|
AS CLOSE TO US AS BREATHING by Elizabeth Poliner (Fiction)
In 1948, sisters Ada, Vivie and Bec assemble at their beloved family cottage in Woodmont, Connecticut. Ada is unimpeded by her strict, religious husband. Vivie is the family diplomat and an increasingly inventive chef. Unmarried Bec finds herself forced to choose between a family-centric life and a passion-filled life with a married man. But when a terrible accident occurs on the sisters' watch, the girls’ lives are changed forever. Seen through the eyes of Molly, who was 12 years old when she witnessed the accident, this is the story of a tragedy and its aftermath. Can Molly, decades after the event, draw from her aunt Bec's wisdom and free herself from the burden that destroyed so many others? Reviewed by Sarah Rachel Egelman.
THE CHARM BRACELET by Viola Shipman (Fiction)
Audiobook available, narrated by Andi Arndt
On her birthday each year, Lolly’s mother gave her a charm, along with the advice that there is nothing more important than keeping family memories alive. Now 70 and starting to forget things, Lolly knows time is running out to reconnect with a daughter and granddaughter whose lives have become too busy for Lolly or her family stories. But when Arden, Lolly’s daughter, receives an unexpected phone call about her mother, she and granddaughter Lauren rush home. Over the course of their visit, Lolly reveals the story behind each charm on her bracelet. One by one the family stories help Lolly, Arden and Lauren reconnect in a way that brings each woman closer to finding joy, love and faith. Reviewed by Carole Turner.
DOUBLE SWITCH by T. T. Monday (Mystery/Thriller)
Audiobook available, narrated by Bruce Thomas
Johnny Adcock is an aging major-league relief pitcher who moonlights as a private investigator. Tiff Tate, the enigmatic, career-making PR/stylist behind the most highly marketable looks in baseball, needs Adcock’s special brand of expertise. Her new client is Yonel Ruiz, the rookie phenom who courageously fled his native Cuba. Now that Ruiz has signed a record-setting contract, the Venezuelan cartel that smuggled him out is squeezing him for a bigger slice of the action, and they’ve unleashed a ruthless assassin to collect. Adcock is immediately swept up in a high-pressure game full of surprising twists, double crosses and deadly gambits that will leave him fighting for his life. Reviewed by Stuart Shiffman.
THE END GAME by Raymond Khoury (Thriller)
In THE END GAME, which is being published exclusively as a Kindle eBook, New York Times bestselling author Raymond Khoury brings back FBI Special Agent Sean Reilly and archaeologist/novelist Tess Chaykin for another blistering thriller in their series. This time out, the man known simply as Reed Corrigan is pursuing a brutal end game that could cost Reilly and those he loves most their lives. Reviewed by Ray Palen.
FOOL ME ONCE by Harlan Coben (Thriller)
Audiobook available, narrated by January LaVoy
Former special ops pilot Maya, home from the war, sees an unthinkable image captured by her nanny cam while she is at work: her two-year-old daughter playing with Maya’s husband, Joe --- who had been brutally murdered two weeks earlier. The provocative question at the heart of the mystery: Can you believe everything you see with your own eyes, even when you desperately want to? To find the answer, Maya must finally come to terms with deep secrets and deceit in her own past before she can face the unbelievable truth about her husband --- and herself. Reviewed by Joe Hartlaub.
HEART OF GLASS: A Memoir by Wendy Lawless (Memoir)
Before downtown Manhattan was scrubbed clean, gentrified, and overrun with designer boutiques and trendy eateries and bars, it was the center of a burgeoning art scene. Running from the shipwreck of her glamorous and unstable childhood with a volatile mother, Wendy Lawless landed in the center of it all. She navigated this demi-monde of jaded punk rockers, desperate actors, pulsing parties and unexpected run-ins with her own past as she made every mistake of youth, looked for love in all the wrong places, and eventually learned how to grow up on her own. Reviewed by Barbara Bamberger Scott.
HIGH DIVE by Jonathan Lee (Fiction)
In September 1984, a bomb was planted at the Grand Hotel in the seaside town of Brighton, England, set to explode in 24 days when the British prime minister and her entire cabinet would be staying there. HIGH DIVE not only takes us inside this audacious assassination attempt --- a decisive act of violence on the world stage --- but also imagines its way into a group of unforgettable characters, nimbly weaving together fact and fiction, comedy and tragedy. Reviewed by Norah Piehl.
INNOCENTS AND OTHERS by Dana Spiotta (Fiction)
Audiobook available, narrated by January LaVoy
INNOCENTS AND OTHERS is about two best friends who grow up in LA in the ’80s and become filmmakers. Meadow and Carrie have everything in common --- except their views on sex, power, movie-making and morality. Their lives collide with Jelly, a loner whose most intimate experience is on the phone. Jelly is older, erotic and mysterious. She cold calls powerful men and seduces them not through sex but through listening. She invites them to reveal themselves, and they do. Reviewed by Harvey Freedenberg.
JUST FALL by Nina Sadowsky (Psychological Thriller)
Audiobook available; narrated by Johnathan McClain, Beresford Bennett and Emily Rankin
On the night of her wedding to Rob, Ellie’s perfect world suddenly collapses. Her suave, charming, sophisticated husband is not the man she believed him to be. Could he really be a killer? Ellie is rapidly swept into a lethal vortex of betrayal, lies and uncertainty: Who is the man she married, really? And how far will she go to protect him? When faced with a terrible choice --- to become a murderess herself to save the man she loves, or to let him die --- Ellie’s decision propels her into a whiplash-paced adventure. Reviewed by Joe Hartlaub.
THE NEST by Cynthia D'Aprix Sweeney (Fiction)
Audiobook available, narrated by Mia Barron
The Plumb family is spectacularly dysfunctional. Years of tensions finally reach a breaking point as Melody, Beatrice and Jack Plumb gather to confront their older brother, Leo, freshly released from rehab. Months earlier, an inebriated Leo got in a car accident that has endangered the Plumbs' joint trust fund, “The Nest,” which they are months away from finally receiving. Now, the siblings must grapple with old resentments, present-day truths and the significant emotional and financial toll of the accident, as well as finally acknowledge the choices they have made in their own lives. Reviewed by Eileen Zimmerman Nicol.
NO ONE KNOWS by J.T. Ellison (Psychological Thriller/Mystery)
Audiobook available, narrated by Teri Schnaubelt and Nick Podehl
The day Aubrey Hamilton’s husband is declared dead by the state of Tennessee should bring closure so she can move on with her life. But Aubrey doesn’t want to move on; she wants Josh back. It’s been five years since he disappeared, since their blissfully happy marriage screeched to a halt and Aubrey became the prime suspect in his disappearance. Why didn’t Josh show up at his friend’s bachelor party? Was he murdered? Did he run away? And now, all this time later, who is the mysterious yet strangely familiar figure suddenly haunting her new life? Reviewed by Kate Ayers.
OFF THE GRID: A Joe Pickett Novel by C. J. Box (Mystery/Thriller)
Audiobook available, narrated by David Chandler
Nate Romanowski is off the grid, recuperating from wounds and trying to deal with past crimes, when he is suddenly surrounded by a small team of elite professional special operators. They’re not there to threaten him, but to make a deal. They need help destroying a domestic terror cell in Wyoming’s Red Desert, and in return they’ll make Nate’s criminal record disappear. But they are not what they seem, as Nate’s friend Joe Pickett discovers. They have a much different plan in mind, and it just may be something that takes them all down --- including Nate and Joe. Reviewed by Joe Hartlaub.
ONLY EVER YOU by Rebecca Drake (Psychological Thriller)
Audiobook available, narrated by Eva Kaminsky
Three-year-old Sophia Lassiter disappears at the playground only to return after 40 frantic minutes --- but her mother Jill's relief is short-lived. Jill is convinced that the tiny dots on Sophia’s arm are puncture marks. When doctors find no trace of drugs in her system, Jill accepts that she won't ever know what happened during her absence and is simply grateful to have her home safely. Three months later, though, Sophia disappears again --- and then information turns up suggesting she was murdered, causing the police to turn their suspicions on the parents. Reviewed by L. Dean Murphy.
PRIVATE PARIS by James Patterson and Mark Sullivan (Thriller)
Audiobook available, narrated by Jay Snyder
When Jack Morgan stops by Private's Paris office, he envisions a quick hello during an otherwise relaxing trip. But he is quickly pressed into duty after getting a call from his client, Sherman Wilkerson, asking him to track down his young granddaughter, who is on the run from a brutal drug dealer. Before Jack can locate her, several members of France's cultural elite are found murdered in stunning, symbolic fashion. The only link between the crimes is a mysterious graffiti tag. As religious and ethnic tensions simmer in the City of Lights, only Jack and his Private team can connect the dots before the smoldering powder keg explodes. Reviewed by Joe Hartlaub.
READER, I MARRIED HIM: Stories Inspired by Jane Eyre edited by Tracy Chevalier (Fiction/Short Stories)
A fixture in the literary canon, Charlotte Brontë is revered by readers all over the world. Her novels featuring unforgettable, strong heroines still resonate with millions today. Part of a remarkable family that produced three acclaimed female writers at a time in 19th-century Britain when few women wrote, and fewer were published, Brontë has become a great source of inspiration to writers, especially women, ever since. Now in READER, I MARRIED HIM, 20 of today’s most celebrated female authors have spun original stories, using the opening line from JANE EYRE as a springboard for their own flights of imagination. Reviewed by Sarah Rachel Egelman.
THE SUMMER BEFORE THE WAR by Helen Simonson (Historical Fiction)
Audiobook available, narrated by Fiona Hardingham
East Sussex, 1914. Hugh Grange, down from his medical studies, is visiting his Aunt Agatha, who has just risked her carefully built reputation by pushing for the appointment of a woman to replace the Latin master. But just as Beatrice Nash, the teacher, comes alive to the beauty of the Sussex landscape and the colorful characters who populate Rye, the perfect summer is about to end. For despite Agatha’s reassurances, the unimaginable is coming. Soon the limits of progress, and the old ways, will be tested as this small Sussex town and its inhabitants go to war. Reviewed by Katherine B. Weissman.
SWITCHED ON: A Memoir of Brain Change and Emotional Awakening by John Elder Robison (Memoir)
Audiobook available, narrated by John Elder Robison
In 2007, John Elder Robison wrote the international bestseller LOOK ME IN THE EYE, a memoir about growing up with Asperger’s syndrome. Amid the blaze of publicity that followed, he received a unique invitation: Would John like to take part in a study led by one of the world’s foremost neuroscientists, who would use an experimental new brain therapy known as TMS, or transcranial magnetic stimulation, in an effort to understand and then address the issues at the heart of autism? SWITCHED ON is the extraordinary story of what happened next. Reviewed by Barbara Bamberger Scott.
TWISTED RIVER by Siobhan MacDonald (Psychological Thriller)
Kate and Mannix O’Brien’s autistic son Fergus is bullied at school, and their daughter Izzy wishes she could protect him. Kate is convinced her luck is about to change when she spots a gorgeous Manhattan apartment on a home-exchange website. Hazel and Oscar Harvey and their two children live on Manhattan’s Upper West Side. Though they seem successful and happy, Hazel has mysterious bruises, and Oscar is hiding things about his dental practice. Hazel has always wanted her children to see her native Limerick, and the house swap offers a perfect chance to soothe two troubled marriages. But this will be anything but a perfect vacation. Reviewed by Joe Hartlaub.
THE WATCHER IN THE WALL by Owen Laukkanen (Thriller)
Audiobook available, narrated by Edoardo Ballerini
Kirk Stevens and Carla Windermere of the joint BCA-FBI violent crime task force have handled shocking cases before, but this one is different. Stevens’ daughter, Andrea, is distraught over a classmate’s suicide, but what the two investigators find is even more disturbing --- an online suicide club of unhappy teenagers, presided over by an anonymous presence who seems to be spurring them on. It soon becomes apparent that the classmate wasn’t the first victim --- and won’t be the last, either, unless they can hunt down this psychopath once and for all. Reviewed by Joe Hartlaub.
|
