The Fury by Alex Michaelides

February 2024

When I started reading THE FURY by Alex Michaelides, it was a blustery cold weekend. I was more than ready for a vacation on a privately owned Greek island named Aura with a movie star and her friends. The island had been given to the actress as a wedding present from her now-deceased husband. I loved that sentiment. So I settled in to be told a story from the perspective of Elliot Chase, our narrator.

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February 2024

February's Books on Screen roundup includes the series premieres of "Tracker" on CBS, "The Walking Dead: The Ones Who Live" on AMC, and "One Day" on Netflix; the season two premiere of ABC's "Will Trent"; the conclusion of "Expats" on Prime Video; the films Argylle and Lisa Frankenstein in theaters; four Hallmark movies inspired by the life and work of Jane Austen (Paging Mr. Darcy, Love & Jane, An American in Austen and Sense and Sensibility); and the DVD releases of The Hunger Games: The Ballad of Songbirds & Snakes, Wonka and Priscilla.

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One Wrong Word by Hank Phillippi Ryan

One wrong word can ruin your life. And no one knows that better than savvy crisis management expert Arden Ward. Problem is, she's now forced to handle a shocking crisis of her own. Unfairly accused of having an affair with a powerful client, Arden’s life and dreams are about to crash and burn. Then Arden is given an ultimatum. She has just two weeks to save her career and her reputation.

Is Cordelia Bannister the answer to her prayers?

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James Grippando, author of Goodbye Girl: A Jack Swyteck Novel

Jack Swyteck’s latest client, Imani Nichols, is a Grammy-winning pop star whose career has skyrocketed. Despite her success, she’s the most underpaid superstar on the planet because of an onerous record contract she signed as a teenager with her now ex-husband, Shaky Nichols. Preferring to see thieves profit from her music than let her ex-husband pocket one more dime, Imani takes to social media and tells her millions of fans to “go pirate” and download her music illegally. Her hardball tactic leads to scorched-earth litigation, and now she needs Jack’s help. The case takes a deadly turn when salacious allegations of infidelity send Imani and Shaky down a path of mutual assured destruction, each implicating the other in the unsolved murder of Imani’s extramarital lover 12 years ago.

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Stephen Hunter, author of Front Sight: Three Swagger Novellas

This collection of three interconnected novellas follows each generation of the iconic Swagger family. In “City of Meat,” Charles Swagger is on the hunt for notorious bank robber Baby Face Nelson when he traces a tip to the Chicago stock yards. While there, he’s brutally assaulted and discovers that the madman who attacked him is involved in a nearby narcotics ring. Earl Swagger investigates a violent bank robbery in “Johnny Tuesday” that left two dead and a fortune missing in small-town Maryland. At every turn, however, he’s met with silence and hostility from the townsfolk. Finally, in “Five Dolls for the Gut Hook,” a 32-year-old Bob Lee Swagger is back from Vietnam nearly broken over good men lost for nothing. But one afternoon he’s wakened from his nightmares by two men with a problem.

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Stacy Willingham, author of Only If You're Lucky

Lucy Sharpe is larger than life. Especially for shy, unassuming Margot, who meets Lucy at the end of their freshman year at a liberal arts college in South Carolina. But when Lucy asks her to room together, something in Margot can't say no. And so she finds herself living in an off-campus house with three other girls: Lucy, the ringleader; Sloane, the sarcastic one; and Nicole, the nice one. It's a year that finds Margot finally coming out of the shell she's been in since the end of high school, when her best friend Eliza died three weeks after graduation. Margot and Lucy have become the closest of friends, but by the middle of their sophomore year, one of the fraternity boys from the house next door has been brutally murdered...and Lucy Sharpe is missing without a trace.

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