The Light of the Fireflies


Paul Pen - 2013
    Before he was born, his family was disfigured by a fire. His sister wears a white mask to cover her burns.He spends his hours with his cactus, reading his book on insects, or touching the one ray of sunlight that filters in through a crack in the ceiling. Ever since his sister had a baby, everyone’s been acting very strangely. The boy begins to wonder why they never say who the father is, about what happened before his own birth, about why they’re shut away.A few days ago, some fireflies arrived in the basement. His grandma said, There’s no creature more amazing than one that can make its own light. That light makes the boy want to escape, to know the outside world. Problem is, all the doors are locked. And he doesn’t know how to get out.…

Fractured Persona


Harry Krebs - 2013
    A glimpse in a mirror and the evidence of a driver's license prove that Fornek is trapped in the body of warehouse worker Daniel Curtis. Terrified, he insists that he's Richard Fornek, but when faced with the prospect of admittance to a psychiatric hospital, he is forced to assume a new role to buy time to figure out what’s going on. Alone and confused, things go from bad to worse as he struggles to regain control of his life. A little romance, a little murder, and a whole lot of hair-raising suspense unfold as he scrambles to stay one step ahead of the mayhem.

Pink Chimneys: A Novel of Nineteenth-Century Maine


Ardeana Hamlin Knowles - 1987
    Back in print by popular demand! Set against the backdrop of temperance crusades, emerging statehood, and the explosive economic and political importance of Bangor when it was the lumber capital of the world, Pink Chimneys captures the romance and excitement of Maine's colorful history in a story that interweaves the lives of a midwife, a madam, and a young seamstress with a mysterious connection to both.

The Paris Winter


Imogen Robertson - 2013
    Maud Heighton came to Lafond's famous Academie to paint, and to flee the constraints of her small English town. It took all her courage to escape, but Paris eats money. While her fellow students enjoy the dazzling joys of the Belle Époque, Maud slips into poverty. Quietly starving, and dreading another cold Paris winter, Maud takes a job as companion to young, beautiful Sylvie Morel. But Sylvie has a secret: an addiction to opium. As Maud is drawn into the Morels' world of elegant luxury, their secrets become hers. Before the New Year arrives, a greater deception will plunge her into the darkness that waits beneath this glittering city of light.

Deadly Deception


Betsy Haynes - 1994
    When her boyfriend is arrested and charged with murdering the school guidance counselor, seventeen-year-old Ashlyn tries to find the real killer.

And Give You Peace


Jessica Treadway - 2000
    Jessica Treadway flawlessly portrays the complexity of human experience in the face of incomprehensible loss, revealing yet again why the New York Times Book Review has called her "a writer with an unsparing bent for the truth."

Drug Gang


Neil Walker - 2017
     What would you be prepared to do to have everything you ever wanted? How far would you go and where would you draw the line? These are the questions facing John Kennedy in Drug Gang, as he arrives in Manchester in the summer of 2001 and finds the sinister but exciting world of The Brotherhood. If he is prepared to sell drugs, risk his life and commit vicious acts without limits, a life of luxury and huge sums of money can be his. As events spiral out of control, are the money and the glamorous lifestyle enough to keep him locked in a destructive cycle of cruelty and violence?

Falling


Colin Thubron - 1989
    As the grief-stricken Swabey looks back on their affair, the exact nature of his responsibility for Clara’s death is movingly revealed.

The Counterfeit Candidate


Brian Klein - 2021
    Their bodies are burned and buried in the Reich Chancellery garden, above the Führer's bunker.Buenos Aires, 9th January, 2012Three audacious thieves carry out the biggest safe depository heist in Argentine history, escaping with more than one hundred million dollars' worth of valuables. Within hours, an encrypted phone call to America triggers a blood-soaked manhunt as the thieves are tracked down, systematically tortured, then murdered.San Francisco, 18th January, 2012Senator John Franklin, hailed as the 'Great Unifier', secures the Republican Presidential nomination and seems destined for the Oval Office. Despite the sixty-seven year interval and a span of thirteen thousand miles, these events are indelibly linked.Chief Inspector Nicolas Vargas of the Buenos Aires Police Department and Lieutenant Troy Hembury of the LAPD are sucked into a dark political conspiracy concealing an incredible historical truth stretching from the infamous Berlin bunker to Buenos Aires and to Washington, which threatens the very heart and soul of American democracy.

Everything After


Sharon Pywell - 2006
    Months later, though, she hears a different account: that one brother killed the other. Determined to uncover the truth-and to keep her family from being ripped apart-Iris winds up uncovering something shocking about her siblings, her supposedly idyllic family, and herself.

The Doctor's Wife


Elizabeth Brundage - 2004
    Michael is a rising OB/GYN at a prominent private practice in Albany, New York; he also moonlights at a local women’s health clinic. But Annie, his wife, has become tired of her workaholic husband’s absences, and the soccer-mom lifestyle has worn thin. She begins a passionate love affair with bad-boy, fading celebrity painter Simon Haas—an affair that quickly goes awry when Simon’s wife Lydia, who is also the model upon whom he built his career, discovers the truth.  Abortion, local evangelism, marital disenchantment, and the rifts of social class:  Brundage takes on the fault lines of our era with a deft hand.

Now You See Her


Paul J. Teague - 2019
    While the authorities draw a blank, Cory picks up the cold trail and finds there's something sinister going on in Shallow Falls--something he'll regret ever getting involved in. Now You See Her is an exciting new thriller about pain, loss and regret. The conspiracies deepen with each turn of the page, leading readers on a relentless pursuit for answers until the very end.

The American Boy


Andrew Taylor - 2003
    England 1819: Thomas Shield, a new master at a school just outside London, is tutor to a young American boy and the boy's sensitive best friend, Charles Frant. Drawn to Frant's beautiful, unhappy mother, Thomas becomes caught up in her family's twisted intrigues. Then a brutal crime is committed, with consequences that threaten to destroy Thomas and all that he has come to hold dear. Despite his efforts, Shield is caught up in a deadly tangle of sex, money, murder and lies -- a tangle that grips him tighter even as he tries to escape from it. And what of the strange American child, at the heart of these macabre events, yet mysterious -- what is the secret of the boy named Edgar Allen Poe?

Karma


Walter Mosley - 2010
    He was a private investigator who had "decided to go from crooked to slightly bent," turning down the shady but lucrative work that New York's thugs and mobsters had long brought to his door. In "Karma," Walter Mosley tells us the story of the moment McGill decided to change his ways, when a seemingly classic femme fatale forced him to confront the reality of his life of corruption and betrayal. It was the culmination of a dark and tragic case that reached back through McGill's entire career, plumbing the full, complex history of the soul-scarred figure now hailed as "a poignantly real character . . . [and] a more than worthy successor to Philip Marlowe." (The Boston Globe) Originally published in Otto Penzler's anthology Dangerous Women, "Karma" was included in Best American Mystery Stories 2006, edited by Scott Turow.

Strange Allure


Susan Lewis - 2000
    And Avril Hayden, Carla's flamboyant and sensual friend, finds herself increasingly intrigued by this mysterious connection - a connection that won't go away.But as hidden truths are finally revealed, intrigue turns to fear, and risk to terrible danger...From a village in Somerset, to the grandeur of London's Belgravia and the exotic island of Zanzibar, Strange Allure is a story of love's passions gone utterly wild.