires a weeklong research trip to that very spot. Because New Avalon isn't your ordinary island. A century ago, it was a commune for spiritual mediums--until they all vanished in 1926. The only trace of them was five dresses hanging from the branches of an old oak tree in the middle of the island, one for each missing woman. Some locals say they simply left. Others think they were murdered. But the prevailing opinion, thanks to a diary left behind by one of the vanished, a young woman named Daisy Rue, is that a s ance gone wrong conjured something supernatural that took them all one by one. Not long after arriving, Marin and her castmates, including legendary actress Violet Wright and white-hot director Ronan Peters, begin to realize all is not right with New Avalon. They hear strange noises in the night and notice mysterious symbols left behind by the island's previous occupants. And after a sudden health emergency leaves Marin, Ronan, and the other actors stranded on the island, the disappearances begin again. Is it the work of someone trying to derail the movie? Or is the island's alleged supernatural past catching up with the present? As fear and suspicion mount, Marin turns to Daisy's diary, hoping it holds the key to figuring out what really happened to the women of New Avalon--and how to keep the island's terrible history from repeating itself.
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The Castle in the Glen
by Rhys Bowen
A ghostwriter plunges into danger as she unravels the dark secrets of a powerful Scottish family in a thrilling novel of romance and mystery by the bestselling author of Mrs. Endicott's Splendid Adventure.Australian writer Emma Callander has been recruited to complete the final historical mystery in a series by celebrated author Iris Blackburn. It's 1965, and Iris's memory is fading. She's certain that only Emma can do justice to her novel about a murder on the Isle of Skye. When Emma ventures to Scotland for research, she discovers the story is not fiction at all but rather a true crime, unsolved for more than fifty years.It was 1904 when a couple's suspicious drowning led to the disappearance of a mysterious young woman the locals called the Wild Girl. To this day the mystery is unforgettable, especially among the descendants of an aristocratic family who'll do anything to keep their secrets buried. From the misty Highlands to a medieval castle, Emma and Tony Gordon, Iris's handsome lawyer, work ever more closely to uncover them.But while Iris may be known for her fiendishly clever twists, there's one not even Emma could have seen coming.
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Etna by Paul YoonSet in a fictional country in the present day, this is a story told through the eyes of an ex-military dog, Etna. After surviving years of a devastating war, Etna decides one night to leave the men he has fought alongside for years and return home--to the place where he was taken from when he was young, in the thin but persistent hope that if a home exists for him, it might be there. Thus begins an exhilarating odyssey told through the eyes of a dog as he traverses across ruined landscapes and fights to survive in a world that, even in peacetime, proves to be just as precarious. Along the way, he encounters other animals and humans who are attempting to figure out how to start again. What makes a life when there is no home to go back to? How do we begin to trust each other again after such profound loss? This is a novel about the power of an idea, about never giving up, and ultimately a novel about finding hope in the most dire of times.
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The Infinite State: Book One of the Decurion Saga by Richard SwanIn this blistering science fiction epic, international bestselling author Richard Swan presents a thrilling tale of survival and an eviscerating examination of totalitarianism. THE INFINITE STATE begins at a flashpoint in the lives of a widowed party member, a disgraced investigator, and a hypersled pilot--entangled in a plot to escape the suffocating authority of a fascist state. WHO GIVES YOU LIFE? PATER AETERNUS. Katherine Fuller's husband is dead. As an esteemed member of Pater Aeternus--governing party of the fascist, galaxy-spanning Decurion Empire--he has left behind an estate of immeasurable wealth. And Katherine is going to inherit it. WHO GIVES YOU PURPOSE? PATER AETERNUS. Life under the Eternal Father is rigidly stratified, surveilled, and controlled--each new day to be endured, not lived. But with Katherine's newfound fortune, she is presented with a rare and dangerous opportunity: purchase a virgin world, and create a better, fairer society. WHO GIVES YOU JOY? PATER AETERNUS. But the Empire cannot allow its wayward daughter to succeed. And as Katherine works in secret, recruiting allies she's not even sure she can trust, she will discover exactly how far Pater Aeternus is willing to go to stop her. Because Katherine is going to create something nobody has seen for many years. A democracy. |
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Queen Mab
by Emily McBride
There is a changeling in this story--but who? Madeleine is young for motherhood, a promising grad student in Victorian and Modernist literature, twenty-three and not long married. Even her mother worries about the timing. But Madeleine's ambivalence is pushed aside by Tom's elation and her own joy at bringing new life to the world. Then comes Maud, perfect and fresh and worth every moment of difficult labor. But after just a few nights, something seems amiss, changed. The child never stops crying. Her hunger is insatiable. Her eyes glint with some kind of ancient mischief. Could Maud be a fairy child, swapped when Madeleine wasn't paying attention? Is the real Maud dancing in the half-light with the fairies and the foxes? Did the gray cat hide her behind the hedge? Meanwhile, the world around them continues in its humdrum ease. Tom works toward a promotion, urging Madeleine to connect with other moms and keep in touch with her colleagues. Her parents travel from abroad to meet the baby, but Madeleine is unnerved by her father's new obsession with genealogy and DNA tests. Interrupted by visions, panicked at her lack of maternal feelings, shut out from her old life, she frantically searches for answers. But the old stories end in sorrow and bloodshed. And fairies do more than kidnap babies. A riveting portrait of madness, motherhood, the myths that haunt us, and the families who keep us tethered, Emily McBride's Queen Mab asks us to reconsider what is real and how we might see a truer picture of ourselves through the darkness.
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Steelbornby Taylor J. LarueReya Connery became the Crimson Dagger, the most notorious thief in Rhiterra, by following a strict set of rules. One: There is no honor among thieves. Two: A good blade is key to any negotiation. Three: Only the dead keep secrets. And Reya has a secret that must be kept at all costs. But when a heist goes wrong on the eve of paying off her debt to a ruthless crime lord, Reya may need a new set of rules. And lots of coin. Fast. Enter Caelan Halcyon, an immortal warrior whose magic makes him a valuable target--if the curse inching closer to his heart doesn't kill him first. There's just one person who might be desperate enough to try and get their hands on the fabled cure in time to save his life, someone whose legend claims they can steal anything: the Crimson Dagger. A male of honor, Caelan loathes everything the beautiful, cocky thief represents, yet knows that Reya is his last hope for survival. Their search takes them to the edge of the known world, where Reya discovers that there is far more at stake than her and Caelan's own lives. Now, Reya must confront deadly foes, her growing attraction to the immortal who is as lethal as his jawline is perfect, and the rage she's spent a lifetime trying to bury. This time, her daggers aren't going to cut it, and the fate of all magic-born hangs in the balance. Enter a world ruled by tyrants and thieves, where magic is outlawed, revolution brews, desire is dangerous, and an impossible cure may prove deadlier than the curse.
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The Wild Beneath: Reese's Book Club Pick (a Novel) by Kelly AndersonAnnie MacLeod always knew she was different, growing up on a sailboat in the Pacific Northwest, navigating by stars and swimming with sea creatures alongside her parents and best friend Evan. But when a tsunami shatters her world, Annie is stranded on land and forced to confront how eccentric she is. In the wreckage, she rescues a wordless man named Walker, who emits a hum only she can hear. Their connection is instant, electric. Walker's touch gives Annie visions of the ocean's hidden world, a life she's never known but feels inexplicably drawn to. Yet even as she is pulled toward him, Evan--the steadfast love who has always been there--remains on dry land, offering the stability she may have to leave behind. Annie is torn between Evan's grounding presence and Walker's magnetic secrets. But then, Walker vanishes, along with the answers she needs about who she really is. Six years later, Annie has left the sea and buried the past--until Walker's otherworldly sound returns, pulling her back toward the ocean and the life she abandoned. The truth under the water is more ancient than she ever could have known, and Annie must confront a choice that will test her heart and determine her future.
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The Women in White by Sarah PekkanenIn 1964, four remarkable young women at a prestigious university became the subjects of parapsychology experiments by a visionary scientist. On the cusp of a historic breakthrough, the women mysteriously vanished and the program was erased from history. Decades later, Riley Bell, newly divorced and desperate for a fresh start, accepts a caretaker job for an elderly widow named Betty. Riley steps into a home that is frozen in another era - no microwave, television, or cell phones, and Betty has never heard of the internet. Why has Betty lived in such profound isolation for so many years, and why does she need Riley now? As the story unfolds across two timelines - Betty's 1960s era of 5 o'clock martinis and high-stakes experiments, and Riley's quest to uncover the truth about the missing women - old secrets rise to the surface. And the only way to survive is to confront the mystery that has lingered for sixty years.
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You'll Be Sorry by Lisa GardnerFor Raquel and Theo Collins, it appeared to be love at first sight. Raquel, a renowned interior designer, and Theo, a brash financial wizard met and married in a matter of months, only to confront a terrible tragedy. Now, unbearably aware of the distance between them, they've come to a remote town in New Hampshire to begin anew. Perched on a ledge with stunning views, the Dixon's family lodge was once a crown jewel of the mountains. Until late one August night, when both parents and their four children vanished, leaving behind a trail of bloody footprints, and a mystery that has endured for thirty years. Now, its latest occupants, the Collinses, are arriving, and the former grand lodge is once more stirring to life. For Amanda Grady, following in her father's footsteps as the recently appointed Shereford police chief, it's good to see a fresh start for the derelict Dixon place. However, not everyone is happy about a new family in the old home and its hidden past may have returned with a vengeance. When a stray dog leads to the discovery of a skeleton on the property, Raquel and Theo face a daunting choice of what to believe, who to trust, and how to survive. Because in the tiny village of Shereford the time has come. The local residents, the new neighbors, and the fledgling police chief must work together to unravel the terrifying events that happened one night thirty years ago, or... You'll be sorry.
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Meet Me in the Garden by Nina LacourFrom bestselling author Nina LaCour comes a sweeping family saga that wrestles with themes of self-discovery and love in all forms, inspired by the author's own Creole family--
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Plant Lady
by Kang Minyoung
In the heart of a quiet town, a young woman tends to her plant shop, but beneath the surface of her lush, green sanctuary lies something far darker.... Will you dare to disrespect her plants? Tucked away in the corner of a neighborhood in Dosan, South Korea, is the Plant Shop. Shop owner Yoohee has started anew, and her meticulously grown foliage thrives under her tender care. To both her customers and herself, Plant Shop is a refuge, where petunias and marigolds bloom and the air itself is like an elixir of peace. By day, Yoohee dispenses advice on gardening, but she also finds herself offering a special service off the clock. Women who are at their wits' end come to her about a man they hope might disappear from their lives. Pulling extra hours is taxing, but Yoohee has encountered--and dealt with--these kind of men in her own life, men who treated her (and her beloved plants) with utter disrespect. So as night falls, Yoohee trades her apron for a shovel and a hoe and disappears into her moonlit garden. There, she buries not just the remains of the day, but also the bloody remnants of a few unfortunate encounters. As men begin to disappear...will anyone ever suspect the Plant Lady? A highly acclaimed novel from South Korea, Plant Lady brings atmospheric tension and delicate humor to a story of obsession and misogyny that will keep you rooted right to its simmering last page.
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A Trade of Blood
by Robert Jackson Bennett
Detective Ana Dolabra must prove a condemned man's innocence and confront a terrifying magical technology in this fantasy-mystery from the bestselling author of The Tainted Cup, winner of the Hugo and World Fantasy awards. The heir to one of the Empire's most powerful families sits in jail, accused of murder. His hands are covered in the victim's blood, and he can neither deny his guilt nor explain his actions. But if the great detective Ana Dolabra cannot save him from the noose, the farming canton of Sapirdad will explode into war, threatening to plunge the whole Empire into starvation and chaos. As Ana investigates--her assistant Dinios Kol, as ever, acting as her eyes and ears--she fears her task is even more daunting than it seemed. For this murder is just the latest in a deeper, subtler web of death, woven by a mastermind with an ancient weapon at his disposal. With their customary skill, Ana and Din pursue their adversary through the canton's wild ranges, sprawling ranches, and reeking slaughterhouses. Yet even they are not prepared to learn the horrifying secret behind their opponent's powers.
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Dead Men Don't Play Fetch: An Andy Carpenter Mystery by David RosenfeltIt's defense lawyer Andy Carpenter's dream to retire. That goal is once again thwarted when he gets a call from Lou Campanelli, an old friend who he simply cannot refuse, asking for a favor. Lou runs a rehab center, and when one of his patients, a homeless veteran, is charged with first degree murder, he needs Andy's help. And of course, Andy will also be called on to care for the accused's dog, but that's okay: What's one more dog? The man that Jason Maddox is accused of stabbing to death is none other than billionaire Paul Vincent, an eccentric businessman and inventor. Bickert dedicated a great portion of his life to philanthropy, with a soft spot for dog-related causes. This led him to befriend Jason, a physicist and war hero, whose life fell apart to the point where he ended up on the streets with his dog, just trying to survive. But why would Jason possibly have wanted to kill him? Well, for one thing, he was to receive a fortune in Vincent's will. That, coupled with the fact that Jason was at the scene, his fingerprints were on the knife, and Vincent's wallet was in his jacket, made it a slam dunk arrest. Once again, Andy is enmeshed in a puzzling, twisty case. But in order to reunite a man and his dog, Andy will have to untangle it all.
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Deceptions by Jeffery DeaverA murder at a crime writers' conference. The method is entirely literary, the motive seems obvious--but can the detective who was first on the scene puzzle out what needs reading between the lines? A brilliant sleuth, obsessed with Sherlock Holmes's mysteries, turns his attention to a serial killer stalking the streets of New York City. But as his deductions bring him closer to his prey, he starts to wonder who is really doing the hunting. A mysterious woman has gone into hiding and Colter Shaw is tasked with bringing her to a safe house. But with a hitman on his trails, the race toward safety takes on a whole new meaning. A serial killer with a motive never before seen in the history of crime challenges Lincoln Rhyme and Amelia Sachs to rethink everything they know about the nature of evil--and the evidence its perpetrators leave at the scenes. No stranger to the cat-and-mouse chase or our favorite twists and turns, Jeffery Deaver brings his chops to Deceptions, where every story unearths trickery and the truths that lie buried deep under.
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The Enchanted Greenhouse by Sarah Beth DurstTerlu Perna broke the law because she was lonely. She cast a spell and created a sentient spider plant. As punishment, she was turned into a wooden statue and hidden away. This should have been the end of her story... but one day, Terlu wakes in the cold of winter on a nearly-deserted island full of hundreds of magical greenhouses. She's starving and freezing, and the only other human on the island is a grumpy gardener. To Terlu's surprise, he offers her a warm refuge--until she's ready to sail home. But Terlu doesn't want to leave, and as she grows closer with the unwittingly charming gardener, Yarrow, she learns that the magic that sustains the greenhouses is failing. Terlu knows she must help, even if that means breaking the law again. This time, though, she isn't alone. Assisted by Yarrow and a sentient rose, Terlu must unravel the secrets of a long-dead sorcerer to save the island--and have a fresh chance at happiness and love. Funny, kind, and forgiving, The Enchanted Greenhouse is a story about giving second chances--to others and to yourself.
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A Monstrous Regiment of Women by Laurie R. KingIt is 1921 and Mary Russell--Sherlock Holmes's brilliant apprentice, now an Oxford graduate with a degree in theology--is on the verge of acquiring a sizable inheritance. Independent at last, with a passion for divinity and detective work, her most baffling mystery may now involve Holmes and the burgeoning of a deeper affection between herself and the retired detective. Russell's attentions turn to the New Temple of God and its leader, Margery Childe, a charismatic suffragette and a mystic, whose draw on the young theology scholar is irresistible. But when four bluestockings from the Temple turn up dead shortly after changing their wills, could sins of a capital nature be afoot?
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A Murder in Springtime: A Bruno, Chief of Police Novel by Martin WalkerAfter Bruno sees he's missed several phone calls from his longtime neighbor Pamela, he has no idea what to expect. He's shocked to hear that she's found her new lodger on her back patio, brutally murdered. Bruno knows that Pamela isn't capable of killing anyone, but then who's the culprit? And what's the motive? The victim had only just moved to town to take a job at the local nursing home. She had no enemies in the village--but no friends, either. Bruno decides that he can't be impartial where Pamela is involved, so the force assigns the case instead to their rising star rookie, Fabien. Bruno is happy for Fabien to take the lead. Lately, Bruno's been distracted: by his faltering relationship, by a meddlesome film crew that's descended on the Dordogne, by a group of opinionated small business owners Bruno wants to help to organize a logistically complicated night market. He can't seem to catch a break. But when Fabien realizes that the victim is connected to his own past, Bruno steps back in to help. The village has never felt more crowded, and the clock is ticking: Will Bruno and Fabien be able to catch a killer?
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The Someday Garden by Ashley PostonWhen Sophie Drear plans her escape to coastal Maine for the summer--for a temporary job revitalizing the storied grounds at Lilymoor House--she doesn't expect to fall in love. But she does: With the beguiling land, the fragrant flowers, and the towering hedge maze. With the quirky staff and the enigmatic woman who owns the place. And then, the door appears. Never in the same place twice, it leads her to a secret, and unfinished, garden with a frustrated thundercloud of a man trapped inside. This mysterious garden is not the only sign that the future of Lilymoor is unstable: the foliage resists Sophie's careful nurturing, vines threaten to strangle the hedges, and the manor's owner has wild ideas about who will take over when she retires--including her inconveniently attractive nephew who is also there just for the summer. Despite herself, Sophie has come to care for the residents of Lilymoor just as much as she cares for its grounds. With the help of one man on the outside of the secret garden, and one man on the inside, she might be the only person who can figure out exactly what Lilymoor needs to bloom once more.
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Someone Else's Husband: Katie Couric Book Club by Kimberly McCreightGretchen Falk, a Park Avenue sophisticate born into great wealth and blessed with a storybook marriage, knows she lives a charmed life, and she's not about to risk losing any part of it. That's why she tried to convince Richard, her devoted husband and the father to their three children, not to join his old college friends on an expedition to the imposing peak of Mount Kilimanjaro. Little did she know that the beautiful artist climbing alongside him might prove the far greater danger. Frankie Callahan's dream of artistic success is within reach, with her career-making exhibition at a celebrated New York gallery only weeks away. If all goes well, the show will leave her financially independent, free of the tainted money that ties her to a past--and a man--she's desperate to escape. To mark this new beginning, she is going to climb Kilimanjaro. But when she learns she's the sole female accompanying a group of male friends, Frankie realizes that nothing about the trip will be as she expected. She certainly hasn't counted on meeting anyone like the very charismatic, very rich, very married Richard Falk. By the time they descend--with one fewer in their group than when they began--they have lost more than they ever could have imagined. Now, less than two weeks after their return to New York, Frankie's East Village loft is a blood-soaked crime scene, and Richard has been charged with her murder. It falls to Gretchen to figure how the life she so carefully constructed could have imploded so completely. There are only two things she knows for sure: she's the only woman Richard has ever loved, and he would never hurt anyone. Someone Else's Husband is the sweeping and suspenseful story of two women on a collision course with love--and with each other--in which no one is right and everyone is very, very wrong.
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Under the Falls by Richard RussoWhen Tyler Sinclair left Stone Mountain at eighteen, he had no plans of returning. With only a duffel bag full of clothes, a few bucks stolen from his father's dresser, and a guitar, his most prized possession, Tyler disappeared without so much as a goodbye. Eighteen years later, Tyler, now the frontman of a famous band aptly named Stone Mountain, finds himself returning to his hometown for a one-night-only benefit concert to support his old friend, Doc, who lost feeling in his legs following a childhood accident. As Tyler ascends the mountain, memories of his childhood come rushing back--memories of his abusive father and despondent mother, of the friends he left behind--and he quickly learns that, for many people on Stone Mountain, the past does not feel like so long ago, and not everyone has been eagerly awaiting Tyler's return. At the concert, resentment simmers just beneath the surface, and Tyler finds himself confronted with faces new and old: there's Curt, Tyler's childhood best friend, now Stone Mountain's chief of police, and his star officer, Deb, an out-of-towner who may have bitten off more than she can chew by accepting a job in Stone Mountain. And then there's Freddi, Curt's wife and Tyler's former lover, a woman whose questionable dealings and fraught history with Tyler will become the catalyst for a tragedy that will upend each of their lives and threaten to validate Tyler's worst fear: that Stone Mountain is the kind of place you might escape from once, if you're lucky, but not twice. Under the Falls is at once a propulsive thriller, a gut-wrenching portrait of a tight-knit rural community undone by the sins of its past, and an unflinchingly honest depiction of how porous the line between right and wrong, good versus evil, can become. This is a stunning, deeply empathetic novel, one that takes Russo's penchant for character-driven drama to thrilling new heights.
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The Secrets We Hide: A North Falls Thriller by Karin Slaughter1601 Iris Drive looks like any other house on the quiet, residential street. But rumors are rampant about the Vickery family, and what goes on behind closed doors. When gunshots ring out, Sheriff Emmy Clifton and her sister, ex-federal agent Jude Archer, discover a devastating crime scene. Allison Vickery has been murdered in her own kitchen, and her teenage daughter is bleeding upstairs, left for dead. Everyone thinks they know what happened. But secrets are buried everywhere in this small town. And it's up to Emmy Clifton to uncover the truth...
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Sunrise by Téa ObrehtIn 2024, Nina's small-engine plane crashes into a lake in the Wyoming mountains. Her boyfriend Ben, who was flying it, is nowhere to be found. Lost and freezing on the shore, Nina is armed with only a few old protein bars, a phone with no service, and a vague hope of rescue. It is up to her to survive in the vast wilderness. But then she stumbles upon Sunrise--a town of the Old West that is strangely well maintained, but seemingly abandoned. A place that holds the missing link to a ghost story one hundred years in the making. In 2003, Sand Daw's golden boy Coll is putting the finishing touches on the town's annual historical reenactment. But when an upstart would-be author comes to him with questions about one of Sunrise's most beloved figures, it threatens to upend everything he thought he knew about the city--and himself. In 1902, town founder, gunslinger, and legendary pulp hero Anton Vargas returns to Sunrise and quickly takes charge of a group searching for a missing boy. But who really is Vargas? What does he know about the boy's disappearance? And why has he returned after such a long absence? These three strangers are separated by time and circumstance. But Sunrise's many secrets are like gunpowder: quiet, contained, until they encounter a spark.
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The True Meaning of Love
by Danielle Steel
This powerful novel by #1 New York Times bestselling author Danielle Steel is a stirring story of the lives of ordinary people during wartime. February 24 is the eighteenth birthday of a Ukrainian ballet school student named Vlad. It also happens to be the day that the first bombs of the 2022 Russian attack land on his homeland. As life for every person in the country is turned upside down in a moment, Vlad is immediately called up to serve in the military. But as much as he wants to defend his country, he is desperate to get his girlfriend, Tatyanna, an orphan whose only home has been the ballet school, out of the country. With their home under siege, Tatyanna tries to make her way to safety in Poland. Also joining the refugees is Yulya, who is torn between getting her young children across the border and staying at the side of her husband, Symon, and her elderly parents, Petro and Oxana, who refuse to abandon their home. As millions flee, Vlad and Symon join a volunteer civilians' unit to fight. Even elderly citizens like Petro and Oxana are given AK-47s, though soon starvation becomes as much of a threat as the encroaching troops. Sasha, an obstetrician, and Anton, a surgeon, who are secretly lovers, stay behind to treat the never-ending waves of wounded. When the Russians bomb hospitals, the heroic couple finds themselves delivering babies in bomb shelters. Through the stories of Vlad, Tatyanna, Yulya, Symon, Sasha, and Anton--each struggling to protect their loved ones and preserve their own humanity--Danielle Steel tells a gripping and deeply moving story of regular people surviving as a war rages around them.
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Hot Girl Murder Club by Ashley WinsteadWhat's a girl got to do to get some fame, a few million record sales, and justice for murder? Ten years ago, aspiring singer-actress Scout Sage lost the only thing that mattered: her sister, Georgia. Ever since Georgia's mysterious death at a Hollywood party, Scout's done her best to honor her memory, clawing her way through the industry and collecting a network of climbers along the way, fellow hot girls in stilettos with cutthroat ambition, a new Hollywood order. But when a slew of targeted murders makes headlines across L.A., all pointing to Scout as the killer, she turns overnight from a mid-tier pop star into the world's most famous (alleged) murderer. Now everything she's worked to build--including the justice she wants for Georgia--will fall apart unless Scout can prove she's not guilty. Meanwhile, the young and unusual detective assigned to her case, herself no stranger to tragedy, begins to unearth secrets not even Scout knows, let alone her millions of new fans. Particularly about the ways Georgia's death connects to an even older pattern of crimes long hushed over in Hollywood--an old reign of terror that, if brought to light, could be the fuel that ignites a reckoning the world over.
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Appraisals
by Claire Boyles
Financial and ecological realities tear at the heart of a multigenerational farm family in this debut novel from a deft and daring (Los Angeles Times) Whiting Award winner.
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The Castle & the Cloister by Laura E. WeymouthTwo centuries ago, the Inver clan conquered the nation of Honoria, ushering in an era of blood. Now, after a period of fragile peace, a king's whims may reignite the engines of war. At the last stronghold of Honoria's sun goddess, Fia, a young postulant, seeks safety for her child, but the price of the cloister's protection will tear her from what she loves most and thrust her into a deadly game of deception. Within the Inver's mountain fortress, Ariana is known as the apostate queen after abandoning her faith for a king. But old loyalties aren't easily severed. Ariana treads a dangerous path, striving for peace in a court made for conquest. And deep in the heart of the mountain, the Inver Priest bides his time with small acts of rebellion. Blinded in the fight for the throne, he harbors a bitter grudge--one that could lead to Honoria's ruin or renewal. Amid a landscape of enemies, allies, and intrigue, three lives intertwine. Each will have to risk the wrath of gods and kings to alter the course of nations.
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Kitten by Stacey YuKatie is far from home, fresh out of college, and desperate to skirt the demands of adult life. It doesn't help that she's no longer speaking to her mother. Or that she owes her roommate and closest friend months of rent money. Luckily, her self-assured, generous boyfriend James seems happy to make decisions for them both. When James takes Katie on vacation to his family's seaside house, he brings Silver, his childhood cat, and Katie discovers a sudden, strange, and giddy connection. Silver doesn't mind that Katie can't seem to get a job, hold her own at dinner parties, or make amends with her mother. Silver, who gets to lie around all day, misbehave spectacularly, act cute, be gross, and still get fed, seems to have the life Katie increasingly longs for. Soon enough, they're inseparable, and something inside Katie begins to crack open . . . or maybe just crack. Because if Katie has learned anything from her mother, it's that devotion comes at a price. As Katie's affection for Silver deepens, her other relationships begin to falter, until she's forced to confront what she really desires from life--and what she might have to risk to get it. Darkly playful, wryly observant, and unexpectedly heartfelt, this debut from an irresistible new voice in fiction is a timeless reckoning with the uncertainty of becoming a person in an age that is as disorienting and lonely as it is full of hope and promise.
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The Last Gentleman
by Walker Percy
Will Barrett is a 25-year-old wanderer from the South living in New York City, detached from his roots and with no plans for the future, until the purchase of a telescope sets off a romance and changes his life forever.
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The Seekers of Deer Creek by Thao ThaiFrom the national bestselling author of Banyan Moon, a captivating, evocative story of two estranged sisters on a quest to find a painting by a forgotten Vietnamese artist that holds the truth of their family's fractured past. Aside from the fact they are sisters, Vivi and Calla Nguyn have little in common.Vivi, the eldest, lives an orderly and predictable life. She works as an art conservator at a museum in Chicago, carefully preserving pieces of the past, all the while refusing to examine her own dark history. Calla leads a much bolder, if occasionally reckless, existence. She's an accomplished artist with a flair for the dramatic, charming and intriguing everyone she meets. She's also a recovering addict, constantly causing Vivi to worry.Months after the two fall out in the wake of their father's death, Calla appears on the steps of the museum with a sketch and a letter she found in their father's belongings. The sketch is an exact copy of Blue Mirror, a striking painting by a Vietnamese painter named K.P. L . In the letter, L writes about a mysterious lost work of art. Calla is convinced it is meant for their family, and that it was their father's deathbed wish for her and Vivi to find it together. Intrigued yet reluctant to follow her capricious sister, Vivi must decide whether she's willing to face or shut the door to the past.From the ghostly Wisconsin woods to a glittering estate in the French countryside to a sprawling ancestral home teetering on the edge of a ravine in Vit Nam, The Seekers of Deer Creek is a story of sisters, art, and the irresistible gravity of the past--how it endures across time and generations, always present even when buried.
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Time Travel for Beginners by Jaclyn MoriartyOn a bustling road in Sydney, Australia, lies a nondescript storefront known simply as the Time Travel Agency. Inside, you'll be welcomed by the smell of fresh-brewed coffee, a selection of baked goods...and the question, Where in time do you wish to go? The guidelines are simple: you can go whenever you wish into the past, and there's no fear of altering the present. Have tea with Jane Austen, scream at a Beatles concert, witness the Olympics in ancient Greece. Perhaps a more personal trip? Visit your long-lost grandmother, recapture the heady days of your youth, return to the idyllic time when your teen was a babbling baby--or watch yourself make the one decision that changed everything. Is it a hoax? And if it's real, what's the catch? When single mother Anna is offered a job at the agency, she glimpses the possibility of happiness. Meanwhile, Teddy's a customer hoping to untangle his recently imploded marriage. And Jade, who has a deeply buried secret, despises the agency for offering false hope. In Jaclyn Moriarty's incandescent novel, Anna, Teddy, and Jade leap headlong into time, hurtling on a crash course toward one another. At turns entertaining and illuminating, Time Travel for Beginners explores the moments, big and small, that shape our destiny.
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When Lemons Give You Life by Anna JohnstonRetired Michelin-star chef Griff Barlow has lost his appetite. He's done with grief, guilt, and the beige slop they call food at Sunny Glen Aged Care Facility, where he resides. Six decades of life have handed him all the lemons he can handle, so he breaks into the nursing home kitchen to bake one last tart as his final meal. But the act of cooking stirs a dormant joy, and soon he's sneaking in after dark to serve up flavor and comfort to fellow residents, who come alive with each bite--all while hiding a lie big enough to destroy the one thing he has left to protect. Lisa, Griff's younger sister and sole visitor, is navigating a midlife ADHD diagnosis, a new romance, and unexpected news that could change everything. Despite their fractured relationship, she keeps showing up, even with hope for reconciliation long buried in the silence between them. But the truth has a way of boiling over, and when secrets, souffles, and second chances collide, Griff and Lisa may discover a recipe for forgiveness. Heartfelt and inspiring, When Lemons Give You Life is a deeply human novel about love, forgiveness, redemption, and rediscovering joy when life has lost its flavor.
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You'll Love It Here by Natalie SueMona thought her living situation was bad... but the real mess is just beginning. One day is all it takes for Mona's life to implode. After years of climbing at her marketing firm, she was supposed to be getting promoted and finally moving out of her crumbling apartment building. Instead, she's jobless, aimless, and still stuck in a space barely big enough for a yoga mat. Then her eccentric landlady takes a tumble and asks Mona to step in as the building's reluctant super. The deal is simple: help prep the place for sale, and she can secure the upgrade she's been chasing. But that's easier said than done when the neighbors treat boundaries as optional. There's the shouting couple, the mysterious shut-in, a possible panty thief in the laundry room--and Sami, the relentlessly cheerful diner owner who keeps showing up with coffee and unsolicited ideas about community. As Mona gets pulled deeper into the building's chaos--and closer to the people inside it--she's forced to confront what, and who, she's really been trying to outrun. Sometimes, the place you're desperate to leave is the one that finally shows you who you are.
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One of the Family by Mark EdwardsWhen Patrick is invited by his girlfriend to join her and her family on a luxury holiday in a remote and beautiful part of Scotland, he has no idea that he is about to be plunged into a nightmare of a family, sinister behavior...and a plot to murder the patriarch's younger fiancee. Arriving at the house, Patrick meets Holly's dad, self-made-millionaire Charles, along with her brother Lewis and older sister Miranda. Also on the trip is the widowed Charles' bride-to-be, Jasmine, who--in her thirties--is around the same age as the three siblings. Lewis and Miranda are horrified by their dad's impending marriage to this younger woman. Surely, she is just after his money--and is going to steal their inheritance from them. To make things worse, Jasmine is an almost exact doppelganger of their mother before she got sick and died. Patrick finds himself in the middle of this viper's nest, trying to keep out of the family crosshairs. He starts to suspect that Lewis has dark plans for Jasmine--putting himself in peril as a potential witness who could mess up his scheme. Perhaps more than one person won't escape this family of snakes...
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God's Country
by William Kent Krueger
From the New York Times bestselling author of The River We Remember, a new mystery in the wildly popular Cork O'Connor series. Cork O'Connor, preparing for a family trip into the Boundary Waters, is troubled by ominous visions about his future. Ignoring the warnings, he uncovers signs of violence while searching for his missing friend, Cordell Bishop. Soon, he is forced to negotiate with dangerous criminals, the Kennedy brothers, who are seeking their late father's hidden stash. Facing escalating danger and difficult choices, Cork grapples with his darkest instincts as he helps others escape and eventually takes justice into his own hands. God's Country is an action-packed thrill ride that will keep readers on the edge of their seats.
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That Night by Gillian McAllisterOn vacation in Europe, Frannie makes two urgent phone calls. One to her sister, and one to her brother. The siblings come running, and they find their sister covered in blood, kneeling over an unmoving body. There's been an accident: Frannie has hit a man with her car, and she needs their help. They bury the body, and they make a promise. They'll never tell anyone. But when the police come calling, the siblings' lies start to spiral. They begin to doubt their trust in each other. Because what really happened that night? And who will be the first to crack? With the incredible twists and turns and a unique look at family relationships that McAllister has become known for, That Night is the ultimate summer thriller that asks: what would you do to protect your family?
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Brain Damage by Freida McFaddenDr. Charly McKenna had the perfect life: a thriving dermatology practice, a luxury apartment overlooking Central Park, and a handsome husband who adored her. Until the night a bullet tore through her skull... and stole everything. Now Charly wakes in a rehabilitation hospital unable to walk, speak, or remember her own name. All she knows is that someone tried to kill her--and they may still be out there. As fragments of memory surface, so do unsettling questions about the people around her, including the attentive man who keeps appearing at her bedside. The truth of what happened that night lives somewhere inside her brain. And as Charly pieces together the jagged edges of her past, she begins to realize the most terrifying possibility: the person who wants her dead might be the one she once trusted most.
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The Divine Gardener's Handbook: Or What to Do If Your Girlfriend Accidentally Turns Off the Sun: A Novel by Eli SnowIn a Jenga-stacked megacity where glowing blue flowers hum in the dark and palace doors open into secret worlds, getting a job in the Divine Gardens is almost impossible--like being plucked from obscurity by a carnival claw machine. But Cyprin has spent her whole life trying. Her only chance is winning the annual flower pageant, dominated for five years by Purcell: brilliant head gardener, unbearable rival, and the one person Cyprin can't stop thinking about. When Cyprin cheats her way to victory, she's thrust into a world of sentient plants, ancient secrets, and a God who turns out to be just some exhausted man with a very good garden. What begins as rivalry, heated glaring, and increasingly personal acts of warfare spirals into something much more dangerous. As rebellion spreads through the city and the truth beneath the Gardens begins to unravel, Cyprin and Purcell find themselves caught between ambition, obsession, and the terrifying possibility of understanding each other completely. Even if they burn the whole world down in the process. The Divine Gardener's Handbook is perfect for readers who like their fantasy weird, heartfelt, and a little unhinged.
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Murder on Charity Lane: A Marigold Cottages Mystery
by Jo Nichols
Months after the shocking murders at Marigold Cottages, eccentric landlady Mrs. B finds the peace and quiet a little too peaceful. That's why she invites her young friend CJ Moore to move into a now-vacant cottage: CJ is a suspect in the death of her employer, a wealthy Santa Barbara philanthropist who tumbled down the stairs of his mansion during a dinner party. The dead man's much-younger widow claims she saw CJ push him, but Mrs. B is certain that she's innocent. Why? Oh, just a feeling. That's enough for her to summon the Marigold Cottages Murder Collective. Lily-Ann will marshal the facts, Hamilton will dig around online, Sophie and Nicholas will offer eyewitness testimony, and everyone will hope that Ocean keeps Mrs. B out of trouble. Just as the tenants begin to suspect that Elsa is in fact the perpetrator, there's a second murder. A bloodier one. And with their tight-knit community in the crosshairs, they must prove her innocence - or accept her guilt.
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Vengeance by Wilbur SmithVan Diemen's Land, 1835 Ralph Courtney has had everything taken from him - his wife, his son, his fortune, his freedom . . . Chased from the hills of Zululand, he had found refuge with Ann and Harry at the mission station at Mahikeng. Behind the great Barrier of Spears, out of reach of King Shaka's murderous brother, they had been safe for a time. But even here, a hundred miles north of the Orange River and British justice, Ralph could not escape his past . . . Captured. Convicted. Sentenced. Transported six thousand miles - to the end of the world, the worst prison on earth. Ralph knows that escape is impossible. All is lost. But one day, a ship comes in over the bar and he is brought back to life by a man he believed dead. Meanwhile, Ann and Harry are trapped in Mahikeng, their fate tied to that of the mission station. When new orders come from London, they have no choice but to return to the Zulu court and face the enemy they thought they'd left behind . . . Blood, vengeance and destiny collide in the latest thrilling novel from the bestselling master of adventure, Wilbur Smith. |
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It Came from Neverland
by Cynthia Pelayo
Peter Pan meets Stephen King's It in this twisted horror retelling of a classic childhood fairy tale set during WWI. 1914, Wendy Darling works by day as a school teacher, and by night, she assists soldiers who have returned home from the Western Front. There is one mysterious patient who, despite all the care they've given him, is in a deep sleep, unable to wake up. One night, when he murmurs the words Peter Pan, Wendy is thrown back to a darker time, one that she wishes she could forget. When one of her students goes missing, it brings back memories of when children went missing and were later found murdered in London many years ago. Wendy is convinced that Peter Pan, the entity that she believes killed those children, is back. She and her brothers had a close encounter with Peter Pan, after all. But her brothers only remember Peter Pan and Neverland as a fantasy of childhood games. When another child goes missing and signs start to point to Wendy, Scotland Yard digs into old reports, finding that Wendy knew the names of all the children who had been killed. As Wendy tries to prove her innocence, she also has to find a way to stop Peter Pan once and for all.
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Delusional: A Michael Bennett Thriller
by James Patterson
A New York Times bestseller from the world's bestselling author. Detective Michael Bennett and army-sniper-turned-NYPD-officer Rob Trilling travel to Montana to investigate a case that crosses state borders and family lines. In New York City, a series of deadly bombs explodes. Across the river, a military base is burglarized for munitions. In Montana, violence and arson rock a small town outside of Bozeman. Are the incidents related? Bennett, Trilling, and the ATF investigate. A single-minded group angry with the government keep turning up in unexpected places, insisting that they're only trying to make the world a better place. To law enforcement, their claims seem delusional. Will words or gunpowder light the next fuse?
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The Enigma Challenge by S. C. GodfreyZoe Wilder has the unflashy, solitary life of an academic, studying ciphers in literature at a California university. When her research takes her to a cryptology conference in Madrid, she's not expecting to trigger the Enigma Challenge, a clandestine puzzle competition few dare to enter. The Enigma Challenge is an infamous competition with impossibly high stakes: Lose, and your identity is wiped forever. It doesn't take long for Zoe to realize that she's in over her head. Enter Dane Seaver: the mysterious hacker who insists they team up. Dane knows the Enigma Challenge--its secrets, its players--and Zoe knows ciphers. For better or worse, they need each other. Six days, five puzzles, three countries, and innumerable rivals. What's more, the spark of attraction between them becomes harder to ignore, but distractions are dangerous. With twelve million dollars and multiple lives on the line, the Enigma Challenge is anyone's game. Will Zoe and Dane come out unscathed against the other players--and each other?
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Freight by Ryan LowellAs a lone semi-truck makes its snowy way to the US-Canadian border, a series of vivid characters are inexorably drawn into a desperate, comedic, and murderous scheme to steal its precious cargo. Curtis, a newly hired dispatcher with a newly pregnant wife at home, holds a scrap of paper that identifies a semi-truck trailer that shouldn't exist. Billy is an enterprising and charismatic sociopath who thinks nothing of quietly killing whoever gets in his way, and he carefully tracks the coordinates of a truck loaded with ten million dollars' worth of Canadian pharmaceuticals. Jimmy, Theo, and Sarah are the not-so-innocent locals poised to stand in Billy's way, none more so than Sarah. Long dismissed as an easy party girl, Sarah's iron will and fierce instinct for survival will create an unexpected trail of mayhem and carnage in her seventy-five-mile-per-hour wake. In the rough-and-tumble tradition of Dennis Lehane, S.A. Cosby, and classic American noir, Freight is a thrill-ride view of the world of labor, life and love--a searing portrait of men at work and also at their worst.
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Hocus Pocus
by Brinda Charry
A young magician travels across the world seeking fame and fortune all the while hiding a secret, in a novel based on the renowned, real-life Indian stage magicians performing in the United States in the 1800s. Samuel Thomas, a man of uncertain parentage, is a young magician convinced that he is destined for greatness in a far-off land. Seeking honor and acclaim, he journeys across the globe--from India to London to the fog-shrouded streets of Boston in 1816, the infamous Year Without a Summer. In this season of unrelenting cold, Samuel arrives in a city alive with ambition, contradiction, and tension. Enter Walter Mepham: in some ways a world away from Samuel, hailing from the upper echelons of Boston society, but also nursing a problem of his own. Proprietor of the New Boston Museum which is on the brink of bankruptcy, Walter is desperate to find ways to keep it open--and Samuel is the ideal fit for the first live addition to the collection. While the perfect solution to each other's problems, the relationship between the two men quickly becomes complicated as Walter grows more and more fascinated, and even obsessed, with the young foreigner. As Samuel becomes subsumed within the museum and dependent on Walter, he must reckon with just how much he's willing to give up to achieve success. Richly detailed and vividly conjured, Hocus Pocus is a story about art, ambition, and desire, and captures the crackling energy and wonder of a bygone era through the eyes of a young performer.
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Immortal Rose (Deluxe Limited Edition) by Alexandra BrackenSet in a sumptuous world ruled by magical perfume, this achingly romantic, slow-burn love story will shatter your heart and leave you breathless. Members of the ancient House Rosebourne have a strange gift born of a fairy ancestor: the ability to infuse fragrance with magic capable of manipulating mind, body, and emotion. When a shocking murder leaves the kingdom of Albion vulnerable to a coup, royal spymaster Hugh Thornton seeks the one person who can help: Viola Lockhart, the last living Rosebourne and secret heir to a fraught legacy. Livid at the silver-eyed aristocrat who had her thrown in jail to force her compliance, Viola nevertheless comes to an agreement with him. In exchange for crafting Immortal Rose, the singular perfume capable of saving Albion, illegitimate Viola can seize the life--and fortune--that should have been hers. As Hugh and Viola race to find the perfume's lost fairy ingredient, hidden deep in Albion's dark underbelly, neither can deny the scorching attraction building between them--especially as the attempts on Viola's life grow increasingly brazen. But a terrible truth lurks in the heart notes of their kingdom--and while every bargain has a cost, Immortal Rose may demand more than Hugh and Viola can ever pay.
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Let's Kiss and Tell by Joss RichardLucy Reid is a sex columnist whose views on relationships aren't exactly optimistic. She empowers readers to embrace their sexuality and challenge the idea that you need a partner to be happy--until her editor points out their audience is mostly coupled up . . . and maybe it's time for something (or someone) new. To buy herself time, Lucy impulsively claims she's started a new relationship she can write about. Enter Marshall Oakley. Marshall is the new senior news writer at Lucy's company. When they meet at a work event, he reveals his ex of nine years is getting married, and he needs a plus-one to keep his family off his back. They agree to fake date until the wedding--Lucy can write about finding the one before proving relationships don't solve everything when they break up, and Marshall gets a no-strings date to convince his friends, family, and ex he's moved on. But as they spend more time together, the lines blur and each begins to reevaluate their views on love. As fear gives way to misunderstandings, can they find the courage to rewrite their story with a happily ever after?
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Mia
by Leslie Bazzett
A stylish, unsettling work of psychological suspense about an American woman, adrift in Mexico for a year, whose chance encounter with a glamorous older expat spirals into obsession and betrayal. There's no one, there's only you. When Sally, an American living in San Miguel de Allende, meets Louise outside her children's school, she's eager to immerse herself more deeply in the life of the city. In Mexico for just a year with her husband, an architect, Sally is entranced by Louise--her elegance, her harshness, her stories about Burroughs, Ginsberg, and Kerouac--and the two quickly become inseparable. Soon enough, Louise has begun calling her Mia and, at first playfully, then in earnest, introducing Sally as her daughter to a growing circle of friends. By turns enthralled with the possibility of a new identity in Mexico and troubled by Louise's magnetic hold over her, Sally attempts to keep the relationship a secret from her husband. As the specter of Sally's troubled childhood looms, and Louise's self-mythologizing tightens its grip, the two women test the limits of reinvention--until their fictions threaten the security of Sally's flesh-and-blood family. A taut, beguiling work of psychological suspense, Mia is a mother-daughter story turned on its head and a high-intensity fable about the limitations of playing a role that doesn't belong to you.
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My Sister Is Going to Kill Me by Nina SimonLiv and Mandy Chisholm's yearly sister trip is a sacred tradition, an attempt to bond as their lives increasingly diverge. Liv, the ever-practical older sister, packs the color-coded itineraries. Mandy, a bedazzled human tumbleweed, brings the spontaneity. This year, the sisters take off for a rafting adventure through the breathtaking depths of the Grand Canyon with a group of strangers. But beyond the terrors of whitewater rapids, sibling squabbles, and rogue reptiles, the ferocious beauty of the river carries a darker undercurrent, and an unexpected guest: a murderer in their midst. When a fellow traveler is found dead and another corpse hits the water, the rafting trip flips from idyllic sister vacation to high-stakes murder investigation. Every suspect has a secret, every clue is drenched in mystery, and Liv and Mandy can hardly trust each other, let alone their own instincts. With the river raging and danger around every bend, the Chisholm sisters must work together to catch a killer--and keep their relationship from capsizing--before it's too late.
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A Plagued Sea by Kim Bo-YoungWhile waiting for a train to Haewon, an isolated Korean seaside village, bodyguard Mu-young gets a disaster alert on her phone. Screens throughout the station report breaking news of a massive earthquake on the coast. Despite the danger, Mu-young boards the train with her niece: she'd rather face the earthquake than leave the girl in her mother's care. That choice haunts her for the rest of her life. Three years later, Haewon Village is home to horrors. The earthquake unleashed an ancient plague that transforms its victims into fishy monsters, and the government's lockdown has cut off any hope for help. Mu-young's niece is dead, and all that's left for her is to hunt villagers who break isolation. When an officious bureaucrat from Seoul arrives in the village, he stirs up even deeper trouble. Will Mu-young survive? Does she even deserve to?
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The Responsible Party by Claire CarusilloClaire grew up with the legend of the Unsinkable Mounsey Women. Her great-great-grandmother Fanny made headlines in 1915 for washing ashore in England nearly a year after her ship sank. Fanny's daughter Sarah went to collect her mother on the equally ill-fated Lusitania--whose sinking she, too, survived. Their improbable endurance led to regional stardom on the Midwestern vaudeville circuit. But Claire never knew the full story--until now. Listless, jobless, and recently canceled for extolling skin-care advice online that sent a reader to the hospital, Claire is surprised when a knock at the door turns out to be the police, looking for answers about a murder from the 1970s they suspect her mother, Kath, may know something about. As the cops zero in, Claire demands answers from her mother. Kath's comically long response, which blossoms into the story of the Mounseys and their descendants writ large, moves from a Liverpudlian poorhouse at the onset of World War I to a Lake Michigan lighthouse in 1971 (when sex was freer and McDonald's fried their potatoes with beef tallow) to present-day Chicagoland; along the way, it offers Claire a richer understanding of what she inherited from the complicated, resilient women she descends from. Replete with inappropriately old boyfriends, dubious medical professionals, and more than a few boats, The Responsible Party is the story of several women, in several different timelines, trying to stay afloat.
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The Salt King by Natasha PulleyAn apocalyptic novel about belief, religion, and the power of myth that blends the gripping, end-of-the-world storytelling of The Passage with the biting wit and epic queer romance that makes Natasha Pulley's books delightful.
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The Sleeping Sisters by Jennifer GivhanFortuna Miercoles has finally moved her family to a better neighborhood across the Rio Grande, desperate to outrun the curse that's stalked her bloodline since her greatest grandmother crossed the desert with a cactus thorn splitting her throat. But burying a family's violent legacy--or her own haunting secret--isn't so easy. Twenty years ago, girls and women vanished into the Albuquerque night, their bones later unearthed on the mesa. The so-called Reaper was never caught. Now, beneath the dormant volcanoes called the Sleeping Sisters, the killings have begun again, and they've called forth something in Fortuna that she has long fought to keep buried... Detective Jeanette Palacio has spent decades promising justice to the ghosts of her murdered cousins--alongside the memory of the other women she couldn't avenge. When a new body turns up in Fortuna's backyard, both women are pulled into a dangerous, ancient plot. Are the Sleeping Sisters awakening--or has someone in Fortuna's family set a trap? Inspired by true events, The Sleeping Sisters begins as a taut mystery shot through with myth and a Chicana-Indigenous reimagining of the legend of the headless woman--but by its cataclysmic end has spiraled into a fevered, feral hymn to motherhood and a mesmerizing portrait of trauma and the monstrous bargains we make to protect those we love.
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A Summer of Stars
by Liana Cincotti
Fake relationship terms and conditions: do not fall in love. After a messy breakup, it feels like the entire world hates tennis superstar Luna Aldridge. With her reputation ruined and her career at risk, the only way to repair it is a PR stunt: fake-dating Hollywood's golden boy, Kieran Alexander. There's just one problem... Luna can't stand him. For Kieran, the feeling is mutual. He's about to lead a big-screen love story, but his dating history is jeopardizing the film's success. His team believes the world needs to see him wildly in love. And who better than Luna, the person he loathes most? Soon, Luna and Kieran spend the summer posing for cameras, sharing red carpets and flying around the world for the tennis circuit. But the more they pretend, the more they question if they can keep their hearts, and their careers, together. Especially with everyone watching...
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Unprecedented Times
by Malavika Kannan
Malavika Kannan establishes herself as an inimitable voice of Gen Z in this piercing coming-of-age debut novel. Which comes first: experience or narrative? Rishi thinks she knows the answer as she arrives on campus for her first year at Stanford. A burnt-out youth climate activist, she used to want to save the world, but now she just wants to have gay sex. Her plan is set--she's going to leave behind the strict trappings of her Indian American childhood in Florida, study literature, experiment with love, and write all about it. Within a few months, she makes her first best friend, falls in love with her situationship, and promptly gets her heart broken. What is not a part of Rishi's plan is the onset of the COVID pandemic. As the outside world becomes a terrifying place, she increasingly finds solace in the friendships she's made. Instead of virtual college, however, Rishi and her classmates join a farm collective, where their political discussions and growing disillusionment collide with sexual tension and responsibility. It's only when those relationships start fracturing under the stress of careless decisions, unrequited crushes, jealousies, and, yes, unprecedented times, that Rishi begins to question her own story. Unprecedented Times captures the beauty, humor, pain, and straight-up chaos that exist in relationships between best friends and lovers, mothers and daughters, and between storytellers and themselves. Malavika Kannan's fresh, arresting novel is a testament to the power of self-narrative for Gen Z American women: of writing oneself into existence where no previous script exists.
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World's Okayest Oracle (Reluctantly) Seeks Demon
by Olivia Dade
An oracle who can see the future teams up with the far-too-hot demon from her past to avert catastrophe, in this steamy paranormal romance from the USA Today bestselling author of Zomromcom. Gwen Wexloff might be able to see the future, but not when it matters. Her visions invariably involve piddling issues, which means--unlike most oracles--she's spent her life predicting for everyday humans instead of international power brokers. After a clutch of brain-slurping zombies escapes from their walled-off compound, though, Gwen experiences the first genuinely world-altering vision of her life . . . and now she needs help. Unfortunately, that help comes from Hugh Blacke, the same starchy (but annoyingly cute) demon who watched her bomb her oracle verification test years ago. To Gwen's dismay, the two of them will need to work together to unravel the deadly conspiracy behind the zombie breach, despite their complicated past and the secrets they're keeping. Even with her newfound power, she couldn't have foreseen how quickly they'd both want more than a simple partnership. But the clock is ticking--and with the fate of humanity at stake, Gwen and Hugh will have to decide how much they're willing to risk for an unexpected, passionate love...and a future together that might prove very short indeed.
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