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Anne Tyler, author of French Braid

The Garretts take their first and last family vacation in the summer of 1959. They hardly ever leave home, but in some ways they have never been farther apart. Mercy has trouble resisting the siren call of her aspirations to be a painter, which means less time keeping house for her husband, Robin. Their teenage daughters, steady Alice and boy-crazy Lily, could not have less in common. Their youngest, David, is already intent on escaping his family's orbit, for reasons none of them understand. Yet, as these lives advance across decades, the Garretts' influences on one another ripple ineffably but unmistakably through each generation.

Janet Evanovich, author of The Recovery Agent

As a recovery agent, Gabriela Rose is hired by individuals and companies seeking lost treasures, stolen heirlooms or missing assets of any kind. But her latest job isn’t for some bamboozled billionaire. It’s for her own family, whose home is going to be wiped off the map if they can’t come up with a lot of money fast. Inspired by an old family legend, Gabriela sets off for the jungles of Peru in pursuit of the Ring of Solomon and the lost treasure of Cortez. But this particular job comes with a huge problem attached to it --- Gabriela’s ex-husband, Rafer. It’s Rafer who has the map that possibly points the way to the treasure, and he’s not about to let Gabriela find it without him. It’s going to take a team to defeat the vicious drug lord who also has been searching for the fabled ring.

Editorial Content for A Safe House: A Stone Barrington Novel

Reviewer (text)

Barbara Lipkien Gershenbaum

A SAFE HOUSE, the 61st installment in Stuart Woods’ iconic series, opens with Stone Barrington having dinner with his closest friend, Dino Bacchetti, New York’s police commissioner. They are interrupted by Lance Cabot, the Director of Operations at the CIA, and Henry Wilcox, his recently appointed deputy director, who inform Stone of a secret assignment. Read More

Teaser

Stone Barrington is looking forward to some quiet time in New York City, until he is asked to transport precious, top-secret cargo across the Atlantic. Taking on the challenge, Stone flies off unaware of what --- or who --- he is bringing with him. But his plans to lie low are quickly spoiled when a dangerous dispatcher tracks down Stone and his tantalizing mystery guest, intent on payback --- and silencing anyone who poses a threat. From the English countryside to the balmy beaches of Key West, Stone is on an international mission to hide and protect those closest to him.

Promo

Stone Barrington is looking forward to some quiet time in New York City, until he is asked to transport precious, top-secret cargo across the Atlantic. Taking on the challenge, Stone flies off unaware of what --- or who --- he is bringing with him. But his plans to lie low are quickly spoiled when a dangerous dispatcher tracks down Stone and his tantalizing mystery guest, intent on payback --- and silencing anyone who poses a threat. From the English countryside to the balmy beaches of Key West, Stone is on an international mission to hide and protect those closest to him.

About the Book

In this adrenaline-charged thriller from #1 New York Times bestselling author Stuart Woods, Stone Barrington takes on a vengeful rival.

Stone Barrington is looking forward to some quiet time in New York City, until he is asked to transport precious, top-secret cargo across the Atlantic. Taking on the challenge, Stone flies off unaware of what --- or who --- he is bringing with him.

But his plans to lie low are quickly spoiled when a dangerous dispatcher tracks down Stone and his tantalizing mystery guest, intent on payback --- and silencing anyone who poses a threat. From the English countryside to the balmy beaches of Key West, Stone is on an international mission to hide and protect those closest to him.

Audiobook available, read by Tony Roberts

Editorial Content for Give Unto Others: A Commissario Guido Brunetti Mystery

Contributors

Reviewer (text)

Ray Palen

Donna Leon’s Commissario Guido Brunetti novels are an absolute treasure and perhaps my favorite mystery series. Her characters are extremely relatable, and each entry seems to deal with a different ethical or moral issue. In GIVE UNTO OTHERS, we have a number of them, varying from charity to loyalty to trust. In the end, all of these feelings will be tested, some in a very personal way for Brunetti. Read More

Teaser

Commissario Guido Brunetti is approached for a favor by Elisabetta Foscarini. Her son-in-law, Enrico Fenzo, has alarmed his wife (her daughter) by confessing that their family might be in danger because of something he’s involved with. Since Fenzo is an accountant, Brunetti logically suspects the cause of danger is related to the finances of a client. Yet his clients seem benign. However, when his friend’s daughter’s place of work is vandalized, Brunetti asks his own favors --- that his colleagues Claudia Griffoni, Lorenzo Vianello and Signorina Elettra Zorzi assist his private investigation, which soon enough turns official as they uncover the dark and Janus-faced nature of a venerable Italian institution.

Promo

Commissario Guido Brunetti is approached for a favor by Elisabetta Foscarini. Her son-in-law, Enrico Fenzo, has alarmed his wife (her daughter) by confessing that their family might be in danger because of something he’s involved with. Since Fenzo is an accountant, Brunetti logically suspects the cause of danger is related to the finances of a client. Yet his clients seem benign. However, when his friend’s daughter’s place of work is vandalized, Brunetti asks his own favors --- that his colleagues Claudia Griffoni, Lorenzo Vianello and Signorina Elettra Zorzi assist his private investigation, which soon enough turns official as they uncover the dark and Janus-faced nature of a venerable Italian institution.

About the Book

Brunetti is forced to confront the price of loyalty, to his past and in his work, as a seemingly innocent request leads him into troubling waters.

What role can or should loyalty play in the life of a police inspector? It’s a question Commissario Guido Brunetti must face and ultimately answer in GIVE UNTO OTHERS, Donna Leon’s splendid 31st installment of her acclaimed Venetian crime series.

Brunetti is approached for a favor by Elisabetta Foscarini, a woman he knows casually, but her mother was good to Brunetti’s mother, so he feels obliged to at least look into the matter privately, and not as official police business. Foscarini’s son-in-law, Enrico Fenzo, has alarmed his wife (her daughter) by confessing that their family might be in danger because of something he’s involved with. Since Fenzo is an accountant, Brunetti logically suspects the cause of danger is related to the finances of a client. Yet his clients seem benign: an optician, a restaurateur, a charity established by his father-in-law. However, when his friend’s daughter’s place of work is vandalized, Brunetti asks his own favors --- that his colleagues Claudia Griffoni, Lorenzo Vianello and Signorina Elettra Zorzi assist his private investigation, which soon enough turns official as they uncover the dark and Janus-faced nature of a venerable Italian institution.

Exploring the wobbly line between the criminal and non-criminal, revealing previously untold elements of Brunetti’s past, GIVE UNTO OTHERS shows that the price of reciprocity can be steep.

Audiobook available, read by David Colacci

Editorial Content for Never Simple: A Daughter’s True Story of a Mother’s Made-Up Life

Contributors

Reviewer (text)

Sarah Rachel Egelman

Growing up, all Liz Scheier had was her mother. In the New York City of the 1970s and ’80s, Judith Scheier was both traditional and eccentric. Known always as Mrs. Scheier, never just Judith, she raised Scheier in an observant Jewish household and had high expectations for her only child. But she was also temperamental, strange and mysterious. And, as Scheier recounts in her affecting memoir, NEVER SIMPLE, her mother was a pathological liar who most likely suffered from a set of mental illnesses that made their home and relationship frightening and unpredictable. Read More

Teaser

On an otherwise uneventful afternoon when Liz Scheier was 18, her mother sauntered into the room and dropped two bombshells. First, that she had been married for most of the previous two decades to a man Liz had never heard of. And second, that the man she had claimed was Liz’s dead father was entirely fictional. She’d made him up --- his name, the stories, everything. Now, decades later, armed with clues to her father’s identity --- and as her mother’s worsening dementia reveals truths she never intended to share --- Liz attempts to uncover the real answers to the mysteries underpinning her childhood. Trying to construct a “normal” life out of decidedly abnormal roots, she navigates her own circuitous path to adulthood: a bizarre breakup, an unexpected romance, and the birth of her son and daughter.

Promo

On an otherwise uneventful afternoon when Liz Scheier was 18, her mother sauntered into the room and dropped two bombshells. First, that she had been married for most of the previous two decades to a man Liz had never heard of. And second, that the man she had claimed was Liz’s dead father was entirely fictional. She’d made him up --- his name, the stories, everything. Now, decades later, armed with clues to her father’s identity --- and as her mother’s worsening dementia reveals truths she never intended to share --- Liz attempts to uncover the real answers to the mysteries underpinning her childhood. Trying to construct a “normal” life out of decidedly abnormal roots, she navigates her own circuitous path to adulthood: a bizarre breakup, an unexpected romance, and the birth of her son and daughter.

About the Book

This gripping and darkly funny memoir “is a testament to the undeniable, indestructible love between a mother and a daughter” (Isaac Mizrahi).

Liz Scheier’s mother was a news junkie, a hilarious storyteller, a fast-talking charmer you couldn’t look away from, a single mother whose devotion crossed the line into obsession, and --- when in the grips of the mental illness that plagued her --- a masterful liar. On an otherwise uneventful afternoon when Scheier was 18, her mother sauntered into the room and dropped two bombshells. First, that she had been married for most of the previous two decades to a man Liz had never heard of. And second, that the man she had claimed was Liz’s dead father was entirely fictional. She’d made him up --- his name, the stories, everything.

Those big lies were the start, but not the end; it had taken dozens of smaller lies to support them, and by the time she was done she had built a fairy-tale, half-true life for the two of them. Judith Scheier’s charm was more than matched by her eccentricity, and Liz had always known there was something wrong in their home. After all, other mothers didn’t raise a child single-handedly with no visible source of income, or hide their children behind fake Social Security numbers, or host giant parties in a one-bedroom Manhattan apartment only to throw raging tantrums when the door closed behind the guests.

Now, decades later, armed with clues to her father’s identity --- and as her mother’s worsening dementia reveals truths she never intended to share --- Liz attempts to uncover the real answers to the mysteries underpinning her childhood. Trying to construct a “normal” life out of decidedly abnormal roots, she navigates her own circuitous path to adulthood: a bizarre breakup, an unexpected romance, and the birth of her son and daughter. Along the way, Liz wrestles with questions of what we owe our parents even when they fail us, and of how to share her mother’s hilarity, limitless love, and creativity with children --- without passing down the trauma of her mental illness.

NEVER SIMPLE is the story of enduring the legacy of a hard-to-love parent with compassion, humor and, ultimately, self-preservation.

Audiobook available, read by Amy Landon

Editorial Content for Secret Identity

Contributors

Reviewer (text)

Ray Palen

When Carmen Valdez was a young girl growing up in Miami, one of her most cherished memories was visiting the local pharmacy with her Papi and making a beeline for the magazine aisle. There she would find comic books and become overwhelmed by the latest issues of Flash, Captain America, Batman and others. This is where she wanted to escape. Even at this early age, she recognized that she needed to become someone else to survive. Read More

Teaser

Carmen Valdez, an assistant at Triumph Comics, is tantalizingly close to fulfilling her dream of writing a superhero book. That dream is nearly a reality when one of the Triumph writers enlists her help to create a new character, which they call “The Lethal Lynx,” Triumph's first female hero. But her colleague is acting strangely and asking to keep her involvement a secret. And then he’s found dead, with all of their scripts turned into the publisher without her name. Carmen is desperate to figure out what happened to him. But that’s complicated by a surprise visitor, a tenacious cop who is piecing everything together too quickly for Carmen, and the tangled web of secrets and resentments among the passionate eccentrics who write comics for a living.

Promo

Carmen Valdez, an assistant at Triumph Comics, is tantalizingly close to fulfilling her dream of writing a superhero book. That dream is nearly a reality when one of the Triumph writers enlists her help to create a new character, which they call “The Lethal Lynx,” Triumph's first female hero. But her colleague is acting strangely and asking to keep her involvement a secret. And then he’s found dead, with all of their scripts turned into the publisher without her name. Carmen is desperate to figure out what happened to him. But that’s complicated by a surprise visitor, a tenacious cop who is piecing everything together too quickly for Carmen, and the tangled web of secrets and resentments among the passionate eccentrics who write comics for a living.

About the Book

Anthony Award-winning writer Alex Segura delivers a "masterful 1970s literary mystery" (NPR) set in the world of comics that is "as engaging as Michael Chabon’s THE AMAZING ADVENTURES OF KAVALIER & CLAY” (Sun Sentinel).

It’s 1975, and the comic book industry is struggling, but Carmen Valdez doesn’t care. She’s an assistant at Triumph Comics, which doesn’t have the creative zeal of Marvel nor the buttoned-up efficiency of DC, but it doesn’t matter. Carmen is tantalizingly close to fulfilling her dream of writing a superhero book.

That dream is nearly a reality when one of the Triumph writers enlists her help to create a new character, which they call “The Lethal Lynx,” Triumph's first female hero. But her colleague is acting strangely and asking to keep her involvement a secret. And then he’s found dead, with all of their scripts turned into the publisher without her name. Carmen is desperate to piece together what happened to him, to hang on to her piece of the Lynx, which turns out to be a runaway hit. But that’s complicated by a surprise visitor from her home in Miami, a tenacious cop who is piecing everything together too quickly for Carmen, and the tangled web of secrets and resentments among the passionate eccentrics who write comics for a living.

Alex Segura uses his expertise as a comics creator as well as his unabashed love of noir fiction to create a truly one-of-a-kind novel --- hard-edged and bright-eyed, gritty and dangerous, and utterly absorbing.

Audiobook available, read by Aida Reluzco

Editorial Content for Kingdoms of Death: The Sun Eater, Book Four

Contributors

Reviewer (text)

Stephen Hubbard

Christopher Ruocchio has done it. It wasn’t enough that he was writing the premier science fiction series currently going, with three prior volumes of exceptional quality. He had to go and absolutely blow up his own trajectory. KINGDOMS OF DEATH, book four in his Sun Eater saga, is miles ahead of the releases that came before. And that’s saying something as those other works were incredible achievements of quality. This? It is a giant amongst lesser entries. Read More

Teaser

Hadrian Marlowe is trapped. For nearly a century, he has been a guest of the Emperor, forced into the role of advisor, a prisoner of his own legend. But the war is changing. Mankind is losing. The Cielcin are spilling into human space from the fringes, picking their targets with cunning precision. The Great Prince Syriani Dorayaica is uniting their clans, forging them into an army and threat the likes of which mankind has never seen. And the Empire stands alone. Now the Emperor has no choice but to give Hadrian Marlowe, once his favorite knight, one more impossible task: journey across the galaxy to the Lothrian Commonwealth and convince them to join the war.

Promo

Hadrian Marlowe is trapped. For nearly a century, he has been a guest of the Emperor, forced into the role of advisor, a prisoner of his own legend. But the war is changing. Mankind is losing. The Cielcin are spilling into human space from the fringes, picking their targets with cunning precision. The Great Prince Syriani Dorayaica is uniting their clans, forging them into an army and threat the likes of which mankind has never seen. And the Empire stands alone. Now the Emperor has no choice but to give Hadrian Marlowe, once his favorite knight, one more impossible task: journey across the galaxy to the Lothrian Commonwealth and convince them to join the war.

About the Book

The fourth novel of the galaxy-spanning Sun Eater series merges the best of space opera and epic fantasy, as Hadrian Marlowe continues down a path that can only end in fire.

Hadrian Marlowe is trapped.

For nearly a century, he has been a guest of the Emperor, forced into the role of advisor, a prisoner of his own legend. But the war is changing. Mankind is losing.

The Cielcin are spilling into human space from the fringes, picking their targets with cunning precision. The Great Prince Syriani Dorayaica is uniting their clans, forging them into an army and threat the likes of which mankind has never seen.

And the Empire stands alone.

Now the Emperor has no choice but to give Hadrian Marlowe --- once his favorite knight --- one more impossible task: journey across the galaxy to the Lothrian Commonwealth and convince them to join the war. But not all is as it seems, and Hadrian’s journey will take him far beyond the Empire, beyond the Commonwealth, impossibly deep behind enemy lines.

Audiobook available, read by Samuel Roukin

Editorial Content for A Harmless Lie

Contributors

Reviewer (text)

Norah Piehl

I’m usually the type who needs to start any kind of series from the beginning. Heck, I’m the kind of person who dislikes walking into a movie five minutes after it starts. So, although I wouldn’t normally pick up a mystery series for the first time and dive right into book #10, I’ve heard enough glowing things about Sara Blaedel’s Detective Louise Rick series that I decided to give this latest installment a try. Read More

Teaser

Detective Louise Rick is on a beach in Thailand when the panicked call from her father comes through. Louise′s beloved brother, Mikkel, has attempted suicide. His wife, Trine, left him days earlier, walking out the door one day with no warning and leaving Mikkel devastated. Louise rushes home to Osted, the small, insular Danish town where she grew up and where Mikkel still lives. But the more Louise learns about Trine --- a devoted wife and the mother of two young children --- and her state of mind in the days before she left Mikkel, the more Louise begins to wonder if Trine really meant to leave him. Or if something much darker may have taken place.

Promo

Detective Louise Rick is on a beach in Thailand when the panicked call from her father comes through. Louise′s beloved brother, Mikkel, has attempted suicide. His wife, Trine, left him days earlier, walking out the door one day with no warning and leaving Mikkel devastated. Louise rushes home to Osted, the small, insular Danish town where she grew up and where Mikkel still lives. But the more Louise learns about Trine --- a devoted wife and the mother of two young children --- and her state of mind in the days before she left Mikkel, the more Louise begins to wonder if Trine really meant to leave him. Or if something much darker may have taken place.

About the Book

A woman is haunted by a heartwrenching decision she made as a teenager in this darkly atmospheric, deeply emotional thriller from #1 internationally bestselling global superstar Sara Blaedel. 

Detective Louise Rick is on a beach in Thailand when the panicked call from her father comes through. Louise′s beloved brother, Mikkel, has attempted suicide. His wife, Trine, left him days earlier, walking out the door one day with no warning and leaving Mikkel devastated.

Louise rushes home to Osted, the small, insular Danish town where she grew up and where Mikkel still lives. But the more Louise learns about Trine --- a devoted wife and the mother of two young children --- and her state of mind in the days before she left Mikkel, the more Louise begins to wonder whether Trine really meant to leave him. Or if something much darker may have taken place.

As the local police begin to suspect that Mikkel may have had a hand in Trine’s disappearance, Louise struggles to clear his name but is forced to confront some hard truths: Small towns always hide secrets. The past always comes back to haunt you. And lies are never harmless.

Audiobook available, read by Christine Lakin

Editorial Content for Fencing with the King

Contributors

Reviewer (text)

Lorraine W. Shanley

Diana Abu-Jaber’s elegiac novel is set in the mid-1990s during the negotiations that would result in the historic Israeli-Palestinian Peace Accords.

Gabriel Hamdan has been summoned back to Jordan after a 30-year absence. He and his wife live in the United States with their daughter, Amani, but when he is asked to participate in a fencing match at King Hussein’s 60th birthday festivities, he quickly agrees. The two men, who had fenced in school together, are to recreate a match from that bygone era --- though it is understood that “the King always wins.” Read More

Teaser

The King of Jordan is turning 60! How better to celebrate the occasion than with his favorite pastime --- fencing --- and with his favorite sparring partner, Gabriel Hamdan. Amani, a divorced poet, jumps at the chance to accompany her father to his homeland for the King’s birthday. Her father’s past is a mystery to her --- even more so since she found a poem on blue airmail paper slipped into one of his old Arabic books, written by his mother, a Palestinian refugee who arrived in Jordan during World War I. Her words hint at a long-kept family secret, carefully guarded by Uncle Hafez, an advisor to the King, who has quite personal reasons for inviting his brother to the birthday party. The Hamdan brothers must face a reckoning, with themselves and with each other --- one that almost costs Amani her life.

Promo

The King of Jordan is turning 60! How better to celebrate the occasion than with his favorite pastime --- fencing --- and with his favorite sparring partner, Gabriel Hamdan. Amani, a divorced poet, jumps at the chance to accompany her father to his homeland for the King’s birthday. Her father’s past is a mystery to her --- even more so since she found a poem on blue airmail paper slipped into one of his old Arabic books, written by his mother, a Palestinian refugee who arrived in Jordan during World War I. Her words hint at a long-kept family secret, carefully guarded by Uncle Hafez, an advisor to the King, who has quite personal reasons for inviting his brother to the birthday party. The Hamdan brothers must face a reckoning, with themselves and with each other --- one that almost costs Amani her life.

About the Book

A mesmerizing breakthrough novel of family myths and inheritances by the award-winning author of CRESCENT.

The King of Jordan is turning 60! How better to celebrate the occasion than with his favorite pastime --- fencing --- and with his favorite sparring partner, Gabriel Hamdan, who must be enticed back from America, where he lives with his wife and his daughter, Amani.

Amani, a divorced poet, jumps at the chance to accompany her father to his homeland for the King’s birthday. Her father’s past is a mystery to her --- even more so since she found a poem on blue airmail paper slipped into one of his old Arabic books, written by his mother, a Palestinian refugee who arrived in Jordan during World War I. Her words hint at a long-kept family secret, carefully guarded by Uncle Hafez, an advisor to the King, who has quite personal reasons for inviting his brother to the birthday party. In a sibling rivalry that carries ancient echoes, the Hamdan brothers must face a reckoning, with themselves and with each other --- one that almost costs Amani her life.

With sharp insight into modern politics and family dynamics, taboos around mental illness, and our inescapable relationship to the past, FENCING WITH THE KING asks how we contend with inheritance: familial and cultural, hidden and openly contested. Shot through with warmth and vitality, intelligence and spirit, it is absorbing and satisfying on every level, a wise and rare literary treat.

Audiobook available, read by Rasha Zamamiri

Editorial Content for The Lying Club

Contributors

Reviewer (text)

Rebecca Munro

Set in an elite private school in the Colorado mountains, Annie Ward’s THE LYING CLUB invites readers into the world of competitive moms, teen athletes, and the teachers, coaches and administrative assistants who know everything that happens between them. Read More

Teaser

At an elite private school nestled in the Colorado mountains, Natalie, an office assistant, dreams of having a life like the school moms she deals with every day. Women like Brooke --- a gorgeous heiress, ferociously loving mother and serial cheater --- and Asha, an overprotective mom who suspects her husband of having an affair. Their fates are bound by the handsome assistant athletic director Nicholas, whom Natalie loves, Brooke wants and Asha needs. But when two bodies are carried out of the school one morning, it seems the tension between mothers and daughters, rival lovers and the haves and have-nots has shattered the surface of this isolated, affluent town --- where people stop at nothing to get what they want.

Promo

At an elite private school nestled in the Colorado mountains, Natalie, an office assistant, dreams of having a life like the school moms she deals with every day. Women like Brooke --- a gorgeous heiress, ferociously loving mother and serial cheater --- and Asha, an overprotective mom who suspects her husband of having an affair. Their fates are bound by the handsome assistant athletic director Nicholas, whom Natalie loves, Brooke wants and Asha needs. But when two bodies are carried out of the school one morning, it seems the tension between mothers and daughters, rival lovers and the haves and have-nots has shattered the surface of this isolated, affluent town --- where people stop at nothing to get what they want.

About the Book

A tangled web of lies draws together three women in this explosive thriller of revenge, murder and shocking secrets.

At an elite private school nestled in the Colorado mountains, Natalie, an office assistant, dreams of having a life like the school moms she deals with every day. Women like Brooke --- a gorgeous heiress, ferociously loving mother and serial cheater --- and Asha, an overprotective mom who suspects her husband of having an affair. Their fates are bound by the handsome assistant athletic director Nicholas, whom Natalie loves, Brooke wants and Asha needs.

But when two bodies are carried out of the school one morning, it seems the tension between mothers and daughters, rival lovers and the haves and have-nots has shattered the surface of this isolated, affluent town --- where people stop at nothing to get what they want.

Audiobook available, read by Teri Schnaubelt