Posted on by Maureen

The God of the Woods by Liz Moore 

Book Description 

When a teenager vanishes from her Adirondack summer camp, two worlds collide

Early morning, August 1975: a camp counselor discovers an empty bunk. Its occupant, Barbara Van Laar, has gone missing. Barbara isn’t just any thirteen-year-old: she’s the daughter of the family that owns the summer camp and employs most of the region’s residents. And this isn’t the first time a Van Laar child has disappeared. Barbara’s older brother similarly vanished fourteen years ago, never to be found.

As a panicked search begins, a thrilling drama unfolds. Chasing down the layered secrets of the Van Laar family and the blue-collar community working in its shadow, Moore’s multi-threaded story invites readers into a rich and gripping dynasty of secrets and second chances. It is Liz Moore’s most ambitious and wide-reaching novel yet.

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Posted on by Maureen

Head Cases by John McMahon

Book Description 

Head Cases follows an enigmatic group of FBI agents as they hunt down a murderer seeking his own justice in this electrifying—and commercial—series debut.

FBI Agent Gardner Camden is an analytical genius with an affinity for puzzles. He also has a blind spot on the human side of investigations, a blindness that sometimes even includes people in his own life, like his beloved seven-year-old daughter Camila. Gardner and his squad of brilliant yet quirky agents make up the Patterns and Recognition (PAR) unit, the FBI’s hidden edge, brought in for cases that no one else can solve.

When DNA links a murder victim to a serial killer long presumed dead, the team springs into action. A second victim establishes a pattern, and the murderer begins leaving a trail of clues and riddles especially for Gardner. And while the PAR team is usually relegated to working cold cases from behind a desk, the investigation puts them on the road and into the public eye, following in the footsteps of a killer.

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All the Other Mothers Hate Me by Sarah Harman 

Book Description 

A mom will do anything to save her kid. Anything.

“The missing boy is 10-year-old Alfie Risby, and to be perfectly honest with you, he’s a little shit.”

Florence Grimes is a thirty-one-year-old party girl who always takes the easy way out. Single, broke and unfulfilled after the humiliating end to her girl band career, she has only one reason to get out of bed each day: her ten-year-old son Dylan. But then Alfie Risby, her son’s bully and the heir to a vast frozen food empire, mysteriously vanishes during a class trip, and Dylan becomes the prime suspect. Florence, for once, is faced with a task she can’t quit: She’s got to find Alfie and clear her son’s name, or risk losing Dylan forever.

The only problem? Florence has no useful skills, let alone investigative ones, and all the other school moms hate her. Oh, and Florence has a reason to suspect Dylan might not be as innocent as she’d like to believe…

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They Never Learn by Layne Fargo 

Book Description 

Scarlett Clark is an exceptional English professor. But she’s even better at getting away with murder.

Every year, Dr. Clark searches for the worst man at Gorman University—professor, student, or otherwise—and plots his well-deserved demise. Thanks to her meticulous planning, she’s avoided drawing attention to herself…but as she’s preparing for her biggest kill yet, the school starts probing into the growing body count on campus. Determined to keep her enemies close, Dr. Clark insinuates herself into the investigation and charms the woman in charge. Everything’s going according to her master plan…until she loses control with her latest victim, putting her secret life at risk of exposure.

Meanwhile, Gorman student Carly Schiller is just trying to survive her freshman year. Finally free of her emotionally abusive father, all Carly wants is to focus on her studies and fade into the background. Her new roommate has other ideas. Allison Hadley is cool and confident—everything Carly wishes she could be—and the two girls quickly form an intense friendship. So when Allison is sexually assaulted at a party, Carly becomes obsessed with making the attacker pay…and turning her fantasies about revenge into a reality.

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He’s To Die For by Erin Dunn 

Book Description 

Brooklyn 99 meets The Charm Offensive in this sparkling romantic murder mystery: it’s murder cute in the first degree when a detective finds himself falling for the lead suspect in a career-making case.

At 29, Detective Rav Trivedi is the youngest member of the NYPD’s homicide squad, and his future looks bright. He may be a bit of an outsider in the department—an ivy-league educated gay Brit with a weakness for designer suits—but his meteoric rise and solve rate prove he belongs.

So when his CO assigns him lead on the high-profile murder of a record executive, Rav is ready for action. He won’t be distracted by TV crews, tabloids, or what’s trending on social media, nor by the ridiculously hot rock star with a clear motive and no alibi.

This is it, his shot, and he is not going to screw it up—certainly not by falling in love with his number one suspect…

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Ink Ribbon Red by Alex Pavesi 

Book Description 

Knives Out meets Saltburn in this wickedly plotted thriller, in which a group of friends play a deadly game that unwraps a motive for murder, perfect for fans of Agatha Christie and Alex Michaelides.

Anatol invites five of his oldest friends to his family home in the Wiltshire countryside to celebrate his thirtieth birthday. At his request, they play a game of his invention: Motive Method Death. The rules are simple: Everyone chooses two players at random, then writes a short story in which one kills the other.

Points are awarded for making the murders feel real. Of course, when given this assignment, it’s only natural for each friend to use what they know. Secrets. Grudges. Affairs. But once they’ve put it in a story, that secret is out. It’s not long before the game reawakens old resentments and brings private matters into the light of day. With each fictional crime, someone new gets a very real motive.

Can all six friends survive the weekend, or will truth turn out to be deadlier than fiction?

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Broken Country by Clare Leslie Hall 

Book Description 

“The farmer is dead. He is dead, and all anyone wants to know is who killed him.”

Beth and her gentle, kind husband Frank are happily married, but their relationship relies on the past staying buried. But when Beth’s brother-in-law shoots a dog going after their sheep, Beth doesn’t realize that the gunshot will alter the course of their lives. For the dog belonged to none other than Gabriel Wolfe, the man Beth loved as a teenager—the man who broke her heart years ago. Gabriel has returned to the village with his young son Leo, a boy who reminds Beth very much of her own son, who died in a tragic accident.

As Beth is pulled back into Gabriel’s life, tensions around the village rise and dangerous secrets and jealousies from the past resurface, this time with deadly consequences. Beth is forced to make a choice between the woman she once was, and the woman she has become.

A sweeping love story with the pace and twists of a thriller, Broken Country is a novel of simmering passion, impossible choices, and explosive consequences that toggles between the past and present to explore the far-reaching legacy of first love.

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Matchmaking for Psychopaths by Tasha Coryell

Book Description 

When Lexie’s fiancé runs off with her so-called best friend on her birthday, her carefully crafted fairy-tale life shatters. Having survived horrors in her past, she was determined to finally get her happily-ever-after—and she’s not giving up yet.

To distract herself, Lexie throws herself into her unusual job: matchmaking psychopaths (a specialty her clients are blissfully unaware of). But the loneliness is crushing. So when a gorgeous, overprotective new client named Aidan insists they’re soulmates, and another intriguing client, Rebecca, seems perfect to fill the best-friend-shaped hole in her life, Lexie can’t help but find the attention comforting—despite her own professional boundaries.

Then a human heart appears on Lexie’s doorstep. As more threatening packages arrive and her fiancé mysteriously disappears, she must confront a terrifying question: did she inadvertently match herself with a killer? Between Aidan’s claims that her fiancé will never return, Rebecca’s growing presence in her life, and her own dark past resurfacing, Lexie’s matchmaker instincts are being tested like never before.

Because someone is determined to ensure her story ends with a funeral.

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The Sirens by Emilia Hart 

Book Description 

A spellbinding novel about sisters separated by centuries, but bound together by the sea, from the author of the runaway New York Times bestseller Weyward

2019: Lucy awakens from a dream to find her hands around her ex-lover’s throat. Horrified, she flees to her older sister’s house on the Australian coast, hoping she can help explain the strangely vivid nightmare that preceded the attack—but Jess is nowhere to be found.

As Lucy awaits her return, the rumors surrounding Jess’s strange small town start to emerge. Numerous men have gone missing at sea, spread over decades. A tiny baby was found hidden in a cave. And sailors tell of hearing women’s voices on the waves. Desperate for answers, Lucy finds and begins to read her sister’s adolescent diary.

1999: Jess is a lonely sixteen-year-old in a rural town in the middle of the continent. Diagnosed with a rare allergy to water, she has always felt different, until her young, charming art teacher takes an interest in her drawings, seeing a power and maturity in them—and in her—that no one else has.

1800: Twin sisters Mary and Eliza have been torn from their loving father in Ireland and forced onto a convict ship bound for Australia. For their entire lives, they’ve feared the ocean, as their mother tragically drowned when they were just girls. Yet as the boat bears them further and further from all they know, they begin to notice changes in their bodies that they can’t explain, and they feel the sea beginning to call to them…

A breathtaking tale of female resilience and the bonds of sisterhood across time and space, The Sirens captures the power of dreams, and the mystery and magic of the sea.

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The Rabbit Club by Christopher J. Yates 

Book Description 

When Ali McCain, an eighteen-year-old from Los Angeles, is accepted at Oxford, it’s a chance to fulfill his dreams. To study English literature in England; to meet true intellectuals; and to glimpse the life he might have lived had his father—British rock star Gel McCain, legendary frontman of the Pale Fires—not abandoned him and his mother when he was a toddler.

But not long after he arrives at the storied campus, Ali is drawn into a dark, disorienting world where events grow more and more curious by the day. Trading on his father’s name, he gains entry into one of Oxford’s oldest and most selective secret societies, the Saracens. As he immerses himself in this rarefied world, he inadvertently sets in motion a series of events that might culminate in disaster.

A mind-bending literary house of mirrors, replete with bookish allusions and Easter eggs ranging from Brideshead Revisited to King Lear, The Rabbit Club is an arresting work of dark academia by the category’s finest writer.

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