January 2018 list by Donalee Jacobs
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The Black Painting
by Neil Olson
Four cousins in the Morse family are summoned by their grandfather to his mansion at Owl's Point. None of them have visited the family estate since they were children, when a prized painting disappeared: a self-portrait by Goya, rumored to cause madness or death upon viewing. Any hope that their grandfather planned to make amends evaporates when they arrive to find the old man dead, his horrified gaze pinned upon the spot where the painting once hung. The quest to find out why he died uncovers ugly family secrets and forces the cousins to confront those who would keep them hidden.
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The Chalk Man
by C. J. Tudor
In 1986, Eddie and his friends are just kids on the verge of adolescence. They spend their days biking around their sleepy English village and looking for any taste of excitement they can get. The chalk men are their secret code: little chalk stick figures they leave for one another as messages only they can understand. But then a mysterious chalk man leads them right to a dismembered body, and nothing is ever the same. In 2016, Eddie is fully grown, and thinks he's put his past behind him. But then he gets a letter in the mail, containing a single chalk stick figure. When it turns out that his friends got the same message, they think it could be a prank ... until one of them turns up dead.
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The Delusion: We All Have Our Demons
by Laura Gallier
Owen was a normal high school student with a great life. That is, until he found a well on some abandoned land, and a man who offered him a drink of water that changed his life forever. Suddenly, Owen is seeing things that no one else sees: Shackles and chains that bind his family and friends, terrifying creatures that connect themselves to the cuffs attached at the end of the chains, and angelic beings who seem to have a power that even the demons cannot withstand. Do the things Owen is seeing have anything to do with the suicide epidemic currently threatening to destroy his high school? The Delusion explores spiritual warfare in a fresh way, reminding us that We All Have Our Demons.
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A Distant Heart
by Sonali Dev
Kimi grows up in a mansion at the top of Mumbai's Pali Hill, surrounded by love and privilege. But at eleven years old, she develops a rare illness that requires her to be confined to a germ-free ivory tower in her home, with only the Arabian Sea churning outside her window for company ... until one person dares venture into her world. Rahul Savant shows up to wash Kimi's windows, and an unlikely friendship develops across the plastic curtain of her isolation room. As years pass, Rahul becomes Kimi's eyes to the outside world-and she becomes his inspiration to better himself. But when a life-saving heart transplant offers the chance of a real future, both must face all that ties them together and keeps them apart.
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The Doomed City
by Arkadi Strugatski
In an experimental city, hand-picked inhabitants from different time periods of the twentieth century must govern themselves, but an idealistic astronomer from 1950s Leningrad rises up to help with various crises and undergoes a drastic transformation.
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Fools and Mortals
by Bernard Cornwell
New York Times bestselling author Bernard Cornwell makes a dramatic departure with this enthralling, action-packed standalone novel that tells the story of the first production of A Midsummer Night's Dream—as related by William Shakespeare's estranged younger brother. Richard Shakespeare dreams of a glittering career in one of the London playhouses, a world dominated by his older brother, William. As William's star rises, Richard's onetime gratitude is souring and he is sorely tempted to abandon family loyalty. So when a priceless manuscript goes missing, he becomes entangled in a high-stakes game of duplicity and betrayal which threatens not only his career and potential fortune, but also the lives of his fellow players.
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The Infernal Battalion
by Django Wexler
Military might and arcane power clash in Django Wexler's thrilling new Shadow Campaigns novel. The Beast, the ancient demon imprisoned beneath the fortress-city of Elysium for a thousand years, has been loosed on the world. It absorbs mind after mind, spreading like a plague through the north. As Queen Raesinia Orboan and soldiers Marcus D'Ivoire and Winter Ihernglass grapple with the aftermath of the military campaign, they soon discover a betrayal they never could have foreseen. The news arrives like a thunderbolt: Janus has declared himself the rightful Emperor of Vordan.
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Into the Night
by Cynthia Eden
Sheltered in the shadows of the Smoky Mountains is the suspect who's summoned FBI agent Macey Night's fears to the surface. Every day that the "Profiler," a vigilante serial killer, escapes justice is another day she's reminded of what it is to be a ruthless predator's prey. Capturing him is a craving deeper than anything she's felt in a long time. But Agent Bowen Murphy seems hell-bent on changing that. Working together—needing, living and breathing each other—they're entwined to distraction. Bowen has to decide if he is willing to fight for a future with Macey, because the consequences of love could be deadly.
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Iron Gold
by Pierce Brown
Ten years after the events of Morning Star, Darrow and the Rising are battling the remaining Gold loyalist forces and are closer than ever to abolishing the color-coded caste system of Society for good. But new foes will emerge from the shadows to threaten the imperfect victory Darrow and his friends have earned. Pierce Brown expands the size and scope of his impressive Red Rising universe with new characters, enemies, and conflicts among the stars.
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The Last Man in Tehran
by Mark Henshaw
When an attack on an Israeli port triggers a Mossad campaign of sabotage and assassination, new Red Cell chief Kyra Stryker turns to her former mentors, retired Red Cell chief Jonathan Burke and former CIA director Kathryn Cooke, to identify Langley moles who are helping the Mossad wage its covert war. By the author of Cold Shot.
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Munich
by Robert Harris
Guy Legat is a rising star of the British diplomatic service, serving in 10 Downing Street as a private secretary to the Prime Minister, Neville Chamberlain. Rikard von Holz is on the staff of the German Foreign Office—and secretly a member of the anti-Hitler resistance. The two men were friends at Oxford in the 1920s, but have not been in contact since, until September 1938 when Guy flies with Chamberlain from London to Munich, and Rikard travels on Hitler's train overnight from Berlin, their paths are set on a disastrous collision course.
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Now That You Mention It
by Kristan Higgins
Returning to her hometown in the hopes of reconciling with her estranged family, a woman who recently survived a brush with death makes discoveries with the potential to heal the rift or permanently separate her from her surviving relatives.
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Robicheaux
by James Lee Burke
James Lee Burke's most beloved character, Dave Robicheaux, returns in this gritty, atmospheric mystery set in the towns and backwoods of Louisiana. During a murder investigation, Robicheaux discovers he may have committed the homicide he's investigating, one which involved the death of the man who took the life of Dave's beloved wife. As he works to clear his name and make sense of the murder, Robicheaux encounters a cast of characters and a resurgence of dark social forces that threaten to destroy all of those whom he loves.
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Spring Forward
by Catherine Anderson
Beauty salon owner Crystal Malloy spent years learning to stand on her own after a difficult childhood. There's never been much time for romance, but when a handsome, friendly man stops in to her salon she's immediately taken with him and their friendship quickly blossoms into romance. He's honest with her from the start that as a recent widower with young children, there's no real prospect of a long-term relationship between them. Crystal never thought she would marry, so she's fine keeping things light, until the day she realizes that she's fallen in love. Now she'll have to choose between following her heart or staying in her beloved Mystic Creek.
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The Take
by Christopher Reich
A freelance industrial spy, Riske lives a mostly quiet life above his garage in central London. He is hired to perform the odd job for a bank, an insurance company, or the British Secret Service, when he isn't expertly stealing a million-dollar watch off the wrist of a crooked Russian oligarch. Riske has maintained his quiet life by avoiding big, messy jobs; until now. A Corsican by the name of Tino Coluzzi has orchestrated the greatest street heist in Paris history: a visiting Saudi prince and his family had their pockets lightened of millions in cash, and something else. Hidden within a stolen briefcase is a letter that will upend the balance of power in the Western world. The Russians have already killed in an attempt to get it back when the CIA comes knocking at Riske's door.
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The Wife Between Us
by Greer Hendricks
In this novel exploring the multi-dimensional layers of marriage and relationships, author Greer Hendricks takes readers on a suspense filled journey of assumptions. Assumptions about the first wife and the new wife and the husband of both.
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Winter
by Ali Smith
In Winter life force matches up to the toughest of the seasons. In this second novel in her acclaimed Seasonal cycle, the follow-up to Ali Smith's sensational Autumn, Smith's shape-shifting quartet of novels casts a merry eye over a bleak post-truth era with a story rooted in history, memory, and warmth, its taproot deep in the evergreens: art, love, laughter. It's the season that teaches us survival.
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Woman at 1,000 degrees
by Hallgrímur Helgason
As she lies alone in a garage in the heart of Reykjavik, waiting to die, eighty-year-old Herra Bjornsson reflects--in a voice by turns darkly funny, bawdy, poignant, and always, always smart--on the mishaps, tragedies, and turns of luck that took her from Iceland to Nazi Germany, from the United States to Argentina and back to a post-crash, high-tech, modern Iceland.
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