Recently Received Riveting Reads: February 2018
Selective list of new fiction recently received
New Fiction
- Agent in Place byCall Number: F GreaneyISBN: 9780451488909Publication Date: 2018-02-20Fresh off his first mission back with the CIA, Court Gentry secures what seems like a cut-and-dried contract job: A group of expats in Paris hires him to kidnap the mistress of Syrian dictator Ahmed Azzam to get intel that could destabilize Azzam's regime. Court delivers Bianca Medina to the rebels, but she soon reveals that she has given birth to a son, the only heir to Azzam's rule--and a potent threat to the Syrian president's powerful wife. Now, to get Bianca's cooperation, Court must bring her son out of Syria alive.
- Asymmetry byCall Number: F HallidayISBN: 9781501166761Publication Date: 2018-02-06Told in three distinct and uniquely compelling sections, Asymmetry explores the imbalances that spark and sustain many of our most dramatic human relations: inequities in age, power, talent, wealth, fame, geography, and justice.
- The Atomic City Girls byCall Number: F BeardISBN: 9780062666710Publication Date: 2018-02-06In November 1944, eighteen-year-old June Walker boards an unmarked bus, destined for a city that doesn't officially exist. Oak Ridge, Tennessee has sprung up in a matter of months--a town of trailers and segregated houses, 24-hour cafeterias, and constant security checks. There, June joins hundreds of other young girls operating massive machines whose purpose is never explained. They know they are helping to win the war, but must ask no questions and reveal nothing to outsiders.
- By the Book byCall Number: F SonnebornISBN: 9781501175183Publication Date: 2018-02-06An English professor struggling for tenure discovers that her ex-fiance has just become the president of her college--and her new boss--in this whip-smart modern retelling of Jane Austen's classic Persuasion.
- Chicago byCall Number: F MametISBN: 9780062797193Publication Date: 2018-02-27A big-shouldered, big-trouble thriller set in mobbed-up 1920s Chicago--a city where some people knew too much, and where everyone should have known better--by the Oscar-nominated screenwriter of The Untouchables and Pulitzer Prize-winning playwright of Glengarry Glen Ross.
- The Château byCall Number: F GoldbergISBN: 9781250116093Publication Date: 2018-02-13It is January 2017 and Bill has hit rock bottom. Yesterday, he was William M. Katzenelenbogen, successful science reporter at The Washington Post. But things have taken a turn. Fired from his job, aimless, with exactly $1,219.37 in his checking account, he learns that his college roommate, a plastic surgeon, has fallen to his death under salacious circumstances. With nothing to lose, Bill boards a flight for Florida's Gold Coast, ready to begin his own investigation--a last ditch attempt to revive his career.
- Daphne byCall Number: F BoastISBN: 9781631493034Publication Date: 2018-02-06Born with a rare (and real) condition in which she suffers degrees of paralysis when faced with intense emotion, Daphne has few close friends and even fewer lovers. Like her mythic namesake, even one touch can freeze her. But when Daphne meets shy, charming Ollie, her well-honed defenses falter, and she's faced with an impossible choice: cling to her pristine, manicured isolation or risk the recklessness of real intimacy.
- The Driest Season byCall Number: F KennyISBN: 9780393634594Publication Date: 2018-02-13As her Wisconsin community endures a long season of drought and feels the shockwaves of World War II, fifteen-year-old Cielle endures a more personal calamity: the unexpected death of her father. A war rages elsewhere, while in the deceptive calm of the American heartland, Cielle's family contends with a new reality and fights not to be undone.
- The Friend byCall Number: F NunezISBN: 9780735219441Publication Date: 2018-02-06When a woman unexpectedly loses her lifelong best friend and mentor, she finds herself burdened with the unwanted dog he has left behind. Her own battle against grief is intensified by the mute suffering of the dog, a huge Great Dane traumatized by the inexplicable disappearance of its master, and by the threat of eviction: dogs are prohibited in her apartment building.
- The Glass Forest byCall Number: F SwansonISBN: 9781501172090Publication Date: 2018-02-06In the autumn of 1960, Angie Glass is living an idyllic life in her Wisconsin hometown. At twenty-one, she's married to charming, handsome Paul, and has just given birth to a baby boy. But one phone call changes her life forever.
- Good Neighbors byCall Number: F SerlingISBN: 9781455541911Publication Date: 2018-02-06In an idyllic suburb, four young families quickly form a neighborhood clique, their friendships based on little more than the ages of their children and a shared sense of camaraderie. When one of the couples, Paige and Gene Edwards, adopt a four-year-old girl from Russia, the group's loyalty and morality is soon called into question. Are the Edwards unkind to their new daughter? Or is she a difficult child with hidden destructive tendencies?
- House Witness byCall Number: F LawsonISBN: 9780802126665Publication Date: 2018-02-06Mike Lawson puts his likable protagonist on the trail of a different kind of fixer--one whose job is to influence, and sometimes disappear, witnesses in seemingly airtight criminal cases.
- The Hush byCall Number: F HartISBN: 9781250012302Publication Date: 2018-02-27It's been ten years since the events that changed Johnny Merrimon's life and rocked his hometown to the core. Since then, Johnny has fought to maintain his privacy, but books have been written of his exploits; the fascination remains. Living alone on six thousand acres of once-sacred land, Johnny's only connection to normal life is his old friend, Jack. They're not boys anymore, but the bonds remain. What they shared. What they lost. But Jack sees danger in the wild places Johnny calls home.
- A Long Way from Home byCall Number: F CareyISBN: 9780525520177Publication Date: 2018-02-27The two-time Booker Prize-winning author now gives us a wildly exuberant, wily new novel that circumnavigates 1954 Australia, revealing as much about the country/continent as it does about three audacious individuals who take part in the infamous 10,000-mile race, the Redex Trial. This is a thrilling high-speed story that starts in one way, and then takes you someplace else. It is often funny, more so as the world gets stranger, and always a page-turner even as you learn a history these characters never knew themselves.
- The Lost Girls of Camp Forevermore byCall Number: F FuISBN: 9780544098268Publication Date: 2018-02-13A group of young girls descend on Camp Forevermore, a sleepaway camp in the Pacific Northwest, where their days are filled with swimming lessons, friendship bracelets, and camp songs by the fire. Filled with excitement and nervous energy, they set off on an overnight kayaking trip to a nearby island. But before the night is over, they find themselves stranded, with no adults to help them survive or guide them home.
- Madness Is Better Than Defeat byCall Number: F BeaumanISBN: 9780385352994Publication Date: 2018-02-13A wild, astonishing literary thriller by arguably England's most accomplished young writer, about Manhattan and Hollywood in the 1930s, Mayan gods, and a CIA operation gone terribly wrong--the Man Booker short-listed Ned Beauman's magnum opus thus far.
- Mrs. byCall Number: F MacyISBN: 9780316434157Publication Date: 2018-02-13In New York's Upper East Side, coolly elegant Philippa Lye is the woman no one can stop talking about. Despite a shadowy past, Philippa has somehow married the scion of the last family-held investment bank in the city. Then, into her precariously balanced life, come two women: Gwen Hogan, a childhood acquaintance who uncovers an explosive secret about Philippa's single days, and Minnie Curtis, a newcomer who puts everyone on alert.
- Not Perfect byCall Number: F LaBanISBN: 9781477809228Publication Date: 2018-02-01Tabitha Brewer wakes up one morning to find her husband gone, leaving her no way to support herself and their two children, never mind their upscale Philadelphia lifestyle. She'd confess her situation to her friends--if it wasn't for those dreadful words of warning in his goodbye note: "I'll tell them what you did." Instead, she does her best to keep up appearances, but Tabitha realizes she can't keep her secrets forever. Sooner or later, someone is bound to figure out that her life is far from perfect.
- The One byCall Number: F MarrsISBN: 9781335005106Publication Date: 2018-02-20How far would you go to find The One? A simple DNA test is all it takes. Just a quick mouth swab and soon you'll be matched with your perfect partner--the one you're genetically made for. A decade ago, a company announced that they had found the gene that pairs each of us with our soul mate. Since then, millions of people around the world have been matched. But the discovery has its downsides: test results have led to the breakup of countless relationships and upended the traditional ideas of dating, romance and love.
- Poison byCall Number: F LescroartISBN: 9781501115707Publication Date: 2018-02-13In John Lescroart's latest thriller, San Francisco attorney Dismas Hardy is called upon to investigate the murder of a wealthy man whose heirs are all potential suspects.
- The Queen of Hearts byCall Number: F MartinISBN: 9780399585050Publication Date: 2018-02-13Zadie Anson and Emma Colley have been best friends since their early twenties, when they first began navigating serious romantic relationships amid the intensity of medical school. Now they're happily married wives and mothers with successful careers .Their lives in Charlotte, North Carolina are chaotic but fulfilling, until the return of a former colleague unearths a secret one of them has been harboring for years.
- Sadness Is a White Bird byCall Number: F Rothman-ZecherISBN: 9781501176265Publication Date: 2018-02-13In this lyrical and searing debut novel written by a rising literary star, a young man is preparing to serve in the Israeli army while also trying to reconcile his close relationship to two Palestinian siblings with his deeply ingrained loyalties to family and country.
- The Storm King byCall Number: F DuffyISBN: 9780804178143Publication Date: 2018-02-06Nate McHale has assembled the kind of life most people would envy. After a tumultuous youth marked by his inexplicable survival of a devastating tragedy, Nate left his Adirondack hometown of Greystone Lake and never looked back. Fourteen years later, he's become a respected New York City surgeon, devoted husband, and loving father. Then a body is discovered deep in the forests that surround Greystone Lake. This disturbing news finally draws Nate home.
- A Time of Love and Tartan byCall Number: F McCall SmithISBN: 9780525436553Publication Date: 2018-02-06The latest installment of Alexander McCall Smith's perennially popular and irresistibly charming 44 Scotland Street series. Alexander McCall Smith's delightfully witty, wise and sometimes surreal comedy spirals out in surprising ways in this new installment, but its heart remains where it has always been, at the center of life in Edinburgh's New Town.
- The Unforgotten byCall Number: F PowellISBN: 9781501181221Publication Date: 2018-02-06It is the summer of 1956, and fifteen-year-old Betty Broadbent has never left the Cornish fishing village of St. Steele or ventured far beyond the walls of the Hotel Eden, the slightly ramshackle boarding house run by her moody, unpredictable mother. But Betty's world is upended when a string of brutal murders brings London's press corps flooding into the village, many of whom find lodging at the Hotel Eden.
- White Houses byCall Number: F BloomISBN: 9780812995664Publication Date: 2018-02-13Lorena Hickok meets Eleanor Roosevelt in 1932 while reporting on Franklin Roosevelt's first presidential campaign. Having grown up worse than poor in South Dakota and reinvented herself as the most prominent woman reporter in America, "Hick," as she's known to her friends and admirers, is not quite instantly charmed by the idealistic, patrician Eleanor. But then, as her connection with the future first lady deepens into intimacy, what begins as a powerful passion matures into a lasting love, and a life that Hick never expected to have.
- Winter Sisters byCall Number: F OliveiraISBN: 9780399564253Publication Date: 2018-02-27New York, 1879: After an epic snow storm ravages the city of Albany, Dr. Mary Sutter, a former civil war surgeon, begins a search for two little girls, the daughters of close friends killed by the storm who have vanished without a trace. Despite resistance from the community, who believe the girls to be dead, the family persists in their efforts to find the two sisters. When what happened to them is revealed, the uproar that ensues tears apart families, reputations, and even the social fabric of the city.
New Fiction
- An American Marriage byCall Number: F JonesISBN: 9781616201340Publication Date: 2018-02-06Newlyweds Celestial and Roy are the embodiment of both the American Dream and the New South. He is a young executive, and she is an artist on the brink of an exciting career. But as they settle into the routine of their life together, they are ripped apart by circumstances neither could have imagined. Roy is arrested and sentenced to twelve years for a crime Celestial knows he didn't commit.
- As Bright as Heaven byCall Number: F MeissnerISBN: 9780399585968Publication Date: 2018-02-06In 1918, Philadelphia was a city teeming with promise. Into this bustling town, came Pauline Bright and her husband, filled with hope that they could now give their three daughters - Evelyn, Maggie, and Willa - a chance at a better life. But just months after they arrive, the Spanish Flu reaches the shores of America. Amidst the tragedy and challenges, they learn what they cannot live without - and what they are willing to do about it.
- Beautiful Days byCall Number: Short Stories OatesISBN: 9780062795786Publication Date: 2018-02-06A new collection of thirteen mesmerizing stories by American master Joyce Carol Oates, including the 2017 Pushcart Prize-winning "Undocumented Alien" .
- Call Me Zebra byCall Number: F Van der Vliet OloomiISBN: 9780544944602Publication Date: 2018-02-06Zebra is the last in a line of anarchists, atheists, and autodidacts. When war came, her family didn't fight; they took refuge in books. Now alone and in exile, Zebra leaves New York for Barcelona, retracing the journey she and her father made from Iran to the United States years ago.
- A Conspiracy of Tall Men byCall Number: F HawleyISBN: 9780671038243Publication Date: 1999-09-01Linus Owen is a young professor of conspiracy theory at a small college just outside San Francisco. Linus' marriage is foundering and his wife, Claudia has gone to Chicago to visit her mother. But if Claudia is in Chicago, how is it that two FBI agents show up at Linus' office and inform him that Claudia has been killed in a plane crash on her way from New York to Brazil?
- A Death in Live Oak byCall Number: F GrippandoISBN: 9780062657800Publication Date: 2018-02-06When the body of Jamal Cousin, president of the pre-eminent black fraternity at the Florida's flagship university, is discovered hogtied in the Stygian water swamps of the Suwanee River Valley, the death sets off a firestorm that threatens to rage out of control when a fellow student, Mark Towson, the president of a prominent white fraternity, is accused of the crime.
- The Deceivers byCall Number: F BerensonISBN: 9780399176166Publication Date: 2018-02-06The target was the American Airlines Center, the home of the Dallas Mavericks. The FBI had told Ahmed Shakir that his drug bust would go away if he helped them, and they'd supply all the weaponry, carefully removing the firing pins before the main event. It never occurred to Ahmed to doubt them, until it was too late. When John Wells is called to Washington, he's sure it's to investigate the carnage in Dallas, but it isn't.
- Finding Georgina byCall Number: F FaulknerISBN: 9781496711557Publication Date: 2018-02-27Its the moment Harper Broussard always dreamed of. Her daughter Georgina, snatched fourteen years ago during a Mardi Gras parade, is standing before her, making cappuccinos behind the counter of Harper's favorite New Orleans coffee shop. Harper's ex-husband, Remy, has patiently endured many "sightings" over the years, and assumes this is yet another false alarm. Yet this time, Harper is right.
- The French Girl byCall Number: F ElliottISBN: 9780399586934Publication Date: 2018-02-20They were six university students from Oxford--friends and sometimes more than friends--spending an idyllic week together in a French farmhouse. It was supposed to be the perfect summer getaway...until they met Severine, the girl next door.
- Girl Unknown byCall Number: F PerryISBN: 9780805098747Publication Date: 2018-02-06David and Caroline Connolly are swimming successfully through their marriage's middle years--raising two children; overseeing care for David's ailing mother; leaning into their careers, both at David's university teaching job, and at the ad agency where Caroline has recently returned to work . Then one early fall afternoon, a student of sublime beauty appears in David's university office and says, "I think you might be my father."
- The House of Impossible Beauties byCall Number: F CassaraISBN: 9780062676979Publication Date: 2018-02-06A gritty and gorgeous debut that follows a cast of gay and transgender club kids navigating the Harlem ball scene of the 1980s and '90s, inspired by the real House of Xtravaganza. It's 1980 in New York City, and nowhere is the city's glamour and energy better reflected than in the burgeoning Harlem ball scene, where seventeen-year-old Angel first comes into her own. Burned by her traumatic past, Angel is new to the drag world, new to ball culture, and has a yearning inside of her to help create family for those without.
- Island of Sweet Pies and Soldiers byCall Number: F AckermanISBN: 9780778319214Publication Date: 2018-02-13Hawaii, 1944. The Pacific battles of World War II continue to threaten American soil, and on the home front, the bonds of friendship and the strength of love are tested. Desperate to discover the truth behind what happened to her husband, while keeping her friends and daughter safe, Violet is torn by guilt, fear and longing as she faces losing everything.
- Kill the Angel byCall Number: F DazieriISBN: 9781501174650Publication Date: 2018-02-20In Rome, a high-speed train hurtles into the city's main station with a carriage full of dead bodies, the macabre discovery of which falls to Deputy Police Commissioner Colomba Caselli. Subsequently, the police receive a claim of responsibility and the threat of more murders to come. But neither Caselli nor her eccentrically brilliant ally, Dante Torre, are yet ready to buy the terrorist link.
- The Killing Snows byCall Number: F EganISBN: 9781781320570Publication Date: 2012-10-01This book is fiction. The story that inspired it was not. In 1990, a box of very old documents was found on a small farm in the west of Ireland. They had been stored for well over a hundred years and told an incredible story of suffering, of love and of courage. In 1846, a young couple met during the worst days of the Great Irish Famine. The Killing Snows is a way to imagine what led to their meeting and what followed from it.
- The Long Deception byCall Number: F McCluskeyISBN: 9781542046329Publication Date: 2018-01-30Alison Eastlake has come a long way from the wild days of her youth in England. Now, instead of streaking her hair purple, dreaming of becoming an artist, and sneaking cigarettes in her friend Sophie's basement, she has a career in advertising in Los Angeles She fears that she is fast becoming the type of person she once despised. When Alison receives news that Sophie has died of a drug overdose, leaving behind a slew of unanswered questions, she must go back home.
- Mister Tender's Girl byCall Number: F WilsonISBN: 9781492656500Publication Date: 2018-02-13At fourteen, Alice Hill was viciously attacked by two of her classmates and left to die. The teens claim she was a sacrifice for a man called Mister Tender, but that could never be true: Mister Tender doesn't exist. His sinister character is pop-culture fiction, created by Alice's own father in a series of popular graphic novels.
- My Name Is Venus Black byCall Number: F LloydISBN: 9780399592188Publication Date: 2018-02-27Venus Black is a straitlaced A student fascinated by the study of astronomy--until the night she commits a shocking crime that tears her family apart and ignites a media firestorm. Venus refuses to talk about what happened or why, except to blame her mother. Adding to the mystery, Venus's developmentally challenged younger brother, Leo, goes missing. More than five years later, Venus is released from prison with a suitcase of used clothes, a fake identity, and a determination to escape her painful past.
- The Night Child byCall Number: F QuinnISBN: 9781538434345Publication Date: 2018-01-30Nora Brown teaches high school English and lives a quiet life in Seattle with her husband and six-year-old daughter. But one November day, moments after dismissing her class, a girl's face appears above the students' desks--"a wild numinous face with startling blue eyes, a face floating on top of shapeless drapes of purples and blues where arms and legs should have been.
- Only Child byCall Number: F NavinISBN: 9781524733353Publication Date: 2018-02-06Squeezed into a coat closet with his classmates and teacher, first grader Zach Taylor can hear gunshots ringing through the halls of his school. A gunman has entered the building, taking nineteen lives and irrevocably changing the very fabric of this close-knit community. While Zach's mother pursues a quest for justice against the shooter's parents, holding them responsible for their son's actions, Zach retreats into his super-secret hideout and loses himself in a world of books and art.
- Only Killers and Thieves byCall Number: F HowarthISBN: 9780062690968Publication Date: 2018-02-06Only Killers and Thieves is a gripping and utterly transporting debut. It is 1885, and a crippling drought threatens to ruin the McBride family. When the rain finally comes, it is a miracle that renews their hope for survival. But returning home from an afternoon swimming at a remote waterhole fourteen-year-old Tommy and sixteen-year-old Billy meet with a shocking tragedy.
- The Plea byCall Number: F CavanaghISBN: 9781250105561Publication Date: 2018-02-13Billionaire David Child swears he didn't murder his girlfriend, Clara. But the evidence overwhelmingly shows that David killed her. The FBI believes David's arrest and obvious guilt could help them take down a huge money laundering scheme--if they can get him to testify. Con-artist-turned-lawyer Eddie Flynn is given the job: persuade David to plead guilty and give the agents the evidence they need.
- The Radicals byCall Number: F McIlvainISBN: 9780553417883Publication Date: 2018-02-13When Eli first meets Sam Westergard they are oth graduate students in New York City. They bond over their idealism, their love of poetry, and their commitment to socialism, both in theory and in practice--this last taking the form of an organized protest against Soline, a giant energy company that has speculated away the jobs and savings of thousands. As an Occupy-like group begins to coalesce around him, Eli realizes that some of his fellow intellectuals are more deeply--and dangerously--devoted to the cause than others.
- Self-Portrait with Boy byCall Number: F LyonISBN: 9781501169588Publication Date: 2018-02-06A compulsively readable and electrifying debut about an ambitious young female artist who accidentally photographs a boy falling to his death--an image that could jump start her career, but would also devastate her most intimate friendship.
- Straying byCall Number: F McCloskeyISBN: 9781501172465Publication Date: 2018-02-20Alice, a young American, arrives in the West of Ireland with no plans and no strong attachments. Alice falls in love with an Irishman, marries him, and settles down in a place whose customs she struggles to understand. In the course of a single hot summer, she embarks on an affair that breaks her marriage and sets her life on a new course.
- Tips for Living byCall Number: F ShafranskyISBN: 9781503949225Publication Date: 2018-02-01On the day Nora discovered that her husband, Hugh, had gotten another woman pregnant, she made a vow: I will come back to life no matter how long it takes... It's taken Nora three years. With the help of her best friend, she fled New York City for a small resort town, snagged a job as the advice columnist for the local paper, and is cautiously letting a new man into her life. But when Hugh and his perfect new family move into a house nearby, Nora backslides.
- The Which Way Tree byCall Number: F CrookISBN: 9780316434959Publication Date: 2018-02-06The poignant odyssey of a tenacious young girl who braves the dangers of the Texas frontier to avenge her mother's death "
- Winter Kept Us Warm byCall Number: F RaeffISBN: 9781619028173Publication Date: 2018-02-13Ulli is a young woman squatting in a dismal Berlin apartment, one year after the war has ended. One night, Ulli meets two soldiers who will change her life: Leo, handsome and ambitious and desperate to escape his small-town upbringing; and intellectual, asthmatic Isaac, whose refugee parents had fled Russia for New York. Winter Kept Us Warm follows Ulli, Leo, and Isaac through the next six decades of their lives.