Below is a list of adult fiction titles* that the library acquired in October and November of this year.
Her Fearful Symmetry
FIC NIFFENEG
When Elspeth Noblin dies, she leaves everything to the 20-year-old American twin daughters of her own long-estranged twin, Edie. Valentina and Julia, as enmeshed as Elspeth and Edie once were, move into Elspeth’s London flat and through a series of developing relationships a crisis develops that could pull the twins apart.
Push
FIC SAPPHIRE
An electrifying first novel that shocks by its language, its circumstances, and its brutal honesty, Push recounts a young black street-girl's horrendous and redemptive journey through a Harlem inferno. For Precious Jones, 16 and pregnant with her father's child, miraculous hope appears and the world begins to open up for her when a courageous, determined teacher bullies, cajoles, and inspires her to learn to read, to define her own feelings and set them down in a diary.
The Afghan Campaign
FIC PRESSFIE
In a story that might have been ripped from today's combat dispatches, Steven Pressfield brings to life the confrontation between an invading Western army and fierce Eastern warriors determined at all costs to defend their homeland. Narrated by an infantryman in Alexander's army, The Afghan Campaign explores the challenges, both military and moral, that Alexander and his soldiers face as they embark on a new type of war and are forced to adapt to the methods of a ruthless foe that employs terror and insurgent tactics.
Seven Loves
FIC TRUEBLOO
Who most deeply affects our lives? Sometimes it is those who touch us briefly, even unexpectedly. For May Nilsson, these include the lover she takes in her forties; the handsome, troubled young rebel she is determined to rescue; the police officer who inadvertently plays a major role in her greatest catastrophe. Moving back and forth in time, from May's childhood to her eighth decade, Seven Loves weaves together the strands of an ordinary life made extraordinary by the complex passions that drive it.
All He Ever Wanted
FIC SHREVE
A man reflects back on three decades of his obsession with an unknown and ultimately unknowable woman--his courtship of her, his marriage to her, and the unforgivable act that ripped their family apart.
Fortune's Rocks
FIC SHREVE
We are transported to the turn of the last century, to the social realm of a prominent Boston family summering on the New Hampshire coast, and to the world of a spirited young woman who falls into a passionate, illicit affair with an older man--with cataclysmic results.
The Last Time They Met
FIC SHREVE
A man and a woman sustain a lifelong passionate relationship even though they have been together only three times.
Sea Glass
FIC SHREVE
Set in 1929 at a decaying beach house on the Atlantic Coast, Sea Glass unfolds a richly engaging tale of marriage, money, and troubled times.
A Wedding in December
FIC SHREVE
Seven former schoolmates gather at an inn in the Berkshires to celebrate a wedding and to recall a long-ago night that marked each of their lives.
The King of Torts
FIC GRISHAM
The office of the public defender is not known as a training ground for bright young litigators. Clay Carter has been there too long and, like most of his colleagues, dreams of a better job in a real firm. When he reluctantly takes the case of a young man charged with a random street killing, he assumes it is just another of the many senseless murders that hit D.C. every week. As he digs into the background of his client, Clay stumbles on a conspiracy too horrible to believe. He suddenly finds himself in the middle of a complex case against one of the largest pharmaceutical companies in the world, looking at the kind of enormous settlement that would totally change his lifethat would make him, almost overnight, the legal profession’s newest king of torts.
The Brethren
FIC GRISHAM
They call themselves the Brethren: three disgraced former judges doing time in a Florida federal prison. One was sent up for tax evasion. Another, for skimming bingo profits. And the third, for a career-ending drunken joyride. Meeting daily in the prison law library, taking exercise walks in their boxer shorts, these judges-turned-felons can reminisce about old court cases, dispense a little jailhouse justice, and contemplate where their lives went wrong. Or they can use their time in prison to get very rich -- very fast. And so they sit, sprawled in the prison library, furiously writing letters, fine-tuning a wickedly brilliant extortion scam ... while events outside their prison walls begin to erupt. A bizarre presidential election is holding the nation in its grips -- and a powerful government figure is pulling some very hidden strings. For the Brethren, the timing couldn't be better. Because they've just found the perfect victim.
The Summons
FIC GRISHAM
Ray Atlee is a professor of law at the University of Virginia. He's forty-three, newly single, and still enduring the aftershocks of a surprise divorce. He has a younger brother, Forrest, who redefines the notion of a family's black sheep. And he has a father, a very sick old man who lives alone in the ancestral home in Clanton, Mississippi. He is known to all as Judge Atlee, a beloved and powerful official who has towered over local law and politics for forty years. No longer on the bench, the Judge has withdrawn to the Atlee mansion and become a recluse. With the end in sight, Judge Atlee issues a summons for both sons to return home to Clanton, to discuss the details of his estate. Ray reluctantly heads south, to his hometown, to the place where he grew up, which he prefers now to avoid. But the family meeting does not take place. The Judge dies too soon, and in doing so leaves behind a shocking secret known only to Ray. And perhaps someone else.
Garden Spells
FIC ALLEN
In this luminous debut novel, Allen tells the story of an enchanted apple tree that bears prophetic fruit and edible flowers that are imbued with special powers--and the extraordinary people who tend it.
The Queen of the South
FIC PEREZ- REVERTE
Set to the irresistible beat of outlaw ballads, this sweeping story encompasses sensuality and cruelty, love and betrayal as its heroine's story unfolds. It spans continents from the dusty streets of Mexico to the sparkling waters off the coast of Morocco, to the Strait of Gibraltar and Spain.
Bed and Breakfast
FIC BATTLE
The upstairs/downstairs comedies of a Southern inn make a perfect backdrop for this portrait of a family in all its tender, touching, and flawed glory.
The Shadow of the Wind
FIC RUIZ ZAFON
Barcelona, 1945-just after the war, a great world city lies in shadow, nursing its wounds, and a boy named Daniel awakes on his eleventh birthday to find that he can no longer remember his mother's face. To console his only child, Daniel's widowed father, an antiquarian book dealer, initiates him into the secret of the Cemetery of Forgotten Books, a library tended by Barcelona's guild of rare-book dealers as a repository for books forgotten by the world, waiting for someone who will care about them again. Daniel's father coaxes him to choose a volume from the spiraling labyrinth of shelves, one that, it is said, will have a special meaning for him. And Daniel so loves the novel he selects, "The Shadow of the Wind" by one Julian Carax, that he sets out to find the rest of Carax's work. To his shock, he discovers that someone has been systematically destroying every copy of every book this author has written. In fact, he may have the last one in existence. Before Daniel knows it, his seemingly innocent quest has opened a door into one of Barcelona's darkest secrets, an epic story of murder, magic, madness and doomed love. And before long he realizes that if he doesn't find out the truth about Julian Carax, he and those closest to him will suffer horribly.
The Night Watch
FIC WATERS
Moving back through the 1940s, through air raids, blacked-out streets, illicit partying, and sexual adventure, to end with its beginning in 1941, "The Night Watch" tells the story of four Londoners-three women and a young man with a past-whose lives, and those of their friends and lovers, connect in tragedy, stunning surprise and exquisite turns, only to change irreversibly in the shadow of a grand historical event.
The Rule of Four
FIC CALDWELL
It's Easter at Princeton and two students, Tom Sullivan and Paul Harris, are a hair's breadth from solving the mysteries of the Hypnerotomachia Poliphili -- a renowned text attributed to an Italian nobleman, a work that has baffled scholars since its publication in 1499. But as their deadline looms, research has stalled -- until a long-lost diary surfaces with a vital clue. And when a fellow researcher is murdered just hours later, Tom and Paul realize that they are not the first to glimpse the Hypnerotomachia's secrets.
Portrait in Sepia
FIC ALLENDE
Completing the trilogy that includes the bestselling novels "Daughter of Fortune" and "The House of the Spirits, Portrait in Sepia" is a stunning novel about memory and family secrets. Set at the end of the 19th century, this book is a richly imagined historical novel featuring the colorful and intrepid del Valle family.
Mr. Darcy's Daughters
FIC ASTON
Picking up twenty years after Pride and Prejudice left off, "Mr. Darcy's Daughters" begins in the year 1818. Elizabeth and Darcy have gone to Constantinople, giving us an opportunity to get to know their five daughters, who have left the sheltered surroundings of Pemberley for a few months in London. While the eldest, Letitia, frets and the youngest, Alethea, practices her music, twins Georgina and Belle flirt and frolic their way through parties and balls and Camilla -- levelheaded and independent -- discovers what joys and sorrows the city has to offer an intelligent young woman. Readers will delight in the return of such beloved Austen creations as Elizabeth's old nemesis Caroline Bingley (now Lady Warren), the ever-reliable Gardiners and wayward Aunt Lydia.
Middlesex
FIC EUGENIDE
In the spring of 1974, Calliope Stephanides, a student at a girls' school in Grosse Pointe, finds herself drawn to a chain-smoking, strawberry blond classmate with a gift for acting. The passion that furtively develops between them--along with Callie's failure to develop--leads Callie to suspect that she is not like other girls. In fact, she is not really a girl at all.
Love in the Ruins
FIC PERCY
Dr. Tom More has created a miraculous instrument--the Ontological Lapsometer, a kind of stethoscope of the human spirit. With it, he plans to cure mankind of its spiritual flu. Though scorned by the experts, Tom embarks on an outrageous odyssey to prove himself. But in attempting to save the world from destruction, our hero ultimately begins to understand what he can never really know--the value of life and its corresponding susceptibility to time, chance, and ruin.
Thirteen Steps Down
FIC RENDELL
Mix Cellini is obsessed. And not just with the supermodel he’s been stalking. He’s also endlessly fascinated by the life of Reggie Christie, the infamous serial killer hanged fifty years ago. So when things get difficulthis snoopy landlady and her friends watch him with growing suspicion and the object of his desire ignores himMix turns to his hero, Reggie Christie, for inspiration. And Reggie was a man for whom murder began as a practical solution and became a matter of appetite.
The Night Villa
FIC GOODMAN
Bestselling author Goodman's novel sweeps across the dramatic skies of present day Texas to ancient Capri, evocatively telling a tale of intrigue, romance, and treachery that changes two women's lives centuries apart.
A Short History of Tractors in Ukrainian
FIC LEWYCKA
A wise, tender, deeply funny novel about an eccentric elderly Ukrainian widower in England and the struggles of his two feuding daughters to thwart the voluptuous young gold-digger from the old country who sweeps him off his feet.
Hanna's Daughters
FIC FREDRIKS
Spanning more than 100 years in the lives of three remarkable women--a mother, daughter, and grandmother--this luminous, heartfelt novel is shaped by the epic sweep of history and linked through a century of great love and great loss.
Portuguese Irregular Verbs
FIC MCCALL SMITH
Von Igelfeld is the world’s leading scholar on Portuguese irregular verbs, having written a majestic book on the subject. But in other matters, von Igelfeld is not nearly so skilled. Whether haplessly playing tennis against an equally dreadful opponent, or committing his friends to swordfighting duels without their knowledge, von Igelfeld is somewhat naive in the ways of the world. Yet that does not stop him from having a go at life, and the results are always humorous.
The Accusers
FIC DAVIS
Fresh from his trip to Britain, Marcus Didius Falco needs to re-establish his presence in Rome. A minor role in the trial of a senator entangles him in the machinations of Silius Italicus and Paccius Africanus two real-life lawyers at the top of their trade. These notorious ex-consuls play a dangerous game, where success brings rich pickings but a mistrial or a wrong verdict entails huge financial penalties. The senator is convicted but then dies, apparently by suicide. It may be a legal move to protect his heirs, but Silius hires Falco and his young associates to prove it was murder. As Falco shows off his own talents in the role of advocate, he exposes himself to powerful elements in Roman law: offending the wrong people may lead to charges he has not bargained for, in a contest that threatens financial ruin for himself and his family.
Sarum: The Novel of England
FIC RUTHERFU
A masterpiece that is breathtaking in its scope, SARUM is an epic novel that traces the entire turbulent course of English history. This rich tapesty weaves a compelling saga of five families who preserve their own particular characteristics over the centuries, and offer a fascinating glimpse into the future.
The Cold Moon
FIC DEAVER
On a freezing December night, with a full moon hovering in the black sky over New York City, two people are brutally murdered -- the death scenes marked by eerie, matching calling cards: moon-faced clocks inves-tigators fear ticked away the victims' last moments on earth. Renowned criminologist Lincoln Rhyme immediately identifies the clock distributor and has the chilling realization that the killer -- who has dubbed himself the Watchmaker -- has more murders planned in the hours to come.
Cradle and All
FIC PATTERSO
Two pregnant teenagers--both virgins--find themselves at the center of a terrifying battle on which the fate of humanity hangs. They haven't been told of the secret prophecy of the Virgin of Fatima, known only to the Pope: one of these girls will give birth to the Messiah while the other will bear the child of Satan.
Interview with the Vampire
FIC RICE
In a remote room in a large city, a young reporter sits face-to-face with his most astonishing subject: a onetime New Orleans gentleman plantation owner who, in vividly terrifying and haunting detail, recalls his centuries of extraordinary life--beginning with his initiation into the ranks of the living dead at the hands of the sinister, sensual vampire Lestat.
Sarah's Key
FIC ROSNAY
Paris, July 1942: Sarah, a ten year-old girl, is brutally arrested with her family by the French police in the Vel’ d’Hiv’ roundup, but not before she locks her younger brother in a cupboard in the family's apartment, thinking that she will be back within a few hours. Paris, May 2002: On Vel’ d’Hiv’s 60th anniversary, journalist Julia Jarmond is asked to write an article about this black day in France's past. Through her contemporary investigation, she stumbles onto a trail of long-hidden family secrets that connect her to Sarah. Julia finds herself compelled to retrace the girl's ordeal, from that terrible term in the Vel d'Hiv', to the camps, and beyond. As she probes into Sarah's past, she begins to question her own place in France, and to reevaluate her marriage and her life.
The Crimson Petal and the White
FIC FABER
At the heart of this panoramic, multidimensional narrative is the compelling struggle of a young woman to lift her body and soul out of the gutter. Faber leads readers back to 1870s London, where Sugar, a 19-year-old whore in the brothel of the terrifying Mrs. Castaway, yearns for escape to a better life.
The Eyre Affair
FIC FFORDE
In Jasper Fforde's Great Britain, circa 1985, time travel is routine, cloning is a reality (dodos are the resurrected pet of choice), and literature is taken very, very seriously. England is a virtual police state where an aunt can get lost (literally) in a Wordsworth poem and forging Byronic verse is a punishable offense. All this is business as usual for Thursday Next, renowned Special Operative in literary detection. But when someone begins kidnapping characters from works of literature and plucks Jane Eyre from the pages of Bronte's novel, Thursday is faced with the challenge of her career. Fforde's ingenious fantasy-enhanced by a Web site that re-creates the world of the novel--unites intrigue with English literature in a delightfully witty mix.
Lost in a Good Book
FIC FFORDE
When Landen, the love of her life, is eradicated by the corrupt multinational Goliath Corporation, Thursday Next must moonlight as a Prose Resource Operative of Jurisfiction, the police force inside books. She is apprenticed to the man-hating Miss Havisham from Dickens's "Great Expectations," who grudgingly shows Thursday the ropes. Along with jumping into the works of Kafka and Austen, and even Beatrix Potter's "The Tale of the Flopsy Bunnies," Thursday finds herself the target of a series of potentially lethal coincidences, the authenticator of a newly discovered play by the Bard himself, and the only one who can prevent an unidentifiable pink sludge from engulfing all life on Earth.
The Well of Lost Plots
FIC FFORDE
Literary detective, Thursday Next, definitely needs some downtime. And what better place for a respite than in the hidden depths of the Well of Lost Plots, where all unpublished books reside? But peace and quiet remain elusive for Thursday, who soon discovers that the Well is a veritable linguistic free-for-all, where grammasites run rampant, plot devices are hawked on the black market, and lousy books, like the one she has taken up residence in, are scrapped for salvage. To make matters worse, a murderer is stalking the personnel of Jurisfiction and it's up to Thursday to save the day.
Cleopatra's Daughter
FIC MORAN
After the death of their parents, Marc Antony and Cleopatra, twins Alexander and Selene and younger brother Ptolemy are in a dangerous position, left to the mercy of their father's greatest rival, Octavian Caesar. However, Caesar does not kill them as expected, but takes the trio to Rome to be paraded as part of his triumphant return and to demonstrate his solidified power. As the twins adapt to life in Rome in the inner circle of Caesar's family, they grow into adulthood ensconced in a web of secrecy, intrigue and constant danger. Told from Selene's perspective, the tale draws readers into the fascinating world of ancient Rome and into the court of Rome's first and most famous emperor.
The Queen's Mistake
FIC HAEGER
When the young and beautiful Catherine Howard becomes the fifth wife of King Henry VIII, she seems to be on top of the world. Yet her reign is destined to be brief and heartbreaking, as she is forced to do battle with enemies far more powerful than she could have ever imagined.
The Other Boleyn Girl
FIC GREGORY
When Mary Boleyn comes to court as an innocent girl of fourteen, she catches the eye of Henry VIII. Dazzled by the king, Mary falls in love with both her golden prince and her growing role as unofficial queen. However, she soon realizes just how much she is a pawn in her family's ambitious plots as the king's interest begins to wane and she is forced to step aside for her best friend and rival: her sister, Anne.
*Please note that most adult fiction titles are acquired through donations--thank you to those who are generous with their gently read books!
