New and Popular Items
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A Calamity of Souls
Set in the tumultuous year of 1968 in southern Virginia, a racially-charged murder case sets a duo of white and Black lawyers against a deeply unfair system as they work to defend their wrongfully-accused Black defendants in this courtroom drama from #1 New York Times bestselling author David Baldacci.
Jack Lee is a white lawyer from Freeman County, Virginia, who has never done anything to push back against racism, until he decides to represent Jerome Washington, a Black man charged with brutally killing an elderly and wealthy white couple. Doubting his decision, Lee fears that his legal skills may not be enough to prevail in a case where the odds are already stacked against both him and his client. And he quickly finds himself out of his depth when he realizes that what is at stake is far greater than the outcome of a murder trial.
Desiree DuBose is a Black lawyer from Chicago who has devoted her life to furthering the causes of justice and equality for everyone. She comes to Freeman County and enters a fractious and unwieldy partnership with Lee in a legal battle against the best prosecutor in the Commonwealth. Yet DuBose is also aware that powerful outside forces are at work to blunt the victories achieved by the Civil Rights era.
Lee and DuBose could not be more dissimilar. On their own, neither one can stop the prosecution's deliberate march towards a guilty verdict and the electric chair. But together, the pair fight for what once seemed impossible: a chance for a fair trial and true justice.
Over a decade in the writing, A Calamity of Souls breathes richly imagined and detailed life into a bygone era, taking the reader through a world that will seem both foreign and familiar. -
Close to Death
In New York Times bestselling author Anthony Horowitz's ingenious fifth literary whodunnit in the Hawthorne and Horowitz series, Detective Hawthorne is once again called upon to solve an unsolvable case--a gruesome murder in an idyllic gated community in which suspects abound.
Riverside Close is a picture-perfect community. The six exclusive and attractive houses are tucked far away from the noise and grime of city life, allowing the residents to enjoy beautiful gardens, pleasant birdsong, and tranquility from behind the security of a locked gate.
It is the perfect idyll, until the Kentworthy family arrives, with their four giant, gas-guzzling cars, gaggle of shrieking children, and plans for a garish swimming pool in the backyard. Obvious outsiders, the Kentworthys do not belong in Riverside Close, and quickly offend every last one of the neighbors.
When Charles Kentworthy is found dead on his own doorstep, a crossbow bolt sticking out of his chest, Detective Hawthorne is the only investigator they can call to solve the case.
Because how do you solve a murder when everyone is a suspect?
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While We Were Burning
Parasite meets Such a Fun Age in a scorching debut that is as heartbreaking as it is thrilling, examining the intersection of race, class, and female friendship, and the devastating consequences of everyday actions.
After her best friend's mysterious death, Elizabeth Smith’s picture-perfect life in the Memphis suburbs has spiraled out of control—so much so that she hires a personal assistant to keep her on track. Composed and elegant, Brianna is exactly who she needs and slides so neatly into Elizabeth’s life, almost like she belonged there from the start. Soon, the assistant Elizabeth hired to distract her from her obsession with her friend's death is the same person working with her to uncover the truth behind it.
Because Brianna has questions too.
She wants to know why the police killed her young Black son. Why someone in Elizabeth’s neighborhood called the cops on him that day. Who took that first step that stole her child away from her. And the only way she’s ever going to be able to find out is to entwine herself deep into Elizabeth’s life, where the answers to her questions lie. As the two women hurtle towards an electrifying final showdown, and the lines between employer and friend blur, it becomes clear that neither of them is what they first appear. -
It Had to Be You
In the latest thrilling entry of the bestselling Under Suspicion series by Queen of Suspense Mary Higgins Clark and Alafair Burke, television producer Laurie Moran investigates the unsolved murder of a beloved couple celebrating the college graduations of their successful twin sons.
The two identical brothers seemed perfect in every way—handsome, intelligent, popular—until a shocking summer night when one brother killed his parents in cold blood while the other brother had an iron-clad alibi. But which twin was where during the murders? And is it possible the two of them planned the perfect crime together?
Years later, the twins are long estranged, each of them claiming to be convinced that the other is responsible for the death of their parents. Married now with children of their own, they may finally be ready to clear one name at the expense of the other and turn to Laurie Moran and her team to reinvestigate their parents’ murder. But as the Under Suspicion crew gets closer to the truth, the danger that was assumed to be left in the past finds its way into the present.
Featuring chilling suspense, a cast of characters whom loyal readers have come to love, and a final jaw-dropping twist, It Had to Be You is not to be missed. -
Pay Dirt
Legendary detective V.I. Warshawski uncovers a mystery with roots dating back to the Civil War in this edge-of-your-seat thriller from New York Times bestseller Sara Paretsky.
V .I. Warshawski is famous for her cool under fire, her intelligence, her humor, her unflinching courage, and her love of good coffee. But even the strongest people sometimes need a break to recharge, so her friends send her to Kansas for a weekend of college basketball where Angela, one of her protégées, is playing. And that's where trouble finds V.I.
Sabrina, one of Angela's roommates, disappears and V.I. agrees to try to find her. Finding a missing person in a city where she knows few people and doesn't have her trusted contacts is hard, but not as hard as the brutally negative reaction to the detective from some of the locals. When V.I. finds Sabrina close to death in a remote house, she lands herself in the FBI's crosshairs and faces a violent online backlash. The men running the county's opioid distribution are also not happy.
Discovering a dead body in the same house a few days later, V.I. is pitched headlong into a local land-use battle with roots going back to the Civil War. She finds that today's combatants are just as willing as opponents in the 1860s to kill to settle their differences.
V.I.'s survival depends on keeping one step ahead of players in a game she never intended to play, before the clock runs down.
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The Spoiled Heart
“The Spoiled Heart confirms Sunjeev Sahota's position as one of our essential novelists.” —Karan Mahajan, author of the National Book Award Finalist The Association of Small Bombs
A brilliant and riveting story of ambition, love, family secrets, and unintended consequences, from “bold storyteller” (The New Yorker) and two-time Booker Prize nominee Sunjeev Sahota
Nayan Olak keeps seeing Helen Fletcher around town. She’s returned with her teenage son to live in the run-down house at the end of the lane, and—though she’s strangely guarded—Nayan can’t help but be drawn to her. He hasn’t risked love since losing his young family in a terrible accident twenty years earlier.
In the wake of the tragedy, Nayan’s labor union, long a cornerstone of his community, became the center of his life: a way for him to channel his energies into making the world a better—fairer, as he sees it—place. Now, he’s decided to mount a run for the leadership. But his campaign pits him against a newcomer, Megha, who quickly proves to be a more formidable challenger than he anticipated.
As Nayan’s differences with Megha spin out of control, complicating the ideals he’s always held dear, he grows closer to Helen—and unknowingly barrels toward long-held secrets about how their pasts might be connected. Suddenly, much more is threatened than his chances of winning.
In one sense a tragedy in the classic mold, tracing one man’s seemingly inexorable fall, The Spoiled Heart is also an explosively contemporary story of how a few words or a single action—to one person careless, to another, charged—can trigger a cascade of unimaginable consequences. A vivid and multi-layered exploration of the mysteries of the heart, how community is forged and broken, and the shattering impact of secrets and assumptions alike, it is a blazing achievement from one of Britain’s foremost living writers. -
You Know What You Did
In this heart-pounding debut thriller for fans of Lisa Jewell and Celeste Ng, a first-generation Vietnamese American artist must confront nightmares past and present. . . .
Annie “Anh Le” Shaw grew up poor, but seems to have it all now: a dream career, a stunning home, and a devoted husband and daughter. When Annie’s mother, a Vietnam War refugee, dies suddenly one night, Annie’s carefully curated life begins to unravel. Her obsessive-compulsive disorder, which she thought she’d vanquished years ago, comes roaring back—but this time, the disturbing fixations swirling around in Annie’s brain might actually be coming true.
A prominent art patron disappears, and the investigation zeroes in on Annie. Spiraling with self-doubt, she distances herself from her family and friends, only to wake up in a hotel room—naked, next to a lifeless body. The police have more questions, but with her mind increasingly fractured, Annie doesn’t have answers. All she knows is this: She will do anything to protect her daughter—even if it means losing herself.
With dizzying twists, You Know What You Did is both a harrowing thriller and a heartfelt exploration of the refugee experience, the legacies we leave for our children, and the unbreakable bonds between mothers and daughters. -
To Gaze Upon Wicked Gods
She has power over death. He has power over her. When two enemies strike a dangerous bargain, will they end a war . . . or ignite one?
“A thrilling tale of magic and murder, intrigue and betrayal.”—Cassandra Clare, #1 New York Times bestselling author of Sword Catcher
The gorgeous first edition hardcover of To Gaze Upon Wicked Gods will feature a poster, color endpapers, a custom-stamped case, and a foil jacket!
Heroes die, cowards live. Daughter of a conquered world, Ruying hates the invaders who descended from the heavens long before she was born and defeated the magic of her people with technologies unlike anything her world had ever seen.
Blessed by Death, born with the ability to pull the life right out of mortal bodies, Ruying shouldn’t have to fear these foreign invaders, but she does. Especially because she wants to keep herself and her family safe.
When Ruying’s Gift is discovered by an enemy prince, he offers her an impossible deal: If she becomes his private assassin and eliminates his political rivals—whose deaths he swears would be for the good of both their worlds and would protect her people from further brutalization—her family will never starve or suffer harm again. But to accept this bargain, she must use the powers she has always feared, powers that will shave years off her own existence.
Can Ruying trust this prince, whose promises of a better world make her heart ache and whose smiles make her pulse beat faster? Are the evils of this agreement really in the service of a much greater good? Or will she betray her entire nation by protecting those she loves the most? -
One of Us Knows
From the critically acclaimed and New York Times bestselling author of When No One Is Watching comes a riveting thriller about the new caretaker of a historic estate who finds herself trapped on an island with a murderer--and the ghosts of her past.
Years after a breakdown and a diagnosis of dissociative identity disorder derailed her historical preservationist career, Kenetria Nash and her alters have been given a second chance they can't refuse: a position as resident caretaker of a historic home. Having been dormant for years, Ken has no idea what led them to this isolated Hudson River island, but she's determined not to ruin their opportunity.
Then a surprise visit from the home's conservation trust just as a Nor'easter bears down on the island disrupts her newfound life, leaving Ken trapped with a group of possibly dangerous strangers--including the man who brought her life tumbling down years earlier. When he turns up dead, Ken is the prime suspect.
Caught in a web of secrets and in a race against time, Ken and her alters must band together to prove their innocence and discover the truth of Kavanaugh Island--and their own past--or they risk losing not only their future, but their life.
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The Alternatives
“A tale about sisterhood, a novel of ideas, a chronicle of our collective follies, a requiem for our agonizing species, The Alternatives unfolds in a prose full of gorgeous surprises and glows with intelligence, compassion, and beauty.” —Hernan Diaz
From the writer Anthony Doerr calls “a massive talent,” the story of four brilliant Irish sisters, orphaned in childhood, who scramble to reconnect when the oldest disappears into the Irish countryside
The Flattery sisters were plunged prematurely into adulthood when their parents died in tragic circumstances. Now in their thirties—all single, all with PhDs—they are each attempting to do meaningful work in a rapidly foundering world. The four lead disparate, distanced lives, from classrooms in Connecticut to ritzy catering gigs in London’s Notting Hill, until one day their oldest sister, a geologist haunted by a terrible awareness of the earth’s future, abruptly vanishes from her work and home. Together for the first time in years, the Flatterys descend on the Irish countryside in search of a sister who doesn’t want to be found. Sheltered in a derelict bungalow, they reach into their common past, confronting both old wounds and a desperately uncertain future. Warm, fiercely witty, and unexpectedly hopeful, The Alternatives is an unforgettable portrait of a family perched on our collective precipice, told by one of Ireland’s most gifted storytellers. -
The Familiar
From the #1 New York Times bestselling author Leigh Bardugo comes a spellbinding novel set in the Spanish Golden Age.
A MOST ANTICIPATED BOOK OF 2024 by The Washington Post, NPR, Goodreads, LitHub, The Nerd Daily, Paste Magazine, Today.com, and so much more!
“A must-read for those who are seeking a little magic in their lives.” —Deborah Harkness, #1 bestselling author of A Discovery of Witches
In a shabby house, on a shabby street, in the new capital of Madrid, Luzia Cotado uses scraps of magic to get through her days of endless toil as a scullion. But when her scheming mistress discovers the lump of a servant cowering in the kitchen is actually hiding a talent for little miracles, she demands Luzia use those gifts to improve the family's social position.
What begins as simple amusement for the nobility takes a perilous turn when Luzia garners the notice of Antonio Pérez, the disgraced secretary to Spain's king. Still reeling from the defeat of his armada, the king is desperate for any advantage in the war against England's heretic queen—and Pérez will stop at nothing to regain the king's favor.
Determined to seize this one chance to better her fortunes, Luzia plunges into a world of seers and alchemists, holy men and hucksters, where the lines between magic, science, and fraud are never certain. But as her notoriety grows, so does the danger that her Jewish blood will doom her to the Inquisition's wrath. She will have to use every bit of her wit and will to survive—even if that means enlisting the help of Guillén Santángel, an embittered immortal familiar whose own secrets could prove deadly for them both. -
Daughter of Mine
The new thrilling novel from Megan Miranda, the instant New York Times bestselling author of All the Missing Girls, The Last to Vanish, and The Only Survivors.
When Hazel Sharp, daughter of Mirror Lake’s longtime local detective, unexpectedly inherits her childhood home, she’s warily drawn back to the town—and people—she left behind almost a decade earlier. But Hazel’s not the only relic of the past to return: a drought has descended on the region, and as the water level in the lake drops, long-hidden secrets begin to emerge…including evidence that may help finally explain the mystery of her mother’s disappearance. -
A Better World
A cunning, outside-the-box satirical thriller about a family’s odyssey into an exclusive enclave for the wealthy that might not be as ideal as it seems.
You’ll be safe here. That’s what the tour guide tells the Farmer-Bowens when they visit Plymouth Valley, a walled-off company town with clean air, pantries that never go empty, and blue-ribbon schools. On a very trial basis, the company offers to hire Linda Farmer’s husband, Russell, a numbers genius, and relocate her whole family to this bucolic paradise for the .0001 percent. Though Linda will have to sacrifice her medical career back home, the family jumps at the opportunity. They’d be crazy not to take it. With the outside world falling apart, this might be the Farmer-Bowens’ last chance.
But fitting in takes work. The pampered locals distrust outsiders, snubbing Linda, Russell, and their teen twins. And the residents fervently adhere to a group of customs and beliefs called Hollow...but what exactly is Hollow?
It’s Linda who brokers acceptance, by volunteering her medical skills to the most influential people in town through their pet charity, ActHollow. In the months afterward, everything seems fine. Sure, Russell starts hyperventilating through a paper bag in the middle of the night, and the kids have become secretive, but living in Plymouth Valley is worth sacrificing their family’s closeness, isn’t it? At least they’ll survive. The trouble is, the locals never say what they think. They seem scared. And Hollow’s ominous culminating event, the Plymouth Valley Winter Festival, is coming.
Linda is warned by her husband and her powerful new friends to stop asking questions. But the more she learns, the more frightened she becomes. Should the Farmer-Bowens be fighting to stay, or fighting to get out?
Sarah Langan’s latest novel, A Better World, is gleefully ruthless in its dissection of wealth, power, and privilege, timely in its depiction of a self-destructing world—and it is a prescient warning to us all. -
The Fellowship of Puzzlemakers
An extraordinary, gloriously uplifting novel about the power of friendship and the puzzling ties that bind us
Clayton Stumper might be in his twenties, but he dresses like your grandpa and fusses like your aunt. Abandoned at birth on the steps of the Fellowship of Puzzlemakers, he was raised by a group of eccentric enigmatologists and now finds himself among the last survivors of a fading institution.
When the esteemed crossword compiler and main maternal presence in Clayton’s life, Pippa Allsbrook, passes away, she bestows her final puzzle on him: a promise to reveal the mystery of his parentage and prepare him for life beyond the walls of the commune. So begins Clay’s quest to uncover the secrets surrounding his birth, secrets that will change Clay—and the Fellowship—forever.
The Fellowship of Puzzlemakers is pure joy, a story about love and family and what it means to find your people—no matter what age you are. -
The Gathering
A detective investigating a grisly crime in rural Alaska finds herself caught up in the dark secrets and superstitions of a small town in this riveting novel from the acclaimed author of The Chalk Man.
“The Gathering is an incredibly exciting novel, tightly plotted and brilliant tense, with an atmosphere you could eat with a spoon.”—Stuart Turton, author of The Seven Deaths of Evelyn Hardcastle
In a small Alaska town, a boy is found with his throat ripped out and all the blood drained from his body. The inhabitants of Deadhart haven’t seen a killing like this in twenty-five years. But they know who’s responsible: a member of the Colony, an ostracized community of vampyrs living in an old mine settlement deep in the woods.
Detective Barbara Atkins, a specialist in vampyr killings, is called in to officially determine if this is a Colony killing—and authorize a cull. Old suspicions die hard in a town like Deadhart, but Barbara isn’t so sure. Determined to find the truth, she enlists the help of a former Deadhart sheriff, Jenson Tucker, whose investigation into the previous murder almost cost him his life. Since then, Tucker has become a recluse. But he knows the Colony better than almost anyone.
As the pair delve into the town’s history, they uncover secrets darker than they could have imagined. And then another body is found. While the snow thickens and the nights grow longer, a killer stalks Deadhart, and two disparate communities circle each other for blood. Time is running out for Atkins and Tucker to find the truth: Are they hunting a bloodthirsty monster . . . or a twisted psychopath? And which is more dangerous?