April Adult Reading Challenge
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The Silver Pigs
When Marcus Didius Falco encounters the young and very pretty Sosia Camillina in the Forum, he senses immediately that there is something amiss. When she confesses that she is fleeing for her life, Falco offers to help her and, in doing so, he gets himself mixed up in a deadly plot involving stolen ingots, dangerous and dark political machinations, and, most hazardous of all, one Helena Justina, a brash, indominable senator's daughter connected to the very traitors that Falco has sworn to expose.
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S.P.Q.R.
In SPQR, Mary Beard demonstrates how "a slightly shabby Iron Age village" rose to become the "undisputed hegemon of the Mediterranean." This "highly informative, highly readable" work examines not just how we think of ancient Rome but challenges the comfortable historical perspectives that have existed for centuries.
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A Ballad of Love and Glory
In 1846, Ximena Salomé is a gifted Mexican healer who dreams of building a family with the man she loves on the coveted land she calls home. But when Texas Rangers storm her ranch and shoot her husband dead, Ximena decides to use her healing skills as a nurse on the frontlines of the ravaging war. John Riley, an Irish immigrant in the Yankee army, is sickened by the unjust war. In a bold act of defiance, he swims the Rio Grande and forms the St. Patrick’s Battalion, a band of Irish soldiers willing to fight to the death for México’s freedom. When Ximena and John meet, a dangerous attraction blooms between them.
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All of You Every Single One
Julia Lindqvist, a woman unhappily married to a famous Swedish playwright in 1910, leaves her husband to begin a passionate affair with a female tailor named Eve. The pair run away together and settle in the more liberal haven of Vienna, where they fall in love, navigate the challenges of their newfound independence, and find community in the city's Jewish quarter. But Julia's yearning for a child throws their fragile happiness into chaos. Ada Bauer's wealthy industrialist family have sent her to Dr. Freud in the hope that he can cure her mutism--and do so without a scandal. But help will soon come for Ada from an unexpected place, changing many lives irrevocably.
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The Ottomans
The Ottomans: Sultans, Khans, and Caesars offers a bold new history of this empire that straddled East and West for nearly five hundred years and negotiated the challenges of religious difference in ways that had a profound influence on the emergence of our modern world. As historian Marc David Baer shows, the Ottomans enjoyed a tripartite inheritance as they rose from a frontier principality to a world empire. For better and for worse, the Ottoman Empire was as magnificent and as horrible as any of its European contemporaries.
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Every Rising Sun
In twelfth century, Persia, clever and dreamy Shaherazade stumbles on the Malik’s beloved wife entwined with a lover in a sun-dappled courtyard. When Shaherazade recounts her first tale, the story of this infidelity, to the Malik, the once-gentle Malik beheads his wife. When that when that killing does not quench his anger, the Malik begins to marry and behead a new bride each night. To suppress her guilt, Shaherazade persuades her beloved father, the Malik’s vizier, to offer her as the next wife. On their wedding night, Shaherazade begins a yarn, but as the sun ascends she cuts the story short, a practice she repeats night after night. She must keep the Malik enticed with her otherworldly tales—because the slightest misstep could cost Shaherazade her head.
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The Shadow King
Recently orphaned Hirut struggles to adapt to her new life as a maid in Kidane and his wife Aster's household. Kidane, an officer in Emperor Haile Selassie's army, rushes to mobilise his strongest men before the Italians invade. Meanwhile, Mussolini's hundreds of thousands of Italian soldiers march on Ethiopia expecting an easy victory. When Emperor Haile Selassie goes into exile and Ethiopia quickly loses hope, it is Hirut who offers a plan to maintain morale. She helps disguise a gentle peasant as the emperor and soon becomes his guard, inspiring other women to take up arms.
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The Wolf and the Watchman
One morning in the autumn of 1793, watchman Mikel Cardell is awakened from his drunken slumber with reports of a body seen floating in the Larder, once a pristine lake on Stockholm’s Southern Isle, now a rancid bog. Efforts to identify the bizarrely mutilated corpse are entrusted to incorruptible lawyer Cecil Winge, who enlists Cardell’s help to solve the case. Winge and Cardell become immersed in a brutal world of guttersnipes and thieves, mercenaries and madams. The rich and the poor, the pious and the fallen, the living and the dead—all collide and interconnect with the body pulled from the lake.
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The Vikings
Drawing on the latest discoveries that have only recently come to light, Scottish archaeologist Neil Oliver goes on the trail of the real Vikings. Where did they emerge from? How did they really live? And just what drove them to embark on such extraordinary voyages of discovery over 1,000 years ago? The Vikings: A New History tells an extraordinary story of a people who, from the brink of destruction, reached a quarter of the way around the globe and built an empire that lasted nearly two hundred years.
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Pachinko (National Book Award Finalist)
In the early 1900s, teenaged Sunja, the adored daughter of a crippled fisherman, falls for a wealthy stranger at the seashore near her home in Korea. He promises her the world, but when she discovers she is pregnant--and that her lover is married--she refuses to be bought. Instead, she accepts an offer of marriage from a gentle, sickly minister passing through on his way to Japan. But her decision to abandon her home, and to reject her son's powerful father, sets off a dramatic saga that will echo down through the generations.
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Jade Dragon Mountain
Once an imperial librarian, now Li Du is an exile. Arriving in 1708 in Dayan, the last Chinese town before the Tibetan border, he finds it teeming with travelers, soldiers, and merchants. When a Jesuit astronomer is found murdered in the home of the local magistrate, blame is hastily placed on Tibetan bandits. But everyone has secrets: the ambitious magistrate, the powerful consort, the bitter servant, the irreproachable secretary, the East India Company merchant, the nervous missionary, and the traveling storyteller who can't keep his own story straight. Li Du must choose whether to leave, and embrace his exile, or to stay, and investigate a murder that the town of Dayan seems all too willing to forget.
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When Women Ruled the World
Female rulers are a rare phenomenon--but thousands of years ago in ancient Egypt, women reigned supreme. Regularly, repeatedly, and with impunity, queens like Hatshepsut, Nefertiti, and Cleopatra controlled the totalitarian state as power-brokers and rulers. But throughout human history, women in positions of power were more often used as political pawns in male-dominated societies. Why did ancient Egypt provide women this kind of access to the highest political office? What was it about these women that allowed them to transcend patriarchal obstacles?
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The First Muslim
Muhammad’s was a life of almost unparalleled historical importance; yet for all the iconic power of his name, the intensely dramatic story of the prophet of Islam is not well known. In The First Muslim, Lesley Hazleton brings him vibrantly to life. Drawing on early eyewitness sources and on history, politics, religion, and psychology, she renders him as a man in full, in all his complexity and vitality.
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The Nightingale's Castle
In 1573, Countess Erzsébet Báthory gives birth to an illegitimate child. Secretly taken to a peasant family living in the foothills of the Carpathian Mountains, the infant girl is raised as their own. Years later, a young woman called Boróka--ignorant of her true history--is sent to join the Countess's household. Terrified of the Countess's murderous reputation and the brutally cruel women who run the castle, Boróka struggles to find her place. Then plague breaches the castle's walls, and a tentative bond unexpectedly forms between the girl and the Countess.
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Half of a Yellow Sun
During the late 1960s, Biafra struggled to establish an independent republic in southeastern Nigeria. We experience this tumultuous decade alongside five unforgettable characters: Ugwu, a thirteen-year-old houseboy who works for Odenigbo, a university professor full of revolutionary zeal; Olanna, the professor’s beautiful young mistress who has abandoned her life in Lagos for a dusty town and her lover’s charm; and Richard, a shy young Englishman infatuated with Olanna’s willful twin sister Kainene.
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American Heroes
U.S. soldiers who served in overseas conflicts--from World War II, Korea, and Vietnam to Iraq and Afghanistan--share true stories of the actions that earned them some of America's most distinguished military medals, up to and including the Medal of Honor. They never acted alone, but always in the spirit of camaraderie, patriotism, and for the good of our beloved country. There has never been a better time for all of us to think about duty, sacrifice, and what it means to be an American hero.
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Passions in Death
On a hot August night, Lt. Eve Dallas and her husband, Roarke, speed through the streets of Manhattan to the Down and Dirty club, where a joyful, boisterous pre-wedding girls’ night out has turned into a murder scene. One of the brides lies in a pool of blood, garroted in a private room where she was preparing a surprise for her fiancée—two scrimped and saved-for tickets to Hawaii. Despite the dozens of people present, useful witnesses are hard to come by. Eve needs to provide justice for poor young Erin.
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Confessions of the Dead
Hollows Bend, New Hampshire, is a picture-perfect New England town where weekend tourists flock to see fall leaves and eat breakfast at the Stairway Diner. The crime rate--zero--is a point of pride for Sheriff Ellie Pritchett. The day the stranger shows up is when the trouble starts. The sheriff and her deputy investigate the mysterious teenage girl. None of the locals can place her. She can't--or won't--answer any questions. She won't even tell them her name. While the girl is in protective custody, the officers are called to multiple crime scenes leading them closer and closer to a lake outside of town that doesn't appear on any map.
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The Housemaid
Every day I clean the Winchesters' beautiful house top to bottom, collect their daughter from school, and cook a delicious meal for the whole family before heading up to eat alone in my tiny room on the top floor. I try to ignore Nina's malicious, unsettling behavior. But as I look into her husband Andrew's handsome brown eyes, it's hard not to imagine what it would be like to live Nina's life. By the time I realize my attic bedroom door only locks from the outside, it's far too late. But I reassure myself: the Winchesters don't know who I really am or what I'm capable of.
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None of This Is True
Celebrating her forty-fifth birthday at her local pub, popular podcaster Alix Summer crosses paths with an unassuming woman called Josie Fair, who is also celebrating her forty-fifth birthday. A few days later, Alix and Josie bump into each other again, this time outside Alix’s children’s school. Josie suggests herself as a topic for the podcast, and although Alix finds her unsettling, she does episodes about Josie. Before she knows it, Josie has inveigled her way into Alix’s life—and into her home. But then Josie disappears. Alix discovers that Josie has left a terrible and terrifying legacy in her wake. Now Alix has become the subject of her own true crime podcast, with her life and her family’s lives under mortal threat.
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The Mirror
When Sonya MacTavish inherits the huge Victorian mansion on the coast of Maine, she has no idea that the house is haunted. The footsteps she hears at night, the doors slamming, the music playing, are not figments of her imagination. In her dreams she sees glimpses of the past. In the present she finds portraits of brides. And when she has visions of an antique mirror, she is drawn to it, sensing it holds dark family secrets. Then one night the mirror appears and Sonya glides through this looking glass, into the past—and sees a bride murdered on her wedding day, the circle of gold torn from her finger. It is a scene that will play out again and again—a centuries-old curse that must be broken—and a puzzle she must solve if there is any hope of breaking the curse.
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Holmes Is Missing
Success has come quickly to Holmes, Marple & Poe Investigations. The New York City agency led by three detectives--Brendan Holmes, "the brain," Margaret Marple, "the eyes," and Auguste Poe, the "muscle"--with famous names and mysterious pasts is one major case away from cementing its professional reputation. But as a series of child abductions tests the PIs' legendary skills, the cerebral Holmes's absence leaves a gaping hole in the agency roster. Only by closing ranks and solving the mystery within can they recover all that's been lost.
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By Any Other Name
In 1581, young Emilia Bassano is a ward of English aristocrats. Her lessons on languages, history, and writing have endowed her with a sharp wit and a gift for storytelling, but like most women of her day, she is allowed no voice of her own. Forced to become a mistress to the Lord Chamberlain, who oversees all theatre productions in England, Emilia sees firsthand how the words of playwrights can move an audience. She begins to form a plan to secretly bring a play of her own to the stage—by paying an actor named William Shakespeare to front her work.
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Lies He Told Me
Everyone in Hemingway Grove, Illinois, knows David and Marcie Bowers. David owns the local pub. Marcie is a former big-city lawyer who practices family law. When David jumps into Cotton River to save a drowning stranger, he's celebrated as a hero. His muscled physique, shaved head, and piercing blue eyes are broadcast on every news outlet. For most people, newfound fame is a lifeline. For David Bowers, it's a death sentence. For Marcie Bowers, it's a test. A wife knows the difference between a loving husband and father and a cold-blooded assassin.
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The House of Cross
In Washington, DC, the president-elect is planning her inauguration. The list of Supreme Court candidates is highly confidential--until it becomes evidence in Detective Alex Cross's toughest investigation. One candidate is gunned down. A second is stabbed. A third is murdered near midnight on a city street. Cross is the FBI's top expert in criminal behavior. For the sake of his family, his city, and his country, he must put himself in the most dangerous place there is: inside the mind of a diabolical killer.
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Now Or Never
INSTANT #1 NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER
The latest Stephanie Plum novel from #1 New York Times bestseller and “the most popular mystery writer alive” (The New York Times) Janet Evanovich.
She said yes to Morelli. She said yes to Ranger. Now Stephanie Plum has two fiancés and no idea what to do about it. But the way things are going, she might not live long enough to marry anyone. While Stephanie stalls for time, she buries herself in her work as a bounty hunter, tracking down an unusually varied assortment of fugitives from justice. With timely assists from her stalwart supporters Lula, Connie, and Grandma Mazur, Stephanie uses every trick in the book to reel in these men. But only she can decide what to do about the two men she actually loves. Stephanie’s keeping a secret from them that is the biggest bombshell of all. -
To Die for
This time it's not Travis Devine's skills that send him to Seattle to aid the FBI in escorting orphaned, twelve-year-old Betsy Odom to a meeting with her uncle, who's under federal investigation. Instead, he's hoping to lay low and keep off the radar of an enemy-the girl on the train. But as Devine gets to know Betsy, questions begin to arise around the death of her parents. What he finds points to a conspiracy bigger than he could've ever imagined.
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Iron Flame
In Violet Sorrengail's second year at Basgiath War College, the real training begins. It’s not just that it’s grueling and maliciously brutal, or even that it’s designed to stretch the riders’ capacity for pain beyond endurance. It’s the new vice commandant, who’s made it his personal mission to teach Violet exactly how powerless she is–unless she betrays the man she loves. Although Violet’s body might be weaker and frailer than everyone else’s, she still has her wits—and a will of iron. And leadership is forgetting the most important lesson Basgiath has taught her: Dragon riders make their own rules. Because Violet knows the real secret hidden for centuries at Basgiath War College—and nothing, not even dragon fire, may be enough to save them in the end.
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The Women
The Women is the story of twenty-year-old nursing student Frances “Frankie” McGrath, who joins the Army Nurse Corps and follows her brother when he ships out to serve in Vietnam. As green and inexperienced as the men sent to Vietnam to fight, Frankie is over-whelmed by the chaos and destruction of war. She meets—and becomes one of—the lucky, the brave, the broken, and the lost. But war is just the beginning for Frankie and her veteran friends. The real battle lies in coming home to a changed and divided America, to angry protesters, and to a country that wants to forget Vietnam.
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Murder Island
When professor turned crime-fighter Brandt "'Doc'"Savage and his girlfriend Kira Sunlight land on a desert island in the middle of the Atlantic, they think they've found a perfect utopia. But they don't have long to enjoy their newfound peace before they are violently separated and dragged to opposite ends of the Earth. Doc's search for Kira takes him from the coast of Brazil to northern Europe and the jungles of the Congo, and he discovers they are entangled in a global conspiracy that is bigger he ever could have imagined.