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 Scandalous Life of Sasha Torte


Lesley Truffle - 2017
    and pastry. The witty new novel from the author of Hotel du Barry, for fans of Jonas Jonasson.In the winter of 1912 on the wild West Coast of Tasmania, Wolfftown's most notorious heiress and murderess, Sasha Torte, tells the tale of her own spectacular downfall.Forsaken by her parents and raised by criminals and reprobates, Sasha becomes a world-famous pastry chef at the tender age of seventeen. Entanglement with the disreputable Dasher brothers leads to love, but also to a dangerous addiction.Behind bars in Wolfftown's gaol, Sasha sips premium champagne as she recalls a life of seduction, betrayal, ghosts, opium and an indiscreet quantity of confectionary - and plots her escape.The Scandalous Life of Sasha Torte: revenge, redemption and pastry, is a novel of dastardly deeds, intrepid protagonists, dark villains, wild gangs, luxurious hotels … and murder.

Mindhunter: Inside the FBI's Elite Serial Crime Unit


John E. Douglas - 1995
    He has confronted, interviewed and researched dozens of serial killers and assassins, including Charles Manson, Richard Speck, John Wayne Gacy, and James Earl Ray - for a landmark study to understand their motives. To get inside their minds. He is Special Agent John Douglas, the model for law enforcement legend Jack Crawford in Thomas Harris's thrillers Red Dragon and The Silence of the Lambs, and the man who ushered in a new age in behavorial science and criminal profiling. Recently retired after twenty-five years of service, John Douglas can finally tell his unique and compelling story.

Full Dress Gray


Lucian K. Truscott IV - 1998
    Truscott IV, " says the Chicago Tribune. Now, the author who first took readers behind the imposing walls of West Point with "Dress Gray" returns to his alma mater with a tense, timely tale of corruption and courage -- as a female cadet collapses and dies while parading past the reviewing stand on a hot September morning, sending Superintendent Ry Slaight, as well as his cadet daughter, on the dangerous trail of the truth.

Our Lizzie


Anna Jacobs - 1999
    She makes an ill-advised marriage in order to escape her harsh home life. However, she quickly discovers that she has married a selfish and violent man. His beatings are ceaseless and she finds herself compelled to run away. With the help of some suffragettes, she escapes to Manchester, where she finds work in a munitions factory for a while. Sam manages to find her and drags her home. It is only when his violence causes her to lose their unborn baby that Lizzie really finds the strength to make things change, and to find happiness with a man who loves her.

Still


Matt Nable - 2021
    If you loved THE DRY and SCRUBLANDS, you will love STILL.Darwin, Summer, 1963.The humidity sat heavy and thick over the town as Senior Constable Ned Potter looked down at a body that had been dragged from the shallow marshland. He didn't need a coroner to tell him this was a bad death. He didn't know then that this was only the first. Or that he was about to risk everything looking for answers.Late one night, Charlotte Clark drove the long way home, thinking about how stuck she felt, a 23-year-old housewife, married to a cowboy who wasn't who she thought he was. The days ahead felt suffocating, living in a town where she was supposed to keep herself nice and wait for her husband to get home from the pub. Charlotte stopped the car, stepped out to breathe in the night air and looked out over the water to the tangled mangroves. She never heard a sound before the hand was around her mouth.Both Charlotte and Ned are about to learn that the world they live in is full of secrets and that it takes courage to fight for what is right. But there are people who will do anything to protect themselves and sometimes courage is not enough to keep you safe.

Three Keys to Murder


Gary Williams - 2012
    Her father’s tragic death earlier in the year still haunts her. For decades, Juan Velarde Cortez obsessively hunted a legendary treasure, and his passing has left unresolved feelings for Fawn. Now, when a series of grisly killings rock the small island community—each victim’s face has a distinct signature—Fawn suspects a bizarre connection between the murders, her father’s quest, and the death ritual of an infamous Seminole Indian from the 1800s. A cigar box that once belonged to her father appears to hold the key. As Fawn draws closer and closer to solving the 200-year-old puzzle and determining the killer’s identity, she will be forced to unravel historical clues that will lead her on a harrowing journey. Time is quickly running out as a serial killer is watching and waiting in the shadows. Will Fawn discover the truth before she becomes the next victim? With historical links and storyline twists, this follow-up to Gary Williams’ & Vicky Knerly’s debut novel, Death in the Beginning, engages all the necessary elements of and delivers a fast-paced, heart-pounding thriller. This is a new release of a previously published edition.

The House Next Door


James Patterson - 2019
    But a few quick tasks became a long lunch-and now things could go too far with a man who isn't what he seems....The Killer's Wife (with Max DiLallo): Four girls have gone missing. Detective McGrath knows the only way to find them is to get close to the suspect's wife...maybe too closeWe. Are. Not. Alone (with Tim Arnold): The first message from space. It will change the world. It's first contact. Undeniable proof of alien life. Disgraced Air Force scientist Robert Barnett found it. Now he's the target of a desperate nationwide manhunt-and Earth's future hangs in the balance.

The Paris Model


Alexandra Joel - 2020
    After a devastating discovery, Grace Woods leaves her vast Australian sheep station and travels to tumultuous post-war Paris in order to find her true identity.While working as a glamorous mannequin for Christian Dior, the world's newly acclaimed emperor of fashion, Grace mixes with counts and princesses, authors and artists, diplomats and politicians.But when Grace falls for handsome Philippe Boyer she doesn't know that he is leading a double life, nor that his past might inflict devastating consequences upon her. As she is drawn into Philippe's secret world of international espionage, Grace discovers both the shattering truth of her origins - and that her life is in peril.Based on a true story, The Paris Model is a tale of glamour, family secrets and heartbreak that takes you from the Australian outback to the exclusive salons of Paris.

The New Bedside, Bathtub and Armchair Companion to Agatha Christie


Dick Riley - 1979
    Lavishly embellished with black-and-white photographs, book covers, and images. Reviews of Agatha Christie works avoid spoilers. Original thoughts on tea, word puzzles, appetite, gender, accumulate to fun times.

Thick as Thieves


Sandra Brown - 2020
    But by daybreak, their plan had been shot to hell. One of them was in the hospital. One was in jail. One was dead. And one got away with it.Arden Maxwell, the daughter of the man who disappeared all those years ago -- presumably with the money, after murdering his accomplice -- has never reconciled with her father's abandonment of her and her sister. After countless personal setbacks she decides to return to her family home near mysterious Caddo Lake, and finally get answers to the many questions that torment her. Little does she know, two of her father's co-conspirators -- a war hero and a corrupt district attorney -- are watching her every move.Ledge Burnet, a rebellious teen at the time of the heist, evaded his jail sentence by enlisting in the army. Now he's back in town to care for his ailing father -- and to keep his eye on the county's corrupt district attorney, whom he suspects was the real murderer. Although the two are bound to silence because of the crime they committed together, each has spent years waiting and hoping that the other will make a fatal misstep. But the arrival of their elusive accomplice's daughter, Arden, who may know more about the missing money than she's telling, sets them both on red alert. She ignites Ledge's determination to expose the D.A.'s treachery . . . and sparks a desire he wishes to deny.

On, Off


Colleen McCullough - 2005
    The year is 1965, the setting a university town in Connecticut, and serial killers are still referred to as "multiple murderers." Profiling hasn't even begun, so Delmonico has to go it alone on a frantic learning curve that has the killer always two steps ahead of him." "The story begins when parts of the body of a young woman are found in a research center for neurology privately funded by one of the university's greatest benefactors." "It swiftly develops that the killer is very possibly a member of the research facility and that this is not his first murder. With great cunning and daring, he targets a "type" of young woman, following which the women are subjected to unspeakable torture and rape, and finally a horrible death." "The suspects are many and varied, and include a wealthy and ambitious young Indian eager to win a Nobel Prize; the professional head of the institute, who does something peculiar in his basement; an internationally renowned epilepsy clinician; a neurochemist with a taste for fine food, wine, and music; a Japanese with rarefied and strange tastes; and a business manager named Desdemona Dupre, a tough, well-educated woman, full of common sense, for whom Delmonico feels a growing, risky attraction." As the serial murders begin to mount - the killer is getting more and more bloodthirsty and bold - and the media and anguished parents begin to put pressure on the governor, Delmonico and the forceful, enigmatic Miss Dupre are drawn deeper and deeper into the secrets of the suspects and toward an old family scandal as shocking as it is bizarre. But is the scandal something quite separate, or does it lie at the roots of the present killings?

King Death


Toby Litt - 2010
    A heart - a human heart - slithering down outside the window of a train travelling between London Bridge and Blackfriars. Someone must have thrown it out from a carriage in front. Kumiko is determined to find out who - and why. But Skelton was sitting next to Kumiko on the train and he saw it too, so he also wants to get to the bottom of the mystery. Or he says he does, but really he just wants Kumiko back, because she's walked out on him, just like that, and left him heartbroken. Each for their own reasons, Kumiko and Skelton set out - separately - on a bizarre trail of discovery. Darting between dingy student pubs, the roofs of Borough Market and the corridors and car-parks of Guy's Hospital, they become embroiled in the seedy world of young medical students, until eventually the gossip and the stories lead them both to the hospital's infamous dissection lecturer - known behind his back as 'King Death'...

The Whole Bright Year


Debra Oswald - 2018
    Years ago, when her husband was killed as a bystander in an armed robbery, Celia left the city and brought her newborn daughter Zoe to this farm for a secure life. Now sixteen, Zoe is a passionate, intelligent girl, chafing against her mother's protectiveness, yearning to find intensity and a bit of danger.Barging into this world as itinerant fruit-pickers come a desperate brother and sister from Sydney. The hard-bitten Sheena has kidnapped her wild, ebullient eighteen-year-old brother Kieran and dragged him out west, away from trouble in the city. Kieran and Zoe are drawn to each other the instant they meet, sparking excitement, worry, lust, trouble . . . How do we protect people we love? How do we bear watching them go out into the perilous world with no guarantee of safety or happiness? What bargains do people make with darkness in order to survive? From the creator of Offspring and author of Useful, The Whole Bright Year is a gripping, wry and tender novel about how holding on too tightly can cost us what we love.

Vivian In Red


Kristina Riggle - 2016
    So when he steps out of his Upper West Side brownstone on one exceptionally hot morning, he's not expecting to see the impossible: a woman from his life sixty years ago, cherry red lips, bright red hat, winking at him on a New York sidewalk, looking just as beautiful as she did back in 1934.The sight causes him to suffer a stroke. And when he comes to, the renowned lyricist discovers he has lost the ability to communicate. Milo believes he must unravel his complicated history with Vivian Adair in order to win back his words. But he needs help—in the form of his granddaughter Eleanor—failed journalist and family misfit. Tapped to write her grandfather’s definitive biography, Eleanor must dig into Milo’s colorful past to discover the real story behind Milo’s greatest song Love Me, I Guess, and the mysterious woman who inspired an amazing life.A sweeping love story, family mystery and historical drama set eighty years apart, Vivian in Red will swell your heart like a favorite song while illuminating Broadway like you've never seen before.