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Reviews

Reviews

by Ben Mezrich - Biography, Nonfiction

Ben Mezrich's 2009 bestseller, THE ACCIDENTAL BILLIONAIRES, is the definitive account of Facebook's founding and the basis for the Academy Award–winning film The Social Network. Two of the story's iconic characters are Harvard students Tyler and Cameron Winklevoss: identical twins, Olympic rowers and foils to Mark Zuckerberg. BITCOIN BILLIONAIRES is the story of the brothers’ redemption and revenge in the wake of their epic legal battle with Facebook.

by Claire Harman - History, Nonfiction, True Crime

Early on the morning of May 6, 1840, the elderly Lord William Russell was found in his London house with his throat so deeply cut that his head was nearly severed. The crime soon had everyone, including Queen Victoria, feverishly speculating about motives and methods. But when the prime suspect claimed to have been inspired by a sensational crime novel, it sent shock waves through literary London and drew both Dickens and Thackeray into the fray. Could a novel really lead someone to kill?

by Andrea Bartz - Fiction, Psychological Suspense, Psychological Thriller, Suspense, Thriller, Women's Fiction

In 2009, Edie had New York’s social world in her thrall. Mercurial and beguiling, she was the shining star of a group of recent graduates living in a Brooklyn loft and treating New York like their playground. When Edie’s body was found near a suicide note at the end of a long, drunken night, no one could believe it. Grief, shock, and resentment scattered the group and brought the era to an abrupt end.

by Elinor Lipman - Comedy, Fiction, Romance

Daphne Maritch doesn't quite know what to make of the heavily annotated high school yearbook she inherits from her mother. The late June Winter Maritch was the teacher to whom the class of '68 had dedicated its yearbook, and in turn she went on to attend every reunion, scribbling notes and observations after each one --- not always charitably --- and noting who overstepped boundaries of many kinds. In a fit of decluttering, she discards it when she moves to a small New York City apartment. But when it's found in the recycling bin by a busybody neighbor/documentary filmmaker, the yearbook's mysteries --- not to mention her own family's --- take on a whole new urgency, and Daphne finds herself entangled in a series of events both poignant and absurd.

by Laura Sims - Fiction, Psychological Suspense, Psychological Thriller, Suspense, Thriller

Though the two women live just a few doors apart, a chasm lies between them. The actress, a celebrity with a charmed career, shares a gleaming brownstone with her handsome husband and three adorable children, while the recently separated narrator, unhappily childless and stuck in a dead-end job, lives in a run-down, three-story walk-up with her ex-husband’s cat. As her fascination grows, the narrator’s hold on reality begins to slip. Before long, she’s collecting cast-off items from the actress’s stoop and fantasizing about sleeping with the actress’s husband. After a disastrous interaction with the actress at the annual block party, what began as an innocent preoccupation turns into a stunning --- and irrevocable --- unraveling.

by Sam Lipsyte - Fiction, Humor, Satire

In an America convulsed by political upheaval, cultural discord, environmental catastrophe and spiritual confusion, so many of us find ourselves anxious and distracted, searching desperately for peace, salvation and focus. Enter Hark Morner, a failed stand-up comic turned mindfulness guru whose revolutionary program is set to captivate the masses. But for Fraz and Tovah, a middle-aged couple slogging through a very rough patch, it may take more than the tenets of Hark’s “Mental Archery” to solve the riddles of love, lust, work and parenthood on the eve of civilizational collapse. And given the sudden power of certain fringe players, it just might be too late. But what’s the point of a world, even a blasted-out post-apocalyptic world, if they don’t try with all their might to keep their marriage alive?

by Brad Meltzer and Josh Mensch - History, Nonfiction

In 1776, an elite group of soldiers were handpicked to serve as George Washington’s bodyguards. Washington trusted them. But unbeknownst to him, some of them were part of a treasonous plan. In the months leading up to the Revolutionary War, these traitorous soldiers, along with the Governor of New York, William Tryon, and Mayor David Mathews, launched a deadly plot against the most important member of the military: George Washington himself. This is the story of the secret plot and how it was revealed. It is a story of leaders, liars, counterfeiters and jailhouse confessors. It also shows just how hard the battle was for Washington and how close America was to losing the Revolutionary War.

by Ezekiel Boone - Fiction, Horror, Suspense, Thriller

Years ago, Shawn Eagle and Billy Stafford created a revolutionary computer called Eagle Logic. But they parted ways following a major falling-out. Now Billy is beset by poverty and addiction, and Shawn is the most famous man in the world. Unable to let the past be forgotten, Shawn decides to resurrect his and Billy’s biggest failure: a next-generation computer program named Nellie that can control a house’s every function. He decides to set it up in the abandoned mansion they worked near all those years ago. But something about Nellie isn’t right --- and the reconstruction of the mansion is plagued by accidental deaths. Shawn is forced to bring Billy back, despite their longstanding mutual hatred, to discover and destroy the evil that lurks in the source code.

by Ben Schott - Fiction, Humor

The misadventures of Bertie Wooster and his incomparable personal gentleman, Jeeves, have delighted audiences for nearly a century. Now bestselling author Ben Schott brings this odd couple back to life in a madcap new adventure full of the hijinks, entanglements, imbroglios and Wodehousian wordplay that readers love. The Junior Ganymede Club (an association of England's finest butlers and valets) is revealed to be an elite arm of the British secret service. Jeeves must ferret out a Fascist spy embedded in the highest social circles, and only his hapless employer, Bertie, can help. Unfolding in the background are school-chum capers, affairs of the heart, antics with aunts and sartorial set-tos.

by Colm Tóibín - Biography, History, Nonfiction

Colm Tóibín begins MAD, BAD, DANGEROUS TO KNOW with a walk through the Dublin streets where he went to university and where three Irish literary giants also came of age. Oscar Wilde, writing about his relationship with his father, William Wilde, stated: “Whenever there is hatred between two people there is bond or brotherhood of some kind…you loathed each other not because you were so different but because you were so alike.” W.B. Yeats wrote of his father, painter John Butler Yeats: “It is this infirmity of will which has prevented him from finishing his pictures. The qualities I think necessary to success in art or life seemed to him egotism.” John Stanislaus Joyce, James’ father, was widely loved, garrulous, a singer and drinker with a volatile temper, who drove his son from Ireland.