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Unsympathetic Victims: A Legal Thriller (Ashley Montgomery Book 1)


Laura Snider - 2021
    Following the verdict, a protest breaks out — and the hated defense attorney quickly finds her life in danger.But little does Ashley know, things are about to get worse — much worse. One of her clients turns up dead, and Ashley is arrested for his murder. As local investigators Katie Mickey and George Thomanson dive into the case, they start to suspect that Ashely is being framed — but by whom?With Ashley’s freedom at stake, Katie and George are desperate to find out the truth. And soon, they uncover a sinister plot born of corruption, greed, and misplaced loyalty that will leave the whole town reeling — and questioning their faith in the people they trusted most.

The Mourning Hours


Paula Treick DeBoard - 2013
    Kirsten Hammarstrom hasn't been home to her tiny corner of rural Wisconsin in years-not since the mysterious disappearance of a local teenage girl rocked the town and shattered her family. Kirsten was just nine years old when Stacy Lemke went missing, and the last person to see her alive was her boyfriend, Johnny-the high school wrestling star and Kirsten's older brother. No one knows what to believe-not even those closest to Johnny-but the event unhinges the quiet farming community and pins Kirsten's family beneath the crushing weight of suspicion. Now, years later, a new tragedy forces Kirsten and her siblings to return home, where they must confront the devastating event that shifted the trajectory of their lives. Tautly written and beautifully evocative, The Mourning Hours is a gripping portrayal of a family straining against extraordinary pressure, and a powerful tale of loyalty, betrayal and forgiveness.

Trail of Destruction


Tracy Buchanan - 2021
    Can one woman uncover the truth before it all goes up in flames?Eager for distraction in the aftermath of her messy divorce, Ellie Mileham dives into moderating the petty squabbles on her local Facebook group. When a prankster starts trolling uptight members, it’s a welcome diversion at first. But then the war of words moves onto the streets of Forest Grove, with threatening letters escalating into violent destruction. It’s suddenly clear there’s something much more dangerous at play.With lives at risk, Ellie delves into the history of Forest Grove and realises the so-called rural paradise has a dark and sinister heart. As she pieces together the puzzle of her own troubled childhood on the edge of the forest, Ellie learns this is not the first time the villagers have been targeted by an anonymous vigilante with an axe to grind…Could the two cases be connected? Ellie is determined to find out. But with everybody watching and nobody quite what they seem, can she uncover the truth before online threats become nightmarish reality?

Treasure of the Mayan King


Alex Zabala - 2012
    Chauncy Rollock is an amiable archaeologist with just the right knack for solving logic problems. And the Mexican Military captain Gustavo De Leon is tired of fighting corruption at all levels of government. All three men and their families become entangled in the secret of the Mayan Riddle found on the steps of a newly discovered pyramid. Those who would use the treasure for personal gain are never far from their goal and must be stopped at all costs.The Yucatan will never be the same.Treasure of the Mayan King is a clean action-adventure novel that is safe and enjoyable for the whole family to read. “If you like Indiana Jones, you’ll love this book!”From the back cover:A violent tropical storm has uncovered a previously unknown Mayan pyramid in the Yucatan Peninsula. On the steps of this temple lies a riddle that leads to the hidden treasure of a great Mayan king. One man, the French linguist Dr. Sova, believes he knows the secrets of the riddle. But his efforts to find it are cut short and the information falls into the hands of unscrupulous people. The race is on to see who will be the first to find the treasure of the Mayan king!

The Missing Hours


Julia Dahl - 2021
    But look closer, and things are messier: her parents are separating, she’s just been humiliated by a sleazy documentary, and her sister is about to have a baby with a man she barely knows.Claudia starts the school year resolved to find a path toward something positive, maybe even meaningful – and then one drunken night everything changes. Reeling, her memory hazy, Claudia cuts herself off from her family, seeking solace in a new friendship. But when the rest of school comes back from spring break, Claudia is missing.Suddenly, the whole city is trying to piece together the hours of that terrible night.From the critically acclaimed author of Invisible City and Conviction, The Missing Hours is a novel about obsession, privilege, and the explosive consequences of one violent act.

One of the Good Ones


Maika Moulite - 2021
    As Kezi becomes another immortalized victim in the fight against police brutality, Happi begins to question the idealized way her sister is remembered. Perfect. Angelic.One of the good ones.Even as the phrase rings wrong in her mind—why are only certain people deemed worthy to be missed?—Happi and her sister Genny embark on a journey to honor Kezi in their own way, using an heirloom copy of The Negro Motorist Green Book as their guide. But there's a twist to Kezi's story that no one could've ever expected—one that will change everything all over again.

Arcadia Falls


Carol Goodman - 2010
    . . . Meg Rosenthal is driving toward the next chapter in her life. Winding along a wooded roadway, her car moves through a dense forest setting not unlike one in the bedtime stories Meg used to read to her daughter, Sally. But the girl riding beside Meg is a teenager now, and has exchanged the land of make-believe for an iPod and some personal space. Too much space, it seems, as the chasm between them has grown since the sudden, unexpected death of Meg’s husband.  Dire financial straits and a desire for a fresh start take Meg and Sally from a comfortable life on Long Island to a tucked-away hamlet in upstate New York: Arcadia Falls, where Meg has accepted a teaching position at a boarding school. The creaky, neglected cottage Meg and Sally are to call home feels like an ill portent of things to come, but Meg is determined to make the best of it and to make a good impression on the school’s dean, the diminutive, elegant Ivy St. Clare.St. Claire, however, is distracted by a shocking crisis: During Arcadia’s First Night bonfire, one of Meg’s folklore students, Isabel Cheney, plunges to her death in a campus gorge. Sheriff Callum Reade finds Isabel’s death suspicious, but then, he is a man with secrets and a dark past himself. Meg is unnerved by Reade’s interest in the girl’s death, and as long-buried secrets emerge, she must face down her own demons and the danger threatening to envelop Sally. As the past clings tight to the present, the shadows, as if in a terrifying fairy tale, grow longer and deadlier. In Arcadia Falls, award-winning author Carol Goodman deftly weaves a mesmerizing narrative of passion: for revenge, for art, for love.

What If It's You


Shauna McDonnell - 2021
    But one lousy date after another has me ready to give up on the game of love.Could my hot-as-hell, MMA fighting best friend be the reason Mr Right seems so far out of reach? What If It's You is a hilarious, sexy, and most definitely sarcastic, best friends to lovers, standalone romance.

Worst Case (Charley Gallagher Mystery)


Jack Parker - 2014
    So he is completely unprepared for when he is assigned the case of a murdered high school gym teacher who was found beaten to death and wrapped up in a volleyball net. Encountering the likes of a compulsive overeater, a female gym teacher with an attitude, and an advice-giving dog, Charley's life gets a little crazy.

Necessary People


Anna Pitoniak - 2019
    One of them wants it all. But they can't both win. Stella and Violet are best friends, and from the moment they met in college, they knew their roles. Beautiful, privileged, and reckless Stella lives in the spotlight. Hardworking, laser-focused Violet stays behind the scenes, always ready to clean up the mess that Stella inevitably leaves in her wake.After graduation, Violet moves to New York and lands a job in cable news, where she works her way up from intern to assistant to producer, and to a life where she's finally free from Stella's shadow. In this fast-paced world, Violet thrives, and her ambitions grow -- but everything is jeopardized when Stella, envious of Violet's new life, uses her connections, beauty, and charisma to get hired at the same network. Stella soon moves in front of the camera, becoming the public face of the stories that Violet has worked tirelessly to produce -- and taking all the credit. Stella might be the one with the rich family and the right friends, but Violet isn't giving up so easily. As she and Stella strive for success, each reveals just how far she'll go to get what she wants -- even if it means destroying the other person along the way.

Happy & You Know It


Laura Hankin - 2020
    Claire is surprised to discover that she is smitten with her new employers, a welcoming clique of wellness addicts with impossibly shiny hair, who whirl from juice cleanse to overpriced miracle vitamins to spin class with limitless energy.There is perfect hostess Whitney who is on the brink of social-media stardom and just needs to find a way to keep her perfect life from falling apart. Caustically funny, recent stay-at-home mom Amara who is struggling to embrace her new identity. And old money, veteran mom Gwen who never misses an opportunity to dole out parenting advice. But as Claire grows closer to the cool women who pay her bills, she uncovers secrets and betrayals that no amount of activated charcoal can fix.Filled with humor and shocking twists, Happy and You Know It is a brilliant take on motherhood—exposing it as yet another way for society to pass judgment on women—while also exploring the baffling magnetism of curated social-media lives that are designed to make us feel unworthy. But, ultimately, this dazzling novel celebrates the unlikely bonds that form, and the power that can be unlocked, when a group of very different women is thrown together when each is at her most vulnerable.

The Vixen


Francine Prose - 2021
    Because Simon has a secret that, at the height of the Red Scare and the McCarthy hearings, he cannot reveal: his beloved mother was a childhood friend of Ethel Rosenberg’s. His parents mourn Ethel’s death.Simon’s dilemma grows thornier when he meets The Vixen’s author, the startlingly beautiful, reckless, seductive Anya Partridge, ensconced in her opium-scented boudoir in a luxury Hudson River mental asylum. As mysteries deepen, as the confluence of sex, money, politics and power spirals out of Simon’s control, he must face what he’s lost by exchanging the loving safety of his middle-class Jewish parents’ Coney Island apartment for the witty, whiskey-soaked orbit of his charismatic boss, the legendary Warren Landry. Gradually Simon realizes that the people around him are not what they seem, that everyone is keeping secrets, that ordinary events may conceal a diabolical plot—and that these crises may steer him toward a brighter future. At once domestic and political, contemporary and historic, funny and heartbreaking, enlivened by surprising plot turns and passages from Anya’s hilariously bad novel, The Vixen illuminates a period of history with eerily striking similarities to the current moment. Meanwhile it asks timeless questions: How do we balance ambition and conscience? What do social mobility and cultural assimilation require us to sacrifice? How do we develop an authentic self, discover a vocation, and learn to live with the mysteries of love, family, art, life and loss?

Wormwood (Group Fifteen Files)


Mark Dawson - 2022
    Eloise Shepherd, one of MI6’s brightest rising stars, is working undercover in Soviet Russia as Magdalina Novikova. Her mission is to persuade nuclear physicist Stanislav Kalashnik to defect and bring his knowledge of Russian weapons back to the UK. On the verge of success, the operation fails suddenly and spectacularly.17 years later, Kalashnik is Chief Engineer at the power plant near Pripyat known as Chernobyl. His concerns for the safety of the plant are growing. When his views lead to accusations that question his patriotism, he finds himself in a very risky position.Meanwhile, back in London, Eloise Shepherd’s life and career are spinning out of control when she’s approached with a one-time offer to redeem herself. The mission: to get Kalashnik over Soviet borders once more. It’s an opportunity that could change everything and Eloise knows there’s no reward without risk. But she’s heading straight towards a danger far greater than she could ever have anticipated.

Big Jack Is Dead


Harvey Smith - 2013
    Controlled and calculating, his world begins to splinter when he learns - in the middle of a corporate meeting - that his father has committed suicide. Returning home to the Gulf Coast, Jack struggles with a host of unresolved feelings as he buries the man he hated most. Interwoven throughout the novel, chapters set in the 1970s depict Jack as a boy, chronicling his relationships with a storm-tossed mother and a menacing father, living in the shadows of the petrochemical plants scattered along the Gulf Coast. The novel highlights the differences between life in California at the end of the Dot-Com era and life in blue collar Texas during the 1970s, contrasting Jack as a man and as a child, and showing how the people who bring us into the world shape us forever.

Self-Portrait with Boy


Rachel Lyon - 2018
    Working three jobs, responsible for her aging father, and worrying that the crumbling warehouse she lives in is being sold to developers, she is at a point of desperation. One day, in the background of a self-portrait, Lu accidentally captures on film a boy falling past her window to his death. The photograph turns out to be startlingly gorgeous, the best work of art she’s ever made. It’s an image that could change her life…if she lets it. But the decision to show the photograph is not easy. The boy is her neighbors’ son, and the tragedy brings all the building’s residents together. It especially unites Lu with his beautiful grieving mother, Kate. As the two forge an intense bond based on sympathy, loneliness, and budding attraction, Lu feels increasingly unsettled and guilty, torn between equally fierce desires: to use the photograph to advance her career, and to protect a woman she has come to love. Set in early 90s Brooklyn on the brink of gentrification, Self-Portrait with Boy is a provocative commentary about the emotional dues that must be paid on the road to success, a powerful exploration of the complex terrain of female friendship, and a brilliant debut from novelist Rachel Lyon.