Best of
Fiction
2019 - 2020
The Things We Cannot Say
Kelly Rimmer - 2019
Just beyond the tents of the Russian refugee camp she calls home, a young woman speaks her wedding vows. It’s a decision that will alter her destiny…and it’s a lie that will remain buried until the next century.Since she was nine years old, Alina Dziak knew she would marry her best friend, Tomasz. Now fifteen and engaged, Alina is unconcerned by reports of Nazi soldiers at the Polish border, believing her neighbors that they pose no real threat, and dreams instead of the day Tomasz returns from college in Warsaw so they can be married. But little by little, injustice by brutal injustice, the Nazi occupation takes hold, and Alina’s tiny rural village, its families, are divided by fear and hate. Then, as the fabric of their lives is slowly picked apart, Tomasz disappears. Where Alina used to measure time between visits from her beloved, now she measures the spaces between hope and despair, waiting for word from Tomasz and avoiding the attentions of the soldiers who patrol her parents’ farm. But for now, even deafening silence is preferable to grief. Slipping between Nazi-occupied Poland and the frenetic pace of modern life, Kelly Rimmer creates an emotional and finely wrought narrative that weaves together two women’s stories into a tapestry of perseverance, loyalty, love and honor. The Things We Cannot Say is an unshakable reminder of the devastation when truth is silenced…and how it can take a lifetime to find our voice before we learn to trust it.
Have You Seen Luis Velez?
Catherine Ryan Hyde - 2019
Not with his mother’s new family. Not as a weekend guest with his father and his father’s wife. Not at school, where he’s an outcast. After his best friend moves away, Raymond has only two real connections: to the feral cat he’s tamed and to a blind ninety-two-year-old woman in his building who’s introduced herself with a curious question: Have you seen Luis Velez?Mildred Gutermann, a German Jew who narrowly escaped the Holocaust, has been alone since her caretaker disappeared. She turns to Raymond for help, and as he tries to track Luis down, a deep and unexpected friendship blossoms between the two.Despondent at the loss of Luis, Mildred isolates herself further from a neighborhood devolving into bigotry and fear. Determined not to let her give up, Raymond helps her see that for every terrible act the world delivers, there is a mirror image of deep kindness, and Mildred helps Raymond see that there’s hope if you have someone to hold on to.
A Fire Sparkling
Julianne MacLean - 2019
Rattled by the discovery, Gillian attempts to unravel the truth behind the photos, setting her off on an epic journey through the past…1939. England is on the brink of war as Vivian Hughes falls in love with a handsome British official, but when bombs begin to fall and Vivian’s happy life is destroyed in the blitz, she will do whatever it takes to protect those she loves…As Gillian learns more about her grandmother’s past, the old photo begins to make more sense. But for every question answered, a new one takes its place. Faced with a truth that is not at all what she expected, Gillian attempts to shine a light not only on the mysteries of her family’s past but also on her own future.This gorgeously written multigenerational saga is a heart-wrenching yet hopeful examination of one woman’s struggle to survive, perfect for fans of The Nightingale and Beneath a Scarlet Sky.
The Nickel Boys
Colson Whitehead - 2019
Martin Luther King to heart: He is "as good as anyone." Abandoned by his parents, but kept on the straight and narrow by his grandmother, Elwood is about to enroll in the local black college. But for a black boy in the Jim Crow South in the early 1960s, one innocent mistake is enough to destroy the future. Elwood is sentenced to a juvenile reformatory called The Nickel Academy, whose mission statement says it provides "physical, intellectual and moral training" so the delinquent boys in their charge can become "honorable and honest men."In reality, The Nickel Academy is a grotesque chamber of horrors, where the sadistic staff beats and sexually abuses the students, corrupt officials and locals steal food and supplies, and any boy who resists is likely to disappear "out back." Stunned to find himself in such a vicious environment, Elwood tries to hold on to Dr. King's ringing assertion "Throw us in jail and we will still love you." His friend Turner thinks Elwood is worse than naive, that the world is crooked and the only way to survive is to scheme and avoid trouble. The tension between Elwood's ideals and Turner's skepticism leads to a decision whose repercussions will echo down the decades. Formed in the crucible of the evils Jim Crow wrought, the boys' fates will be determined by what they endured at The Nickel Academy.Based on the real story of a reform school in Florida that operated for one hundred and eleven years and warped the lives of thousands of children, The Nickel Boys is a devastating, driven narrative.
On the Come Up
Angie Thomas - 2019
Or at least make it out of her neighborhood one day. As the daughter of an underground rap legend who died before he hit big, Bri’s got big shoes to fill. But now that her mom has unexpectedly lost her job, food banks and shutoff notices are as much a part of Bri’s life as beats and rhymes. With bills piling up and homelessness staring her family down, Bri no longer just wants to make it—she has to make it.On the Come Up is Angie Thomas’s homage to hip-hop, the art that sparked her passion for storytelling and continues to inspire her to this day. It is the story of fighting for your dreams, even as the odds are stacked against you; of the struggle to become who you are and not who everyone expects you to be; and of the desperate realities of poor and working-class black families.
The Brothers Karamazov Lib/E
Fyodor Mikhailovich Dostoevsky - 2019
A masterpiece on many levels, it transcends the boundaries of a gripping murder mystery to become a moving account of the battle between love and hate, faith and despair, compassion and cruelty, good and evil.
The Brothers Karamazov (TRANSLATED)
Fyodor Mikhailovich Dostoevsky - 2019
Dostoevsky spent nearly two years writing The Brothers Karamazov, which was published as a serial in The Russian Messenger and completed in November 1880. Dostoevsky intended it to be the first part in an epic story titled The Life of a Great Sinner, but he died less than four months after its publication. The book portrays a parricide in which each of the murdered man's sons share a varying degree of complicity. On a deeper level, it is a spiritual drama of moral struggles concerning faith, doubt, reason, free will and modern Russia. Dostoevsky composed much of the novel in Staraya Russa, which is also the main setting of the novel.
Exhalation: Stories
Ted Chiang - 2019
In "The Merchant and the Alchemist's Gate," a portal through time forces a fabric seller in ancient Baghdad to grapple with past mistakes and the temptation of second chances. In the epistolary "Exhalation," an alien scientist makes a shocking discovery with ramifications not just for his own people, but for all of reality. And in "The Lifecycle of Software Objects," a woman cares for an artificial intelligence over twenty years, elevating a faddish digital pet into what might be a true living being. Also included are two brand-new stories: "Omphalos" and "Anxiety Is the Dizziness of Freedom."In this fantastical and elegant collection, Ted Chiang wrestles with the oldest questions on earth—What is the nature of the universe? What does it mean to be human?—and ones that no one else has even imagined. And, each in its own way, the stories prove that complex and thoughtful science fiction can rise to new heights of beauty, meaning, and compassion.
The Beantown Girls
Jane Healey - 2019
She’ll work in city hall, marry her fiancé when he returns from the war, and settle down in the Boston suburbs. But when her fiancé is reported missing after being shot down in Germany, Fiona’s long-held plans are shattered.Determined to learn her fiancé’s fate, Fiona leaves Boston to volunteer overseas as a Red Cross Clubmobile girl, recruiting her two best friends to come along. There’s the outspoken Viviana, who is more than happy to quit her secretarial job for a taste of adventure. Then there’s Dottie, a shy music teacher whose melodious talents are sure to bring heart and hope to the boys on the front lines.Chosen for their inner strength and outer charm, the trio isn’t prepared for the daunting challenges of war. But through it all come new friendships and romances, unforeseen dangers, and unexpected dreams. As the three friends begin to understand the real reasons they all came to the front, their courage and camaraderie will see them through some of the best and worst times of their lives.
Along the Broken Bay
Flora J. Solomon - 2019
War has erupted in the Pacific, spelling danger for Gina Capelli Thorpe, an American expat living in Manila. When the Japanese invade and her husband goes missing, Gina flees with her daughter to the Zambales Mountains to avoid capture—or worse.Desperate for money, medicine, and guns, the resistance recruits Gina to join their underground army and smuggles her back to Manila. There, she forges a new identity and opens a nightclub, where seductive beauties sing, dance, and tease secrets out of high-ranking Japanese officers while the wildly successful club and its enemy patrons help fund the resistance.But operating undercover in the spotlight has Gina struggling to stay a step ahead of the Japanese. She’s risked everything to take a stand, but her club is a house of cards in the eye of a storm. Can Gina keep this delicate operation running long enough to outlast the enemy, or is she on a sure path to defeat that will put her family, her freedom, or even her life at risk?
The Huntress
Kate Quinn - 2019
When the tide of war sweeps over her homeland, she gambles everything to join the infamous Night Witches, an all-female night bomber regiment wreaking havoc on Hitler’s eastern front. But when she is downed behind enemy lines and thrown across the path of a lethal Nazi murderess known as the Huntress, Nina must use all her wits to survive.British war correspondent Ian Graham has witnessed the horrors of war from Omaha Beach to the Nuremberg Trials. He abandons journalism after the war to become a Nazi hunter, yet one target eludes him: the Huntress. Fierce, disciplined Ian must join forces with brazen, cocksure Nina, the only witness to escape the Huntress alive. But a shared secret could derail their mission, unless Ian and Nina force themselves to confront it.Seventeen-year-old Jordan McBride grows up in post WWII Boston, determined despite family opposition to become a photographer. At first delighted when her long-widowed father brings home a fiancée, Jordan grows increasingly disquieted by the soft-spoken German widow who seems to be hiding something. Armed only with her camera and her wits, Jordan delves into her new stepmother’s past and slowly realizes there are mysteries buried deep in her family. But Jordan’s search for the truth may threaten all she holds dear.
A Woman Is No Man
Etaf Rum - 2019
Though she doesn’t want to get married, her grandparents give her no choice. History is repeating itself: Deya’s mother, Isra, also had no choice when she left Palestine as a teenager to marry Adam. Though Deya was raised to believe her parents died in a car accident, a secret note from a mysterious, yet familiar-looking woman makes Deya question everything she was told about her past. As the narrative alternates between the lives of Deya and Isra, she begins to understand the dark, complex secrets behind her community.
Demons
Fyodor Dostoyevsky - 2019
It is considered one of his four masterpieces written after his return from Siberian exile, together with "Crime and Punishment" (1866), "The Brothers Karamazov" (1880), and "The Idiot" (1869). A work of a political and social satire, this psychological drama represents a warning of the potentially devastating results of the nihilism that was becoming prevalent in Russian politics and morality during the 1860s. In the story, a fictional town is reduced to anarchy when it becomes the centre of an attempted revolution, masterminded by one Pyotr Verkhovensky. Fyodor Mikhailovich Dostoevsky (1821 - 1881) was a Russian novelist, essayist, short story writer, journalist, and philosopher. His literature examines human psychology during the turbulent social, spiritual and political atmosphere of 19th-century Russia, and he is considered one of the greatest psychologists in world literature. A prolific writer, Dostoevsky produced 11 novels, three novellas, 17 short stories and numerous other works. His novella "Notes from Underground" (1864) was among the first existentialist works of literature. Many vintage books such as this are increasingly scarce and expensive. We are republishing this volume now in an affordable, modern, high-quality edition complete with a specially-commissioned new biography of the author.
Fyodor Dostoevsky: Demons (Translated by Constance Garnett)
Fyodor Mikhailovich Dostoevsky - 2019
I trust that these details may at least serve as an introduction, while my projected story itself will come later.I will say at once that Stepan Trofimovitch had always filled a particular rôle among us, that of the progressive patriot, so to say, and he was passionately fond of playing the part—so much so that I really believe he could not have existed without it.“
The Sting
Kimberley Chambers - 2019
Dragged up in care, and cruelly betrayed by everyone they trusted, they made a pact to fight their way out of the gutter – together.TWO SIDES OF THE LAWOld loyalties die hard on the streets of London. Tommy throws his lot in with the notorious Darling family – even if it means leaving Scratch to the wolves. She’s destined for a different path, reinventing herself as copper Kim Regan.ONE DEADLY SHOWDOWNNow they’re on opposite sides of the law. Running Operation Sting, Kim will rip the heart out of the Darling’s empire – and only her old pal Tommy stands in her way.As gritty and dangerous as the London streets in which it’s set, this is No.1 bestseller Kimberley Chambers at her best. Get ready for a shocking read with a STING in the tail . . .
Rumple Buttercup: A Story of Bananas, Belonging, and Being Yourself
Matthew Gray Gubler - 2019
A charming and inspiring story written and narrated by Criminal Minds actor/director, Matthew Gray Gubler.Rumple Buttercup has five crooked teeth, three strands of hair, green skin, and his left foot is slightly bigger than his right.He is weird.Join him and Candy Corn Carl (his imaginary friend made of trash) as they learn the joy of individuality as well as the magic of belonging.
Things You Save in a Fire
Katherine Center - 2019
Cassie Hanwell was born for emergencies. As one of the only female firefighters in her Texas firehouse, she's seen her fair share of them, and she's excellent at dealing with other people's tragedies. But when her estranged and ailing mother asks her to uproot her life and move to Boston, it's an emergency of a kind Cassie never anticipated.The tough, old-school Boston firehouse is as different from Cassie's old job as it could possibly be. Hazing, a lack of funding, and poor facilities mean that the firemen aren't exactly thrilled to have a "lady" on the crew, even one as competent and smart as Cassie. Except for the handsome rookie, who doesn't seem to mind having Cassie around. But she can't think about that. Because she doesn't fall in love. And because of the advice her old captain gave her: don't date firefighters. Cassie can feel her resolve slipping...but will she jeopardize her place in a career where she's worked so hard to be taken seriously?Katherine Center's Things You Save in a Fire is a heartfelt, affecting novel about life, love, and the true meaning of courage.
Daisy Jones & The Six
Taylor Jenkins Reid - 2019
. . until now.Daisy is a girl coming of age in L.A. in the late sixties, sneaking into clubs on the Sunset Strip, sleeping with rock stars, and dreaming of singing at the Whisky a Go Go. The sex and drugs are thrilling, but it’s the rock and roll she loves most. By the time she’s twenty, her voice is getting noticed, and she has the kind of heedless beauty that makes people do crazy things.Also getting noticed is The Six, a band led by the brooding Billy Dunne. On the eve of their first tour, his girlfriend Camila finds out she’s pregnant, and with the pressure of impending fatherhood and fame, Billy goes a little wild on the road.Daisy and Billy cross paths when a producer realizes that the key to supercharged success is to put the two together. What happens next will become the stuff of legend.The making of that legend is chronicled in this riveting and unforgettable novel, written as an oral history of one of the biggest bands of the seventies. Taylor Jenkins Reid is a talented writer who takes her work to a new level with Daisy Jones & The Six, brilliantly capturing a place and time in an utterly distinctive voice.
Recursion
Blake Crouch - 2019
It’s why she’s dedicated her life to creating a technology that will let us preserve our most precious memories. If she succeeds, anyone will be able to re-experience a first kiss, the birth of a child, the final moment with a dying parent. As Barry searches for the truth, he comes face-to-face with an opponent more terrifying than any disease—a force that attacks not just our minds but the very fabric of the past. And as its effects begin to unmake the world as we know it, only he and Helena, working together, will stand a chance at defeating it.But how can they make a stand when reality itself is shifting and crumbling all around them?
The Great Believers
Rebecca Makkai - 2019
Yet as his career begins to flourish, the carnage of the AIDS epidemic grows around him. One by one, his friends are dying and after his friend Nico's funeral, the virus circles closer and closer to Yale himself. Soon the only person he has left is Fiona, Nico's little sister.Thirty years later, Fiona is in Paris tracking down her estranged daughter who disappeared into a cult. While staying with an old friend, a famous photographer who documented the Chicago crisis, she finds herself finally grappling with the devastating ways AIDS affected her life and her relationship with her daughter. The two intertwining stories take us through the heartbreak of the eighties and the chaos of the modern world, as both Yale and Fiona struggle to find goodness in the midst of disaster.The Great Believers has become a critically acclaimed, indelible piece of literature; it was selected as one of New York Times Best 10 Books of the Year, a Washington Post Notable Book, a Buzzfeed Book of the Year, a Skimm Reads pick, and a pick for the New York Public Library's Best Books of the year.
When We Believed in Mermaids
Barbara O'Neal - 2019
Gone forever. It’s what her sister, Kit, an ER doctor in Santa Cruz, has always believed. Yet all it takes is a few heart-wrenching seconds to upend Kit’s world. Live coverage of a club fire in Auckland has captured the image of a woman stumbling through the smoke and debris. Her resemblance to Josie is unbelievable. And unmistakable. With it comes a flood of emotions—grief, loss, and anger—that Kit finally has a chance to put to rest: by finding the sister who’s been living a lie.After arriving in New Zealand, Kit begins her journey with the memories of the past: of days spent on the beach with Josie. Of a lost teenage boy who’d become part of their family. And of a trauma that has haunted Kit and Josie their entire lives.Now, if two sisters are to reunite, it can only be by unearthing long-buried secrets and facing a devastating truth that has kept them apart far too long. To regain their relationship, they may have to lose everything.
Die wandernde Erde: Erzählungen
Liu Cixin - 2019
His novel, The Three-Body Problem, was the first translated work of SF ever to win the Hugo Award. Here is the first collection of his short fiction: eleven stories, including five Chinese Galaxy Award-winners, form a blazingly original ode to planet earth, its pasts and its futures.
The Lost Man
Jane Harper - 2019
But today, the scant shadow it casts was the last hope for their middle brother, Cameron. The Bright family’s quiet existence is thrown into grief and anguish. Something had been troubling Cameron. Did he lose hope and walk to his death? Because if he didn’t, the isolation of the outback leaves few suspects…Dark, suspenseful, and deeply atmospheric, The Lost Man is the highly anticipated next book from the bestselling and award-winning Jane Harper, author of The Dry and Force of Nature.
The Book Woman of Troublesome Creek
Kim Michele Richardson - 2019
The lonely young Appalachian woman joins the historical Pack Horse Library Project of Kentucky and becomes a librarian, riding across slippery creek beds and up treacherous mountains on her faithful mule to deliver books and other reading material to the impoverished hill people of Eastern Kentucky.Along her dangerous route, Cussy, known to the mountain folk as Bluet, confronts those suspicious of her damselfly-blue skin and the government's new book program. She befriends hardscrabble and complex fellow Kentuckians, and is fiercely determined to bring comfort and joy, instill literacy, and give to those who have nothing, a bookly respite, a fleeting retreat to faraway lands.The Book Woman of Troublesome Creek is a powerful message about how the written word affects people--a story of hope and heartbreak, raw courage and strength splintered with poverty and oppression, and one woman's chances beyond the darkly hollows. Inspired by the true and historical blue-skinned people of Kentucky and the brave and dedicated Kentucky Pack Horse library service, The Book Woman of Troublesome Creek showcases a bold and unique tale of the Pack horse Librarians in literary novels — a story of fierce strength and one woman's belief that books can carry us anywhere — even back home.
The Island of Sea Women
Lisa See - 2019
Over many decades—through the Japanese colonialism of the 1930s and 1940s, World War II, the Korean War, and the era of cellphones and wet suits for the women divers—Mi-ja and Young-sook develop the closest of bonds. Nevertheless, their differences are impossible to ignore: Mi-ja is the daughter of a Japanese collaborator, forever marking her, and Young-sook was born into a long line of haenyeo and will inherit her mother’s position leading the divers. After hundreds of dives and years of friendship, forces outside their control will push their relationship to the breaking point.This beautiful, thoughtful novel illuminates a unique and unforgettable culture, one where the women are in charge, engaging in dangerous physical work, and the men take care of the children. A classic Lisa See story—one of women’s friendships and the larger forces that shape them—The Island of Sea Women introduces readers to the fierce female divers of Jeju Island and the dramatic history that shaped their lives.
Crime and Punishment (Illustrated)
Fyodor Mikhailovich Dostoevsky - 2019
It was first published in the literary journal The Russian Messenger in twelve monthly installments during 1866. It was later published in a single volume. It is the second of Dostoevsky's full-length novels following his return from 5 years of exile in Siberia. Crime and Punishment is considered the first great novel of his "mature" period of writing. Crime and Punishment focuses on the mental anguish and moral dilemmas of Rodion Raskolnikov, an impoverished ex-student in Saint Petersburg who formulates a plan to kill an unscrupulous pawnbroker for her money. Before the killing, Raskolnikov believes that with the money he could liberate himself from poverty and go on to perform great deeds. However, once it is done he finds himself racked with confusion, paranoia, and disgust for what he has done. His moral justifications disintegrate completely as he struggles with guilt and horror and confronts the real-world consequences of his deed.
Winter World
A.G. Riddle - 2019
pushes the human race to the brink of extinction.In our darkest hour, an international consortium ventures into space, looking for answers.Near Mars, they make a groundbreaking discovery.Could it save us from the ice age?Or is it the cause?The race is on to find out--and to save humanity.* * * From A.G. Riddle, the worldwide bestselling author of The Atlantis Gene and Departure , comes a new sci-fi thriller that will change the way you look at Earth’s place in the solar system forever.* * * Each month, it grows colder. Snow falls in summer. Glaciers trample cities across North America, Europe, and Asia. The new ice age gripping the Earth shows no signs of stopping.Chaos erupts. Around the world, people abandon their homes, fleeing the cold, flocking to regions where they can survive.Nations prepare to go to war for the world’s last habitable zones.NASA and other scientific organizations race to discover why the world is cooling. They send probes into the solar system to collect readings. Near Mars, one of the probes finds something no one expected: a mysterious object, drifting toward the sun. Could it be responsible for the new ice age? And if so, can we stop it? Or is the artifact merely an observer? Or neither? Could it be a relic from a long-extinct civilization? One thing is certain: investigating the artifact is humanity’s best hope of survival.As the ice age claims more lives and the world slides into anarchy, an international consortium launches a mission into space to study the object and make contact. But the first contact mission doesn’t go as planned. What the crew discovers out there is beyond anyone’s imagination.Two members of the first contact mission may hold the keys to humanity’s salvation.Dr. Emma Matthews is the commander aboard the International Space Station. For months, she has watched the world below freeze and civilization unravel. The headlines tell only half of the story. The messages from her sister tell the rest, of a world witnessing mass migrations, fighting for survival, struggling to provide a future for their children. When a catastrophe strikes the ISS, Emma faces her own fight for survival.Dr. James Sinclair is one of the greatest scientists alive. A mind before his time. Years ago, he invented something with the potential to change the world--an invention that would upset the balance of power in the world forever. Fearing that change, his enemies sent him to prison for a crime he didn’t commit. But with humanity’s future at stake, NASA asks him to join the first contact mission. His expertise is vital to the mission’s success--and to saving Emma. With the clock ticking down to humanity’s final days on Earth, James makes a decision that will change his life forever and may determine the fate of the entire human race.* * *
The Whisper Man
Alex North - 2019
A new beginning, a new house, a new town. Featherbank.But the town has a dark past. Twenty years ago, a serial killer abducted and murdered five residents. Until Frank Carter was finally caught, he was nicknamed "The Whisper Man," for he would lure his victims out by whispering at their windows at night.Just as Tom and Jake settle into their new home, a young boy vanishes. His disappearance bears an unnerving resemblance to Frank Carter's crimes, reigniting old rumors that he preyed with an accomplice. Now, detectives Amanda Beck and Pete Willis must find the boy before it is too late, even if that means Pete has to revisit his great foe in prison: The Whisper Man.And then Jake begins acting strangely. He hears a whispering at his window...
The Spitfire Girls
Soraya M. Lane - 2019
Three brave women who know their place is not at home.At the height of World War II, the British Air Transport Auxiliary need help. A group of young women volunteer for action, but the perils of their new job don’t end on the tarmac. Things are tough in the air, but on the ground their abilities as pilots are constantly questioned.There is friction from the start between the new recruits. Spirited American Lizzie turns heads with her audacity, but few can deny her flying skills. She couldn’t be more different from shy, petite Ruby, who is far from diminutive in the sky. It falls to pragmatic pilot May to bring the women together and create a formidable team capable of bringing the aircraft home.As these very different women fight to prove themselves up to the task at hand, they are faced with challenges and tragedies at every turn. They must fight for equal pay and respect while handling aircraft that are dangerously ill-equipped; meanwhile, lives continue to be lost in the tumult of war.Determined to assist the war effort doing what they love, can May, Lizzie and Ruby put aside their differences to overcome adversity, and will they find love in the skies?
The Hallows
Victor Methos - 2019
Disillusioned, he heads to his small Utah hometown for a simpler life…but that’s not what he finds.Soon after he arrives, Tatum’s childhood crush offers him a job at the county attorney’s office and assigns him a murder case. The victim is a teenage girl not unlike the victim in the last case he tried. Now a prosecutor, Tatum sees a chance for redemption, but politics, corruption, and a killer defense threaten to thwart justice.To complicate matters, Tatum’s estranged father has terminal cancer, and the time to reconcile is running out. Tatum moved to Utah to find clarity, but his thoughts swirl with old feelings and present dangers. As the case heats up, so does the risk, threatening to adjourn Tatum’s new life before it begins.
Emily, Gone
Bette Lee Crosby - 2019
On the final night, a storm muffles the sound of the blaring music, and Rachel tucks her baby into bed before falling into a deep sleep. So deep, she doesn’t hear the kitchen door opening. When she and her husband wake up in the morning, the crib is empty. Emily is gone.Vicki Robart is one of the thousands at the festival, but she’s not feeling the music. She’s feeling the emptiness over the loss of her own baby several months before. When she leaves the festival and is faced with an opportunity to fill that void, she is driven to an act of desperation that will forever bind the lives of three women.When the truth of what actually happened that fateful night is finally exposed, shattering the lives they’ve built, will they be able to pick up the pieces to put their families back together again?
The Overstory
Richard Powers - 2019
From the roots to the crown and back to the seeds, Richard Powers’s twelfth novel unfolds in concentric rings of interlocking fables that range from antebellum New York to the late twentieth-century Timber Wars of the Pacific Northwest and beyond. There is a world alongside ours—vast, slow, interconnected, resourceful, magnificently inventive, and almost invisible to us. This is the story of a handful of people who learn how to see that world and who are drawn up into its unfolding catastrophe.A New York Times Bestseller.
Not My Daughter
Kate Hewitt - 2019
In that endless pause, I see all I need to know. She doesn’t want to give Alice to me – not now, and not ever. And part of me doesn’t even blame her… Milly always dreamed of being a mother. Adopted herself, she has always imagined a powerful intimate connection with a child of her own. So when she and her husband Matt are told they can’t have children, her dreams are shattered. But then their loved ones offer the ultimate gift – Milly’s best friend Anna and Matt’s brother Jack will be donors so that Milly can carry a child and finally have a chance to be a mother. And with everyone accepting and open, Milly believes that nothing could could go wrong. Except none of the four people involved are prepared for the feelings that will threaten their most important relationships as their precious, longed-for daughter Alice grows up and receives a heartbreaking diagnosis. Then those who love her best will have to decide what it means to be a parent, and to make decisions with far-reaching and devastating consequences… for Alice, and for themselves. A powerful, heart-breaking novel guaranteed to make you cry, for fans of Jodi Picoult, Diane Chamberlain, and Gracie’s Secret. Readers love Kate Hewitt: ‘Heart-wrenching and captivating… as good as anything Jodi Picoult and Diane Chamberlain have ever written… gripping, engrossing and compelling.’ Bookish Jottings ‘Oh my gosh! This book is sad, thrilling, gripping and completely pulls on your heart strings… Full of heartache, tough decisions, dilemmas, drama and struggles of everyday life… In two words, simply amazing!’ Books on the Bookshelf, 5 stars ‘Holy heck!!! Kate Hewitt brought her A-game with this must read... I was completely entranced… There were so many well-timed twists and turns and just when I thought I couldn’t be surprised anymore, there was another bomb waiting to drop!!… A complete 5 star novel that will most certainly “wow” you!’ Steph and Chris’ Book Review, 5 stars ‘A heartbreaking story filled with raw emotions that is beautifully and emotionally written… It just hits you right in the gut and pulls out all of the feels. It is absolutely heart wrenching and devastating… a moving and tragic story about life, love and loss.’ Sinfully Wicked Books, 5 stars ‘Oh wow… This story has literally broken my heart into tiny little pieces at every emotional and heart breaking turn.’ Welcome to Mixing Reality with Fiction Book Blog, 5 stars ‘A heart wrenchingly aching tale of motherly love, loss and loyalty… So so sad. But so beautiful!’ Two Girls and a Book Obsession, 5 stars ‘One of the most poignant and life affirming novels… Beautiful, thought-provoking, insightful….and everything in between… Keep the tissues handy, you’re going to need them.’ The Writing Garnet ‘A plot twist so devastating that I needed some time to deal with my emotions before completing the book… a seriously good read&h
Till We Have Faces: A Myth Retold
C.S. Lewis - 2019
S. Lewis. It is a retelling of Cupid and Psyche, based on its telling in a chapter of The Golden Ass of Apuleius. This story had haunted Lewis all his life, because he realized that some of the main characters' actions were illogical.[1] As a consequence, his retelling of the story is characterized by a highly developed character, the narrator, with the reader being drawn into her reasoning and her emotions. This was his last novel, and he considered it his most mature, written in conjunction with his wife, Joy Davidman.
Till we have Faces -- A Myth Retold
C.S. Lewis - 2019
This story had haunted Lewis all his life, because he realized that some of the main characters' actions were illogical. As a consequence, his retelling of the story is characterized by a highly developed character, the narrator, with the reader being drawn into her reasoning and her emotions. The first part of the book is written from the perspective of Psyche's older sister Orual, as an accusation against the gods. The story is set in the fictive kingdom of Glome, a primitive city-state whose people have occasional contact with civilized Hellenistic Greece. In the second part of the book, the narrator undergoes a change of mindset and understands that her initial accusation was tainted by her own failings and shortcomings, and that the gods are lovingly present in humans' lives.
Red Metal
Mark Greaney - 2019
From the New York Times bestselling author of the Gray Man series comes a startlingly realistic novel of World War III.A desperate Kremlin takes advantage of a military crisis in Asia to simultaneously strike into Western Europe and invade east Africa in a bid to occupy three Rare Earth mineral mines that will give Russia unprecedented control for generations over the world's hi-tech sector. Pitted against the Russians are a Marine lieutenant colonel pulled out of a cushy job at the Pentagon and thrown into the fray in Africa, a French Special Forces captain and his intelligence operative father, a young Polish female partisan fighter, an A-10 Warthog pilot, and the captain of an American tank platoon who, along with a German sergeant, fight from behind enemy lines in Germany all the way into Russia.From a daring MiG attack on American satellites, through land and air battles in all theaters, naval battles in the Arabian sea, and small unit fighting down to the hand-to-hand level in the jungle, Russia's forces battle to either take the mines or detonate a nuclear device to prevent the West from exploiting them.
The Idiot (Illustrated)
Fyodor Mikhailovich Dostoevsky - 2019
It was first published serially in the journal The Russian Messenger in 1868–69. The title is an ironic reference to the central character of the novel, Prince (Knyaz) Lev Nikolayevich Myshkin, a young man whose goodness, open-hearted simplicity and guilelessness lead many of the more worldly characters he encounters to mistakenly assume that he lacks intelligence and insight. In the character of Prince Myshkin, Dostoevsky set himself the task of depicting "the positively good and beautiful man." The novel examines the consequences of placing such a unique individual at the centre of the conflicts, desires, passions and egoism of worldly society, both for the man himself and for those with whom he becomes involved. Joseph Frank describes The Idiot as "the most personal of all Dostoevsky's major works, the book in which he embodies his most intimate, cherished, and sacred convictions." It includes descriptions of some of his most intense personal ordeals, such as epilepsy and mock execution, and explores moral, spiritual and philosophical themes consequent upon them. His primary motivation in writing the novel was to subject his own highest ideal, that of true Christian love, to the crucible of contemporary Russian society. The artistic method of conscientiously testing his central idea meant that the author could not always predict where the plot was going as he was writing. The novel is structurally awkward, and many critics have commented on its seemingly chaotic organization. According to Gary Saul Morson, "The Idiot violates every critical norm and yet somehow manages to achieve real greatness." Dostoevsky himself was of the opinion that the experiment was not entirely successful, but the novel remained his favourite among his own works. In a letter to Strakhov he wrote: "Much in the novel was written hurriedly, much is too diffuse and did not turn out well, but some of it did turn out well. I do not stand behind the novel, but I do stand behind the idea."
The Eighth Sister
Robert Dugoni - 2019
Then his former bureau chief shows up at his house with a risky new assignment: travel undercover to Moscow and locate a Russian agent believed to be killing members of a clandestine US spy cell known as the seven sisters.Desperate for money, Jenkins agrees to the mission and heads to the Russian capital. But when he finds the mastermind agent behind the assassinations—the so-called eighth sister—she is not who or what he was led to believe. Then again, neither is anyone else in this deadly game of cat and mouse.Pursued by a dogged Russian intelligence officer, Jenkins executes a daring escape across the Black Sea, only to find himself abandoned by the agency he serves. With his family and freedom at risk, Jenkins is in the fight of his life—against his own country.
The Shadow Girl
Misty Mount - 2019
Most teenagers feel unnoticed and unseen, but for Zylia, it's something much worse. She's disappearing from this world and doesn't know how to stop it. At times, she's not sure she wants to. Until she stumbles across a family mystery surrounding the disappearance of her great-aunt Angelica years earlier. During her quest to unravel the mystery, Zylia discovers she's able to cross the boundary and enter the "in between" world. Now, it's up to Zylia to save herself before she's trapped "in between" forever.
Lanny
Max Porter - 2019
It’s no different from many other villages in England: one pub, one church, red-brick cottages, council cottages and a few bigger houses dotted about. Voices rise up, as they might do anywhere, speaking of loving and needing and working and dying and walking the dogs.This village belongs to the people who live in it and to the people who lived in it hundreds of years ago. It belongs to England’s mysterious past and its confounding present. But it also belongs to Dead Papa Toothwort, a figure schoolchildren used to draw green and leafy, choked by tendrils growing out of his mouth. Dead Papa Toothwort is awake. He is listening to this twenty-first-century village, to his English symphony. He is listening, intently, for a mischievous, enchanting boy whose parents have recently made the village their home. Lanny.
Hunt Them Down
Simon Gervais - 2019
Will his daughter pay the price?Former Army Ranger Pierce Hunt is no stranger to violence. Fresh off a six-month suspension, he’s itching to hit a notorious Mexican drug cartel where it hurts, even if that means protecting crime boss Vicente Garcia, a witness in the case against sadistic cartel leader Valentina Mieles. But things spiral out of control when the cartel murders Garcia and kidnaps his granddaughter and an innocent bystander, Hunt’s own teenage daughter.Mieles wants the new head of the Garcia family on a plate—literally. Hunt has seventy-two hours to deliver, or Mieles will execute the girls live on social media. With the clock ticking, Hunt goes off the grid and teams up with Garcia’s daughter, a former lover and current enemy. To save the girls, Hunt will have to become a man he swore he’d never be again: an avenging killer without limits or mercy.
Where the Forest Meets the Stars
Glendy Vanderah - 2019
She throws herself into her work from dusk to dawn, until her solitary routine is disrupted by the appearance of a mysterious child who shows up at her cabin barefoot and covered in bruises.The girl calls herself Ursa, and she claims to have been sent from the stars to witness five miracles. With concerns about the child’s home situation, Jo reluctantly agrees to let her stay—just until she learns more about Ursa’s past.Jo enlists the help of her reclusive neighbor, Gabriel Nash, to solve the mystery of the charming child. But the more time they spend together, the more questions they have. How does a young girl not only read but understand Shakespeare? Why do good things keep happening in her presence? And why aren’t Jo and Gabe checking the missing children’s website anymore?Though the three have formed an incredible bond, they know difficult choices must be made. As the summer nears an end and Ursa gets closer to her fifth miracle, her dangerous past closes in. When it finally catches up to them, all of their painful secrets will be forced into the open, and their fates will be left to the stars.
The Magnificent Mrs Mayhew
Milly Johnson - 2019
Behind the fall of a successful man is usually another woman. Sophie Mayhew looks like she has the perfect life. Wife of rising political star John F Mayhew, a man who is one step away from the top job in the government, her glamour matches his looks, power, breeding and money. But John has made some stupid mistakes along the way, some of which are threatening to emerge. Still, all this can still be swept under the carpet as long as Sophie 'the trophy' plays her part in front of the cameras. But the words that come out of Sophie’s mouth one morning on the doorstep of their country house are not the words the spin doctors put in there. Bursting out of the restrictive mould she has been in since birth, Sophie flees to a place that was special to her as a child, a small village on the coast where she intends to be alone. But once there, she finds she becomes part of a community that warms her soul and makes her feel as if she is breathing properly for the first time. Sophie knows she won't be left in peace for long. Now she must decide: where does her real future lie? Praise for Milly Johnson: 'A glorious, heartfelt novel' ROWAN COLEMAN ‘Absolutely loved it. Milly's writing is like getting a big hug with just the right amount of bite underneath. I was rooting for Bonnie from the start' JANE FALLON ‘Bursting with warmth and joie de vivre’ JILL MANSELL ‘Warm, optimistic and romantic’ KATIE FFORDE
Surviving the Fall Box Set: The Complete Surviving the Fall Series - Books 1-12
Mike Kraus - 2019
When a devastating attack cripples and destroys every Internet-connected device in the country, Rick Waters is stranded a thousand miles from his wife, Dianne, and their children. To get back home he'll have to draw on every survival instinct he has as he's pulled into a web of lies and conspiracy that threaten not just his survival but that of the entire world. Surviving the Fall is a thrilling post-apocalyptic episodic series that focuses on Rick and Dianne Waters and how they each deal with the apocalypse. Stranded across the country away from his family, Rick must travel from California to Virginia to reunite with his wife and children, all while struggling to comprehend and deal with the horrors along the way. At home with her three children when she experiences the beginning of the end in a dramatic and deadly fashion, Dianne Waters has experience as a prepper and survivalist, but not even years of training and preparation have readied her for the darkness that comes with the end of the world. Now she must draw upon those skills to protect her loved ones and fight back against those who come against her and her family. This complete edition of Surviving the Fall features all twelve books in the series, each one full of action, suspense and drama as Rick and Dianne struggle to survive the end of days.
The Things I Know
Amanda Prowse - 2019
But she also wants more. To see the world. To own her own home. To fall madly in love.But those are fairy tales, and if her life is a fairy tale, then she’s the ugly duckling. Her deformed lip, her crooked limbs and her weak heart have kept her from taking chances. But that’s about to change.When Grayson Potts comes to stay, he’s unlike anyone Thomasina has ever met. He’s aloof, eccentric and exceptionally kind. He’s also totally unconcerned with the physical flaws that have always defined Thomasina.The two form a bond that neither has had before. It’s possible that it could become something more, but Thomasina also wonders if it’s too good to be true. By putting her heart on the line, Thomasina may open herself to heartbreak. But she may also open herself to so much more.
On Earth We're Briefly Gorgeous
Ocean Vuong - 2019
Written when the speaker, Little Dog, is in his late twenties, the letter unearths a family's history that began before he was born — a history whose epicenter is rooted in Vietnam — and serves as a doorway into parts of his life his mother has never known, all of it leading to an unforgettable revelation. At once a witness to the fraught yet undeniable love between a single mother and her son, it is also a brutally honest exploration of race, class, and masculinity. Asking questions central to our American moment, immersed as we are in addiction, violence, and trauma, but undergirded by compassion and tenderness, On Earth We're Briefly Gorgeous is as much about the power of telling one's own story as it is about the obliterating silence of not being heard.With stunning urgency and grace, Ocean Vuong writes of people caught between disparate worlds, and asks how we heal and rescue one another without forsaking who we are. The question of how to survive, and how to make of it a kind of joy, powers the most important debut novel of many years.
The Oceans Between Us
Gill Thompson - 2019
Only that she has lost something very precious.As the little boy waits in the orphanage, he hopes his mother will return.But then he finds himself on board a ship bound for Australia, the promise of a golden life ahead, and wonders: how will she find him in a land across the oceans?In Perth, a lonely wife takes in the orphaned child. But then she discovers the secret of his past. Should she keep quiet? Or tell the truth and risk losing the boy who has become her life?
A Memory Called Empire
Arkady Martine - 2019
But no one will admit that his death wasn't an accident--or that Mahit might be next to die, during a time of political instability in the highest echelons of the imperial court.Now, Mahit must discover who is behind the murder, rescue herself, and save her Station from Teixcalaan's unceasing expansion--all while navigating an alien culture that is all too seductive, engaging in intrigues of her own, and hiding a deadly technological secret--one that might spell the end of her Station and her way of life--or rescue it from annihilation.
August Origins
Alan Lee - 2019
Rather than join the force, he opens his own P.I. shop and hires out to local attorneys--until Sheriff Stackhouse comes calling, a stunner in designer khakis. Trouble has arrived, she explains, in the form of a gang general from the West Coach. He's galvanizing the drug trade using vicious strong-arm tactics, and the police can't identify him.The Sheriff begs Mackenzie to take a temporary assignment teaching at an inner city school, to infiltrate the general's operative ranks inside, identify the crime boss, and bring him down. It's an impossible task; he'd be a bull in a china shop. He could lose his license and people might get hurt. But if anyone can pull it off...
Call Your Daughter Home
Deb Spera - 2019
Gertrude, a mother of four, must make an unconscionable decision to save her daughters from starvation or die at the hands of an abusive husband. Retta is navigating a harsh world as a first-generation freed slave, still employed by the Coles, influential plantation proprietors who once owned her family. Annie is the matriarch of the Coles family and must come to terms with the terrible truth that has ripped her family apart.These three women seemingly have nothing in common, yet as they unite to stand up to the terrible injustices that have long plagued the small town, they find strength in the bond that ties women together. Told in the pitch-perfect voices of Gertrude, Retta and Annie, Call Your Daughter Home is an audacious, timeless story about the power of family, deep-buried secrets and the ferocity of motherhood.
Pleasant Day
Vera Jane Cook - 2019
As Pleasant struggles with her mother's distance, her father's infidelity and the death of her best friend, she draws closer to Clarissa, an older woman with an uncanny, almost psychic, ability to 'read people.'As Clarissa uncovers the stories behind the murders, both Pleasant and Clarissa's worlds are transformed by the truths they’re forced to accept, and both find solace and strength in the shared histories that have shaped them.
Queenie Malone's Paradise Hotel
Ruth Hogan - 2019
She loved fizzy drinks, swear words, fish fingers and Catholic churches, but most of all she loved living in Brighton in Queenie Malone's Magnificent Paradise Hotel with its endearing and loving family of misfits - staff and guests alike.But Tilly's childhood was shattered when her mother sent her away from the only home she'd ever loved to boarding school with little explanation and no warning. Now, Tilda has grown into an independent woman still damaged by her mother's unaccountable cruelty. Wary of people, her only friend is her dog, Eli. But when her mother dies, Tilda goes back to Brighton and with the help of her beloved Queenie sets about unraveling the mystery of her exile from The Paradise Hotel and discovers that her mother was not the woman she thought she knew at all ... Mothers and daughters ... their story can be complicated ... it can also turn out to have a happy ending.
Home for Wounded Hearts
Ashley Farley - 2019
She's established a shelter for women in crisis. Not only for homeless women but also for those who are suffering from abuse, dealing with addiction, or coping with grief over the loss of a loved one. Faith's mission, when she opens her doors, is to help the residents mend their broken hearts. In the midst of that challenge, she struggles to find additional funding to keep her program afloat while balancing the demands of career and home.This standalone spinoff of the bestselling Sweeney Sisters series presents a cast of memorable characters. Tilda, who is convinced she has Alzheimer's. Molly, a street-smart homeless woman who has an endearing childlike quality. Caroline, whose gardening hobby has become an obsession since the death of her son. And Jenny, a young woman whose anger at her husband for having an affair with her best friend has spiraled out of controlJoin these women in their day-to-day lives as they endeavor to move from uncertainty toward independence. When the actions of a young resident's abusive stepfather threaten the residents' lives as well as the future of the shelter, tension mounts and bonds of friendship are tested in a dramatic conclusion. A Sweeney Sisters Series standalone spinoff.
Her Last Promise
Kathryn Hughes - 2019
A surprising new beginning... Fall in love this summer with Her Last Promise, a gripping, heartwrenching story of how hope can blossom in the ruins of tragedy and of the redeeming power of love. From No. 1 bestselling author Kathryn Hughes. What real readers are saying about Her Last Promise... 'Hope rises from despair and new beginnings are forged in the most extraordinary and unexpected way. Kathryn Hughes delves deeply into the heart and soul of her characters, making them totally relatable...like friends you really care for. My addiction to this novel was total and uncompromising *****' 'Wonderful! First book I have read by Kathryn Hughes and will now read her previous stories. I loved it *****' 'Another great story from Kathryn Hughes *****''As always, a lovely story by Kathryn Hughes *****''I really enjoyed this book, especially the nostalgic 1970's descriptions ****'Tara Richards was just a girl when she lost her mother. Years later when Tara receives a letter from a London solicitor its contents shake her to the core. Someone has left her a key to a safe deposit box. In the box lies an object that will change everything Tara thought she knew and lead her on a journey to deepest Spain in search of the answers that have haunted her for forty years.Violet Skye regrets her decision to travel abroad leaving her young daughter behind. As the sun dips below the mountains, she reminds herself she is doing this for their future. Tonight, 4th June 1978, will be the start of a new life for them. This night will indeed change Violet's destiny, in the most unexpected of ways... Readers love the powerful novels of Kathryn Hughes: 'A wonderful, enthralling story'Lesley Pearse'Gripping'Good Housekeeping'A heartbreakingly powerful read'Sun
The Memory House
Rachel Hauck - 2019
But a tornado sweeps through Waco, Texas, taking her hopes of a bright future with it. Seven years later, widowed and childless, she is living with her mother and older than her years. It is not until she runs into an old high school friend, Don Callahan, that a small spark of hope for what life could be is rekindled. However, a secret Everleigh has kept threatens their happiness and future.Beck Holiday is a tough, angry, New York City cop. Her father’s death on 9/11 took not just her father’s life but many of her memories as well. She learns that she’s inherited a house from an Everleigh Callahan—whom Beck apparently knows but cannot remember—in north Florida, and her suspension from work because of her anger issues leaves her with time to make the trip to figure out why. Upon her arrival, she meets Bruno Endicott, who clearly remembers her. Beck must work to regain her memory, face her anger, and open her heart to love.Connected through a beautiful house in ways they will both come to understand, both women must find the courage to face the truth about themselves and their past in order to truly love and be loved in return.
Blessing in Disguise
Danielle Steel - 2019
Isabelle’s relationship with Putnam, and her time at his château on the Normandy coast, are the stuff of dreams. But it turns real when she becomes pregnant, for she knows that marriage is out of the question. When Isabelle returns to New York, she enters a new relationship that she hopes will be more stable and traditional. But she soon realizes she has made a terrible mistake and again finds herself a single mother. With two young daughters and no husband, Isabelle finally and unexpectedly finds happiness and a love that gives her a third child, a baby as happy as her beloved father. And yet, once again, life brings dramatic changes. The three girls grow up to be very different women and Isabelle’s relationship with each of them is unique. While raising her girls alone, Isabelle also begins building a career as a successful art consultant. Then one final turn of fate brings a past secret to light, bonds mother and daughters closer, and turns a challenge into a blessing.
Rules of Survival: A Post-Apocalyptic EMP Survival Thriller (Survival Rules Series Book 1)
Jack Hunt - 2019
Tyler Ford is a tour guide, a brother, and the son of a prepper from Whitefish, Montana. Robbed of a childhood and forced to learn his father’s stringent rules of survival for every kind of apocalypse, he couldn’t wait to leave home, but when an EMP obliterates the United States electrical grid, takes out communication and stalls vehicles, Tyler must face the past and remember what he taught him if he hopes to make it out of Vegas alive. When chaos erupts, will you know the rules to survive? Erika Lyons just wanted an evening away from the hectic world of hotel management but she got more than she expected. There’s only one thing worse than a bad date, that’s relying on them to keep you alive. Demanding guests were a challenge, desperate ones, pure hell. As food stops being delivered, vehicles clog up the streets, and society begins to unravel, sin city could be the most dangerous place in America. In a world without power, fighting to stay alive may be the only rule that matters. With no warning, no communication, and planes falling out of the sky, the Ford’s may be the only ones who know what it takes to thrive. Can Tyler, and two ordinary strangers survive the perilous journey home to Montana? Can the Ford family hold it together long enough to push back the tide of violence, looters and roving gangs? And will they help the community survive as the world is thrown into darkness? Rules of Survival is book one in Survival Rules, a post-apocalyptic EMP thriller series following the Ford family and their community as they fight to survive after an EMP destroys the nation’s power grid.
Happiness for Beginners
Carole Matthews - 2019
There's Anthony the anti-social sheep, Tina Turner the alpaca with attitude, and the definitely-not-miniature pig, Teacup.Molly runs the farm as an alternative school for kids who haven't thrived in mainstream education. It's full on, but she wouldn't have it any other way. So when the well-groomed Shelby Dacre turns up at Hope Farm asking to enrol his son Lucas, Molly isn't fazed.But Lucas is distant and soon Molly realises he might be more of a handful than she anticipated. And then there's the added problem that his dad is distractingly handsome. Molly has her beloved farm to think of - could letting Lucas and Shelby in be a terrible mistake, or the start of something wonderful?
Coming Home to Holly Close Farm
Julie Houston - 2019
Charlie's sister Daisy, a landscape gardener, is also back home in desperate need of company and some fun. Their great-grandmother, Madge – now in her early nineties – reveals she has a house, Holly Close Farm, mysteriously abandoned over sixty years ago, and persuades the girls to project manage its renovation. As work gets underway, the sisters start uncovering their family's history, and the dark secrets that are hidden at the Farm. A heart-breaking tale of wartime romance, jealousy and betrayal slowly emerges, but with a moral at its end: true love can withstand any obstacle, and, before long, Charlie dares to believe in love again too... Julie Houston's novels are heart-warming, full of joy and completely addictive. Perfect for all fans of Katie Fforde and Jill Mansell.
Polar Vortex
Matthew Mather - 2019
No distress calls. Vanished into thin air.Mitch Matthews is a writer struggling to make ends meet when his wife's brother Josh offers them a first-class seat on a flight from Hong Kong to New York. When his wife needs to stay behind, it becomes an opportunity for some quality daddy-daughter time with his five-year-old Lilly.At check-in, they run into a strange Norwegian arguing with a huge Russian. A mysterious redhead is guarding a package in the business lounge. But everything is fine, until...Within hours of Allied Airlines 695 disappearing, a massive international search is launched. Aircraft and ships are dispatched from Russia, China, America, Canada, and Norway. In an area overflown by dozens of satellites from as many nations, ringed by radar and missile installations dating from the Cold War...How can a modern airliner simply vanish in one of the most heavily monitored places on Earth?
When You're Gone
Brooke Harris - 2019
Everyone’s noticed that the injury which stopped Annie Fagan’s father from working doesn’t prevent him from hitting his wife. But a man’s home is his castle, and no one is going to intervene.Until Annie runs into Arthur ‘Sketch’ Talbot. Sketch is determined to help Annie, and the two soon fall in love. But Annie’s father won’t give his daughter up lightly, and Sketch’s attempts to save her will have devastating consequences…NowHolly’s world is falling apart. Her unborn baby is seriously ill, her relationship is fracturing before her eyes, and her Nana is dying. But Nana has one final wish before she leaves: to read, one last time, the handwritten story of her first – and last – love, Albert ‘Sketch’ Talbot.As Holly reads to Nana, could it help her find the strength to face her own future? Could fulfilling her grandmother’s final wish really be a gift for Holly?Compelling, heart-breaking, and emotionally vivid, When You’re Gone will break your heart and fix it anew. A gripping and emotional novel about family, love and sacrifice, for fans of Diane Chamberlain, Susan Lewis and Kathryn Hughes’ The Letter.Previously published as When It Rains. This edition contains significant editorial revisions.
Spring House
Mary Ellen Taylor - 2019
With the help of her fiancé’s caring best friend, it’s sure to draw much-needed tourist revenue to Cape Hudson, a town rich in southern history.However, it’s Spring House, the caretaker’s cottage on the grounds, that holds the most intriguing history for Megan. In a cache of old letters, she’s drawn into the captivating life of a young woman who embarked on her own dream adventure a century ago. With each one, Megan is swept away into her enthralling world—and all its secrets. But Megan has secrets too.Now, as one woman’s past unfolds in each revealing letter, Megan will discover more about herself and about the emotional tides of family that can be weathered with those you love and trust the most.
Rhyme & Reason
Nia Forrester - 2019
But after months of silence, he thought he was over it. He’d moved on, hadn’t he? And as far as he knew, she might have done the same. Now Zora is back from California, and he’s thrown into an immediate tailspin. Nothing’s changed. She’s the one, the only, his rhyme, and his reason … But this ain’t no college romance. There are serious, grown-folks’ obstacles standing in the way, and the other woman in his life isn’t even the half of it. And sometimes growing up might mean moving on … Over a few short summer weeks, Deuce and Zora will have to decide whether the great love they shared in the past, is enough of a foundation to build a future.
The Family Upstairs
Lisa Jewell - 2019
Be careful who you let in. Soon after her twenty-fifth birthday, Libby Jones returns home from work to find the letter she’s been waiting for her entire life. She rips it open with one driving thought: I am finally going to know who I am. She soon learns not only the identity of her birth parents, but also that she is the sole inheritor of their abandoned mansion on the banks of the Thames in London’s fashionable Chelsea neighborhood, worth millions. Everything in Libby’s life is about to change. But what she can’t possibly know is that others have been waiting for this day as well—and she is on a collision course to meet them. Twenty-five years ago, police were called to 16 Cheyne Walk with reports of a baby crying. When they arrived, they found a healthy ten-month-old happily cooing in her crib in the bedroom. Downstairs in the kitchen lay three dead bodies, all dressed in black, next to a hastily scrawled note. And the four other children reported to live at Cheyne Walk were gone. In The Family Upstairs, the master of “bone-chilling suspense” (People) brings us the can’t-look-away story of three entangled families living in a house with the darkest of secrets.
The Lager Queen of Minnesota
J. Ryan Stradal - 2019
A family is split when their father leaves their shared inheritance entirely to Helen, his younger daughter. Despite baking award-winning pies at the local nursing home, her older sister, Edith, struggles to make what most people would call a living. So she can't help wondering what her life would have been like with even a portion of the farm money her sister kept for herself.With the proceeds from the farm, Helen builds one of the most successful light breweries in the country, and makes their company motto ubiquitous: "Drink lots. It's Blotz." Where Edith has a heart as big as Minnesota, Helen's is as rigid as a steel keg. Yet one day, Helen will find she needs some help herself, and she could find a potential savior close to home. . . if it's not too late.Meanwhile, Edith's granddaughter, Diana, grows up knowing that the real world requires a tougher constitution than her grandmother possesses. She earns a shot at learning the IPA business from the ground up--will that change their fortunes forever, and perhaps reunite her splintered family?Here we meet a cast of lovable, funny, quintessentially American characters eager to make their mark in a world that's often stacked against them. In this deeply affecting family saga, resolution can take generations, but when it finally comes, we're surprised, moved, and delighted.
Only One Life
Ashley Farley - 2019
He made her feel worthy and loved. Their marriage was also an escape from her sister’s bullying, her father’s scrutiny, and her chilly and enigmatic mother. But when tragedy strikes on the night she gives birth, Julia’s happiness is shattered. She has no choice but to return home to her family’s South Carolina mansion, where the grief and guilt buried in her mother’s past await her.As a young woman trapped in a bitter marriage, Julia’s mother, Iris, once needed her own means of escape. In Lily, she found a best friend. In the flower shop they opened, she discovered independence. Then came a transgression—unforgivable, unforgettable, and unresolved—that changed Iris’s life forever.Now, in Iris’s most desperate hour, her only hope is to regain the trust of the daughter she loves—and to share the secrets of the heart that could rebuild a family’s broken bonds.
The Butterfly Room
Lucinda Riley - 2019
Still living in her beautiful family home, Admiral House, set in the glorious Suffolk countryside where she spent her own idyllic childhood catching butterflies with her beloved father, and raised her own children, Posy knows she must make an agonising decision. Despite the memories the house holds, and the exquisite garden she has spent twenty-five years creating, the house is crumbling around her, and Posy knows the time has come to sell it.Then a face appears from the past - Freddie, her first love, who abandoned her and left her heartbroken fifty years ago. Already struggling to cope with her son Sam’s inept business dealings, and the sudden reappearance of her younger son Nick after ten years in Australia, Posy is reluctant to trust in Freddie’s renewed affection. And unbeknown to Posy, Freddie - and Admiral House - have a devastating secret to reveal . . . Full of her trademark mix of unforgettable characters and heart-breaking secrets, The Butterfly Room is the new spellbinding, multi-generational story from Sunday Times bestseller Lucinda Riley.
The Victory Garden
Rhys Bowen - 2019
She is convinced by a cheeky and handsome Australian pilot that she can do more, and it is not long before she falls in love with him and accepts his proposal of marriage.When he is sent back to the front, Emily volunteers as a “land girl,” tending to the neglected grounds of a large Devonshire estate. It’s here that Emily discovers the long-forgotten journals of a medicine woman who devoted her life to her herbal garden. The journals inspire Emily, and in the wake of devastating news, they are her saving grace. Emily’s lover has not only died a hero but has left her terrified—and with child. Since no one knows that Emily was never married, she adopts the charade of a war widow.As Emily learns more about the volatile power of healing with herbs, the found journals will bring her to the brink of disaster, but may open a path to her destiny.
A Wedding on Lily Pond Lane
Emily Harvale - 2019
The Angel Bell is ringing for Mia and Jet’s Big Day – but will the Wedding of the Year go without a hitch? Every bride wants the perfect wedding and Mia Ward is no exception. But she is the only bride in Little Pondale and everyone in the village has ideas for her Big Day. Drowning in suggestions, Mia needs some help. When she bumps into childhood friend, Breanna Wright on a shopping trip to London, Mia’s convinced it’s Fate. Breanna’s only ambition was to be a wedding planner with her own business, The Wright Wedding … so Mia doesn’t hesitate. Breanna’s now got three months to plan a wedding where the sky’s the limit, budget-wise. She should be over the moon. Especially as she’ll get a chance to see old friends again, including her first love. There’s just one tiny hitch ... Breanna doesn’t have a wedding-planning business. She should tell Mia there has been a slight mistake, but as usual Breanna’s life isn’t running smoothly and she could really use a break. And when you’ve dreamt about planning weddings all your life, how difficult can it be? Will this be the chance Breanna’s longed for? Or will Mia’s Dream Wedding be Breanna’s biggest disaster yet? What readers and reviewers are saying about this series: Love everything to do with Lily Pond Lane and its characters – Rachel's Random Resources - TOP 500 REVIEWER An idyllic read that really gets you in the festive mood. Loved it. – Sarah Hardy - TOP 500 REVIEWER The book is as beautiful on the inside as the cover looks - Whispering Stories Book Blog - TOP 500 REVIEWER Wow oh wow. Emily has written a fantastic Christmas edition to the Amazing Lily Pond Lane series. - dash fan A fabulous festive read and I can’t wait for the next visit to Little Pond Lane! - Blackcountryshaz I loved it and highly recommend it! - Donna Maguire - TOP 1000 REVIEWER A merry, captivating, entertaining read that is a delightful reminder that sometimes wishes really do come true. - Zoe (whatsbetterthanbooks)
Wonder
Christina C. Jones - 2019
The one who followed the rules, never went looking for trouble – I kept to myself. I just wanted to take care of my family. To not constantly look over my shoulder, worried about the things that went bump in the night. I just wanted to survive. But that wasn’t meant to be. As luck – or fate, or something – would have it, the trouble found me. I followed a rabbit through the wreckage of a half-ruined world to get back what was mine, and wound up at the end of it. In Wonderland. But there’s nothing magical about it. (While Wonder does feature a central love story, it is not a contemporary romance novel)
Whisper in the Night (Detectives Kane and Alton #6)
D.K. Hood - 2019
One thing she knows instantly – her wrists are bound and she’s tied to a chair, unable to move. As she screams for help, she hears footsteps outside. He’s coming… Fifteen-year-old Lindy Rosen has been having nightmares for weeks, waking in a panic, screaming that there’s a man in her room watching her sleep. Her parents assumed it was her overactive imagination, but when one morning they find Lindy missing from her bedroom, they’re not so sure. Detective Jenna Alton is called in to investigate. Within hours of the schoolgirl going missing, the kidnapper reaches out to Jenna with a video of Lindy bound and tied to a chair, crying to be set free. And a simple message – you’ve got 24 hours to find her or I kill her. Jenna’s team work around the clock to try to find Lindy before the deadline, but time runs out, and Jenna receives a devastating message. The killer has made good on his promise. He’s playing a dangerous game. And no one knows what his next move will be. But just two days later, one of Lindy’s school friends is taken in the middle of the night and the countdown begins again. Completely addictive from the very start, if you like Lisa Regan, Karin Slaughter and Rachel Abbott you’ll love Whisper in the Night. What readers are saying about D.K. Hood: ‘Wow!!! I read this book in one sitting… gripping… I was swept away.’ Goodreads Reviewer, 5 stars ‘WOW, WOW, WOW!!!!! ABSOLUTELY AMAZING!!!... From literally the first page you’re hooked and gripped!! Kept me on the edge of my seat throughout. I just couldn’t put it down… My new all time favourite author!!... I just wish I could’ve given it more than five stars!!!’ Goodreads Reviewer, 5 stars ‘Wow, this book was amazing… totally thrilling and had me hanging on to every word… Leaves you wanting more… Well worth 5 stars, in fact I wish I could give it more.’ Bonnie’s Book Talk, 5 stars ‘GO AND READ THIS BOOK!’ Loving Life Everyday ‘I absolutely love D.K. Hood… An amazing author!!... A book that I absolutely devoured!’ Goodreads Reviewer, 5 stars ‘Oh my flipping goodness!!... kept me guessing until the very last page… I cannot fault this book at all.’ The Writing Garnet ‘I did not want this book to end! But it was so good that I was reading faster and faster!’ Musings of a Tired Mummy ‘I was riveted. And I simply had to know how it would all end. I’d read the author again in a heartbeat!’ Goodreads Reviewer ‘From the beginning this book was intense!... I was on the edge of my seat!... Make sure to keep the lights on!’ Touch My Spine Book Reviews ‘Absolutely beyond brilliant!!!... A definite must-read.’ Goodreads reviewer, 5 stars ‘Keeps you guessing till the end. Highly recommend this author.
The Place on Dalhousie
Melina Marchetta - 2019
Two years later, Rosie returns to the house and living there is Martha, whom Seb Gennaro married less than a year after the death of Rosie’s mother. Martha is struggling to fulfil Seb’s dream, while Rosie is coming to terms with new responsibilities. And so begins a stand-off between two women who refuse to move out of the home they both lay claim to.As the battle lines are drawn, Jimmy Hailler re-enters Rosie’s life. Having always watched other families from the perimeters, he’s now grappling, heartbreakingly, with forming one of his own . . .An unforgettable story about losing love and finding love; about the interconnectedness of lives and the true nature of belonging, from one of our most acclaimed writers.
The Rescue
Steven Konkoly - 2019
Hired by an influential US senator to liberate his daughter from a human-trafficking ring, Decker never anticipated sabotage or that the assault could go so disastrously wrong. The hostage is dead. His team is wiped out, and so are their families, including Decker’s own wife and son—eliminated one by one by the Russian mafia. And he’s survived to take the fall.When he’s inexplicably freed soon into a ten-year sentence in federal prison, Decker suspects another setup. And private investigator Harlow Mackenzie knows he’s right. She has evidence that a power greater than the Russian mob was behind the raid that ruined Decker’s life.The next move in a nationwide cat-and-mouse game of high-level sedition is up to them. Fueled by revenge and an obsession to clear his name, Decker has only one mission: to destroy a growing conspiracy before it’s too late.
Don’t Tell Teacher
Suzy K. Quinn - 2019
With its excellent reputation, Lizzie knows it’ll be a safe space away from home.But there's something strange happening at school. Parents are forbidden from entering the grounds, and there are bars across the classroom windows.Why is Tom coming home exhausted, unable to remember his day? What are the strange marks on his arm? And why do the children seem afraid to talk? Lizzie is descending into every parent’s worst nightmare: her little boy is in danger. But will she be able to protect him before it’s too late? *** If you loved Behind Closed Doors, Sometimes I Lie and The Couple Next Door, you won’t be able to put down the chilling new psychological thriller from Suzy K Quinn. Don’t Tell Teacher will have you hooked from the very first page!
Sabrina & Corina: Stories
Kali Fajardo-Anstine - 2019
Kali Fajardo-Anstine’s magnetic story collection breathes life into her Latina characters of indigenous ancestry and the land they inhabit. Set against the remarkable backdrop of Denver, Colorado–a place that is as fierce as it is exquisite–these women navigate the land the way they navigate their lives: with caution, grace, and quiet force. In “Sugar Babies,” ancestry and heritage are hidden inside the earth but tend to rise during land disputes. “Any Further West” follows a sex worker and her daughter as they leave their ancestral home in southern Colorado only to find a foreign and hostile land in California. In “Tomi,” a woman leaves prison and finds herself in a gentrified city that is a shadow of the one she remembers from her childhood. And in the title story, “Sabrina & Corina,” a Denver family falls into a cycle of violence against women, coming together only through ritual.Sabrina & Corina is a moving narrative of unrelenting feminine power and an exploration of the universal experiences of abandonment, heritage, and an eternal sense of home.
The Stationery Shop
Marjan Kamali - 2019
Roya is a dreamy, idealistic teenager living in 1953 Tehran who, amidst the political upheaval of the time, finds a literary oasis in kindly Mr. Fakhri’s neighborhood book and stationery shop. She always feels safe in his dusty store, overflowing with fountain pens, shiny ink bottles, and thick pads of soft writing paper.When Mr. Fakhri, with a keen instinct for a budding romance, introduces Roya to his other favorite customer—handsome Bahman, who has a burning passion for justice and a love for Rumi’s poetry—she loses her heart at once. And, as their romance blossoms, the modest little stationery shop remains their favorite place in all of Tehran.A few short months later, on the eve of their marriage, Roya agrees to meet Bahman at the town square, but suddenly, violence erupts—a result of the coup d’etat that forever changes their country’s future. In the chaos, Bahman never shows. For weeks, Roya tries desperately to contact him, but her efforts are fruitless. With a sorrowful heart, she resigns herself to never seeing him again.Until, more than sixty years later, an accident of fate leads her back to Bahman and offers her a chance to ask him the questions that have haunted her for more than half a century: Why did he leave? Where did he go? How was he able to forget her?The Stationery Shop is a beautiful and timely exploration of devastating loss, unbreakable family bonds, and the overwhelming power of love.
Some Choose Darkness
Charlie Donlea - 2019
. . The truth is easy to miss, even when it’s right in front of us. As a forensic reconstructionist, Rory Moore sheds light on cold-case homicides by piecing together crime scene details others fail to see. Cleaning out her late father’s law office a week after his burial, she receives a call that plunges her into a decades-old case come to life once more. In the summer of 1979, five Chicago women went missing. The predator, nicknamed The Thief, left no bodies and no clues behind—until police received a package from a mysterious woman named Angela Mitchell, whose unorthodox investigation skills appear to have led to his identity. But before police could question her, Angela disappeared. Forty years later, The Thief is about to be paroled for Angela’s murder—the only crime the DA could pin on him. As a former client of her father’s, Rory becomes reluctantly involved with the killer—though he continues to insist he didn’t murder Angela. Now he wants Rory to do what her father once promised: prove that Angela is, in fact, still alive. As Rory begins reconstructing Angela’s last days, another killer emerges from the shadows, replicating those long-ago murders. With every startling discovery she makes, Rory becomes more deeply entangled in the enigma of Angela Mitchell—and in The Thief’s tormented mind. Drawing connections between past and present is the only way to stop the nightmare, but even Rory can’t be prepared for the full, terrifying truth that is emerging . . .
Cemetery Road
Greg Iles - 2019
But his father is terminally ill, and he must return to his childhood home - a place he vowed he would never go back to.Bienville, Mississippi, is no longer the city Marshall remembers. His family's 150-year-old newspaper is failing, and Jet Talal, the love of his youth, has married into the family of Max Matheson, one of a dozen powerful patriarchs who rule the town through the exclusive Bienville Poker Club. The city's only hope of economic salvation is a new, billion-dollar Chinese paper mill. But on the verge of the deal's consummation, two deaths rock Bienville to its core.Joining forces with his former lover, Marshall begins digging for the truth. But he and Jet soon discover that the soil of Mississippi is a minefield where explosive secrets can be far more destructive than injustice.
The Last Year of the War
Susan Meissner - 2019
Then her father, a legal U.S. resident for nearly two decades, is suddenly arrested on suspicion of being a Nazi sympathizer. The family is sent to an internment camp in Texas, where, behind the armed guards and barbed wire, Elise feels stripped of everything beloved and familiar, including her own identity.The only thing that makes the camp bearable is meeting fellow internee Mariko Inoue, a Japanese-American teen from Los Angeles, whose friendship empowers Elise to believe the life she knew before the war will again be hers. Together in the desert wilderness, Elise and Mariko hold tight the dream of being young American women with a future beyond the fences.
Lost and Found
Danielle Steel - 2019
It all starts with a fall from a ladder, in a firehouse in New York City. The firehouse has been converted into a unique Manhattan home and studio where renowned photographer Madison Allen works and lives after raising three children on her own. But the accident, which happens while Maddie is sorting through long-forgotten personal mementos and photos, results in more than a broken ankle. It changes her life. Spurred by old memories, the forced pause in her demanding schedule, and an argument with her daughter that leads to a rare crisis of confidence, Maddie embarks on a road trip. She hopes to answer questions about the men she loved and might have married—but didn’t—in the years after she was left alone with three young children. Wearing a cast and driving a rented SUV, she sets off to reconnect with three very different men—one in Boston, one in Chicago, and another in Wyoming—to know once and for all if the decisions she made long ago were the right ones. Before moving forward into the future, she is compelled to confront the past. As the miles and days pass, and with each new encounter, Maddie’s life comes into clearer focus and a new future takes shape. A deeply felt story about love, motherhood, family, and fate, Lost and Found is an irresistible new novel from America’s most dynamic storyteller.
One Good Deed
David Baldacci - 2019
When war veteran Aloysius Archer is released from Carderock Prison, he is sent to Poca City on parole with a short list of do's and a much longer list of don'ts: do report regularly to his parole officer, don't go to bars, certainly don't drink alcohol, do get a job--and don't ever associate with loose women. The small town quickly proves more complicated and dangerous than Archer's years serving in the war or his time in jail. Within a single night, his search for gainful employment - and a stiff drink - leads him to a local bar, where he is hired for what seems like a simple job: to collect a debt owed to a powerful local businessman, Hank Pittleman. Soon Archer discovers that recovering the debt won't be so easy. The indebted man has a furious grudge against Hank and refuses to pay; Hank's clever mistress has her own designs on Archer; and both Hank and Archer's stern parole officer, Miss Crabtree, are keeping a sharp eye on him. When a murder takes place right under Archer's nose, police suspicions rise against the ex-convict, and Archer realizes that the crime could send him right back to prison . . . if he doesn't use every skill in his arsenal to track down the real killer.
The Last Thing You Surrender
Leonard Pitts Jr. - 2019
A young black woman, widowed by the same events at Pearl, finds unexpected opportunity and a dangerous friendship in a segregated Alabama shipyard feeding the war. A black man, who as a child saw his parents brutally lynched, is conscripted to fight Nazis for a country he despises and discovers a new kind of patriotism in the all-black 761st Tank Battalion.Set against a backdrop of violent racial conflict on both the front lines and the home front, The Last Thing You Surrender explores the powerful moral struggles of individuals from a divided nation. What does it take to change someone’s mind about race? What does it take for a country and a people to move forward, transformed?
Beyond the Shadow of Night
Ray Kingfisher - 2019
On a small farm, two boys are born within days of each other, both Ukrainian, one Jewish. Mykhail and Asher grow up inseparable, together finding friendship, adventure and escape from the harshness of Russian rule. But after Asher’s family flees to Warsaw, their worlds are torn to shreds by the Second World War.The war brings cruelty to both boys. Although Asher finds love in Warsaw, the city is far from the haven his family sought; meanwhile Mykhail becomes a victim of the bitter struggle for Ukraine. But worse follows in the shape of the Treblinka death camp. There, both men must obey orders, and both find their morals compromised and their souls tortured.The inhuman horrors they witness cast long shadows. Many years later, their paths cross once more, and each man must confront the legacy of his actions. When the darkest of secrets can no longer be kept hidden, can their friendship survive the final reckoning?
Beyond the Point
Claire Gibson - 2019
Set at the U.S. Military Academy at West Point, this is an amazing debut novel. Duty. Honor. Country. That’s West Point’s motto, and every cadet who passes through its stone gates vows to live it. But on the eve of 9/11, as Dani, Hannah and Avery face four grueling years ahead, they realize they’ll only survive if they do it together.Everyone knows Dani is going places. With athletic talent and a brilliant mind, she navigates West Point’s predominantly male environment with wit and confidence, breaking stereotypes and embracing new friends.Hannah’s grandfather, a legendary Army general, offers a stark warning about the dangers that lie ahead, but she moves forward anyway, letting faith guide her path. When she meets her soul mate at West Point, the future looks perfect, just as planned.Wild child Avery moves fast and doesn’t mind breaking a few rules (and hearts) along the way. But she can’t outpace her self-doubt, and the harder she tries, the further it leads her down a treacherous path.The world—of business, of love, and of war—awaits Dani, Hannah, and Avery beyond the gates of West Point. These three women know that what doesn’t kill you makes you stronger. But soon, that adage no longer rings true—for their future, or their friendship. As they’re pulled in different directions, will their hard-forged bond prevail or shatter?Beyond the Point is a heartfelt look at how our closest friends can become our fiercest battle buddies. After all, the greatest battles we fight rarely require a uniform.
This Is How You Lose the Time War
Amal El-Mohtar - 2019
It reads: Burn before reading.And thus begins an unlikely correspondence between two rival agents hellbent on securing the best possible future for their warring factions. Now, what began as a taunt, a battlefield boast, grows into something more.Except discovery of their bond would be death for each of them. There’s still a war going on, after all. And someone has to win that war. That’s how war works. Right?
The Life We Wanted
Kelsey Kingsley - 2019
The looks and charm to get him any woman he laid his eyes on. All the friends he could ever ask for.But something was always missing.That is, until he receives a letter, telling him that he’s a father to a fifteen-year-old boy.Now, with the addition of his son, a love interest he never expected, and a whole new set of responsibilities, Sebastian finds himself happier than he’s ever been.But old habits die hard, and when life finally gives him everything he wanted, he’ll have to find a way to keep his past from ruining the present.
City of Girls
Elizabeth Gilbert - 2019
Told from the perspective of an older woman as she looks back on her youth with both pleasure and regret (but mostly pleasure), City of Girls explores themes of female sexuality and promiscuity, as well as the idiosyncrasies of true love.In 1940, nineteen-year-old Vivian Morris has just been kicked out of Vassar College, owing to her lackluster freshman-year performance. Her affluent parents send her to Manhattan to live with her Aunt Peg, who owns a flamboyant, crumbling midtown theater called the Lily Playhouse. There Vivian is introduced to an entire cosmos of unconventional and charismatic characters, from the fun-chasing showgirls to a sexy male actor, a grand-dame actress, a lady-killer writer, and no-nonsense stage manager. But when Vivian makes a personal mistake that results in professional scandal, it turns her new world upside down in ways that it will take her years to fully understand. Ultimately, though, it leads her to a new understanding of the kind of life she craves-and the kind of freedom it takes to pursue it. It will also lead to the love of her life, a love that stands out from all the rest.Now ninety-five years old and telling her story at last, Vivian recalls how the events of those years altered the course of her life - and the gusto and autonomy with which she approached it. At some point in a woman's life, she just gets tired of being ashamed all the time, she muses. After that, she is free to become whoever she truly is. Written with a powerful wisdom about human desire and connection, City of Girls is a love story like no other.
Whose Waves These Are
Amanda Dykes - 2019
Decades later, Annie returns to the coastal Maine town where stone ruins spark her curiosity and her search for answers faces a battle against time.
How the Light Gets in
Jolina Petersheim - 2019
She hopes the Mennonite community will be a quiet place to grieve and piece together next steps.Ruth and her family are welcomed by Elam, her husband's cousin, who invites them to stay at his cranberry farm through the harvest. Sifting through fields of berries and memories of a marriage that was broken long before her husband died, Ruth finds solace in the beauty of the land and healing through hard work and budding friendship. She also encounters the possibility of new love with Elam, whose gentle encouragement awakens hopes and dreams she thought she'd lost forever.But an unexpected twist threatens to unseat the happy ending Ruth is about to write for herself. On the precipice of a fresh start and a new marriage, Ruth must make an impossible decision: which path to choose if her husband isn't dead after all.
A Vintage Summer
Cathy Bramley - 2019
Realising it’s time to cut and run, she packs up and moves back home – but finds her family in disarray. In need of a new place to stay, Lottie takes up the offer of a live-in job managing a local vineyard. There’s a lot to learn – she didn’t even know grapes could grow so far north!Butterworth Wines in the rolling Derbyshire hills has always been run on love and passion but a tragic death has left everyone at a loss. Widowed Betsy is trying to keep the place afloat but is harbouring a debilitating secret. Meanwhile her handsome but interfering grandson, Jensen, is trying to convince her to sell up and move into a home.Lottie’s determined to save Butterworth Wines, but with all this and an unpredictable English summer to deal with, it’ll be a challenge.And that’s before she discovers something that will turn her summer – and her world – upside down . . .Your favourite authors have loved reading Cathy's novels:‘Delightful!’ Katie Fforde‘A page-turner of a story’ Milly Johnson'Delightfully warm with plenty of twists and turns' Trisha Ashley
Without Precedent
J.D. Trafford - 2019
As the first defense attorney on call to get pharmaceutical companies out of trouble, Matt is rising in the judicial system exactly as he planned. Until his sister dies of a heroin overdose.Now, torn between conscience and career, the newly minted law partner faces a critical choice: defend the very companies that manufactured the addictive drugs, or give up his fiancée and his hard-won dream job to fight for justice in his sister’s name.Returning to his blue-collar hometown with a ragtag band of law-school misfits by his side, Matt squares off against a team of New York corporate attorneys in a high-stakes courtroom battle. If he wins, the case could have national implications, bringing down the multibillion-dollar Big Pharma industry. If he loses, he’ll become collateral damage in the greatest fall of his career and his life.
The Candidate and other stories
Samuel R. George - 2019
He never expected an afterlife, and the fabled abode is nothing like the fable, which never mentioned a salmon with human arms and legs, or a flying saucer captained by lizard man.In “Harold,” you’ll meet a homunculus who is certain he is a one of a kind, a freak of nature. Imagine his surprise when he discovers an island populated by thousands of his kind. There he finds adventure, love, and danger. He must face thugs his size, sinister large people, a dangerous house cat, and a plethora of perplexing situations.Irresolute poets find their plush postmortem refuge is anything but when it soon becomes a type of Hell in “Between Life and Oblivion.”Discover the true story of Helen, the famous face that launched a thousand ships, in the tale “A More Likely Odyssey.”Within these pages you’ll be taken on journeys beyond imagining. You’ll meet characters and explore familiar worlds through different eyes. Look beyond the hedge…
Half a World Away
Mike Gayle - 2019
She provides for her son by cleaning houses she could never hope to afford. Taken into care as a child, Kerry cannot ever forget her past.Noah Martineau is a successful barrister with a beautiful wife, daughter and home in fashionable Primrose Hill. Adopted as a child, Noah always looks forward, never back.When Kerry reaches out to the sibling she lost on the day they were torn apart as children, she sets in motion a chain of events that will have life-changing consequences for them both.
After the End
Clare MackintoshClare Mackintosh - 2019
They're best friends, lovers—unshakable. But then their son gets sick and the doctors put the question of his survival into their hands. For the first time, Max and Pip can't agree. They each want a different future for their son. What if they could have both?A gripping and propulsive exploration of love, marriage, parenthood, and the road not taken, After the End brings one unforgettable family from unimaginable loss to a surprising, satisfying, and redemptive ending and the life they are fated to find. With the emotional power of Jodi Picoult's My Sister's Keeper, Mackintosh helps us to see that sometimes the end is just another beginning.
The French Photographer
Natasha Lester - 2019
But when she arrives the army men make her life as difficult as possible. Three friendships change that: journalist Martha Gellhorn encourages Jess to bend the rules, paratrooper Dan Hallworth takes her to places to shoot pictures and write stories that matter, and a little girl, Victorine, who has grown up in a field hospital, shows her love. But success comes at a price.France, 2005: Australian curator D'Arcy Hallworth arrives at a beautiful chateau to manage a famous collection of photographs. What begins as just another job becomes far more disquieting as D'Arcy uncovers the true identity of the mysterious photographer -- and realises that she is connected to D'Arcy's own mother, Victorine.Crossing a war-torn Europe from Italy to France, The French Photographer is a story of courage, family and forgiveness, by the bestselling author of The Paris Seamstress and A Kiss from Mr Fitzgerald.
The Perfect Child
Lucinda Berry - 2019
All that’s missing is a child. When Janie, an abandoned six-year-old, turns up at their hospital, Christopher forms an instant connection with her, and he convinces Hannah they should take her home as their own.But Janie is no ordinary child, and her damaged psyche proves to be more than her new parents were expecting. Janie is fiercely devoted to Christopher, but she acts out in increasingly disturbing ways, directing all her rage at Hannah. Unable to bond with Janie, Hannah is drowning under the pressure, and Christopher refuses to see Janie’s true nature.Hannah knows that Janie is manipulating Christopher and isolating him from her, despite Hannah’s attempts to bring them all together. But as Janie’s behavior threatens to tear Christopher and Hannah apart, the truth behind Janie’s past may be enough to push them all over the edge.
We Hope for Better Things
Erin Bartels - 2019
But when she loses her job after a botched investigation, she suddenly finds herself with nothing but time.At her great-aunt's 150-year-old farmhouse, Elizabeth uncovers a series of mysterious items, locked doors, and hidden graves. As she searches for answers to the riddles around her, the remarkable stories of two women who lived in this very house emerge as testaments to love, resilience, and courage in the face of war, racism, and misunderstanding. And as Elizabeth soon discovers, the past is never as past as we might like to think.Debut novelist Erin Bartels takes readers on an emotional journey through time--from the volatile streets of 1960s Detroit to the Underground Railroad during the Civil War--to uncover the past, confront the seeds of hatred, and discover where love goes to hide.
Jane Austen: The Complete Novels
Jane Austen - 2019
This edition has been professionally formatted and contains several tables of contents. The first table of contents (at the very beginning of the ebook) lists the titles of all novels included in this volume. By clicking on one of those titles you will be redirected to the beginning of that work, where you'll find a new TOC that lists all the chapters and sub-chapters of that specific work.
You Then, Me Now
Nick Alexander - 2019
Now it’s time to give her the truth.Becky’s father is not just absent: he’s a mystery, a gaping hole in her past. He died before she was born and for her mother, Laura, the subject is strictly off-limits. But when Laura books an unexpected trip to Greece, Becky decides to join her, determined to get closer to her mother—and to the truth.As they make their way to the beautiful island of Santorini, it becomes clear that this holiday is not as impulsive as Becky thought. Laura’s hiding something from her daughter—and she’s been hiding it for as long as Becky can remember. Laura has been here before, and that last visit holds the answers to Becky’s past.But Laura’s memories of that first trip are tinged with pain and heartbreak, secrets she’s kept buried for twenty-five years. Now, with the truth emerging into the sunlight at last, can mother and daughter lay the ghosts of their past to rest and find the happiness they’ve both been looking for?
Ask Again, Yes
Mary Beth Keane - 2019
What happens behind closed doors in both houses—the loneliness of Francis’s wife, Lena, and the instability of Brian’s wife, Anne—sets the stage for the explosive events to come.Ask Again, Yes is a deeply affecting exploration of the lifelong friendship and love that blossoms between Francis and Lena’s daughter, Kate, and Brian and Anne’s son, Peter. Luminous, heartbreaking, and redemptive, Ask Again, Yes reveals the way childhood memories change when viewed from the distance of adulthood—villains lose their menace and those who appeared innocent seem less so. Kate and Peter’s love story, while tested by echoes from the past, is marked by tenderness, generosity, and grace.