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Reviews

Reviews

by Tara M. Stringfellow - Fiction, Women's Fiction

Ten-year-old Joan, her mother and her younger sister flee her father’s explosive temper and seek refuge at her mother’s ancestral home in Memphis. Half a century earlier, Joan’s grandfather built this majestic house in the historic Black neighborhood of Douglass --- only to be lynched days after becoming the first Black detective in the city. Joan tries to settle into her new life, but family secrets cast a longer shadow than any of them expected. As she grows up, Joan finds relief in her artwork. One of her subjects is their enigmatic neighbor Miss Dawn, who claims to know something about curses, and whose stories about the past help Joan see how her passion, imagination and relentless hope are, in fact, the continuation of a long matrilineal tradition.

by Blair Fell - Fiction, Romance

Arlo Dilly is young, handsome and eager to meet the right girl. He also happens to be DeafBlind, a Jehovah’s Witness and under the strict guardianship of his controlling uncle. His chances of finding someone to love seem slim to none. And yet, it happened once before. Many years ago, at a boarding school for the Deaf, Arlo met the love of his life --- a mysterious girl with onyx eyes and beautifully expressive hands that told him the most amazing stories. But tragedy struck, and their love was lost forever. Or so Arlo thought. After years trying to heal his broken heart, Arlo is assigned a college writing assignment that unlocks buried memories of his past. Soon he wonders if the hearing people he was supposed to trust have been lying to him all along, and if his lost love might be found again.

by Jess Montgomery - Fiction, Historical Fiction, Historical Mystery, Mystery

Sheriff Lily Ross and her family look forward to the opening of an amusement park created by Chalmer Fitzpatrick. When Lily is alerted to the possible drowning of a girl, she discovers schisms going back several generations, in an ongoing dispute over the land on which Fitzpatrick has built the park. Lily's family life is soon rattled with the revelation that before he died, her brother had a daughter, Esme, and arrangements have been made for Esme to immigrate to the U.S. to live with them. But Esme never makes it to Kinship, and soon Lily discovers that she has been kidnapped. A young woman is indeed found murdered in the fishing pond on Fitzpatrick's property, at the same time that a baby is left on his doorstep. As the two crimes interweave, Lily must confront the question of what makes family.

by Leanne Kale Sparks - Fiction, Mystery, Suspense, Thriller

The only survivor of Denver’s notorious “Reaper” serial murders, FBI Special Agent Kendall Beck grapples with the ghosts of her past by seeking justice for victims of abuse. She’s neck deep in a particularly ugly case involving the disappearance of five-year-old Emily Williams. But her investigation is derailed when her best friend and roommate, Gwen Tavich, turns up dead floating in a nearby lake. Devastated by the news of Gwen’s death, Kendall teams up with Denver detective Adam Taylor to find the killer. With every new clue, Kendall questions how well she really knew her friend. And when Gwen’s dark secrets begin spilling out one by one, she begins to understand the devastating magnitude of her murder.

by David Rosenfelt - Fiction, Mystery

The Paterson Police Department has created a cold case division, and they want to hire the private investigators known as the K Team to look into the crimes. After all, Corey Douglas and his K-9 partner, German shepherd Simon Garfunkel, recently retired from the force. Plus, another K Team member, Laurie Collins, used to be a cop as well. Their first cold case hits home for the K Team. A decade ago, at Laurie's 10th high school reunion, two of their friends simply…vanished. With no leads, the case went cold. As the team starts to delve deeper into the events leading up to that night, the pieces start to come together. But someone wants to stop them from uncovering the truth behind the disappearance, by any means necessary.

by Maggie Smith - Fiction, Women's Fiction

After losing both her job as a reporter and her boyfriend in the same day, Megan Barnes retreats to Chicago and moves in with Helen, her overprotective mother. Before long, the two are clashing over everything from pro-choice to #MeToo, not to mention Helen's run for U.S. Congress, which puts Megan's career on hold until after the election. Desperate to reboot her life, Megan gets her chance when an altercation at a campus rally brings her face-to-face with Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Jocelyn Jones, who offers her a job on her PR team. Before long, Megan is pulled into the heady world of fame and glamour that her charismatic new mentor represents. Until an anonymous tweet brings it all crashing down. To salvage Jocelyn's reputation, Megan must locate the online troll and expose the lies.

by Claire Cook - Fiction, Women's Fiction

If you live in Marshbury, Massachusetts, that picture postcard perfect seaside town an hour south of Boston and the epicenter of the Irish Riviera, it’s pretty much mandatory to be a little bit Irish for the whole month of March. Preschool teacher Sarah probably should have warned John about that once they bought the Hurlihy family house. And she definitely should have told him that half the town would be watching the St. Patrick’s Day parade from their front yard. In her defense, Sarah has a lot on her plate. Hormones are flying every which way as she and John ramp up their fertility journey, their five rescue cats get spayed and neutered, and assistant teacher-slash-housemate Polly gets ready to give birth with Sarah’s bossy big sister as her labor coach.

by Kieran Scott - Domestic Thriller, Fiction, Suspense, Thriller

Emma Walsh has finally worked up the courage to confront her husband, James, about his drinking. But he never shows up to meet her as planned. His body lies crumpled amidst the wreckage of his flashy car, which has been smashed to its final resting place halfway through the back wall of their suburban house’s garage. In the aftermath of the fatal crash, Emma and her teenage children begin to embrace life without James’ looming, volcanic presence. It turns out that her husband’s legacy as an upstanding business owner and family man shines only because so many people, for so long, were so willing to keep his secrets --- secrets that twist into new and unexpected shapes as the mysterious details of his last day of life begin to come to light.

by Jane Cockram - Fiction, Women's Fiction

Growing up, the Anderson sisters could not have been more different. Susie had an adventurous life, while Camilla --- Mills --- followed a safer path. When Susie suddenly dies, Mills falls apart. Until she receives a bundle of mysterious letters from her estranged sister to be read in the case of her death. Each letter instructs her to visit a place special to Susie, both to spread her ashes but also to uncover some truths Susie has long kept hidden from her family. Their mother Margaret has secrets of her own. When living in Swinging Sixties London, she too made a decision about her life that not only haunts her, but will reverberate through the generations. One family, three very different women. What choices and secrets connect them?

by Kelley Armstrong - Fiction, Mystery

It’s not always easy to live in the hidden town of Rockton, something Detective Casey Duncan knows firsthand. Tucked away in the Yukon wilderness, the community survives and thrives because the residents' many secrets stay just that --- secret. But what happens when these secrets start to come out? Overnight, no one is safe. Casey and her boyfriend, Sheriff Eric Dalton, need to find the culprit while protecting those who have been thrust into the spotlight. For a place built on privacy and new beginnings, Rockton isn’t handling these revelations very well. People are turning on one another, and when one of the loudest complainers turns up barely alive, it's clear that their trickster is actually a murderer.