Recommended Reads

It's the opening night of The Manor, the newest and hottest luxury resort, and no expense, small or large, has been spared. But under the burning midsummer sun, darkness stirs. Old friends and enemies circulate among the guests. Just outside the Manor's immaculately kept grounds, an ancient forest bristles with secrets. And it's not too long before the local police are called. Turns out the past has crashed the party, with deadly results.

Raised in the wilderness by her late great-uncle, Vida is a young woman with an almost preternatural affinity for nature, especially for the wolves that also call the forested mountains home. Vida just wants peace. But in nearby Kettleton County, José Nochelobo, the love of Vida's life and a cherished local hero, dies in a tragic "accident." The truth can't be contained for long. The hungry men of power in Kettleton want that Vida, like José, disappear forever. One by one they come for her, prepared to do anything to see their plans through to their evil end. But Vida, the forest, and its formidable wonders are waiting. 

In The Comfort of Crows, Margaret Renkl presents a literary devotional: fifty-two chapters that follow the creatures and plants in her backyard over the course of a year. As we move through the seasons--from a crow spied on New Year's Day, its resourcefulness and sense of community setting a theme for the year, to the lingering bluebirds of December, revisiting the nest box they used in spring--what develops is a portrait of joy and grief: joy in the ongoing pleasures of the natural world, and grief over winters that end too soon and songbirds that grow fewer and fewer.

When she is only six years old, Allegra Dixon’s party-loving mother leaves without so much as a goodbye. Her father, an emotionally distant military officer, is also unable—or unwilling—to care for her. Sent to live like a ghost in her grandparents’ joyless home, Allegra finds her only solace through an escape into books. Life finally takes a turn when she meets a dashing young West Point cadet named Shep Williams. Soon they fall deeply in love. When Shep suddenly receives a posting to Afghanistan, they decide to marry before he goes. Between his deployments, they cling to their brief and fraught stolen moments together. Then Allegra realizes that the horrors of war have begun to change her husband into a man she no longer recognizes. Allegra finds herself feeling utterly alone again just when she thought she’d finally found happiness.

A year has passed since Elizabeth Palmer was nearly killed with hundreds more in the attempted bombing of St. Paul's in London, believed to be a terrorist act until the police discovered it was a cover for something even more sinister. But with three new attempts on her life, and her connection to the terrorist attack, MI-5 gets involved to find out who is trying to kill her and why. Autumn Backman, twelve years old, begrudgingly accepts a summer job to shepherd Tash Navarro, a shy, bullied little boy. Autumn learns Tash is gifted psychically, like her, and Tash's father, Archer Navarro, is suspected of embezzling from his own firm. Now Archer and his new wife have disappeared. Autumn reaches out to Dillon Savich, the only person she knows who can find them. Desperate for answers, Elizabeth flies to Washington, D.C., to seek out Savich and Sherlock and is assigned Special Agent Rome Foxe for protection. With deadly assailants in terrifying pursuit, Elizabeth and Rome soon find themselves neck deep in danger and in a race for survival.

Completed by James Patterson from a partial manuscript left behind by Michael Crichton, Eruption begins in 2016 when a class field trip to Hawaii’s Hilo Botanical Gardens is disrupted by the sudden appearance of deadly black stains on the park’s banyan trees. Nine years later, Hilo makes headlines again: Mauna Loa, an active volcano inside the park, is days away from an eruption that could unleash more lava than it has in a century. In addition to endangering nearby communities, the lava is likely to reach a cache of secret materials the U.S. military is storing on the Big Island, which could lead to the release of toxic waste—likely the same stuff that killed Hilo’s trees. The U.S. government assembles a team of experts to avert disaster, led by Mark Rivers, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, and geologist John MacGregor, who heads the Hawaiian Volcano Observatory. Together, they race against the clock to divert the lava flow in hopes of saving life on Earth.

In one of the most luxurious cities on earth, a billion-dollar deal is about to go badly wrong. A lavish night out is about to end in murder. And the British government is about to be plunged into crisis. In the heart of the British establishment, Lord Hartley, the latest in a line of peers going back over two hundred years, lies dying. But his will triggers an inheritance with explosive consequences. Two deaths continents apart with no obvious connection. So why are they both at the centre of a master criminal's plot for revenge? And can Scotland Yard's elite squad uncover the truth before it's too late?

Tanner Hughes was raised by his grandparents.  When his grandmother passes away, her last words to him tell him the name of the father he never knew—and where to find him. Tanner is due at his next Army Ranger posting soon, but he sets out for Asheboro, North Carolina, to ask around. He’s been in town less than twenty-four hours when he meets Kaitlyn Cooper, a doctor and single mom. They both feel an immediate connection. Nearby, eighty-three-year-old Jasper lives quietly alone in a cabin bordering a national forest, haunted by a tragic accident that took place decades before. When he hears rumors that a white deer has been spotted in the forest, he becomes obsessed with protecting the deer from poachers.

A killer uses fearsome precision to take out impossible targets. Detective Michael Bennett teams with a shooting expert--a former Army Ranger and sniper with NYPD's Emergency Services Unit. But Officer Rob Trilling seems more comfortable with rifles than he is with people. When his new partner begins to log unexplained absences from duty, only Bennett can prove whether the decorated officer is a lonely hunter or a hardened assassin.

Young playwright Melina Green has just written a new work inspired by the life of her Elizabethan ancestor Emilia Bassano. But seeing it performed is unlikely, in a theater world where the playing field isn’t level for women. In 1581, young Emilia Bassano is endowed 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.
 

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. Eve knows that the level of violence and the apparent premeditation involved suggest a volatile mix of hidden, heated passion and ice-cold calculation. Eve will not stop until she finds the killer who destroyed this couple’s dreams before the honeymoon even began.

Meet twenty heroes and heavies from the brilliant mind of legendary crime author Lee Child. These twenty intriguing, thrilling, and rapid-fire fictions are intimate portraits of humanity at its best and worst, sure to please new and longtime fans of Child and to illuminate a side of the author's work unknown to Reacher devotees. Featuring a colorful new introduction from the author, the collection stands as the first book written entirely by Child in four years.

Three years ago, sports agent Myron Bolitar gave a eulogy at the funeral of his client, renowned basketball coach Greg Downing. Myron and Greg had history: initially as deeply personal rivals, and later as unexpected business associates. Myron made peace and moved on – until now, when two federal agents walked into his office, demanding to know where Greg Downing is. According to the agents, Greg is still alive—and has been placed at the scene of a double homicide, making him their main suspect. Shocked, Myron needs answers. Myron and Win, longtime friends and colleagues, set out to find the truth, but the more they discover about Greg, the more dangerous their world becomes. 

Jack Lee is a white lawyer from Freeman County, Virginia, who has never done anything to push back against racism, until he decides to represent Jerome Washington, a Black man charged with brutally killing an elderly and wealthy white couple. Doubting his decision, Lee fears that his legal skills may not be enough to prevail in a case where the odds are already stacked against both him and his client. And he quickly finds himself out of his depth when he realizes that what is at stake is far greater than the outcome of a murder trial. Desiree DuBose is a Black lawyer from Chicago who has devoted her life to furthering the causes of justice and equality for everyone. She comes to Freeman County and enters a fractious and unwieldy partnership with Lee in a legal battle against the best prosecutor in the Commonwealth. Yet DuBose is also aware that powerful outside forces are at work to blunt the victories achieved by the Civil Rights era.  Lee and DuBose could not be more dissimilar. On their own, neither one can stop the prosecution’s deliberate march towards a guilty verdict and the electric chair. But together, the pair fight for what once seemed impossible: a chance for a fair trial and true justice. 

Women can be heroes. When twenty-year-old nursing student Frances McGrath hears these words, it is a revelation. Raised in Southern California and sheltered by her conservative parents, she has always prided herself on doing the right thing. But in 1965, the world is changing. When her brother ships out to serve in Vietnam, she joins the Army Nurse Corps and follows his path. As green and inexperienced as the men sent to Vietnam to fight, Frankie is over-whelmed by the chaos and destruction of war. Each day is a gamble of life and death, hope and betrayal; friendships run deep and can be shattered in an instant. In 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.