The Ones We Choose


Julie Clark - 2018
    Paige’s carefully constructed life begins to unravel as the truth of Miles’s paternity threatens to destroy everything she has grown to cherish. As Paige slowly opens herself up—by befriending an eccentric mother, confronting her own deeply buried vulnerabilities, and trying to make sense of her absent father’s unexpected return—she realizes breakthroughs aren’t only for the lab. But when tragedy strikes, Paige must face the consequences of sharing a secret only she knows. With grace and humor, Julie Clark shows that while the science is fascinating, solving these intimate mysteries of who we are and where we come from unleashes emotions more complex than the strands of DNA that shape us.

Finding Charlie


Katie O'Rourke - 2015
    When Charlie vanishes without warning, the people who love her are worried sick. Even if the law considers her an adult at nineteen, Charlie's still the baby of her already broken family. Older sister Olivia is determined to figure out what's happened. She finds a lost cell phone, an abandoned car and a shady boyfriend she's never met before. And he's not the only secret Charlie's been keeping.This disappearance feels uncomfortably familiar, reminding Olivia and her father of another loss years before. But this will be different, Olivia swears. Charlie's coming back.

By Nightfall


Michael Cunningham - 2010
    With a spacious loft, a college-age daughter in Boston, and lively friends, they are admirable, enviable contemporary urbanites with every reason, it seems, to be happy. Then Rebecca’s much younger look-alike brother, Ethan (known in thefamily as Mizzy, “the mistake”), shows up for a visit. A beautiful, beguiling twenty-three-year-old with a history of drug problems, Mizzy is wayward, at loose ends, looking for direction. And in his presence, Peter finds himself questioning his artists, their work, his career—the entire world he has so carefully constructed.Like his legendary, Pulitzer Prize–winning novel, The Hours, Michael Cunningham’s masterly new novel is a heartbreaking look at the way we live now. Full of shocks and aftershocks, it makes us think and feel deeply about the uses and meaning of beauty and the place of love in our lives.<

Light Years


James Salter - 1975
    It is the story of Nedra and Viri, whose favored life is centered around dinners, ingenious games with their children, enviable friends, and near-perfect days passed skating on a frozen river or sunning on the beach. But even as he lingers over the surface of their marriage, Salter lets us see the fine cracks that are spreading through it, flaws that will eventually mar the lovely picture beyond repair. Seductive, witty, and elegantly nuanced, Light Years is a classic novel of an entire generation that discovered the limits of its own happiness—and then felt compelled to destroy it.

Train to Anywhere


David George Howard - 2010
    Late one evening he witnesses a local businessman committing a murder. His life is spared, but he will be killed if he talks to the police. Everything he has worked for falls apart as he becomes caught between rival criminal and legal organizations.

Disappearing in Plain Sight


Francis Guenette - 2013
    She is drawn to Izzy Montgomery, a gifted trauma counsellor who is struggling through personal and professional challenges. Lisa-Marie also befriends Liam Collins, a man who goes quietly about his life trying to deal with his own secrets and guilt. The arrival of a summer renter for Izzy's guest cabin is the catalyst for change amongst Crater Lake's tight knit community. People are forced to grapple with the realities of grief and desire to discover that there are no easy choices - only shades of grey.

Fury


Salman Rushdie - 2001
    There’s a fury within him, and he fears he has become dangerous to those he loves. He arrives in New York at a time of unprecedented plenty, in the highest hour of America’s wealth and power, seeking to “erase” himself. But fury is all around him. An astonishing work of explosive energy, Fury is by turns a pitiless and pitch-black comedy, a love story of mesmerizing force, and a disturbing inquiry into the darkest side of human nature.

32 Minutes


Zach Kraft - 2018
    Fielding an ICBM wasn't one of them... INAUGURATION DAY, IN THE NEAR FUTURE: A young and optimistic president-elect shivers in the cold, waiting for the ordeal to be over. Little does she realize, the ordeal hasn't even begun. Shortly after she takes the oath, the proceedings are interrupted with shocking news: the U.S. military has detected the launch of an intercontinental ballistic missile. The death toll, should the weapon strike the United States: upwards of 10 million people. Her advisers warn her that there are rules to this game, ones that must be followed if there's to be any hope of avoiding global nuclear war. Adding to the problem: buried in a bunker, and surrounded by career professionals with agendas of their own, she has no idea what to believe about the conditions unfolding topside. Soon she learns that the loneliest person on the planet is the one who's trying to save billions from annihilation. An explosive, fast-paced novella from the author of The Counting series.

Grave Girl: The Complete Trilogy


Amy Cross - 2019
    In the center of the village, the local cemetery might at first seem rather ordinary. Old gravestones lean in every direction, watched over by statues of angels. There are rumors, however, that the cemetery in Rippon hides one very dark secret. Could it be that this is where the Devil himself is buried? After running away from home in search of a fresh start, Samantha Marker can't afford to be picky about finding a new job. When she's hired to look after Rippon's cemetery, she thinks she can simply hide away from society and get on with her life. She soon discovers, however, that Rippon has begun to attract some very unwelcome attention. Dark forces are determined to recover the Devil's body, and they'll stop at nothing in their quest. Even if that means bringing about the end of the world. Thrown into a battle she doesn't even understand, Sam finds herself up against demons, ghosts and other nightmares. As if those dangers aren't bad enough, there's also the distinct possibility that all these battles might accidentally cause the Devil to rise from his grave. Even as she tries to save the world, however, Sam also has to deal with the consequences of a terrible mistake that she made long ago. How can she save humanity when she's already abandoned the one person who needs her even more? Grave Girl: The Complete Trilogy is an omnibus edition containing the three books in the Grave Girl trilogy: Grave Girl (2013), Raven Revivals (2014) and The Gravest Girl of All (2018).

Moral Misconduct (Flynn & Levy Book 1)


David DeLee - 2016
    You Can't Always Choose Your Partner.NYPD homicide detective Frank Flynn catches the worst case there is; a murdered police officer. Forced to team up with Internal Affairs investigator Christine Levy, they must get past their differences and learn to work together, and more importantly, trust each other, if they're to solve a cop's brutal murder, put a stop to an illegal child adoption ring, and expose a forfeiture asset scheme involving a group of corrupt NYPD cops willing to kill to keep their secrets.The first in an exciting new series from David DeLee, author of the award-winning Grace deHaviland Bounty Hunter series.The Flynn & Levy Series (in chronological order):Moral Misconduct * While the City Burns

The White Woman on the Green Bicycle


Monique Roffey - 2009
    When George and Sabine Harwood arrive in Trinidad from England, George is immediately seduced by the beguiling island, while Sabine feels isolated, heat-fatigued, and ill-at-ease. As they adapt to new circumstances, their marriage endures for better or worse, despite growing political unrest and racial tensions that affect their daily lives. But when George finds a cache of letters that Sabine has hidden from him, the discovery sets off a devastating series of consequences as other secrets begin to emerge.

The Female Persuasion


Meg Wolitzer - 2018
    But sometimes it can also mean entry to a new kind of life, a bigger world. Greer Kadetsky is a shy college freshman when she meets the woman she hopes will change her life. Faith Frank, dazzlingly persuasive and elegant at sixty-three, has been a central pillar of the women’s movement for decades, a figure who inspires others to influence the world. Upon hearing Faith speak for the first time, Greer—madly in love with her boyfriend, Cory, but still full of longing for an ambition that she can’t quite place—feels her inner world light up. And then, astonishingly, Faith invites Greer to make something out of that sense of purpose, leading Greer down the most exciting path of her life as it winds toward and away from her meant-to-be love story with Cory and the future she’d always imagined. Charming and wise, knowing and witty, Meg Wolitzer delivers a novel about power and influence, ego and loyalty, womanhood and ambition. At its heart, The Female Persuasion is about the flame we all believe is flickering inside of us, waiting to be seen and fanned by the right person at the right time. It’s a story about the people who guide and the people who follow (and how those roles evolve over time), and the desire within all of us to be pulled into the light.

Come What May


Larry Darter - 2016
    Or so he thought until he is caught up in a run of bad luck and his life starts falling apart. The worst of it, his unfortunate entanglement in a spate of fatal on-duty shootings at a time when activists are protesting the use of deadly force by police and rioting all over the country. On edge and questioning his judgment, Malone's LAPD superiors speculate that he may be too quick to use deadly force.Relieved from street duty, Malone is sequestered in Robbery-Homicide Division's Cold Case Homicide Section to keep him under wraps while he undergoes department-mandated psychiatric evaluation. His work-related problems compounded by a vindictive ex-wife intent on bleeding him dry financially sends Malone into a spiral of depression that soon has him drinking too much in the attempt to cope.Initially resentful over his reassignment to the cold case section, Malone's attitude starts to change when he and new partner, Detective Jaime Reyes, come across the files of a cold as ice, 23-year-old unsolved murder case. The more they study the case, the more certain they become that the theory pursued by the original investigators was completely wrong.Since the decades-old murder does not fit the unit's criteria for reopening a cold case for active investigation, Malone and Reyes embark on an "off-the-books" investigation. Predictably, that creates some problems, especially for Malone. It quickly becomes clear that there are powerful forces at work both inside and outside the LAPD determined to keep the truth behind the murder buried along with the corpse.The more resistance he encounters, the more unwavering Malone becomes in his unwillingness to let sleeping dogs lie, even when things start to get increasingly personal. His persistence in digging up bones from the past begins to threaten his very career with the LAPD. Even when the investigation sends him hurtling into more trouble than he ever dreamed possible, Malone is unrelenting. He is determined to solve the mystery and to uncover the truth behind the brutal 23-year-old unsolved murder, come what may.

The Department of Lost & Found


Allison Winn Scotch - 2007
    This is a novel that will leave you taking stock of what's important in your own life . . . and never letting it go.It didn't start out as the worst day of Natalie Miller's life. At 30, she is moving up the political ladder, driven by raw ambition and ruthless determination. As the top aide to New York's powerful female senator, she works hard, stays late, and enjoys every bit of it, even if the bills she's pushing through do little to improve the lives of the senator's constituents. And if her boyfriend isn't the sexiest guy alive, at least he's a warm body to come home to.Then he announces he's leaving. But that news is barely a blip compared to what Natalie's doctor tells her: She has breast cancer. And she can't cure it by merely being headstrong. Now the life Natalie must change is her own.All her energy, what little of it she has left, must go into saving herself from a merciless disease. So when she's not lying on the sofa recovering from her treatments and indulging in a curious addiction to The Price Is Right, she realizes it's time to take a hard look at her choices. She begins by tracking down the five loves-of-her-life to assess what went wrong. Along the way, she questions her relationships with her friends, her parents, her colleagues, the one who got away, and, most important, with herself: Why is she so busy moving through life that she never stops to embrace it?As Natalie sleuths out the answers to these questions, her journey of self-discovery takes her down new paths and to unexplored places. And she learns that sometimes when life is at its most unexpected, it's not what you lose that makes you who you are . . . it's what you find.

The Amish Detective


Hannah Schrock - 2016
     Hannah Byler has never married, at twenty-five she half believes it is too late and she half lives in regret at what she might have done in the Englisch world. As she watches Jacob’s body being lowered into the ground her mind starts working and she feels that there may be more to the accident than meets the eye. She and her reluctant sister Ruth start investigating the case and find a haunting web of lies, deceit and coverups that lead them into danger…