Family Mystery

Pirriwee Public is a beautiful little beachside primary school where children are taught that ‘sharing is caring.’ So how has the annual School Trivia Night ended in full-blown riot? Sirens are wailing. People are screaming. The principal is mortified. And one parent is dead. Was it a murder, a tragic accident or just good parents gone bad? As the parents at Pirriwee Public are about to discover, sometimes it’s the little lies that turn out to be the most lethal.

The site of the old campus bungalow where two girls were brutally slain is now a flower patch covered with chrysanthemums. It's been 50 years since the Immaculate Conception Murders. Three more students and a teacher were killed in a sickening spree that many have forgotten. But there is one person who knows every twisted detail... Hannah O'Rourke and her volatile half-sister, Eden, have little in common except a parent. Yet they've ended up at the same small college outside Chicago, sharing a bungalow with another girl.

The Hartes and the Golds have been neighbors for 18 years and are very close. So when Chris and Emily's friendship reaches the next level, nobody is surprised. Then one night, the hospital calls. Seventeen-year-old Emily is dead - shot in the head by a gun Chris took from his father's cabinet. One bullet remains in the chamber, and Chris tells of his suicide pact with Emily. But the police have questions, and soon Chris is on trial for murder.

A windswept private island off the coast of Massachusetts. A hungry ocean, churning with secrets and sorrow. A fiery, addicted heiress. An irresistible, unpredictable boy. A summer of unforgivable betrayal and terrible mistakes. Welcome back to the Sinclair family. They were always liars.

Molly Wynters has moved back to her small hometown to care for her father, recently felled by a stroke and no longer able to communicate. She is ready to make a fresh start with her son after her divorce, but is haunted by both old events and new realities in her childhood home. What Molly recalls of her young life with her father is full of love and care, even though a violent trauma defined her childhood: when she was a young girl, she witnessed her mother’s murder, and her testimony–“There was a man downstairs”–sent a teenager to prison.

Amelie has always been a survivor, from losing her parents as a child in Paris to making it on her own in London. As she builds a life for herself, she is swept up into a glamorous lifestyle where she married the handsome billionaire Ned Hawthorne. But then, Amelie wakes up in a pitch-black room, not knowing where she is. Why has she been taken? Who are her mysterious captors? And why does she soon feel safer here, imprisoned, than she had begun to feel with her husband Ned?

Disguised as a peasant, Cecilia has been hiding for years from the evil people who killed her parents. Now the time has come to reclaim her title. There's just one problem. Princess Desmia - supposedly Cecilia's decoy - believes a different version of the story.

When a deathbed confession uncovers secrets about his birth, twenty-year-old Roan—who has always believed himself an orphan, with no last name—sets off on a quest to discover the truth of his origins. His journey takes him across the snow-covered landscape of Newfoundland from the remote Northern Peninsula to St. John's and then onto the Newfoundland, one of the rickety and poorly equipped ships heading out to the sealing grounds for the spring hunt.

The epic tale of Harry Clifton's life begins in 1920, with the words "I was told that my father was killed in the war." A dock worker in Bristol, Harry never knew his father, but he learns about life on the docks from his uncle, who expects Harry to join him at the shipyard once he's left school. But then an unexpected gift wins him a scholarship to an exclusive boys' school, and his life will never be the same again. As he enters into adulthood, Harry finally learns how his father really died, but the awful truth only leads him to question, was he even his father?

The Aldens visit their mysterious Aunt Jane at her run-down ranch and make a surprising discovery!

One empire. Three men. The throne is at stake, and the Valentine brothers are presented with an opportunity of a lifetime. Their father, Domino, has decided to retire, leaving them with the chance to take over. One issue looms over their heads: which man is qualified to run the empire? Once a certain set of rules has been put in place, the Valentine brothers find themselves in a competition that produces a series of dangerous events. Deceit corrupts the family in a manner that they didn't see coming, and secrets are unveiled, leaving the brothers in a war against each other.

On a humid summer day in Alabama, a mayor’s wife turns up brutally murdered under a railroad bridge. Standing next to her body is fourteen-year-old Mason Hill, the autistic son of former Miss USA Genevieve Hill. The locals are quick to level their verdict on young Mason: he did it. The town detective calls in local autism expert Casey Walker to consult on the case. At first, Casey tries to keep an open mind. But the more time she spends with Genevieve, the more her unease grows, and she suspects that Genevieve is doing more than just protecting her son.

Kate Atkinson's dazzling Life After Life explored the possibility of infinite chances, following Ursula Todd as she lived through the turbulent events of the last century again and again. Her new novel tells the story of Ursula Todd's beloved younger brother, Teddy - would-be poet, RAF bomber pilot, husband, and father - as he navigates the perils and progress of the 20th century. For all Teddy endures in battle, his greatest challenge is facing the difficulties of living in a future he never expected to have.

Camp Alpine Lake is the only place where Goldie Easton feels safe—the camp is the lifeline of the small town she lives in. Alpine Lake provides jobs, money and prestige to the region. Her parents work there so Goldie is one of the few townies who have reaped the rewards of living so close to the summer camp, with its five-figure tuition and rich kids who have been dumped there for eight weeks by their powerful parents.

Three years after leaving her family behind on the idyllic lighthouse island where she grew up, 17-year-old Elizabeth "Squid" McCrae returns, full of anger and accusations and eager to confront her father about a family tragedy. But as a ghostly voice from the past sparks her memories, Squid soon realizes that nothing is exactly as she thought it was, and no one, not even herself, is completely free from blame.

New Mark Twain! This previously unpublished Twain piece was written 125 years ago, composed in 1876 as a "blind novelette" that Twain planned to launch as a competition for other great writers of the day. The competition never took place, and the story was thought by many to have been lost. This rediscovered gem, with a new introduction and afterword by Roy Blount, Jr., and brilliantly read by Blount and Garrison Keillor, allows us, once again, to celebrate the literary genius of Mark Twain.

Only days before Britain declares war on Germany, Harry Clifton, hoping to escape the consequences of long-buried family secrets, and forced to accept that his desire to marry Emma Barrington will never be fulfilled, has joined the Merchant Navy. But his ship is sunk in the Atlantic by a German Uboat, drowning almost the entire crew. An American cruise liner, the SS Kansas Star, rescues a handful of sailors, among them Harry and the third officer, an American named Tom Bradshaw.

In the course of her everyday work, career-driven assistant district attorney Nina Frost prosecutes child molesters and works determinedly to ensure that a legal system with too many loopholes keeps these criminals behind bars. But when her own five-year-old son, Nathaniel, is traumatized by a sexual assault, Nina and her husband, Caleb, a quiet and methodical stone mason, are shattered, ripped apart by an enraging sense of helplessness in the face of a futile justice system that Nina knows all too well.

Sure to enchant fans of the Lemony Snicket series, this wonderful sequel to Peppermints in the Parlor is an exciting tale that follows the adventures of young orphan Emily Luccock. Finally free from a dark and dangerous boarding school, Emily learns that she is to be sent away again. Award-winning author Barbara Brooks Wallace has written many suspenseful books for children, including Sparrows in the Scullery.

Five years ago, Geeta lost her no-good husband. As in, she actually lost him—he walked out on her and she has no idea where he is. But in her remote village in India, rumor has it that Geeta killed him. And it’s a rumor that just won’t die.