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

General Fiction

An Absolute Scandal
By Penny Vincenzi
During the boom-or-bust days of the 1980s, a disparate group of people is brought together by the devastating financial woes of Lloyd’s of London:  Nigel Cowper, faced with the destruction of his family business; his wife, Lucinda, who refuses to give up her lover; charismatic banker Simon Beaumont and his ad-executive wife; a debt-ridden widow; and a desperate single mother.

America America
By Ethan Canin
The son of working-class parents, Corey Sifter is befriended by the wealthy Metarey family, a politically powerful dynasty in New York, and becomes an aide to New York senator Henry Bonwiller as he runs for the Democratic presidential nomination during the Nixon era.  When a crime is committed, Corey is forced to reconcile his role in the complex drama.

The Beach House
By Jane Green
Disregarding local gossip that pegs her as an eccentric, sixty-five-year-old Nantucket widow Nan skinny-dips in unattended pools and steals her neighbors’ flowers, until one day her dwindling funds force her to take in boarders, a change that brings new friends and an unexpected visitor.

Beijing Coma
By Ma Jian
Awakening after a decade of unconsciousness, former Tiananmen Square protester Dai Wei learns that his mother had sold one of his kidneys to finance his care and had gone insane after falling in love with a Falun Gong master, two events that make him realize that the China he knew has undergone radical change.

The Betrayal: The Lost Life of Christ
By Kathleen O’Neal Gear & W. Michael Gear
Early fourth-century biblical scholar Brother Barnabas flees for his life while protecting ancient holy texts written by such figures as Mary Magdalene, Phillip, and James that reveal Christ’s more radical and heretical side, texts that have been denounced and ordered for destruction by the Ecumenical Council of Bishops.

Blood Colony
By Tananarive Due
Born the only immortal with Living Blood, Fana Wolden flees her protective home in order to rescue a mortal friend and joins an underground group of fellow immortals who are using their powerful blood to heal AIDS victims.

Blood Noir:  An Anita Blake, Vampire Hunter Novel
By Laurell K. Hamilton
When vampire hunter Anita Blake agrees to do a favor for Jason, her werewolf lover, she becomes caught up in the middle of a scandal that not only threatens the reign of master-vampire Jean-Claude, but also makes her a pawn in an ancient vampire queen’s rise to power.

Blue Smoke and Murder
By Elizabeth Lowell
Protecting a river guide with ties to the art world, private information collector and reluctant bodyguard Zach Balfour quickly realizes his charge is in more danger than previously known, a situation that pits them against the ruthless multi-million-dollar western art circuit.

Breath
By Tim Winton
Falling under the spell of an enigmatic extreme-sports surfer, a thrill-seeking pair of western Australian adolescents, is initiated into a world of high-stakes adventures such as swimming in storm swells on remote and shark-infested reefs.

Bright Shiny Morning
By James Frey
An ambitious young Mexican-American woman compromises her future in a moment of searing humiliation, while a narcissistic action-movie star risks everything in his obsession over an unattainable love, and a young couple escapes their suffocating home and struggles for survival on the fringes of Los Angeles.

The Condition
By Jennifer Haigh
Unaware of the long-standing grievances harbored by their divorced parents, three adult siblings embark on a tumultuous summer when the oldest, a successful Manhattan doctor, investigates his sister’s chromosomal disorder against his mother’s wishes.

Cost
By Roxana Robinson
Settling into her parents’ home in Maine in hopes of helping them with their respective health challenges, art professor Julie Lambert is shattered by the discovery of her son’s heroin addiction, a situation for which mother and son receive help from multiple family members.

Dark Horse:  A Political Thriller
By Ralph Reed
In the wake of an election involving a solitary strong candidate who is violently assassinated by terrorists, the nation is thrown into further chaos by the controversial campaigns of two wildcat candidates against a backdrop of the war on terrorism and a looming conflict with a newly nuclear Iran.

Dear American Airlines
By Jonathan Miles
Traveling to the wedding of his estranged daughter and left stranded in O’Hare Airport when his flight is cancelled, Bernie Ford, a fifty-three-year-old failed poet and translator, begins writing a letter of complaint to the airline that evolves into a painful lament for a life that has gone badly awry.

Death and Honor:  An Honor Bound Novel
By W. E. B. Griffin & William E. Butterworth, IV
Working as a P.I. to earn just enough money to support his passion for surfing, Boone Daniels is obsessed with the unsolved abduction of a young girl named Rain during his career with the San Diego police, until he is given the chance to make amends during an investigation into an insurance scam that could put him and his surfer buddies at risk.

The Deceived
By Brett Battles
Shocked to discover that his latest task is to eliminate all traces of Steven Markoff, a former CIA agent and one of his best friends, professional “cleaner” Jonathan Quinn risks everything to seek justice for Markoff and to find out what has happened to Markoff’s girlfriend Jenny, an aide to an ambitious congressman.

Domestic Affairs
By Eileen Goudge
Twenty-five years after being kicked out of the home of Ina Merriweather with her mother, teenager Abigail, feeling deeply betrayed by Ina’s daughter, Lila, her best friend, finally gets the chance to settle old scores.

Dragonfly Summer
By Eva Rice
Discovered while singing at an impresario’s wedding, a repressed vicar’s daughter is swept up in the chaos of 1962 London where her budding career is shaped by such influences as a self-destructive model, an eyeliner-wearing boy, and a Bob Dylan-addicted songwriter.

Executive Privilege
By Philip Margolin
Taking a seemingly simple assignment to follow and report on the activities of a pretty college student, private detective Dana Cutler is forced to flee for her life when the student is murdered, while junior lawyer Brad Miller discovers strange coincidences between Dana’s case and another killing with ties to the president.

Finding Nouf
By Zoe Ferraris
Stumbling upon the drowned body of Nouf, the teenage daughter of a prominent, wealthy Saudi Arabian family, a desert guide hired by her family to search for her feels compelled to discover what really happened to the girl, a case that brings him into contact with a female lab technician at the coroner’s office, who shows him what life is really like for women in a rigidly segregated Middle Eastern society.

The Garden of Last Days
By Andre Dubus III
Reluctantly bringing her daughter to her men’s club office when her babysitter falls ill, a stripper endeavors to keep her child safe while servicing a wealthy foreign client, and a drunken regular angrily retaliates for being thrown out of the club. 

The Good Thief
By Hannah Tinti
Growing up in a New England orphanage unaware of his family and of how he had lost his left hand as an infant, twelve-year-old Ren is terrified of the future until a young man shows up claiming to be his long-lost brother, with whom he embarks on an adventure-filled odyssey of scam artists, petty criminals, and resurrection men.

The House at Midnight
By Lucie Whitehouse
Following his uncle’s suicide, Lucas Heathfield inherits Stoneborough Manor in Oxfordshire, which he and his best friend Joanna plan to use as a gathering place for their circle of close friends, but the house begins to have a strange effect on everyone who stays there, revealing dark secrets of the past, destroying friendships, and changing lives forever.

How to Be Single
By Liz Tuccillo
Fed up with New York City’s dating scene and depressed by the marital failures of her friends, thirty-seven-year-old publicist Julie Jenson travels throughout the world to learn how women from other cultures cope with being single, while her friends back home struggle with their own romantic foibles.

The James Boys:  A Novel Account of Four Desperate Brothers
By Richard Liebmann-Smith
Highlighted by historical photographs and notes, a rollicking, original debut novel chronicles a year in the life of four of the most famous men of the nineteenth century:  psychologist William James; his novelist brother, Henry; and their purportedly troubled younger brothers, notorious outlaws Frank and Jesse James – in a work that turns history upside down.

Married Lovers
By Jackie Collins
Relocating to Los Angeles to escape an abusive boyfriend, personal trainer Cameron Paradise saves money to open her own fitness studio and pursues an affair with Ryan Lambert, a movie producer with a demanding wife and powerful Hollywood father-in-law.

Master of the Delta
By Thomas H. Cook
Returning home to his father’s estate, Great Oaks, in 1954 Mississippi to take a job teaching at the local high school, Jack Branch befriends Eddie, one of his students and the son of the Coed Killer, a notorious local murderer, but he soon discovers that his efforts on Eddie’s behalf could have deadly consequences in a small town hiding dark secrets.

Mexican High
By Liza Monroy
Mila, the daughter of an American diplomat, has no idea what to expect when her mother is assigned to Mexico City for her senior year of high school. Finding herself in a private school with the high-living sons and daughters of Mexico’s ruling class, Mila sets out to discover the identity of her unknown father, a high-ranking politician with whom her mother had a brief affair during her hippie youth.

Mistress of the Sun
By Sandra Gulland
A tale based on the life of seventeenth-century horsewoman Louise de la Valliere finds an eccentric young woman’s love for a wild white stallion tempting her into using an ancient magic that overshadows her subsequent life and leads to her affair with the charismatic Louis XIV.

More Than It Hurts You
By Darin Strauss
The lives of a family and a doctor are irrevocably changed and intertwined by a possible case of Munchausen by Proxy, a situation that forces a mother to question everything from her past and the doctor’s concerns about her role in tearing a distressed family apart.

Netherland
By Joseph O’Neill
Abandoned amid the offbeat inhabitants of the Chelsea Hotel when his English wife and son return to London following September 11, Hans, a banker originally from the Netherlands, struggles to find himself in his adopted country, until he stumbles upon a vibrant New York cricket subculture and a charismatic countryman.

Nothing to Lose:  A Jack Reacher Novel
By Lee Child
Arriving in the small town of Despair, Colorado, Jack Reacher finds himself taking on an entire town as he searches for the truths behind its sinister connection to a brutal war that is killing Americans thousands of miles away.

Off Season
By Anne Rivers Siddons
A grieving widow takes a solitary road trip to her late husband’s favorite getaway on pristine coastal Maine, where she remembers their many happy years of family life, reevaluates the time before they met, and considers her future.

One in a Million
By Kimberla Lawson Roby
An O. Henry-style tale by the author of Sin No More finds Kennedi Mason’s attempt to share long-awaited happy news with her husband abruptly halted by his own surprise announcement.

The Other
By David Guterson
Two boys from profoundly different backgrounds – John William Barry, the wealthy scion of two elite Seattle families, and the blue-collar Irish Neil Countryman – brought together by their fierce love of the natural world.  The young men grow up to pursue vastly different paths in life:  Neil as a devoted schoolteacher, and John William as a recluse seeking refuge in the wilderness.

Outtakes from a Marriage
By Ann Leary
Delighted when her actor-husband lands a role on a hit TV series, Julia DeLuca is disturbed when she accidentally overhears the voice of a sultry Southern belle on her husband’s voice mail and launches a desperate campaign to uncover the truth, in a witty study of a long-term marriage in crisis, the perils of fame, and one woman’s quest to find herself.

Plague Ship
By Clive Cussler
A new installment in a series featuring Captain Juan Cabrillo and his intelligence-gathering ship-for-hire finds the crew encountering an abandoned cruise ship filled with hundreds of dead passengers that eventually leads to a discovery of a cult’s devastating plot for the human race.

The Reapers
By John Connolly
When his friend, a former member of an elite assassin organization, is abducted by a vengeful adversary, Charlie Parker and his associates set out to find him, in a case that forces Charlie to test the boundaries of his ethics.

The Richest Season
By Maryann McFadden
Having raised her children in a dozen different towns in order to support her husband’s frequent corporate relocations, Joanna leaves her husband to return to the coastal South Carolina community she loves, while Paul, distraught by Joanna’s abandonment, leaves his job and endeavors to win her back.

Rogue
By Danielle Steel
An amicably divorced couple – Blake, a charismatic, globe-trotting, dot-com entrepreneur, and Maxine, an expert on childhood trauma and adolescent suicide – confront a life-changing choice as Maxine falls in love with Dr. Charles West and Blake finds himself dealing with hundreds of orphaned children after a devastating earthquake near one of his foreign homes.

Secrets of a Shoe Addict
By Beth Harbison
Loreen struggles to recover from her ill-advised hire of a Las Vegas male prostitute, while minister’s wife Abbey hides the truth about how she is being blackmailed for her secret past, and Tiffany finds herself in crippling debt after an impulsive shopping spree.

The Sister
By Poppy Adams
Reunited after a forty-year estrangement, Ginny, a solitary lepidopterist living in the crumbling family home in rural Britain, and Vivien, who had fled her family’s eccentricities for the normalcy of London, struggle to come to terms with their stormy past and a web of hidden family secrets, in a haunting debut novel about betrayal, trust, passion, and destructive family relationships.

The Size of the World
By Joan Silber
An engineer in Vietnam is shaken by the discovery about why his company’s planes are getting lost, while a marriage between a Thai Muslim and an American woman sparks a terrible family fight, and a young woman in 1920s Siam experiences the colonial stance of her tin-prospecting brother.

Stealing Athena
By Karen Essex
The dramatic and complex history of the Elgin Marbles, the sculptures from the Athenian Parthenon, is viewed through the lives of two very different women – Aspasia, an ancient Greek female philosopher and mistress of Pericles, and Mary Nisbet, wife of the Earl of Elgin, the British ambassador to Constantinople, who played a key role in bringing the artworks to England.

The Story of Edgar Sawtelle
By David Wroblewski
A Hamlet-style tale that also celebrates the ancient alliance between humans and dogs follows the coming-of-age speech-disabled Wisconsin youth Edgar, who bonds with three yearling canines and struggles to prove that his sinister uncle is responsible for his father’s death.

Summer Blowout
By Claire Cook
Working for her Italian-American family’s beauty salon chain while secretly indulging her passion for lipstick, Bella Shaughnessy vows against any further relationships when her husband and sister run off together, a resolution that falters when she meets a contrary entrepreneur, develops a business idea, and attends a huge southern wedding.

This Charming Man
By Marian Keyes
A tale told from the viewpoints of four different women traces their experiences of heartbreak at the hands of up-and-coming Dublin politician Paddy de Courcy, a charismatic womanizer who hides the truth about his fickle nature.

Time Is a River
By Mary Alice Monroe
Rehabilitating from breast cancer in a North Carolina mountain sanctuary, Mia London discovers the lost journal of a 1920s fly-fisherwoman, whose writings inspire Mia to reconnect with the natural world and investigate a local secret.

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

A Fatal Waltz
By Tasha Alexander
When her friend’s husband is wrongfully accused of murdering the odious Lord Basil Fortescue, Lady Emily Ashton searches for answers, in a case that risks her own fiance’s life and takes her from London’s glittering ballrooms to Vienna’s sordid alleys.

An Expert in Murder:  A New Mystery Featuring Josephine Tey
By Nicola Upson
Traveling to London in 1934 to celebrate her play’s triumphant final week, popular writer Josephine Tey is caught up by the murder of a fellow train passenger, in a case that raises the suspicions of Detective Inspector Archie Penrose.

The Blood Detective
By Dan Waddell
Baffled by the killing of a man whose nude, mutilated body has turned up in a London graveyard, Detective Chief Inspector Grant Foster and his colleague, Detective Superintendent Heather Jenkins, call in genealogist Nigel Barnes to assist in the case, when the carved letters and numbers on the corpse turn out to refer to city archive files of birth, death, and marriage certificates.

Dyer Consequences:  A Knitting Mystery
By Maggie Sefton
Kelly Flynn’s plans to renovate her recently purchased alpaca ranch are threatened by acts of sabotage targeting her new home and her local yarn shop, a situation that is complicated by the discovery of the body of a young woman, found drowned in a tub of dye in the basement of her shop, in a mystery complicated by a new knitting pattern and recipe.

Fearless Fourteen:  A Stephanie Plum Novel
By Janet Evanovich
A latest installment in the popular Stephanie Plum series places the irrepressible bounty hunter and her motley companions – including Grandma Mazur, vice captain Joe Morelli, and Bob the Dog – in a new adventure involving the Burg’s premier funeral home and a family pot roast.

Fever:  A Nameless Detective Novel
By Bill Pronzini
Tracking down and returning a badly beaten compulsive gambler to her home, Nameless and his associates Tamara and Jake realize the case has further implications when the gambler disappears again, revealing the existence of a violent racket that preys on gambling victims.

Fisherman’s Bend:  A Jane Bunker Mystery
By Linda Greenlaw
Hoping for a respite after the events of Slipknot, former big-city detective Jane Bunker has an unexpected encounter with the dark underworld of her sleepy Maine coastal community when a dark secret from the past strikes close to home.

The Girl of His Dreams:  A Commissario Guido Brunetti Mystery
By Donna Leon
Going undercover to investigate a new Protestant sect that has begun meeting in Venice, Commissario Guido Brunetti is forced to put his probe aside when the body of a young gypsy girl – who may have fallen from the nearby rooftop of an apartment she had robbed – turns up in a local canal.

I Shall Not Want:  A Clare Fergusson/Russ van Alstyne Mystery
By Julia Spencer-Fleming
A trio of execution-style murders apparently targeting the migrant community of the rural Adirondack town of Millers Kill draws Episcopal priest Clare Fergusson and now widowed police chief Russ van Alstyne into a case plagued by media hysteria, conflict within the police, a series of baffling assaults, and the two sleuths’ complex feelings for each other.

Killing Bridezilla:  A Jaine Austen Mystery
By Laura Levine
Hired by her high-school nemesis, Patti, to rewrite the ending of Romeo and Juliet for her wedding, Jaine Austen gets more than she had bargained for when Patti falls to her death from the balcony just before her big scene, and the sassy writer-turned-sleuth must find a killer before he or she can strike again.

Murder on Bank Street:  A Gaslight Mystery
By Victoria Thompson
Once again, widowed midwife Sarah Brandt teams up with Detective Sergeant Frank Malloy to investigate the murder of her late husband, Dr. Tom Brandt, but the shocking revelations that they discover could destroy Sarah, as well as any hopes Malloy might have in building a new future with her, in a mystery set in turn-of-the-twentieth century New York.

Not in the Flesh:  A Wexford Novel
By Ruth Rendell
When a man and his dog searching for truffles unearth the corpse of a man buried more than a decade earlier, Chief Inspector Wexford must piece together long-ago events to uncover the identity of the victim and the cause of his death, only to find his investigation complicated by long-hidden secrets and the discovery of another body nearby.

The Prodigal Nun:  A Sister Agatha Mystery
By Aimée Thurlo & David Thurlo
When the local diocese offers to pay for renovations to the dilapidated Our Lady of Hope monastery in exchange for housing a novice nun from a different order, the contemplative order is delighted, until they meet the boisterous, inappropriate Sister Jo, who also may be the target of violent threats against the order, unless Sister Agatha can uncover the truth is before it is too late.

Vineyard Chill:  A Martha’s Vineyard Mystery
By Philip R. Craig
A final installment of the popular series by the late author of Vineyard Stalker finds J. W.’s happy domesticity with Zee and the kids disrupted by a surprising call from a reckless old friend who needs help hiding from would-be assailants, a situation with ties to a beautiful woman’s disappearance.

Romance

Death Angel
By Linda Howard
Meeting a dire end after double-crossing her lover, a ruthless crime lord, the cynical, amoral, and manipulative Drea returns to life a changed woman, determined to bring down those responsible for her death, joining forces with the FBI to become a guardian of the defenseless and the lover of an enigmatic stranger with a shocking secret.

Fearless
By Diana Palmer
Hoping to destroy a vicious drug cartel operating south of the border, DEA agent Rodrigo Ramirez disguises himself as an itinerant laborer to take a job on Gloryanne Barnes’s Jacobsville truck farm, but his growing attraction to his fiercely independent employer and her dedication to providing work for the immigrants and their families could destroy his dangerous mission.

No Choice but Seduction:  A Malory Novel
By Johanna Lindsey
The latest installment in the popular Malory series finds hot-headed American sea captain Boyd Anderson running to the aid of his brother-in-law’s daughter’s kidnapping, only to lock horns with a fellow rescuer, the adventure-seeking Katey Tyler.

Sweet Love
By Sarah Strohmeyer
Recently fired from her influential television reporting job and struggling to raise a teenage daughter alone, Julie Mueller finds renewal in her relationships with women family members and in a dessert cooking class, where she reconnects with an old flame.

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

Kushiel’s Mercy
By Jacqueline Carey
Witnessing the turmoil brought about as a result of their once-secret relationship, Imriel and Sidonie face the prospect of Sidonie’s disinheritance by her mother, Queen Ysandre, unless Imriel can locate and turn in his own mother, who has been sentenced to death for treason.

The Snow Queen:  A Tale of the Five Hundred Kingdoms
By Mercedes Lackey
Falsely accused of unleashing evil on nearby villages, Aleksia, the Ice Fairy and Queen of the Northern Lights, realizing that a heartless imposter is ruining her reputation, sets out to face down a formidable foe, who is also responsible for the disappearance of a young warrior and the kidnapping of her own son.

Valor’s Trial:  A Confederation Novel
By Tanya Huff
A veteran Confederation Marine gunnery sergeant, Torin Kerr, is unexpectedly pulled from the battlefield and confined to an underground POW camp, where she must not only find a way to escape, but also overcome the compulsion – which has affected her fellow Marine prisoners – to give up and accept her fate.

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