Book picks similar to
The Swan Keeper by Milana Marsenich


crime-thriller
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young-adult-fiction
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Perfume: The Story of a Murderer


Patrick Süskind - 1985
    As a boy, he lives to decipher the odors of Paris, and apprentices himself to a prominent perfumer who teaches him the ancient art of mixing precious oils and herbs. But Grenouille's genius is such that he is not satisfied to stop there, and he becomes obsessed with capturing the smells of objects such as brass doorknobs and fresh-cut wood. Then one day he catches a hint of a scent that will drive him on an ever-more-terrifying quest to create the "ultimate perfume"—the scent of a beautiful young virgin. Told with dazzling narrative brilliance, Perfume is a hauntingly powerful tale of murder and sensual depravity.

The Glass Hotel


Emily St. John Mandel - 2020
    On the night she meets Jonathan Alkaitis, a hooded figure scrawls a message on the lobby’s glass wall: Why don’t you swallow broken glass. High above Manhattan, a greater crime is committed: Alkaitis is running an international Ponzi scheme, moving imaginary sums of money through clients’ accounts. When the financial empire collapses, it obliterates countless fortunes and devastates lives. Vincent, who had been posing as Jonathan’s wife, walks away into the night. Years later, a victim of the fraud is hired to investigate a strange occurrence: a woman has seemingly vanished from the deck of a container ship between ports of call. In this captivating story of crisis and survival, Emily St. John Mandel takes readers through often hidden landscapes: campgrounds for the near-homeless, underground electronica clubs, the business of international shipping, service in luxury hotels, and life in a federal prison. Rife with unexpected beauty, The Glass Hotel is a captivating portrait of greed and guilt, love and delusion, ghosts and unintended consequences, and the infinite ways we search for meaning in our lives.

The Revenant


Michael Punke - 2002
    He’s done it once already.Rocky Mountains, 1823. The trappers of the Rocky Mountain Fur Company live a brutal frontier life. Hugh Glass is one of the most respected men in the company, an experienced frontiersman and an expert tracker.But when a scouting mission puts Glass face-to-face with a grizzly bear, he is viciously mauled and not expected to survive. Two men from the company are ordered to remain with him until his inevitable death. But, fearing an imminent attack, they abandon Glass, stripping him of his prized rifle and hatchet.As Glass watches the men flee, he is driven to survive by one all-consuming desire: revenge. With shocking grit and determination, he sets out on a three-thousand-mile journey across the harsh American frontier, to seek revenge on the men who betrayed him.The Revenant is a remarkable tale of obsession and the lengths that one man will go to for retribution. The novel that inspired the epic new movie starring Leonardo DiCaprio and Tom Hardy.

The Pregnant Indian Bride (Mail Order Bride Western Romance) (Frontier Women)


Florence Linnington - 2021
    

Kyle Achilles Series Complete Collection


Tim Tigner - 2019
     Amazon Prime members can also read this for FREE on a Kindle. To learn how, go to https://www.amazon.com/gp/help/custom... This collection contains all the Kyle Achilles books as of February, 2019, arranged in the suggested reading order. Includes Amazon #1 Bestsellers PUSHING BRILLIANCE, THE LIES OF SPIES, CHASING IVAN, FALLING STARS and TWIST AND TURN. See the individual books for detailed descriptions and reader reviews of the stories destined to keep you reading late into the night. "Achilles is my new Mitch Rapp." —Robert Getty "Reads like Reacher with a little Ludlum and Flynn mixed in.” —Jeff Bowden "My first thought was a new Jack Reacher—only better." —Lucia O'Brien "Think of Tim Tigner as Tom Clancy without the filler." —Larry Nesbit "Every bit as spellbinding as David Baldacci." —Kathryn Grady _______________________________________ PUSHING BRILLIANCE He didn’t do it. He really didn't. But proving it, will be a killer. Imagine Harrison Ford's THE FUGITIVE meets Tom Clancy's HUNT FOR RED OCTOBER. ________________________________________ THE LIES OF SPIES The American president sent him... The Russian president caught him... The free world is counting on him... But he doesn't remember. Imagine Robert Ludlum’s THE BOURNE IDENTITY meets Lee Child’s PERSONAL. ________________________________________ CHASING IVAN Europe's smartest criminal, versus America's best spy. And then there's poor Emily, stuck in between. Imagine THE DAY OF THE JACKAL meets BRIDGET JONES’S DIARY. _______________________________________ FALLING STARS Two distressed heroes. Three dastardly crimes. And the slickest heists of all time. Imagine Bin Laden meets Bernie Madoff—and hold on for the ride. _______________________________________ TWIST AND TURN Their plan was brilliant, their tactics cunning, but then came a twist, they never saw coming. Imagine BREAKING BAD meets THE SUM OF ALL FEARS. _______________________________________ Amazon named Tim Tigner an All-Star Author in December, 2017 and every month since for being one of the most popular authors in Kindle Unlimited. His books are recommended for fans of David Baldacci, Lee Child’s Jack Reacher, Tom Clancy’s Jack Ryan, Nelson DeMille’s John Corey, Vince Flynn’s Mitch Rapp, Mark Greaney’s Gray Man, Gregg Hurwitz’s Orphan X, Robert Ludlum’s Jason Bourne, John Sandford’s Lucas Davenport, Daniel Silva’s Gabriel Allon, Brad Tayl

A Mother for Rosie


Emma Ashwood - 2021
    

The Skook


J.P. Miller - 1984
    Fleeing from a motorcycle gang, alienated, middle-aged Spanish Barrman escapes into a hidden cave and finds himself entombed in an underground labyrinth inhabited by the wondrous Skook.

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.…

My Sunshine Away


M.O. Walsh - 2015
    But in the summer of 1989, when fifteen-year-old Lindy Simpson--free spirit, track star, and belle of the block--experiences a horrible crime late one evening near her home, it becomes apparent that this idyllic stretch of Southern suburbia has a dark side, too. In My Sunshine Away, M.O. Walsh brilliantly juxtaposes the enchantment of a charmed childhood with the gripping story of a violent crime, unraveling families, and consuming adolescent love. Acutely wise and deeply honest, it is an astonishing and page-turning debut about the meaning of family, the power of memory, and our ability to forgive.

Presidio


Randy Kennedy - 2018
    When they steal a station wagon for the journey, the brothers accidentally kidnap Martha Zacharias, a Mennonite girl asleep in the back of the car. Martha turns out to be a stubborn survivor who refuses to be sent home, so together these unlikely road companions attempt to escape across the Mexican border, pursued by the police and Martha’s vengeful father.The story is told partly through Troy’s journal, in which he chronicles his encounters with con artists, down-and-outers, and roadside philosophers, people looking for fast money, human connection, or a home long since vanished. The journal details a breakdown that has left Troy unable to function in conventional society; he is reduced to haunting motels, stealing from men roughly his size, living with their possessions in order to have none of his own and all but disappearing into their identities.With a page-turning plot about a kidnapped child, gorgeously written scenes that probe the soul of the American West, and an austere landscape as real as any character, Presidio packs a powerful punch of anomie, dark humor, pathos, and suspense.

Now You Know: A Novel


Susan Kelly - 2013
    It ends with a promise. On her deathbed Frances extracts it from her three daughters—the utterly capable homemaker Alice; the recalcitrant Allegra, a recovering alcoholic; and bohemian Edie, who shrinks in the face of any commitment: their promise to “look after Libba.” As if the formidable, tough-minded Libba Charles, author of ten books, a literary celebrity, needed looking after. Yet when they are summoned by Libba to Creek Cabin, their mother’s summer hideaway in the Blue Ridge Mountains of North Carolina, they go. None of them is prepared, though, for what they will discover there—about their mother, about Libba, about themselves—in this poignant, adroit rendering of reunions and farewells.

A Spy In Vienna: A Paul Muller Novel of Political Intrigue


William N. Walker - 2018
    It is the second Paul Muller novel set in Europe before World War II. Muller is recruited to become a spy to resist Hitler's campaign to absorb Austria into the German Reich and, from his perch in Vienna, finds himself at the epicenter of the desperate struggle to preserve Austrian independence. Muller plays a dangerous game in helping Austria oppose Hitler's demands and he hatches a bold plan to divert Austria's gold reserves so they stay out of Hitler's grasp. The novel captures this gripping drama in rich and vivid detail as political pressures mount and the threat of war looms. A Spy in Vienna re-creates for readers the fraught atmosphere of 1930's, when the threat of Nazi violence hung over Europe. Aficionados of that epoch will relish the authenticity of the novel, which reawakens the tensions and turbulence of the era, with its undercurrent of violence and fear. The narrative recaptures the urgency of the crisis as repeated confrontations escalated to an explosive conclusion. Today, sitting at the safe remove of eighty years, we know the outcome. Hitler's bald aggression prevailed; his takeover of Austria became a crucial stepping stone leading to World War II. But the characters in the novel know none of this; for them, the events they are caught up in are frightening and bewildering, confronting them with dire choices and fearful consequences. The novel transports the reader into that contemporary maelstrom of intrigue and danger—combining real history with a compelling story. Admirers of Paul Muller in Danzig will revel in his new adventures in Vienna, as once again he confronts Nazi tyranny.

Shiner


Amy Jo Burns - 2020
    They have no car, no mailbox, and no visitors-except for her mother's lifelong best friend. Every Sunday, Wren's father delivers winding sermons in an abandoned gas station, where he takes up serpents and praises the Lord for his blighted white eye, proof of his divinity and key to the hold he has over the community, over Wren and her mother.But over the course of one summer, a miracle performed by Wren's father quickly turns to tragedy. As the order of her world begins to shatter, Wren must uncover the truth of her father's mysterious legend and her mother's harrowing history and complex bond with her best friend. And with that newfound knowledge, Wren can imagine a different future for herself than she has been told to expect.Rich with epic love and epic loss, and diving deep into a world that is often forgotten but still part of America, Shiner reveals the hidden story behind two generations' worth of Appalachian heartbreak and resolve. Amy Jo Burns brings us a smoldering, taut debut novel about modern female myth-making in a land of men-and one young girl who must ultimately open her eyes.

God's Coffin (Wade Garrison Book 2)


Richard Greene - 2011
    Now, six years later, his old friend, Sheriff Seth Bowlen, in Sisters, Colorado is in trouble and needs help. Sheriff Bowlen sends a wire to United States Marshal Billy French in Santa Fe who in turn sends Deputy Marshal Wade Garrison to help their old friend. Innocently, Wade decides to take his wife, Sarah, and son, Emmett, with him so they can visit her family in Harper, a small town northeast of Sisters. As he and his family board the train in Santa Fe, he could not have known that a terrible storm of violence was already brewing and this fateful decision could destroy his wife and child.

The Women of Crooked Creek (Emma/Hattie/Briley/Clara): A Western Story Collection


M.K. McClintock - 2016
    Casey Latimer is a wounded soldier in search of a new home and a new beginning. When Casey, battered and bruised, quite literally falls at Emma's feet, she is duty-bound to help him. What happens next is something Emma never expected."Hattie of Crooked Creek"Married three months before the war and now a widow, Harriett McBride can either give up and sell her ranch or fight for the life she and her husband came west to build. With the help of a friend and a stranger, she must stop the one who threatens all she holds dear. When Hattie is faced with an unexpected choice, will she bury her heart on the battlefield forever or find a way to love again?"Briley of Crooked Creek"Far from home and with no family left, Briley Donaghue answers an advertisement from a rancher seeking a wife in Montana Territory. She arrives in Crooked Creek to find an empty cabin, a letter from her fiancé, and too many unanswered questions. Alone and uncertain, Briley forges a new life in an unfamiliar land."Clara of Crooked Creek"No longer willing to allow society's opinion to influence her life, Clara Stowe sought a change, and what better place than the frontier. With her young daughter by her side, she embarks on an unexpected undertaking to the Montana Territory. With grit and determination, they arrive in Crooked Creek to shape the life Clara had always dreamed of and honor the memory of the one they lost.The war is over between the North and the South, but the battles at home are just beginning. If you love stories of bravery and courage with unforgettable women and the men they love, you'll enjoy The Women of Crooked Creek. MK McClintock delivers another extraordinary western series with more to come.