The Newman Resident


Charles Swift - 2014
    Dr. Newman is at the leading edge of creating the perfect educational environment for children, and all he requires is a hefty tuition—and your child at the age of six months.Christopher Carson is one of the “Newman Residents” who live at the Newman Home year-round. His parents, Richard and Carol, both Manhattan attorneys, may disagree about the specifics, but each wants what’s best for their son. For Richard, this means bringing Christopher, now six years old, home for one last summer vacation before the visits become brief and infrequent.Carol agrees with the staff: Christopher should stay at the school. And Christopher is confused, not sure where his real home is anymore. But Richard would like for their house to be Christopher’s home, at least for one summer.As Richard and Christopher spend more time together they become closer. Not long into Christopher’s visit, Richard begins to suspect that the Newman Home’s methods for developing their children into future leaders are too experimental, if not outright dangerous. His suspicions are confirmed when a secretive support group of Newman parents reaches out to him about their frightening experiences with the school.Richard’s investigations into the Newman Home quickly spiral out of control; he has underestimated the extent of the school’s power and connections—and Dr. Newman’s incessant drive to achieve a new level of success for the students. But what Dr. Newman underestimates may be even more powerful: one father’s determination to fight for his son against the odds.What follows in The Newman Resident is a whirlwind battle between a devoted father and an education system more terrifyingly powerful than he ever could have imagined. It’s a battle that forces him to confront how some will cross any line in order to create the “perfect” child.

The Christmas Promise


Nikki Larson - 2020
    But now that her dear husband has died and her money is running out, she reluctantly returns home to the small town of Crystalline Falls.Hunter Flynn is restless. Expected to work on his dad’s Christmas tree farm with his older brothers, he dreams instead of traveling and settling in some tropical location where he can enjoy the sun and the surf and keep his troubles at bay.Sabrina Townsend knows what she wants, and nothing will stop her from getting it. And this year, she’s decided, she wants Hunter Flynn back. If only Elise Silverstein would get out of the way.When Hunter runs into Elise, who broke his heart several years ago when she married Wesley, he is reeled in once again by her captivating personality. They were so young the last time they fell in love, and foolish. Now he is tempted to let himself become all wrapped up in her again. But wouldn’t that be a colossal mistake? An enchanting story about the joy of Christmas, the importance of family, and falling in love in the most magical holiday season of the year. This is a Sweet Contemporary Clean Romance with Christian themes, perfect for holiday reading.

The Fireproof Girl


Loretta Lost - 2016
    When the constant danger became too much to bear, she ran away, thinking she could survive on her hacking skills alone.That was until she met Cole Hunter. He became the only person she could trust: her family, her friend, her partner-in-crime. Her everything. After struggling through college and starting their lives together, she believed that nothing could ever tear them apart. Until it did.When news of a brutal murder reaches Sophie, she’ll do everything in her power to fix what is broken. If it isn’t too late…---------When Cole was nine years old, he watched his whole family burn to death in a house fire. Fueled by years of obsession, he started one of the world’s leading architectural firms, with a mission to design homes resistant to fire, earthquakes, floods, and every threat known to man. Sophie was his secret weapon. She was his purpose. Since they were teenagers, he was determined to build a better life for her, so she could finally be safe, and they could be together. But disaster has always followed Cole around, ripping away everything he loves. This time, if he isn’t careful…His enemies might just take him down.

Harborside Hatred


Sarah A. Denzil - 2021
    Now it’s catching up with her.Wherever Oakland goes, the mystery caller finds her, the one who breathes down the line, who calls her at any time of day or night, who somehow always seems to know where she is.Moving all the way from London, Oakland settled on Liars Island, finally feeling safe enough to put down roots. Running Harborside Books, a quaint little shop by the harbor, she’s content with her quiet life. For the first time since she was seventeen years old, no one has harassed her. Until one day, she picks up the phone and hears that rasping breath one more time. But this time, it’s worse, someone is following her. She finds a threatening note in the bookstore. She’s convinced that there are eyes in the shadows, watching her every move.There is a person out there who hates Oakland O'Neill more than anyone in the world, and that person is on Liars Island, waiting for their opportunity to strike…Welcome to Liars Island… a stand-alone series of interconnected, novella-length domestic thrillers set in the picture-perfect community of Liars Island. Here, nothing is quite as it seems.On this island, families, and friendships are more than meets the eye … secrets, deceptions, and jealousies threaten to ruin everything these influential people have built. But it isn’t only the rich that live here … and power comes in all shapes and sizes. Everyone here is a liar … just how far would you go to get what you want?

Under the Influence


Joyce Maynard - 2016
    Once an aspiring art photographer, she now makes ends meet taking portraits of school children and working for a caterer. Recovering from her addiction, she spends lonely evenings checking out profiles on an online dating site. Weekend visits with her son are awkward. He’s drifting away from her, fast.When she meets Ava and Swift Havilland, the vulnerable Helen is instantly enchanted. Wealthy, connected philanthropists, they have their own charity devoted to rescuing dogs. Their home is filled with fabulous friends, edgy art, and dazzling parties.Then Helen meets Elliott, a kind, quiet accountant who offers loyalty and love with none of her newfound friends’ fireworks. To Swift and Ava, he’s boring. But even worse than that, he’s unimpressed by them.As Helen increasingly falls under the Havillands’ influence—running errands, doing random chores, questioning her relationship with Elliott—Ava and Swift hold out the most seductive gift: their influence and help to regain custody of her son. But the debt Helen owes them is about to come due.Ollie witnesses an accident involving Swift, his grown son, and the daughter of the Havillands’ housekeeper. With her young son’s future in the balance, Helen must choose between the truth and the friends who have given her everything.

Tuesday Nights in 1980


Molly Prentiss - 2016
    Among them: James Bennett, a synaesthetic art critic for The New York Times whose unlikely condition enables him to describe art in profound, magical ways, and Raul Engales, an exiled Argentinian painter running from his past and the Dirty War that has enveloped his country. As the two men ascend in the downtown arts scene, dual tragedies strike, and each is faced with a loss that acutely affects his relationship to life and to art. It is not until they are inadvertently brought together by Lucy Olliason—a small town beauty and Raul’s muse—and a young orphan boy sent mysteriously from Buenos Aires, that James and Raul are able to rediscover some semblance of what they’ve lost.As inventive as Jennifer Egan's A Visit From The Goon Squad and as sweeping as Meg Wolitzer's The Interestings, Tuesday Nights in 1980 boldly renders a complex moment when the meaning and nature of art is being all but upended, and New York City as a whole is reinventing itself. In risk-taking prose that is as powerful as it is playful, Molly Prentiss deftly explores the need for beauty, community, creation, and love in an ever-changing urban landscape.

The House Swap


Rebecca Fleet - 2018
    But she knows why they are there. Be careful who you let in...A house swap becomes the eerie backdrop to a crumbling marriage, a long-buried affair, and the fatal consequences that unfold.When Caroline and Francis receive an offer to house swap--from their city apartment to a house in a leafy, upscale London suburb--they jump at the chance for a week away from home, their son, and the tensions that have pushed their marriage to the brink.As the couple settles in, the old problems that permeate their marriage--his unhealthy behaviors, her indiscretions--start bubbling to the surface. But while they attempt to mend their relationship, their neighbor, an intense young woman, is showing a little too much interest in their activities.Meanwhile, Caroline slowly begins to uncover some signs of life in the stark house--signs of her life. The flowers in the bathroom or the music might seem innocent to anyone else--but to her they are clues. It seems the person they have swapped with is someone who knows her, someone who knows the secrets she's desperate to forget. . . .Be careful who you let in. . .

The Lightness


Emily Temple - 2020
    Yearning to make sense of his shocking departure and to escape her overbearing mother—a woman as grounded as her father is mercurial—Olivia runs away from home and retraces his path to a place known as the Levitation Center.Once there, she enrolls in their summer program for troubled teens, which Olivia refers to as “Buddhist Boot Camp for Bad Girls”. Soon, she finds herself drawn into the company of a close-knit trio of girls determined to transcend their circumstances, by any means necessary. Led by the elusive and beautiful Serena, and her aloof, secretive acolytes, Janet and Laurel, the girls decide this is the summer they will finally achieve enlightenment—and learn to levitate, to defy the weight of their bodies, to experience ultimate lightness. But as desire and danger intertwine, and Olivia comes ever closer to discovering what a body—and a girl—is capable of, it becomes increasingly clear that this is an advanced and perilous practice, and there’s a chance not all of them will survive. Set over the course of one fateful summer that unfolds like a fever dream, The Lightness juxtaposes fairy tales with quantum physics, cognitive science with religious fervor, and the passions and obsessions of youth with all of these, to explore concepts as complex as faith and as simple as loving people—even though you don’t, and can’t, know them at all.

The Wisdom Of Secrets: The Templar Covenant


Ami Noone - 2014
    Although they have been mentioned in the bible and traces of their existence are scattered throughout the globe, Peter Madeloy had always presumed that the myths of the possible existence of an ancient brotherhood, living on Earth for milennia, was nothing more than that, a myth. Until one day his father is brutally murdered and his mother is kidnapped. In exchange for his mother’s safe return, Peter must enter his father’s secret world, uncover the truth about his mother’s kidnappers and find the ancient artefact his father had dedicated his life to protecting. Peter enlists the help of his uncle, Daniel O'Brien, a professor of Philology and avid researcher of veiled organisations and his wife, Emily, a geneticist, to unravel a series of clues his father has left him. Together they embark on a journey that thrusts them into the centre of an ancient battle for supremacy that uncovers a truth that for them, will change the history and future of humanity simultaneously. With the enemy watching their every move Peter, Daniel and Emily must figure out his father's clues in time to save his mother and ultimately protect the world from the true secret that was unearthed from beneath King Solomon's Temple all those centuries ago.

Corsair


James L. Cambias - 2015
    One, Elizabeth Santiago, dreams of technology and space travel. The other, David Schwartz, is just looking to make a quick buck.Nearly ten years later, David is setting himself to become a billionaire by working in the shadows for international thieves, while Elizabeth works in intelligence preventing international space piracy. With robotic mining in space becoming a lucrative part of Earth's economy, her job has become increasingly stressful.David and Elizabeth fight for dominance of the computer systems controlling ore drop placement in international waters. If David can nudge a shipment 500 miles off its target, his employers can get there first and claim it legally in the open sea. Each one intuits that the other is their real competition but can't prove it. When Elizabeth loses a major shipment, she leaves government employ to work for a private space company to find a better way to protect shipments. But international piracy has very high stakes and some very evil players, and both Elizabeth and David are in for a world of trouble.

Due Justice


Diane Capri - 2011
    Fiercely independent Carly is the number one suspect. When Carly asks Willa for due justice, Willa has everything to lose. But she risks it all to uncover the conspiracy and keep Carly alive. Can Willa possibly win?<**formerly titled Carly's Conspiracy

Girls on Fire


Robin Wasserman - 2016
    Three days later, he’s found with a bullet in his head and a gun in his hand—a discovery that sends tremors through this conservative community, already unnerved by growing rumors of Satanic worship in the region.In the wake of this incident, bright but lonely Hannah Dexter is befriended by Lacey Champlain, a dark-eyed, Cobain-worshiping bad influence in lip gloss and Doc Martens. The charismatic, seductive Lacey forges a fast, intimate bond with the impressionable Dex, making her over in her own image and unleashing a fierce defiance that neither girl expected. But as Lacey gradually lures Dex away from her safe life into a feverish spiral of obsession, rebellion, and ever greater risk, an unwelcome figure appears on the horizon—and Lacey’s secret history collides with Dex’s worst nightmare.By turns a shocking story of love and violence and an addictive portrait of the intoxication of female friendship, set against the unsettled backdrop of a town gripped by moral panic, Girls on Fire is an unflinching and unforgettable snapshot of girlhood: girls lost and found, girls strong and weak, girls who burn bright and brighter—and some who flicker away.

The Truth Hurts


Rebecca Reid - 2019
    Drew is enamored, devoted, and, okay, a little mysterious—but that's part of the thrill. What's the harm in letting his past remain private? Maybe he's not the only one… Fortunately, Drew never seems to wonder why his young wife has so readily agreed to their unusual pact to live only in the here and now and not probe their personal histories. Perhaps he assumes, as others do, that she is simply swept up in the intoxication of infatuation and sudden wealth. What's the harm in letting them believe that? How far will they go to keep the past buried? Isolated in Drew's sprawling mansion, Poppy starts to have time to doubt the man she's married, to wonder what in his past might be so terrible that it can't be spoken of, to imagine what harm he might be capable of. She doesn't want this dream to shatter. But Poppy may soon be forced to confront the dark truth that there are sins far more dangerous than the sin of omission…

Missing Evidence (Goodlove and Shek #5)


Al Macy - 2021
    The boy asks for help because he thinks his older sister may be some kind of vigilante. Belinda, eighteen and way too sexy for her own good, has been missing for five months. The police are convinced that she’s just another runaway. Her bullheaded stepdad agrees.But the younger brother found Belinda’s secret stash of chatroom texts. They suggest she’s on a misguided mission to entrap and kill a sexual predator. If so, she’s in over her head and on a collision course with a first-degree murder indictment.Goodlove promises Belinda’s family that he’ll help her.But first, he has to find her.Missing Evidence may be enjoyed as a standalone book or as part of the Goodlove and Shek series.

The Hearts of Men


Nickolas Butler - 2017
    Nelson Doughty, age thirteen, social outcast and overachiever, is the Bugler, sounding the reveille proudly each morning. Yet this particular summer marks the beginning of an uncertain and tenuous friendship with a popular boy named Jonathan.Over the years, Nelson, irrevocably scarred from the Vietnam War, becomes Scoutmaster of Camp Chippewa, while Jonathan marries, divorces, and turns his father’s business into a highly profitable company. And when something unthinkable happens at a camp get-together with Nelson as Scoutmaster and Jonathan’s teenage grandson and daughter-in-law as campers, the aftermath demonstrates the depths—and the limits—of Nelson’s selflessness and bravery.The Hearts of Men is a sweeping, panoramic novel about the slippery definitions of good and evil, family and fidelity, the challenges and rewards of lifelong friendships, the bounds of morality—and redemption.