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Reading Challenge A book that is first in a series |
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Still life : a Chief Inspector Gamache novel
by Louise Penny
In Still Life, bestselling author Louise Penny introduces Inspector Armand Gamache of the Surêté du Québec.Winner of the New Blood Dagger, Arthur Ellis, Barry, Anthony, and Dilys awards. Chief Inspector Armand Gamache of the Surêté du Québec and his team of investigators are called in to the scene of a suspicious death in a rural village south of Montreal. Jane Neal, a local fixture in the tiny hamlet of Three Pines, just north of the U.S. border, has been found dead in the woods. The locals are certain it's a tragic hunting accident and nothing more, but Gamache smells something foul in these remote woods, and is soon certain that Jane Neal died at the hands of someone much more sinister than a careless bowhunter.
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The poacher's son
by Paul Doiron
Game warden Mike Bowditch returns home one evening to find an alarming voice from the past on his answering machine: his father, Jack, a hard-drinking womanizer who makes his living poaching illegal game. An even more frightening call comes the next morning from the police: They are searching for the man who killed a beloved local cop the night before---and his father is their prime suspect. Jack has escaped from police custody, and only Mike believes that his tormented father might not be guilty. Now, alienated from the woman he loves, shunned by colleagues who have no sympathy for the suspected cop killer, Mike must come to terms with his haunted past. He knows firsthand Jack's brutality, but is the man capable of murder? Desperate and alone, Mike strikes up an uneasy alliance with a retired warden pilot, and together the two men journey deep into the Maine wilderness in search of a runaway fugitive. There they meet a beautiful woman who claims to be Jack's mistress but who seems to be guarding a more dangerous secret.The only way for Mike to save his father now is to find the real killer---which could mean putting everyone he loves in the line of fire.
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Master and commander
by Patrick O'Brian
Ardent, gregarious British naval officer Jack Aubrey is elated to be given his first appointment as commander: the fourteen-gun ship HMS Sophie. Meanwhile--after a heated first encounter that nearly comes to a duel--Aubrey and a brilliant but down-on-his-luck physician, Stephen Maturin, strike up an unlikely rapport. On a whim, Aubrey invites Maturin to join his crew as the Sophie's surgeon. And so begins the legendary friendship that anchors this beloved saga set against the thrilling backdrop of the Napoleonic Wars.
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Triptych
by Karin Slaughter
From Atlanta's wealthiest suburbs to its stark inner-city housing projects, a killer has crossed the boundaries of wealth and race. And the people who are chasing him must cross those boundaries, too. Among them is Michael Ormewood, a veteran detective whose marriage is hanging by a thread--and whose arrogance and explosive temper are threatening his career. And Angie Polaski, a beautiful vice cop who was once Michael's lover before she became his enemy. But unbeknownst to both of them, another player has entered the game: a loser ex-con who has stumbled upon the killer's trail in the most coincidental of ways--and who may be the key to breaking the case wide open.
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Crocodile on the sandbank
by Elizabeth Peters
The unshakeable Amelia Peabody embarks on an Egyptian adventure armed with self-confidence, a journal to record her thoughts, and, of course-a sturdy umbrella. On her way to Cairo, Amelia rescues young Evelyn Barton-Forbes, who has been abandoned by her scoundrel lover. Together the two women sail up the Nile to an archeological site run a pair of handsome brothers. Strange visitations, suspicious accidents, and a botched kidnapping convince Amelia that there is a plot afoot to harm Evelyn. Now Amelia finds herself up against an unknown enemy--and perilous forces that threaten to make her first Egyptian trip also her last...
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The priory of the orange tree by Samantha Shannon
| The House of Berethnet has ruled Inys for a thousand years. Still unwed, Queen Sabran the Ninth must conceive a daughter to protect her realm from destruction--but assassins are getting closer to her door. |
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Fourth Wing
by Rebecca Yarros
As war grows more deadly, Violet Sorrengail joins the elite Navarre: the dragon riders. But she'll need to keep her wits because once you enter the Basgiath War College, there are only two ways out: graduate or die.
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1st to die
by James Patterson
Homicide inspector Lindsay Boxer, medical examiner Claire Washburn, assistant D.A. Jill Bernhardt, and journalist Cindy Thomas joins forces in the Women's Murder Club in order to stop a killer who is targeting San Francisco newlyweds.
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The maid
by Nita Prose
A charmingly eccentric hotel maid discovers a guest murdered in his bed, turning her once orderly world upside down.
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Miss Julia speaks her mind
by Ann B. Ross
When Wesley Lloyd Springer passed away, he left his proper Southern wife two legacies. The first, as befits a gentleman of means, is the whole of his sizeable estate. The second, so astonishing thereupon hangs this wonderful and witty tale.Miss Julia, recently bereaved and newly wealthy widow, is only slightly bemused when one Hazel Marie Puckett appears at her door with a youngster in tow. But this perfectly practiced composure is quickly reduced when Hazel Marie unceremoniously announces her intentions: the child is Wesley Lloyd's bastard son and, since the man left her penniless, she's leaving little Lloyd in Miss Julia's care. Suddenly, this longtime church member and pillar of her small community finds herself in the center of an unseemly scandal -- and the guardian of a wan nine-year-old whose mere presence will turn her life upside down.With razor wit and perfect Steel Magnolia poise, Miss Julia speaks her mind indeed -- about a robbery, a kidnapping, and all the other disgraceful goings-on that are precipitated by her husband's death.
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The kill artist
by Daniel Silva
Ari Shamron, the head of Israeli intelligence, calls on former intelligence operative Gabriel Allon to thwart a Palestinian plot to destroy the Middle East peace negotiations, a conspiracy linked to a Palestinian zealot with ties to Gabriel's past.
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Detective Inspector Huss
by Helen Tursten
While investigating the apparent suicide of a wealthy financier who is connected to one of the most powerful families in Sweden, Detective Inspector Irene Huss soon finds herself immersed in a murder mystery involving motorcycle gang members, skinheads, immigrants, and neo-Nazis.
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Shadows at the fair
by Lea Wait
In the world of antiques dealing, there are minor calamities...like accidentally selling a rare engraving for $170 instead of $1,700. And then there are worse tragedies — such as the chain of suspicious deaths among dealers in the weeks prior to the Rensselaer County Spring Antiques Fair.
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Inheritance : the lost bride trilogy, book 1
by Nora Roberts
https://minerva.maine.edu/record=b4107626~S501806: Astrid Poole sits in her bridal clothes, overwhelmed with happiness. But before her marriage can be consummated, she is murdered, and the circle of gold torn from her finger. Her last words are a promise to Collin never to leave him... Graphic designer Sonya MacTavish is stunned to learn that her late father had a twin he never knew about--and that her newly discovered uncle, Collin Poole, has left her almost everything he owned, including a majestic Victorian house on the Maine coast, which the will stipulates she must live in it for at least three years. She sees a painting by her father inexplicably hanging in her deceased uncle's office, and a portrait of a woman named Astrid, whom the lawyer refers to as "the first lost bride." It's becoming clear that Sonya has inherited far more than a house. She has inherited a centuries-old curse, and a puzzle to be solved if there is any hope of breaking it.
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Naked in death
by J. D. Robb
It is the year 2058, and technology now completely rules the world. But New York City Detective Eve Dallas knows that the irresistible impulses of the human heart are still ruled by just one thing-passion. When a senator's daughter is killed, the secret life of prostitution she'd been leading is revealed. The high-profile case takes Lieutenant Eve Dallas into the rarefied circles of Washing-ton politics and society. Further complicating matters is Eve's growing attraction to Roarke, who is one of the wealthiest and most influential men on the planet, devilishly handsome...and the leading suspect in the investigation.
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While justice sleeps : a thriller
by Stacey Abrams
An inside-Washington thriller about an ambitious law clerk thrown into a life-or-death treasure hunt with major national implications when the Supreme Court justice she works for slips into a sudden coma.
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Maisie Dobbs
by Jacqueline Winspear
In the aftermath of the Great War, a former officer has founded a working farm known as The Retreat that acts as a convalescent refuge for ex-soldiers too shattered to resume normal life. When Fate brings Maisie a second case involving The Retreat, she must finally confront the ghost that has haunted her for over a decade.
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The Secret, Book & Scone Society
by Ellery Adams
North Carolina: Miracle Springs, North Carolina, is a place of healing. Strangers flock here hoping the natural hot springs, five-star cuisine, and renowned spa can cure their ills. If none of that works, they often find their way to Miracle Books, where, over a fresh-baked zcomforty scone from the Gingerbread House bakery, they exchange their stories with owner Nora Pennington in return for a carefully chosen book. Thats Noras special talent prescribing the perfect novel to ease a persons deepest pain and lighten their heaviest burden.
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Beartown
by Fredrik Backman
You'll love this engrossing novel. --People From the bestselling author of A Man Called Ove and Anxious People, Fredrik Backman captivates readers with a dazzling, profound novel about a small town with a big dream--and the price required to make it come true. People say Beartown is finished. A tiny community nestled deep in the forest, it is slowly losing ground to the ever-encroaching trees. But down by the lake stands an old ice rink, built generations ago by the working men who founded this town. And in that ice rink is the reason people in Beartown believe tomorrow will be better than today. Their junior ice hockey team is about to compete in the national semi-finals, and they actually have a shot at winning. All the hopes and dreams of this place now rest on the shoulders of a handful of teenage boys. Being responsible for the hopes of an entire town is a heavy burden, and the semi-final match is the catalyst for a violent act that will leave a young girl traumatized and a town in turmoil. Accusations are made and, like ripples on a pond, they travel through all of Beartown, leaving no resident unaffected. Beartown explores the hopes that bring a small community together, the secrets that tear it apart, and the courage it takes for an individual to go against the grain. In this story of a small forest town, Fredrik Backman has found the entire world.
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Long road to mercy
by David Baldacci
Atlee Pine, an FBI special agent, is called in to investigate the mutilated carcass of a mule found in the Grand Canyon--and hopefully, solve the disappearance of its rider. But this isn't the only recent disappearance. In fact, it may be just the first clue, the key to unraveling a rash of other similar missing persons cases in the canyon.
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The sweetness at the bottom of the pie by Alan Bradley
| It is the summer of 1950–-and at the once-grand mansion of Buckshaw, young Flavia de Luce, an aspiring chemist with a passion for poison, is intrigued by a series of inexplicable events: A dead bird is found on the doorstep, a postage stamp bizarrely pinned to its beak. Then, hours later, Flavia finds a man lying in the cucumber patch and watches him as he takes his dying breath. For Flavia, who is both appalled and delighted, life begins in earnest when murder comes to Buckshaw. |
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Spindrift
by Anna Burke
Morgan Donovan had everything she ever wanted: a dream job as a large animal veterinarian, awesome friends, and a loving and supportive fianceé. But it all comes crashing down when her fianceé dumps her after realizing that Morgan's job will always come first. And, while Morgan still has the job and friends, her heart is broken into a million tiny pieces. Emilia Russo is a burned-out shelter vet. When the unexpected death of her father triggers a mental breakdown that hastens the end of her relationship, she retreats to his house in Seal Cove, Maine. When she runs into Morgan at the dock where her father's sailboat is moored, her plans for a quiet summer of healing and reflection sink like a stone--the attraction is immediate and obvious, and Emilia finds herself slipping seamlessly into Morgan's world. As the gales of fall begin to drive leaves like spindrift upon Seal Cove, Morgan and Emilia must each come to terms with how much they're willing to give up to stay together.
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The Thursday Murder Club
by Richard Osman
In a peaceful retirement village, four unlikely friends meet weekly in the Jigsaw Room to discuss unsolved crimes; together they call themselves The Thursday Murder Club. When a local developer is found dead with a mysterious photograph left next to the body, the friends suddenly find themselves in the middle of their first live case. They might be senior citizens, but they are cleverer than most. As the bodies begin to pile up, can our unorthodox but brilliant gang catch the killer, before it's too late?
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Among the shadows : a Detective Byron mystery
by Bruce Robert Coffin
Fall in Portland, Maine usually arrives as a welcome respite from summer's sweltering temperatures and, with the tourists gone, a return to normal life?usually. But when a retired cop is murdered, things heat up quickly, setting the city on edge. Detective Sergeant John Byron, a second-generation cop, is tasked with investigating the case?at the very moment his life is unraveling. On the outs with his department's upper echelon, separated from his wife, and feeling the strong pull of the bottle, Byron remains all business as he tries to solve the murder of one of their own. And when another ex-Portland PD officer dies under suspicious circumstances, he quickly realizes there's much more to these cases than meets the eye. The closer Byron gets to the truth, the greater the danger for him and his fellow detectives.
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Emily Wilde's Encyclopaedia of Faeries
by Heather Fawcett
Cambridge professor Emily Wilde is good at many things: She is the foremost expert on the study of faeries. She is a genius scholar and a meticulous researcher who is writing the world's first encyclopaedia of faerie lore. But Emily Wilde is not good at people. She could never make small talk at a party--or even get invited to one. And she prefers the company of her books, her dog, Shadow, and the Fair Folk to other people. So when she arrives in the hardscrabble village of Hrafnsvik, Emily has no intention of befriending the gruff townsfolk. Nor does she care to spend time with another new arrival: her dashing and insufferably handsome academic rival Wendell Bambleby, who manages to charm the townsfolk, muddle Emily's research, and utterly confound and frustrate her. But as Emily gets closer and closer to uncovering the secrets of the Hidden Ones--the most elusive of all faeries--lurking in the shadowy forest outside the town, she also finds herself on the trail of another mystery: Who is Wendell Bambleby, and what does he really want? To find the answer, she'll have to unlock the greatest mystery of all--her own heart.
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In the woods
by Tana French
As dusk approaches a small Dublin suburb in the summer of 1984, mothers begin to call their children home. But on this warm evening, three children do not return from the dark and silent woods. When the police arrive, they find only one of the children gripping a tree trunk in terror, wearing blood-filled sneakers, and unable to recall a single detail of the previous hours. Twenty years later, the found boy, Rob Ryan, is a detective on the Dublin Murder Squad and keeps his past a secret. But when a twelve-year-old girl is found murdered in the same woods, he and Detective Cassie Maddox--his partner and closest friend--find themselves investigating a case chillingly similar to the previous unsolved mystery. Now, with only snippets of long-buried memories to guide him, Ryan has the chance to uncover both the mystery of the case before him and that of his own shadowy past.
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Outlander
by Diana Gabaldon
Hurtled back through time more than two hundred years to Scotland in 1743, Claire Randall finds herself caught in the midst of an unfamiliar world torn apart by violence, pestilence, and revolution and haunted by her growing feelings for James Fraser, a young soldier.
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Slipknot
by Linda Greenlaw
Greenlaw introduces an indomitable heroine, Jane Bunker, in her strong mystery debut, which finds the former Dade County, Florida, chief detective seeking her roots and a slower pace of life in her coastal childhood hometown of Green Haven, Maine.
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The crossing places
by Elly Griffiths
When she's not digging up bones or other ancient objects, quirky, tart-tongued archaeologist Ruth Galloway lives happily alone in a remote area called Saltmarsh near Norfolk, land that was sacred to its Iron Age inhabitants - not quite earth, not quite sea. When a child's bones are found on a desolate beach nearby, Detective Chief Inspector Harry Nelson calls Galloway for help. Nelson thinks he has found the remains of Lucy Downey, a little girl who went missing ten years ago. Since her disappearance he has been receiving bizarre letters about her, letters with references to ritual and sacrifice. The bones actually turn out to be two thousand years old, but Ruth is soon drawn into the Lucy Downey case and into the mind of the letter writer, who seems to have both archaeological knowledge and eerie psychic powers. Then another child goes missing and the hunt is on to find her. As the letter writer moves closer and the windswept Norfolk landscape exerts its power, Ruth finds herself in completely new territory - and in serious danger.
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A discovery of witches
by Deborah Harkness
In this tale of passion and obsession, Diana Bishop, a young scholar and a descendant of witches, discovers a long-lost and enchanted alchemical manuscript, Ashmole 782, deep in Oxford's Bodleian Library. Its reappearance summons a fantastical underworld, which she navigates with her leading man, vampire geneticist Matthew Clairmont.
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Slow horses
by Mick Herron
Intelligence agent River Cartwright, after being banished from high-profile work for incompetence, suspects a prominent British journalist with ties to an extremist party of being behind the kidnapping of a Muslim teenager.
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The No. 1 Ladies' Detective Agency
by Alexander McCall Smith
This first novel in Alexander McCall Smith's widely acclaimed The No. 1 Ladies Detective Agency series tells the story of the delightfully cunning and enormously engaging Precious Ramotswe, who is drawn to her profession to help people with problems in their lives. Immediately upon setting up shop in a small storefront in Gaborone, she is hired to track down a missing husband, uncover a con man, and follow a wayward daughter. But the case that tugs at her heart, and lands her in danger, is a missing eleven-year-old boy, who may have been snatched by witchdoctors.
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Wolfsong : a Green Creek novel
by Tj Klune
The Bennett family has a secret: They're not just a family, they're a pack. Wolfsong is Oxnard 'Ox' Matheson's story. Ox Matheson was twelve when his father taught him a lesson: Ox wasn't worth anything and people would never understand him. Then he left. Ox was sixteen when the energetic Bennett family moved in next door, harbouring a secret that would change him forever. For the family are shapeshifters, who can transform into wolves at will. Drawn to their magic, loyalty and enduring friendships, Ox feels a gulf between this extraordinary new world and the quiet life he's known. He also finds an ally in Joe, the youngest Bennett boy. Joe is charming and handsome, but haunted by scars he cannot heal. Ox was twenty-three when murder came to town, and tore a hole in his heart. Violence flared, tragedy split the pack and Joe left town, leaving Ox behind. Three years later, the boy is back. Except now he's a man--and Ox can no longer ignore the song that howls between them.
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The girl with the dragon tattoo
by Stieg Larsson
A spellbinding amalgam of murder mystery, family saga, love story, and financial intrigue. An unlikely team of investigators discovers a vein of iniquity running through one of the wealthiest families in Sweden and finds an astonishing corruption at the highest echelon of Swedish industrialism.
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Death at La Fenice
by Donna Leon
When renowned opera conductor Helmut Wellauer is found dead in his dressing room, the victim of cyanide poisoning, Guido Brunetti, the Vice Commissario of the Venice police, must sift through several suspects.
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House of earth and blood
by Sarah J. Maas
Half-Fae, half-human Bryce Quinlan loves her life. By day, she works for an antiquities dealer, selling barely legal magical artifacts, and by night, she parties with her friends, savoring every pleasure Lunathion--otherwise known as Crescent City--has to offer. But it all comes crumbling down when a ruthless murder shakes the very foundations of the city.
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