Fiction
The world played chess : a novel
Robert Dugoni
FICTION Dugoni Robert
Fiction
"In 1979, Vincent Bianco has just graduated high school. His only desire: collect a little beer money and enjoy his final summer before college. So he lands a job as a laborer on a construction crew. Working alongside two Vietnam vets, one suffering from PTSD, Vincent gets the education of a lifetime. Now forty years later, with his own son leaving for college, the lessons of that summer--Vincent's last taste of innocence and first taste of real life--dramatically unfold in a novel about breaking away, shaping a life, and seeking one's own destiny"--
No One Goes Alone: A Novel
Erik Larson
OverDrive Audiobook
Suspense, Fiction, Historical Fiction
A group of researchers sets sail for the Isle of Dorn in the North Atlantic in 1905 to explore the cause of several mysterious disappearances, most notably a family of four who vanished without a trace after a week-long holiday on the island. Led by Professor James, a prominent member of the Society for Psychical Research, they begin to explore the island’s sole cottage and surrounding landscape in search of a logical explanation. The idyllic setting belies an undercurrent of danger and treachery, with raging storms and unnerving discoveries adding to the sense of menace. As increasingly unexplainable events unfold, the now-stranded investigators are unsure whether they can trust their own eyes, their instincts, one another—or even themselves. Erik Larson has written a terrifying tale of suspense, underpinned with actual people and events. Created specifically to entertain audio listeners, this eerie blend of the ghostly and the real will keep listeners captivated till the blood-chilling end.
Need a good story for a dark winter's night? Here is one. Erik Larson's latest, only available in audiobook is worth the listen. The premise is familiar, a group of individuals stay at an old manor in an isolated place. Strange events occur, suspicions arise, and everyone is afraid. However, this group of individuals expected came here for exactly this purpose. They are a group of 19th century scientists, experts, and scholars there to prove--or more likely disprove--that the house is haunted. But can they? I love Erik Larson's histories. All of his skills as a writer: ability to tell a story, have you deeply care about the individual's involved, and keep you rapt as the events unfold, translated easily to fiction. -Anne M
The silent patient
Michaelides, Alex, 1977- author.
FICTION Michaelides, Alex
Fiction
Alicia Berenson's life is seemingly perfect. A famous painter married to an in-demand fashion photographer, she lives in a grand house with big windows overlooking a park in one of London's most desirable areas. One evening her husband Gabriel returns home late from a fashion shoot, and Alicia shoots him five times in the face, and then never speaks another word. Alicia's refusal to talk or give any kind of explanation turns a domestic tragedy into something far grander, a mystery that captures the public imagination and casts Alicia into notoriety. The price of her art skyrockets, and she, the silent patient, is hidden away from the spotlight of the tabloids at the Grove, a secure forensic unit in North London. Theo Faber is a criminal psychotherapist who has waited a long time for the opportunity to work with Alicia. His search for the truth leads him down a terrifying path and threatens to consume him.
Added by Beth
Tampa
Nutting, Alissa.
FICTION Nutting Alissa
Fiction
In Alissa Nutting's novel Tampa, Celeste Price, a smoldering 26-year-old middle-school teacher in Florida, unrepentantly recounts her elaborate and sociopathically determined seduction of a 14-year-old student. In slaking her sexual thirst, Celeste is remorseless and deviously free of hesitation. She deceives everyone, is close to no one, and cares little for anything but her own pleasure. T
Added by Beth
Intensity
Koontz, Dean R. (Dean Ray), 1945-
FICTION Koontz, Dean R.
Fiction
Past midnight, Chyna Shepard, twenty-six, gazes out a moonlit window, unable to sleep on her first night in the Napa Valley home of her best friend's family. Instinct proves reliable. A murderous sociopath, Edgler Foreman Vess, has entered the house, intent on killing everyone inside. A self-proclaimed "homicidal adventurer," Vess lives only to satisfy all appetites as they arise, to immerse himself in sensation, to live without fear, remorse or limits, to live with "intensity." Chyna is trapped in his deadly orbit. Chyna is a survivor, toughened by a lifelong struggle for safety and self-respect. Now she will be tested as never before. At first her sole aim is to get out alive--until, by chance, she learns the identity of Vess's next intended victim, a faraway innocent only she can save. Driven by a newly discovered thirst for meaning beyond mere self-preservation, Chyna musters every inner resource she has to save an endangered girl...as moment by moment, the terrifying threat of Edgler Foreman Vess intensifies.
Added by Beth
Verity
Hoover, Colleen, author.
FICTION Hoover, Colleen
Fiction
Lowen Ashleigh is a struggling writer on the brink of financial ruin when she accepts the job offer of a lifetime. Jeremy Crawford, husband of bestselling author Verity Crawford, has hired Lowen to complete the remaining books in a successful series his injured wife is unable to finish. Lowen arrives at the Crawford home, to sort through years of Verity's notes and outlines, hoping to find enough material to get started. Lowen uncovers an unfinished autobiography Verity never intended anyone to read, with pages of bone-chilling admissions, including Verity's recollection of the night their family was forever altered. Lowen decides to keep the manuscript hidden from Jeremy, knowing its contents would devastate him. But as Lowen's feelings for Jeremy begin to intensify, she recognizes all the ways she could benefit, if he were to read his wife's words. After all, no matter how devoted Jeremy is to his injured wife, a truth this horrifying would make it impossible for him to continue to love her.
Added by Beth
The Hunting Wives
Cobb, May K., 1973- author.
FICTION Cobb May
Fiction
"The Hunting Wives share more than target practice, martinis, and bad behavior in this novel of obsession, seduction, and murder. Sophie O'Neill left behind an envy-inspiring career and the stressful, competitive life of big-city Chicago to settle down with her husband and young son in a small Texas town. It seems like the perfect life with a beautiful home in an idyllic rural community. But Sophie soon realizes that life is now too quiet, and she's feeling bored and restless. Then she meets Margot Banks, an alluring socialite who is part of an elite clique secretly known as the Hunting Wives. Sophie is completely drawn to Margot and swept into her mysterious world of late-night target practice and dangerous partying. As Sophie's curiosity gives way to full-blown obsession, she slips further away from the safety of her family and deeper into this nest of vipers. When the body of a teenage girl is discovered in the woods where the Hunting Wives meet, Sophie finds herself in the middle of a murder investigation and her life spirals out of control"--
Added by Beth
Lolita
Nabokov, Vladimir Vladimirovich, 1899-1977.
FICTION Nabokov, Vladimir Vladimirovich
Fiction
When it was published in 1955, Lolita immediately became a cause celebre because of the freedom and sophistication with which it handled the unusual erotic predilections of its protagonist. But Vladimir Nabokov's wise, ironic, elegant masterpiece owes its stature as one of the twentieth century's novels of record not to the controversy its material aroused but to its author's use of that material to tell a love story almost shocking in its beauty and tenderness. Awe and exhilaration--along with heartbreak and mordant wit--abound in this account of the aging Humbert Humbert's obsessive, devouring, and doomed passion for the nymphet Dolores Haze. Lolita is also the story of a hypercivilized European colliding with the cheerful barbarism of postwar America, but most of all, it is a meditation on love--love as outrage and hallucination, madness and transformation.
Added by Beth
Small things like these
Claire Keegan
FICTION/Keegan, Claire
Literary Fiction, Fiction
"It is 1985 in a small Irish town. During the weeks leading up to Christmas, Bill Furlong, a coal merchant and family man faces into his busiest season. Early one morning, while delivering an order to the local convent, Bill makes a discovery which forces him to confront both his past and the complicit silences of a town controlled by the church. Already a bestseller in France and certain to be read worldwide for generations to come, Small Things Like These is a deeply affecting story of hope, quiet heroism, and empathy from one of our most critically lauded and iconic writers"--
This is a December book. Bill Furlong, who has an ordinary and content existance, delivers an order of coal to a local convent that houses young and unwed mothers. That one ordinary, simple order sets him on a path of rethinking who he is, what his life means, and the importance of empathy and compassion for others. It is a small, but mighty book. -Anne M
The Lincoln highway
Amor Towles
FICTION Towles Amor
Historical Fiction, Literary Fiction, Fiction
"The bestselling author of A Gentleman in Moscow and Rules of Civility and master of absorbing, sophisticated fiction returns with a stylish and propulsive novel set in 1950s America In June, 1954, eighteen-year-old Emmett Watson is driven home to Nebraska by the warden of the juvenile work farm where he has just served fifteen months for involuntary manslaughter. His mother long gone, his father recently deceased, and the family farm foreclosed upon by the bank, Emmett's intention is to pick up his eight-year-old brother, Billy, and head to California where they can start their lives anew. But when the warden drives away, Emmett discovers that two friends from the work farm have hidden themselves in the trunk of the warden's car. Together, they have hatched an altogether different plan for Emmett's future, one that will take them all on a fateful journey in the opposite direction-to the City of New York. Spanning just ten days and told from multiple points of view, Towles's third novel will satisfy fans of his multi-layered literary styling while providing them an array of new and richly imagined settings, characters, and themes"--
I very much enjoyed Towles latest novel. He is a talented writer and I think this book is Towles at his best. If you enjoy adventure novels, different perspectives, and a narrative that builds upon itself, I highly recommend this book. The audiobook is very well done. Towles has essentially written an American Odyssey; the read would make a great companion for any travel. -Anne M
The World Played Chess is is a hauntingly beautiful story of growing from boy to man. Well written and a moving story line makes this a great read. -Angie