Author: Willingham, Stacy, author. Published: 2024 2023 Call Number: F WILLINGH Format: Books Summary: "A sharp and twisty exploration of female friendship from the New York Times bestselling author of A Flicker in the Dark and All the Dangerous Things. Lucy Sharpe is larger than life. Magnetic, addictive. Bold and dangerous. Especially for Margot, who meets Lucy at the end of their freshman year at a liberal arts college in South Carolina. Margot is the shy one, the careful one, always the sidekick and never the center of attention. But when Lucy singles her out at the end of the year, a year Margot spent studying and playing it safe, and asks her to room together, something in Margot can't say no--something daring, or starved, or maybe even envious. And so Margot finds herself living in an off-campus house with three other girls, Lucy, the ringleader; Sloane, the sarcastic one; and Nicole, the nice one, the three of them opposites but also deeply intertwined. It's a year that finds Margot finally coming out of the shell she's been in since the end of high school, when her best friend Eliza died three weeks after graduation. Margot and Lucy have become the closest of friends, but by the middle of their sophomore year, one of the fraternity boys from the house next door has been brutally murdered... and Lucy Sharpe is missing without a trace. From the author of A Flicker in the Dark and All the Dangerous Things comes a tantalizing thriller about the nature of friendship and belonging, about loyalty, envy, and betrayal--another gripping novel from an author quickly becoming the gold standard in psychological suspense"--
Author: Shalvis, Jill, author. Published: 2024 Call Number: F SHALVIS Format: Books Summary: Running her farm-to-table café as well as a menagerie of rescued animals, Luna Wright, when the owner of Apple Ridge Farm passes away and his investment manager takes over control, she, with her home threatened, must dig deep to find true strength and the real meaning of love and family. "Luna Wright is a lot of things, but sweet and trusting isn't on the list. However, she's a sucker for the underdog and a hard-luck story. Adopted at birth, with scant knowledge of her biological family, she's created her own inner circle, a motley crew which includes her bestie Willow, to help her run the struggling but charming Apple Ridge Farm. With a farm-to-table café as well as a menagerie of rescued animals (complete with a baby goat who keeps escaping to the pantry to eat the secret stash of decidedly not organic potato chips), it's the best home she's ever known. But when the owner Silas, who they secretly call The Grinch, passes away, Luna discovers the farm is now under control of his investment manager, the enigmatic Jameson Hayes....and her. And that Silas had many, many secrets..." -- Amazon.com
Author: Bertino, Marie-Helene, author. Published: 2024 Call Number: F BERTI Format: Books Summary: "A tender, deeply wise novel of a young woman who doesn't feel at home on this earth, by the author of Parakeet"-- At the moment when Voyager 1 is launched into space carrying its famous golden record, a baby of unusual perception is born to a single mother in Philadelphia. Adina Giorno is tiny and jaundiced, but reaches for warmth and light. As a child, she recognizes that she is different; she also possesses knowledge of a faraway planet. The arrival of a fax machine enables her to contact her extraterrestrial relatives, beings who have sent her to report on the oddities of earthlings. For years, as she moves through the world and makes a life for herself among humans, she dispatches transmissions on the terrors and surprising joys of their existence. But at a precarious moment, a beloved friend urges Adina to share her messages with the world. Is there a chance she is not alone?
Author: Bradford, Barbara Taylor, 1933- author. Published: 2024 2023 Call Number: LP F BRADFORD Format: Large print Summary: "James Falconer -- a tycoon and a self-made man -- seems to have the world in the palm of his hand. But the Great War looms, and James decides to fight for king and country. The fighting is bloody and brutal, and James returns a changed man, with wounds both physical and mental. His beloved wife is dead, but a new woman returns to help nurse him back to health. Georgiana Ward once held James in her thrall, but years have passed and bitterness has set in. Still, the old attraction is there and James is determined to make amends to both Georgiana and his child Leonie -- now a grown woman and someone he hasn't seen in decades. Leonie is having none of it, and is embarking on a dangerous journey with a man who might very well destroy her. As James fights to return to the man he once was, he needs to find a way to heal his body, soul, and family."--
Author: Shalvis, Jill, author. Published: 2024 Call Number: LP F SHALVIS Format: Books Summary: Running her farm-to-table café as well as a menagerie of rescued animals, Luna Wright, when the owner of Apple Ridge Farm passes away and his investment manager takes over control, she, with her home threatened, must dig deep to find true strength and the real meaning of love and family. "Luna Wright is a lot of things, but sweet and trusting isn't on the list. However, she's a sucker for the underdog and a hard-luck story. Adopted at birth, with scant knowledge of her biological family, she's created her own inner circle, a motley crew which includes her bestie Willow, to help her run the struggling but charming Apple Ridge Farm. With a farm-to-table café as well as a menagerie of rescued animals (complete with a baby goat who keeps escaping to the pantry to eat the secret stash of decidedly not organic potato chips), it's the best home she's ever known. But when the owner Silas, who they secretly call The Grinch, passes away, Luna discovers the farm is now under control of his investment manager, the enigmatic Jameson Hayes....and her. And that Silas had many, many secrets..." -- Amazon.com
Author: Gerritsen, Tess, author. Published: 2024 2023 Call Number: LP F GERRITSE Format: Large print Summary: "Former spy Maggie Bird came to the seaside village of Purity, Maine, eager to put the past behind her after a mission went tragically wrong. These days, she's living quietly on her chicken farm, still wary of blowback from the events that forced her early retirement. But when a body turns up in Maggie's driveway, she knows it's a message from former foes who haven't forgotten her. Maggie turns to her local circle of old friends -- all retirees from the CIA -- to help uncover the truth about who is trying to kill her, and why. This "Martini Club" of former spies may be retired, but they still have a few useful skills that they're eager to use again, if only to spice up their rather sedate new lives. Complicating their efforts is Purity's acting police chief, Jo Thibodeau. More accustomed to dealing with rowdy tourists than homicide, Jo is puzzled by Maggie's reluctance to share information -- and by her odd circle of friends, who seem to be a step ahead of her at every turn. As Jo's investigation collides with the Martini Club's maneuvers, Maggie's hunt for answers will force her to revisit a clandestine career that spanned the globe, from Bangkok to Istanbul, from London to Malta. The ghosts of her past have returned, but with the help of her friends -- and the reluctant Jo Thibodeau -- Maggie might just be able to save the life she's built."--
Author: Carpenter, Lea, author. Published: 2024 Call Number: F CARPENTE Format: Books Summary: "Fast-paced and powerful, gripping and immersive, this subtly crafted and suspenseful novel, set in the present and the immediate past, in the dark world of international espionage in London, Mallorca, Croatia, Paris, and Cap Ferret is told through its young female protagonist who unwittingly becomes a perfect asset in the long overdue finale of a special op. The young English narrator briefly tells us of her unhappy family life in London, wanting to escape, and of her childhood obsession with a locked private garden, near where her mother worked, accessible only to the owners of a few houses. Just as she is about to turn 21, at a party near that garden she meets its charismatic and mysterious new owner, Marcus, thirty-three years older, who sweeps her off her feet, proposes and soon they are married at his finca in Mallorca. On their honeymoon in Croatia, he reveals there is something she can do--a plan is in place and she can help with "a favor." Posing as an art adviser starts as soon as they meet up with Raja in Paris, who sends her off to stand in for him at a lunch of what he says are his friends at Cap Ferret where she must just "listen." A helicopter ride alone to a remote, highly guarded and regulated compound on a spit of land called Cap Ferret in the Atlantic is not what it seems. We meet the mysterious, and charming owner Edouard, along with his wife Dasha, children Nikki and Felix, among others. Everyone has a role, and almost everyone is scripted. Brilliantly compelling, this is a spellbinding and poignant story of a long planned joint CIA Mossad op that only needed the right asset to complete"--
Author: Atrek, İnci, author. Published: 2024 2023 Call Number: F ATREK Format: Books Summary: "Nineteen-year-old Ada adores spending every summer in a Turkish seaside town with her mother and grandmother at the family villa. The glittering waters, picturesque olive groves, and her spirited friends make it easy for Ada to leave her idle life in California behind. But no matter how much Ada feels she belongs to the country where her mother grew up, deep down, her connection to the culture feels as fleeting as the seasons. When Levent, a mysterious man from her mother's past, shows up in their town, Ada can't help but imagine a different future for her mother--one that promises a return to home, to love, to happiness. But while playing matchmaker, Ada has to come to terms with her own intensifying attraction to Levent. Does the future she's fighting for belong to her mother--or to her alone?..."--
Author: Hawkins, Rachel, 1979- author. Published: 2024 2023 Call Number: F HAWKINS Format: Books Summary: "When Ruby McTavish Callahan Woodward Miller Kenmore dies, she's not only North Carolina's richest woman, she's also its most notorious. The victim of a famous kidnapping as a child and a widow four times over, Ruby ruled the tiny town of Tavistock from Ashby House, her family's estate high in the Blue Ridge mountains. In the aftermath of her death, that estate--along with a nine-figure fortune and the complicated legacy of being a McTavish--pass to her adopted son, Camden. But to everyone's surprise, Cam wants little to do with the house or the money--and even less to do with the surviving McTavishes. Instead, he rejects his inheritance, settling into a normal life as an English teacher in Colorado and marrying Jules, a woman just as eager to escape her own messy past. Ten years later, Camden is a McTavish in name only, but a summons in the wake of his uncle's death brings him and Jules back into the family fold at Ashby House. Its views are just as stunning as ever, its rooms just as elegant, but coming home reminds Cam why he was so quick to leave in the first place. Jules, however, has other ideas, and the more she learns about Cam's estranged family--and the twisted secrets they keep--the more determined she is for her husband to claim everything Ruby once intended for him to have. But Ruby's plans were always more complicated than they appeared. As Ashby House tightens its grip on Jules and Camden, questions about the infamous heiress come to light. Was there any truth to the persistent rumors following her disappearance as a girl? What really happened to those four husbands, who all died under mysterious circumstances? And why did she adopt Cam in the first place? Soon, Jules and Cam realize that an inheritance can entail far more than what's written in a will--and that the bonds of family stretch far beyond the grave"--
Author: Green, Joshua, 1972- author. Published: 2024 Call Number: 324.973 Format: Books Summary: "In his classic book Devil's Bargain , Joshua Green chronicled how the forces of economic populism on the right, led by the likes of Steve Bannon, turned Donald Trump into their flawed but powerful vessel. In The Rebels, he gives an epic account of the long struggle that has played out in parallel on the left, told through an intimate reckoning with the careers of the three political figures who have led the charge most prominently. Based on remarkable inside sourcing and razor-sharp analysis, The Rebels uses the grand narrative of a political party undergoing tumult and transformation to tell an even larger story about the fate of America. For many years, as Green recounts, the Democrats made their bed with Wall Street and big tech, relying on corporate money for electioneering and embracing the worldview that technological and financial innovation and globalization were a powerful net good, a rising tide lifting all boats. Yes, there were howls of pain, but they were written off by most of the elites as the moaning of sore losers mired in the past. There were always some Democratic politicians representing the old labor base who resisted the new dispensation, but these figures never made it very far on a national level. For one thing, they didn't have the money. But as income inequality ballooned, widening the gulf between the wealthy elite and everyone else, pressures began to build. With the 2008 crisis, those forces finally erupted into plain sight, turning this book's protagonists into national icons. At its heart, The Rebels tells the riveting human story of the rise and fight of Elizabeth Warren, Bernie Sanders, and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez from the financial crisis on, as outrage over the unfairness of the American system formed a flood tide of political revolution. That same tide that would sweep Trump into office was blunted on the left, as the Democratic party found itself riven by culture war issues between its centrists and its progressives. But the winds behind economic populism still howl at gale force. Whether the Democrats can bridge their divisions and home in on a vision that unites the party, and perhaps even the country, in the face of the most violently deranged political landscape since the Civil War will be the ultimate test of the legacies of all three characters." --
Author: Goddard, Elizabeth, author. Published: 2024 2023 Call Number: LP F GODDARD Format: Large print Summary: "Montana Detective Trevor West is desperate to learn what happened to his sister, who went missing in Alaska over a year ago, leaving nothing but a few photographs as clues to her whereabouts. At the advice of Police Chief Autumn Long, Trevor enlists the help of an experienced bush pilot. If Carrie James can't help him find the places in the photographs, no one can. But Carrie has her own agenda. Grieving the death of her closest friend and the only person she could trust, Carrie will help Trevor find his sister on one condition -- that he help her track down her friend's killer. As the two close in on the answers they crave, they'll face dangers and connections they could not have imagined. They'll have to learn to trust one another -- and face the dark secrets of the past -- if they are ever to discover the truth and bring a killer to justice."--
Author: McNeil, Donald G., Jr., author. Published: 2024 Call Number: 614.4 Format: Books Summary: "For a certain class of American's, Donald McNeil was a comforting voice when the Covid-19 pandemic broke out. He was the regular reporter on the New York Times's popular Daily podcast, and he was telling folks to prepare for the worst. A generation of NYT readers went out and stocked up on food and PPE stuff because of his clear advice. He'd covered public health for the Times for 25 years and understood what he was seeing out of China. The wisdom of plagues is his account of what he learned over a quarter-century of reporting on public health in over 60 countries: part-memoir, part history, and part activism. Many science reporters understand the basics of diseases--how a virus works, for example, or what goes into making a vaccine. But very few understand the psychology of how small outbreaks turn into pandemics: How everyone from hunters to farmers to guano-diggers gets exposed to animal diseases. How diseases spread through networks of similar people and by "mass-gathering" events. How surveillance fails. How countries respond slowly or even cover up outbreaks. Why people refuse to believe they're at risk, or why they reject protective measures like quarantine or vaccines. How wild rumors spring up and scare people away from common sense responses. How greedy makers of false remedies spread confusion. Why public health agencies fumble and let things spiral out of control. The Covid pandemic was the story McNeil had trained his whole life to cover..."--
Author: Balogh, Mary, author. Published: 2024 Call Number: F BALOGH Format: Books Summary: "Left unable to walk by a childhood illness, Lady Jennifer, sister of the Duke of Wilby, has grown up to make a happy place for herself in society. Outgoing and cheerful, she has many friends and enjoys the pleasures of high society--even if she cannot dance at balls or stroll in Hyde Park. She is blessed with a large, loving, and protective family. But she secretly dreams of marriage and children, and of walking--and dancing. When Ben Ellis comes across Lady Jennifer as she struggles to walk with the aid of primitive crutches, he instantly understands her yearning. He is a fixer. It is often said of him that he never saw a practical problem he did not have to solve. He wants to help her discover independence and motion--driving a carriage, swimming, even walking a different way. But he must be careful. He is the bastard son of the late Earl of Stratton. Though he was raised with the earl's family, he knows he does not really belong in the world of the ton. Jennifer is shocked--and intrigued--by Ben's ideas, and both families are alarmed by the growing friendship and perhaps more that they sense developing between the two. A duke's sister certainly cannot marry the bastard son of an earl. Except sometimes, love can find a way"--
Author: Marlantes, Karl, author. Published: 2024 Call Number: F MARLANTE Format: Books Summary: "Helsinki, 1947. Finland teeters between the Soviet Union and the West. Everyone is being watched. A wrong look or a wrong word could end in catastrophe. Natalya Bobrova, from Russia, and Louise Koski, from the United States, are young wives of their country's military attachés. When they meet at an embassy party, their husbands, Arnie and Mikhail, both world-class skiers, drunkenly challenge each other to a friendly-but secret-cross-country wilderness race. Louise is delighted, but Natalya is worried. Stalin and Beria's secret police rule with unforgiving brutality. If news of the race gets out and Mikhail loses, Natalya knows it would mean his death, her imprisonment, and the loss of her two children. Meanwhile, Louise, who is childless, uses the race as an opportunity to raise money for a local orphanage, naive to the danger it will bring to Natalya and her family. Too late to stop Louise's scheme, a horrified Natalya watches as news of the race spreads across the globe as newspapers and politicians spin it as a symbolic battle: freedom versus communism. Desperate to undo her mistake, Louise must reach Arnie to tell him to throw the race and save Mikhail--but how? The two racers are in a world of their own, unreachable in Finland's arctic wilderness."--
Author: Khan, Shubnum, author. Published: 2024 Call Number: F KHAN Format: Books Summary: "Rebecca meets Fatima Farheen Mirza in this sweeping, gorgeously atmospheric novel about a ruined mansion by the sea, and a young girl who unearths the true story of the tragedy that happened there a hundred years ago. Akbar Manzil was once a grand estate off the coast of South Africa. Now, nearly a century since it was built, it stands in ruins--a boardinghouse for misfits, where people come to forget or be forgotten. Seeking a new home after a painful tragedy, Sana and her effusive father are Akbar Manzil's newest residents. There they find a community of eccentrics, each suffering their own losses and likewise searching for something--escape, solace, absolution. As Sana becomes increasingly entwined in their stories, she finds herself irresistibly drawn to the history of the mansion itself: to the overgrown garden and its strange assortment of bones; to the eerie and forgotten East Wing, home to a clutter of broken and abandoned objects; and to a dusty old bedroom, unopened for decades, where she finds faded photographs of Akbar Manzil's first residents and a worn diary with entries she cannot translate..."--
Author: Swierczynski, Duane, author. Published: 2024 Call Number: F SWIERCZY Format: Books Summary: A serial killer who vanished 40 years prior emerges from hibernation and is being tracked by a retired LAPD officer, a teenager with a terminal disease and a genealogist trying to repair her marriage.
Author: Ailes, Kat, author. Published: 2024 2023 Call Number: F AILES Format: Books Summary: "The Expectant Detectives is first in a delightful new mystery series following a group of pregnant women who meet at a prenatal class and team up to solve the murder of someone in their village"-- For Alice and her partner Joe, moving to the sleepy village of Penton is a chance to embrace country life and prepare for the birth of their first child. He can take up woodwork; maybe she'll learn to make jam? But the rural life they'd hoped for doesn't quite pan out when a dead body is discovered at their local prenatal class, and they find themselves suspects in a murder investigation. With a cloud of suspicion hanging over the heads of the whole group, Alice and her new-found pregnant friends set out to solve the mystery and clear their names, with the help of her troublesome dog, Helen. However, there are more secrets and tensions in the heart of Penton than first meet the eye. Between the discovery of a shady commune up in the woods, the unearthing of a mysterious death years earlier, and the near-tragic poisoning of Helen, Alice is soon in way over her head.
Author: Fawcett, Heather (Heather M.), author. Published: 2024 Call Number: F FAWCETT Format: Books Summary: "When mysterious faeries from other realms appear at her university, curmudgeonly professor Emily Wilde must uncover their secrets before it's too late in this second installment of the Emily Wilde series"-- "Emily Wilde is a genius scholar of faerie folklore who just wrote the world's first comprehensive encyclopaedia of faeries. She's learned many of the secrets of the Hidden Ones on her adventures . . . and also from her fellow scholar and former rival Wendell Bambleby. Because Bambleby is more than infuriatingly charming. He's an exiled faerie king on the run from his murderous mother and in search of a door back to his realm. And despite Emily's feelings for Bambleby, she's not ready to accept his proposal of marriage: Loving one of the Fair Folk comes with secrets and dangers." --Amazon.com
Author: Goldberg, Lee, 1962- Published: 2024 Call Number: F GOLDBERG Format: Books Summary: Hidden Hills is a private celebrity enclave of white picket fences and horse trails that seems to exist in a dreamworld. But when reality superstar Kitty Winslow is killed within their gates and corpses are found in the vast state park outside them, LASD detective Eve Ronin realizes there is a deadly, razor-thin line between what's real and what's imagined. Eve discovers that Kitty's surreal on- and off-camera life, a blur of fact and fantasy, shockingly mirrors her own as she struggles to investigate the killings, wade into a music industry war, and battle a vicious Chilean gang--all while her life is being turned into a fictional cop show directed by her estranged father. Eve's grip on reality and the case is strained to the breaking point as the slayings continue, the media frenzy reaches a fever pitch, and the only inescapable truth she can see is death...and it's coming for her.
Author: Grumley, Michael C., author. Published: 2024 2023 Call Number: F GRUMLEY Format: Books Summary: After surviving a bus accident, veteran John Reiff awakens in the hospital alive and suspicious that the doctors aren't telling him something. "The accident came quickly. With no warning. In the dead of night, a precipitous plunge into a freezing river trapped everyone inside the bus. It was then that Army veteran John Reiff's life came to an end. Extinguished in the sudden rush of frigid water. There was no expectation of survival. None. Let alone waking up beneath blinding hospital lights. Struggling to move, or see, or even breathe. But the doctors assure him that everything is normal. That things will improve. And yet, he has a strange feeling that there's something they're not telling him." --Amazon.com