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AUTHOR

Queen of Babble

Lizzie Nichols sets off across the pond to spend the summer with British boyfriend Andrew, whom she barely knows. When Lizzie learns that Andrew isn't the man she imagined, she changes direction and heads for France, where her best friend Shari is working at Château Mirac in the Dordogne wine country. En route, she meets Jean-Luc de Villiers, a French-American hottie whose father owns the château, and who would be so easy to fall in love with if he weren't already taken.

Cabot, Meg

Dead Days of Summer

When bookstore owner Annie Darling's PI husband, Max, accepts a new case and fails to come home, she's frantic and calls in all her friends, including the police. The authorities organize an effective search that leads to the body of an attractive woman near Max's abandoned car; in the trunk is the murder weapon. Portrayed by the press as an unfaithful husband and killer, Max is arrested as soon as he surfaces. Annie goes undercover, determined to clear Max's name even if it means putting herself in a cunning murderer's path.

Hart, Carolyn

Espresso Tales

Bertie the immensely talented six year old is now enrolled in kindergarten, and much to his dismay, has been clad in pink overalls for his first day of class. Bruce has lost his job as a surveyor, and between admiring glances in the mirror, is contemplating becoming a wine merchant. Pat is embarking on a new life at Edinburgh University and perhaps on a new relationship, courtesy of Domenica, her witty and worldly-wise neighbor. 

McCall Smith, Alexander

A Field of Darkness

Madeline Dare is a jumble of contradictions.  She comes from an old-money Long Island family but is married to Dean, a railroad worker, in Syracuse, N.Y.  Dean's job requires frequent travel, while Madeline writes fluff features for the local newspaper. Nothing in her background prepares her for trying to solve the bizarre 20-year-old murder of two young women, a crime that her cousin, Lapthorne Townsend, might have been involved in.

Read, Cornelia

End in Tears

Teenage mother Amber Marshalson has been found bludgeoned to death by the side of a rural English road (the killer, as it turns out, twice tried to end her life, first dropping a lump of concrete onto a silver car he had mistaken for hers). Soon after, a young, pregnant acquaintance of Amber is murdered. The suspects are numerous: a pair of peculiar twins; a heavily pierced and tattooed boyfriend; a thin, hooded figure seen lurking in the nearby woods. Meanwhile, Inspector Wexford has problems of his own; his daughter, Sylvia, has agreed to be the surrogate mother for her ex-husband's new wife.

Rendell, Ruth

Voyagers

Stoner knew. The fiery object hurtling toward the Earth was an alien spacecraft. But the world might never know. He was trapped in an iron cordon of secrecy, for the discovery had shattered the world power balance, setting off a brutal struggle for supremacy that raged from the sacred halls of the Vatican to the corridors of the Kremlin and the Pentagon. The forces of fear and treachery would use any weapon at their command, from mind war to sabotage, to keep the world in darkness.

Bova, Ben

Lilah

Lilah is the sister of the prophet Ezra, who led his people back to Jerusalem from the Babylonian exile. After securing an audience with the king of Babylonia, which paves the way for the return to Jerusalem, Lilah makes the arduous journey alongside her brother, even though it means leaving her longtime love, Antinoes. In the course of rebuilding the temple in Jerusalem, Ezra becomes so extreme in his beliefs that he bans non-Jewish wives and children to preserve the purity of his people. Disgusted at his decision, Lilah leaves with the exiled women, facing a bloody, terrifying future.

Halter, Mark

Anybody Out There?

Anna Walsh has returned to the bosom of her family in the Dublin suburbs to recuperate from the horrendous car accident that has left her with multiple fractures and a disfiguring scar across her face. Desperate to go back to New York and resume her normal life, she soon packs up her bags and returns to her job in beauty PR for punk cosmetics brand Candy Grrrl. A lonely and debilitated Anna leaves e-mails and phone messages for her mysteriously absent husband, Aidan, pleading for him to reply.

Keyes, Marian

Hard Truth

Two children who mysteriously disappeared twenty-one years ago are the last thing on Lorna Temple’s mind when she returns to her Pennsylvania hometown to sell the old family property in the wake of her parents’ passing. But instead of memories, the fields where Lorna grew up yield something utterly chilling.

Stewart, Mariah

Terrorist

Ahmad, an 18-year-old high school student, is the son of an Irish American mother and an Egyptian father. He has taken up the Islamic faith of his father so completely that he is obsessed with distancing himself from the unclean infidel, which is how he views the New Jersey community in which he lives. The high-school guidance counselor, who attempts to steer young Ahmad in a direction he feels is more suitable and productive, is a compelling and oddly attractive supporting character, who, as it turns out, plays a vital role in a deadly plot into which Ahmad tumbles like the naive, easily manipulated adolescent he is.

Updike, John

Coming Out

Olympia's first husband, Chauncey, is a stereotypical, upper-class snob, with no job but a passion for playing polo. Harry, son of Holocaust survivors, champions liberal causes. When Olympia's teenage twin daughters, Veronica and Virginia, are invited to an exclusive "coming out" ball, everyone's lives are thrown into turmoil.

Steel, Danielle

Cold Truth

Twenty-six years ago, even before a series of brutal murders rocked the idyllic town of Bowers Inlet, Cassie Burke lost her parents, her sister, and nearly her own life to a transient befriended by her father. Back then, Cassie was a scared kid–now she’s a homicide cop. Back then, the suspect was caught and convicted–he died in prison. But now the killing has started again. And all signs indicate that the Bayside Strangler has come back for more.

Stewart, Mariah

Digging To America

Two families converge at the Baltimore airport, each nervously anticipating the arrival of an adopted Korean baby girl. Bitsy and Brad Donaldson appear to be stereotypical white middle-class Americans. The Yazdans--Ziba, Sami, and Sami's glamorous, long-widowed mother, Maryam--are Iranian Americans. Hoping that the families will stay in touch so that their daughters can grow up together, Bitsy invents Arrival Day, an annual celebration that grows increasingly elaborate each year. Ultimately, these amusingly awkward and contentious events become the gauge of their lives.

Tyler, Anne

The Politically Incorrect Guide to Women, Sex and Feminism

We were raised to think we could have it all. In college we were told that men weren’t necessary. Pop culture told us that career—not family—came first. The idea of being a stay-at-home mom was for losers. And yet are we happier than our mothers or grandmothers, who grew up before women were "liberated" by the sexual revolution? For many women, the answer is no.

305.42 Luk

Conservatives Without Conscience

John Dean, who served as White House counsel under Richard Nixon and then helped to break the Watergate scandal with his testimony before the Senate, takes a vivid and analytical look at a Republican Party that has changed drastically from the conservative movement that he joined in the mid-1960s as an admirer of Senator Barry Goldwater.

324.273 Dea

Six Lessons for Six Sons

As a boy, Massengale witnessed his father, Hugh, being knocked to his knees in Marshall, Tex., when he stood up to a white man who owed him money. Despite desperate poverty, Hugh imbued his son with the confidence to survive; in 1947, Joe started a landscaping business in California. He passed this confidence on to his sons along with five other lessons: fortitude, pride, persistence, fearlessness and focus. In each chapter Massengale and one son together reveal how one of these traits influenced their lives.

B Massengale, Joe

A Little History of the World

In 40 brief chapters, Gombrich relates the history of humankind from the Stone Age through World War II. In between are historic accounts of such topics as cave people and their inventions (including speech), ancient life along the Nile and in Mesopotamia and Greece, the growth of religion, the Dark Ages, the age of chivalry, the New World, and the Thirty Years' War. Much of this history is told through concise sketches of such figures as Confucius, Alexander the Great, Hannibal, Jesus Christ, Charlemagne, Leonardo da Vinci, Napoleon, and Columbus.

909 Gom

Dark Tort

Arriving at a local law firm to ready breakfast for clients of one of the attorneys, she trips over the body of 20-year-old Dusty Routt, a young employee who lives down the street from Goldy. When Dusty's distraught mother, who has no faith in cops, begs Goldy to find out who killed her daughter, Goldy's curiosity kicks in, and she cobbles together a list of clues that lead back to the law firm and to paintings of food by artist Charlie Baker that decorate the firm's walls.

Davidson, Diane Mott

Prior Bad Acts

Shortly after Minneapolis judge Carey Moore decides that the many "prior bad acts" of accused serial killer Karl Dahl can't be used in his trial, Dahl escapes from jail and someone attacks Moore. Homicide cops Sam Kovac and Nikki Liska, introduced in Ashes to Ashes (1999), are assigned to protect the judge, whom the police hate for her liberal views. Moore's disintegrating marriage and her husband's shady business dealings lead the investigation in new directions, while more murders exacerbate the hunt for Dahl.

Hoag, Tami

Everyman

The unnamed hero here is a thrice-married adman, a father and a philanderer, a 70-something who spends his last days lamenting his lost prowess (physical and sexual), envying his healthy and beloved older brother, and refusing to apologize for his many years of bad behavior, although he palpably regrets them.  Everyman begins with its hero's end, his interment. Only three of the graveside mourners speak -- the dead man's daughter, his second wife and his older brother.

Roth, Philip