February list by Donalee Jacobs |
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Asymmetry
by Lisa Halliday
Told in three distinct and uniquely compelling sections, Asymmetry explores the imbalances that spark and sustain many of our most dramatic human relations: inequities in age, power, talent, wealth, fame, geography, and justice.
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The Atomic City Girls
by Janet Beard
In November 1944, eighteen-year-old June Walker boards an unmarked bus, destined for a city that doesn't officially exist. Oak Ridge, Tennessee, has sprung up in a matter of months, a town of trailers and segregated houses, 24-hour cafeterias, and constant security checks. There, June joins hundreds of other young girls operating massive machines whose purpose is never explained. They know they are helping to win the war, but must ask no questions and reveal nothing to outsiders.
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Check Me Out
by Rebecca A Wilhite
Greta must choose between boy-next-door Will and dreamboat Mac while also trying to prevent the county from closing the library where she works. Check Me Out is a contemporary romance-with just a hint of Cyrano de Bergerac-that reminds us that it is what's on the inside that matters most.
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Dreaming in Chocolate
by Susan Bishop Crispell
With an endless supply of magical gifts and recipes from the hot chocolate cafe Penelope Dalton runs alongside her mother, she is able to give her daughter almost everything she wants. The one sticking point is Ella's latest request: get a dad. And not just any dad. Ella has her sights set on Noah Gregory, her biological father who's back in town for a few months - and as charming as ever. Noah broke Penelope's heart years ago, but now part of her wonders if she made the right decision to keep the truth of their daughter from him. The other, more practical part, is determined to protect Ella from the same heartbreak. Now Penelope must give in to her fate or face a future of regrets.
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The English wife
by Lauren Willig
Annabelle and Bayard Van Duyvil live a charmed life in New York: he's the scion of an old Knickerbocker family, she grew up in a Tudor house in England, they had a fairytale romance in London, they have three-year-old twins on whom they dote, and he's recreated her family home on the banks of the Hudson and named it Illyria. Yes, there are rumors that she's having an affair with the architect, but rumors are rumors and people will gossip. But then Bayard is found dead with a knife in his chest on the night of their Twelfth Night Ball, Annabelle goes missing, presumed drowned, and the papers go mad.
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Fall From Grace
by Danielle Steel
What happens when you lose everything? Husband, safety, protection, money, and reputation gone, faced with prison, Sydney must rebuild her life from the bottom to the top again, with honor, resourcefulness, and dignity after her husband dies. In the process she finds herself, as well as courage and resilience. Taking life by the horns, she revives her own career as a talented designer, from New York to Hong Kong, risking all in an exotic, unfamiliar world, determined to forge a new life she can be proud of.
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Fifty Fifty
by James Patterson
Sam Blue stands accused of the brutal murders of three young students, their bodies dumped near the Georges River. Only one person believes he is innocent: his sister, Detective Harriet Blue. And she's determined to prove it. But Harry's outburst at her brother's trial earns her a reassignment to the outback. With no choice but to leave Sam's case alone, she relocates to Last Chance Valley, population 75, where a diary found on the roadside outlines a shocking plan: the massacre of the entire town. And the first killing, shortly after Harry's arrival, suggests the clock is already ticking. Meanwhile, back in Sydney, a young woman holds the key to crack Sam's case wide open, if only she could escape the madman holding her hostage.
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Force of Nature
by Jane Harper
When five colleagues go on a corporate retreat in the wilderness, they reluctantly pick up their backpacks and start walking down the muddy path. But one woman doesn't come out of the woods. And each of her companions tells a slightly different story about what happened. Federal Police Agent Aaron Falk has a keen interest in the whereabouts of the missing hiker. In an investigation that takes him deep into isolated forest, Falk discovers secrets lurking in the mountains, and a tangled web of personal and professional friendship, suspicion, and betrayal among the hikers. But did that lead to murder?
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The Grave's a Fine and Private Place
by C. Alan Bradley
Flavia and her two older sisters are on a boating trip when their punt drifts past the church where a notorious vicar had recently dispatched three of his female parishioners by spiking their communion wine with cyanide. Suddenly something grazes against Flavia's fingers as she dangles them in the water. She clamps down on the object and pulls up a human head, attached to a human body. If anything could take Flavia's mind off her recent sorrows, it is solving a murder--although one that may lead the young sleuth to an early grave.
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The Great Alone
by Kristin Hannah
Ernt Allbright, a former POW, comes home from the Vietnam war a changed and volatile man. When he loses yet another job, he makes an impulsive decision: he will move his family north, to Alaska, where they will live off the grid in America's last true frontier. So Ernt, thirteen-year-old Leni and her mother make the move. At first, Alaska seems to be the answer to their prayers. But as winter approaches and darkness descends on Alaska, Ernt's fragile mental state deteriorates and the family begins to fracture. Soon the perils outside pale in comparison to threats from within. In their small cabin, covered in snow, blanketed in eighteen hours of night, Leni and her mother learn the terrible truth: they are on their own. In the wild, there is no one to save them but themselves.
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Grist Mill Road
by Christopher J Yates
The year is 1982; the setting, an Edenic hamlet some ninety miles north of New York City. There, among the craggy rock cliffs and glacial ponds of timeworn mountains, three friends, Patrick, Matthew, and Hannah, are bound together by a terrible and seemingly senseless crime. Twenty-six years later, in New York City, living lives their younger selves never could have predicted, the three meet again, with even more devastating results.
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How to Stop Time
by Matt Haig
Tom Hazard has a dangerous secret. He may look like an ordinary 41-year-old, but owing to a rare condition, he's been alive for centuries. Tom has lived history—performing with Shakespeare, exploring the high seas with Captain Cook, and sharing cocktails with Fitzgerald. Now, he just wants an ordinary life. So Tom moves back his to London, his old home, to become a high school history teacher—the perfect job for someone who has witnessed the city's history first hand. Better yet, a captivating French teacher at his school seems fascinated by him. But the Albatross Society, the secretive group which protects people like Tom, has one rule: Never fall in love.
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The Immortalists
by Chloe Benjamin
If you knew the date of your death, how would you live your life? It's 1969 in New York City's Lower East Side, and word has spread of the arrival of a mystical woman, a traveling psychic who claims to be able to tell anyone the day they will die. The Gold children sneak out to hear their fortunes. The prophecies inform their next five decades. The Immortalists probes the line between destiny and choice, reality and illusion, this world and the next. It is a deeply moving testament to the power of story, the nature of belief, and the unrelenting pull of familial bonds.
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The Masterpiece
by Francine Rivers
New York Times bestselling author Francine Rivers returns to her romance roots with this unexpected and redemptive love story, a probing tale that reminds us that mercy can shape even the most broken among us into an imperfect yet stunning masterpiece. A successful LA artist, Roman Velasco appears to have everything he could possibly want-money, women, fame. Only Grace Moore, his reluctant, newly hired personal assistant, knows how little he truly has. Like Roman, Grace is wrestling with ghosts and secrets of her own. But as she gets to know the enigmatic man behind the reputation, it's as if the jagged pieces of both of their pasts slowly begin to fit together ... until something so unexpected happens that it changes the course of their relationship-and both their lives-forever.
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Night Moves
by Jonathan Kellerman
An affluent family returns home from Sunday dinner only to find the murdered and brutalized corpse of a total stranger in their house. This baffling, twisted tale tests Alex and Milo to their intellectual and emotional limits.
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Only Child
by Rhiannon Navin
Squeezed into a coat closet with his classmates and teacher, first grader Zach Taylor can hear gunshots ringing through the halls of his school. A gunman has entered the building, taking nineteen lives and irrevocably changing the very fabric of this close-knit community. While Zach's mother pursues a quest for justice against the shooter's parents, holding them responsible for their son's actions, Zach retreats into his super-secret hideout and loses himself in a world of books and art. Armed with his newfound understanding, and with the optimism and stubbornness only a child could have, Zach sets out on a captivating journey towards healing and forgiveness, determined to help the adults in his life rediscover the universal truths of love and compassion needed to pull them through their darkest hours.
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The Philosopher's Flight
by Tom Miller
In this thrilling debut from ER doctor turned novelist Tom Miller, Robert Weekes is a practitioner of empirical philosophy—an arcane, female-dominated branch of science used to summon the wind, shape clouds of smoke, heal the injured, and even fly. He dreams of fighting in the Great War as the first male in the elite US Sigilry Corps Rescue and Evacuation Service—a team of flying medics. When a deadly accident puts his philosophical abilities to the test, Robert rises to the occasion and wins a scholarship to study at Radcliffe College, an all-women's school. At Radcliffe, Robert falls hard for Danielle Hardin, a disillusioned young war hero turned political radical. With their lives in mounting danger, Robert and Danielle band together with a team of unlikely heroes to fight for Robert's place among the next generation of empirical philosophers.
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A Time of Love and Tartan
by Alexander McCall Smith
"The latest installment of Alexander McCall Smith's charming 44 Scotland Street series. When Pat accepts her narcissistic ex-boyfriend Bruce's invitation for coffee, she has no idea of the complications in her romantic and professional life that will follow. Meanwhile, Matthew, her boss at the art gallery, attracts the attention of the police after a misunderstanding at the local bookstore. Whether caused by small things such as a cup of coffee and a book, or major events such as Stuart's application for promotion and his wife Irene's decision to pursue a PhD in Aberdeen, change is coming to Scotland Street. But for three seven-year-old boy--Bertie Pollock, Ranald, and Big Lou's foster son, Finlay--it also means getting a glimpse of perfect happiness.
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Traitor
by Jonathan De Shalit
When a young Israeli walks into an American embassy and offers to betray his country for money and power, he has no idea that the CIA agent interviewing him is a Russian mole. Years later, that young man has risen in the ranks to become a trusted advisor to Israel's Prime Minister and throughout his career, he's been sharing everything he knows with the Kremlin. Now, however, a hint that there may be a traitor in the highest realms of power has slipped out and a top-secret team is put together to hunt for him. The chase leads the team from the streets of Tel Aviv to deep inside the Russian zone and, finally, to the United States, where a most unique spymaster is revealed.
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Where the Wild Cherries Grow
by Laura Madeleine
1919, and the end of World War I has not brought peace for Emeline Vane. Lost in grief, she is suddenly alone at the heart of a depleted family. And just as everything seems to be slipping beyond her control, in a moment of desperation, she boards a train and runs away. Her journey leads her to a tiny seaside village in the South of France. Taken in by cafe owner Maman and her twenty-year-old son, Emeline discovers a world completely new to her: of oranges, olives and wild herbs, the raw, rich tastes of the land. But soon secrets from home begin blowing in on the sea waves. Fifty years later, Bill Perch finds Emeline's diary, and begins to trace an anguished story of betrayal and love that will send him on a journey to discover the truth. What really happened to Emeline all those years ago?
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