January Adult Reading Challenge
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Seabiscuit
Seabiscuit was one of the most electrifying and popular attractions in sports history and the single biggest newsmaker in the world in 1938, receiving more coverage than FDR, Hitler, or Mussolini. But his success was a surprise to the racing establishment, which had written off the crooked-legged racehorse with the sad tail. Over four years, three unlikely partners survived a phenomenal run of bad fortune, conspiracy, and severe injury to transform Seabiscuit from a neurotic, pathologically indolent also-ran into an American sports icon.
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Leviathan Wakes
Two hundred years after migrating into space, mankind is in turmoil. When a reluctant ship's captain and washed-up detective find themselves involved in the case of a missing girl, what they discover brings our solar system to the brink of civil war, and exposes the greatest conspiracy in human history.
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Schindler's List
A stunning novel based on the true story of how German war profiteer and factory director Oskar Schindler came to save more Jews from the gas chambers than any other single person during World War II. In this milestone of Holocaust literature, Thomas Keneally, author of Daughter of Mars, uses the actual testimony of the Schindlerjuden—Schindler’s Jews—to brilliantly portray the courage and cunning of a good man in the midst of unspeakable evil.
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The Exorcist
Based on true events of a child's demonic possession in the 1940s, The Exorcist tells the story of eleven-year-old Regan MacNeil and her mother Chris, a famous actress and doting mother. When Regan's personality unexpectedly shifts and she starts exhibiting disturbing, often violent behavior, her desperate mother is driven to seek help from two Catholic priests, men who will risk everything--including their own souls-- to free the girl from the ancient malevolent force possessing her.
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True Grit
Mattie Ross is just fourteen years of age when a coward going by the name of Tom Chaney shoots her father down in Fort Smith, Arkansas, and robs him of his life, his horse, and $150 in cash money. Mattie leaves home to avenge her father's blood. With the one-eyed Rooster Cogburn, the meanest available U.S. Marshal, by her side, Mattie pursues the homicide into Indian Territory.
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Slow Horses
London, England: Slough House is where washed-up MI5 spies go to while away what’s left of their failed careers. The “slow horses,” as they’re called, have all disgraced themselves in some way to get relegated there. When a young man is abducted and his kidnappers threaten to broadcast his beheading live on the Internet, the slow horses see an opportunity to redeem themselves. But is the victim really who he appears to be?
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Killers of the Flower Moon
In the 1920s, the richest people per capita in the world were members of the Osage Nation in Oklahoma after oil was discovered beneath their land. Then, one by one, the Osage began to be killed off. The family of an Osage woman, Mollie Burkhart, became a prime target. As the death toll rose, the newly created FBI took up the case. Director, J. Edgar Hoover turned to a former Texas Ranger named Tom White to try to unravel the mystery.
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Virgin River
Recently widowed Melinda Monroe decides that the remote mountain town of Virgin River might be the perfect place to escape her heartache and to reenergize the midwifery / nursing career she loves. But her high hopes are dashed within an hour of arriving. Realizing she's made a huge mistake, Mel decides to leave town the following morning. But a tiny baby abandoned on a front porch changes her plans, and former marine Jack Sheridan cements them into place.
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The Dark Wind
The corpse had been “scalped,” its palms and soles removed after death. Sergeant Jim Chee of the Navajo Tribal Police knows immediately he will have his hands full with this case, a certainty that is supported by the disturbing occurrences to follow. A mysterious nighttime plane crash, a vanishing shipment of cocaine, and a bizarre attack on a windmill only intensify Chee’s fears. A dark and very ill wind is blowing through the Southwestern desert, a gale driven by Navajo sorcery and white man’s greed.
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The Last Wish
Geralt is a Witcher, a man whose magic powers, enhanced by long training and a mysterious elixir, have made him a brilliant fighter and a merciless hunter. Yet he is no ordinary killer. His sole purpose: to destroy the monsters that plague the world. But not everything monstrous-looking is evil and not everything fair is good. In every fairy tale there is a grain of truth.
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Killing Floor
Ex-military policeman Jack Reacher is a drifter. He’s just passing through Margrave, Georgia, and in less than an hour, he’s arrested for murder. Not much of a welcome. All Reacher knows is that he didn’t kill anybody. At least not here. Not lately. But he doesn’t stand a chance of convincing anyone. Not in Margrave, Georgia. Not a chance in hell.
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The Perfect Couple
The Otis-Winbury wedding promises to be an event to remember as a lavish ceremony at an oceanfront estate. When a body is discovered in Nantucket Harbor just hours before the ceremony, everyone in the wedding party is suddenly a suspect. As Chief of Police Ed Kapenash interviews the bride, the groom, the groom's famous mystery-novelist mother, and even a member of his own family, he discovers that every wedding is a minefield-and no couple is perfect.
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The Lincoln Lawyer
Mickey Haller is a Lincoln Lawyer, a criminal defense attorney who operates out of the backseat of his Lincoln Town Car, traveling between the far-flung courthouses of Los Angeles to defend clients of every kind. Bikers, con artists, drunk drivers, drug dealers -- they're all on Mickey Haller's client list. For him, the law is rarely about guilt or innocence, it's about negotiation and manipulation. Sometimes it's even about justice.
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Hidden Figures
Before John Glenn orbited the earth, or Neil Armstrong walked on the moon, a group of exceptionally talented female mathematicians known as “human computers” used pencils, slide rules and adding machines to calculate the numbers that would launch rockets, and astronauts, into space. When America’s aeronautics industry was in dire need of anyone who had the right stuff, these overlooked African-American women answered Uncle Sam’s call, moving to Hampton, Virginia. Even as Jim Crow laws required them to be segregated from their white counterparts, the women of Langley’s all-black “West Computing” group helped America achieve one of the things it desired most: a decisive victory over the Soviet Union in the Cold War, and complete domination of the heavens.
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The Handmaid's Tale
In Margaret Atwood’s dystopian future, environmental disasters and declining birthrates have led to a Second American Civil War. The result is the rise of the Republic of Gilead, a totalitarian regime that enforces rigid social roles and enslaves the few remaining fertile women. Offred is one of these, a Handmaid bound to produce children for one of Gilead’s commanders. Deprived of her husband, her child, her freedom, and even her own name, Offred clings to her memories and her will to survive.
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Catch-22
In Italy during World War II, malingering bombardier Yossarian's real problem is his own army, which keeps increasing the number of missions the men must fly to complete their service. Yet if Yossarian makes any attempt to excuse himself from the perilous missions, he’ll be in violation of Catch-22, a bureaucratic rule: a man is considered insane if he willingly continues to fly dangerous combat missions, but if he makes a formal request to be removed from duty, he is proven sane and therefore ineligible to be relieved.
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All the Colors of the Dark
1975 is a time of change in America. In the small town of Monta Clare, Missouri, girls are disappearing. When the daughter of a wealthy family is targeted, the most unlikely hero emerges—Patch, a local boy, who saves the girl, and, in doing so, leaves heartache in his wake. Patch and those who love him soon discover that the line between triumph and tragedy has never been finer. Their search for answers will lead them to truths that could mean losing one another.
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The Seven Rings
Long ago, Arthur Poole built a grand house overlooking the turbulent ocean, in a Maine village that bore his name. Today, Sonya MacTavish lives in that house—a manor that has been cursed for generations. Within its walls, she has witnessed the deaths of seven brides and the thefts of seven wedding rings. And now, to break the curse and banish a malevolent spirit once and for all, a difficult task must be completed.
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The King's Ransom
Gabriela Rose, recovery agent extraordinaire, can’t seem to lose her gorgeous-but-infuriating ex-husband Rafer Jones. And now he needs her help. His cousin, Harley, is in trouble. As a bank president, he invested an astronomical amount of money in insuring some of the world’s most priceless artifacts at the urging of his board. Recently, these insured pieces started going missing and worse, there’s no paper trail of Harley being directed to make these risky investments. Unless the artwork can be recovered soon, it looks like Harley is going to be heading to jail as the fall guy for an ingenious crime.
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Emma on Fire
Everyone at Ridgemont Academy knows to expect perfect grades, perfect record, and a perfect life from Emma Caroline Blake. Then she stands up in class and commits an act so shocking her reputation will never recover. Emma has decided to live life as if everyone's future depends on it because it does.
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Lethal Prey
Doris Grandfelt, an employee at an accounting firm, was brutally stabbed to death, but her killer was never found. Twenty years later, her twin sister Lara is determined to find Doris’s killer once and for all. Lucas Davenport and Virgil Flowers are called in to review anything that might be a new lead. When one of the bloggers locates the murder weapon, Lucas and Virgil begin to uncover vital details about the killer’s identity.
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The Grave Artist
A wedding reception is coming to a close in the Hollywood Hills when the blissful day is shattered by the death of one of the newlyweds. Though the incident appears to be an accident, Homeland Security Investigations agent Carmen Sanchez and her partner, security expert Jake Heron, discover that the tragedy is the third in a series of similar deaths and conclude that chilling evidence points to a serial killer dubbed the Honeymoon Killer. Now his dark obsession has turned to Carmen and Jake, his perfect next target.
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The Black Wolf
Several weeks ago, Chief Inspector Armand Gamache of the Sûreté du Québec and his team uncovered and stopped a domestic terrorist attack in Montréal, arresting the person behind it. A man they called the Black Wolf. In a sickening turn of events, Gamache has realized that plot, as horrific as it was, was just the beginning. Something deeper and darker, more damaging, is planned. Did he in fact arrest the Black Wolf, or are they still out there?
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Nightshade
Los Angeles County Sheriff's Detective Stilwell has been "exiled" to a low-key post policing rustic Catalina Island. Then Detective Stilwell gets a report of a body found weighed down at the bottom of the harbor, a Jane Doe identifiable at first only by a streak of purple dye in her hair. He is convinced he is the only one who can bring justice to the woman known as "Nightshade." Soon, his investigation uncovers closely guarded secrets and a dark heart to the serene island that was meant to be his escape from the evils of the big city.
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Gone Before Goodbye
Army combat surgeon Maggie McCabe has lost her purpose after a devastating series of tragedies leads to her medical license being revoked. At her lowest point, she is thrown a lifeline by an elite plastic surgeon, a former colleague. A mysterious man requires unconventional medical assistance. Desperate but skilled enough to take this job, Maggie fulfills her end of the agreement. When the patient suddenly disappears while still under her care, Maggie must become a fugitive herself.
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Exit Strategy
First—a Baltimore coffee shop. A seat in the corner, facing the door. As he leaves, a young guy brushes against him in the doorway. Instinctively Reacher checks the pocket holding his cash and passport. Nothing is missing. Second—a store to buy a coat. As he pulls out his cash, he finds something new in his pocket. A handwritten note with a desperate plea for help.
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The Writer
In a tower apartment on Central Park West, NYPD Detective Declan Shaw finds a woman waiting for him. She's covered in blood. A body is lying dead on the floor of the luxurious living room. Every book in the apartment's floor-to-ceiling shelves is by the same author: bestselling true-crime writer Denise Morrow. "This is you?" Shaw asks the woman. "You're a writer?" Only one person knows the ending to this story.
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The Widow
Simon Latch is a lawyer in rural Virginia, making just enough to pay his bills while his marriage slowly falls apart. Then into his office walks Eleanor Barnett, an elderly widow in need of a new will. Apparently, her husband left her a small fortune, and no one knows about it. Simon works quietly to keep her wealth under the radar. But when she is hospitalized after a car accident, Simon realizes that nothing is as it seems, and he finds himself on trial for a crime he swears he didn’t commit: murder.
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Hidden Nature
Natural Resources police officer Sloan Coope pulled in at a convenience store and walked right into a robbery in progress and subsequent gunshot. After being shocked back to life on the operating table, she moves back to her parents’ peaceful house in Heron’s Rest. When a woman vanishes, leaving her car behind in a supermarket parking lot, Sloan searches online for similar cases. She finds them: Men and women, old and young, with nothing apparent in common. And the abductions keep happening.
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Nobody's Fool
Sami Kierce, a young college grad backpacking in Spain with friends, wakes up covered in blood with a knife in his hand. Beside him, the dead body of his girlfriend Anna. His screams drown out his thoughts and then he runs. Twenty-two years later, Kierce, now a private investigator, is teaching wannabe sleuths at a night school in New York City. One evening, he recognizes Anna at the back of the classroom. She bolts when they make eye contact. Kierce knows he must find this woman and solve the impossible mystery that has haunted his every waking moment.