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End-of-the-Year Contest 2024

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J. Courtney Sullivan, author of The Cliffs

On a secluded bluff overlooking the ocean sits a Victorian house that contains a century’s worth of secrets. By the time Jane Flanagan discovers the house as a teenager, it has long been abandoned. There are still clothes in the closets, marbles rolling across the floors and dishes in the cupboards, even though no one has set foot there in decades. The house becomes a hideaway for Jane, a place to escape her volatile mother. Twenty years later, Jane returns home to Maine following a terrible mistake that threatens both her career as an archivist and her marriage. Jane is horrified to find the Victorian is now barely recognizable. The new owner, Genevieve, has gutted it and is convinced that it’s haunted. She hires Jane to research the history of the place and the women who lived there. The story Jane uncovers is even older than Maine itself.

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The Cliffs by J. Courtney Sullivan

July 2024

I enjoy J. Courtney Sullivan's writing, so I was looking forward to reading THE CLIFFS. Here, she returns to Maine in a book that is full of character, history and stories woven together.

First, there is an abandoned house, one that Jane Flanagan, a teen with a less-than-happy home life, explores in her free time. Her imagination is in gear about who may have lived there and what their story was. Things seem hurriedly abandoned as if a family fled. There are clothes in closets and dishes in cabinets. But life moves on. And so does Jane.

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Week of June 16, 2025

Paperback releases for the week of June 16th include WHAT HAVE YOU DONE?, an unputdownable thriller from the “queen of the one-sit read,” Shari Lapena, that unravels the secrets of the seemingly peaceful town of Fairhill, Vermont; BETWEEN THE WORLD AND ME, Ta-Nehisi Coates' profound work that pivots from the biggest questions about America's racial history and ideals to the most intimate concerns of a father for his son; NOW OR NEVER, the 31st Stephanie Plum mystery from Janet Evanovich, who has written a staggering 45 New York Times bestsellers over the last three decades; J. Courtney Sullivan's THE CLIFFS, an enthralling novel of family, secrets, ghosts and homecoming set on the seaside cliffs of Maine; and BEN & ME, an unconventional biography in which Eric Weiner follows in the footsteps of Benjamin Franklin, mining his life for inspiration and practical lessons for living a purposeful and virtuous life.

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