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New Adult Fiction - Authors L - O |
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Newest items are displayed first. Click on a title for more information or to place a hold. |
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The Kings of Vegas
by Karen Mack
When Josie King left Las Vegas in the 90s, she never looked back. The daughter of gambling mogul Roy King, spirited math whiz Josie grew up on the casino floor but deliberately turned away from the family business. She’s been living a quiet life in LA as an accountant and a single mom when she finds herself summoned back to Sin City. Now, fifteen years later, her father has died unexpectedly, and Josie’s siblings are already gathered for the reading of his will...only to discover that in order to inherit they must spend three years working together at the notorious family casino, The Jackpot. Josie’s pride won’t let her walk away from the family empire again, so she agrees to take charge of the casino’s finances. She quickly discovers that while Roy King was once
the most powerful man in Vegas, times have changed. These days, everyone has a piece of the action: Josie’s brothers, the FBI, the local mobsters, even the sexy rival casino owner who’s more than a friend. Las Vegas is more dangerous than ever, but Josie knows that to save
the family business she’ll have to wade in deeper…
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The Butler: A Thriller
by Clare Mackintosh
The South of France is stunning, though not without its imperfections, from pickpockets to burglars to the occasional cold-blooded killer. But in his twenty-five years of service, Baxter--with a spotless reputation as a polished, well-mannered butler--has never run into any issues catering
to the ultrawealthy. Until now. Baxter's latest assignment is at Villa Serenite, where Alec Prescott is hosting a colorful cast of characters, including his ex-wife, his much younger lady friend, and some
Hollywood hotshots, after the Cannes Film Festival. But it doesn't take long for a week of sun, wine, and a family birthday celebration to devolve into bickering and backstabbing. And soon, secrets aren't the only thing floating to the surface. When one of the guests is found dead in the villa's glittering pool, the gendarmes turn to the unflappable Baxter to help determine who's responsible. A good butler is expected
to see everything and say nothing--but what if he too becomes a
target?
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Country People
by Daniel Mason
Miles Krzelewski is a devoted husband, a doting father beloved for his outlandish bedtime stories, and the proud owner of a truffle-hunting
dog in a land with no truffles. He is also a bit lost, twelve years late with his PhD on Russian folktales and increasingly haunted by a sense that he's become a disappointment to his family. So when his wife, Kate, accepts a visiting professorship at a prestigious college in the faraway forests of Vermont, he decides that this will be the year to finally move forward with his life. But Miles is a man of many enthusiasms, one who possesses, in Kate's words, a great capacity to fall in with anyone, anywhere. And no sooner does he arrive than he finds himself
entangled with a cast of characters as colorful as those of any of his folktales, from a ghostly tree surgeon to a scythe-mad biochemist, from a Shakespearean temptress to a photographer of snowflakes obsessed with chronicling, on thousands of index cards, the world's delusions in
an Inventory of Wrong Ideas. The new friends, the enchanted woods, the histories: sure, no PhD, but all good fun. Until Miles stumbles upon
a bizarre--perhaps ridiculous--local legend, which, he soon suspects, might not be just a legend after all. Joyous, absurd, and life-affirming, Country People is a luminous exploration of marriage and parenthood, the nature of belief and the power of stories, and the ways in which we find connection in an increasingly fragmented world.
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Alan Opts Out
by Courtney Maum
Alan Anderson is a powerful advertising executive who has built a successful life and thriving business by making people buy stuff they don't actually need. He's up for the biggest pitch of his career and the account everyone wants, US Dairy: cow's milk sales are plummeting,
and the C-Suite wants to see trendy oat milk kicked to the curb. But when an anarchist farmer tanks Alan's presentation, Alan bombs the pitch but ends the day with an epiphany. No longer will he exploit the insecurities of others in the service of capitalism. Alan is opting out.
This development is anathema to his wife, Vivian. She's just a few positive affirmations, a swimming pool, and an exacting series of social tests away from finally becoming part of the elite women's club, the Queen Annes, in their adopted town of Greenwich, Connecticut. As if contending with a daughter who wants to write plays (!) and another who has an unnatural empathy with animals isn't enough to manage, she can only watch as Alan moves into their backyard playhouse to live off the land and--worse--spend time with the family. But instead of shocking the neighbors, Alan's commitment to a less-is-more lifestyle seems to be catching on. Could everyone want what Alan's not selling?
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The Frenzy: Stories
by Joyce Carol Oates
Frenzy (noun): a temporary madness; a violent mental or emotional agitation; intense usually wild and often disorderly compulsive or agitated activity. Joyce Carol Oates is a master of the short story and
one of the legends of the form. Her collections of short fiction have
twice been finalists for the Pulitzer Prize and have won numerous awards, including the O. Henry Award and the PEN/Malamud Award for Excellence in the Art of the Short Story. In The Frenzy: Stories, Oates plunges us into the lives of her characters at moments of crisis and confusion, when much of what they understand about themselves and those they love comes undone. A young woman on a supposedly romantic weekend trip to Cape May, New Jersey, turns the tables on her older, married lover. A freak bicycle accident on a bridge haunts one family for decades. A girl jealous of her popular cousin discovers she is the lucky one. A widow waits at her riverside house for her dead husband's return. A young man hiking in the woods comes upon a couple in a heated, possibly violent argument--should he intervene? Suspenseful and psychologically astute, Oates's short stories enthrall
and captivate as they dissect her character's deepest fears--revealing
our own in turn.
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Land
by Maggie O'Farrell
On a windswept peninsula stretching out into the Atlantic, Tomas and
his reluctant son, Liam, are working for the great Ordnance Survey project to map the whole of Ireland. The year is 1865, and in a country not long since ravaged and emptied by the Great Hunger, the task is not an easy one. Tomas, however, is determined that his maps will be a record of the disaster. The British soldiers in charge are due to arrive
any day, expecting the work to be completed, but Tomas is
unexpectedly sent off course by an unsettling encounter in a copse. His life, and the lives of those of his family, will never be the same again. Liam is terrified by the sudden change in his taciturn father. What was it that caused such cracks to open in Tomas, and how is Liam, aged only ten, going to finish the mapping and get them both home? Land is a novel about separation and reunion, tragedy and recovery, colonization and rebellion. It is a story of buried treasure, overlapping lives, ancient woodland, persistent ghosts, a particularly loyal dog, and how, when it comes to both land and history, nothing ever goes away. As spellbinding and varied as the landscape that inspired it, Land is, above all, a story
of survival, for our times and for all time.
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The Typing Lady: And Other Fictions
by Ruth Ozeki
In this spirited and emotionally resonant collection, award-winning novelist Ruth Ozeki turns her singular gaze to the short story, exploring childhood ambition, youthful desire, midlife reinvention, and the unsparing clarity of old age. With her distinctive blend of wit, warmth, and deep humanity, she brings us eleven richly imagined stories of characters standing at life's thresholds--grappling with faded ideals, evolving identities, and the inevitable compromises that shape a life. Spanning eras and geographies--from a New England college town in
the 1970s to downtown Manhattan in the 1990s to a moss-covered Pacific Northwest island during the early pandemic--The Typing Lady is an electrifying meditation on the stories we tell ourselves, the stories
we abandon, and the stories we become. Threaded with the tactile ephemera of writing--typewriters, letters, manuscripts, and
disappearing ink--the book reveals how we record ourselves in
language, and how language, over time, records us in return.
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List of All Possible Desires: A Novel in Stories
by Dylan Landis
In postwar Paris, over the course of one fateful day, a boy's crush on his nanny ignites into a destructive passion that burns into his memory and reveals to him the disquieting world of adult secrets. In 1950s New York City, a naive caretaker struggles to protect her charge, a married
woman paralyzed by her recent stroke, as new bruises appear each day on her body. In the 1970s, a fragile cousin wanders into the Royal family's chaotic jazz-filled townhouse, where music, sex, and ruin intertwine. And at the heart of these stories is Rainey Royal herself, coming of age in Greenwich Village, inventing herself as an artist
through the tumult of the '70s and '80s. By turns shocking, erotic, and deeply humane, List of All Possible Desires is a haunting portrait of family and history.
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Midnight, at the War
by Devi S. Laskar
Foreign correspondent Rita Das has left New York for the war-torn Middle East, a reassignment she asked for after learning she is
pregnant, but uncertain whether the father is her husband or her lover. As she strives to shed light on the fallouts of the war, Rita finds herself embroiled in her own conflicts with her interpreter and her news editor, her sources and her colleagues. She is unable to accept the loss of her mother and deal with her guilt for not being at her side when she died. Fiercely independent and ambitious (and, in her journalism, deeply humane), Rita is also in denial about her need for intimate human relationships. As she goes into the field to report on the war, she grapples with the physical and emotional tolls of her pregnant body
and a turbulent region where the numbing repetition of war slides suddenly into horror. When her news editor delivers urgent orders for
her to return to New York, Rita is faced with a choice about how she wants to live her life as a journalist and a soon-to-be mother.
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Death of the Soccer God
by Dimitry Elias Léger
Gilbert Chevalier's life is a mid-century miracle: wealthy, handsome, beloved by every woman he meets, and blessed with incomparable talents on the soccer field. And it's all about to end. . . Gil's father
makes him swear off the sport, to focus on his studies. When he leaves the bourgeois comforts of Port-au-Prince high society and moves to the dizzying, jazz-soaked streets of Harlem to attend Columbia University, the promise is broken. Scrimmaging in Central Park, he's spotted by the U.S. National Team's coach and is recruited to play for the Americans in the 1950 World Cup in Brazil. And then he flies too close to the sun.
Gil's unraveling is the wild stuff of myth: a plea to God for salvation; secret messages smuggled across continents; lovers shuffled, scorned, and reclaimed; and journeys past the veil between our world and the afterlife. Inspired by the unbelievable yet true story of an intrepid
young Haitian immigrant and energized with the high-voltage fervor of
a packed stadium, Death of the Soccer God is a heady dance between life and death, an answer to the eternal question: can love save us?
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How We See the Gray
by Rachel León
Foster care is a disaster in Rockford, Illinois. Meredith, a social worker and single mom, is stretched beyond thin but determined to protect her kids: not only her son, but those on her caseload too. When the stress
of the job has her breaking her sobriety, the foundations of her life
begin to tremble. After drinking too much, she makes a mistake that puts her preschooler in jeopardy, and Meredith finds herself in a
situation that mirrors her clients’ as she loses custody of her son. In her fight to get him back, Meredith experiences the system from the outside―while still working for the kids inside of it. Set over the course of a year, this riveting documentary-esque novel is told from multiple perspectives, including those of case workers, birth parents, foster parents, and foster children. Written with the working-class humor and heart that defines the Midwest, How We See the Gray is a story about mistakes, second chances, and trying to do better in a system that seems doomed to fail.
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Canon
by Paige Lewis
Yara can't comprehend why God has chosen them to slay Dominic, the ruthless leader of the army of Bad Guys. Cast out by their family and reeling from a destructive relationship, Yara has never felt weaker--but with nothing left to lose, they strike a deal. Abandoning their solitary days of embroidery and obsessive cleaning, Yara reluctantly embarks
on a perilous odyssey designed to prepare them for the daunting
mission ahead. Meanwhile, Adrena, a disillusioned prophet with a terrifying secret power, is determined to become the hero of this story.
Desperately seeking the glory of God's approval and the promise of heaven, where she hopes to reunite with her beloved mother, Adrena must first persuade Harpo, the leader of the Good Guys, that her plan
is God's will. As their journeys unfold in a series of unforgettable adventures, Yara and Adrena are propelled toward each other and transformative revelations about life, death, and destiny in this
intensely captivating, irreverent epic from a singularly brilliant new
voice in fiction.
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Babylon, South Dakota
by Tom Lin
When Saul Keng Hsiu and his wife, Mei Lee, move from China to the United States to take possession of a 160-acre homestead bequeathed
to them by a distant relative, all they have are the possessions on their back, some hidden gold, and a pocketful of chrysanthemum seeds.
After a rocky start and a long, harsh winter, the couple find themselves successfully raising chrysanthemums and livestock, and soon after, a daughter, Mara. But when representatives from the US Army Corps of Engineers buy an acre of the Hsiu's farmland and begin building a
missile silo, the inexplicable starts to occur: Mara can commune with
the animals on the farm, Mei develops a hidden talent for augury, and the chrysanthemums become impervious to everything. When the Hsius learn that the project on their farm is an effort to make America's nuclear deterrent invulnerable, they see firsthand the long arm of
power and empire. In the years and generations that follow,
increasingly impacted by the silo and its residue, the Hsius experience strange, wondrous, and tragic events on their farm.
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Pretend You're Dead and I Carry You
by Julián Delgado Lopera
Cloistered in a dreary Bogotá apartment, Ignacio’s light has dimmed, leaving his teenage daughter, Valentina, to raise herself in the wake of her mother Alma’s death. Lonely and love-starved, Valentina aches to discover the details of her mother’s drowning, and for her father to
snap out of his depression. But Ignacio can’t. He spends listless afternoons smoking cigarettes in long blonde wigs, telenovelas
humming in the background, haunted not only by matrimonial guilt, but by memories of a young man he once loved and betrayed. From Ignacio’s tragic past emerges the luminous queen of Bogotá’s queer underground, Mamadora Eléctrica, the wise travesti who he first met under the silvery lights of Club Aquario when he was just a shy country boy. With Alma gone, Mamadora steps in as a mother figure to
Valentina the way she once did for the girl’s father. But as an expert in Travesti Lore, she fears the worst: that Ignacio’s self-destruction may have unleashed a curse on them all.
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Caller Unknown
by Gillian McAllister
There is nothing that Simone won't do for her daughter, Lucy. The two have always been close, and with Lucy about to leave home for university, they depart the UK for a vacation to Texas to spend some quality time together. But when Simone awakens on their first morning
in the desert, Lucy is gone, missing from their rental cabin. In her place is a cell phone, and a voice on the other line issues a shocking ransom demand. Don't tell the police. Come to this location. And be prepared to do a deal. Though Simone's husband urges her to bring in the
authorities for help, she knows she can't take any chances. The kidnappers might kill Lucy if she tells anyone. No mother would take
that risk. Instead, that night, she drives to the isolated meet-up. What she finds there changes everything. The mysterious kidnapper doesn't want money. They want Simone to do something. The unthinkable. A catastrophic chain of events is set in motion, with chilling
consequences that extend beyond Simone and her family. What follows is a heart-pounding journey through the small towns and punishing deserts of remote Texas, in which Simone's courage--and morality--is pushed to the brink as she discovers what it truly means to be a
mother.
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The Divorce
by Freida McFadden
What is a happily ever after really worth? Naomi was living the quintessential love story. Boy meets girl. They fall in love, get married, buy a dream house, start a family...Then--he kicks her out, hires the city's best divorce lawyers, drains their accounts, and takes up with a
20-something. It's a brutal end to the story. Naomi should accept
defeat: move into a dingy apartment, get back into the workforce,
and piece together the shattered remains of her life. Except, why
should she?Instead, Naomi fixates on her husband's new girlfriend.
What begins as cynical curiosity soon twists into obsession--and then into something far darker. As Naomi uncovers secrets she never imagined, she realizes her own life may be in danger. But if it keeps her perfect family intact, isn't it worth it?
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Dolly All the Time
by Annabel Monaghan
If they start by pretending, can they end with something real? Dolly Brick has never met a problem she couldn't solve. Not when her mom left when she was twelve, and not at thirty-nine when she moves with her son back to Whitfield, Rhode Island, for the summer to keep her
dad and brother from losing the family home. So when she comes
across Stewart Whitfield--annoyingly handsome scion of the Whitfield family--with a flat tire and at the wrong end of a very public, very humiliating breakup, it's in her nature to help. But Stewart's proposed arrangement ends up being more than either of them bargained for, because as public dinners and high-society benefits turn into sunset
boat rides and kisses that hit her bloodstream like a ghost pepper,
Dolly starts to feel something more than helpful. She's never relied on anyone besides herself--can she really start now?
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A Little Bit Bad
by Cassandra Neyenesch
Perdita Jungfrau thought she was going to be married to her husband forever, so falling in love with Nando, her neighbor's anarcho-Marxist roofer, is a crisis. Life seems to put every possible obstacle in their way: she's pregnant, he has a girlfriend, he's fifteen years younger, she's terrified of messing up her children and equally drawn towards this magnetic man who entrusts her with his deepest secret. Now it's three years later and Nando has been murdered. As her bewildered husband tries to make sense of the wildly unpredictable person his wife has become, Perdita has other things on her mind. For starters, who is the mysterious woman sitting outside her house in a parked car all day?
How can she stop her adored baby brother from being pulled under by his opioid addiction? Can someone with a childhood like hers ever be
the mother her children deserve? And most of all, what should she do with the searing memories of the affair which turned her life upside down?
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Electric Shamans at the Festival of the Sun
by Mónica Ojeda
In the near future, best friends Noa and Nicole flee their home in Guayaquil, Ecuador to attend the Solar Noise Festival, a week-long,
retro-futuristic gathering at the foot of an active volcano. While Noa
fully embraces the haze of narcotics and hedonism in an effort to obscure her true reason for attending, Nicole senses something darker
at play behind the festival's so-called celebration of life. Amid technoshamanic poetry, collective hallucinations, and ritualistic dances, each girl navigates her own path in an effort to escape her past and reclaim her right to a future. Vivid, terrifying, and celebratory, Electric Shamans at the Festival of the Sun blends the primal with the supernatural, solidifying Mónica Ojeda as one of the most singular and exciting voices in Latin American and world literature today.
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