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The temptation of magic

Megan Scott

He was an Empyreal, her greatest threat, her greatest fascination. Everything she'd been warned against. And yet she wanted him, still.

Nicole Palmer's secret powers are invaluable. As an Empyreal, she harbors the ability to destroy dangerous creatures, an ability The Wake--a shadowy organization that governs all supernatural creatures--will stop at no lengths to weaponize. Dormant for now, Nicole knows if her powers were to be triggered she'd suffer the same deadly fate as her mother.

To stay safe from The Wake and find a final encoded message from her mother, Nicole secures a role researching the supernatural art collection at the local Cornish manor. But when Kyan McCarter, The Wake's most skilled Empyreal and perhaps Nicole's greatest enemy, is stationed there to track a deadly creature, they are forced to work together to stop a painting falling into the wrong hands.

As their hunt for the creature progresses, it threatens to expose Nicole's powers, and her tenuous alliance with Kyan begins to threaten her heart. If Nicole's true identity is revealed, Kyan will hunt her next. No one disobeys The Wake and survives. Especially when the art they're seeking could hold the key to a conspiracy that would change the lives of creatures and humans forever ...

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The shadow key

Susan Stokes-Chapman

On an isolated estate in late-eighteenth-century rural Wales, a young English doctor uncovers dangerous secrets that may threaten his own life in this spellbinding Gothic tale from the bestselling author of Pandora.

Dismissed from his post at a prestigious London hospital, Dr. Henry Talbot has little choice but to accept a mysterious offer of employment as a private physician from an inscrutable lord in rural Wales, Lord Julian. Arriving at Plas Helyg, the isolated estate, Henry can't speak the language and finds himself treated with hostile suspicion by superstitious villagers, whose beliefs in myths and magic he's inclined to dismiss. But when he discovers that his predecessor died under peculiar, inexplicable circumstances, his determination to uncover the truth leads him down a path fraught with danger--made all the more perilous by his headstrong, reluctant ally Linette, Lord Julian's cousin.

Linette has lived a lonely life as Plas Helyg's unconventional mistress: Julian treats her with disdain, her father is long dead, and her mother, long plagued by strange spells and believed by everyone around her to be deeply unwell, spends most of her time locked away in her rooms. Fiercely self-reliant, Linette refuses to wear women's clothes, has no interest in marriage, and takes an interest in the welfare of the men working in Lord Julian's mines, against his wishes.

Linette has always suspected something is not quite right in the village, but it is only through Henry's dogged investigations that the dark truth about those closest to her will come to light--a truth that will bind hers and Henry's destinies together forever in ways neither thought possible.

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Return to Wyldcliffe Heights

Carol Goodman

Jane Eyre meets The Thirteenth Tale in this new modern gothic mystery from two-time Mary Higgins Clark Award-winner Carol Goodman, about a reclusive writer who is desperate to rewrite the past.

Losing yourself inside of a book can be dangerous. Not everyone finds their way out.

Agnes Corey, a junior editor at a small independent publisher, has been hired by enigmatic author Veronica St. Clair to transcribe the sequel to her 1993 hit phenomenon, The Secret of Wyldcliffe Heights. St. Clair has been a recluse since the publication of the Jane Eyre-esque book, which coincided with a terrible fire that blinded and scarred her. Arriving in the Hudson Valley at St. Clair's crumbling estate, which was once a psychiatric hospital for "wayward women," Agnes is eager to ensure St. Clair's devoted fans will get the sequel they've been anticipating for the past thirty years.

As St. Clair dictates, Agnes realizes there are clues in the story that reveal the true--and terrifying--events three decades ago that inspired the original novel. The line between fact and fiction becomes increasingly blurred, and Agnes discovers terrible secrets about an unresolved murder from long ago, which have startling connections to her own life. As St. Clair's twisting tale infiltrates Agnes's psyche, Agnes begins to question her own sanity--and safety. In order to save herself, Agnes must uncover what really happened to St. Clair, and in doing so, set free the stories of all the women victimized by Wyldcliffe Heights.

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The only one left

Riley Sager

At seventeen, Lenora Hope Hung her sister with a rope Now reduced to a schoolyard chant, the Hope family murders shocked the Maine coast one bloody night in 1929. While most people assume seventeen-year-old Lenora was responsible, the police were never able to prove it. Other than her denial after the killings, she has never spoken publicly about that night, nor has she set foot outside Hope's End, the cliffside mansion where the massacre occurred. Stabbed her father with a knife Took her mother's happy life It's now 1983, and home-health aide Kit McDeere arrives at a decaying Hope's End to care for Lenora after her previous nurse fled in the middle of the night. In her seventies and confined to a wheelchair, Lenora was rendered mute by a series of strokes and can only communicate with Kit by tapping out sentences on an old typewriter. One night, Lenora uses it to make a tantalizing offer--I want to tell you everything"It wasn't me," Lenora said But she's the only one not dead  As Kit helps Lenora write about the events leading to the Hope family massacre, it becomes clear there's more to the tale than people know. But when new details about her predecessor's departure come to light, Kit starts to suspect Lenora might not be telling the complete truth--and that the seemingly harmless woman in her care could be far more dangerous than she first thought.

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A novel summer

Jamie Brenner

A bestselling author finds love and second chances in the stacks of a quaint beach town bookshop

Author Shelby Archer found inspiration for her first novel while living on the picturesque shores of Provincetown on Cape Cod. When she comes to the town to celebrate her new bestseller, she is expecting a warm homecoming. But instead she is confronted with the cold shoulders of friends and neighbors who feel exposed and betrayed.

Heartbroken, Shelby tries to move on and focus on her next novel. But then an unexpected call comes: her dear friend who owns the beloved Land's End bookshop needs help for the summer. Shelby reluctantly returns to the Cape to manage the store.

Back at the beach, Shelby sets her focus on the tiny seaside shop, getting lost in the shelves of steamy romance novels and dusty classics and trying to right the wrongs of her past. With every page turned and every customer served, Shelby comes closer to gaining back the trust of those she hurt. But as her manuscript deadline nears, she is again forced to choose between her own success and a second chance at love and belonging.

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I need you to read this

Jessa Maxwell

The author of the "clever, atmospheric, and creepy" (Andrea Bartz, New York Times bestselling author) The Golden Spoon returns with a sly and addictive new mystery about an advice columnist searching for answers about her predecessor's murder.

Her most important letter might be her last ...

Years ago Alex Marks escaped to New York City for a fresh start. Now, aside from trips to her regular diner for coffee, she keeps to herself, gets her perfectly normal copywriting job done, and doesn't date. Her carefully cultivated world is upended when her childhood hero, Francis Keen, is brutally murdered. Francis was the woman behind the famous advice column, Dear Constance, and her words helped Alex through some of her darkest times.

When Alex sees an advertisement searching for her replacement, she impulsively applies, never expecting to actually get the job. Against all odds, Alex is given the position and quickly proves herself skilled at solving other people's problems. But soon, she begins to receive strange, potentially threatening letters at the office. Francis's murderer was never identified, turning everyone around her into a threat. Including her boss, editor-in-chief Howard Dimitri, who has a habit of staying late at the office and drinking too much.

As Alex is drawn into the details surrounding her predecessor's murder, her own dark secrets begin to rise to the surface and Alex suddenly finds herself trapped in a dangerous and potentially deadly game of cat and mouse that takes her all the way from the power centers of Manhattan to Francis Keen's summer house, where her body was found and where the killer may just be waiting for her.

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How economics explains the world : a short history of humanity

Andrew Leigh

A sweeping, engrossing history of how economic forces have shaped the world--all in under 200 pages

In How Economics Explains the World, Harvard-trained economist Andrew Leigh presents a new way to understand the human story. From the dawn of agriculture to AI, here is story of how ingenuity, greed, and desire for betterment have, to an astonishing degree, determined our past, present, and future. 

This small book indeed tells a big story. It is the story of capitalism - of how our market system developed. It is the story of the discipline of economics, and some of the key figures who formed it. And it is the story of how economic forces have shaped world history. Why didn't Africa colonize Europe instead of the other way around? What happened when countries erected trade and immigration barriers in the 1930s? Why did the Allies win World War II? Why did inequality in many advanced countries fall during the 1950s and 1960s? How did property rights drive China's growth surge in the 1980s? How does climate change threaten our future prosperity? You'll find answers to these questions and more in How Economics Explains the World.

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A family of killers

Bryce Moore

Warren Bullock always thought he was a decent person. But lately he's been haunted by a sinister voice in his head urging him to commit unspeakable acts of violence against the people around him. And then the rumors start . . . There have been a string of disappearances in southeastern Kansas, and his father's friend is one of the missing travelers. When Warren's father leaves to investigate and doesn't return, Warren knows this is his chance to prove that he is stronger than his darkest impulses. As he makes his way through Kansas, he finds himself at a suspicious inn run by the Benders, a family with deeply unsettling mannerisms. They watch every move he makes, stand over him in his sleep, and the daughter seems to be able to see into both the past and future. As he delves further into the disappearances, he realizes one or all of the Benders may be responsible for all the missing people--and might be the reason his father never came home. It's up to Warren to set things right, even if that means giving into the voice he has been working so hard to ignore.

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The accomplice

Curtis Jackson

The New York Times bestselling multitalented artist delivers an electrifying novel--The Accomplice--that combines the imaginative page-turning suspense of S. A. Cosby's books with the high-tension thrills of the Netflix blockbuster series Money Heist.

In The Accomplice, Curtis ""50 Cent"" Jackson and award-winning mystery writer Aaron Philip Clark introduce readers to New York-born and Texas-bred Nia Adams, who always dreamt of becoming a Texas Ranger. She knows the dangers of the job, and as the first Black female ranger, she knows the politics, but she's never encountered a criminal like Desmond Bell. A Vietnam vet turned thief, Desmond steals more than money; he steals the secrets of the rich and powerful and blackmails them for millions. When Desmond steals from the Duchamps, the wealthiest family in the country, Nia's investigation into the robbery threatens to expose him and the criminal enterprise he works for. As the bodies pile up, Nia digs deeper for the truth, putting her life and career in danger. It's a deadly cat-and-mouse game between ranger and thief, but to protect their family's secrets, the Duchamps won't hesitate to kill them both.

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The accidental joe

Tom Straw

When the CIA approaches celebrity chef Sebastian Pike about using his award-winning food and culture travel show as cover for espionage, the outspoken bad-boy host says no. When they point out how roaming the globe interviewing foodies, heads of state, rock stars, journalists-in-exile, poets, subversives, supermodels--even the pope--gives him perfect cover, Pike smiles and says, "F@#! no." They push. They'd embed their top agent in his crew to do the spy work. And when romantic sparks crackle between him and the female agent, Pike's all in, kicking off a romantic spy thriller in which the globetrotting celebrity chef uses his TV series to help sneak Putin's accountant out of Russia before he's exposed as a mole. The high-stakes mission quickly puts Pike in harm's way. There's danger, there's double dealing, there's shooting with real bullets. Plus, a minefield of complications from the hot romance that grows between Pike and his gutsy CIA handler-producer, Cammie Nova. Beyond their attraction, Pike and Nova become an operational team, not only to survive the perils they face but to pull off an operation fraught with one twist after another, capped by a shocking, emotional climax.

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Swan song

Elin Hilderbrand

The beloved #1 New York Times bestselling author brings her Nantucket novels to a brilliant finish: when rich strangers move to the island, social mayhem and a possible murder follow. Can Nantucket's best locals save the day, and their way of life?

Chief of Police Ed Kapenash is about to retire. Blond Sharon is going through a divorce. But when a 22-million-dollar summer home is purchased by the mysterious Richardsons--how did they make their money, exactly?--Ed, Sharon, and everyone in the community are swept up in high drama

The Richardsons throw lavish parties, flirt with multiple locals, flaunt their wealth with not one but two yachts, and raise impossible hopes of everyone they meet. When their house burns to the ground and their most essential employee goes missing, the entire island is up in arms.

The last of Elin Hilderbrand's bestselling Nantucket novels, Swan Song is a propulsive medley of glittering gatherings, sun-soaked drama, wisdom and heart, featuring the return of some of her most beloved characters, including, most importantly, the beautiful and timeless island of Nantucket itself.

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Studies at the school by the sea

Jenny Colgan

The long-awaited and never-before published finale in New York Times bestselling author Jenny Colgan's delightful School by the Sea series.

After all those lessons, it's time to graduate....

Beloved literature teacher Maggie Adair loves her life at the prestigious Downey House boarding school on the gloriously sunny, windy English coast. It was there that she found her footing as a teacher and fell in love with her colleague David--the two great anchors of her life. But these days Maggie's feeling restless, lured by the promise of a different life back in her Scottish hometown. How can you follow your heart when it seems to be taking you in two directions at once?

Meanwhile, Maggie's favorite students are abuzz at the thought of graduation and set to fly the nest to their next adventure. What will life hold for mercurial Fliss, glamorous Alice, and shy, hard-working Simone when they finally finish their studies at the school by the sea? Will Maggie stay to welcome the next class of girls, or will she too graduate to new adventures?

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Storybook ending

Poppy Alexander

From the author of The Littlest Library--a heartwarming novel about a widowed children's book author who moves into a cottage in the English countryside and finds herself face-to-face with the handsome and brooding blacksmith who lives next door.

In her books she can write "happily ever after"-- but real life? That's another matter...

For children's book author Imogen, an idyllic life in the English countryside seems like the perfect fit for her and her husband. But when tragedy strikes, Imogen is left widowed, and finds herself moving into Storybook Cottage alone with only her monstrously narcissistic cat for company.

After discovering she is pregnant, Imogen grows determined to embrace a new start in Middlemass, with its duckpond, cricket matches and village fêtes. The only thing Imogen can't seem to shake is her neighbor--a brooding, artisan blacksmith named Gabriel--who she can't quite decide is friend or foe. That is until she realizes, thanks to an arcane clause in her deeds, that Gabriel-- not just an artist, but lord of the local manor house-- has the power to take her home and leave her completely broke.

Devastatingly, he seems keen to do exactly that. Yet, Imogen finds herself drawn to him nonetheless. And in her darkest hour, Gabriel may just be the bright spot to save Imogen in more ways than one.

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Still see you everywhere

Lisa Gardner

My name is Frankie Elkin, and finding missing people is what I do.

From #1 New York Times bestselling author Lisa Gardner comes a harrowing locked-room style thriller set on a remote island.

Frankie Elkin is an expert at finding the missing persons that the rest of the world has forgotten, but even she couldn't have anticipated this latest request--to locate the long-lost sister of a female serial killer facing execution in three weeks' time. She has called herself "death," but people called her the devil.

The case was sensational. Kaylee Pierson had confessed from the very beginning, waived all appeals. Despite the media's chronicling of her tragic circumstances--the childhood spent with a violent father--no one could find sympathy for "the Beautiful Butcher" who had led eighteen men home from bars before viciously slitting their throats.

Now, with only twenty-one days left to live, Pierson has finally received a lead on the whereabouts of the sister who was kidnapped over a decade ago, and she needs Frankie's help to find her. The Beautiful Butcher's offer:

When was the last time your search ended with finding the living?

Unable to resist the chance for a rescue, Frankie takes on Pierson's request. Twelve years ago, five-year-old Leilani went missing in Hawaii. The main suspect? Pierson's tech mogul ex-boyfriend, Sanders MacManus. Now, on a remote island in the middle of the Pacific--the site of MacManus's latest vanity project--fresh evidence has appeared. In order to learn the truth and possibly save a young woman's life, Frankie must go undercover at the isolated base camp. Her challenge: A dozen strangers. Countless dangerous secrets. Zero means of calling for help. And then the storm rolls in ... 

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The lion women of Tehran

Marjan Kamali

In 1950s Tehran, seven-year-old Ellie lives in grand comfort until the untimely death of her father, forcing Ellie and her mother to move to a tiny home downtown. Lonely and bearing the brunt of her mother's endless grievances, Ellie dreams of a friend to alleviate her isolation. Luckily, on the first day of school, she meets Homa, a kind, passionate girl with a brave and irrepressible spirit. Together, the two girls play games, learn to cook in the stone kitchen of Homa's warm home, wander through the colorful stalls of the Grand Bazaar, and share their ambitions for becoming "lion women." But their happiness is disrupted when Ellie and her mother are afforded the opportunity to return to their previous bourgeois life. Now a popular student at the best girls' high school in Iran, Ellie's memories of Homa begin to fade. Years later, however, her sudden reappearance in Ellie's privileged world alters the course of both of their lives. Together, the two young women come of age and pursue their own goals for meaningful futures. But as the political turmoil in Iran builds to a breaking point, one earth-shattering betrayal will have enormous consequences. Written with Marjan Kamali's signature "evocative, devastating, and hauntingly beautiful" (Whitney Scharer, author of The Age of Light) prose, The Lion Women of Tehran is a sweeping exploration of how profoundly we are shaped by those we meet when we are young, and the way love and courage transforms our lives.

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Angel of vengeance

Douglas Preston

Preston & Child continue their #1 bestselling series featuring FBI Special Agent Pendergast and Constance Greene, as they take a final stand against New York's deadliest serial killer: Pendergast's own ancestor ... and Constance's greatest enemy.

A desperate bargain is broken ...

Constance Greene confronts Manhattan's most dangerous serial killer, Enoch Leng, bartering for her sister's life--but she is betrayed and turned away empty-handed, incandescent with rage.

A clever trap is set ...

Unknown to Leng, Pendergast's brother, Diogenes, appears unexpectedly, offering to help--for mysterious reasons of his own. Disguised as a cleric, Diogenes establishes himself in New York's notorious Five Points slum, manipulating events like a chess master, watching Leng's every move ... and awaiting his own chance to strike.

A vengeful angel will not be deterred ...

Meanwhile, as Pendergast focuses on saving the unstable Constance in her fanatical quest for vengeance, she strikes out on her own: to rescue her beloved siblings from a tragic fate and take savage retribution on Leng. But Leng is one step ahead and has a surprise for them all ... 

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All this & more

Peng Shepherd

One woman. Endless options. Every choice has consequences.

Meek, play-it-safe Marsh has just turned forty-five, and her life is in shambles. Her career is stagnant, her marriage has imploded, and her teenage daughter grows more distant by the day. Marsh is convinced she's missed her chance at everything--romance, professional fulfillment, and adventure--and is desperate for a do-over.

She can't believe her luck when she's selected to be the star of the global sensation All This and More, a show that uses quantum technology to allow contestants the chance to revise their pasts and change their present lives. It's Marsh's only shot to seize her dreams, and she's determined to get it right this time.

But even as she rises to become a famous lawyer, gets back together with her high school sweetheart, and travels the world, she begins to worry that All This and More's promises might be too good to be true. Because while the technology is amazing, something seems a bit off....

Can Marsh really make her life everything she wants it to be? And is it worth it?

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The protector

Wanda E. Brunstetter

In book one of A Mifflin County Mystery series, Rosa Petersheim has disappeared from the Big Valley without a trace. Norman always considered himself his sister's protector and can't believe she would have left home of her own accord--so he must have failed her. He throws all he has into helping the authorities search for Rosa, while trying to support his parents and siblings who are struggling both mentally and physically. Salina Swarey loves Norman and hopes they are headed towards marriage, but his obsession with Rosa's whereabouts is driving them apart. Can Norman find a place of peace and contentment if he never learns where Rosa is?

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Our narrow hiding places

Kristopher Jansma

An elderly woman recounts her Dutch family's survival during the final years of Nazi occupation, shedding new light on old secrets that rippled through subsequent generations. 

Eighty-year-old Mieke Geborn's life is one of quiet routine. Widowed for many years, she enjoys the view from her home on the New Jersey shore, visits with friends, and tai chi at the local retirement community. But when her beloved grandson, Will, and his wife, Teru, show up for a visit, things are soon upended. Their marriage is threatening to unravel, and Will has questions for his grandmother--questions about family secrets that have been lost for decades and are now finally rising to the surface.

But telling Will the truth involves returning to the past, and to Mieke's childhood in coastal Holland. There, in the last years of World War II, she survived the Hunger Winter, a brutal season when food and heat were cut off and thousands of Dutch citizens starved. Her memories weave together childhood magic and the madness of history, and carry readers from the windy beaches of the Hague to the dark cells of a concentration camp, through the bends of eel-filled rivers, and, finally, to the story of Will's father, absent since Will's childhood.

Our Narrow Hiding Places is a sweeping story of survival and of the terrible cost of war--and a reminder that sometimes the traumas we inherit come along with a resilience we never imagined.

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The bookshop sisterhood

Michelle Lindo-Rice

When life rewrites the story, only friendship will see them through. After years of hard work, four best friends--Celeste, Yasmeen, Toni and Leslie--are finally on the verge of opening the bookstore of their dreams. A place where their community can find solace with an intriguing new read, a comforting beverage and book-loving friends. But before they can cut the ribbon, their worlds are upended. Toni receives devastating news just months before her wedding, while Celeste's struggling marriage threatens to collapse completely. Leslie learns a shocking secret about her family, and a lotto ticket changes Yasmeen's life--but not for the better. As the bookstore's grand opening fast approaches, the four women must lean on each other now more than ever to navigate their grief and uncertainty. And together, they'll learn that sometimes, even life's most unexpected plot twists can lead to beautiful new beginnings.

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The borrowed life of Frederick Fife

Anna Johnston

For readers of Remarkably Bright Creatures and The Pilgrimage of Harold Fry, a warm, life-affirming debut about a zany case of mistaken identity that allows a lonely old man one last chance to be part of a family.

"Would you mind terribly, old boy, if I borrowed the rest of your life? I promise I'll take excellent care of it."

Frederick Fife was born with an extra helping of kindness in his heart. If he borrowed your car, he'd return it washed with a full tank of gas. The problem is there's nobody left in Fred's life to borrow from. At eighty-two, he's desperately lonely, broke, and on the brink of homelessness. But Fred's luck changes when, in a bizarre case of mistaken identity, he takes the place of grumpy Bernard Greer at the local nursing home. Now he has warm meals in his belly and a roof over his head--as long as his poker face is in better shape than his prostate and that his look-alike never turns up. 

Denise Simms is stuck breathing the same disappointing air again and again. A middle-aged mom and caregiver at Bernard's facility, her crumbling marriage and daughter's health concerns are suffocating her joy for life. Wounded by her two-faced husband, she vows never to let a man deceive her again.

As Fred walks in Bernard's shoes, he leaves a trail of kindness behind him, fueling Denise's suspicions about his true identity. When unexpected truths are revealed, Fred and Denise rediscover their sense of purpose and learn how to return a broken life to mint condition. 

Bittersweet and remarkably perceptive, The Borrowed Life of Frederick Fife is a hilarious, feel-good, clever novel about grief, forgiveness, redemption, and finding family.

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Swift River

Essie Chambers

It's the summer of 1987 in Swift River, and Diamond Newberry is learning how to drive. Ever since her Pop disappeared seven years ago, she and her mother hitchhike everywhere they go. But that's not the only reason Diamond stands out: she's teased relentlessly about her weight, and the fact that since Pop's been gone, she is the only Black person in all of Swift River. This summer, Ma is determined to declare Pop legally dead so that they can collect his life insurance money, get their house back from the bank, and finally move on. But when Diamond receives a letter from a relative she's never met, key elements of Pop's life are uncovered, and she is introduced to two generations of African American Newberry women, spanning the 20th century and revealing a much larger picture of prejudice and abandonment, of love and devotion. As pieces of their shared past become clearer, Diamond gains a sense of her place in the world and in her family. But how will what she's learned of the past change her future? A story of first friendships, family secrets, and finding the courage to let go, Swift River is a sensational debut about how history shapes us that heralds the arrival of a major new literary talent.

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Looking for smoke

K. A. Cobell

In her powerful debut novel, Looking for Smoke, author K. A. Cobell (Blackfeet) weaves loss, betrayal, and complex characters into a thriller that will illuminate, surprise, and engage readers until the final word. A must-pick for readers who enjoy books by Angeline Boulley and Karen McManus!

When local girl Loren includes Mara in a traditional Blackfeet Giveaway to honor Loren's missing sister, Mara thinks she'll finally make some friends on the Blackfeet reservation.

Instead, a girl from the Giveaway, Samantha White Tail, is found murdered.

Because the four members of the Giveaway group were the last to see Samantha alive, each becomes a person of interest in the investigation. And all of them--Mara, Loren, Brody, and Eli--have a complicated history with Samantha.

Despite deep mistrust, the four must now take matters into their own hands and clear their names. Even though one of them may be the murderer.

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Lessons in liberty : thirty rules for living from ten extraordinary Americans

Jeremy S. Adams

America is full of inspiring heroes.

Greatness is not a chance--it is a choice. George Washington didn't simply wake up as one of the greatest men in human history. His greatness was the sum of a lifetime of difficult and consequential choices.

In Lessons in Liberty, Jeremy S. Adams distills inspiring advice from the lives of extraordinary Americans from our past.

George Washington's lifelong struggle to conquer his temper makes him a model for self-help and self-improvement.Daniel Inouye was a beloved Japanese American senator who carried out daring missions in World War II, despite being subjected to discrimination by the very nation he decided to defend.Eleven-year-old Clara Barton's role in nursing her injured brother back to health instilled the courage and ferocity that would later empower her to pioneer new nursing techniques during the Civil War.

Adams has been an educator for more than a quarter century. Teaching a new generation of students who suffer with anxiety, passivity, and a cynical view of their own nation and its principles has convinced him that a change is urgently needed: The recovery of national greatness requires that we passionately study our heroes. Lessons in Liberty is the first step to discovering the better angels of our nature by restoring the possibilities of individual freedom.

In this beautifully written, proudly patriotic, and deeply researched ode to American heroes from a rich variety of eras and backgrounds, Adams reclaims the power of the American story, discovering thirty different and surprising lessons that will inspire modern Americans to lead better and more substantive lives.

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Deep water : the world in the ocean

James Bradley

In this thrilling work--a blend of history, science, nature writing, and environmentalism--acclaimed writer James Bradley plunges into the unknown to explore the deepest recesses of the natural world.

Seventy-one percent of the earth's surface is ocean. These waters created, shaped, and continue to sustain not just human life, but all life on Planet Earth, and perhaps beyond it. They serve as the stage for our cultural history--driving human development from evolution through exploration, colonialism, and the modern era of global leisure and trade. They are also the harbingers of the future--much of life on Earth cannot survive if sea levels are too low or too high, temperatures too cold or too warm. Our oceans are vast spaces of immense wonder and beauty, and our relationship to them is innate and awe inspired.

Deep Water is both a lyrically written personal meditation and an intriguing wide-ranging reported epic that reckons with our complex connection to the seas. It is a story shaped by tidal movements and deep currents, lit by the insights of philosophers, scientists, artists and other great minds. Bradley takes readers from the atomic creation of the oceans, to the wonders within, such as fish migrations guided by electromagnetic sensing. He describes the impacts of human population shifts by boat and speaks directly and uncompromisingly to the environmental catastrophe that is already impacting our lives. It is also a celebration of the ocean's glories and the extraordinary efforts of the scientists and researchers who are unlocking its secrets. These myriad strands are woven together into a tapestry of life that captures not only our relationship with the planet, but our past, and perhaps most importantly, what lies ahead for us.

A brilliant blend of Robert MacFarlane's Underland, Susan Casey's The Underworld, and Simon Winchester's Pacific and The Atlantic, Deep Water taps into the essence of our planet and who we are.

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The night we lost him: a novel

Laura Dave

Liame Noone was many things to many people. To the public, he was an exacting, self-made hotel magnate fleeing his past. To his three ex-wives, he was a loving albeit distant family man who kept his finances flush and his families carefully separated. To Nora, he was a father who often loved her from afar--notably, a cliffside cottage perched on the California coast where he fell to his death.

The authorities rule the death accidental, but Nora and her estranged brother Sam have other ideas. As Nora and Sam form an uneasy alliance to unravel the mystery, they start putting together the pieces of their father's past and uncover a family secret that changes everything.

With Laura Dave's trademark blend of soulful suspense and evocative family drama, The Night We Lost Him is a riveting page-turner with a heartbreaking final twist that you will never see coming.

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The lightning bottles

Marissa Stapley

The author of New York Times bestseller and Reese's Book Club pick Lucky returns with a spellbinding story of rock 'n' roll and star-crossed love--about grunge-era musician Jane Pyre's journey to find out what really happened to her husband and partner in music, who abruptly disappeared years earlier. He was the troubled face of rock 'n' roll...until he suddenly disappeared without a trace. Jane Pyre was once half of the famous rock 'n' roll duo, the Lightning Bottles. Years later, she's perhaps the most hated--and least understood--woman in music. She was never as popular with fans as her bandmate (and soulmate), Elijah Hart--even if Jane was the one who wrote the songs that catapulted the Lightning Bottles to instant, dizzying fame, first in the Seattle grunge scene, then around the world. But ever since Elijah disappeared five years earlier and the band's meteoric rise to fame came crashing down, the public hatred of Jane has taken on new levels, and all she wants to do is retreat. What she doesn't anticipate is the bombshell that awaits her at her new home in the German countryside: the sullen teenaged girl next door--a Lightning Bottles superfan--who claims to have proof that not only is Elijah still alive, he's also been leaving secret messages for Jane. And they need to find them right away. A cross-continent road trip about two misunderstood outsiders brought together by their shared love of music, The Lightning Bottles is both a love letter to the 90s and a searing portrait of the cost of fame.

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The explorers : a new history of America in ten expeditions

Amanda Bellows

A fascinating new history of America, told through the stories of a diverse cast of ten extraordinary--and often overlooked--adventurers, from Sacagawea to Matthew Henson to Sally Ride, who pushed the boundaries of discovery and determined our national destiny.

The archetype of the American explorer, a rugged white man, has dominated our popular culture since the late eighteenth century, when Daniel Boone's autobiography captivated readers with tales of treacherous journeys. But our commonly held ideas about American exploration do not tell the whole story--far from it.

The Explorers rediscovers a diverse group of Americans who went to the western frontier and beyond, traversing the farthest reaches of the globe and even penetrating outer space in their endeavor to find the unknown. Many escaped from lives circumscribed by racism, sexism, poverty, and discrimination as they took on great risk in unfamiliar territory. Born into slavery, James Beckwourth found freedom as a mountain man and became one of the great entrepreneurs of Gold Rush California. Matthew Henson, the son of African American sharecroppers, left rural Maryland behind to seek the North Pole. Women like Harriet Chalmers Adams ascended Peruvian mountains to gain geographic knowledge while Amelia Earhart and Sally Ride shattered glass ceilings by pushing the limits of flight.

In The Explorers, readers will travel across the vast Great Plains and into the heights of the Sierra Nevada mountains; they will traverse the frozen Arctic Ocean and descend into the jungles of South America; they will journey by canoe and horseback, train and dogsled, airplane and space shuttle. Readers will experience the exhilarating history of American exploration alongside the men and women who shared a deep drive to discover the unknown.

Across two centuries and many thousands of miles of terrain, Amanda Bellows offers an ode to our country's most intrepid adventurers--and reveals the history of America in the process.

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The examiner : a novel

Janice Hallett

Told in emails, text messages, and essays, this innovative page-turner follows a group of students in an art master's program that goes dangerously awry, from the internationally bestselling "new queen of crime" (Electric Literature) Janice Hallett. Gela Nathaniel, head of Royal Hastings University's new Multimedia Art course, must find six students from all walks of life across the United Kingdom for her new master's program before the university cuts her funding. The students are nothing but trouble from day one. There's Jem, a talented sculptor recently graduated from her university program and eager to make her mark as an artist at any cost. Jonathan, who has little experience in art practice aside from running his family's gallery. Patrick runs an art supply store, but can barely operate his phone, much less design software. Ludya is a single mother and graphic designer more interested in a paycheck than homework. Cameron is a marketing executive in search of a hobby or a career change. And Alyson, already a successful artist, seems to be overqualified. Finally, there is the examiner, the man hired to grade students' final works--an art installation for a local cloud-based solutions company that may have an ulterior agenda--and who, in sifting through final essays, texts, and message boards, warns that someone is in danger...or already dead. And nothing about this course has been left up to chance. With her trademark "unique and exhilarating" (Megan Collins, author of The Family Plot) voice, Janice Hallett weaves a fresh and mind-bending mystery that will keep you guessing until the final page.

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Break to You

Neal Shusterman; Debra Young; Michelle Knowlden

Bestselling author of Scythe and Challenger Deep Neal Shusterman, here with coauthors Debra Young and Michelle Knowlden, tells an intense yet tender story of two teens, trapped in impossible circumstances and unjust systems, willing to risk everything for love—no matter the consequences.

Adriana knows that if she can manage to keep her head down for the next seven months, she might be able to get through her sentence in the Compass juvenile detention center. Thankfully, she’s allowed to keep her journal, where she writes down her most private thoughts when her feelings get too big.

Until the day she opens her journal and discovers that her thoughts are no longer so private. Someone has read her writings—and has written back. A boy who lives on the other side of the gender-divided detention center. A boy who sparks a fire in her to write back.

Jon’s story is different than Adriana’s; he’s already been at Compass for years and will be in the system for years to come. Still, when he reads the words Adriana writes to him, it makes him feel like the walls that hold them in have melted away.

This fast-paced, highly compelling tour de force novel exposes what life is like in detention—and reveals the hearts of two teens who are forced to live in desperate circumstances.

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Joy

Danielle Steel

In this deeply moving novel from #1 New York Times bestselling author Danielle Steel, a determined young woman must survive a series of abandonments to find a love that is worthy of her.

When she is only six years old, Allegra Dixon’s party-loving mother leaves without so much as a goodbye. Her father, an emotionally distant military officer, is also unable—or unwilling—to care for her. Sent to live like a ghost in her grandparents’ joyless home, Allegra finds her only solace through an escape into books.

Attending boarding school, life finally takes a turn when she meets a dashing young West Point cadet named Shep Williams. Soon their friendship blossoms into something more, and they fall deeply in love.

After college, Allegra has established herself as a book editor and Shep is rising through the ranks of the military. But then Shep suddenly receives a posting to Afghanistan, and they decide to marry before he goes. Between his deployments, they cling to their brief and fraught stolen moments together. Each time he leaves, Shep promises the separations will soon come to an end.

But soon Allegra realizes that the horrors of war have begun to change her husband into a man she no longer recognizes. The trauma he has experienced proves to be too harrowing, and Allegra will find herself feeling utterly alone again just when she thought she’d finally found happiness.

In her new novel, Danielle Steel tells the unforgettable story of a woman who refuses to give up until she finds the joy she deserves.

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Resurrection

Danielle Steel

#1 New York Times bestselling author Danielle Steel returns with an irresistible novel about a woman whose seemingly perfect life comes crashing down—and learns to find joy in rising above.

Darcy Gray is a successful influencer with her blog, The Gray Zone, trusted by more than a million followers for her integrity and taste. At forty-two, she has the life she wants in many ways. Darcy and her husband, department store magnate Charles Gray, are a power couple in Manhattan and on the international stage. Their beloved twin daughters are each enjoying their junior year abroad, Penny in Hong Kong and Zoe at the Sorbonne in Paris.

To celebrate twenty years of marriage, Darcy impulsively flies to Rome to surprise Charlie, who is tending to business interests there. Instead, she gets the shock of her life, which upends her whole world.

Still reeling, Darcy flees to Paris to see Zoe. But a rapidly escalating worldwide health crisis forces her to remain indefinitely in France. Suddenly thrust into a gray zone of her own, her forced separation from Zoe and the rest of her family feels like too much to bear …

Until Darcy finds a welcoming refuge in the home of the aging French movie star Sybille Carton. There, she meets a widowed American engineer and former Marine who is also stranded. Bill Thompson is kind and courteous but also carries an air of mystery about him.

In this shared confinement, and despite worries about her girls, Darcy begins to see glimpses of new possibilities.

In Resurrection, Danielle Steel poignantly shows how the hardest of times can give birth to a beautiful new life.

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I Hope This Finds You Well

Natalie Sue

INTERNATIONAL BESTSELLER Recommended by the New York Times Book Review, Today show, People,Elle, Good Housekeeping, Parade, Harper's Bazaar, and more!

"Fans of The Office will delight."—SHELBY VAN PELT "Wickedly funny."—PEOPLE "I could not put it down."—JULIA QUINN "A workplace sitcom transformed into a romantic comedy novel."—ELLE

In this wildly funny and heartwarming office comedy, an admin worker accidentally gains access to her colleagues’ private emails and DMs and decides to use this intel to save her job—a laugh-till-you-cry debut novel you’ll be eager to share with your entire list of contacts, perfect for fans of Anxious People and Eleanor Oliphant Is Completely Fine.

As far as Jolene is concerned, her interactions with her colleagues should start and end with her official duties as an admin for Supershops, Inc. Unfortunately, her irritating, incompetent coworkers don’t seem to understand the importance of boundaries. Her secret to survival? She vents her grievances in petty email postscripts, then changes the text color to white so no one can see.That is until one of her secret messages is exposed. Her punishment: sensitivity training (led by the suspiciously friendly HR guy, Cliff) and rigorous email restrictions.

When an IT mix-up grants her access to her entire department’s private emails and DMs, Jolene knows she should report it, but who could resist reading what their coworkers are really saying? And when she discovers layoffs are coming, she realizes this might just be the key to saving her job. The plan is simple: gain her boss’s favor, convince HR she’s Supershops material, and beat out the competition.

But as Jolene is drawn further into her coworkers' private worlds and realizes they are each keeping secrets, her carefully constructed walls begin to crumble—especially around Cliff, who she definitely cannot have feelings for. Eventually she will need to decide if she’s ready to leave the comfort of her cubicle, even if that means coming clean to her colleagues.

Crackling with laugh-out-loud dialogue and relatable observations, I Hope This Finds You Well is a fresh and surprisingly tender comedy about loneliness and love beyond our computer screens. This sparkling debut novel will open your heart to the everyday eccentricities of work culture and the undeniable human connection that comes along with it.

"Wickedly funny . . . This sparkling debut will have you snickering in the break room."—PEOPLE

“Snarky, romantic, and wickedly heartfelt . . . If you’re looking for your next favorite read, this book has everything—vengeful coworkers, fake engagements, and a hero with a heart of gold. Natalie Sue’s debut is an absolute stunner!”—ASHLEY POSTON, New York Times bestselling author of The Dead Romantics

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One Perfect Couple

Ruth Ware

Harkening to Agatha Christie’s classic And Then There Were None, this high-tension thriller follows five couples trapped on a storm-swept island as a killer stalks among them—from Ruth Ware, the New York Times bestselling author who “is turning out to be as ingenious and indefatigable as the Queen of Crime” (The Washington Post).

Lyla is in a bit of a rut. Her post-doctoral research has fizzled out, she’s pretty sure they won’t extend her contract, and things with her boyfriend, Nico, an aspiring actor, aren’t going great. When the opportunity arises for Nico to join the cast of a new reality TV show, One Perfect Couple, she agrees to try out with him.

A whirlwind audition process later, Lyla finds herself whisked off to a tropical paradise with Nico, boating through the Indian Ocean towards Ever After Island, where the two of them will compete against four other couples—Bayer and Angel, Dan and Santana, Joel and Romi, and Conor and Zana—in order to win a cash prize.

But not long after they arrive on the deserted island, things start to go wrong. After the first challenge leaves everyone rattled and angry, an overnight storm takes matters from bad to worse. Cut off from the mainland by miles of ocean, deprived of their phones, and unable to contact the crew that brought them there, the group must band together for survival. As tensions run high and fresh water runs low, Lyla finds that this game show is all too real—and the stakes are life or death.

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Blind to Midnight

Reed Farrel Coleman

When you're in trouble, you call 911.

When cops are in trouble, they call Nick Ryan.

Every cop in the city knows his name, but no one says it out loud.

He doesn't wear a uniform, but he is the most powerful cop in New York.

Nick Ryan can find a criminal who's vanished. Or make a key witness disappear.

He has cars, safe houses, money, and weapons hidden all over the city.

Nearly three thousand New Yorkers died on 9/11. But in the entire city on that tragic day, only one murder actually took place. Now, over two decades later, Detective Nick Ryan must dig beneath the official report--and into his own past--to find the truth.

Working again for the mysterious power broker "Joe," Nick finds a link between an airman, a billionaire, a trove of Nazi gold, and a crew of killers, but gets sidetracked when his dear "uncle" Tony and Tony's wife are murdered in a professional hit.

Nick's investigations uncover a tangled web of corruption and blood money, and as the horrifying truth emerges, he finds himself outgunned, on the run, and trusting no one.

With professional killers on his trail, will Nick Ryan be able to end the violence before he loses everything that matters to him--including his own life?

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The Ballad of Jacquotte Delahaye

Briony Cameron

This epic, dazzling tale based on true events illuminates a woman of color's rise to power as one of the few purported female pirate captains to sail the Caribbean, and the forbidden love story that will shape the course of history. In the tumultuous town of Yáquimo, Santo Domingo, Jacquotte Delahaye is an unknown but up-and-coming shipwright. Her dreams are bold but her ambitions are bound by the confines of her life with her self-seeking French father. When her way of life and the delicate balance of power in the town are threatened, she is forced to flee her home and become a woman on the run along with a motley crew of refugees, including a mysterious young woman named Teresa. Jacquotte and her band become indentured servants to the infamous Blackhand, a ruthless pirate captain who rules his ship with an iron fist. As they struggle to survive his brutality, Jacquotte finds herself unable to resist Teresa despite their differences. When Blackhand hatches a dangerous scheme to steal a Portuguese shipment of jewels, Jacquotte must rely on her wits, resourcefulness, and friends to survive. But she discovers there is a grander, darker scheme of treachery at play, and she ultimately must decide what price she is willing to pay to secure a better future for them all. An unforgettable tale told in three parts, The Ballad of Jacquotte Delahaye is a thrilling, buccaneering escapade filled with siege and battle, and is also a tender exploration of friendship, love, and the search for freedom and home.

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Children of Anguish and Anarchy

Tomi Adeyemi

INSTANT #1 NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER * INSTANT USA TODAY BESTSELLER * INSTANT INDIE BESTSELLER

"A phenomenon." ―Entertainment Weekly

Featuring gorgeous designed edges, dazzling metallic foil designs on the jacket and case, and an exclusive endpaper map that reveals new unexplored territories, Tomi Adeyemi's #1 New York Times-bestselling Legacy of Orïsha series comes to an earth-shaking conclusion.

New allies rise.
The Blood Moon nears.
Zélie faces her final enemy.
The king who hunts her heart.


When Zélie seized the royal palace that fateful night, she thought her battles had come to an end. The monarchy had finally fallen. The maji had risen again. Zélie never expected to find herself locked in a cage and trapped on a foreign ship. Now warriors with iron skulls traffic her and her people across the seas, far from their homeland.

Then everything changes when Zélie meets King Baldyr, her true captor, the ruler of the Skulls, and the man who has ravaged entire civilizations to find her. Baldyr's quest to harness Zélie's strength sends Zélie, Amari, and Tzain searching for allies in unknown lands.

But as Baldyr closes in, catastrophe charges Orïsha's shores. It will take everything Zélie has to face her final enemy and save her people before the Skulls annihilate them for good.

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The Complete Legacy of Orïsha Series:


Children of Blood and Bone (Book 1)
Children of Virtue and Vengeance (Book 2)
Children of Anguish and Anarchy (Book 3) (read less)

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The Light Eaters

Zoë Schlanger

Award-winning environment and science reporter Zoë Schlanger delivers a groundbreaking work of popular science that probes the hidden world of the plant kingdom and reveals the astonishing capabilities of the green life all around us.

It takes tremendous biological creativity to be a plant. To survive and thrive while rooted in a single spot, plants have adapted ingenious methods of survival. In recent years, scientists have learned about their ability to communicate, recognize their kin and behave socially, hear sounds, morph their bodies to blend into their surroundings, store useful memories that inform their life cycle, and trick animals into behaving to their benefit, to name just a few remarkable talents.

The Light Eaters is a deep immersion into the drama of green life and the complexity of this wild and awe-inspiring world that challenges our very understanding of agency, consciousness, and intelligence. In looking closely, we see that plants, rather than imitate human intelligence, have perhaps formed a parallel system. What is intelligent life if not a vine that grows leaves to blend into the shrub on which it climbs, a flower that shapes its bloom to fit exactly the beak of its pollinator, a pea seedling that can hear water flowing and make its way toward it? Zoë Schlanger takes us across the globe, digging into her own memories and into the soil with the scientists who have spent their waking days studying these amazing entities up close.

What can we learn about life on Earth from the living things that thrive, adapt, consume, and accommodate simultaneously? More important, what do we owe these life forms once we come to understand their rich and varied abilities? Examining the latest epiphanies in botanical research, Schlanger spotlights the intellectual struggles among the researchers conceiving a wholly new view of their subject, offering a glimpse of a field in turmoil as plant scientists debate the tenets of ongoing discoveries and how they influence our understanding of what a plant is.

We need plants to survive. But what do they need us for--if at all? An eye-opening and informative look at the ecosystem we live in, this book challenges us to rethink the role of plants--and our own place--in the natural world

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Slow dance a novel / [sound recording (CD)]

Rainbow Rowell

From the #1 New York Times bestselling author of Eleanor & Park and Attachments comes Slow Dance--a bright, beaming power ballad of a novel about a love so true it refuses to be forgotten.

"Sexy, sweet, wise, and nostalgic - Jane Austen's Persuasion for our times." -- Gabrielle Zevin, New York Times bestselling author of Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow

Back in high school, everybody thought Shiloh and Cary would end up together . . . everybody but Shiloh and Cary.

They were just friends. Best friends. Allies. They spent entire summers sitting on Shiloh's porch steps, dreaming about the future. They were both going to get out of north Omaha--Shiloh would go to go to college and become an actress, and Cary would join the Navy. They promised each other that their friendship would never change.

Well, Shiloh did go to college, and Cary did join the Navy. And yet, somehow, everything changed.

Now Shiloh's thirty-three, and it's been fourteen years since she talked to Cary. She's been married and divorced. She has two kids. And she's back living in the same house she grew up in. Her life is nothing like she planned.

When she's invited to an old friend's wedding, all Shiloh can think about is whether Cary will be there--and whether she hopes he will be. Would Cary even want to talk to her? After everything?

The answer is yes. And yes. And yes.

Slow Dance is the story of two kids who fell in love before they knew enough about love to recognize it. Two friends who lost everything. Two adults who just feel lost.

It's the story of Shiloh and Cary, who everyone thought would end up together, trying to find their way back to the start.

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In My Time of Dying

Sebastian Junger

For years as an award-winning war reporter, Sebastian Junger traveled to many front lines and frequently put his life at risk. And yet the closest he ever came to death was the summer of 2020 while spending a quiet afternoon at the New England home he shared with his wife and two young children. Crippled by abdominal pain, Junger was rushed to the hospital by ambulance. Once there, he began slipping away. As blackness encroached, he was visited by his dead father, inviting Junger to join him. "It's okay," his father said. "There's nothing to be scared of. I'll take care of you." That was the last thing Junger remembered until he came to the next day when he was told he had suffered a ruptured aneurysm that he should not have survived.

 

This experience spurred Junger--a confirmed atheist raised by his physicist father to respect the empirical--to undertake a scientific, philosophical, and deeply personal examination of mortality and what happens after we die. How do we begin to process the brutal fact that any of us might perish unexpectedly on what begins as an ordinary day? How do we grapple with phenomena that science may be unable to explain? And what happens to a person, emotionally and spiritually, when forced to reckon with such existential questions?

 

In My Time of Dying is part medical drama, part searing autobiography, and part rational inquiry into the ultimate unknowable mystery. 

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The instruments of darkness

John Connolly

In Maine, Colleen Clark stands accused of the worst crime a mother can commit: the abduction and possible murder of her child. Everyone--ambitious politicians in an election season, hardened police, ordinary folk--has an opinion on the case, and most believe she is guilty. But most is not all. Defending Colleen is the lawyer Moxie Castin, and working alongside him is the private investigator Charlie Parker, who senses the tale has another twist, one involving a husband too eager to accept his wife's guilt, a group of fascists arming for war, a disgraced psychic seeking redemption, and an old, twisted house deep in the Maine woods, a house that should never have been built. A house, and what dwells beneath.

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First frost

Craig Johnson

It's the summer of 1964, and recent college graduates Walt Longmire and Henry Standing Bear read the writing on the wall and enlist to serve in the Vietnam War. As they catch a few final waves in California before reporting for duty, a sudden storm assaults the shores and capsizes a nearby cargo boat. Walt and Henry jump to action, but it's soon revealed by the police who greet them ashore that the sunken boat carried valuable contraband from underground sources.

The boys, in their early twenties and in the peak of their physical prowess from playing college football for the last four years, head out on Route 66. The question, of course, is how far they will get before the consequences of their actions catch up to them--the answer being, not very.

Back in the present day, Walt is forced to speak before a judge following the fatal events of The Longmire Defense. With powerful enemies lurking behind the scenes, the sheriff of Absaroka County must consider his options if he wishes to finish the fight he started.

Going back and forth between 1964 and the present day, Craig Johnson brings us a propulsive dual timeline as Walt Longmire stands between the crossfire of good and evil, law and anarchy, and compassion and cruelty at two pivotal stages in his life.

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The unraveling

Vi Keeland

After experiencing a terrible loss, New York City psychiatrist Meredith McCall feels painfully adrift. When she crosses paths with a man with whom she has a tragic connection, she follows him, sparking an unhealthy obsession with Gabriel Wright. How is he doing so well while her life is in shambles? But when Gabriel walks into her office as a patient, seemingly unaware of who she is, she knows it crosses all ethical and moral bounds to treat him. Yet, Meredith can't bring herself to turn him away and becomes further entangled. With her life and career continuing to unravel, it appears that things could not get any worse...until they do.

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Such a bad influence

Olivia Muenter

Hazel Davis is drifting: newly unemployed, living in a city she hates, and significantly less successful than her infamous younger sister, Evie. Evie grew up online, having gone viral at age five in a daddy-daughter dance video. She had an Instagram following in elementary school, and brand sponsorships before she had a driver's permit. Now she's a megapopular lifestyle influencer, with a million-dollar career at an age when few teens know what they're going to major in.

But to Hazel, @evelyn is just Evie, her beloved little sister--and a kid who has been exploited for her entire childhood. Ten years older and spotlight-averse, Hazel has managed to dodge the family business, but she's deeply protective of Evie and skeptical of the way everyone seems to want a piece of her: Evie's followers, her YouTuber boyfriend, her frenemies across the influencer industry.

So when Evie disappears--in the middle of a live stream, during a brand-sponsored trip to Los Angeles--Hazel knows something is terribly wrong. Determined to find her sister, Hazel throws herself into the darkest parts of internet culture to untangle the threads of truth behind Evie's disappearance. After all, Hazel knows Evie better than anyone else ... doesn't she?

Internet fame, the allure of parasocial relationships, and some of our deepest cultural obsessions collide in this electric thriller by a debut writer to watch.

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How to read a book : a novel

Monica Wood

Our Reasons meet us in the morning and whisper to us at night. Mine is an innocent, unsuspecting, eternally sixty-one-year-old woman named Lorraine Daigle...

Violet Powell, a twenty-two-year-old from rural Abbott Falls, Maine, is being released from prison after serving twenty-two months for a drunk-driving crash that killed a local kindergarten teacher.

Harriet Larson, a retired English teacher who runs the prison book club, is facing the unsettling prospect of an empty nest.

Frank Daigle, a retired machinist, hasn't yet come to grips with the complications of his marriage to the woman Violet killed.

When the three encounter each other one morning in a bookstore in Portland--Violet to buy the novel she was reading in the prison book club before her release, Harriet to choose the next title for the women who remain, and Frank to dispatch his duties as the store handyman--their lives begin to intersect in transformative ways.

How to Read a Book is an unsparingly honest and profoundly hopeful story about letting go of guilt, seizing second chances, and the power of books to change our lives. With the heart, wit, grace, and depth of understanding that has characterized her work, Monica Wood illuminates the decisions that define a life and the kindnesses that make life worth living.

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A whisper in the walls

Scott Reintgen

Ren Monroe is a wolf among lions. After infiltrating one of the greatest Houses in Kathor through her successful bond with Theo Brood, she finds Theo's father is two steps ahead. He exiles Theo and isolates Ren, strategically working to break her unwelcome grasp on his son--and foiling Ren's first step to enacting the revenge she's been planning her whole life. Ren might have more resources than she'd ever imagined growing up, but she'll still get nowhere without allies. Enter House Tin'Vori. Years ago, House Brood led an unprecedented raid to destroy a fellow House of Kathor. But a few siblings survived, and they haven't forgotten the horrors waged against their family. Quietly, they've plotted their own revenge, waiting for the right moment to strike. And Ren Monroe might be their best chance. Like fire, the Tin'Vori siblings are as dangerous as they are useful, both gifted in rare magics. Ren must decide how to unleash them against House Brood without hurting Theo in the process. Her feelings for Theo are growing past the boundaries of their bond, and Ren finds herself balanced on a knife's edge, a breath away from immense power or utter ruin. 

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Sandwich

Catherine Newman

From the beloved author of We All Want Impossible Things, a moving, hilarious story of a family summer vacation full of secrets, lunch, and learning to let go.

For the past two decades, Rocky has looked forward to her family's yearly escape to Cape Cod. Their humble beach-town rental has been the site of sweet memories, sunny days, great meals, and messes of all kinds: emotional, marital, and--thanks to the cottage's ancient plumbing--septic too.

This year's vacation, with Rocky sandwiched between her half-grown kids and fully aging parents, promises to be just as delightful as summers past--except, perhaps, for Rocky's hormonal bouts of rage and melancholy. (Hello, menopause!) Her body is changing--her life is, too. And then a chain of events sends Rocky into the past, reliving both the tenderness and sorrow of a handful of long-ago summers.

It's one precious week: everything is in balance; everything is in flux. And when Rocky comes face to face with her family's history and future, she is forced to accept that she can no longer hide her secrets from the people she loves.

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Pink glass houses : a novel

Asha Elias

A seductive social satire about the wealthy PTA moms of an elite elementary school in Miami Beach, Pink Glass Houses is very Big Little Lies and Pineapple Street, but with diamonds, a tan, and a glass of rosé.

There's a reason people call Miami Beach "a sunny place for shady people."

Welcome to Sunset Academy, the most coveted elementary school in Miami Beach, where there are three categories of families: rich, wealthy, and ultra-wealthy.

Perfectly tanned and smiling Charlotte Giordani is Sunset Academy's alpha mom. With a sleek blowout and relentless charm, Charlotte's brashness serves her well. She's up for election as the PTA president and is riding high, having just secured a massive donation from billionaire Don Walker and his socialite wife Patricia. Don and Patricia are philanthropists, media darlings, and the owners of Villa Rosé, a newly built modern glass house that everyone is talking about. (It's either spectacular or a tacky eyesore, depending on how you feel about billionaires.)

Enter Melody Howard, a wide-eyed transplant from Wichita, Kansas. At first a skeptic about Miami Beach and its endlessly hashtaggable social scene, Melody finds herself sucked into the glossy, frenetic world of Sunset Academy moms. Melody's easygoing manner and background in nonprofit management make her an asset to the PTA. But when she emerges as a rival for the PTA presidency, Charlotte begins to unravel. Even the most powerful players on the social scene prove to be vulnerable when an investigation into white-collar crime--triggered by another school mom, the formidable Jamaican-American Judge Carol Lawson--threatens to take down the whole institution. No amount of rosé can soothe tensions as the drama builds to a shocking crisis point.

Told in rotating first person voices, Pink Glass Houses is an irresistibly voyeuristic peek into the lives of the rich and infamous, where cocaine playdates, $100,000 kiddie birthday parties, and relentless social climbing are a way of life.

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I hope this finds you well : a novel

Natalie Sue

As far as Jolene is concerned, her interactions with her colleagues should start and end with her official duties as an admin for Supershops, Inc. Unfortunately, her irritating, incompetent coworkers don't seem to understand the importance of boundaries. Her secret to survival? She vents her grievances in petty email postscripts, then changes the text colour to white so no one can see. That is, until one of her secret messages is exposed. Her punishment: sensitivity training (led by the suspiciously friendly HR guy, Cliff) and rigorous email restrictions.

When an IT mix-up grants her access to her entire department's private emails and DMs, Jolene knows she should report it, but who could resist reading what their coworkers are really saying? And when she discovers layoffs are coming, she realizes this might just be the key to saving her job. The plan is simple: gain her boss's favour, convince HR she's Supershops material and beat out the competition.

But as Jolene is drawn further into her coworker's private worlds and secrets, her carefully constructed walls begin to crumble--especially around Cliff, who she definitely cannot have feelings for. Soon she will need to decide if she's ready to leave the comfort of her cubicle, even if it means coming clean to her colleagues.

Crackling with laugh-out-loud dialogue and relatable observations, I Hope This Finds You Well is a fresh and surprisingly tender comedy about loneliness and love beyond our computer screens. This sparkling debut novel will open your heart to the everyday eccentricities of work culture and the undeniable human connection that comes with it.

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The bright sword : a novel of King Arthur

Lev Grossman

A gifted young knight named Collum arrives at Camelot to compete for a place at the Round Table, only to find that he's too late. King Arthur died two weeks ago at the Battle of Camlann, and only a handful of the knights of the Round Table are left.

The survivors aren't the heroes of legend like Lancelot or Gawain. They're the oddballs of the Round Table, like Sir Palomides, the Saracen Knight, and Sir Dagonet, Arthur's fool, who was knighted as a joke. They're joined by Nimue, who was Merlin's apprentice until she turned on him and buried him under a hill. 

But it's up to them to rebuild Camelot in a world that has lost its balance, even as God abandons Britain and the fairies and old gods return, led by Morgan le Fay. They must reclaim Excalibur and make this ruined world whole again--but first they'll have to solve the mystery of why the lonely, brilliant King Arthur fell. 

The first major Arthurian epic of the new millennium, The Bright Sword is steeped in tradition, complete with duels and quests, battles and tournaments, magic swords and Fisher Kings. It's also a story about imperfect men and women, full of strength and pain, trying to reforge a broken land in spite of being broken themselves.

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The Ministry of Time

Kaliane Bradley

A time travel romance, a speculative spy thriller, a workplace comedy, and an ingeniously constructed exploration of the nature of truth and power and the potential for love to change it all

In the near future, a civil servant is offered the salary of her dreams and is, shortly afterward, told what project she'll be working on. A recently established government ministry is gathering "expats" from across history to establish whether time travel is feasible--for the body but also for the fabric of space-time.

She is tasked with working as a "bridge," living with, assisting, and monitoring the expat known as "1847" or Commander Graham Gore. As far as history is concerned, Commander Gore died on Sir John Franklin's doomed 1845 expedition to the Arctic, so he's a little disoriented to be living with an unmarried woman who regularly shows her calves, surrounded by outlandish concepts such as "washing machine," "Spotify," and "the collapse of the British Empire." But he adjusts quickly; he is, after all, an explorer by trade.

Soon, what the bridge initially thought would be, at best, a seriously uncomfortable housemate dynamic, evolves into something much more. Over the course of an unprecedented year, Gore and the bridge fall haphazardly, fervently in love, with consequences they never could have imagined.

Supported by a chaotic and charming cast of characters--including a seventeenth-century cinephile who can't get enough of Tinder, a painfully shy World War I captain, and a former spy with an ever-changing series of cosmetic surgery alterations and a belligerent attitude to HR--the bridge will be forced to confront the past that shaped her choices--and the choices that will shape the future.

An exquisitely original and feverishly fun fusion of genres and ideas, The Ministry of Time asks the universal question: What happens if you put a disaffected millennial and a Victorian polar explorer in a house together?

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The Midnight Feast

Lucy Foley

Book your place at the table . . . The brand new murder mystery thriller from the No.1 bestseller

Midsummer, the Dorset coast

Guests gather for the opening of The Manor hotel, the new jewel on the Dorset coastline. The champagne is flowing, the guest list sparkling, the sun setting on an unforgettable summer solstice.

But under the cloak of celebration, something dark is stirring. The Manor has a secret history; built in the shadows of an ancient wood.

Now old friends and enemies are creeping out of the shadows.

And they'll soon discover what other deadly secrets come out at night . . .

Laced with atmosphere and a chilling edge of folklore, The Midnight Feast is available to pre-order now.

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No Road Home

John Fram

For years, single father Toby Tucker has done his best to keep his sensitive young son, Luca, safe from the bigotry of the world. But when Toby marries Alyssa Wright--the granddaughter of a famed televangelist known for his grandiose, Old Testament preaching--he can't imagine the world of religion, wealth, and hate that he and Luca are about to enter. A trip to the Wright family's compound in sun-scorched Texas soon turns hellish when Toby realizes that Alyssa and the rest of her brood might have some very strange plans for Toby and his son. The situation only grows worse when a freak storm cuts off the roads and the family patriarch is found murdered, stabbed through the heart on the roof of the family's mansion. Suspicion immediately turns to Toby, but when his son starts describing a spectral figure in a black suit lurking around the house with unfinished business in mind, Toby realizes this family has more than murder to be afraid of. And as the Wrights close in on Luca, no one is prepared for the lengths Toby will go in the fight to clear his name and protect his son.

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Bright Objects

Ruby Todd

A young widow grapples with the arrival of a once-in-a-lifetime comet and its tumultuous consequences, in a debut novel that blends mystery, astronomy, and romance, perfect for fans of Emma Cline's The Girls and Ottessa Moshfegh's Death in Her Hands. Sylvia Knight is losing hope that the person who killed her husband will ever face justice. Since the night of the hit-and-run, her world has been shrouded in hazy darkness--until she meets Theo St. John, the discoverer of a rare comet soon to be visible to the naked eye. As the comet begins to brighten, Sylvia wonders what the apparition might signify. She is soon drawn into the orbit of local mystic Joseph Evans, who believes the comet's arrival is nothing short of a divine message. Finding herself caught between two conflicting perspectives of this celestial phenomenon, she struggles to define for herself where the reality lies. As the comet grows in the sky, her town slowly descends further and further into a fervor over its impending apex, and Sylvia's quest to uncover her husband's killer will push her and those around her to the furthest reaches of their very lives. A novel about the search for meaning in a bewildering world, the loyalty of love, and the dangerous lengths people go to in pursuit of obsession, Bright Objects is a luminous, masterfully crafted literary thriller.

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Funny Story

Emily Henry

Daphne always loved the way her fiancé Peter told their story. How they met (on a blustery day), fell in love (over an errant hat), and moved back to his lakeside hometown to begin their life together. He really was good at telling it...right up until the moment he realized he was actually in love with his childhood best friend Petra.
 
Which is how Daphne begins her new story: Stranded in beautiful Waning Bay, Michigan, without friends or family but with a dream job as a children's librarian (that barely pays the bills), and proposing to be roommates with the only person who could possibly understand her predicament: Petra's ex, Miles Nowak.
 
Scruffy and chaotic--with a penchant for taking solace in the sounds of heart break love ballads--Miles is exactly the opposite of practical, buttoned up Daphne, whose coworkers know so little about her they have a running bet that she's either FBI or in witness protection. The roommates mainly avoid one another, until one day, while drowning their sorrows, they form a tenuous friendship and a plan. If said plan also involves posting deliberately misleading photos of their summer adventures together, well, who could blame them?
 
But it's all just for show, of course, because there's no way Daphne would actually start her new chapter by falling in love with her ex-fiancé's new fiancée's ex...right?

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Toxic prey

John Sandford

Gaia is dying.

That, at least, is what Dr. Lionel Scott believes. A renowned expert in tropical and infectious diseases, Scott has witnessed the devastating impact of illness and turmoil at critical scale. Society as it exists is untenable, and the direct link to Earth's death spiral; population levels are out of control and people have allowed disarray and disorder to run rampant. While most are concerned about deadly disease, Scott knows that it is truly humanity itself that will destroy Gaia. It's only by removing the threat that the planet can continue to prosper, and luckily, Scott is just the right man for the job...

When Scott then disappears without a trace, Letty Davenport is tasked with tracking down any and all leads. Scott's connections to sensitive research into virus and pathogen spread has multiple national and international organizations on high alert, and his shockingly high clearance levels at various institutions, including the Los Alamos National Laboratory, make him the last person they'd like to go missing. As the web around Scott becomes more tangled, Letty calls in her father, Lucas, help her lead a group of specialists to find Scott as soon as possible. But as Letty and Lucas begin to uncover startling and disturbing connections between Scott and Gaia conspiracists, their worst fears are confirmed, and it quickly becomes a race to find him before the virus he created becomes the perfect weapon.

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Home is where the bodies are

Jeneva Rose

After their mother passes, three estranged siblings reunite to sort out her estate. Beth, the oldest, never left home. She stayed with her mom, caring for her until the very end. Nicole, the middle child, has been kept at arm's length due to her ongoing battle with a serious drug addiction. Michael, the youngest, lives out of state and hasn't been back to their small Wisconsin town since their father ran out on them seven years before.

While going through their parents' belongings, the siblings stumble upon a collection of home videos and decide to revisit those happier memories. However, the nostalgia is cut short when one of the VHS tapes reveals a night back in 1999 that none of them have any recollection of. On screen, their father appears covered in blood. What follows is a dead body and a pact between their parents to get rid of it, before the video abruptly ends.

Beth, Nicole, and Michael must now decide whether to leave the past in the past or uncover the dark secret their mother took to her grave.

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The one and only family

Katherine Applegate

This is the latest adventure in the series that has won the Newbery Award. Powerhouse author Katherine Applegate invites readers back into Ivan's world for one last adventure--his most exciting yet.

Ivan has been happily living in a wildlife sanctuary, with his friend Ruby next door in the elephant enclosure, frequent visits from his canine friend Bob, and his mate Kinyani by his side. And in the happiest turn of all, Ivan and Kinyani have welcomed a set of twins to their family!

Ivan loves being a papa, even though it can be hard sometimes. But as he navigates the joys and challenges of parenthood, he can't help but recall his life before the glass walls of the mall circus, his own childhood in the jungle--and his own twin.

In the tradition of timeless classics like Charlotte's Web and Stuart Little, The One and Only Family is a poignant, delightful, heartbreaking, unforgettable final foray into the world of Ivan, the world's favorite silverback.

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Camino ghosts : a novel

John Grisham

Mercer Mann, a popular writer from Camino Island, is back on the beach, marrying her boyfriend, Thomas, in a seaside ceremony. Bruce Cable, infamous owner of Bay Books, performs the wedding. Afterward, Bruce tells Mercer that he has stumbled upon an incredible story. Mercer desperately needs an idea for her next novel, and Bruce now has one.
 
The true story is about Dark Isle, a sliver of a barrier island not far off the North Florida coast. It was settled by freed slaves three hundred years ago, and their descendants lived there until 1955, when the last one was forced to leave. That last descendant is Lovely Jackson, elderly now, who loves her birthplace and its remarkable history. But now Tidal Breeze, a huge, ruthless corporate developer, wants to build a resort and casino on the island, which Lovely knows, deep down, is rightfully hers.
 
Mercer befriends Lovely, and they plunge into an enormous fight over who owns Dark Isle, taking on Tidal Breeze Corporation, its lawyers, lobbyists, and powerful Florida politicians. But Lovely knows something about the island that could seriously cloud the dollar signs in the developer's eyes: the island is cursed. It has remained uninhabited for nearly a century for some very real and very troubling reasons. The deep secrets of the past are about to collide with the enormous ambitions of the present, and the fate of Dark Isle--and Camino Island, too--hangs in the balance.

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Wives like us

Plum Sykes

Take a grand English country house, one (heartbroken) American divorcee, three rich wives, two tycoons, a pair of miniature sausage dogs and one (bereaved) butler; put them all into the blender and out comes the impossibly funny Wives Like Us, the new novel from the best-selling author of Bergdorf Blondes and Party Girls Die In Pearls, Plum Sykes.

If you think the English countryside is all green wellies, muddy Land Rovers and grey-haired ladies in tweed, then you've never visited 'The Bottoms.'

Welcome to the rose-strewn county of Oxfordshire, and the tony Cotswold villages of Little Bottom, Middle Bottom, Great Bottom, and Monkton Bottom, recently annexed by a glittering new breed of female: the Country Princess. 

Following a ghastly row about a missing suite of diamonds, Tata Hawkins has flounced out of Monkton Bottom Manor with her daughter, Minty, and Executive Butler Ian Palmer in tow, decamping to The Old Coach House to teach her husband Bryan a lesson.

But things don't go to plan: Bryan disappears to Venice with a bikini designer; Selby Fairfax, the glamorous American divorcée who has inherited the beautiful estate next door, is refusing Tata's overtures at friendship; Tata's best friends, Sophie Thompson and Fernanda Ovington-Williams, are distracted by their own heartache, and the posh Pennybacker-Hoare sisters are plotting to prevent Tata regaining her crown as Queen of the Bottoms. Worst of all, Ian has nowhere to store his collection of vintage Gucci loafers.

Will Tata ever return to the comforts of the Manor? Will Selby find her Prince Charming? Will the Pennybacker-Hoares prevail? With the help of a pig farmer-ess moonlighting as a Personal Assistant, a male model moonlighting as a stable hand and a London barrister moonlighting as a gentleman farmer, can Ian restore harmony to The Bottoms?

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The wide wide sea : imperial ambition, first contact, and the fateful final voyage of Captain James Cook

Hampton Sides

On July 12th, 1776, Captain James Cook, already lionized as the greatest explorer in British history, set off on his third voyage in his ship the HMS Resolution. Two-and-a-half years later, on a beach on the island of Hawaii, Cook was killed in a conflict with native Hawaiians. How did Cook, who was unique among captains for his respect for Indigenous peoples and cultures, come to that fatal moment?

Hampton Sides' bravura account of Cook's last journey both wrestles with Cook's legacy and provides a thrilling narrative of the titanic efforts and continual danger that characterized exploration in the 1700s. Cook was renowned for his peerless seamanship, his humane leadership, and his dedication to science--the famed naturalist Joseph Banks accompanied him on his first voyage, and Cook has been called one of the most important figures of the Age of Enlightenment. He was also deeply interested in the native people he encountered. In fact, his stated mission was to return a Tahitian man, Mai, who had become the toast of London, to his home islands. On previous expeditions, Cook mapped huge swaths of the Pacific, including the east coast of Australia, and initiated first European contact with numerous peoples. He treated his crew well, and endeavored to learn about the societies he encountered with curiosity and without judgment.

Yet something was different on this last voyage. Cook became mercurial, resorting to the lash to enforce discipline, and led his two vessels into danger time and again. Uncharacteristically, he ordered violent retaliation for perceived theft on the part of native peoples. This may have had something to do with his secret orders, which were to chart and claim lands before Britain's imperial rivals could, and to discover the fabled Northwest Passage. Whatever Cook's intentions, his scientific efforts were the sharp edge of the colonial sword, and the ultimate effects of first contact were catastrophic for Indigenous people around the world. The tensions between Cook's overt and covert missions came to a head on the shores of Hawaii. His first landing there was harmonious, but when Cook returned after mapping the coast of the Pacific Northwest and Alaska, his exploitative treatment of the Hawaiians led to the fatal encounter.

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The museum of lost quilts

Jennifer Chiaverini

Jennifer Chiaverini's beloved and bestselling Elm Creek Quilts series returns with the first Elm Creek Quilts novel since 2019's The Christmas Boutique.

Summer Sullivan, the youngest founding member of Elm Creek Quilts, has spent the last two years pursuing a master's degree in history at the University of Chicago. Her unexpected return home to the celebrated quilter's retreat is met with delight but also concern from her mother, Gwen; her best friend, Sarah; master quilter Sylvia; and her other colleagues--and rightly so. Stymied by writer's block, Summer hasn't finished her thesis, and she can't graduate until she does.

Elm Creek Manor offers respite while Summer struggles to meet her extended deadline. She finds welcome distraction in organizing an exhibit of antique quilts as a fundraiser to renovate Union Hall, the 1863 Greek Revival headquarters of the Waterford Historical Society. But Summer's research uncovers startling facts about Waterford's past, prompting unsettling questions about racism, economic injustice, and political corruption within their community, past and present.

As Summer's work progresses, quilt lovers and history buffs praise the growing collection, but affronted local leaders demand that she remove all references to Waterford's troubled history. As controversy threatens the exhibit's success, Summer fears that her pursuit of the truth might cost the Waterford Historical Society their last chance to save Union Hall. Her only hope is to rally the quilting community to her cause.

The Museum of Lost Quilts is a warm and deeply moving story about the power of collective memory. With every fascinating quilt she studies, Summer finds her passion for history renewed--and discovers a promising new future for herself.

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Miss Morgan's book brigade

Janet Skeslien Charles

1918: As the Great War rages, Jessie Carson takes a leave of absence from the New York Public Library to work for the American Committee for Devastated France. Founded by millionaire Anne Morgan, this group of international women help rebuild destroyed French communities just miles from the front. Upon arrival, Jessie strives to establish something that the French have never seen--children's libraries. She turns ambulances into bookmobiles and trains the first French female librarians. Then she disappears.

1987: When NYPL librarian and aspiring writer Wendy Peterson stumbles across a passing reference to Jessie Carson in the archives, she becomes consumed with learning her fate. In her obsessive research, she discovers that she and the elusive librarian have more in common than their work at New York's famed library, but she has no idea their paths will converge in surprising ways across time.

Based on the extraordinary little-known history of the women who received the Croix de Guerre medal for courage under fire, Miss Morgan's Book Brigade is a "rich, glorious, life-affirming tribute to literature and female solidarity. Simply unforgettable" (Kate Thompson, author of The Wartime Book Club).

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Every time we say goodbye

Natalie Jenner

In 1955, Vivien Lowry is facing the greatest challenge of her life. Her latest play, the only female-authored play on the London stage that season, has opened in the West End to rapturous applause from the audience. The reviewers, however, are not as impressed as the playgoers and their savage notices not only shut down the play but ruin Lowry's last chance for a dramatic career. With her future in London not looking bright, at the suggestion of her friend, Peggy Guggenheim, Vivien takes a job in as a script doctor on a major film shooting in Rome's Cinecitta Studios. There she finds a vibrant movie making scene filled with rising stars, acclaimed directors, and famous actors in a country that is torn between its past and its potentially bright future, between the liberation of the post-war cinema and the restrictions of the Catholic Church that permeates the very soul of Italy.

As Vivien tries to forge a new future for herself, she also must face the long-buried truth of the recent World War and the mystery of what really happened to her deceased fiancé. Every Time We Say Goodbye is a brilliant exploration of trauma and tragedy, hope and renewal, filled with dazzling characters both real and imaginary, from the incomparable author who charmed the world with her novels The Jane Austen Society and Bloomsbury Girls.

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Everyone is watching

Heather Gudenkauf

From the New York Times bestselling author of The Overnight Guest comes a twisty locked-room thriller about a mysterious high-stakes game that proves life-threatening.The Best Friend. The Confidant. The Senator. The Boyfriend. The Executive.Five contestants have been chosen to compete for ten million dollars on the game show One Lucky Winner. The catch? None of them knows what (or who) to expect, and it will be live streamed all over the world. Completely secluded in an estate in Northern California, with strict instructions not to leave the property and zero contact with the outside world, the competitors start to feel a little too isolated.When long-kept secrets begin to rise to the surface, the contestants realize this is no longer just a reality show--someone is out for blood. And the game can't end until the world knows who the contestants really are... 

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The wives

Simone Gorrindo

Simone Gorrindo was twenty-seven and working her dream job in New York City when her new husband decided to join a special operations unit in the Army. When she made the difficult decision to leave behind the life she had made for the life he'd chosen, nothing could have prepared her for their new reality. Two weeks after their move to Georgia, he was deployed to Afghanistan, and she was left alone in the quiet of their little brick house on a military base. Then she met the other women left behind. Amidst the uncertainty and isolation, Simone was quickly swept up in the world of the other soldiers' wives. Thrown together into the strangeness of a life none of them imagined for themselves, the women navigated marriage over monitored phone calls and intertwined their lives, enduring the long days and dark nights together as they awaited news from overseas. In an unfamiliar and foreign-feeling landscape, the wives became Simone's reliable but imperfect compass, her true north. The Wives is at once an intimate look into the inner lives of a remarkable group of women and a tender, unflinching portrait of a marriage. Its own kind of coming-of-age story, it asks difficult questions about how far we are willing to bend for those we love, what we owe each other, and who we are in the face of the unknown. Simone's is an unputdownable story of human connection in a country divided, and a deeply personal account of what it means to find home--in each other, and in ourselves.

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It had to be you

Mary Higgins Clark

In the latest thrilling entry of the bestselling Under Suspicion series by Queen of Suspense Mary Higgins Clark and Alafair Burke, television producer Laurie Moran investigates the unsolved murder of a beloved couple celebrating the college graduations of their successful twin sons.

The two identical brothers seemed perfect in every way--handsome, intelligent, popular--until a shocking summer night when one brother killed his parents in cold blood while the other brother had an iron-clad alibi. But which twin was where during the murders? And is it possible the two of them planned the perfect crime together?

Years later, the twins are long estranged, each of them claiming to be convinced that the other is responsible for the death of their parents. Married now with children of their own, they may finally be ready to clear one name at the expense of the other and turn to Laurie Moran and her team to reinvestigate their parents' murder. But as the Under Suspicion crew gets closer to the truth, the danger that was assumed to be left in the past finds its way into the present.

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The husbands : a novel

Holly Gramazio

When Lauren returns home to her flat in London late one night, she is greeted at the door by her husband, Michael. There's only one problem--she's not married. She's never seen this man before in her life. But according to her friends, her much-improved decor, and the photos on her phone, they've been together for years.

As Lauren tries to puzzle out how she could be married to someone she can't remember meeting, Michael goes to the attic to change a lightbulb and abruptly disappears. In his place, a new man emerges, and a new, slightly altered life re-forms around her. Realizing that her attic is creating an infinite supply of husbands, Lauren confronts the question: If swapping lives is as easy as changing a lightbulb, how do you know you've taken the right path? When do you stop trying to do better and start actually living?

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The familiar : a novel

Leigh Bardugo

In a shabby house, on a shabby street, in the new capital of Madrid, Luzia Cotado uses scraps of magic to get through her days of endless toil as a scullion. But when her scheming mistress discovers the lump of a servant cowering in the kitchen is actually hiding a talent for little miracles, she demands Luzia use those gifts to improve the family's social position.

What begins as simple amusement for the nobility takes a perilous turn when Luzia garners the notice of Antonio Pérez, the disgraced secretary to Spain's king. Still reeling from the defeat of his armada, the king is desperate for any advantage in the war against England's heretic queen--and Pérez will stop at nothing to regain the king's favor.

Determined to seize this one chance to better her fortunes, Luzia plunges into a world of seers and alchemists, holy men and hucksters, where the lines between magic, science, and fraud are never certain. But as her notoriety grows, so does the danger that her Jewish blood will doom her to the Inquisition's wrath. She will have to use every bit of her wit and will to survive--even if that means enlisting the help of Guillén Santángel, an embittered immortal familiar whose own secrets could prove deadly for them both.

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Extinction : a novel

Douglas Preston

Erebus Resort, occupying a magnificent, hundred-thousand acre valley deep in the Colorado Rockies, offers guests the experience of viewing woolly mammoths, Irish Elk, and giant ground sloths in their native habitat, brought back from extinction through the magic of genetic manipulation. When a billionaire's son and his new wife are kidnapped and murdered in the Erebus back country by what is assumed to be a gang of eco-terrorists, Colorado Bureau of Investigation Agent Frances Cash partners with county sheriff James Colcord to track down the perpetrators.

As killings mount and the valley is evacuated, Cash and Colcord must confront an ancient, intelligent, and malevolent presence at Erebus, bent not on resurrection--but extinction.

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Darling girls

Sally Hepworth

For as long as they can remember, Jessica, Norah, and Alicia have been told how lucky they are. As young girls they were rescued from family tragedies and raised by a loving foster mother, Miss Fairchild, on an idyllic farming estate and given an elusive second chance at a happy family life.

But their childhood wasn't the fairy tale everyone thinks it was. Miss Fairchild had rules. Miss Fairchild could be unpredictable. And Miss Fairchild was never, ever to be crossed. In a moment of desperation, the three broke away from Miss Fairchild and thought they were free. Even though they never saw her again, she was always somewhere in the shadows of their minds. When a body is discovered under the home they grew up in, the foster sisters find themselves thrust into the spotlight as key witnesses. Or are they prime suspects?

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Dark parts of the universe

Samuel Miller

In Calico Springs, Willie's life has been defined by two powerful forces: God and the river. The "miracle boy" died for five minutes as a young child, and ever since, Willie is certain he survived for a reason, but that purpose didn't become clear until he found the Game.

The Game is called Manifest Atlas, and the concept is simple: enter an intention and the Game provides a target--a blinking blue dot on the map. Willie's second time playing Manifest Atlas, his intention takes him to an ominous target: three empty graves. Willie is sure the Game is telling him he's going to die.

Willie's older brother, Bones, doesn't believe him, but their friends are intrigued. Sarai, a girl from across the river, sets the next intention: something bloody. The group follows the Game's coordinates and they discover something even more unsettling than the graves: a dead body. Sarai's stepfather's body. The Game is suddenly personal.

Willie is dedicated to proving the Game works while Sarai is set on finding out what happened to her stepdad. Bones just wants to enjoy his last summer before real life begins. As the group digs deeper into Manifest Atlas, stranger and wilder things begin to appear, unlocking a much deeper mystery running like an undercurrent through the small town.

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The day tripper : a novel

James Goodhand

The right guy, the right place, the wrong time.

It's 1995, and Alex Dean has it all: a spot at Cambridge University next year, the love of the beautiful and vivacious Holly, and all the time in the world ahead of him. That is until a run-in with a former childhood bully sees him bruised and bloody and almost drowning in the Thames.

He awakes the next day only to find he is in a messy, derelict room he's never seen before, in grimy clothes he doesn't recognize, with no idea of how he got there. A glimpse in the mirror tells him he's older--much older--and has been living a hard life, his features ravaged by time and poor decisions

He snatches a newspaper and finds it's 2010--fifteen years since that night by the river. After finally drifting off to sleep that night, Alex wakes the following morning to find it's now 2019, another nine years later. But the next day, it's 1999. Never knowing which day is coming, he begins to piece together what happens in his life after that fateful night by the river.

But what exactly is going on? Why does his life look nothing like he thought it would? What happened to Cambridge, to Holly?

Alex must push against the heavy headwind of fate, however impossible that might feel, and learn that small actions have untold impact. It might be all he needs to save the people he loves and, equally importantly, himself.

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Kill for me, kill for you

Steve Cavanagh

One dark evening on New York City's Upper West Side, two strangers meet by chance. Over drinks, Amanda and Wendy realize they have much in common, especially loneliness and an intense desire for revenge against the men who destroyed their families. As they talk into the night, they come up with the perfect plan: if you kill for me, I'll kill for you. In another part of the city, Ruth is home alone when the beautiful brownstone she shares with her husband, Scott, is invaded. She's attacked by a man with piercing blue eyes, who disappears into the night. Will she ever be able to feel safe again while the blue-eyed stranger is out there? Intricate, heart-racing, and from an author who "is the real deal" (Lee Child, #1 New York Times bestselling author), Kill for Me, Kill for You will keep you breathless until the final page.

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We've got issues: how you can stand strong for America's soul and sanity

Phillip C. McGraw

Do you think mainstream America needs to find its voice? If so, you're not alone. The country is under attack by extremists at the fringes who put ideology before sanity and stoke division for their own gain. They are trying to rob America of its common sense and deny empirical truths, and we're all suffering the consequences.

In We've Got Issues: How You Can Stand Strong for America's Soul and Sanity, Dr. Phil employs his signature no-nonsense approach to analyze America's cultural crisis and offers practical, empirically based, action-oriented strategies to restore and support our country's collective mental health.

This compelling work combines a brutally honest look at the sustained attack on the core values that have defined America at its best and offers prescriptive guidance on what you can do in your own life to stop the madness. With his ten working principles for a healthy society, Dr. Phil provides the tools for mainstream America to fight back against the forces of division with sensible and urgently needed advice supported by the latest social, medical, and psychological findings.

Dr. Phil demystifies the "tyranny of the fringe" and deconstructs their assault on the principles that made our nation prosperous, free, and powerful. With the hard-earned wisdom of years spent working with Americans of all backgrounds, Dr. Phil charts a course from cancel culture to counsel culture, from fear to acceptance, from victimhood to community, and from the tyranny of the fringe to a more civil society where we heal our divides and every one of us decides to be who we are on purpose. Dr. Phil is here to show us how.

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Infinity kings

Adam Silvera

In this epic conclusion to the New York Times bestselling Infinity Cycle, two brothers find themselves in a heartbreaking war against one another. The hardcover edition features a reversible jacket with two stunning covers by Kevin Tong and Meybis Ruiz Cruz!

After the ultimate betrayal, Emil must rise up as a leader to stop his brother before he becomes too powerful. Even if that means pushing away Ness and Wyatt as they compete for his heart so he can focus on the war.

Brighton has a legion of followers at his command, but when he learns about an ancient scythe that can kill the unkillable, that's all he will need to become unstoppable against Emil and other rising threats.   

Meanwhile, Maribelle aligns with her greatest enemy to resurrect her lost love, and Ness infiltrates political circles to stop Iron from ruling the country, but both missions lead to tragedies that will change everyone's lives forever.

As the Infinity Son and the Infinity Reaper go to war, who will be crowned the Infinity King?

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Hell put to shame : the 1921 murder farm massacre and the horror of America's second slavery

Earl Swift

From the acclaimed New York Times bestselling author of Chesapeake Requiem comes a gripping new work of narrative nonfiction telling the forgotten story of the mass killing of eleven Black farmhands on a Georgia plantation in the spring of 1921--a crime which exposed for the nation the existence of the "peonage system," a form of legal enslavement established after the Civil War across the American South. 

On a Sunday morning in the spring of 1921, a small boy made a grim discovery as he played on a riverbank in the cotton country of rural Georgia: the bodies of two drowned men, bound together with wire and chain and weighted with a hundred-pound sack of rocks. Within days a third body turned up in another, nearby river, and in the weeks that followed, eight others. And with them, a deeper horror: all eleven had been kept in virtual slavery before their deaths. In fact, as America was shocked to learn, the dead were among thousands of Black men enslaved throughout the South, in conditions nearly as dire as those before the Civil War.

Hell Put to Shame tells the forgotten story of that mass killing, and of the revelations about peonage, or debt slavery, that it placed before a public self-satisfied that involuntary servitude had ended at Appomattox more than fifty years before.

By turns police procedural, courtroom drama, and political expose, Hell Put to Shame also reintroduces readers to three Americans who spearheaded the prosecution of John S. Williams, the wealthy plantation owner behind the murders, at a time when White people rarely faced punishment for violence against their Black neighbors. Georgia Governor Hugh M. Dorsey had earned international infamy while prosecuting the 1913 Leo Frank murder case in Atlanta and consequently won the statehouse as a hero of white supremacists--then redeemed himself in spectacular fashion with the "Murder Farm" affair. The remarkable polymath James Weldon Johnson, newly appointed the first Black leader of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, marshaled the organization into a full-on war against peonage. And Johnson's lieutenant, Walter F. White, a light-skinned, fair-haired, blue-eyed Black man, conducted undercover work at the scene of lynchings and other Jim Crow atrocities, helping to throw a light on such violence and to hasten its end.

The result is a story that remains fresh and relevant a century later, as the nation continues to wrestle with seemingly intractable challenges in matters of race and justice. And the 1921 case at its heart argues that the forces that so roil society today have been with us for generations.

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The vacation

T.M. Logan

It was supposed to be the perfect vacation, dreamed up by Kate as the ideal way to turn 40: four best friends and their husbands and children, spending a week in a luxurious villa under the blazing sunshine of Provence.

But there is trouble in paradise.

Kate suspects that her husband is having an affair--and that the other woman is one of her best friends. One of these women is willing to sacrifice years of friendship and destroy her family. But which one? As Kate closes in on the truth in the stifling Mediterranean heat, she realizes--too late--that the stakes are far higher than she ever imagined. And someone in the villa may be prepared to kill to keep their lies hidden.

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The truth about the Devlins

Lisa Scottoline

TJ Devlin is the charming disappointment in the prominent Devlin family, all of whom are lawyers at their highly successful firm--except him. After a stint in prison and rehab for alcoholism, TJ can't get hired anywhere except at the firm, in a make-work job with the title of investigator.

But one night, TJ's world turns upside down after his older brother John confesses that he murdered one of their clients, an accountant he'd confronted with proof of embezzlement. It seems impossible coming from John, the firstborn son and Most Valuable Devlin.

TJ plunges into the investigation, seizing the chance to prove his worth and save his brother. But in no time, TJ and John find themselves entangled in a lethal web of deception and murder. TJ will fight to save his family, but what he learns might break them first.

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My name was Eden : a novel

Eleanor Barker-White

In this edge-of-your-seat psychological debut, a mother's experience with Vanishing Twin Syndrome triggers disturbing changes in her teenage daughter, perfect for fans of The Push and The Undoing.

One twin vanished. The other twin remained. Until now...

When her daughter Eden came home from the hospital, Lucy was profoundly relieved. Eden had survived a drowning incident and had no apparent brain damage, no serious injuries, not even a scratch on her. Lucy fervently welcomed having a second chance at being the good mother she should have been before her teenager's accident.

Until Eden tells her that Eden isn't her name. Until she starts calling herself Eli. The name Lucy had reserved for Eden's unborn twin.

Don't worry, says the doctor. Eden is completely fine, says her husband. Of course I'm fine, Eden says, with that strange new smile of hers. I didn't die. I'm here.

But Lucy knows something's very wrong with Eden. She's not her maddening, complicated teenage girl anymore--this straight-backed, even tempered, steady-eyed child in her house is someone else entirely. Eden, it seems, is the twin who disappeared...

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Icarus

K. Ancrum

Perfect for fans of Adam Silvera and Aristotle and Dante Discover the Secrets of the Universe, this suspenseful queer YA romance from critically acclaimed author K. Ancrum reimagines the tale of Icarus as a star-crossed love story between a young art thief and the son of the man he's been stealing from--think Portrait of a Thief for YA readers.

Icarus Gallagher is a thief. He steals priceless art and replaces it with his father's impeccable forgeries. For years, one man--the wealthy Mr. Black--has been their target in revenge for his role in the death of Icarus's mother. To keep their secret, Icarus adheres to his own strict rules to keep people, and feelings, at bay: Don't let anyone close. Don't let anyone touch you. And, above all, don't get caught.

Until one night, he does. Not by Mr. Black but by his mysterious son, Helios, now living under house arrest in the Black mansion. Instead of turning Icarus in, Helios bargains for something even more dangerous--a friendship that breaks every single one of Icarus's rules.

As reluctance and distrust become closeness and something more, they uncover the gilded cage that has trapped both their families for years. One Icarus is determined to escape. But his father's thirst for revenge shows no sign of fading, and soon it may force Icarus to choose: the escape he's dreamed of, or the boy he's come to love. Reaching for both could be his greatest triumph--or it could be his downfall.

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Everyone is watching

Heather Gudenkauf

From the New York Times bestselling author of The Overnight Guest comes a twisty locked-room thriller about a mysterious high-stakes game that proves life-threatening. The Best Friend. The Confidant. The Senator. The Boyfriend. The Executive. Five contestants have been chosen to compete for ten million dollars on the game show One Lucky Winner. The catch? None of them knows what (or who) to expect, and it will be live streamed all over the world. Completely secluded in an estate in Northern California, with strict instructions not to leave the property and zero contact with the outside world, the competitors start to feel a little too isolated. When long-kept secrets begin to rise to the surface, the contestants realize this is no longer just a reality show--someone is out for blood. And the game can't end until the world knows who the contestants really are... 

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The queen of Sugar Hill : a novel of Hattie McDaniel

ReShonda Tate

Bestselling author ReShonda Tate presents a fascinating fictional portrait of Hattie McDaniel, one of Hollywood's most prolific but woefully underappreciated stars--and the first Black person ever to win an Oscar for her role as Mammy in the critically acclaimed film classic Gone With the Wind.

It was supposed to be the highlight of her career, the pinnacle for which she'd worked all her life. And as Hattie McDaniel took the stage in 1940 to claim an honor that would make her the first African-American woman to win an Academy Award, she tearfully took her place in history. Between personal triumphs and tragedies, heartbreaking losses, and severe setbacks, this historic night of winning best supporting actress for her role as the sassy Mammy in the controversial movie Gone With the Wind was going to be life-changing. Or so she thought.

Months after winning the award, not only did the Oscar curse set in where Hattie couldn't find work, but she found herself thrust in the middle of two worlds--Black and White--and not being welcomed in either. Whites only saw her as Mammy and Blacks detested the demeaning portrayal. As the NAACP waged an all-out war against Hattie and actors like her, the emotionally conflicted actor found herself struggling daily.

Through it all, Hattie continued her fight to pave a path for other Negro actors, while focusing on war efforts, fighting housing discrimination, and navigating four failed marriages. Luckily, she had a core group of friends to help her out--from Clark Gable to Louise Beavers to Ruby Berkley Goodwin and Dorothy Dandridge.

The Queen of Sugar Hill brings to life the powerful story of one woman who was driven by many passions--ambition, love, sex, family, friendship, and equality. In re-creating Hattie's story, ReShonda Tate delivers an unforgettable novel of resilience, dedication, and determination--about what it takes to achieve your dreams--even when everything--and everyone--is against you.

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The boy with the star tattoo

Talia Carner

From acclaimed author of The Third Daughter comes an epic historical novel of ingenuity and courage, of love and loss, spanning postwar France when Israeli agents roamed the countryside to rescue hidden Jewish orphans--to the 1969 daring escape of the Israeli boats of Cherbourg.

1942: As the Vichy government hunts for Jews across France, Claudette Pelletier, a young and talented seamstress and lover of romance novels, falls in love with a Jewish man who seeks shelter at the château where she works. Their whirlwind and desperate romance before he must flee leaves her pregnant and terrified.

When the Nazis invade the Free Zone shortly after the birth of her child, the disabled Claudette is forced to make a heartbreaking choice and escapes to Spain, leaving her baby in the care of his nursemaid. By the time Claudette is able to return years later, her son has disappeared. Unbeknown to his anguished mother, the boy has been rescued by a Youth Aliyah agent searching for Jewish orphans.

1968: When Israeli naval officer Daniel Yarden recruits Sharon Bloomenthal for a secret naval operation in Cherbourg, France, he can't imagine that he is the target of the agenda of the twenty-year-old grieving the recent loss of her fiancé in a drowned submarine. Sharon suspects that Danny's past in Youth Aliyah may reflect that of her mysterious late mother and she sets out to track her boss's extraordinary journey as an orphan in a quaint French village all the way to Israel.

As Danny focuses on the future of his people and on executing a daring, crucial operation under France's radar, he is unaware that the obsessed Sharon follows the breadcrumbs of clues across the country to find her answers. But she is wholly unprepared for the dilemma she must face upon solving the puzzle.

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The women

Kristin Hannah

Women can be heroes. When twenty-year-old nursing student Frances "Frankie" McGrath hears these words, it is a revelation. Raised in the sun-drenched, idyllic world of Southern California and sheltered by her conservative parents, she has always prided herself on doing the right thing. But in 1965, the world is changing, and she suddenly dares to imagine a different future for herself. When her brother ships out to serve in Vietnam, she joins the Army Nurse Corps and follows his path.

 

As green and inexperienced as the men sent to Vietnam to fight, Frankie is over-whelmed by the chaos and destruction of war. Each day is a gamble of life and death, hope and betrayal; friendships run deep and can be shattered in an instant. In war, she meets--and becomes one of--the lucky, the brave, the broken, and the lost.

 

But war is just the beginning for Frankie and her veteran friends. The real battle lies in coming home to a changed and divided America, to angry protesters, and to a country that wants to forget Vietnam.

 

The Women is the story of one woman gone to war, but it shines a light on all women who put themselves in harm's way and whose sacrifice and commitment to their country has too often been forgotten. A novel about deep friendships and bold patriotism, The Women is a richly drawn story with a memorable heroine whose idealism and courage under fire will come to define an era.

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Supercommunicators : how to unlock the secret language of connection

Charles Duhigg

From the bestselling author of The Power of Habit, a fascinating exploration of what makes conversations work--and how we can all learn to be supercommunicators at work and in life

Come inside a jury room as one juror leads a starkly divided room to consensus. Join a young CIA officer as he recruits a reluctant foreign agent. And sit with an accomplished surgeon as he tries, and fails, to convince yet another cancer patient to opt for the less risky course of treatment. In Supercommunicators, Charles Duhigg blends deep research and his trademark storytelling skills to show how we can all learn to identify and leverage the hidden layers that lurk beneath every conversation.

Communication is a superpower and the best communicators understand that whenever we speak, we're actually participating in one of three conversations: practical (What's this really about?), emotional (How do we feel?), and social (Who are we?). If you don't know what kind of conversation you're having, you're unlikely to connect. 

Supercommunicators know the importance of recognizing--and then matching--each kind of conversation, and how to hear the complex emotions, subtle negotiations, and deeply held beliefs that color so much of what we say and how we listen. Our experiences, our values, our emotional lives--and how we see ourselves, and others--shape every discussion, from who will pick up the kids to how we want to be treated at work. In this book, you will learn why some people are able to make themselves heard, and to hear others, so clearly.

With his storytelling that takes us from the writers' room of The Big Bang Theory to the couches of leading marriage counselors, Duhigg shows readers how to recognize these three conversations--and teaches us the tips and skills we need to navigate them more successfully.

In the end, he delivers a simple but powerful lesson: With the right tools, we can connect with anyone.

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A step past darkness

Vera Kurian

SIX CLASSMATES. ONE TERRIFYING NIGHT. A MURDER TWENTY YEARS IN THE MAKING...There's something sinister under the surface of the idyllic, suburban town of Wesley Falls, and it's not just the abandoned coal mine that lies beneath it. The summer of 1995 kicks off with a party in the mine where six high school students witness a horrifying crime that changes the course of their lives.The six couldn't be more different.

Maddy, a devout member of the local megachurch

Kelly, the bookworm next door

James, a cynical burnout

Casey, a loveable football player

Padma, the shy straight-A student

Jia, who's starting to see visions she can't explain

When they realize that they can't trust anyone but each other, they begin to investigate what happened on their own. As tensions escalate in town to a breaking point, the six make a vow of silence, bury all their evidence, and promise to never contact each other again. Their plan works - almost.Twenty years later, Jia calls them all back to Wesley Falls--Maddy has been murdered, and they are the only ones who can uncover why. But to end things, they have to return to the mine one last time.

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The Phoenix Crown

Kate Quinn and Janie Chang

From bestselling authors Janie Chang and Kate Quinn, a thrilling and unforgettable narrative about the intertwined lives of two wronged women, spanning from the chaos of the San Francisco earthquake to the glittering palaces of Versailles.

San Francisco, 1906. In a city bustling with newly minted millionaires and scheming upstarts, two very different women hope to change their fortunes: Gemma, a golden-haired, silver-voiced soprano whose career desperately needs rekindling, and Suling, a petite and resolute Chinatown embroideress who is determined to escape an arranged marriage. Their paths cross when they are drawn into the orbit of Henry Thornton, a charming railroad magnate whose extraordinary collection of Chinese antiques includes the fabled Phoenix Crown, a legendary relic of Beijing's fallen Summer Palace.

His patronage offers Gemma and Suling the chance of a lifetime, but their lives are thrown into turmoil when a devastating earthquake rips San Francisco apart and Thornton disappears, leaving behind a mystery reaching further than anyone could have imagined . . . until the Phoenix Crown reappears five years later at a sumptuous Paris costume ball, drawing Gemma and Suling together in one last desperate quest for justice.

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Love and hot chicken

Mary Liza Hartong

The debut of a dynamite new voice from the South, Love and Hot Chicken is a spicy and hilarious Tennessee story about family, friendship, fried chicken, and two girls in love.

The Chickie Shak is something of a historical landmark. Red clapboard walls, thriving wasp population, yard-toilets resplendent with sunflowers. My best friend Lee Ray and I used to come after our softball games and snag a picnic table while our mammas ordered the home team special. Truth is, most people around here order the same thing until the day somebody throws their ashes off a roller coaster at Dollywood. The line snakes around the building as far as you can see, the grimiest bunch of Jessies, Pearls, and Scooters you ever did behold, hobnobbing in the parking lot from noon until night.

When PJ Spoon returns home for her beloved daddy's funeral, she doesn't expect to stick around. Why abandon her PhD program at Vanderbilt for the humble charms of her hometown, Pennywhistle, Tennessee? Mamma's broken heart, that's why. But truth be told, PJ's own heart ain't doing too good either. She impulsively takes a job as a fry cook at Pennywhistle's beloved Chickie Shak, where locals gather for Nashville-style hot chicken. It may not be glamorous, but it's something to do.

Fate shakes up PJ's life again when the town rallies around the terribly retro and terribly fun Hot Chicken Pageant. PJ finally notices her cute redheaded coworker Boof, a singer-songwriter with a talent as striking as her curly hair, and learns to fear her smack-talking manager, Linda.

As PJ and Boof fall for each other, Boof's search for her birth mother--a Pennywhistle native--catapults the budding couple into a mystery that might be better left unsolved. The Chickie Shak pageant takes off, spurring old rivalries and new friendships in this tale of unexpected connections and new beginnings.

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Life after power : seven presidents and their search for purpose beyond the White House

Jared Cohen

New York Times bestselling author of Accidental Presidents explores what happens after the most powerful job in the world: President of the United States. Former presidents have an unusual place in American life. King George III believed that George Washington's departure after two terms made him "the greatest character of the age." But Alexander Hamilton worried former presidents might "[wander] among the people like ghosts." They were both right. Life After Power tells the stories of seven former presidents, from the Founding to today. Each changed history. Each offered lessons about how to decide what to do in the next chapter of life. Thomas Jefferson was the first former president to accomplish great things after the White House, shaping public debates and founding the University of Virginia, an accomplishment he included on his tombstone, unlike his presidency. John Quincy Adams served in Congress and became a leading abolitionist, passing the torch to Abraham Lincoln. Grover Cleveland was the only president in American history to serve a nonconsecutive term. William Howard Taft became Chief Justice of the Supreme Court. Herbert Hoover shaped the modern conservative movement, led relief efforts after World War II, reorganized the executive branch, and reconciled John F. Kennedy and Richard Nixon. Jimmy Carter had the longest post-presidency in American history, advancing humanitarian causes, human rights, and peace. George W. Bush made a clean break from politics, bringing back George Washington's precedent, and reminding the public that the institution of the presidency is bigger than any person. Jared Cohen explores the untold stories in the final chapters of these presidents' lives, offering a gripping and illuminating account of how they went from President of the United States one day, to ordinary citizens the next. He tells how they handled very human problems of ego, finances, and questions about their legacy and mortality. He shows how these men made history after they left the White House.

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The framed women of Ardemore House

Brandy Schillace

A sharp, savvy mystery about an autistic editor who inherits a crumbling English estate, only to find herself at the center of a murder investigation when a family portrait vanishes and a dead body turns up. Jo Jones has always had a little trouble fitting in. As a neurodivergent, hyperlexic book editor and divorced New Yorker transplanted into the English countryside, Jo doesn't know what stands out more: her Americanisms or her autism. And that was before the body on the carpet. After losing her job, her mother, and her marriage all in one year, Jo couldn't be happier to take possession of a possibly haunted (and clearly unwanted) family estate in North Yorkshire. But when the moody town groundskeeper ends up on her rug with three bullets in his back, Jo finds herself in potential danger--and as a potential suspect. At the same time, a mystifying family portrait vanishes from a secret room in the manor, bearing a strange connection to both the dead body and Jo's mysterious family history. With the aid of a Welsh antiques dealer, the morose local detective, and the Irish innkeeper's wife, Jo embarks on a mission to clear herself of blame and find the missing painting, unearthing a slew of secrets about the town--and herself--along the way. And she'll have to do it all before the killer strikes again...

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End of story

A. J. Finn

For fans of Knives Out comes a spellbinding thriller from the author of the #1 New York Times bestseller The Woman in the Window

"I'll be dead in three months. Come tell my story."

So writes Sebastian Trapp, reclusive mystery novelist, to his longtime correspondent Nicky Hunter, an expert in detective fiction. With mere months to live, Trapp invites Nicky to his spectacular San Francisco mansion to help draft his life story . . . while living alongside his beautiful second wife, Diana; his wayward nephew, Freddy; and his protective daughter, Madeleine. Soon Nicky finds herself caught in an irresistible case of real-life "detective fever."

"You and I might even solve an old mystery or two."

Twenty years earlier--on New Year's Eve 1999--Sebastian's first wife and teenaged son vanished from different locations, never to be seen again. Did the perfect crime writer commit the perfect crime? And why has he emerged from seclusion, two decades later, to allow a stranger to dig into his past?

"Life is hard. After all, it kills you."

As Nicky attempts to weave together the strands of Sebastian's life, she becomes obsessed with discovering the truth . . . while Madeleine begins to question what her beloved father might actually know about that long-ago night. And when a corpse appears in the family's koi pond, both women are shocked to find that the past isn't gone--it's just waiting.

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The edge

David Baldacci

When CIA operative Jenny Silkwell is murdered in rural Maine, government officials have immediate concerns over national security. Her laptop and phone were full of state secrets that, in the wrong hands, endanger the lives of countless operatives. In need of someone who can solve the murder quickly and retrieve the missing information, the U.S. government knows just the chameleon they can call on.

 

Ex-Army Ranger Travis Devine spent his time in the military preparing to take on any scenario, followed by his short-lived business career chasing shadows in the deepest halls of power, so his analytical mind makes him particularly well-suited for complex, high-stakes tasks. Taking down the world's largest financial conspiracy proved his value, and in comparison, this case looks straightforward. Except small towns hold secrets and Devine finds himself an outsider again.

 

Devine must ingratiate himself with locals who have trusted each other their whole lives, and who distrust outsiders just as much. Dak, Jenny's brother, who's working to revitalize the town. Earl, the retired lobsterman who found Jenny's body. And Alex, Jenny's sister with a dark past of her own. As Devine gets to know the residents of Putnam, Maine, answers seem to appear and then transform into more questions. There's a long history of secrets and those who will stop at nothing to keep them from being exposed. Leaving Devine with no idea who he can trust... and who wants him dead.

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What really happens in Vegas : true stories of the people who make Vegas, Vegas

James Patterson

  • Las Vegas is on Luxury Standard Time: every clock in the airport is a Rolex.
  • No dream is too big, no wish is too small--the VIP hosts in Vegas fulfill guests' every (legal) desire.
  • Jackpots hit when least expected. The Nevada Gaming Control Board has days to find a man who unknowingly won over $200,000 at the slots.
  • "I love love": the inventor of the Elvis impersonator wedding and the drive-thru wedding has performed hundreds of marriages--and believes in them all.
  • Glamorous yogis take a helicopter across the desert to the Valley of Fire, where they perform sun salutations to the glory of Las Vegas.
  • A gambling VIP "whale" loses $1 million at the casinos, yet still leaves saying, "Had a great time. I'll be back."



​In What Really Happens in Vegas, full of surprises for both newcomers and Las Vegas regulars, James Patterson and Vanity Fair contributing editor Mark Seal transport readers from the thrill of adrenaline-fueled vice to the glitter of A-list celebrity and entertainment.

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The survivors of the Clotilda

Hannah Durkin

Joining the ranks of Rebecca Skloot's The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks and Zora Neale Hurston's rediscovered classic Barracoon, an immersive and revelatory history of the Clotilda, the last slave ship to land on US soil, told through the stories of its survivors--the last documented survivors of any slave ship--whose lives diverged and intersected in profound ways.

The Clotilda, the last slave ship to land on American soil, docked in Mobile Bay, Alabama, in July 1860--more than half a century after the passage of a federal law banning the importation of captive Africans, and nine months before the beginning of the Civil War. The last of its survivors lived well into the twentieth century. They were the last witnesses to the final act of a terrible and significant period in world history.

In this epic work, Dr. Hannah Durkin tells the stories of the Clotilda's 110 captives, drawing on her intensive archival, historical, and sociological research. The Survivors of the Clotilda follows their lives from their kidnappings in what is modern-day Nigeria through a terrifying 45-day journey across the Middle Passage; from the subsequent sale of the ship's 103 surviving children and young people into slavery across Alabama to the dawn of the Civil Rights movement in Selma; from the foundation of an all-Black African Town (later Africatown) in Northern Mobile--an inspiration for writers of the Harlem Renaissance, including Zora Neale Hurston--to the foundation of the quilting community of Gee's Bend--a Black artistic circle whose cultural influence remains enormous.

An astonishing, deeply compelling tapestry of history, biography, and social commentary, The Survivors of the Clotilda is a tour de force that deepens our knowledge and understanding of the Black experience and of America and its tragic past. 

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Only if you're lucky

Stacy Willingham

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.

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The heiress

Rachel Hawkins

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?

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Harbor lights : stories

James Lee Burke

Harbor Lights is a story collection from one of the most popular and widely acclaimed icons of American fiction, featuring a never-before-published novella. These eight stories move from the marshlands on the Gulf of Mexico to the sweeping plains of Colorado to prisons, saloons, and trailer parks across the South, weaving together love, friendship, violence, survival, and revenge A boy and his father watch a German submarine sink an oil tanker as evil forces in the disguise of federal agents try to ruin their family. A girl is beaten up outside a bar as her university-professor father navigates new love and threats from a group of neo-Nazis. A pair of undercover union organizers are hired to break colts for a Hollywood actor, whose "Western hero" façade hides darkness. An oil rig worker witnesses a horrific attack on a local village while on a job in South America and seeks justice through one final act of bravery. With his nuanced characters, lyrical prose, and ability to write shocking violence in the most evocative settings, James Lee Burke's singular skills are on display in this superb anthology. Harbor Lights unfolds in stories that crackle and reverberate as unexpected heroes emerge.

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The friendship club

Robyn Carr

Four women come together at a tumultuous time in their lives, forging an unbreakable bond that will leave them all forever changed.

Celebrity cooking show host Marni McGuire has seen it all. She's been married--twice--and widowed and divorced. Now in her midfifties, she's single. Happily so. She just needs to convince her pregnant daughter, Bella, of this fact. And maybe convince herself, too. Especially after Marni's efforts to humor her determined daughter result in a series of disastrous dates that somehow prompt Marni to wonder if maybe the right man for her is still out there after all.

Similarly single, Marni's best friend and colleague is confident she's content without a man, but both older women soon find themselves leading by example as the young intern on their show appears caught in a toxic relationship--and Bella reveals her own marriage maybe isn't built to withstand the stresses of the baby on the way.

Suddenly, all four women find themselves at a crossroads, each navigating the challenges of dating, marriage, loneliness and love. Thankfully, they have each other to lean on. The realities of modern love are far from easy, but there's no better group to have in your corner than friends who will lift you up, no matter what, and hold fast in the face of any storm.

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The curse of Penryth Hall

Jess Armstrong

An atmospheric gothic mystery that beautifully brings the ancient Cornish countryside to life, Armstrong introduces heroine Ruby Vaughn in her Minotaur Books & Mystery Writers of America First Crime Novel Award-winning debut, The Curse of Penryth Hall.

After the Great War, American heiress Ruby Vaughn made a life for herself running a rare bookstore alongside her octogenarian employer and house mate in Exeter. She's always avoided dwelling on the past, even before the war, but it always has a way of finding her. When Ruby is forced to deliver a box of books to a folk healer living deep in the Cornish countryside, she is brought back to the one place she swore she'd never return. A more sensible soul would have delivered the package and left without rehashing old wounds. But no one has ever accused Ruby of being sensible. Thus begins her visit to Penryth Hall.

A foreboding fortress, Penryth Hall is home to Ruby's once dearest friend, Tamsyn, and her husband, Sir Edward Chenowyth. It's an unsettling place, and after a more unsettling evening, Ruby is eager to depart. But her plans change when Penryth's bells ring for the first time in thirty years. Edward is dead; he met a gruesome end in the orchard, and with his death brings whispers of a returned curse. It also brings Ruan Kivell, the person whose books brought her to Cornwall, the one the locals call a Pellar, the man they believe can break the curse. Ruby doesn't believe in curses--or Pellars--but this is Cornwall and to these villagers the curse is anything but lore, and they believe it will soon claim its next victim: Tamsyn.

To protect her friend, Ruby must work alongside the Pellar to find out what really happened in the orchard that night.

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