Recently Received Riveting Reads: December 2016
Selective list of new fiction recently received
New Fiction
- All Joe Knight byCall Number: F MorrisISBN: 9780802125781Publication Date: 2016-12-061961. Outside Philadelphia, a soon-to-be father runs into a telephone pole while driving drunk; nine months later, his widow dies in a smashed up T-Bird. From the start, the orphaned Joe Knight is a blank slate. Taken in by a kindly aunt in a tough-skinned suburb, Joe finds his family in high school with the Fallcrest basketball team--the kind of team that comes around once in a lifetime. Fast-forward thirty years. Joe is newly divorced with one kid and certain he is unfit for love. Ever since selling the ad firm he built from the ground up for millions, he's had time on his hands, and now he wiles it away in strip clubs, the only place where he can quiet his mind.
- The Art of Confidence byCall Number: F LeeISBN: 9781617734892Publication Date: 2016-11-29Liu Qingwu doesn't set out to commit a crime. He only wants to sell a painting--something more substantial than the Impressionist knockoffs he flogs to tourists outside New York's Metropolitan Museum of Art. But the lucrative commission he receives from a Chelsea art dealer is more complicated than he initially realizes. Liu has been hired to create not an homage to Andrew Cantrell's modernist masterpiece, Elegy, but a forgery that will sell for millions.
- Days Like These byCall Number: F MargolisISBN: 9780451471857Publication Date: 2016-12-06Recently widowed, Judy Schofield jumps at the chance to look after her two grandchildren for six weeks while their parents are out of the country. After all, she's already raised her own daughter--and quite successfully, if she may say so herself. But all it takes is a few days of private school functions, helicopter parents, video games, and never-ending Frozen sing-alongs for Judy to feel she's in over her head.
- Expecting to Die byCall Number: F JacksonISBN: 9781496705006Publication Date: 2016-11-29Detective Regan Pescoli is counting the days until her maternity leave. Exhausted and emotional, the last thing she needs is another suspected serial killer. Especially when her daughter, Bianca, is swept up in the media storm. When a reality show arrives in town, the chaos only makes it harder for Pescoli and her partner, Selena Alvarez, to distinguish rumor from truth. Another body is found…and another. And as the nightmare strikes closer to home, Pescoli races to find the terror lingering in the darkness, where there are too many places to hide…and countless places to die…
- The Gardens of Consolation byCall Number: F RezaISBN: 9781609453503Publication Date: 2016-12-06In the early 1920s, in the remote village of Ghamsar, Talla and Sardar, two teenagers dreaming of a better life, fall in love and marry. Sardar brings his young bride with him across the mountains to the suburbs of Tehran, where the couple settles down and builds a home. From the outskirts of the capital city, they will watch as the Qajar dynasty falls and Reza Khan rises to power as Reza Shah Pahlavi.
- In Sunlight or in Shadow byCall Number: Short Stories BlockISBN: 9781681772455Publication Date: 2016-12-06"Edward Hopper is surely the greatest American narrative painter. His work bears special resonance for writers and readers, and yet his paintings never tell a story so much as they invite viewers to find for themselves the untold stories within."So says Lawrence Block, who has invited seventeen outstanding writers to join him in an unprecedented anthology of brand-new stories: In Sunlight or In Shadow.
- The Magdalen Girls byCall Number: F MagdalenISBN: 9781496706126Publication Date: 2016-12-27"Dublin, 1962. Within the gated grounds of the convent of The Sisters of the Holy Redemption lies one of the city's Magdalen Laundries. Once places of refuge, the laundries have evolved into grim workhouses. Some inmates are fallen women-unwed mothers, prostitutes, or petty criminals. Most are ordinary girls whose only sin lies in being too pretty, too independent, or tempting the wrong man. Stripped of their freedom and dignity, the girls are given new names and denied contact with the outside world.
- Oedipus in Brooklyn, and Other Stories byCall Number: Short Stories LemISBN: 9781942134251Publication Date: 2016-11-22Lempel (1907-1999) was one of a small number of writers in the United States who wrote in Yiddish into the 1990s. Though many of her stories opened a window on the Old World and the Holocaust, she did not confine herself to these landscapes or themes. She often wrote about the margins of society, and about subjects considered untouchable. her prize-winning fiction is remarkable for its psychological acuity, its unflinching examination of erotic themes and gender relations, and its technical virtuosity.
- The Ornatrix byCall Number: F HowardISBN: 9781468313826Publication Date: 2016-12-06Cursed from birth by the bird-shaped blemish across her face, Flavia spends much of her life hidden from the outside world. Lonely and alienated even from her family, she sabotages her sister's wedding in a fit of jealous rage and is exiled to serve in the convent of Santa Giuliana. Soon she finds that another exile dwells in the convent: a former Venetian courtesan named Ghostanza whose ostentatious appearance clashes with the otherwise austere convent and sparks gossip throughout the town.
- The Pattern Artist byCall Number: F MoserISBN: 9781634097925Publication Date: 2016-12-01Born into a life of hard work, English housemaid Annie Wood arrives in New York City in 1911 with her wealthy mistress. Annie chooses to risk everything, and goes off on her own, finding employment in the sewing department at Macy's. While at Macy's Annie catches the eye of a salesman at the Butterick Pattern Company. Through determination, hard work, and God's leading, Annie discovers a hidden gift: she is a talented fashion designer--a pattern artist of the highest degree.
- Small Admissions byCall Number: F PoeppelISBN: 9781501122521Publication Date: 2016-12-27One admission can change your life...forever. When ambitious grad student Kate Pearson's handsome French "almost fiance;" ditches her, she definitely does not roll with the punches. Miraculously, one cringe-worthy job interview leads to a position in the admissions department at the revered Hudson Day School. Kate's instantly thrown into a highly competitive and occasionally absurd culture, where she interviews all types of children: suitable, wildly unsuitable, charming, loathsome, ingratiating, or spoiled beyond all measure. And then there are the Park Avenue parents who refuse to take no for an answer.
- They Are Trying to Break Your Heart byCall Number: F SavillISBN: 9781632865465Publication Date: 2016-12-06In 1994, Marko Novak's world is torn apart by the death of his best friend, Kemal, a young soldier in the darkest days of the Bosnian war. After the funeral, Marko flees to England, hoping to put his broken homeland, and the part he played in the loss of his friend, behind him. In 2004, human rights researcher Anya Teal is following a tenuous lead in the hunt for a Bosnian man with blood on his hands. She is also clinging to the fragile hope that she can rebuild a relationship with her first love, William Howell.
- Tom Clancy True Faith and Allegiance byCall Number: F GreaneyISBN: 9780399176814Publication Date: 2016-12-06After years of facing international threats, President Jack Ryan learns that the greatest dangers always come from within... It begins with a family dinner in Princeton, New Jersey. After months at sea, U.S. Navy Commander Scott Hagan, captain of the USS James Greer, is on leave when he is attacked by an armed man in a crowded restaurant. Hagan is shot, but he manages to fight off the attacker. Though severely wounded, the gunman reveals he is a Russian whose brother was killed when his submarine was destroyed by Commander Hagan's ship.
New Fiction
- The Art Teacher byCall Number: F ReadISBN: 9781785079573Publication Date: 2017-01-01Patrick Owen managed seven years at Highfields Secondary School without punching a pupil in the face. Unknowingly drawn into a war against his own pupils, Patrick's patience finally snaps as he finds himself the number one target with the boy the school just can't seem to expel.
- Curtain of Death byCall Number: F GriffinISBN: 9780399176739Publication Date: 2016-12-27From author W. E. B. Griffin comes the dramatic third novel in the Clandestine Operations series about the Cold War, the fledgling Central Intelligence Agency--and a new breed of warrior. January 1946: Two WACs leave an officers' club in Munich, and four Soviet NKGB agents kidnap them at knifepoint in the parking lot and shove them in the back of an ambulance. That is the agents' first mistake, and their last.
- The Edit byCall Number: F JonesISBN: 9781504038737Publication Date: 2016-12-13On the coast of Central America, an aging man sits down to pen his memoirs. He begins with his childhood in Vienna, just after World War I, when his family lived in respectable poverty and his greatest pleasure was being rocked to sleep in the lap of his beloved babysitter. It would be a sweet tale if the author could withhold what comes later . . . but he intends to tell every horrifying detail of the truth. He's a war criminal, a veteran of the elite Nazi brigade known as the SS, and he'll write proudly of every atrocity he can recall.
- How Will I Know You? byCall Number: F TreadwayISBN: 9781455554119Publication Date: 2016-12-06On a cold December day in northern upstate New York, the body of high school senior Joy Enright is discovered in the woods at the edge of a pond. She had been presumed drowned, but an autopsy shows that she was, in fact, strangled. As the investigation unfolds, four characters tell the story from widely divergent perspectives. As a web of small-town secrets comes to light, a dramatic conclusion reveals the truth about Joy's death.
- The Ice Beneath Her byCall Number: F GrebeISBN: 9780425284322Publication Date: 2016-12-27Acclaimed Swedish author Camilla Grebe makes her solo American debut with a psychological thriller as cunning in its twists as it is captivating in its storytelling. Winter's chill has descended on Stockholm as police arrive at the scene of a shocking murder. An unidentified woman lies beheaded in a posh suburban home--a brutal crime made all the more disturbing by its uncanny resemblance to an unsolved killing ten years earlier. But this time there's a suspect: the charismatic and controversial chain-store CEO Jesper Orre, who owns the home but is nowhere to be found.
- The Midnight Bell byCall Number: F HigginsISBN: 9780399185304Publication Date: 2016-12-27In Ulster, Northern Ireland, a petty criminal kills a woman in a drunken car crash. Her sons swear revenge. In London, Sean Dillon and his colleagues in the "Prime Minister's private army," fresh from defeating a deadly al-Qaeda operation, receive a warning: You may think you have weakened us, but you have only made us stronger. In Washington, D.C., a special projects director with the CIA, frustrated at not getting permission from the President for his daring anti-terrorism plan, decides to put it in motion anyway. Soon, the ripples from these events will meet and overlap, creating havoc in their wake. Desperate men will act, secrets will be revealed - and the midnight bell will toll.
- Nice Work (If You Can Get It) byCall Number: F ImrieISBN: 9781632866646Publication Date: 2016-12-13Somewhere on the French Riviera, tucked between glitzy Monte Carlo and Cannes' red carpets, lies the pretty town of Bellevue-Sur-Mer. Sheltered from the glittering melee, it is home to many an expat--including an enterprising team who plan to open a new restaurant. Snapping up a local property and throwing themselves into preparations, Theresa, Carol, William and Benjamin's plans are proceeding unnervingly well. But when Theresa encounters a mysterious intruder, she begins to wonder what secrets the building is concealing.
- Of All That Ends byCall Number: F GrassISBN: 9780544785380Publication Date: 2016-12-06The final work of the Nobel Prize winner Gunter Grass contains meditations on writing, growing old, the world In spite of the trials of old age, and with the end in sight, suddenly everything seems possible again: love letters, soliloquies, scenes of jealousy, swan songs, social satire, and moments of happiness crowd onto the page. Only an aging artist who has once more cheated death can set to work with such wisdom, defiance, and wit.
- Onslaught byCall Number: F PoyerISBN: 9781250056313Publication Date: 2016-12-06Onslaught chronicles Captain Dan Lenson's latest challenge as the U.S. Navy struggles to hold Taiwan, Korea, and Japan against a massive Chinese offensive. The prize: domination of Asia and the Western Pacific. The most explosive novel yet in the long-running Dan Lenson series, David Poyer's Onslaught follows Tipping Point to unfold an utterly convincing scenario of how a global war with China could unfold.
- Revelation byCall Number: F WilsonISBN: 9781608092185Publication Date: 2016-12-13When Harden Campbell wakes cold and beaten in a dirt-floor cell, he finds only three other things in the room with him: the mutilated body of his good friend, an ancient typewriter, and a stack of blank paper, the top sheet of which has a single, typed sentence. Tell me a story.
- The Seventh Plague byCall Number: F RollinsISBN: 9780062381682Publication Date: 2016-12-13In the Sudanese desert, the leader of a British archeological expedition, Professor Harold McCabe, comes stumbling out of the sands, frantic and delirious, but he dies before he can tell his story. The mystery deepens when an autopsy uncovers a bizarre corruption: someone had begun to mummify the professor's body, while he was still alive. His strange remains are returned to London for further study, when alarming news arrives from Egypt. The medical team who had performed the man's autopsy has fallen ill with an unknown disease, one that is quickly spreading throughout Cairo.
- To Capture What We Cannot Keep byCall Number: F ColinISBN: 9781250071446Publication Date: 2016-11-29Set against the construction of the Eiffel in February 1887, Caitriona Wallace and Emile Nouguier meet in a hot air balloon, floating high above Paris, France--a moment of pure possibility. But back on firm ground, their vastly different social strata become clear. Cait is a widow who because of her precarious financial situation is forced to chaperone two wealthy Scottish charges. Emile is expected to take on the bourgeois stability of his family's business and choose a suitable wife.
- A Want of Kindness byCall Number: F LimburgISBN: 9781681772592Publication Date: 2016-12-06The wicked, bawdy Restoration court is no place for a child princess. Ten-year-old Anne cuts an odd figure: a sickly child, she is drawn towards improper pursuits. Cards, sweetmeats, scandal, and gossip with her Ladies of the Bedchamber figure large in her life. But as King Charles' niece, Anne is also a political pawn, who will be forced to play her part in the troubled Stuart dynasty.