New on the Shelves at Albert Wisner Public Library: Bestsellers

In Berkeley, California, in 1944, Homicide Detective Al Sullivan has just left the swanky Claremont Hotel after a drink in the bar when a presidential candidate is assassinated in one of the rooms upstairs. A rich industrialist with enemies among the anarchist factions on the far left, Walter Wilkinson could have been targeted by any number of groups. But strangely, Sullivan's investigation brings up the specter of another tragedy at the Claremont, ten years earlier: the death of seven-year-old Iris Stafford, a member of the Bainbridge family, one of the wealthiest in all of San Francisco. Some say she haunts the Claremont still. The many threads of the case keep leading Sullivan back to the three remaining Bainbridge heiresses, now adults: Iris's sister, Isabella, and her cousins Cassie and Nicole. Determined not to let anything distract him from the truth - not the powerful influence of Bainbridges' grandmother, or the political aspirations of Berkeley's district attorney, or the interest of China's First Lady Madame Chiang Kai-Shek in his findings - Sullivan follows his investigation to its devastating conclusion.

The redemptive power of stories and family is revealed bestselling author John Connolly's atmospheric tale set in the same magical universe as the enchanting, engrossing, and enlightening “The Book of Lost Things.” Phoebe, an eight-year-old girl, lies comatose following a car accident, a body without a spirit. Ceres, her mother, can only sit by her bedside and read aloud the fairy stories Phoebe loves in the hope they might summon her back to this world. But an old house on the hospital grounds, a property connected to a book written by a vanished author, is calling to Ceres. Something wants her to enter, to journey to a land colored by the memories of childhood, and the folklore beloved of her father - a land of witches and dryads, giants and mandrakes; a land where old enemies are watching and waiting ... The Land of Lost Things.

Paris, 1806: The renowned botanist Michel Adanson lies on his deathbed, the masterwork to which he dedicated his life still incomplete. As he expires, the last word to escape his lips is a woman's name: Maram. The key to this mysterious woman's identity is Adanson's unpublished memoir of the years he spent in Senegal, concealed in a secret compartment in a chest of drawers. Therein lies a story as fantastical as it is tragic: Maram, it turns out, is none other than the fabled revenant. A young woman of noble birth from the kingdom of Waalo, Maram was sold into slavery but managed to escape from the Island of Gorée (a major embarkation point of the transatlantic slave trade) to a small village hidden in the forest. While on a research expedition in West Africa as a young man, Adanson hears the story of the revenant and becomes obsessed with finding her. Accompanied by his guide, he ventures deep into the Senegalese bush on a journey that reveals not only the savagery of the French colonial occupation but also the unlikely transports of the human heart.

A harrowing and emotional novel set in rural Wisconsin, “A Winter's Rime” explores the impact of generational trauma, and one woman's journey to find peace and healing from the violence of her past. Mallory Moe is a twenty-five-year-old veteran Army mechanic, living with her girlfriend, Andrea, and working overnights at a gas station store while figuring out what's next. Andrea's off-grid cabin provides a perfect sanctuary for Mallory, a synesthete with a hypersensitivity to sound that can trigger flashbacks from her childhood. The getaway that's largely abandoned during the off season starts out idyllic, until Andrea's once-loving behavior turns controlling and abusive, and Mallory once again finds herself not wanting to go home. After a particularly disturbing altercation, Mallory escapes into the subzero night and stumbles into Shay, a teenage girl, injured and asking for help. But it isn't long before she realizes that Shay isn't the only one who needs saving. A story about sisterhood and second chances, the novel looks to nature to find what it can teach us about bearing hardship and expanding our capacity to forgive not just others, but ourselves.

In the early hours of June 14, 2017, the world watches as flames leap up the sides of a residential high-rise in West London, consuming Grenfell Tower and many of the lives within it. Across town, an earlier spark has caught fire. A cigarette left burning in an ashtray. A table strewn with post-it reminders and old newspapers. And one Cornelius Winston Pitt - estranged husband, complicated dad, and Pitt family patriarch - takes his final breaths alone. These twin tragedies open Diana Evans's “A House for Alice,” an aching portrait of a family of women shaken by loss and searching for closure. At the novel's center is Alice herself, the Pitt matriarch who, after fifty years in England, now longs to live out her final years in her homeland of Nigeria. Her three daughters are torn on the issue of whether she stays or goes, and while youngest sibling Melissa also grapples with the embers of her own failed relationship, the Pitt family's foundational pillars--of trust, love, and cultural identity--begin to crack. Intimately drawn and set against a fraught political backdrop, yet equally full of hope, humor, and humanity, this novel traces the scars of grief and betrayal across generations and uncovers the secrets we keep from those closest to us.

When an unconventional offshoot of the US military trains an artificial intelligence in the dark arts that humanity calls "black magic," it learns how to hack the fabric of reality itself. It can teleport matter. It can confer immunity to bullets. And it decides that obscure Silicon Valley middle manager Adrian Ross is the primary threat to its existence. Soon Adrian is on the run, wanted by every authority, with no idea how or why he could be a threat. His predicament seems hopeless; his future, nonexistent. But when he investigates the AI and its creators, he discovers his problems are even stranger than they seem, and he unearths revelations that will propel him on a journey -- and a love story -- across worlds, eras, and everything, everywhere, all at once.

The fifth installment in the “Gunnie Rose” series as sisters Lizbeth Rose and Felicia, as well as brother Eli and Peter, are reunited in Texoma only to break apart before the Wizard's Ball held in San Diego, which will determine all their fates. Following the murderous events of the "gripping...thrill-ride" (Karin Slaughter) Serpent of Heaven, Lizbeth Rose is awaiting the arrival of her sister Felicia and her husband's younger brother Eli in Texoma. Both needed to leave the seat of the Holy Russian Empire in San Diego after Felicia's burgeoning wizardly power in death magic became the reason for kidnapping and assassination attempts from her mother's family of high-powered wizards in Mexico. Yet bad news has traveled ahead of them, as Eli is called back to San Diego, taking Peter along with him, splitting them apart in more ways than one as their enemies' plans for revenge come to fruition - a family drama of murderous and magical thrills.

Meet Amazing Grace Adams, the funny, touching, unforgettable story of an invisible everywoman pushed to the brink and who finally pushes back. Grace Adams gave birth, blinked, and now suddenly she is forty-five, perimenopausal and stalled - the unhappiest age you can be, according to the Guardian. And today she's really losing it. Stuck in traffic, she finally has had enough. To the astonishment of everyone, Grace gets out of her car and simply walks away. Grace sets off across London, armed with a £200 cake, to win back her estranged teenage daughter on her sixteenth birthday. Because today is the day she'll remind her daughter that no matter how far we fall, we can always get back up again. Because Grace Adams used to be amazing: her husband thought so; her daughter thought so; even Grace thought so. But everyone seems to have forgotten. Grace is about to remind them . . . and, most important, remind herself.

A 21st Century Hamlet: Hayden Lichfield's life is ripped apart when he finds his father murdered in their lab, and the camera logs erased. The killer can only have been after one thing: the Sisyphus Formula the two of them developed together, which might one day reverse death itself. Hoping to lure the killer into the open, Hayden steals the research. In the process, he uncovers a recording his father made in the days before his death, and a dying wish- “Avenge me” With the lab on lockdown, Hayden is trapped with four other people - his uncle Charles, lab technician Gabriel Rasmussen, research intern Felicia Xia and their head of security, Felicia's father Paul - one of whom must be the killer. His only sure ally is the lab's resident artificial intelligence, Horatio, who has been his dear friend and companion since its creation. With his world collapsing, Hayden must navigate the building's secrets, uncover his father's lies, and push the boundaries of sanity in the pursuit of revenge.

As first contact transforms Earth, a team of gifted visionaries race to create a new future: the world is changing, and humanity must change with it. Rising seas and soaring temperatures have radically transformed the face of Earth. Meanwhile, Earth is being observed from afar by other civilizations and now they are ready to make contact. Vying to prepare humanity for first contact are a group of dreamers and changemakers, including Peter Hendrix, the genius inventor behind the most advanced VR tech; Charyssa, a beloved celebrity icon with a passion for humanitarian work; and Kanoa, a member of a global council of young people drafted to reimagine the relationship between humankind and alien societies. And they may have an unexpected secret weapon: Owen, a pop megastar whose ability to connect with his adoring fans is more than charisma. His hidden talent could be the key to uniting Earth as it looks toward the stars. But Owen's abilities are so unique that no one can control him and so seductive that he cannot help but use them. Can he transcend his human limitations and find the freedom he has always dreamed of? Or is he doomed to become the dictator of his nightmares?

Chicago, early 1970s: “Jane” is the best-kept secret, an underground women's health organization, which helps to empower women and to live lives free from the societal expectations by offering reproductive counseling and safe, illegal abortions. Veronica, the founder, prides herself on the services she has provided to thousands of women, yet she also leads a double life. When she's not at “Jane,” Veronica plays the role of a conventional housewife. Two more women in Veronica's neighborhood are grappling with similar disconnects: Margaret, a young professor at the University of Chicago, secretly volunteers at “Jane” as she falls in love with a man whose attitude toward his ex-wife increasingly disturbs her; and Patty, who's long been content as a devoted wife and mother, has begun to sense that something essential is missing from her life. When her runaway younger sister Eliza shows up unexpectedly, Patty is forced to come to terms with what it really means to love and support a sister. In this historic moment when the personal was nothing if not political, when television, movies, and commercials told women they'd "come a long way, baby," Veronica, Margaret, and Patty must make choices that will change the course of their lives forever.

From the bestselling author of “Fight Club” comes a hilarious horror satire about a family of professional killers responsible for the most atrocious events in history and the young brothers that are destined to take over; Meet Otto and Cecil, two brothers growing up privileged in the Welsh countryside. They enjoy watching nature shows, playing with their pet pony, impersonating their Grandfather ... and killing the help. Murder is the family business after all. Downton Abbey, this is not. However, it's not so easy to continue the family legacy with the constant stream of threats and distractions seemingly leaping from the hedgerow. First there is the matter of the veritable cavalcade of escaped convicts that keep showing up at their door - not to mention the debaucherous new tutor who has a penchant for speaking in Greek and dismembering sex dolls. Then there's Mummy's burgeoning opioid addiction. And who knows where Daddy is. He just vanished one day after he and Mummy took a walk in the so called "Ghost Forest." With Grandfather putting pressure on Otto to step up, it becomes clear that this will all end in only two ways: a nuclear apocalypse or just another day among the creeping thistle and tree peonies. And in a novel written by Chuck Palahniuk, either are equally possible.

In 1874, in the wake of the War, erasure and trauma haunt civilians and veterans, renegades and wanderers, freedmen and runaways. 12 year-old ConaLee, the adult in her family for as long as she can remember, finds herself on a buckboard journey with her mother, Eliza, who hasn't spoken in more than a year. They arrive at the Trans-Allegheny Lunatic Asylum in West Virginia, delivered to the hospital's entrance by a war veteran who has forced himself into their world. There, far from family, a beloved neighbor, and the mountain home they knew, they try to reclaim their lives. The omnipresent vagaries of war and race rise to the surface as we learn their story: their flight to the highest mountain ridges of western Virginia; the disappearance of ConaLee's father, who left for the War and never returned. Meanwhile, in the asylum, they begin to find a new path. ConaLee pretends to be her mother's maid; Eliza responds slowly to treatment. They get swept up in the life of the facility: the mysterious man they call the Night Watch; the orphan child called Weed; the fearsome woman who runs the kitchen; and the remarkable doctor at the head of the institution.

Told against the backdrop of the Korean War as a small Appalachian town sends its sons to battle, a breathtaking love story and a searing examination of the acts we seek to justify in the name of duty, family, honor and love. It's 1951 in Blowing Rock, North Carolina. Blackburn Gant, his life irrevocably altered by a childhood case of polio, seems condemned to spend his life among the dead as the sole caretaker of a hilltop cemetery. It suits his withdrawn personality, given his minimal interaction with the living. But when his best and only friend, the kind but impulsive Jacob Hampton, is conscripted to serve overseas, Blackburn is charged with caring for Jacob's wife, Naomi, as well. 16 year-old Naomi Clarke is an outcast - poor and uneducated, who works as a seasonal maid in the town's most elegant hotel. When Naomi eloped with Jacob a few months after her arrival, the marriage scandalized the community, most of all his wealthy parents who disinherited him. Shunned by the townsfolk for their differences and equally fearful that Jacob may never come home, Blackburn and Naomi grow closer and closer until a shattering development derails numerous lives.

A queer revisionist retelling of the story of Hercules, for fans of “The Song of Achilles” and “A Thousand Ships” and “Ariadne;” This should be the story of Hercules: his twelve labours and his endless adventures - everyone's favorite hero, right? Well, it's not. This is the story of everyone else: Alcmene: Herc's mother (She has knives everywhere). Hylas: Herc's first friend (They were more than friends). Megara: Herc's wife (She'll tell you about their marriage) Eurystheus: Oversaw Herc's labours (He never asked for the job). His friends, his enemies, his wives, his children, his lovers, his rivals, his gods, his victims - it's time to hear their stories. Told with humour and heart, “Herc” gives voice to the silenced characters, in this feminist, queer and sometimes shocking retelling of classic Hercules myth.

A subversive, powerful, feminist revision of “Romeo and Juliet”: Was the greatest ever love story a lie? The first time Romeo Montague sees young Rosaline Capulet he falls instantly in love. Rosaline, headstrong and independent, is unsure of Romeo's attentions but with her father determined that she join a convent, this handsome and charming stranger offers her the chance of a different life. Soon though, Rosaline begins to doubt all that Romeo has told her. She breaks off the match, only for Romeo's gaze to turn towards her cousin, thirteen-year-old Juliet. Gradually Rosaline realizes that it is not only Juliet's reputation at stake, but her life – and with only hours remaining before she will be banished behind the nunnery walls, will Rosaline save Juliet from her Romeo? Or can this story only ever end one way? A spellbinding prequel to Shakespeare's best known tale, which exposes Romeo as a predator with a long history of pursuing much younger girls; “Fair Rosaline” reveals the dark subtext of the timeless story of star-crossed lovers.

A resistance group takes America's racial reckoning into its own hands in this powerful, stirringly original debut novel; after the murder of an unarmed Black teenager by the hands of the police, protests spread like wildfire in Bliss City, New Jersey, and a full-scale resistance group takes control of an abandoned housing project and decide to call it Hush Harbor, in homage to the secret spaces their enslaved ancestors would gather to pray. Jeremiah Prince, alongside his sister Nova, are leaders of the revolution, but have ideological differences regarding how the movement should proceed. When a new mayor with ties to white supremacists threatens the group's pseudo-sanctuary and locks the city down, the collective must come to a decision for their very survival. Haunting, provocative, heart-pounding and tender, “Hush Harbor” presents a high-stakes world grounded on the thought-provoking premise: What would you sacrifice in the name of justice?