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General Fiction . Mystery & Suspense . Romance . Science Fiction & Fantasy

General Fiction

The 19th Wife
By David Ebershoff
The complex history of polygamy in the Mormon Church intertwines the story of Ann Eliza Young, the nineteenth and final wife of Brigham Young, who, in 1875, leaves her husband and embarks on a crusade to end polygamy; and a modern-day murder mystery in which a polygamous man has been found dead and one of his wives is accused of the crime.

The Assassin
By Stephen Coonts
A follow-up to The Traitor follows the poisoning murder of a prominent Russian dissident whose demise reveals the work of a traitor, forcing special agent Tommy Carmellini to track down a seductive Frenchwoman with possible ties to escaped terrorist leader Abu Qasim.

At First Sight: A Novel of Obsession
By Stephen J. Cannell
During a holiday trip to Maui with his trophy wife, Evelyn, and his drug-addict teenage daughter, Melissa, middle-aged, disaffected, dot-com millionaire Chick Best becomes infatuated with the beautiful Paige Ellis, developing a growing obsession that compels him to stage a carjacking in order to murder his wife and Paige’s husband, Chandler.

Being Elizabeth
By Barbara Taylor Bradford
As she rises to the heights of the corporate world, Elizabeth Deravenel becomes the most powerful Managing Director in the history of the Deravenel business empire, only to find herself surrounded by corporate intrigue, takeover threats, betrayal, and scandal as she must make a choice between love and duty.

The Bible Salesman
By Clyde Edgerton
Living on the wrong side of the law in the decades following World War II, car thief Preston Clearwater picks up hitchhiking Bible salesperson Henry Dampier and endeavors to transform him into an innocent-faced partner-in-crime.

Cold Case: A Barbara Holloway Legal Thriller
By Kate Wilhelm
When state senator Robert McCrutchen is murdered, the evidence points to David Etheridge, who, along with Robert, had been investigated in the death of a young co-ed twenty-two years earlier.  Following her intuition, Barbara Holloway takes David on as a client – a risk to both her career and her life.

Deadly Beautiful
By Sam Baker
Content with the peace and superficiality of her job at “Hand Bag Magazine,” reporter Annie Anderson is thrown back into the gritty world of investigative journalism when she stumbles upon a secret about a missing supermodel and sets out to uncover the truth linking the disappearance, the cutthroat world of high fashion, and a vicious serial killer.

Devil Bones
By Kathy Reichs
When a plumber discovers the remains of a murdered girl and various dark religious objects in the cellar of a client’s house, Temperance Brennan is called in to investigate the case and finds her efforts challenged by vigilante upheavals against Wiccans and occultists.

Envy the Night
By Michael Koryta
Seven years after the death of his father, a covert agent who supposedly committed suicide to avoid prosecution, Frank Temple is confronted by the past in the person of Devin Matteson, the old friend and associate who had betrayed his father, and must deal with a web of family secrets, mob assassins, and his father’s shadowy legacy.

The Fifth Floor
By Michael Harvey
In the atmospheric sequel to The Chicago Way, private detective Michael Kelly is hired by a former lover to follow her abusive husband. When he follows the subject to an old house on Chicago’s North Side, he stumbles upon a body and a possible answer to the mystery about who actually started the Great Chicago Fire of 1871.

Forced Out
By Stephen Frey
Spotting a remarkable minor-league ballplayer, unhappily retired Yankees scout Jack Barrett hopes to re-enter his former life by bringing the young athlete into the big leagues, an effort that is challenged by the boy’s bad attitude and a dangerous secret.

Foreign Body
By Robin Cook
Shocked by her beloved grandmother’s untimely death a day after she travels to New Delhi to have affordable hip-replacement surgery, fourth-year UCLA medical student Jennifer Hernandez heads to India for answers, and uncovers a series of unexplained deaths, a finding that forces her to turn for assistance to her mentor, medical examiner Dr. Montgomery.

The Gaudi Key
By Esteban Martin and Andreu Carranza
Charged with protecting a sacred relic, a former apprentice to a master architect and member of an ancient religious brotherhood guards the object until his death at an old age, and subsequently leaves it to his unsuspecting granddaughter.

The Glimmer Palace
By Beatrice Colin
Emerging from an early twentieth-century Berlin Catholic orphanage where she had spent her formative years, the illegitimate daughter of a cabaret performer experiences a series of identities as a maid, war bride, and nightclub girl before rising to become one of Germany’s leading silent-film stars.

Good-bye and Amen
By Beth Gutcheon
Determined to keep their inheritance from dividing them, close siblings Eleanor, Monica, and Jimmy Moss struggle with differences of opinion about how to share and maintain their late parents’ summer house, a situation that is further complicated by the members of their extended families.

Good People
By Marcus Sakey
Deeply in debt after years of failed infertility treatments, Tom and Anna Reed believe that they have been given a second chance when their downstairs tenant, a hermit, dies in his sleep, leaving $400,000 stashed in his kitchen. They soon discover, however, that their reclusive tenant had been a criminal who had betrayed some of the most dangerous men in Chicago.

It Only Takes a Moment: A Novel of Suspense
By Mary Jane Clark
Catching the attention of the entire country when her seven-year-old daughter is kidnapped, news anchor Eliza Blake becomes increasingly frustrated by authorities’ inability to find her child, and enlists the help of her producer, cameraman, and psychiatrist to outwit the kidnappers.

It’s a Crime
By Jacqueline Carey
With her perfect life in ruins after her husband, Frank, is arrested for accounting fraud at his telecommunications firm, landscape designer and mystery novel enthusiast Pat Foy joins forces with two old friends, both mystery novelists, to help her make it up to victims of the crime, unaware of the true repercussions of Frank’s misdeeds.

The Last Pope
By Luis Miguel Rocha
On September 29, 1978, the world awakens to news of Pope John Paul’s sudden death and the Vatican’s official statement leaves no room for speculation: the cause was a fatal heart attack. But in 2006, reporter Sara Monteiro returns from vacation to find an envelope containing two puzzling documents: a list of names and a coded message linked to the Pope’s death.

Legally Dead
By Edna Buchanan
Guilt-ridden for failing to protect two young girls, former U.S. Marshall Michael Venturi draws on his skills with the Witness Protection Program to help people start over with new identities, a private business that goes terribly wrong when someone begins murdering his clients.

The Little Book
By Selden Edwards
The exiled scion of a prominent Boston banking family, forty-seven-year-old Wheeler Burden is living in San Francisco in 1988, until he is mysteriously transported to fin-de-siecle Vienna, a city that he finds strangely familiar.  While there, he finds a mentor there in Sigmund Freud, falls in love with a young American woman, and gains insight into the war-hero father he never knew.

Man in the Dark
By Paul Auster
Recovering from a car accident at his daughter’s house in Vermont, retired book critic August Brill spends his time haunted by his wife’s recent death and the brutal murder of his granddaughter’s boyfriend, Titus.

The Mercedes Coffin
By Faye Kellerman
When a billionaire heiress connects a recent high-profile murder to an unsolved killing from fifteen years earlier, LAPD lieutenant Peter Decker schedules an interview with a detective from the first case, only to learn of the man’s suspicious suicide, which prompts his collaboration with his wife and daughter to solve the case.

My Husband’s Sweethearts
By Bridget Asher
Shocked to discover that her husband has had affairs during their four-year marriage, thirtysomething Lucy is even more devastated by the news that his heart is failing, and sets out to invite all the women listed in her cheating spouse’s little black book for a final visit to his deathbed.

One Fifth Avenue
By Candace Bushnell
Living within New York City’s most elite apartment building, five women pursue relationships and personal dreams amid the social and sexual politics of New York’s privileged, including comeback-seeking actress Schiffer Diamond; rich-husband-hunting Lola; and high-powered career woman Winnie. 

One More Year:  Stories
By Sana Krasikov
A debut collection of short fiction by a recipient of the O. Henry Award is populated by characters – mostly displaced women – who, despite the odds and challenges in their lives, continue to hold out hope that the love in their lives will make everything all right.

People of the Whale
By Linda Hogan
Separated from his beloved wife by an ill-fated decision to serve in Vietnam, Native American Thomas Witka fathers a child with another woman, returns home to find his tribe in a moral conflict over a whale hunt, and struggles to reconcile his feelings about the son he left behind.

The Road Home
By Rose Tremain
Making his way to London through Eastern Europe in the wake of factory closings and his wife’s death, Lev finds a job in a posh restaurant and a room in the home of an Irishman who has also lost his family, a situation that is colored by his affair with a younger co-worker and his phone conversations with a friend back home.

The Seamstress
By Frances de Pontes Peebles
Having mastered the clothing maker’s art at an early age, orphaned siblings Emilia and Luzia dos Santos harbor individual dreams for the future but find their lives playing out divergently as the wife of a wealthy doctor’s son and a member of a rebel bandit gang.

Skeleton Lake
By Mike Doogan
Twenty years after receiving the first big assignment of his career, Anchorage detective Nik Kane finds himself badly injured during a case and identifies similarities between his own situation and that of his predecessor’s unsolved murder.

Smoke Screen
By Sandra Brown
A latest work by the author of  Play Dirty and  Richochet follows a theme of role reversal and the abuse of power, in a tale in which corruption and betrayals turn friends against one another and force criminals to become heroes.

Something to Tell You
By Hanif Kureishi
Unwilling to admit that he has entered into middle age, successful psychoanalyst and divorced father Jamal interacts with a string of outcast friends while struggling with memories about his first love, from whom he was separated by an unconfessed act of violence.

T.H.U.G. L.I.F.E.
By Sanyika Shakur
A provocative debut novel from the author of Monster: The Autobiography of an L.A. Gang Member journeys inside the violence and depravity of urban gang life to profile Lapeace, leader of the Eight Tray Crips in South Central L. A., whose battle with his arch-rival Anyhow kills innocent civilians and sends him on the run to escape retribution and the law.

Train to Trieste
By Domnica Radulescu
Years after fleeing the hardships, terror, totalitarianism, and paranoia of Ceausecu’s Romania to build a new life and family in the West, Mona returns to her native land to uncover the truth about the mysterious boy with whom she had fallen in love as a teenager in 1977.

Trigger City
By Sean Chercover
Unable to believe police reports that blame a mentally ill co-worker for his daughter’s murder, a retired army intelligence colonel hires Ray Dudgeon to discern the truth, a case that inadvertently triggers a brutal confrontation between the FBI and the Department of Homeland Security.

The Turnaround
By George Pelecanos
Thirty-five years after a devastating accident that irrevocably shapes the lives of six people, a pair of redemption-seeking survivors reaches out to one another in an effort that is compromised by a fellow survivor’s release from prison and the changing neighborhoods of modern Washington, D.C.

The White Mary
By Kira Salak
Returning to the U.S. after a harrowing assignment in the Congo during which she had been held hostage by rebel soldiers, Marika Vecera is stunned to learn that her long-time hero, Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Robert Lewis, has committed suicide, and sets out to write his biography, only to hear rumors that he may still be alive in Papua, New Guinea.

Who’s Loving You
By Mary B. Morrison
Starting a new life in Atlanta, Georgia, with the help of police officer Sapphire Bleu, former prostitute and madam, Honey Thomas, falls in love with Grant Hill, but when he discovers her past, Grant wants nothing to do with her, forcing Honey to revert to her old tricks to prove her love.

Mystery & Suspense
(some titles may also be found in General Fiction)

Ash Wednesday:  A Father Dowling Mystery
By Ralph McInerny
Father Dowling becomes embroiled in a decade-old crime when he meets Nathaniel Green, returning home after being convicted of killing his terminally ill wife. As he deals with the antipathy of many of his parishioners, Father Dowling ponders the moral questions involved in the case, and begins to suspect that Green may not have actually committed the crime to which he confessed.

Black and White and Dead All Over
By John Darnton
When an editor turns up murdered in the newsroom of the financially troubled “New York Globe,” one of the city’s leading newspapers, Priscilla Bollingsworth, an ambitious, young NYPD detective, teams up with rebellious reporter Jude Hurley to find a killer among a group of suspects that includes a ruthless media tycoon, a bumbling publisher, and resentful journalists.

Blackout:  An Inspector Espinosa Mystery
By Luiz Alfredo Garcia-Roza
Unable to forget the unsolved murder of a homeless man, Chief Inspector Espinosa methodically investigates a group of affluent guests who had dined at a nearby mansion on the night of the killing, exposing a web of lies and cover-ups that raises more questions than it answers.

The Bordeaux Betrayal:  A Wine Country Mystery
By Ellen Crosby
One year after taking over her family vineyard in Virginia’s Blue Ridge mountains, Lucie Montgomery attends a historical wine lecture at Mount Vernon and is swept up in a mystery when the lecturer turns up dead, in a case with ties to the suspicious authenticity of a wine formerly owned by Thomas Jefferson.

Closer Still:  A Brodie Farrell Mystery
By Jo Bannister
Angered by threats made by criminal Joe Loomis against his family, P. I. wife Brodie Farrell and their new baby, Detective Superintendent Jack Deacon is prepared to do whatever it takes to protect them, but the case takes a bizarre turn when Loomis turns up dead and Brodie’s best friend, Daniel Hood, becomes a suspect in the killing.

Death by Cashmere:  A Seaside Knitters Mystery
By Sally Goldenbaum
When Angie Archer, her unpopular upstairs tenant, turns up drowned in the harbor, knitting shop owner Isabel “Izzy” Chambers, and her friends, the Seaside Knitters, take matters into their own hands to investigate the suspicious death.

Death’s Half Acre:  A Deborah Knott Mystery
By Margaret Maron
When a high-profile commissioner is murdered in the wake of corruption-marked struggles between housing developers and farmers in the North Carolina countryside, Judge Deborah Knott and her husband, sheriff’s deputy Dwight Bryant, find themselves in the middle of an increasingly violent dispute.

The Highly Effective Detective Goes to the Dogs:  A Mystery
By Richard Yancey
Shut down by the state for sleuthing without a license, bumbling private detective Teddy Ruzak stumbles upon the body of a man whom he had befriended the previous day outside his office, and launches a personal investigation when the police dismiss his suspicions of foul play.

Hounded to Death
By Rita Mae Brown
During a visit to the Mid-South Hound Show in Kentucky, Sister Jane Arnold, Master of Foxhounds, finds herself caught up in a mystery involving the theft of a valuable hound, the murder of a much detested master, the suicide of popular veterinarian Hope Rogers, and the disappearance of a wealthy pet food manufacturer.

A Job to Kill For: A Lacy Fields Mystery
By Janice Kaplan
Stunned when her Hollywood casting agent best friend is accused of murdering a billionaire’s wife, decorator-to-the-stars Lacy Fields puts her life on the line for answers, in an investigation that pits her against a crazed reality-show producer, a dangerously clever professor, and a bad-boy motorcyclist.

Lie Down with the Devil:  A Carlotta Carlyle Mystery
By Linda Barnes
Boston private detective Carlotta Carlyle finds her life becoming complicated as she investigates a secret murder indictment against her fiancé, Sam Gianelli, who refuses to reveal anything about the case, as well as the killing of her most recent client, a nervous bride-to-be who had hired her to confirm that the groom-to-be is being faithful to her.

People Who Walk in Darkness:  An Inspector Porfiry Rostnikov Mystery
By Stuart M. Kaminsky
Traveling to Siberia to investigate a murder at a diamond mine, honest Inspector Porfiry Petrovich Rostnikov uncovers a diamond-smuggling operation involving kidnapped workers and an international conspiracy.

Scone Cold Dead:  A Liss MacCrimmon Mystery
By Kaitlyn Dunnett
When the Scottish dance troupe she once had belonged to arrives in Moosetookalook, Maine, Liss MacCrimmon, throws a reception in their honor, but finds her world spinning out of control when murder crashes the party, leaving company manager Victor Owens dead.

The September Society
By Charles Finch
Amateur detective and Victorian gentleman Charles Lenox heads for his alma mater at Oxford to investigate the disappearance of a student, the son of the widowed Lady Annabelle, and comes face to face with a series of bizarre clues, including a dead cat, a card bearing the name “The September Society,” and the murder of another student.

Tiny Little Troubles
By Marc Lecard
Aaron Rogell, a San Francisco scientist with a beautiful wife, new baby, and a lucrative new business based on the innovative nanotech technology he has invented, finds everything he cares about at risk when Pablo Clench, the ruthless acquaintance of one of the prostitutes he has been seeing, sees an opportunity to steal the secret of Aaron’s invention.

Vi Agra Falls: A Bed-and-Breakfast Mystery
By Mary Daheim
When her close-knit community is thrown into chaos by the arrival of her long-time nemesis, Judith investigates the woman’s plan to build a much-contested condominium complex, a plan that is complicated by a gruesome murder.

Working Stiff: A Sofie Metropolis Novel
By Tori Carrington
Hiring her questionably motivated cousin to help with her successful private investigating business, Sofie Metropolis struggles between her feelings for two men while investigating the disappearance of a body from her aunt’s funeral home, in a case that is complicated by her belief in a murder defendant’s innocence.

Romance

Cypress Nights: A Bayou Novel
By Stella Cameron
When murder and mayhem plague St. Cecil’s church, Roche Savage, a renowned psychiatrist with a dark secret, and widow Bleu Labeau, a reticent teacher who has come to Toussaint to start a new school, join forces to solve the mystery – an investigation that reveals the deadly truth about their town.

Science Fiction & Fantasy
(some titles may also be found in General Fiction)

Acheron:  A Dark-Hunter Novel
By Sherrilyn Kenyon
Determined to solve an ancient mystery, a woman undertakes a forbidden quest that pits her against Dark-Hunters leader and proud god Acheron Parthenopaeus, with whom she joins forces when ancient guardians and old enemies threaten both of them.

City at the End of Time
By Greg Bear
Unable to recall anything about their own pasts, three young people living in modern-day Seattle share a disturbing vision of a far-future, decaying cityscape, and are each drawn into a desperate mission to preserve their own universe and to pass important knowledge onto a new universe that is in the process of being born.

The Gargoyle
By Andrew Davidson
Awakening in a burn ward after being horribly burned over much of his body following a terrible car accident, the cynical narrator is visited by a beautiful and enigmatic sculptress of gargoyles who tells him that they had once been lovers in medieval Germany, and spins a tale of deathless love.

The Gypsy Morph
By Terry Brooks
With the fall of the last cities, demons and other minions of the dark roam the ravaged landscape of the former United States, while a small band of survivors – the Elves of Cintra, a ragtag group of human children, and their protectors, including two Knights of the Word – journeys northward toward a safe haven, led by a boy named Hawk, the legendary gypsy morph.

Juggler of Worlds
By Larry Niven and Edward M. Lerner
In a tale set two centuries before the discovery of the Ringworld, covert agent Sigmund Ausfaller protects humanity by exposing dangerous plots with his paranoid skills but meets his match in Puppeteers representative Nessus, who schemes with the help of the planet’s adversaries and traitors.

The Last Centurion
By John Ringo
In the wake of dual catastrophes that strike Earth in the second decade of the twenty-first century – a mini ice age and a devastating plague – an American Army officer who becomes known as “Bandit Six” becomes caught up in the desperate struggle to rebuild the world and prevent the ultimate fall of his homeland.

Mars Life
By Ben Bova
Discovering the remains of a civilization that prove that intelligent life had existed on Mars millions of years earlier, scientists Jamie Waterman and Carter Carleton struggle to protect Mars funding in the face of ultra-conservatives that fear the Mars findings will compromise their religious beliefs.

Marsbound
By Joe Haldeman
Joining her family as a colonist on Mars, rebellious young Carmen Dula ventures alone out into the harsh Martian landscape, where an accident nearly claims her life and she is rescued by a mysterious alien being that wants her to warn the new human inhabitants of the planet that others had arrived first.

Underground:  A Greywalker Novel
By Kat Richardson
A Greywalker with the ability to negotiate the shadowy realm between the living world and the paranormal, private detective Harper Blaine investigates the mutilation murders of Pioneer Square’s homeless population and the appearance of zombies roaming the underground beneath Seattle, only to come face to face with a monstrous creature of ancient legend.

Zoe’s Tale
By John Scalzi
A seventeen-year-old colonist stranded on a deadly pioneer world recounts the tale of how she became a pawn in a dangerous interstellar confrontation during which she was forced to use her wits and make terrible sacrifices in order to save the human race.

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