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Reviews

Reviews

by Liz Moore - Fiction

Ada Sibelius is raised by David, her brilliant, eccentric, socially inept single father, who directs a computer science lab in 1980s-era Boston. Home-schooled, Ada accompanies David to work every day; by 12, she is a painfully shy prodigy. The lab begins to gain acclaim at the same time that David’s mysterious history comes into question. When his mind begins to falter, leaving Ada virtually an orphan, she is taken in by one of David’s colleagues. Soon she embarks on a mission to uncover her father’s secrets: a process that carries her from childhood to adulthood.

by Juliette Fay - Fiction, Historical Fiction

In 1919, the Turner sisters and their parents are barely scraping by. Their father is a low-paid boot-stitcher in Johnson City, New York, and the family is always one paycheck away from eviction. When their father’s hand is crushed and he can no longer work, their irrepressible mother decides that the vaudeville stage is their best --- and only --- chance for survival. Traveling by train from town to town, recent widow Nell and teenagers Gert, Winnie and Kit soon find a new kind of freedom in the company of performers who are as diverse as their acts. There is a seamier side to the business, however, and the young women face dangers and turns of fate they never could have anticipated.

by Elizabeth Brundage - Fiction, Mystery, Psychological Suspense, Psychological Thriller, Suspense, Thriller

Late one winter afternoon in the small town of Chosen, New York, professor George Clare knocks on his neighbor’s door with terrible news: he returned from work to find his wife, Catherine, murdered in their bed. Once a thriving dairy farm, their home is haunted by the tragedy that left the former owner’s three sons orphaned and adrift. As one dark secret peels away to reveal others --- and as the Clare marriage reveals itself to have a sinister darkness that rivals the farm’s history --- Elizabeth Brundage offers a rich and complex portrait of the scars that can haunt a community for generations and the dark longings inside each and every one of us that drive us to do inexplicable things.

by Kate Hamer - Fiction, Psychological Suspense, Psychological Thriller, Suspense, Thriller

Newly single mom Beth worries that her eight-year-old daughter, Carmel, who has a tendency to wander off, will one day go missing. And then it happens: The two get separated at a local outdoor festival, and Carmel vanishes. Beth sets herself on the grim and lonely mission to find her daughter. Carmel, meanwhile, is on a strange and harrowing journey of her own --- to a totally unexpected place that requires her to live by her wits, while trying desperately to keep in her head a vision of her mother.

by Sunil Yapa - Fiction

Grief-stricken after his mother's death and three years of wandering the world, Victor is longing for a family and a sense of purpose. He believes he's found both when he returns home to Seattle only to be swept up in a massive protest. With young, biracial Victor on one side of the barricades and his estranged father --- the white chief of police --- on the opposite, the day descends into chaos, capturing in its confusion the activists, police, bystanders and citizens from all around the world who had arrived that day brimming with hope. By the day's end, they have all committed acts they never thought possible.

by Natasha Solomons - Fiction

New Year’s Eve, Dorset, England, 1946. Harry Fox-Talbot and his brothers have returned from World War II determined to save their once grand home from ruin. But the arrival of beautiful Jewish wartime singer Edie Rose tangles the threads of love and duty, and leads to a devastating betrayal. Fifty years later, now a celebrated composer, Fox reels from the death of his adored wife, Edie. Until his connection with his four-year old grandson --- a music prodigy --- propels him back into life, and ultimately to confront his past.

by Bonnie Jo Campbell - Fiction, Short Stories

Bonnie Jo Campbell is a keen observer of life and trouble in rural America, and her working-class protagonists can be at once vulnerable, wise, cruel and funny. The strong but flawed women of MOTHERS, TELL YOUR DAUGHTERS must negotiate a sexually charged atmosphere as they love, honor and betray one another against the backdrop of all the men in their world. Such richly fraught mother-daughter relationships can be lifelines, anchors, or they can sink a woman like a stone.

by Tracy Daugherty - Biography, Nonfiction

Joan Didion lived a life in the public and private eye with her late husband, writer John Gregory Dunne. They became wildly successful writing partners and co-wrote screenplays and adaptations together. Didion is well-known for her literary journalistic style in both fiction and nonfiction. Tracy Daugherty takes readers on a journey back through time, following a young Didion in Sacramento, through to her adult life as a writer interviewing those who know and knew her personally, while maintaining a respectful distance from the reclusive literary great.

by Vicki Pettersson - Fiction, Psychological Suspense, Psychological Thriller, Suspense, Thriller

It’s high summer in the Mojave Desert, and Kristine Rush and her fiancé, Daniel, are en route from Las Vegas to Lake Arrowhead, California, for the July Fourth holiday weekend. But when Daniel is abducted from a desolate rest stop, Kristine is forced to choose: return home unharmed, but never to see her fiancé again, or plunge forward into the searing desert to find him…where a killer lies in wait.

by Jami Attenberg - Fiction, Historical Fiction

Mazie Phillips is the truth-telling proprietress of The Venice, the famed New York City movie theater. When the Great Depression hits, she opens the doors of The Venice to those in need, becoming the beating heart of the Lower East Side. More than 90 years after Mazie began her diary, it is discovered by a documentarian in search of a good story. Who was Mazie Phillips, really? A chorus of voices from the past and present fill in some of the mysterious blanks of her adventurous life.