BEYOND THE ICE LIMIT: A Gideon Crew Novel by Douglas Preston and Lincoln Child (Thriller)
Audiobook available, read by David W. Collins
Five years ago, the mysterious and inscrutable head of Effective Engineering Solutions, Eli Glinn, led a mission to recover a gigantic meteorite from a remote island off the coast of South America. The mission ended in disaster when their ship foundered in a vicious storm and broke apart, sinking to the ocean floor. The tragedy revealed something truly terrifying: the meteorite they tried to retrieve was not simply a rock. Instead, it was a complex organism from the deep reaches of space. That organism has now implanted itself in the sea bed two miles below the surface --- and it’s growing. As Gideon Crew and his colleagues soon discover, the "meteorite" has a mind of its own and has no intention of going quietly. Reviewed by Ray Palen.
THE CURIOUS CHARMS OF ARTHUR PEPPER by Phaedra Patrick (Fiction)
Audiobook available, performed by James Langton
Sixty-nine-year-old Arthur Pepper lives a simple life. But on the one-year anniversary of his wife Miriam’s death, something changes. Sorting through Miriam’s possessions, Arthur finds an exquisite gold charm bracelet he’s never seen before. What follows is a surprising and unforgettable odyssey that takes Arthur from London to Paris and as far as India in an epic quest to find out the truth about his wife’s secret life before they met --- a journey that leads him to find hope, healing and self-discovery in the most unexpected places. Reviewed by Jane Krebs.
THE DEFENSE by Steve Cavanagh (Legal Thriller)
Audiobook available, read by Adam Sims
Former con artist turned lawyer Eddie Flynn gave up the law a year ago after a disastrous case, and he vowed never to step foot in a courtroom again. But now he doesn't have a choice. The head of the Russian mob in New York City, on trial for murder, has kidnapped Eddie's 10-year-old daughter: Eddie has to take this case whether he likes it or not. Using his razor-sharp wit and every con, bluff, grift and trick in the book, Eddie has 48 hours to defend an impossible murder trial. And if he loses this case, he loses everything. Reviewed by Joe Hartlaub.
THE DOLL-MASTER AND OTHER TALES OF TERROR by Joyce Carol Oates (Horror/Short Stories)
In the title story of Joyce Carol Oates’ haunting collection of six “tales of terror,” a young boy becomes obsessed with his cousin’s doll after she tragically passes away from leukemia. As he grows older, he begins to collect “found dolls” from the surrounding neighborhoods and stores his treasures in the abandoned carriage house on his family's estate. But just what kind of dolls are they? Joyce Carol Oates evokes the “fascination of the abomination” that is at the core of the most profound, the most unsettling and the most memorable of dark mystery fiction. Reviewed by Joe Hartlaub.
DON'T YOU CRY by Mary Kubica (Psychological Thriller)
Audiobook available, performed by Kate Rudd and Kirby Heyborne
In downtown Chicago, a young woman named Esther Vaughan disappears from her apartment without a trace. A haunting letter addressed to My Dearest is found among her possessions, leaving her friend and roommate, Quinn Collins, to wonder where Esther is and whether or not she's the person Quinn thought she knew. Meanwhile, in a small Michigan harbor town an hour outside Chicago, a mysterious woman appears in the quiet coffee shop where 18-year-old Alex Gallo works as a dishwasher. He is immediately drawn to her charm and beauty, but what starts as an innocent crush quickly spirals into something far more dark and sinister than he ever expected. Reviewed by Joe Hartlaub.
EVERYBODY'S FOOL by Richard Russo (Fiction)
Audiobook available, read by Mark Bramhall
In this long-awaited follow-up to 1993’s NOBODY’S FOOL, the irresistible Sully is staring down a cardiologist’s estimate that he has only a year or two left. It’s hard work trying to keep this news from the most important people in his life: Ruth, the married woman he carried on with for years; the ultra-hapless Rub Squeers, who worries that he and Sully aren’t still best friends; and Sully’s son and grandson, for whom he was mostly an absentee figure (and now a regretful one). Reviewed by Jana Siciliano.
THE FIREMAN by Joe Hill (Supernatural Thriller/Horror)
Audiobook available, performed by Kate Mulgrew
A terrifying new plague is spreading like wildfire across the country, striking cities one by one. The doctors call it Draco Incendia Trychophyton. To everyone else it’s Dragonscale, a highly contagious, deadly spore that marks its hosts with beautiful black and gold marks across their bodies --- before causing them to burst into flames. Millions are infected, and blazes erupt everywhere. A mysterious and compelling stranger straddles the abyss between insanity and death. Known as The Fireman, he strolls the ruins of New Hampshire, a madman afflicted with Dragonscale who has learned to control the fire within himself, using it as a shield to protect the hunted…and as a weapon to avenge the wronged. Reviewed by Joe Hartlaub.
GIRLS & SEX: Navigating the Complicated New Landscape by Peggy Orenstein (Family & Relationships/Social Science)
Audiobook available, read by Peggy Orenstein
A generation gap has emerged between parents and their girls. Even in this age of helicopter parenting, the mothers and fathers of tomorrow’s women have little idea what their daughters are up to sexually or how they feel about it. Drawing on in-depth interviews with over 70 young women and a wide range of psychologists, academics and experts, renowned journalist Peggy Orenstein goes where most others fear to tread, pulling back the curtain on the hidden truths, hard lessons and important possibilities of girls’ sex lives in the modern world. Reviewed by Jana Siciliano.
GIRLS ON FIRE by Robin Wasserman (Thriller)
Audiobook available, performed by Cassandra Campbell, Soneela Nankani and Allyson Ryan
On Halloween in 1991, a popular high school basketball star ventures into the woods and disappears. Three days later, he’s found with a bullet in his head and a gun in his hand. In the wake of this incident, bright but lonely Hannah Dexter is befriended by the charismatic, seductive Lacey Champlain. Lacey forges a fast, intimate bond with the impressionable Dex, making her over in her own image and unleashing a fierce defiance that neither girl expected. But as Lacey gradually lures Dex away from her safe life into a feverish spiral of obsession, rebellion and ever greater risk, an unwelcome figure appears on the horizon --- and Lacey’s secret history collides with Dex’s worst nightmare. Reviewed by Norah Piehl.
HIDE AWAY: An Eve Duncan Novel by Iris Johansen (Thriller)
Audiobook available, narrated by Elizabeth Rodgers
World-famous forensic sculptor Eve Duncan has landed in a well-guarded hospital room in Carmel, California. But hidden danger looms for Eve, her beloved Joe Quinn, and Cara Delaney, the young girl they’ve both sworn to protect. With Cara’s enemies on the move, Eve has no choice but to flee the hospital. She turns to her daughter, Jane MacGuire, for help in getting out of the country. For years, Jane has been avoiding pressure to find a treasure thought to be buried in Scotland, but she’s finally succumbed to John MacDuff’s pleas to track it down. Eve and Cara join Jane in the remote mountains, but soon realize that nowhere is far enough away from the ruthless predators who are on their trail. Reviewed by Judy Gigstad.
THE HIGHWAYMAN: A Longmire Story by Craig Johnson (Mystery)
Audiobook available, narrated by George Guidall
When Wyoming highway patrolman Rosey Wayman is transferred to the beautiful and imposing landscape of the Wind River Canyon, an area the troopers refer to as no-man's-land because of the lack of radio communication, she starts receiving “officer needs assistance” calls. The problem? They're coming from Bobby Womack, a legendary Arapaho patrolman who met a fiery death in the canyon almost a half-century ago. With an investigation that spans this world and the next, Sheriff Walt Longmire and Henry Standing Bear take on a case that pits them against a legend: The Highwayman. Reviewed by Joe Hartlaub.
I'M FASCINATED BY SACRIFICE FLIES: Inside the Game We All Love by Tim Kurkjian (Sports)
ESPN baseball commentator Tim Kurkjian is fascinated by sacrifice flies. In fact, he is fascinated by so many aspects of baseball that he's written a book to show baseball fans where this fascination comes from and how they, too, can find it. In the aftermath of the Steroid Era that stained the game, at a time when so many players are so rich and therefore have a sense of entitlement that they haven't earned, Kurkjian shows readers how to love the game more than ever, with incredible insight and stories that are hilarious, heartbreaking and revealing. Reviewed by Ron Kaplan.
IMAGINE ME GONE by Adam Haslett (Fiction)
Audiobook available, read by Ellen Archer and Robert Fass
When Margaret's fiancé, John, is hospitalized for depression in 1960s London, she faces a choice: carry on with their plans despite what she now knows of his condition, or back away from the suffering it may bring her. She decides to marry him. IMAGINE ME GONE is the story of what unfolds from this act of love and faith. At the heart of it is their eldest son, Michael, a brilliant, anxious music fanatic who makes sense of the world through parody. Over the span of decades, his younger siblings struggle along with their mother to care for his increasingly troubled and precarious existence. Reviewed by Rebecca Kilberg.
LaROSE by Louise Erdrich (Fiction)
Audiobook available, performed by Louise Erdrich
Hunting along the edge of his property, Landreaux Iron accidentally kills his neighbor's five-year-old son, Dusty Ravich. Horrified at what he’s done, the recovered alcoholic turns to an Ojibwe tribe tradition --- the sweat lodge --- for guidance and finds a way forward. Following an ancient means of retribution, he and his wife, Emmaline, will give their son, LaRose, to Dusty's grieving parents. But when a vengeful man with a long-standing grudge against Landreaux begins raising trouble, hurling accusations of a cover-up the day Dusty died, he threatens the tenuous peace that has kept these two fragile families whole. Reviewed by L. Dean Murphy.
LIFE WITHOUT A RECIPE: A Memoir of Food and Family by Diana Abu-Jaber (Memoir)
On one side, there is Grace: prize-winning author Diana Abu-Jaber’s tough, independent sugar-fiend of a German grandmother, wielding a suitcase full of holiday cookies. On the other, Bud: a flamboyant, spice-obsessed Arab father, full of passionate argument. The two could not agree on anything: not about food, work, or especially about what Diana should do with her life. Grace warned her away from children. Bud wanted her married above all --- even if he had to provide the ring. Caught between cultures and lavished with contradictory “advice” from both sides of her family, Diana spent years learning how to ignore others’ well-intentioned prescriptions. Reviewed by Pauline Finch.
THE LONEY by Andrew Michael Hurley (Horror)
Audiobook available, read by Richard Burnip
When the remains of a young child are discovered during a winter storm on a stretch of the bleak Lancashire coastline known as the Loney, a man named Smith is forced to confront the terrifying and mysterious events that occurred 40 years earlier. At that time, his devoutly Catholic mother was determined to find healing for Hanny, his disabled older brother. And so the family embarked on an Easter pilgrimage to an ancient shrine. When the two brothers found their lives entangling with a glamorous couple staying at a nearby house, they became involved in more troubling rites. Reviewed by Sarah Rachel Egelman.
UNKNOWN REMAINS by Peter Leonard (Thriller)
Jack McCann is a high-stakes Wall Street trader who sneaks into his office early one morning to try and clear out his things and get out of Dodge; he knows he’s in trouble, deep legal trouble. Outside his office window, he hears a booming sound, and then the worst noise imaginable. He works in the World Trade Center, and it's September 11, 2001. His wife, Diane, is visited the next day by a grief counselor, and then the mob. She learns that Jack owes them $750,000; their personal bank accounts have been emptied, and she's totally broke. Lost in grief and shock, Diane soon discovers that her husband was not the loving spouse he appeared to be. Reviewed by Joe Hartlaub.
THE WEEKENDERS by Mary Kay Andrews (Fiction)
Audiobook available, read by Kathleen McInerney
Riley Griggs has a season of good times with friends and family ahead of her on the idyllic island of Belle Isle, North Carolina, when things take an unexpected turn. While waiting for her husband to arrive on the ferry one Friday afternoon, Riley is confronted by a process server who thrusts papers into her hand. And her husband is nowhere to be found. So she turns to her island friends for help and support, but it turns out that each of them has their own secrets. The clock is ticking as the mystery deepens...in a murderous way. Riley must find a way to investigate the secrets of Belle Island, the husband she might not really know, and the summer that could change everything. Reviewed by Jamie Layton.
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