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General Fiction . Mystery & Suspense . Romance . Science Fiction & Fantasy
General Fiction
All We Ever Wanted Was Everything
By Janelle Brown
Over the course of an eventful summer, the three Miller women – Janice, abandoned by her wealthy husband for her tennis partner; daughter Margaret, facing bankruptcy; and teenage daughter Lizzie, dealing with the loss of her reputation – do battle with divorce lawyers, debt collectors, country-club snobs, their own demons, and each other. A first novel.
The Art of Racing in the Rain
By Garth Stein
Evaluating his life on the eve of his death, atypical canine Enzo considers the sacrifices his master, Denny Swift, has made in his pursuit of becoming a professional race car driver; the painful custody battle between Denny and his in-laws; and the dog’s own efforts to preserve the Swift family.
Black Out
By Lisa Unger
Annie Power’s idyllic life in a Florida suburb with a wealthy, doting husband and beautiful young daughter begins to unravel when the demons of the past return to haunt her in the form of an enigmatic dark figure, the murder of her psychologist, and confusing violent memories.
Blood Trail
By C. J. Box
In the wake of an elk hunter’s grisly murder, Wyoming game warden Joe Pickett is directed by the governor to investigate the relevance of a mysterious poker chip found at the crime scene. By the author of Free Fire.
The Boat: Arc
By Nam Le
Ranging from the Colombian slums to New York City, from the streets of Tehran to a boat in the South China Sea, an inventive collection of short fiction explores the complexities of human relationships and the challenges we face.
A Case of Exploding Mangoes
By Mohammed Hanif
Junior Officer Ali Shigri of the Pakistan Air Force, the son of a colonel who had been one of General Mohammad Zia-ul-Haq’s right-hand men prior to his suicide, struggles to unravel the secrets and motives that led to his father’s death and plots his revenge on the Pakistani dictator whom he holds responsible. A first novel.
Chasing Harry Winston
By Lauren Weisberger
Making a pact that they will change the things that most challenge them within a year’s time, Manhattan friends Emmy, Leigh, and Adriana shed their downtrodden identities in order to pursue the high life. By the author of The Devil Wears Prada.
Child 44
By Tom Rob Smith
Rising Soviet state security force officer Leo Demidov encounters the test of his career when a serial killer challenges his beliefs about the paradise of the working world, resulting in his demotion and threats against the lives of his family members. A first novel.
City of Thieves
By David Benioff
Documenting his reluctant grandparents’ experiences during the infamous siege of Leningrad, a young writer learns his grandfather’s story about how he and a military deserter endeavored to secure their pardons by gathering hard-to-find ingredients for a powerful colonel’s daughter’s wedding cake.
Comfort Food
By Kate Jacobs
Tiring of playing the hostess as her fiftieth birthday approaches, celebrity chef Augusta Simpson tries to distance herself from her overly dependent loved ones, and receives assistance from handsome fellow chef Oliver in her efforts to launch an on-air cooking class. By the author of The Friday Night Knitting Club.
Days of Infamy
By Newt Gingrich and William R. Forstchen
A follow-up to Pearl Harbor finds Admiral Yamamoto struggling with the discovery that his government failed to formally declare war on America prior to the Pearl Harbor attack, while Admiral Halsey prepares for a decisive counter-strike.
Devil May Care
By Sebastian Faulks, writing as Ian Fleming
Marking the centennial of Ian Fleming’s birth, the author of Birdsong pens a novel in which Fleming’s debonair British agent, James Bond, returns in a new Cold War adventure that takes 007 to some of the world’s most exotic and dangerous locales.
Enlightenment
By Maureen Freely
Disappearing a few months after her Turkish husband is detained and her young son is placed in foster care by the U. S. Border Patrol, Jeannie Wakefield leaves behind a letter to an anonymous investigative journalist detailing the political factors that shaped her more than three-decade life in Turkey.
Escape
By Robert K. Tanenbaum
While newly elected New York D. A. Butch Karp works to convict Jessica Campbell, a rabble-rousing NYU political science professor, of the murders of her three children, an Islamic terrorist plans a spectacular attack in Manhattan, and only Butch’s wife, P. I. Marlene Ciampi, their daughter Lucy, and an eccentric team of crime fighters stands in his way.
Escape from Andersonville: A Novel of the Civil War
By Gene Hackman and Daniel Lenihan
Incarcerated within a murderous Confederate prison camp in 1864, Union officer Nathan Parker narrowly escapes and urges his superiors to intervene in clearing him of the crime of which he was accused, but when his efforts are blocked by military higher-ups, he organizes a private mission with a shady ex-soldier.
Evening Is the Whole Day
By Preeta Samarasan
The lives of six-year-old Aasha Rajasekharan and those of her prosperous family are turned upside down by the death of her grandmother, the dismissal of the family’s rubber plantation servant girl, and the departure of her older sister, Uma, for Columbia University, in a saga of one Malaysian Indian immigrant family’s secrets and lies. A first novel.
Exiles
By Ron Hansen
Exiled for their religious beliefs in 1875, five nuns embark on a voyage to America in the hopes of starting over, only to lose their lives with sixty others when the ship runs aground, in a tale that inspires a grand poem by a doomed priest and Oxford scholar who themselves are living in literary exile.
Friday Nights
By Joanna Trollope
Gathering weekly to commiserate over their relationships, careers, and hardships, six women find their circle changing significantly when one of them meets an enigmatic man who inadvertently tests their closely forged bond.
From Dead to Worse
By Charlaine Harris
In the wake of hurricane Katrina and the explosion at the vampire summit, Louisiana cocktail waitress Sookie Stackhouse confronts the disappearance of her boyfriend Quinn and dramatic changes in the paranormal world of the vampires and werewolves.
The Front
By Patricia Cornwell
Dispatched by the district attorney to a declining Massachusetts neighborhood to address a case related to a new public relations campaign, state investigator Win Garano suspects a deeper agenda and becomes involved with a loosely organized association of vigilante police officers, in a case during which he is assisted by his intuitive grandmother.
The Girl With No Shadow
By Joanne Harris
A long-awaited sequel to the best-selling Chocolat finds Vianne assuming a low-profile new identity in Paris, where she opens a chocolaterie and hopes to escape the ghosts of her past before a devious new friend threatens everything she has worked for.
A Good Indian Wife
By Anne Cherian
Successful anesthesiologist Neel hopes to resist his family’s pleas that he marry a proper woman during a visit home to India, while jaded thirty-year-old teacher Leila reluctantly anticipates her latest suitor as she retains memories of an old friendship with a Muslim boy.
Hollywood Crows
By Joseph Wambaugh
Encountering a seemingly harmless socialite named Margot Azia, LAPD cops Hollywood Nate and Bix Rumstead are unaware that the woman’s bitter divorce from a nefarious nightclub owner is part of a murderous ruse in which both Nate and Rumstead are being set up.
The House on Fortune Street
By Margot Livesey
Forging an unlikely friendship that endures beyond their university years, actress Abigail and therapist Dara approach their relationships from respective vantage points and encounter challenges in the forms of an anonymous letter and reconciliation with a distant parent.
Killing Rommel
By Steven Pressfield
In the fall of 1942, with Hitler controlling continental Europe and Rommel’s forces poised to overrun Egypt, the Suez, and the oil-rich Middle East, the British launch a desperate plan to send a small, mobile, and heavily armed team behind German lines to stop Germany’s Afrika Korps and its commander, in a novel about the real-life exploits of the elite Long Range Desert Group.
The Lazarus Project
By Aleksandar Hemon
The murder of Jewish immigrant Lazarus Averbuch triggers ethnic and political tensions in early twentieth-century Chicago, an event that is investigated a century later by a young writer from Eastern Europe.
Love the One You’re With
By Emily Giffin
Believing her marriage to Andy to be perfect in every way, Ellen runs into former flame Leo and wonders why she has been unable to forget him even though they brought out the worst in each other. By the author of Baby Proof.
Mercy Street
By Mariah Stewart
Forced by scandal out of her job on the police force, detective Mallory Russo takes up a new career as a successful true-crime author, until she is asked to join a team of law enforcement specialists to investigate cold cases and takes on the case of the shooting of two teens and the disappearance of two others.
Moon Shell Beach
By Nancy Thayer
Leaving behind anger and resentment, as well as a broken friendship with Clare Hart, when she eloped at the age of nineteen, Lexi Laney returns to Nantucket after an eleven-year absence and a bitter divorce and, along with Clare, struggles to rebuild the childhood friendship destroyed by deception and betrayal.
Odd Hours
By Dean Koontz
Haunted by dreams of a powerful red tide, Odd Thomas, accompanied by two otherworldly sidekicks – his dog Boo and the Chairman of the Board – is drawn to a small California coastal town where nothing is as it appears and where he confronts overwhelming and sinister forces out to stop his quest.
The Outlander
By Gil Adamson
Fleeing the law in 1903 after killing her husband, Mary Boulton races toward the mountains while being tormented by visions about the cold-blooded brothers-in-law who pursue her – a situation that forces her to retreat deeper into the wilds of the West and her own imagination.
Phantom Prey
By John Sandford
Terrified by her Goth-associated daughter’s disappearance and the signs of a deadly struggle in their home, a widow implores Lucas Davenport to use his connections to local authorities to expedite the investigation, which subsequently reveals the work of a serial killer.
The Plague of Doves
By Louise Erdrich
Unaware of a violent event that marked the beginning of her mixed ancestry, ambitious young Evelina Harp, a part-Ojibwe/part-white girl prone to falling hopelessly in love, learns disturbing truths from her gifted storyteller grandfather, while a sentimental judge weighs the legacy of a century-old crime as reflected by his own love life.
Quiver
By Peter Leonard
When her teenage son, Luke, kills her husband in a tragic hunting-bow accident, Kate McCall suddenly becomes caught up in a dangerous, life-and-death confrontation with a gang of killers that includes Kate’s old flame, an ex-con desperately trying to convince his former colleagues that he lost their heist money. A first novel.
The Romanov Bride
By Robert Alexander
A final installment of a trilogy that began with Rasputin’s Daughter and The Kitchen Boy finds vengeance-seeking villager Pavel joining an underground group that assassinates the grand duke of Russia, irrevocably affecting the life of his widow, Elisavyeta.
Rubicon
By Lawrence Alexander
In the wake of a heated presidential race headed by incumbents determined to further their radical policies, a rising young California senator learns of a daring assassination plot designed to seize control of the government and impose a dictatorship.
Scream for Me
By Karen Rose
A sequel to Die for Me finds special agent Daniel Vartanian investigating a copycat killer whose methods more brutally emulate those of Daniel’s serial-murderer brother, in a case that forces him to search the dark past of his own family and team up with a beautiful and troubled nurse.
Secrets in the Shadows
By V. C. Andrews
In the sequel to Secrets in the Attic, Alice, whose mother is a murderer confined to a mental institution, is sent to live with her aunt Zipporah following a tragic accident on prom night, but when she visits the asylum where her mother lives, her own mysterious past begins to unfold in terrifying detail.
Skeletons at the Feast
By Chris Bohjalian
During the final months of World War II, a small group of people – including teenager Anna Emmerich, daughter of Prussian aristocrats; Callum Finnela, a twenty-year-old POW; and a young Wehrmacht corporal hiding his true Jewish identity – make their way westward across a ravaged Europe in a desperate attempt to reach British and American lines.
Snuff
By Chuck Palahniuk
Narrated from the perspectives of Mr. 72, Mr. 137, and Mr. 600 as they await their turn on camera, a provocative new novel about the role of pornography in contemporary life follows the sexual exploits of porn queen Cassie Wright, who plans to break the world record for serial fornication with six hundred men on camera.
The Sorrows of an American
By Siri Hustvedt
Finding a disturbing note from a mysterious woman in their late father’s papers, grieving siblings Erik and Inga investigate clues that make them suspect that their father may have played a role in a suspicious death, a situation that is further complicated by Erik’s new tenants, his psychiatric patients, and a hostile widow journalist.
Soul of the Assassin (Larry Bond’s First Team)
By Larry Bond & Jim DeFelice
Learning that one of the CIA’s most-wanted figures is going to be in Italy, officer Bob Ferguson and the First Team set out to apprehend him at any cost, a situation that is complicated by the killer’s long-time absence; rumors about his planned hit of a western leader; and the discovery of a much bigger plot.
The Steel Wave: A Novel of World War II
By Jeff Shaara
A fictional account of D-Day and the Allied invasion of Europe chronicles the events of the World War II campaign and the personalities who took part in it, from the ordinary soldiers on the land and in the air, to such leaders as Dwight Eisenhower, George Patton, and Omar Bradley, as their efforts changed the course of the war.
Steer Toward Rock
By Fae Myenne Ng
A solitary bachelor butcher in San Francisco’s McCarthy-era Chinatown, Jack Szeto serves the left-behind housewives of Central Valley farm laborers, falls in love with the free-spirited daughter of a shunned mortician, and naively triggers a heartbreaking retaliatory act.
The Story of a Marriage
By Andrew Sean Greer
Caring for her ill husband and son in 1953 San Francisco, dutiful housewife Pearlie finds everything she has ever believed about her husband’s character brought into question by the appearance of a stranger who mysteriously offers her a considerable sum of money. By the author of The Confessions of Max Tivoli.
The Sugar Queen
By Sarah Addison Allen
Quiet, awkward Josey Cirrini’s peaceful life – caring for her elderly mother, enjoying romance novels, and indulging in her secret passion for sweets – is turned upside down when Della Lee Baker, a sassy, confident, and bold waitress fleeing an abusive boyfriend, decides to hide out in Josey’s home. By the author of Garden Spells.
Sun Going Down
By Jack Todd
In a tale that traces the experiences of the Paint family, from Civil War-era Ebenezer through his Depression-era great-grandchildren, the story of four generations of an American frontier family is inspired by the letters and diaries of the author’s ancestors.
Swine Not?
By Jimmy Buffett
Moving their beloved pet pig from their Tennessee hometown to their new home in a posh, no-pets-allowed New York City hotel, southern belle Ellie McBride and her twin children struggle to hide the swine from the hotel staff, including an ultra-carnivorous hotel chef.
The Tenth Gift
By Jane Johnson
A volume of seventeenth-century embroidery patterns that also contains faint diary entries brings together the lives of two women of vastly different eras – Cat Tregenna, an embroideress kidnapped by Muslim pirates in 1625 and taken to Morocco as a slave, and Julia Lovat, a modern-day woman out to determine the authenticity of Cat’s story.
To the Death
By Patrick Robinson
When Admiral Arnold Morgan breaks up a terrorist cell in the U.S. following a bombing at Boston’s Logan Airport, sending its fanatics to Guantanamo Bay, the Hamas high command vows to assassinate the Admiral when he leaves American soil, unless an elite Navy SEAL team can stop the attack.
Trophies
By Heather Thomas
A “second wives club” of trophy women shares a series of lavish and riotous adventures in Hollywood, including Marion, who makes a devastating choice to save her life; Pepper, who struggles against a rival for her husband’s affections; and Maya, a supermodel whose spouse wants a baby.
The Wolfman
By Nicholas Pekearo
Drifting from town to town after a dishonorable discharge, Marlowe Higgins struggles with a werewolf nature that forces him to kill bad guys during every full moon, a circumstance that culminates in a deadly confrontation with a serial killer in small-town Tennessee.
The World Before Her
By Deborah Weisgall
Set in Venice a century apart, two parallel stories follow two women and their marriages: Marian Evans, better known as famed English author George Eliot, who is newly married to a man twenty years her junior, and in the city on her honeymoon; and sculptor Caroline Spingold, coming unwillingly to the city with her older, wealthy husband to celebrate their tenth anniversary.
The Year of Disappearances
By Susan Hubbard
A follow-up to The Society of S finds the teenage vampire Ari following the presidential campaign from within her journalism class and forming suspicions about a lead candidate.
Mystery & Suspense
(some titles may also be found in General Fiction)
The Body in the Gallery
By Katherine Hall Page
Secretly assisting her museum-president friend in a case involving a stolen piece of fine art, Faith Fairchild stumbles upon a murder scene near a controversial exhibit and becomes increasingly exasperated by the police’s inability to recognize important clues.
The Calling
By Inger Wolfe
When a terminally ill woman is found brutally murdered in her home, sixty-one-year-old Detective Inspector Hazel Micallef and her understaffed Port Dundee department must track a terrifying serial killer, who targets terminally ill victims whose bodies are found drained of blood, their mouths sculpted into strange shapes, on a bloodthirsty trail across the country.
Careless in Red
By Elizabeth George
Resigning from Scotland Yard and engaging in exhaustive hikes along the Cornish coast in the aftermath of his wife’s murder, former Detective Superintendent Thomas Lynley witnesses the falling death of a young man and aids local investigators in a case that tests his loyalty to his former employer.
Clubbed to Death: A Dead-End Job Mystery
By Elaine Viets
Working a dead-end job in a country club complaint department that puts her face-to-face with the continual griping of the rich and spoiled, Helen Hawthorne’s life goes from bad to worse when her deadbeat ex-husband arrives back in her life aboard the yacht of his new lady, Marcella, known as the “Black Widow” for her string of dead spouses – and subsequently finds herself charged with his murder when he mysteriously vanishes.
The Demon of Dakar: A Mystery
By Kjell Eriksson
While probing the brutal murder of one of the owners of Dakar, a fancy restaurant, Detective Ann Lindell discovers that her suspects include his partner in the establishment, as well as everyone else who works there, but her investigation is complicated when additional bodies turn up.
Frames: A Valentino Mystery
By Loren D. Estleman
Discovering a skeleton in a decrepit movie palace he hopes to restore, UCLA film archivist Valentino also finds a priceless original director’s cut of a long-lost classic film, and must solve the mystery of the skeleton before the police claim the film as evidence and doom it to destruction.
Last Post
By Robert Barnard
Receiving a letter from a woman who claims to have been her late mother’s lover, Eve McNabb considers her mother’s mysterious nature and the possibility that the father she has always believed to be dead may still be alive.
The Mercy Oak
By Kathryn R. Wall
In the eighth installment in a mystery series set in South Carolina’s Low Country, private investigator Bay Tanner’s business and romantic life takes a perilous turn when a call from her housekeeper’s son Bobby hints that a recent hit-and-run may really have been a murder, and that the victim, a local agitator for the rights of illegal immigrants, may not have been the intended target.
Poisoned Tarts: A Savannah Reid Mystery
By G. A. McKevett
As Halloween approaches, full-figured P.I. Savannah Reid finds herself knee-deep in tricks and treats when a member of The Skeleton Key Three, a celebutante clique, goes missing, and the wealthy host of the annual Halloween bash is murdered.
Scared to Live
By Stephen Booth
A house fire that claims the life of a woman and two children, followed by the brutal murder of an elderly woman, becomes the catalyst for an investigation by Detective Sergeant Diane Fry and Detective Constable Ben Cooper as they follow a trail that takes them from their native Derbyshire to the other side of Europe.
Tell No Lies
By Julie Compton
Jack Hilliard’s new job as District Attorney of St. Louis and his loving family life are threatened when he gives in to his growing attraction to Jenny Dodson, an old friend and colleague, a situation that is further complicated when Jenny is accused of killing one of her clients, and her night with Jack is her only alibi. A first novel.
The Triumph of Caesar: A Novel of Ancient Rome
By Steven Saylor
Retired from his profession of “’Finder” and recently returned from Egypt, Gordianus is called in by Calpurnia, the wife of Julius Caesar, because of her dreams of disaster, fears of a conspiracy against her husband’s life, and the murder of her previous investigator, Gordianus’ old friend Hieronymous.
Romance
The Angel
By Carla Neggers
While investigating the mysterious legend of an ancient Celtic stone angel in Ireland, folklorist and illustrator Keira Sullivan is rescued from disaster by Simon Cahill, who does not believe in myths or magic until he accompanies her back to Boston and discovers that they are being followed by a great evil.
Secrets
By Jude Deveraux
Having harbored an unrequited love for a man she met in childhood, Cassandra impulsively breaks an engagement to become the now-widowed man’s nanny, but realizes that her chance for winning his heart is threatened by dark secrets.
Twenty Wishes
By Debbie Macomber
Thirty-eight-year-old widow Anne Marie Roche, the owner of a successful bookstore on Seattle’s Blossom Street, creates a list of twenty wishes, and, while acting upon her wishes, becomes involved with an eight-year-old girl named Ellen, who helps her complete her list – with unexpected results.
Science Fiction & Fantasy
(some titles may also be found in General Fiction)
Amber and Blood, Volume Three (The Dark Disciple)
By Margaret Weis
In the epic conclusion of the Dark Disciple trilogy, Mina finally uncovers the truth about herself, a discovery that drives her insane. Embarking on a perilous quest, Mina is accompanied by Rhys, the monk of Majere, his dog Atta, and the kinder Nightshade, to a mysterious place called Godshome, where she hopes to find the key to her very existence.
The Host
By Stephenie Meyer
A member of a species that takes over the minds of human bodies, Wanderer is unable to disregard his host’s love for a man in hiding, a situation that forces both possessor and host to become unwilling allies. A first adult novel by the author of Eclipse.
The Immortal Prince
By Jennifer Fallon
When a convicted murderer announces that he is the embodiment of a believed-mythical immortal hero, legend expert Arkady Desean is sent to disprove his claims but finds himself believing his story against his own better judgment.
Invincible (Star Wars: Legacy of the Force)
By Troy Denning
In the ninth and final volume in the Legacy of the Force series, Luke Skywalker faces the difficult decision to destroy Darth Caedus – formerly his peace-loving nephew Jacen Solo – while Jacen’s twin sister, Jaina, must fulfill her destiny as the “Sword of the Jedi,” joining her parents and others on a quest to confront the tyrant who had once been her twin brother.
The Sharing Knife. Volume Three, Passage
By Lois McMaster Bujold
Unable to overcome the bigotry of their own families in spite of the numerous hardships they have shared, Fawn and Dag set out to find alternative solutions to the perilous rift between their races, during which they acquire such motley companions as a pair of novice Lakewalker patrollers, a magically beguiled farmer boy, and a young riverboat captain.
The Shadow Isle, Book Three (The Silver Wyrm)
By Katharine Kerr
In the epic conclusion of the Deverry fantasy saga, as the Horsekin continue to push their religious crusade to the very borders of the kingdom, the humans of Deverry and their elven allies, with the magical aid of Dallandra and Valandario and the power of the great dragons Arzosah and Rori, battle to reveal the secrets that can protect the Northlands from ultimate conquest.
The Stone Gods
By Jeanette Winterson
After rendering the planet unlivable, humankind begins to colonize a new blue planet, and heroine Billie Crusoe embarks on a personal odyssey into the future, in a futuristic adventure that explores humankind’s relationship to the environment, power, and technology, and assesses what it is that makes us human. By the author of Lighthousekeeping.
5/08 |
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