Literary Mystery

Set in a beautiful but economically devastated Pennsylvania steel town, American Rust is a novel of the lost American dream and the desperation-as well as the acts of friendship, loyalty, and love-that arise from its loss. From local bars to train yards to prison, it is the story of two young men, bound to the town by family, responsibility, inertia, and the beauty around them, who dream of a future beyond the factories and abandoned homes.

On its surface, life in Houston in the 1950s is as you'd expect: stoic fathers, restless teens, drive-in movies, and souped-up Cadillacs. But underneath lies a world shifting under high school junior Aaron Broussard's feet. There's a class war between the "haves" and the "have-nots" as well as a real war, Korea, happening on the other side of the world. It is against this backdrop that Aaron comes of age, trying to understand how first loves, friendship, violence, and power can alter what "traditional America" means for the people trying to find their way in a changing world.

When Katie appears in the small North Carolina town of Southport, her sudden arrival raises questions about her past. Beautiful yet self-effacing, Katie seems determined to avoid forming personal ties until a series of events draws her into two reluctant relationships: one with Alex, a widowed store owner with a kind heart and two young children; and another with her plainspoken single neighbor, Jo. Despite her reservations, Katie begins to let down her guard, putting down roots in the close-knit community..

It’s 1986, the heart of the Cold War, and Marie Mitchell is an intelligence officer with the FBI. She’s brilliant, but she’s also a young Black woman working in an old boys’ club. Her career has stalled out, she’s overlooked for every high-profile squad, and her days are filled with monotonous paperwork. So when she’s given the opportunity to join a shadowy task force aimed at undermining Thomas Sankara, the charismatic revolutionary president of Burkina Faso whose Communist ideology has made him a target for American intervention, she says yes.

When Tessa arrives at the little house by the lake with her two children, it is an escape. The rental house may be a bit small – but it’s theirs for the summer. A place to hide.... However, their isolation is disrupted by the family from the big house next door. Three children and their glamorous mother Rebecca – who seems determined to invite Tessa into their lives.

Deftly blending such genres as mystery, science fiction, and classic literature, Jasper Fforde’s gleefully irreverent New York Times best-selling Thursday Next novels defy categorization. In this sixth installment, the threat of all-out Genre war looms over BookWorld. But with the real Thursday Next retired in the real world, the Council of Genres has no other choice than to tap the fictional Thursday to save the day. Her mission as emissary is to prevent the brewing war—but her task is made more difficult by a hidden foe manipulating events.

Equal parts Dexter and Fifty Shades, this is the eagerly awaited follow-up to the daring erotic thriller The Girl in 6E by A.R. Torre.

Barcelone, 1979. Óscar, quinze ans, a l'habitude de s'échapper du pensionnat et d'errer dans la ville. Un jour, alors qu'il s'est introduit dans une demeure à l'allure abandonnée, il rencontre Marina qui va briser la solitude de ses escapades quotidiennes. Lorsque la jeune fille l'emmène à la découverte d’une tombe anonyme flanquée d'un papillon noir sur laquelle vient se recueillir chaque jour une femme couverte d'un voile sombre, les deux adolescents décident de mener l'enquête.

Meet Hickey, an American school teacher in his late 30s, an American school teacher who burns his bridges with the school board and goes to Africa as an aid worker. Working for an agency in Nairobi, one of his jobs is to drive food and medical supplies to Southern Sudan to an aid station run by Ruth, a middle-aged woman, who acts as nurse, doctor, hospice worker, feeder of starving children, and witness. Ruth is gruff but efficient, and Hickey, who is usually drawn to youth and beauty, is struck by her devotion. Returning to Nairobi, he can’t forget what he has seen.

On an autumn day in 1686, eighteen-year-old Nella Oortman knocks at the door of a grand house in the wealthiest quarter of Amsterdam. She has come from the country to begin a new life as the wife of the illustrious merchant trader Johannes Brandt, but instead she is met by his sharp-tongued sister, Marin. Only later does Johannes appear and present her with an extraordinary wedding gift: a cabinet-sized replica of their home. It is to be furnished by an elusive miniaturist, whose tiny creations mirror their real-life counterparts in unexpected ways . . .

You stay in bed until the afternoon, scrolling through your social media feeds and wondering why everyone else seems to be achieving so much. Sometimes you don't get out of bed at all. Then you hear about Life on Nyx, a programme that allows 100 lucky winners the chance to escape it all, move to another planet and establish a new way of life. One with meaning and purpose. One without Instagram and online dating. There's one caveat: if you go, you can never come back. But you aren't worried about that. After all, what on Earth could there possibly be to miss?

The year is 1896, the place, New York City. On a cold March night New York Times reporter John Schuyler Moore is summoned to the East River by his friend and former Harvard classmate Dr. Laszlo Kreizler, a psychologist, or "alienist." On the unfinished Williamsburg Bridge, they view the horribly mutilated body of an adolescent boy, a prostitute from one of Manhattan's infamous brothels.

Once a land of Pueblo dwellers, the town of San Geronimo Peak, New Mexico, is prime ski country. PI Howard Moon Deer and ex-cop Jack Wilder are headed there to meet their first client - a former US senator and the ski slope's owner. Instead, they find his body - and a murder case to solve.

Two years have passed since the events of the bestselling Christine Falls, and much has changed for Quirke, the irascible, formerly hard-drinking Dublin pathologist. His beloved Sarah is dead, the Judge lies in a convent hospital paralyzed by a devastating stroke, and Phoebe, Quirke's long-denied daughter, has grown increasingly withdrawn and isolated. With much to regret from his last inquisitive foray, Quirke ought to know better than to let his curiosity get the best of him.

From Victorian India to near-future New York, The Calcutta Chromosome takes listeners on a wondrous journey through time as a computer programmer trapped in a mind-numbing job hits upon a curious item that will forever change his life. When Antar discovers the battered I.D. card of a long-lost acquaintance, he is suddenly drawn into a spellbinding adventure across centuries and around the globe, into the strange life of L. Murugan....

On an Illinois farm in the 1920s, a man is murdered, and in the same moment the tenous friendship between two lonely boys comes to an end. In telling their interconnected stories, American Book Award winner William delivers a masterfully restrained and magically evocative meditation on the past

Living on his posh French estate with his elegant heiress wife, Tom Ripley, on the cusp of middle age, is no longer the striving comer of The Talented Mr. Ripley. Having accrued considerable wealth through a long career of crime—forgery, extortion, serial murder—Ripley still finds his appetite unquenched and longs to get back in the game.

Three clever murderers challenge Nero Wolfe in cases involving lovers who want to make sure neither is a killer, a stable full of suspects in the search for a killer on horseback, and a murderer stalking Wolfe's brownstone.

Abbie awakens in a daze with no memory of who she is or how she landed in this unsettling condition. The man by her side claims to be her husband. He’s a titan of the tech world, the founder of one of Silicon Valley’s most innovative start-ups. He tells Abbie that she is the perfect wife. He says she had a terrible accident five years ago and that, through a huge technological breakthrough, she has been brought back from the abyss. But as Abbie pieces together memories of her marriage, she begins to question her husband’s motives - and his version of events.

London, 1992. Late one night, Edward Crane, 76, is declared dead at a London hospital. An obituary describes him only as a 'resourceful career diplomat'. But Crane was much more than that—and the circumstances surrounding his death are far from what they seem. Fifteen years later, academic Sam Gaddis needs money. When a journalist friend asks for his help researching a possible sixth member of the notorious Trinity spy ring, Gaddis knows that she's onto a story that could turn his fortunes around. But within hours the journalist is dead, apparently from a heart attack.