The Second Life of Mirielle West


Amanda Skenandore - 2021
    Based on little-known history, this timely book will strike a chord with readers of Fiona Davis, Tracey Lange, and Marie Benedict.Based on the true story of America’s only leper colony, The Second Life of Mirielle West brings vividly to life the Louisiana institution known as Carville, where thousands of people were stripped of their civil rights, branded as lepers, and forcibly quarantined throughout the entire 20th century. For Mirielle West, a 1920’s socialite married to a silent film star, the isolation and powerlessness of the Louisiana Leper Home is an unimaginable fall from her intoxicatingly chic life of bootlegged champagne and the star-studded parties of Hollywood’s Golden Age. When a doctor notices a pale patch of skin on her hand, she’s immediately branded a leper and carted hundreds of miles from home to Carville, taking a new name to spare her family and famous husband the shame that accompanies the disease.At first she hopes her exile will be brief, but those sent to Carville are more prisoners than patients and their disease has no cure. Instead she must find community and purpose within its walls, struggling to redefine her self-worth while fighting an unchosen fate.As a registered nurse, Amanda Skenandore’s medical background adds layers of detail and authenticity to the experiences of patients and medical professionals at Carville – the isolation, stigma, experimental treatments, and disparate community. A tale of repulsion, resilience, and the Roaring ‘20s, The Second Life of Mirielle West is also the story of a health crisis in America’s past, made all the more poignant by the author’s experiences during another, all-too-recent crisis.

Someone Else's Secret


Julia Spiro - 2020
    Lindsey and Georgie have high hopes for their summer on Martha’s Vineyard. In the wake of the recession, ambitious college graduate Lindsey accepts a job as a nanny for an influential family who may help her land a position in Boston’s exclusive art world. Georgie, the eldest child in that family, is nearly fifteen and eager to find herself, dreaming of independence and yearning for first love.Over the course of that formative summer, the two young women develop a close bond. Then, one night by the lighthouse, a shocking act occurs that ensnares them both in the throes of a terrible secret. Their budding friendship is shattered, and neither one can speak of what happened that night for ten long years.Until now. Lindsey and Georgie must confront the past after all this time. Their quest for justice will require costly sacrifices, but it also might give them the closure they need to move on. All they know for sure is that when the truth is revealed, their lives will be forever changed once again.From a fresh voice in fiction, this poignant and timely novel explores the strength and nuance of female friendship, the cost of ambition, and the courage it takes to speak the truth.

Girls of Brackenhill


Kate Moretti - 2020
    It’s been seventeen years, and though desperate to start a new life with her fiancé, Hannah is compelled to question the events of her last summer at Brackenhill.When a human bone is found near the estate, Hannah is convinced it belongs to her long-lost sister. She launches her own investigation into that magical summer that ended in a nightmare. As strange happenings plague the castle, Hannah uncovers disturbing details about the past and startling realizations about her own repressed childhood memories.Fueled by guilt over her sister’s vanishing, Hannah becomes obsessed with discovering what happened all those years ago, but by the time Hannah realizes some mysteries are best left buried, it’s too late to stop digging. Overwhelmed by what she has exposed, Hannah isn’t sure her new life can survive her old ghosts.

Lawyers Gone Bad


Vincent L. Scarsella - 2014
    In this case they’re investigating the local District Attorney, who may have committed the ultimate ethical wrong - murder.Novelist Vincent Scarsella draws on his over 18 years of real life experience as head of the Eighth Judicial District Grievance Committee in Buffalo, New York to craft a gripping, suspenseful novel about lawyers gone bad.But the story is more than a crime novel. It concerns friendship, loss, unrequited love, and ultimately, justice. It seeks to answer the question, does what goes around, come around?

The Atlantis Gene


A.G. Riddle - 2013
    They will set off a race to unravel the deepest secrets of human existence--and an event that could change humanity forever.

A Bridge Across the Ocean


Susan Meissner - 2017
    World War Two is over, but the recovery from the most intimate of its horrors has only just begun for Annaliese Lange, a German ballerina desperate to escape her past, and Simone Deveraux, the wronged daughter of a French Resistance spy.Now the two women are joining hundreds of other European war brides aboard the renowned RMS Queen Mary to cross the Atlantic and be reunited with their American husbands. Their new lives in the United States brightly beckon until their tightly-held secrets are laid bare in their shared stateroom. When the voyage ends at New York Harbor, only one of them will disembark... Present day. Facing a crossroads in her own life, Brette Caslake visits the famously haunted Queen Mary at the request of an old friend. What she finds will set her on a course to solve a seventy-year-old tragedy that will draw her into the heartaches and triumphs of the courageous war brides and will ultimately lead her to reconsider what she has to sacrifice to achieve her own deepest longings.

Colin McCool and the Vampire Dwarf


M.D. Massey - 2012
    Now, they've been recruited by a leprechaun who loves IKEA and a centuries-old wizard (who may or may not think he’s Gandalf) to break the evil vampire dwarf’s curse and save the town… The thing is, there are a lot of weird and frightening things sneaking around their town, and not all of them are friendly. Cats the size of ponies. Ponies that eat people. Little people that eat people, and who have horrible taste in hats. And, pom-pom girls with goat feet. All-in-all, it’s a pretty messed up situation, and it looks like Colin and Jesse are the only ones who can do anything about it – which makes it even more messed up. But if they fail, it could mean an end to their town… and an even bloodier end for Colin and Jesse. About “Colin McCool and the Vampire Dwarf”: “Colin McCool and the Vampire Dwarf” is an exciting new entry among fantasy adventure books for kids 9-12, and is a unique and entertaining addition to the YA books genre. If you enjoy vampire books for kids or kids adventure books, then you’ll love the Colin McCool children’s fantasy book series. “Colin McCool and the Vampire Dwarf” classifies as middle grade fiction for ages 9 and up, grade levels 4 and up.

What Happened to the Bennetts


Lisa Scottoline
    He is driving his family home after his daughter’s lacrosse game when a pickup truck begins tailgating them, on a dark stretch of road. Suddenly two men jump from the pickup and pull guns on Jason, demanding the car. A horrific flash of violence changes his life forever. Later that awful night, Jason and his family receive a visit from the FBI. The agents tell them that the carjackers were members of a dangerous drug-trafficking organization - and now Jason and his family are in their crosshairs. The agents advise the Bennetts to enter the witness protection program right away, and they have no choice but to agree. But WITSEC was designed to protect criminal informants, not law-abiding families. Taken from all they know, trapped in an unfamiliar life, the Bennetts begin to fall apart at the seams. Then Jason learns a shocking truth and realizes that he has to take matters into his own hands.

Road Out of Winter


Alison Stine - 2020
    Now she’s been left behind to tend the crop alone. Then spring doesn’t return for the second year in a row, bringing unprecedented extreme winter.With grow lights stashed in her truck and a pouch of precious seeds, she begins a journey, determined to start over away from Appalachian Ohio. But the icy roads and strangers hidden in the hills are treacherous. After a harrowing encounter with a violent cult, Wylodine and her small group of exiles become a target for its volatile leader. Because she has the most valuable skill in the climate chaos: she can make things grow.Urgent and poignant, Road Out of Winter is a glimpse of an all-too-possible near future, with a chosen family forged in the face of dystopian collapse. With the gripping suspense of The Road and the lyricism of Station Eleven, Stine’s vision is of a changing world where an unexpected hero searches for a place hope might take root.

Secrets From The Dust


George Hamilton - 2010
    She stubbornly fights to maintain her culture until she can escape or her real parents find her. But soon she discovers that she is growing to like many of the customs and material possessions of her captors, throwing her into an identity crisis, which rips another fault line through her world.By the time she grows into a beautiful young woman, she has already suffered the disappointments of unrequited love and a forbidden desire. Encouraged to hide behind the identity of a Southern European, the highly charged political environment of the time, and her love for a political activist, forces her to confront her true identity.

Toothless


J.P. Moore - 2009
    Martin, a failed Templar, is slain on the field of battle only to be reanimated in service to the very evil he hoped to destroy. The Black Yew, the dark force that controls the undead army, considers him a gifted minion. But life is not done with him yet.

The Rose and the Crane


Clint Dohmen - 2017
    The place? China-adjacent. If you had told young Simon Lang that he’d spend his best years piloting a boat for a trumped-up Venetian, instead of enjoying the good life back home in Exeter, he’d have laughed in your face. But King Edward IV did not like that Simon was thrice removed from some long forgotten ancestor who was somehow related to the owner of the cow that gave milk to King Henry the Fifth. Or something like that, Simon was not very good at genealogy. But now the Lancastrian lordling has fled to the far reaches of the world to brood on revenge. He’s stranded in these strange waters with money-hungry Captain Aldo Mitacchione, his halfwit first mate Neno, and a crew of starving Italians. But if the strange vessel on the horizon or the unexpected ally on board have anything to say about it, things are about to get stranger.Join smart-talking Simon, fabled samurai Kojiro Takeda, and their band of misfit brothers as they outrun cannibals, outsmart assassins, (attempt to) outdrink Scotsmen, and help Henry Tudor oust the crown from the sociopathic Duke of Gloucester.Note: The area of western Japan that surrounds the cities of Kyoto and Osaka is referred to as the Kansai or "Kinki," region (so get your minds out of the gutter).

Yesterday's News


R.G. Belsky - 2018
    Now, new evidence, new victims, and new suspects plunge Clare back into this sensational story—challenging every fiber of her ethical code and forcing her to confront dangerous elements and long-hidden truths from her own past.A classic cold case reopened—along with Pandora's boxWhen eleven-year-old Lucy Devlin disappeared on her way to school more than a decade ago, it became one of the most famous missing child cases in history. The story turned reporter Clare Carlson into a media superstar overnight. Clare broke exclusive after exclusive. She had unprecedented access to the Devlin family as she wrote about the heartbreaking search for their young daughter. She later won a Pulitzer Prize for her extraordinary coverage of the case.Now Clare once again plunges back into this sensational story. With new evidence, new victims, and new suspects—too many suspects. Everyone from members of a motorcycle gang to a prominent politician running for a US Senate seat seem to have secrets they’re hiding about what really might have happened to Lucy Devlin. But Clare has her own secrets. And, in order to untangle the truth about Lucy Devlin, she must finally confront her own torturous past.

Faye, Faraway


Helen Fisher - 2021
    Every night, before she puts them to bed, she whispers to them: “You are good, you are kind, you are clever, you are funny.” She’s determined that they never doubt for a minute that their mother loves them unconditionally. After all, her own mother Jeanie had died when she was only seven years old and Faye has never gotten over that intense pain of losing her.But one day, her life is turned upside down when she finds herself in 1977, the year before her mother died. Suddenly, she has the chance to reconnect with her long-lost mother, and even meets her own younger self, a little girl she can barely remember. Jeanie doesn’t recognize Faye as her daughter, of course, even though there is something eerily familiar about her...As the two women become close friends, they share many secrets—but Faye is terrified of revealing the truth about her identity. Will it prevent her from returning to her own time and her beloved husband and daughters? What if she’s doomed to remain in the past forever? Faye knows that eventually she will have to choose between those she loves in the past and those she loves in the here and now, and that knowledge presents her with an impossible choice.Emotionally gripping and ineffably sweet Faye, Faraway is a brilliant exploration of the grief associated with unimaginable loss and the magic of being healed by love.

The Labrador Response


Melissa Crickard - 2019
    doctor must save her daughter from a genetically modified filovirus as the nation fights for access to healthcare. When she's not working in the Emergency Department at George Washington University Hospital, Dr. Sara Sullivan lives an adventurous life. But the chance at another vacation seems to diminish with each passing day when the dangerous Labrador virus begins spreading throughout the capital, devastating the African American population and escalating racial tension. As a biracial woman, Sara begins to fear for her and her daughter's lives when mortality rates continue to grow, with no cure in sight. After being forced into quarantine due to exposure to the virus, her fear becomes reality. Escape is no longer a consideration—it's the only way she can save millions of lives, including her daughter's. Sara's journey to find a cure becomes increasingly complex as she begins to unravel a conspiracy within the pharmaceutical industry and learns the disturbing truth about the disease's purpose.