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December 2019
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Fiction Staff Favorites of the 2010-2019 Decade
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The book charmer
by Karen Hawkins
"The residents of Dove Pond, North Carolina, know three things: they have the finest bar-b-que this side of Atlanta, their Apple Festival is the best that ever was, and the town has phenomenal good luck whenever the Dove family has seven daughters. Fortunately, that time is now, because Dove Pond desperately needs a miracle. The seventh daughter, Sarah Dove, believes in all things magical. Books have whispered their secrets to her since she was a child. Now the town librarian, she makes sure every book finds the reader who most needs it. But recently the books have been whispering something different--that change is about to come to Dove Pond. Sarah is soon convinced that the legendary Dove Pond good luck has arrived in the form of new resident, Grace Wheeler"--from the publisher.
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Dark matter : a novel
by Blake Crouch
Kidnapped and drugged at gunpoint for inexplicable reasons, physics professor Jason Dessen awakens in a lab and is informed that his entire life has been an illusion and that he is being hunted by a deadly adversary.
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The masterpiece
by Francine Rivers
A successful Los Angeles artist hides behind a veneer of fame his secret activities as an anonymous graffiti artist, an alter ego that his new personal assistant fears could destroy his career before they bond over their mutually tragic pasts in ways that transform their relationship and lives.
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The nightingale
by Kristin Hannah
Reunited when the elder's husband is sent to fight in World War II, French sisters Vianne and Isabelle find their bond as well as their respective beliefs tested by a world that changes in horrific ways.
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The woman in the window
by A. J. Finn
An agoraphobic recluse languishes in her New York City home, drinking wine and spying on her neighbors, before witnessing a terrible crime through her window that exposes her secrets and raises questions about her perceptions of reality.
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Gone girl
by Gillian Flynn
When a woman goes missing on her fifth wedding anniversary, her diary reveals hidden turmoil in her marriage, while her husband, desperate to clear himself of suspicion, realizes that something more disturbing than murder may have occurred
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Bluebird, bluebird : a novel
by Attica Locke
Forced by duty to return to his racially divided East Texas hometown, an African-American Texas Ranger risks his job and reputation to investigate a highly charged double-murder case involving a black Chicago lawyer and a local white woman
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The mother-in-law
by Sally Hepworth
A woman's obsessive fears about how much she disappoints her successful, pillar-of-the-community mother-in-law lead to a controversial disinheritance and a suspicious suicide.
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Mostly dead things : a novel
by Kristen N. Arnett
Taking over her family's failing taxidermy shop in the wake of her father's suicide, a grief-stricken woman pursues less-than-legal ways of generating income while struggling to figure out her place among her eccentric loved ones.
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The violets of March : a novel
by Sarah Jio
Emily Watson, trying to recover from a broken marriage, retreats to Bainbridge Island in Washington State at the invitation of her great-aunt Bee and discovers a diary dated to 1943 with a secret about her grandmother's past, which helps her resolve a decision she needs to make about her own life.
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The girl on the train
by Paula Hawkins
Obsessively watching a breakfasting couple every day to escape the pain of her losses, Rachel witnesses a shocking event that inextricably entangles her in the lives of strangers
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The Martian : a novel
by Andy Weir
Stranded on Mars by a dust storm that compromised his space suit and forced his crew to leave him behind, astronaut Watney struggles to survive in spite of minimal supplies and harsh environmental challenges that test his ingenuity in unique ways.
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Station eleven
by Emily St. John Mandel
The sudden death of a Hollywood actor during a production of "King Lear" marks the beginning of the world's dissolution in a story told at various past and future times from the perspectives of the actor and four of his associates
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Bird box
by Josh Malerman
In a world where no one can go outside or open the door for fear of letting "them" in, single mother Malorie and her children must leave the house and risk everything to survive.
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The library of lost and found
by Phaedra Patrick
A shy librarian whose kind heart is often exploited receives a mysterious book of fairy tales from the beloved grandmother she believed dead and embarks on a perspective-changing journey of astonishing family secrets.
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A gentleman in Moscow
by Amor Towles
Deemed an unrepentant aristocrat by a Bolshevik tribunal in 1922, Count Alexander Rostov is sentenced to house arrest in a grand hotel across the street from the Kremlin, where he endures life in an attic room while some of the most tumultuous decades in Russian history unfold.
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Midnight at the Blackbird Café
by Heather S Webber
After the death of her beloved grandmother, Anna Kate travels to Wicklow, Alabama to settle her estate and sell the café she ran, but finds herself drawn to the quirky town and the mysterious blackbird pie everyone is talking about.
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The apple orchard
by Susan Wiggs
Set to inherit half of Bella Vista, a 100-acre apple orchard in a town called Archangel, along with a half-sister she's never heard of, Tess Delaney, who makes a living restoring stolen treasures to their rightful owners, discovers a world filled with the simple pleasures of food and family.
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The summer before the war : a Novel
by Helen Simonson
Arriving in the 1914 village of Rye, England, Beatrice Nash, a young woman of good family, becomes a first female teacher of Latin at the local school and falls in love with her sponsor's nephew..
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Reconstructing Amelia : a novel
by Kimberly McCreight
When her high-achieving 15-year-old daughter Amelia supposedly commits suicide after she is caught cheating, litigation lawyer and single mother Kate Baron, leveled by grief, must reconstruct the pieces of Amelia's life to find the truth and vindicate the memory of the daughter whose life she could not save.
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Mystery Staff Favorites of the 2010-2019 Decade
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Bury your dead
by Louise Penny
Taking leave during Quebec's Winter Carnival after a case gone wrong, a disgruntled Chief Inspector Armand Gamache is unable to avoid assisting a politically-charged investigation involving a historian's murder during a search for a famous figure's burial site
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Murders and metaphors
by Amanda Flower
"January means ice wine season in the Niagara Falls region, but the festivities leave Charming Books owner Violet Waverly cold, still reeling from a past heartbreak. A past heartbreak who will be present at the annual midnight grape-harvest festival, and no magic in the world or incantation powerful enough could get Violet to attend. But Grandma Daisy, an omniscient force all on her own, informs Violet that she's already arranged for the mystical Charming Books to host celebrity sommelier Belinda Perkins's book signing at the party. Little do either Waverly women know, the ice wine festival will turn colder still when Violet finds Belinda in the middle of the frozen vineyard--with a grape harvest knife protruding from her chest."
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The victory garden
by Rhys Bowen
Marrying an Australian pilot during World War I, Emily volunteers to tend the neglected grounds of a Devonshire estate where she finds inspiration and support in an herbalist's long-forgotten journals.
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The cuckoo's calling
by Robert Galbraith
Working as a private investigator after losing his leg in Afghanistan, Cormoran Strike takes the case of a legendary supermodel's suspicious suicide and finds himself in a world of multi-millionaire beauties, rock-star boyfriends, desperate designers and hedonist pursuits.
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The woman in cabin 10
by Ruth Ware
Assigned to review an exclusive North Sea luxury cruise, travel journalist Lo Blacklock witnesses a woman being thrown overboard and is baffled when all passengers remain unruffled and accounted for, a nightmare that unravels as Lo struggles to convince everyone that what she saw was real.
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Science Fiction and Fantasy Staff Favorites of the 2010-2019 Decade
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Ready player one
by Ernest Cline
Immersing himself in a mid-21st-century technological virtual utopia to escape an ugly real world of famine, poverty and disease, Wade Watts joins an increasingly violent effort to solve a series of puzzles by the virtual world's super-wealthy creator, who has promised that the winner will be his heir.
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Red rising
by Pierce Brown
A tale set in a bleak future society torn by class divisions follows the experiences of secret revolutionary Darrow, who after witnessing his wife's execution by an oppressive government joins a revolutionary cell and attempts to infiltrate an elite military academy
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The skin map by Steve LawheadWhen Kit Livingstone learns that Britain's "ley lines" are not legends but pathways to other worlds, he's determined to find a map tattooed on a piece of skin in order to travel to the dangerous realms
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A discovery of witches
by Deborah E. Harkness
Discovering a magical manuscript in Oxford’s library, scholar Diana Bishop, a descendant of witches who has rejected her heritage, inadvertently unleashes a fantastical underworld of daemons, witches and vampires whose activities center around an enchanted treasure.
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