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Featured Books

Make this a December to remember with these historical novels and holiday thrillers!

The Echo of Old Books by Barbara Davis

Book No: DB116319

Rare-book dealer Ashlyn Greer's affinity for books extends beyond the intoxicating scent of old paper, ink, and leather. She can feel the echoes of the books' previous owners. An emotional fingerprint only she can read. When Ashlyn discovers a pair of beautifully bound volumes that appear to have never been published, her gift quickly becomes an obsession. Not only is each inscribed with a startling incrimination, but the authors, Hemi and Belle, tell conflicting sides of a tragic romance. The more Ashlyn learns about Hemi and Belle, the nearer she comes to bringing closure to their love story - and to the unfinished chapters of her own life. WARNING: Strong Language

Bridge to the Sun: The Secret Role of the Japanese Americans Who Fought in the Pacific in World War II by Bruce Henderson

Book No: DB111053

After Japan's surprise attack on Pearl Harbor, the U.S. military was desperate to find Americans who spoke Japanese to serve in the Pacific war. They soon turned to the Nisei, first-generation U.S. citizens whose parents were immigrants from Japan. Eager to prove their loyalty to America, several thousand Nisei-many of them volunteering from the internment camps where they were being held behind barbed wire-were selected by the Army for top-secret training, then were rushed to the Pacific theater. Henderson reveals, in riveting detail, the harrowing untold story of the Nisei and their major contributions in the war of the Pacific, through six Japanese American soldiers.

The Wright Brothers by David McCullough

Book No: DB082175

On a winter day in 1903, in the Outer Banks of North Carolina, two unknown brothers from Ohio changed history. But it would take the world some time to believe what had happened: the age of flight had begun, with the first heavier-than-air, powered machine carrying a pilot.

 In this thrilling book, master historian David McCullough draws on the immense riches of the Wright Papers, including private diaries, notebooks, scrapbooks, and more than a thousand letters from private family correspondence to tell the human side of the Wright Brothers' story, including the little-known contributions of their sister, Katharine, without whom things might well have gone differently for them.

There Are Rivers in the Sky by Elif Shafak

Book No: DB123649

This is the story of one lost poem, two great rivers, and three remarkable lives - all connected by a single drop of water. In the ruins of Nineveh, that ancient city of Mesopotamia, there lies hidden in the sand fragments of a long-forgotten poem, the Epic of Gilgamesh. In Victorian London, an extraordinary child is born at the edge of the dirt-black Thames.  In 2014 Turkey, Narin, a Yazidi girl living by the River Tigris, waits to be baptised with water brought from the holy city of Lalish in Iraq. In 2018 London, broken-hearted Zaleekhah, a hydrologist, moves to a houseboat on the Thames to escape the wreckage of her marriage. A dazzling feat of storytelling, There are Rivers in the Sky spans centuries, continents and cultures, entwined by rivers, rains, and waterdrops.

The Most Wonderful Crime of the Year by Ally Carter

Book No: DB124576

Meet Maggie Chase and Ethan Wyatt. She's the new queen of the cozy mystery. He's Mr. Big-Time thriller guy. But when they both accept a cryptic invitation to attend a Christmas house party at the English estate of a reclusive fan, neither is expecting their host to be the most powerful author in the world...That night, the weather turns, and the next morning Eleanor is gone. She vanished from a locked room, and Maggie has to wonder: Is Eleanor in danger? Or is it all some kind of test? Is Ethan the competition? Or is he the only person in that snowbound mansion she can trust?

You Better Watch Out by James S. Murray

Book No: DB124952

Forty-eight hours until Christmas, Jessica Kane wakes up with blurred vision, ears ringing, and in excruciating pain. A gash in her head and blood running down her face, the last thing she remembers is going for a run and something or someone hitting her in the head. It doesn't take her long to realize she is trapped in an unknown, deserted town with five other strangers who share similar stories of being attacked and stranded there. Unsure why and how they got there, she knows one thing for certain, she has to find a way out. That becomes nearly impossible when someone is meticulously orchestrating their deaths, one by one, and the only thing Jessica can do is watch the life leave their eyes. The fenced-in town is the killer's very own playground and there's nowhere left to hide... she better watch out because she could be next.

Enjoy a cornucopia of books.

Book No: DB083648

Thirty essays on the pleasures of food and eating in the Midwest. Includes Peggy Wolff on fish boils, Elizabeth Berg on meatloaf, Jacquelyn Mitchard on corn, Peter Sagal on paÌteÌ, Anne Dimock on rhubarb, Lorna Landvik on diets, and Sue Hubbell on pie.

Book No: DB095402

After years of trying to make it as a writer in 1990s New York City, James Smale finally sells his novel to none other than editor Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis. The two become friends, and Jackie encourages James to confront the truth of his relationship with his mother.

Book No: DBC19705

The National Football League is a towering, distinctly American colossus spewing out $14 billion in annual revenue. But it was not always a success. In The League, John Eisenberg focuses on the pioneering sportsmen who kept the league alive in the 1920s, 1930s, and 1940s, when its challenges were many and its survival was not guaranteed. At the time, college football, baseball, boxing, and horseracing dominated America's sports scene. Art Rooney, George Halas, Tim Mara, George Preston Marshall, and Bert Bell believed in pro football when few others did and ultimately succeeded only because at critical junctures each sacrificed the short-term success of his team for the longer-term good of the league. At once a history of a sport and a remarkable story of business ingenuity, The League is an essential read for any fan of our true national pastime

Book No: DB064677

San Francisco freelance writer Cynthia reluctantly spends Thanksgiving in New England with her married sister Frances and their long-estranged father, Robert. Cynthia believes Robert was responsible for their mother's death twenty-five years ago, but Frances has a different take. The reunion deteriorates as they all confront their shared past.

Book No: DB097804

Historian reevaluates the events driving the founding of the Plymouth colony in the seventeenth century. Discusses the founding of the peaceful alliance between the English and the Wampanoag Indians and its eventual bloody dissolution. Examines the complicated emotions and cultural narratives surrounding the holiday of Thanksgiving.

Book No: DB075765

Billy and the other soldiers of Bravo squad are home in the states for a victory tour after an Iraqi firefight they were in was taped and televised. As they experience a Dallas Cowboys game on Thanksgiving Day, Billy reflects on fame, life, and war.

DB 120710

A gifted healer unravels the mysteries of a cursed estate—and its enigmatic owner—in a witchy retelling of Jane Eyre . Trunks packed with potions and cures, Jane Aire sets out on a crisp, clear morning in October to face the greatest challenge of her sheltered girls’-school existence. A shadow lies over Thornfield Hall and its reclusive master, Edward Rochester. And he’s hired her only as a last resort. Jane stumbles again and again as she tries to establish a rapport with her prickly new employer, but he becomes the least of her worries as a mysterious force seems to work against her. The threats mount around both Jane and Rochester—who’s becoming more intriguing and appealing to her by the day. Jane begins to fear her herb healing and protective charms may not be enough to save the man she’s growing to love from a threat darker and more dangerous than either of them imagined.

DB 103941

Eight years ago, Grace McMullen broke Sutton Whitlock’s heart when she walked away. But it was only to save him from the baggage of her own troubled past. Now all she wants is to make sure he’s okay. Only everything she learns about him online says otherwise. According to his social media accounts, he placed roots in her hometown, married a look-alike, and even named his daughter Grace. He clearly hasn’t moved on. In fact, it’s creepy. So Grace does what any concerned ex-girlfriend would she moves home…and watches him. But when Grace crosses paths with Sutton’s wife, Campbell, an unexpected friendship develops. Campbell has no idea whom she’s inviting into her life. As the women grow closer, it becomes clear to Grace that Sutton is not the sentimental man she once knew. He seems controlling, unstable, and threatening. And what a broken man like Sutton is capable of, Grace can only imagine. It’s up to her to save Campbell and her baby now—but while she’s been watching them, who’s been watching her?

DB 100706

Lizzy Moon never wanted Moon Girl Farm. Eight years ago, she left the land that nine generations of gifted healers had tended, determined to distance herself from the whispers about her family’s strange legacy. When her beloved Grandmother Althea dies, Lizzy must face the tragedy still hanging over the farm’s lavender fields: the unsolved murders of two young girls. Lizzy discovers a Book of Remembrances meant to help Lizzy embrace her own special gifts. When she reconnects with Andrew Greyson, one of the few in town who believed in Althea’s innocence, she resolves to clear her grandmother’s name.

DB 063255

Dr. Julia Cates was one of the country's preeminent child psychiatrists until a shocking tragedy ruined her career. Retreating to her small western Washington hometown, Julia meets an extraordinary six-year-old girl who has inexplicably emerged from the deep woods nearby—a child locked in a world of unimaginable fear and isolation. To Julia, nothing is more important than saving the girl she now calls Alice. But Julia will need help from others, including the sister she barely knows and a handsome doctor with secrets of his own. What follows will test the limits of Julia's faith and strength, as she struggles to find a home for Alice... and for herself.

DB 116098

Ken and Abby Gardner lost their mother when they were small and they have been haunted by her absence ever since. Their father, Adam, a brilliant oceanographer, raised them mostly on his own in his remote home on Cape Cod, where the attachment between Ken and Abby deepened into something complicated-and as adults their relationship is strained. Now, years later, the siblings' lives are still deeply entwined. Ken is a successful businessman with political ambitions and a picture-perfect family and Abby is a talented visual artist who depends on her brother's goodwill, in part because he owns the studio where she lives and works. As the novel opens, Adam is approaching his seventieth birthday, staring down his mortality and fading relevance. He has always managed his bipolar disorder with medication, but he's determined to make one last scientific breakthrough and so he has secretly stopped taking his pills, which he knows will infuriate his children. Meanwhile, Abby and Ken are both harboring secrets of their own, and there is a new person on the periphery of the family-Steph, who doesn't make her connection known. As Adam grows more attuned to the frequencies of the deep sea and less so to the people around him, Ken and Abby each plan the elaborate gifts they will present to their father on his birthday, jostling for primacy in this small family unit. 

DB 122210

1975 is a time of change in America. The Vietnam War is ending. Muhammad Ali is fighting Joe Frazier. And 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. And that their search for answers will lead them to truths that could mean losing one another. A missing person mystery, a serial killer thriller, a love story, a unique twist on each, Chris Whitaker has written a novel about what lurks in the shadows of obsession and the blinding light of hope.

It’s Labor Day! So here are some books about people with jobs! Labor Omina Vincit!

Triangle by Katharine Weber

Book No: DBC9846

Esther Gottesfeld is the last living survivor of the notorious 1911 Triangle Shirtwaist fire and has told her story countless times in the span of her lifetime. Even so, her death at the age of 106 leaves unanswered many questions about what happened that fateful day. How did she manage to survive the fire when at least 146 workers, most of them women, her sister and fiancé among them, burned or jumped to their deaths from the sweatshop inferno? Are the discrepancies in her various accounts over the years just ordinary human fallacy, or is there a hidden story in Esther’s recollections of that terrible day? Esther’s granddaughter Rebecca Gottesfeld, with her partner George Botkin, an ingenious composer, seek to unravel the facts of the matter while Ruth Zion, a zealous feminist historian of the fire, bores in on them with her own mole-like agenda.

The Intuitionist by Colson Whitehead

Book No: DB91574

Two warring factions in the Department of Elevator Inspectors in a bustling metropolis vie for dominance: the Empiricists, who go by the book and rigorously check every structural and mechanical detail, and the Intuitionists, whose observational methods involve meditation and instinct. Lila Mae Watson, the city’s first black female inspector and a devout Intuitionist with the highest accuracy rate in the department, is at the center of the turmoil. An elevator in a new municipal building has crashed on Lila Mae’s watch, fanning the flames of the Empiticist-Intuitionist feud and compelling Lila Mae to go underground to investigate. As she endeavors to clear her name, she becomes entangled in a web of intrigue that leads her to a secret that will change her life forever.

Labor Day by Joyce Maynard

Book No: DB78426

With the end of summer closing in and a steamy Labor Day weekend looming in the town of Holton Mills, New Hampshire, thirteen-year-old Henry—lonely, friendless, not too good at sports—spends most of his time watching television, reading, and daydreaming about the soft skin and budding bodies of his female classmates. For company Henry has his long-divorced mother, Adele—a onetime dancer whose summer project was to teach him how to foxtrot; his hamster, Joe; and awkward Saturday-night outings to Friendly's with his estranged father and new stepfamily. As much as he tries, Henry knows that even with his jokes and his "Husband for a Day" coupon, he still can't make his emotionally fragile mother happy. Adele has a secret that makes it hard for her to leave their house and seems to possess an irreparably broken heart. But all that changes on the Thursday before Labor Day, when a mysterious bleeding man named Frank approaches Henry and asks for a hand. Over the next five days, Henry will learn some of life's most valuable lessons: how to throw a baseball, the secret to perfect piecrust, the breathless pain of jealousy, the power of betrayal, and the importance of putting others—especially those we love—above ourselves. And the knowledge that real love is worth waiting for.

The Displacements by Bruce Holsinger

Book No: DB109018

To all appearances, the Larsen-Hall family has everything: healthy children, a stable marriage, a lucrative career for Brantley, and the means for Daphne to pursue her art full-time. Their deluxe new Miami life has just clicked into place when Luna--the world's first category 6 hurricane--upends everything they have taken for granted. When the storm makes landfall, it triggers a descent of another sort. Their home was destroyed, two of its members missing, and finances abruptly cut off, the family finds everything they assumed about their lives now up for grabs. Swept into a mass rush of evacuees from across the American South, they are transported hundreds of miles to a FEMA megashelter where their new community includes an insurance-agent-turned-drug dealer, a group of vulnerable children, and a dedicated relief worker trying to keep the peace. Will "normal" ever return? A suspenseful read plotted on a vast national tapestry, The Displacements thrillingly explores what happens when privilege is lost and resilience is tested in a swiftly changing world.

Carrie Soto is Back” by Taylor Jenkins Reid

Book No: DB109886

Carrie Soto is fierce, and her determination to win at any cost has not made her popular. But by the time she retires from tennis, she is the best player the world has ever seen. She has shattered every record and claimed twenty Grand Slam titles. And if you ask Carrie, she is entitled to every one. She sacrificed nearly everything to become the best, with her father, Javier, as her coach. A former champion himself, Javier has trained her since the age of two. But six years after her retirement, Carrie finds herself sitting in the stands of the 1994 US Open, watching her record be taken from her by a brutal, stunning player named Nicki Chan. At thirty-seven years old, Carrie makes the monumental decision to come out of retirement and be coached by her father for one last year in an attempt to reclaim her record. Even if the sports media says that they never liked "the Battle-Axe" anyway. Even if her body doesn't move as fast as it did. And even if it means swallowing her pride to train with a man she once almost opened her heart to: Bowe Huntley. Like her, he has something to prove before he gives up the game forever. In spite of it all, Carrie Soto is back, for one epic final season.

Manual for Cleaning Women: Selected Stories by Lucia Berlin

Book No: DB83703

A retrospective collection of short fiction from the author. The stories contained in this volume involve everyday miracles and moments of grace in the laundromats and halfway houses of the American Southwest, in the homes of the upper classes, among switchboard operators, struggling mothers, bad mothers, and hitchhikers.