Recently Received Riveting Reads: January 2016
Selective list of new fiction recently received
New Fiction
- The 8th Circle byCall Number: F CainISBN: 9781629534800Publication Date: 2016-01-12A year ago, Danny Ryan lost his wife and son in a car accident. He's still reeling from the tragedy when Michael Cohen, his friend and fellow journalist, drives into the pond in front of his house with a bullet through his gut. With Michael's death ruled a murder, Danny must work to get his name crossed off the list of suspects, and that means digging into Michael's last article, an expose of the twisted side of Philadelphia politics. But powerful people are ready to kill to protect what Michael was about to uncover, and if Danny's not careful, he'll be next. .
- American Housewife byCall Number: Short Stories EllisISBN: 9780385541039Publication Date: 2016-01-12A sharp, funny, delightfully unhinged collection of stories set in the dark world of domesticity, American Housewife features murderous ladies who lunch, celebrity treasure hunters, and the best bra fitter south of the Mason Dixon line.
- Blackout byCall Number: F RosenfeltISBN: 9781250055316Publication Date: 2016-01-05New Jersey state police officer Doug Brock has been after infamous criminal Nicholas Bennett for years. When Bennett kills someone close to Doug, however, Doug's investigation and his life start spiraling out of control. He's placed on indefinite suspension from the police force and breaks things off with his fiancee, but he can't let the case go, and he continues an off-the-books investigation on his own.
- The Crooked House byCall Number: F KentISBN: 9780374131821Publication Date: 2016-01-12Alison is as close to anonymous as you can get: she has no ties and no home, and her only anchors are her boyfriend and her small backroom job in publishing. Which is exactly how she wants it. Because once, Alison was a teenager named Esme who lived in a remote, dilapidated house by a bleak estuary with her parents and three siblings. One night something terrible happened in the family's crooked house, leaving Alison the only survivor. In order to escape from the horror she witnessed, she moved away from the village, changed her name, and cut herself off from her past. But now her boyfriend has invited her to a wedding being held in her old hometown, which means returning there for the first time since that night.
- The Dictator byCall Number: F HarrisISBN: 9780307957948Publication Date: 2016-01-12Imperium . . . Conspirata . . . and now Dictator--the long-awaited final volume of Robert Harris's magnificent Ancient Rome Trilogy At the age of forty-eight, Cicero--the greatest orator of his time--is in exile, separated from his wife and children, tormented by his sense of failure, his great power sacrificed on the altar of his principles. By promising to support Caesar--his political enemy--he is granted return to Rome. There, he fights his way back to prominence: first in the law courts, then in the Senate, and finally by the power of his pen, until at last, for one brief and glorious period, he is again the preeminent statesman in the city.
- The Dogs of Littlefield byCall Number: F BerneISBN: 9781476794242Publication Date: 2016-01-12A comedy of manners that explores the unease behind the manicured lawns of suburban America Littlefield, Massachusetts, named one of the Ten Best Places to Live in America, full of psychologists and college professors, is proud of its fine schools, its girls' soccer teams, its leafy streets, and charming village center. Yet no sooner has sociologist Dr. Clarice Watkins arrived to study the elements of good quality of life, than someone begins poisoning the town's dogs. Are the poisonings in protest to an off-leash proposal for Baldwin Park, the subject of much town debate, or the sign of a far deeper disorder?
- The Edge of Lost byCall Number: F McMorrisISBN: 9780758281180Publication Date: 2015-11-24On a cold night in October 1937, searchlights cut through the darkness around Alcatraz. A prison guard's only daughter--one of the youngest civilians who lives on the island--has gone missing. Tending the warden's greenhouse, convicted bank robber Tommy Capello waits anxiously. Only he knows the truth about the little girl's whereabouts, and that both of their lives depend on the search's outcome.
- The Evening Spider byCall Number: F ArsenaultISBN: 9780062379313Publication Date: 2016-01-26A gripping blend of psychological suspense and historical true crime, this riveting novel, inspired by a sensational real-life murder from the 1800s, delivers a heart-stopping mystery linking two young mothers from different centuries. Frances Barnett and Abby Bernacki are two haunted young mothers living in the same house in two different centuries.
- The Expatriates byCall Number: F LeeISBN: 9780525429470Publication Date: 2016-01-12From the author of the New York Times bestseller The Piano Teacher, a beautiful, transporting novel about motherhood, marriage, and friendship Now, in her long-awaited new novel, Lee explores with devastating poignancy the emotions, identities, and relationships of three very different American women living in the same small expat community in Hong Kong. As each woman struggles with her own demons, their lives collide in ways that have irreversible consequences for them all.
- Forty Thieves byCall Number: F PerryISBN: 9780802124524Publication Date: 2016-01-08Sid and Ronnie Abel are a husband-and-wife detective team, both retirees of the LAPD. Ed and Nicole Hoyt are married assassins-for-hire living in the San Fernando Valley. Except for deadly aim with a handgun, the two couples have little in common--until they are both hired to do damage control on the same murder case. The previous spring, after days of torrential rain, a body was recovered from one of the city's storm sewers. Now, with the case turning cold, the victim's former employers bring in the Abels to succeed where the police have failed, while the Hoyts' mysterious contractors want to make sure that the facts about the deceased stay hidden.
- The Golden Son byCall Number: F GowdaISBN: 9780062391452Publication Date: 2016-01-26The first of his family to go to college, Anil Patel, the golden son, leaves his tiny Indian village to begin a medical residency at one of the best hospitals in America. When his father dies, Anil becomes the head of the Patel household and inherits the mantle of arbiter for all of the village's disputes. But he is uncertain that he has the wisdom and courage required to take on the role. Back home in India, Anil's childhood friend, Leena, struggles to adapt to her demanding new husband. Arranged by her parents, the marriage shatters Leena's romantic hopes, and forces her to make choices that will hold drastic repercussions for her family.
- The Good Goodbye byCall Number: F BuckleyISBN: 9780553390582Publication Date: 2016-01-12How well do we know our children? Natalie Falcone would say she knows her daughter, Arden, very well. Despite the challenges of running a restaurant and raising six-year-old twin boys, she's not too worried as she sends her daughter off to college--until she gets the call that Arden's been in a terrible fire, along with her best friend and cousin, Rory. Both girls are critically injured and another student has died. The police suspect arson.
- Good on Paper byCall Number: F CantorISBN: 9781612194707Publication Date: 2016-01-26Shira is a permanent temp with a few short stories published in minor literary magazines and a PhD on Dante's Vita Nuova that she abandoned halfway. Her life has some happy certainties, though: she lives with her friend Ahmad, and her daughter, Andi, on the Upper West Side. They're an unconventional family, but a real one, with Friday night dinner rituals, private jokes and the shared joys and strains of any other family.
- The Illegal byCall Number: F HillISBN: 9780393070590Publication Date: 2016-01-25The Illegal is the gripping story of Keita Ali, a refugee--like the many in today's headlines--compelled to leave his homeland. All Keita has ever wanted to do is to run. Running means respect and wealth at home. His native Zantoroland, a fictionalized country whose tyrants are eerily familiar, turns out the fastest marathoners on earth. But after his journalist father is killed for his outspoken political views, Keita must flee to the wealthy nation of Freedom State--a country engaged in a crackdown on all undocumented people.
- The Last Dawn byCall Number: F GannonISBN: 9781250048035Publication Date: 2016-01-26It is time to die. 1989. It's been three years since Captain Ajax Montoya cleared the smoke and blood from his last case and what a three years. The old world order is coming down along with the Berlin Wall, and the Soviet Evil Empire is being born to the ash heap of history by its once captive people. .
- The Lightkeepers byCall Number: F GeniISBN: 9781619026001Publication Date: 2016-01-12Miranda, a nature photographer travels to the Farallon Islands, a dangerous archipelago off the coast of California, for a one-year residency capturing the landscape. Her only companions are the scientists studying there, odd and quirky refugees from the mainland living in rustic conditions Shortly after her arrival, Miranda is assaulted by one of the inhabitants of the islands. A few days later, her assailant is found dead, perhaps the result of an accident.
- Midnight in St. Petersburg byCall Number: F BennettISBN: 9781250079435Publication Date: 2016-01-19St. Petersburg, 1911. Inna Feldman has fled the pogroms of the south to take refuge with distant relatives in Russia's capital. Welcomed by the flamboyant Leman family, she is apprenticed into their violin-making workshop. She feels instantly at home in their bohemian circle, but revolution is in the air, and as society begins to fracture, she is forced to choose between her heart and her head.
- Moon in a Dead Eye byCall Number: F GarnierISBN: 9781908313492Publication Date: 2014-08-12Martial would not have moved to Les Conviviales. But Odette loved the idea of a new retirement village in the south of France. At first it feels like a terrible mistake: they're the only residents and it's raining nonstop. Then three neighbors arrive, the sun comes out, and life becomes far more interesting and agreeable.Until, that is, some gypsies set up camp just outside their gated community.
- Nelly Dean byCall Number: F CaseISBN: 9781605989617Publication Date: 2016-02-08Young Nelly Dean has been Hindley's closest companion for as long as she can remember, living freely at the great house, Wuthering Heights. But when the benevolence of the master brings a wild child into the house, Nelly learns she must follow in her mother's footsteps, be called "servant" and give herself over completely to the demands of the Earnshaw family. As death, illness, and passion sweep through the house, Nelly suffers heartache and betrayals at the hands of those she cherishes most, tempting her to leave it all behind.
- Only Love Can Break Your Heart byCall Number: F TarkingtonISBN: 9781616203825Publication Date: 2016-01-05Spencerville, Virginia, 1977. Eight-year-old Rocky worships his older brother, Paul. Sixteen and full of rebel cool, Paul spends his days cruising in his Chevy Nova blasting Neil Young, cigarette dangling from his lips, arm slung around his beautiful, troubled girlfriend. Then one day, in an act of vengeance against their father, Paul picks up Rocky from school and nearly abandons him in the woods. Afterward, Paul disappears. Seven years later, Rocky is a teenager himself. He hasn't forgotten being abandoned by his boyhood hero, but he's getting over it, with the help of the wealthy neighbors' daughter, ten years his senior, who has taken him as her lover. Unbeknownst to both of them, their affair will set in motion a course of events that rains catastrophe on both their families.
- Orphan X byCall Number: F HurwitzISBN: 9781250067845Publication Date: 2016-01-19The Nowhere Man is a legendary figure spoken about only in whispers. It's said that when he's reached by the truly desperate and deserving, the Nowhere Man can and will do anything to protect and save them. But he's no legend. Evan Smoak is a man with skills, resources, and a personal mission to help those with nowhere else to turn. Chosen as a child, he was raised and trained as part of the off-the-books black box Orphan program, designed to create the perfect deniable intelligence assets---i.e. assassins. He was Orphan X.
- The Other Me byCall Number: F SarginsonISBN: 9781250089137Publication Date: 2016-01-121986, London - Klaudia is about to start high school. She's embarrassed by her German father, never knowing what he may have done during the war. In 1995 Leeds, Eliza is a young woman in love with her boyfriend Cosmo. But Eliza is living a lie, running away from a past of which she was always ashamed. But when her mother dies and she is called home, she can no longer deny her roots. And woven throughout the novel is Ernst's story - Ernst is one of two brothers growing up in Nazi Germany. One rallied for the Fuhrer, one held back. When Eliza learns a long-buried family secret, it will completely change how she views her past and her future.
- The Poison Artist byCall Number: F MooreISBN: 9780544520561Publication Date: 2016-01-26Dr. Caleb Maddox is a San Francisco toxicologist studying the chemical effects of pain. After a breakup with his girlfriend, he's out drinking whiskey when a seductive woman appears by his side. Emmeline whispers to Caleb over absinthe, gets his blood on her fingers and then brushes his ear with her lips as she says goodbye. He must find her. As his search begins, Caleb becomes entangled in a serial-murder investigation.
- The Portable Veblen byCall Number: F McKenzieISBN: 9781594206856Publication Date: 2016-01-19A young couple on the brink of marriage--the charming Veblen and her fiancé Paul, a brilliant neurologist--find their engagement in danger of collapse. Along the way they weather everything from each other's dysfunctional families, to the attentions of a seductive pharmaceutical heiress, to an intimate tête-à-tête with a very charismatic squirrel. Throughout, Elizabeth McKenzie asks: Where do our families end and we begin? How do we stay true to our ideals?
- The Precious One byCall Number: F De Los SantosISBN: 9780061670893Publication Date: 2015-03-24Eustacia "Taisy" Cleary's father Wilson Cleary; professor, inventor, philanderer, self-made millionaire, brilliant man, breathtaking jerk.. Seventeen years ago, Wilson ditched his first family for Caroline, a beautiful young sculptor. In all that time, Taisy's family has seen Wilson, Caroline, and their daughter, Willow, only once. Why then, is Wilson calling Taisy now, inviting her for an extended visit, encouraging her to meet her pretty sister? Why, now, does Wilson want Taisy to help him write his memoir?
- The Readers of Broken Wheel Recommend byCall Number: F BivaldISBN: 9781492623441Publication Date: 2016-01-19Broken Wheel, Iowa, has never seen anyone like Sara, who traveled all the way from Sweden just to meet her book-loving pen pal. When she arrives, however, she finds Amy's funeral guests just leaving. The residents of Broken Wheel are happy to look after their bewildered visitor -- not much else to do in a small town that's almost beyond repair. They just never imagined that she'd start a bookstore. Or that books could bring them together - and change everything.
- Shaker byCall Number: F FrankISBN: 9780385350037Publication Date: 2016-01-26Meet Roy Cooper, stoic, unassuming "errand runner" for various New York criminals. Roy arrives in Los Angeles to shoot a man named Martin Shine a week after a powerful earthquake has knocked out cell service, buckled the freeways, and thrown L.A. into chaos. Roy doesn't know who Shine is or why he has to die, but he does his job and does it well. Except for one thing: after the hit, Roy can't find where he parked his car.
- The Stargazer's Sister byCall Number: F BrownISBN: 9780804197939Publication Date: 2016-01-19This exquisitely imagined novel opens as astronomer William rescues his sister Caroline from a life of drudgery in Germany and brings her to England and a world of music making and stargazing. Lina, as Caroline is known, serves as William's assistant and the captain of his busy household. William is generous, wise, and charismatic, an obsessive genius whom Lina adores and serves with the fervency of a beloved wife. When William suddenly announces that he will be married, Lina watches her world collapse.
- The Things We Keep byCall Number: F HepworthISBN: 9781250051905Publication Date: 2016-01-19Anna Forster, in the early stages of Alzheimer's disease at only thirty-eight years old, knows that her family is doing what they believe to be best when they take her to Rosalind House, an assisted living facility. She also knows there's just one another resident her age, Luke. What she does not expect is the love that blossoms between her and Luke even as she resists her new life at Rosalind House. As her disease steals more and more of her memory, Anna fights to hold on to what she knows,including her relationship with Luke.
- Unspeakable Things byCall Number: F SpivackISBN: 9780385353960Publication Date: 2016-01-26Anna (known as the Rat), a Hungarian countess with the face of an angel, with a passionate intelligence, and the power to enchant . . . Her second cousin Herbert, a former Austrian civil servant who believes in Esperanto, powerful in the social sphere yet under the thumb of his wife, Adeline . . . Michael, their missing homosexual son . . . Felix, a German pediatrician, practicing from his Upper East Side office with his dachshund by his side . . . The Tolstoi String Quartet, four men who for twenty years lived as one, playing the great concert halls of Europe, escaping to New York . And watching them all: Herbert's eight-year-old granddaughter, Maria, who understands from the huddled penury of their lives, and the sense of being in hiding, even in New York, that life is a test of courage and silence. . .
- Warriors of the Storm byCall Number: F CornwellISBN: 9780062250940Publication Date: 2016-01-19A fragile peace reigns in Wessex, Mercia, and East Anglia. King Alfred's son, Edward, and formidable daughter, Æthelflaed, rule the kingdoms. But all around, the restless Northmen are mounting raids. Uhtred of Bebbanburg, the kingdom's greatest warrior, controls northern Mercia, but forces are gathering against him. Northmen allied to the Irish, led by the fierce warrior Ragnall Ivarson, are soon joined by the Northumbrians, and their strength could prove overwhelming.
- What Belongs to You byCall Number: F GreenwellISBN: 9780374288228Publication Date: 2016-01-19On a warm autumn day, an American teacher enters a public bathroom beneath Sofia's National Palace of Culture. There he meets Mitko, a charismatic young hustler, and pays him for sex. He returns to Mitko again and again over the next few months, drawn by hunger and loneliness and risk, and finds himself ensnared in a relationship. As he struggles to reconcile his longing with the anguish it creates, he's forced to grapple with his own fraught history, the world of his southern childhood where to be queer was to be a pariah.
- Where My Heart Used to Beat byCall Number: F FaulksISBN: 9780805097320Publication Date: 2016-01-26London, 1980. Robert Hendricks, a psychiatrist and author, has so bottled up memories of his own wartime past that he is nearly sunk into a life of lonliness and depression. Out of the blue, a letter arrives from one Dr. Alexander Pereira, a neurologist and a World War I veteran who claims to be an admirer of Robert's published work. The letter brings Robert to the older man's home on a secluded island off the south of France, and into tempests of memories--his childhood as a fatherless boy, the carnage he witnessed and the wound he can't remember receiving as a young officer in World War II, and, above all, the great, devastating love of his life, an Italian woman, "L," whom he met during the war.
- Winter byCall Number: F NicholsonISBN: 9781609452957Publication Date: 2016-01-05A November morning in the 1920s finds an elderly man walking the grounds of his home, pondering his past and future with despondence. That man is the novelist and poet Thomas Hardy, and Christopher Nicholson's fictionalized account of the final years of the accomplished writer's life. The novel focuses on the true events that occurred around the London theater dramatization of Hardy's acclaimed novel Tess of the D'Urbervilles, including Hardy's casting of the young "Gertie" Bugler to play Tess. As plans for the play become more concrete, Hardy's interest in Gertie becomes a voyeuristic infatuation. However, when Hardy's wife, Florence, catches wind of Hardy's desire for Gertie, a tangled web of jealously and missed opportunity ensnares all three characters-with devastating results
- Yellow Crocus byCall Number: F IbrahimISBN: 9781477824757Publication Date: 2014-08-19Moments after Lisbeth is born, she's taken from her mother and handed over to an enslaved wet nurse, Mattie, a young mother separated from her own infant son in order to care for her tiny charge. Though Lisbeth leads a life of privilege, she finds nothing but loneliness in the company of her overwhelmed mother and her distant, slave-owning father. As she grows older, Mattie becomes more like family to Lisbeth than her own kin and the girl's visits to the slaves' quarters--and their lively and loving community--bring them closer together than ever. But can two women in such disparate circumstances form a bond like theirs without consequence?
New Fiction
- After the Crash byCall Number: F BussiISBN: 9780316309677Publication Date: 2016-01-05Just after midnight on December 23, 1980, a night flight bound for Paris plummets toward the Swiss Alps, crashing into a snowy mountainside. Within seconds flames engulf the plane, which is filled with holiday travelers. Of the 169 passengers, all but one perish. The sole survivor is a three-month-old girl--thrown from the airliner before fire consumes the cabin. But two infants were on board. Is "the Miracle Child of Mont Terri" Lyse-Rose or Emilie? The families of both girls step forward to claim the child.
- Angels Burning byCall Number: F'DellISBN: 9781476755953Publication Date: 2016-01-05On the surface, Chief Dove Carnahan is a true trailblazer who would do anything to protect the rural Pennsylvanian countryside where she has lived all fifty of her years. Traditional and proud of her blue-collar sensibilities, Dove is loved by her community. But beneath her badge lies a dark and self-destructive streak, fed by a secret she has kept since she was sixteen. When a girl is beaten to death, her body tossed down a fiery sinkhole in an abandoned coal town, Dove is faced with solving the worst crime of her law enforcement career.
- Beside Myself byCall Number: F MorganISBN: 9781632864338Publication Date: 2016-01-12Six-year-old Helen and Ellie are identical twins, but Helen is smarter, more popular, and their mother's favorite. Ellie, on the other hand, requires special instruction at school, is friendless, and is punished at every turn. Until they decide to swap places--just for fun, and just for one day--and Ellie refuses to switch back. With those around her oblivious to her plight, the girl who used to be Helen loses her sense of self and withdraws into a spiral of behavioral problems, delinquency, and mental illness. Twenty-five years later, she receives a call that threatens to pull her back into her sister's dangerous orbit. Will she take this chance to face her past?
- The Blue Line byCall Number: F BetancourtISBN: 9781594206580Publication Date: 2016-01-26Buenos Aires, the 1970s. Julia inherits from her grandmother a gift, precious and burdensome. Sometimes visions appear before her eyes, mysterious and terrible apparitions from the future, seen from the perspective of others. From the age of five, Julia must intervene to prevent horrific events. In fact, as her grandmother tells her, it is her duty to do so--otherwise she will lose her gift. At fifteen, Julia falls in love with Theo, a handsome revolutionary . Their lives are turned upside down when Juan Perón, the former president and dictator, returns to Argentina. Confronted by the realities of military dictatorship, Julia and Theo become Montoneros sympathizers and radical idealists, equally fascinated by Jesus Christ and Che Guevara.
- Confucius Jane byCall Number: F LynchISBN: 9780765381682Publication Date: 2016-01-19Confucius Jane is a charming novel that vividly depicts New York City's Chinatown. On leave from college, Jane Morrow has a new job, helping out in her uncle's fortune cookie factory. Though surrounded by her loving family and their close-knit Chinatown community, Jane feels like a colossal failure. Writing fortunes is a kind of poetry, but Jane is penning words of wisdom for strangers while wondering if she will ever have the guts to move on with her life.
- The Dressmaker's War byCall Number: F ChamberlainISBN: 9780812997378Publication Date: 2016-01-12The Dressmaker's War is the story of a brilliant English seamstress taken prisoner in Germany during World War II: about her perseverance, the choices she makes to stay alive, and the haunting aftermath of war.
- The Drifter byCall Number: F AshISBN: 9780399174568Publication Date: 2016-01-12Peter Ash came home from the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan with only one souvenir: what he calls his "white static," the buzzing claustrophobia due to post-traumatic stress that has driven him to spend a year roaming in nature, sleeping under the stars. But when a friend from the Marines commits suicide, Ash returns to civilization to help the man's widow with some home repairs. Under her dilapidated porch, he finds the largest, ugliest, meanest dog he's ever encountered . . . and a Samsonite suitcase stuffed with cash and explosives.
- Even the Dead byCall Number: F BlackISBN: 9781627790666Publication Date: 2016-01-12Quirke's latest case leads him inexorably toward the dark machinations of an old foe. Perhaps Quirke has been down among the dead too long. Lately the Irish pathologist has suffered hallucinations and blackouts, and he fears the cause is a brain tumor. A specialist diagnoses an old head injury caused by a savage beating; all that's needed, the doctor declares, is an extended rest. But Quirke, ever intent on finding his place among the living, is not about to retire.
- The Ex byCall Number: F BurkeISBN: 9780062390486Publication Date: 2016-01-26Olivia Randall is one of New York City's best criminal defense lawyers. When she hears that her former fiancé, Jack Harris, has been arrested for a triple homicide and that one of the victims was connected to his wife's murder three years earlier, there is no doubt in her mind as to his innocence. The only question is, who would go to such great lengths to frame him and why?
- Fallen Land byCall Number: F BrownISBN: 9781250077974Publication Date: 2016-01-12Fallen Land is Taylor Brown's debut novel set in the final year of the Civil War, as a young couple on horseback flees a dangerous band of marauders who seek a bounty reward. Callum, a seasoned horse thief at fifteen years old, came to America from his native Ireland as an orphan. Ava, her father and brother lost to the war, hides in her crumbling home until Callum determines to rescue her from the bands of hungry soldiers pillaging the land, leaving destruction in their wake. Ava and Callum have only each other in the world and their remarkable horse, Reiver, who carries them through the destruction that is the South.
- The First Order byCall Number: F AbbottISBN: 9781455558414Publication Date: 2016-01-05Two brothers. One dead, executed by extremists on a grainy video. The other forged into a top undercover agent. But now, Sam Capra has reason to believe that his brother, Danny, may be alive. And if Danny has been living a secret life these past years, where has he been--and what has he become? Sam's desperate search for his brother leads him into a modern heart of darkness: the Russian elite inner circle, a group of ruthless ex-KGB billionaires who owe fealty to Russia's corrupt president, . . .
- Girl Through Glass byCall Number: F WilsonISBN: 9780062326270Publication Date: 2016-01-26In the summer of 1977, eleven-year-old Mira is an aspiring ballerina in the competitive world of New York City ballet. Ballet offers her the promise of glory. It also introduces her to forty-seven-year-old Maurice DuPont, a reclusive balletomane who becomes her friend and mentor. Over the course of three years, Mira is accepted into the prestigious School of American Ballet, run by George Balanchine, and eventually becomes one of Mr. B's girls, a dancer of rare talent chosen for greatness. In the present day, Kate, a professor of dance at a midwestern college, embarks on a risky affair with a student that threatens to capsize the new life she has created for her reinvented self. When she receives a letter from a man she's long thought dead, Kate is hurled back into the dramas of a past she thought she had left behind.
- The Guest Room byCall Number: F BohjalianISBN: 9780385538893Publication Date: 2016-01-05When Kristin Chapman agrees to let her husband, Richard, host his brother's bachelor party, she expects a certain amount of debauchery. She brings their young daughter to Manhattan for the evening, leaving her Westchester home to the men and their hired entertainment. What she does not expect is this: bacchanalian drunkenness, her husband sharing a dangerously intimate moment in the guest room, and two women stabbing and killing their Russian bodyguards before driving off into the night.
- A Hard and Heavy Thing byCall Number: F HeftiISBN: 9781440591884Publication Date: 2016-01-01Contemplating suicide after nearly a decade at war, Levi sits down to write a note to his best friend Nick, explaining why things have to come to this inevitable end. Years earlier, Levi--a sergeant in the army--made a tragic choice that led his team into ambush, leaving three soldiers dead and two badly injured. During the attack, Levi risked death to save a badly burned and disfigured Nick. His actions won him the Silver Star for gallantry, but nothing could alleviate the guilt he carried after that fateful day.
- The Lady of Misrule byCall Number: F DunnISBN: 9781605989426Publication Date: 2016-01-11Escorting the nine-day queen Lady Jane Grey across the Tower of London from throne room into imprisonment is Elizabeth Tilney. Everyone knows Jane will go free as soon as the victorious new queen is crowned. They are united though by their disdain for the seventeen-year-old boy to whom Jane has recently been married: petulant Guildford Dudley, held prisoner in a neighboring tower. As Jane's captivity extends into the turbulent last months of 1553, the two girls learn to live with each other, but Elizabeth finds herself drawn into the difficult relationship between the newlyweds. And when, at the turn of the year, events take an unexpected and dangerous direction, her newfound loyalties are put to the test.
- The Longest Night byCall Number: F WilliamsISBN: 9780812997743Publication Date: 2016-01-12In 1959, Nat Collier moves with her husband, Paul, and their two young daughters to Idaho Falls, a remote military town. An Army Specialist, Paul is stationed there to help oversee one of the country's first nuclear reactors--an assignment that seems full of opportunity. Then, on his rounds, Paul discovers that the reactor is compromised, placing his family and the entire community in danger. Worse, his superiors set out to cover up the problem rather than fix it. Paul can't bring himself to tell Nat the truth, but his lies only widen a growing gulf between them.
- The Man Without a Shadow byCall Number: F OatesISBN: 9780062416094Publication Date: 2016-01-19In 1965, neuroscientist Margot Sharpe meets Elihu Hoopes: the man without a shadow, who will be known, in time, as the most-studied and most famous amnesiac in history. A vicious infection has clouded anything beyond the last seventy seconds just beyond the fog of memory. Over the course of thirty years, the two embark on mirrored journeys of self-discovery: Margot attempts to unlock Eli's shuttered memories of a childhood trauma without losing her own sense of self in the process.
- New Uses for Old Boyfriends byCall Number: F NicholsonISBN: 9780451465863Publication Date: 2015-02-03After growing up in privilege and marrying into money, Lila Alders has gotten used to the good life. But when her happily ever after implodes, Lila must return to Black Dog Bay, the tiny seaside town where she grew up. She's desperate for a safe haven, but everything has changed over the past ten years. Her family's fortune is gone - and her mother is in total denial. It's up to Lila to take care of everything . . . but she can barely take care of herself.
- Nightfall over Shanghai byCall Number: F KallaISBN: 9780765383808Publication Date: 2016-01-26It's 1944 and the Japanese are losing the war, but Shanghai is more dangerous than ever, particularly for the Adler family. After fleeing Nazi Europe, Dr. Franz Adler and his daughter, Hannah, have adjusted to life in their adopted city, but they are now imprisoned in the Shanghai Ghetto for refugee Jews. Franz is compelled to work as a surgeon for the Japanese military, while his Eurasian wife, Sunny, is recruited into a spy ring, providing crucial information to the Allies about the city's port. Hannah is drawn into the perilous operation, just as she also becomes drawn to the Zionism movement. .
- Noah's Wife byCall Number: F HawleyISBN: 9780399159237Publication Date: 2016-01-26When young minister Noah and his wife arrive at their new post in the hills, they find a gray little town where it's been raining for as long as anyone can remember. Noah's wife is determined to help her husband revive this soggy congregation, but soon finds her efforts thwarted by her eccentric new neighbors, among them an idiom-wielding Italian hardware store owner, a towering town matriarch, and a lovelorn zookeeper determined to stand by his charges. Overwhelmed, Noah's wife fails to realize that Noah, too, is battling his own internal crisis.
- Once a Crooked Man byCall Number: F McCallumISBN: 9781250080455Publication Date: 2016-01-12From the beloved actor known for his roles on The Man from U.N.C.L.E. and NCIS comes a quirky crime novel featuring a well-intentioned young actor, a trio of suave crooks, and a series of untimely coincidences.
- Orchard Grove byCall Number: F ZandriISBN: 9781940610788Publication Date: 2016-01-12Sometimes fences make for nice neighbors. Other times they hide the evil within. Orchard Grove is a town like any other, with quiet neighborhoods and apple groves . . . though Ethan, the depressed screenplay writer, and his secretive wife, Susan, would tell you differently. So would the seductive serial killer living next door. The lines between good and evil are blurred, and then erased, as Ethan does what it takes to survive.
- Passenger 19 byCall Number: F LarsenISBN: 9781608091676Publication Date: 2016-01-05Jammer Davis has spent most of his life investigating aircraft accidents. When a small regional jet disappears over the jungles of Colombia, it is a tragedy like dozens of others he has seen...but for one terrible detail--his young daughter, who was enroute to a semester abroad in South America, is listed on the passenger manifest.. A distraught Davis rushes to Bogotá and bulls his way into the inquiry. When the wreckage is located, it becomes clear the crash was unsurvivable.
- The Past byCall Number: F HadleyISBN: 9780062270412Publication Date: 2016-01-05Three sisters and a brother, complete with children, a new wife, and an ex-boyfriend's son, descend on their grandparents' dilapidated old home in the Somerset countryside for a final summer holiday, where simmering tensions and secrets rise to the surface over three long, hot weeks.The house is full of memories of their childhood and their past, their mother took them there to live when she left their father, but now, they may have to sell it. And beneath the idyllic pastoral surface lie tensions.
- The Rataban Betrayal byCall Number: F AlterISBN: 9781628725759Publication Date: 2016-01-05The sleepy Himalayan hill station of Mussoorie, near India's border with Tibet, is home to an eclectic mix of residents including Tibetan refugees and former guerrilla fighters, foreign missionaries, Indian military, tourists, and spies. Here, in a top-secret facility facing the snow-clad Himalayas, India's legendary spymaster, Colonel Imtiaz Afridi, keeps a watchful eye on sensitive high-altitude borders. When an American agent is shot dead in Mussoorie, both the CIA and India's Research and Analysis Wing (RAW), dispatch undercover agents to investigate.
- Real Tigers byCall Number: F HerronISBN: 9781616956127Publication Date: 2016-01-19London: Slough House is the MI5 branch where disgraced operatives are reassigned after they've messed up too badly to be trusted with real intelligence work. The "Slow Horses," as the failed spies of Slough House are called, are doomed to spend the rest of their careers pushing paper, but they all want back in on the action. When one of their own is kidnapped and held for ransom, the agents of Slough House must defeat the odds, overturning all expectations of their competence, to breach the top-notch security of MI5's intelligence headquarters, and steal valuable intel in exchange for their comrade's safety.
- River Road byCall Number: F GoodmanISBN: 9781501109904Publication Date: 2016-01-19Nan Lewis, a creative writing professor at a state university in upstate New York is driving home from a faculty holiday party after finding out she's been denied tenure. On her way, she hits a deer, but when she gets out of her car to look for it, the deer is nowhere to be found. Nan is forced to leave her car at the bottom of her snowy driveway to wait out the longest night of the year, and the lowest point of her life. The next morning, Nan is woken up by a police officer at her door with terrible news, one of her students, Leia Dawson, was killed in a hit-and-run on River Road the night before.
- The Swans of Fifth Avenue byCall Number: F BenjaminISBN: 9780345528698Publication Date: 2016-01-26Of all the glamorous stars of New York high society, none blazes brighter than Babe Paley. By all appearances, Babe has it all: money, beauty, glamour, jewels, influential friends, a prestigious husband, and gorgeous homes. But beneath this elegantly composed exterior dwells a passionate woman--a woman desperately longing for true love and connection. Enter Truman Capote. This diminutive genius with a larger-than-life personality explodes onto the scene. Through Babe, Truman gains an entrée into the lives of Manhattan's elite, along with unparalleled access to the scandal and gossip of Babe's circle. Babe never imagines the destruction Truman will leave in his wake.
- A Taste for Nightshade byCall Number: F BaileyISBN: 9781250056924Publication Date: 2016-01-12Manchester 1787. When budding young criminal Mary Jebb swindles Michael Croxon's brother with a blank pound note, he sets in motion a train of sinister events. Condemned to seven years of transportation to Australia, Mary sends him a 'Penny Heart'-a token of her vow of revenge. Two years later, Michael marries young Grace Moore. Although initially overjoyed at the union, Grace quickly realizes that her husband is more interested in her fortune than her company. Lonely and desperate for companionship, she turns to her new cook to help mend her ailing marriage. But Mary Jebb, recently hired, has different plans for the unsuspecting owners of Delafosse Hall.
- Thomas Murphy byCall Number: F RosenblattISBN: 9780062394569Publication Date: 2016-01-19Trying to weasel out of an appointment with the neurologist that his only child, Máire, has cornered him into, the poet Thomas Murphy, exuberant singer of the oldies; friend of the down-and-out; tough, honest, and all-around good guy, contemplates his sunset years. Máire worries that Murph is losing his memory, while Murph wonders what to do with the rest of his life.
- Vagabond byCall Number: F SeymourISBN: 9781250075659Publication Date: 2016-01-05MI5 officer Winnie Monks has never forgotten - or forgiven - the death of a young agent on her team at the hands of a former Russian Army Major turned gangster. Now, ten years later, she learns that the Major is travelling to a villa on the popular Spanish holiday destination Costa del Sol, and she asks permission to send in a surveillance unit. They find an empty property near the Major's: the Villa Paraiso. It's perfect to spy from - and as a base for Winnie's darker, less official, plans.
- What She Left byCall Number: F RichmondISBN: 9781476773841Publication Date: 2016-01-12On a snowy morning, the body of twenty-five-year-old journalist Alice Salmon washes up on a riverbank south of London. The sudden death of this beloved girl becomes a media sensation, and those who knew her struggle to understand what happened to Alice Salmon. Was it suicide? A tragic accident? Or murder? Professor Jeremy Cooke is an anthropologist nearing the end of his unremarkable academic career. Alice is his former student, and the object of his unhealthy obsession. After her death, he embarks on a final project a book documenting Alice's life through the digital and paper trails that survive her:
- What Was Mine byCall Number: F RossISBN: 9781476732350Publication Date: 2016-01-05Lucy Wakefield is a seemingly ordinary woman who does something extraordinary in a desperate moment: she takes a baby girl from a shopping cart and raises her as her own. It's a secret she manages to keep for over two decades from her daughter, the babysitter who helped raise her, family, coworkers, and friends. When Lucy's now-grown daughter Mia discovers the devastating truth of her origins, she is overwhelmed by confusion and anger and determines not to speak again to the mother who raised her. She reaches out to her birth mother for a tearful reunion, and Lucy is forced to flee to China to avoid prosecution.
- The Winter Girl byCall Number: F MarinovichISBN: 9780385539975Publication Date: 2016-01-19It's wintertime in the Hamptons, where Scott and his wife, Elise, have come to be with her terminally ill father, Victor, to await the inevitable. As weeks turn to months, their daily routine--Elise at the hospital with her father, Scott pretending to work and drinking Victor's booze--only highlights their growing resentment and dissatisfaction with the usual litany of unhappy marriages. But then Scott notices something simple, even innocuous. Every night at precisely eleven, the lights in the neighbor's bedroom turn off. It's clearly a timer . . .but in the dead of winter with no one else around, there's something about that light he can't let go of. So one day while Elise is at the hospital, he breaks in.
- Your Heart Is a Muscle the Size of a Fist byCall Number: F YapaISBN: 9780316386531Publication Date: 2016-01-12On a cold day in November, young Victor--a scrappy teenager who's run away from home--sets out to sell as much marijuana as possible to the throng of WTO demonstrators determined to shut down the city. With the proceeds, he plans to buy a plane ticket and leave Seattle forever, but it quickly becomes clear that the history-making 50,000 anti-globalization protestors are testing the patience of the police, and what started out as a peaceful protest is threatening to erupt into violence.