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A Book of Common Prayer


Joan Didion - 1977
    Grace Strasser-Mendana controls much of the country's wealth and knows virtually all of its secrets; Charlotte Douglas knows far too little. "Immaculate of history, innocent of politics," she has come to Boca Grande vaguely and vainly hoping to be reunited with her fugitive daughter. As imagined by Didion, her fate is at once utterly particular and fearfully emblematic of an age of conscienceless authority and unfathomable violence.

The Long Trial of Nolan Dugatti


Stephen Graham Jones - 2008
    If there's a line between the real and the digital, between meat and the game, between past and present, then hold this book close to your mouth and whisper it into the pages. Please. Maybe the kid in there'll hear you. His name is Nolan Dugatti. He's lost, see, running down hall after hall, something both ancient and not-yet born galloping up behind him on a hundred legs, each individual footfall a sound he knows, a way of shuffling that he's always known. His father? Except it can't be. Unless of course this is another novel from Stephen Graham Jones. Not quite horror, not quite science fiction, but like his five or six other books, a story trembling at some pupal stage between meat and the game, where words will sometimes stop their crawl across the page and crane their neck around at the sky, nod about what they see there--you--then unfold their wings, drift up into another world altogether.

The Larmenius Inheritance


John Paul Davis - 2013
    Hidden amongst his cargo is a legendary treasure – its very existence known only to those deemed worthy.500 years later, esteemed history professor William Anson is found murdered in La Rochelle. Around his neck, an ancient medallion, one that has not been seen since 1307. He is the grandmaster of the Knights of Arcadia: a society of men deemed worthy. His killers, a ruthless brotherhood, whose existence is equally legendary. And they will not rest until they have reclaimed what was once theirs.For Anson’s son, navy outcast Matt Anson, his father’s death is just the start of a series of events that turn his life upside down. Meanwhile, in London, journalist Nicole Stocker is sent to look into a string of deaths, including the mysterious demise of Anson. But as progress starts to be made, she is dragged off the case, attacked, and soon running for her life.As the futures of Anson and Stocker become intertwined, it becomes clear there is more at stake than mere history. An explosive secret remains buried, one that threatens to bring half the world to its knees. And some want it exposed…

The Christmas Contract


Jan Romes - 2013
    While he's generous with his money, he also makes the community work for it. He's the same with his family. No free handouts. What he gives has strings attached. Dax decides it's time for his fiercely independent, almost-thirty year old granddaughters to settle down. He wants them to find love and give him great-grandchildren before his lights go out. And he knows how to make it happen. Prompted by love, guilt and a desire to own their own business, the Dawson triplets -- Joy, Noelle and Christi -- enter into a Christmas contract that will change their lives forever. Finding true love is a unique adventure, so each girl has their own story. The outcome for all three, however, funnels into one giant happily-ever-after.

Rough Men


Aric Davis - 2013
    Worse, Alex wasn’t an innocent bystander but part of the gang that raided the vault and left behind numerous bodies.Simmering with rage over his loss, Will tries to let the police handle the matter. But as Alex’s killers remain at large, Will decides that it’s up to him—and a few old friends—to enact revenge in a most brutal manner.Now he’s calling on dangerous connections that have been buried for years—and should’ve stayed that way. But Will vows to do whatever it takes to see Alex’s killers repay their sins in blood, even if it means his own damnation.

The Cold Millions


Jess Walter - 2020
    While sixteen-year-old Rye yearns for a steady job and a home, his older brother, Gig, dreams of a better world, fighting alongside other union men for fair pay and decent treatment. Enter Ursula the Great, a vaudeville singer who performs with a live cougar and introduces the brothers to a far more dangerous creature: a mining magnate determined to keep his wealth and his hold on Ursula.Dubious of Gig’s idealism, Rye finds himself drawn to a fearless nineteen-year-old activist and feminist named Elizabeth Gurley Flynn. But a storm is coming, threatening to overwhelm them all, and Rye will be forced to decide where he stands. Is it enough to win the occasional battle, even if you cannot win the war?An intimate story of brotherhood, love, sacrifice, and betrayal set against the panoramic backdrop of an early twentieth-century America that eerily echoes our own time, The Cold Millions offers a kaleidoscopic portrait of a nation grappling with the chasm between rich and poor, between harsh realities and simple dreams. Featuring an unforgettable cast of cops and tramps, suffragists and socialists, madams and murderers, it is a tour de force from a “writer who has planted himself firmly in the first rank of American authors” (Boston Globe

Blood at the Premiere


R.R. Haywood - 2016
    At a film premiere she tries engaging a producer about a new project… before everything goes terribly wrong.Soon Swallow finds herself on the run amidst the full horror of the Undead. Along with a small band of survivors, and one miserable producer, Swallow must do everything just to stay alive on the blood-soaked streets.As the Undead get more numerous, can she run, beat and hack her way out of trouble?

To Dream the Blackbane


Richard J. O'Brien
    Scientists referred to the event as The Anomaly. A byproduct of The Anomaly was the advent of hybrid beings—people who became mixed with whatever animal or object was closest to them the moment the event occurred. Humans, or pedigrees, soon relegated fairy refugees and hybrids into ghetto zones in large cities.Seventy years later, Wolfgang Rex, a second-generation hybrid—part human, part Rhodesian Ridgeback—is a retired police detective who runs a private investigation business in Chicago’s Southside. It’s a one-hybrid show; though Rex couldn’t survive without his assistant, the faerie Sally Sandweb.One night, two vampires visit Rex and offer him a substantial reward for the recovery of a stolen scroll. Later that same evening, Charlotte Sweeney-Jarhadill, a pedigree woman from Louisiana, visits Rex and hires him to exorcize the headless ghost of a Confederate soldier from her home.To complicate matters, the private detective ends up falling for Charlotte. Meanwhile, the vampires demand results in the search for the missing scroll. When Rex’s assistant Sally goes missing, he must stay alive long enough to find her. Charlotte and the vampires, however, have other plans for Rex.

The Spirit of the Place


Samuel Shem - 2008
    Orville Rose's newfound peace is shattered by a telegram informing him of his mother's death. On his return to Columbia, a Hudson River town of quirky people and "plagued by breakage," he learns that his mother has willed him a large sum of money, the 1981 Chrysler, and her Victorian house in the center of town. But there's a catch: he must live in her house continuously for a year and thirteen days. As he struggles with his decision -- whether to stay and meet the terms of the will or return to his love and life in Italy -- Orville reconnects with Bill Starbuck, the town doctor who mentored a young Orville and who practices a long-ago kind of medicine that treats the working poor, people neglected and forgotten by the medical and insurance industries. Now in his seventies, and in need of help with the practice, Bill convinces Orville to stay. During the course of his year and thirteen days, Orville reacquaints himself with Columbia and Colombians. He reunites with his sister and niece and comes to terms with old rivals and bitter memories. And he doctors a community in desperate need of care. He also meets Miranda Braak, a remarkable young single mother who aspires to be the town historian. Her knowledge of and reverence for the past challenges Orville to examine his own history, and her courage, integrity, and love challenge him to grow. In this story filled with wit, pointed insight, and drama, Orville learns what it means to be a healer, and to be healed.

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."

Open Water


Caleb Azumah Nelson - 2021
    Both are Black British, both won scholarships to private schools where they struggled to belong, both are now artists - he a photographer, she a dancer - trying to make their mark in a city that by turns celebrates and rejects them. Tentatively, tenderly, they fall in love. But two people who seem destined to be together can still be torn apart by fear and violence.

The Pale King


David Foster Wallace - 2011
    But as he immerses himself in a routine so tedious and repetitive that new employees receive boredom-survival training, he learns of the extraordinary variety of personalities drawn to this strange calling. And he has arrived at a moment when forces within the IRS are plotting to eliminate even what little humanity and dignity the work still has.The Pale King remained unfinished at the time of David Foster Wallace's death, but it is a deeply compelling and satisfying novel, hilarious and fearless and as original as anything Wallace ever undertook. It grapples directly with ultimate questions--questions of life's meaning and of the value of work and society--through characters imagined with the interior force and generosity that were Wallace's unique gifts. Along the way it suggests a new idea of heroism and commands infinite respect for one of the most daring writers of our time.

Glass Tiger


Joe Gores - 2006
    Halden Corwin, legendary Vietnam sniper and mercenary, has vowed to assassinate the recently elected president of the United States, and the government’s computers have picked Thorne as the most likely person to find Corwin. Special agent Terrill Hatfield’s crack FBI team will take care of the rest. But when the plan doesn’t go as described, Thorne discovers he’s been drawn into a web of lies, ambitions, and double-crosses that will force him to stand and fight.

How Beautiful We Were


Imbolo MbueImbolo Mbue - 2021
    Set in the fictional African village of Kosawa, it tells the story of a people living in fear amidst environmental degradation wrought by an American oil company. Pipeline spills have rendered farmlands infertile. Children are dying from drinking toxic water. Promises of clean-up and financial reparations to the villagers are made—and ignored. The country’s government, led by a brazen dictator, exists to serve its own interest. Left with few choices, the people of Kosawa decide to fight back. Their struggle would last for decades and come at a steep price. Told through the perspective of a generation of children and the family of a girl named Thula who grows up to become a revolutionary, How Beautiful We Were is a masterful exploration of what happens when the reckless drive for profit, coupled with the ghost of colonialism, comes up against one community’s determination to hold onto its ancestral land and a young woman’s willingness to sacrifice everything for the sake of her people’s freedom."The unforgettable story of a community on the wrong end of Western greed, How Beautiful We Were will enthrall you, appall you, and show you what is possible when a few people stand up and say this is not right. A masterful novel by a spellbinding writer engaged with the most urgent questions of our day.”—David Ebershoff, bestselling author of The Danish Girl

Billy Lynn's Long Halftime Walk


Ben Fountain - 2012
    It explores the gaping national disconnect between the war at home and the war abroad.Ben Fountain’s remarkable debut novel follows the surviving members of the heroic Bravo Squad through one exhausting stop in their media-intensive "Victory Tour" at Texas Stadium, football mecca of the Dallas Cowboys, their fans, promoters, and cheerleaders.