New Release Adult Fiction: August 10, 2022
Chrysalis (Jeremy Logan #6) by Lincoln Child
GENRE: Thriller
THE SYNOPSIS: Like millions of people around the world, Jeremy Logan (famed enigmalogist, or investigator of unexplained things) has grown to rely on his incredible new tech device. Made by Chrysalis, the global multi-billion-dollar tech company, the small optical device connects people in a stunning new way, tapping into virtual reality for the first time on a wide scale.
And yet, when Logan is summoned by Chrysalis to investigate a disturbing anomaly in the massive new product rollout, Logan is shocked to see the true scope of the massive company. He also quickly realizes that something in Chrysalis’s technology is very wrong, and could be potentially devastating. The question is what, and where is the danger coming from?
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Francie’s Got a Gun by Carrie Snyder
GENRE: Psychological Fiction
THE SYNOPSIS: On a June afternoon in a small city, a wild-eyed girl named Francie dashes down a neighbourhood street, clutching a gun. She doesn't know exactly what she's running from, and she doesn't know what she's heading towards. All she understands is the need to survive. To save herself, she has no choice but to run--and to save those she loves, she must hold tight to that gun.
Swirling around Francie is a chorus of friends, family, and neighbours, each person with a different view of her. As we hear from these voices--Francie's steadfast best friend, Alice; Alice's comically unaware mother, Sally, and struggling mathematician father, David; Francie's distressed and distracted mother, Marietta, and troubled, unwell father, Luce--a fractured portrait emerges of the girl and the village surrounding her. And at last we arrive at a still point in the chaos: a tall tree where Francie takes shelter, and where the meaning of her flight--for herself, and for the people around her--becomes clear.
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Mercury Pictures Presents by Anthony Marra
GENRE: Historical Fiction
THE SYNOPSIS: Like many before her, Maria Lagana has come to Hollywood to outrun her past. Born in Rome, where every Sunday her father took her to the cinema instead of church, Maria immigrates with her mother to Los Angeles after a childhood transgression leads to her father's arrest.
Fifteen years later, on the eve of America's entry into World War II, Maria is an associate producer at Mercury Pictures, trying to keep her personal and professional lives from falling apart. Her mother won't speak to her. Her boss, a man of many toupees, has been summoned to Washington by congressional investigators. Her boyfriend, a virtuoso Chinese-American actor, can't escape the studio's narrow typecasting. And the studio itself, Maria's only home in exile, teeters on the verge of bankruptcy.
Over the coming months, as the bright lights go dark across Los Angeles, Mercury Pictures becomes a nexus of European émigrés: modernist poets trying their luck as B-movie screenwriters, once-celebrated architects becoming scale-model miniaturists, and refugee actors finding work playing the very villains they fled. While the world descends into war, Maria rises through a maze of conflicting politics, divided loyalties, and jockeying ambitions. But when the arrival of a stranger from her father's past threatens Maria's carefully constructed facade, she must finally confront her father's fate--and her own.
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Only Sisters by Lilian Nattel
GENRE: Literary Fiction
THE SYNOPSIS: Joan has always done the right thing, both as a palliative care doctor and as a caregiver for her widowed mother, Sheila. Joan's adventurous sister, Vivien, is a different story. She left home as soon as she was able--running from an insecure childhood troubled by an alcoholic father and a mother who constantly threw away all their possessions in order to buy new ones. Vivien's rarely been back, working as a nurse in the world's trouble zones, leaving the heavy burden of family on her sister.
Still, when Vivien learns that their mother is seriously ill, she reaches out to Joan. She's heading for a remote village where Ebola is spreading, and she's afraid she may die. If she does, she wants Joan to pose as her online so her dying mother won't have to grieve a daughter. It's a lie, but it's the good kind of lie, designed to spare their mother, and so Joan reluctantly agrees, figuring it will never come to that.
But Vivien does die. And even as Joan mourns her sister, she begins to impersonate her online, as promised. It's difficult at first, but to her surprise, posing as Vivien becomes liberating, even addictive. Then she receives a message on her sister's Facebook from a man claiming to be the son Vivien gave up for adoption, and the line between right and wrong, adventure and tragedy, really begins to blur.
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Reckoning (FBI Thriller #26) by Catherine Coulter
GENRE: Thriller
THE SYNOPSIS: When she was twelve years old, Kirra Mandarian's parents were murdered and she barely escaped with her life. Fourteen years later Kirra is a commonwealth attorney back home in Porte Franklin, Virginia, and her goal is to find out who killed her parents and why. She assumes the identity of E.N.--Eliot Ness--and gathers proof to bring down the man she believes was behind her parents' deaths. She quickly learns that big-time criminals are very dangerous indeed and realizes she needs Dillon Savich's help. Savich brings in Special Agent Griffin Hammersmith to work with Lieutenant Jeter Thorpe, the young detective who'd saved Kirra years before.
Emma Hunt, a piano prodigy and the granddaughter of powerful crime boss Mason Lord, was only six years old when she was abducted. Then, she was saved by her adoptive father, San Francisco federal judge Ramsey Hunt. Now a 12-year-old with a black belt in Tae Kwon Do, she narrowly saves herself from a would-be kidnapper at Davies Hall in San Francisco. Worried for her safety, Emma's entire family joins her for her next performance, at the Kennedy Center in Washington, D.C.. Sherlock and officers from METRO are assigned to protect her, but things don't turn out as planned...
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Sugar and Salt (Bella Vista Chronicles #4) by Susan Wiggs
GENRE: Romance
THE SYNOPSIS: Jerome "Sugar" Barnes learned the art of baking in his grandma's bakery, also called Sugar, on historic Perdita Street in San Francisco. He supplies baked goods to the Lost and Found Bookshop across the street.
When the restaurant that shares his commercial kitchen loses its longtime tenant, a newcomer moves in: Margot Salton, a barbecue master from Texas.
Margot isn't exactly on the run, but she needs a fresh start. She's taken care of herself her whole life, pulling herself up by her fingernails to recover from trauma, and her dream has been to open a restaurant somewhere far, far from Texas. The shared kitchen with Jerome Sugar's bakery is the perfect setup: a state-of-the-art kitchen and a vibrant neighborhood popular with tourists and locals.
Margot instantly takes to Jerome's grandmother, the lively, opinionated Ida, and the older woman proves to be a good mentor. Margot thinks Jerome is gorgeous, and despite their different backgrounds their attraction is powerful--even though Jerome worries that Margot will simply move on from him once she's found some peace and stability. But just as she starts to relax into a happy new future, Margot's past in Texas comes back to haunt her...
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The Couple at No. 9 by Claire Douglas
GENRE: Thriller
THE SYNOPSIS: It was the house of their dreams. Until the bodies were found . . .
BODIES FOUND UNDER PATIO
When pregnant Saffron Cutler moves into 9 Skelton Place with boyfriend Tom and sets about renovations the last thing she expects is builders uncovering a body - two bodies, in fact.
POLICE INVESTIGATE
Forensics indicate the bodies have been buried at least thirty years. Nothing Saffy need worry herself over. Until the police launch a murder investigation and ask to speak to the cottage's former owner - her grandmother, Rose.
OWNER QUESTIONED
Rose is in a care home and Alzheimer's means her memory is increasingly confused. She can't help the police but it is clear she remembers something.
A KILLER AT LARGE?
As Rose's fragmented memories resurface, and the police dig ever deeper, Saffy fears she and the cottage are being watched.
What happened thirty years ago?
Why did no one miss the victims?
What part did her grandmother play?
And is Saffy now in danger?
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The Family Remains (The Family Upstairs #2) by Lisa Jewell
GENRE: Thriller
THE SYNOPSIS: Early one morning on the shore of the Thames, DCI Samuel Owusu is called to the scene of a gruesome discovery. When Owusu sends the evidence for examination, he learns the bones are connected to a cold case that left three people dead on the kitchen floor in a Chelsea mansion thirty years ago.
Rachel Rimmer has also received a shock—news that her husband, Michael, has been found dead in the cellar of his house in France. All signs point to an intruder, and the French police need her to come urgently to answer questions about Michael and his past that she very much doesn’t want to answer.
After fleeing London thirty years ago in the wake of a horrific tragedy, Lucy Lamb is finally coming home. While she settles in with her children and is just about to purchase their first-ever house, her brother takes off to find the boy from their shared past whose memory haunts their present.
As they all race to discover answers to these convoluted mysteries, they will come to find that they’re connected in ways they could have never imagined.
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The Last White Man by Mohsin Hamid
GENRE: Dystopian
THE SYNOPSIS: One morning, Anders wakes to find that his skin has turned dark, his reflection a stranger to him. At first he tells only Oona, an old friend, newly a lover. Soon, reports of similar occurrences surface across the land. Some see in the transformations the long-dreaded overturning of an established order, to be resisted to a bitter end. In many, like Anders's father and Oona's mother, a sense of profound loss wars with profound love. As the bond between Anders and Oona deepens, change takes on a different shading: a chance to see one another, face to face, anew.
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The Lost Kings by Tyrell Johnson
GENRE: Thriller
THE SYNOPSIS: Twins Jeanie and Jamie King are inseparable. Stuck in a cabin in rural Washington with their alcoholic father, they cling to one another for safety and companionship. Until one night, when their father comes home covered in blood. The next day, he's gone . . . and so is Jamie. Jeanie's whole world is turned upside down. Not only has she lost her beloved brother, but with no family left in Washington, she is ripped from everything she knows, including Maddox, the boy she could be learning to love.
Twenty years later, Jeanie is in England. She keeps her demons at bay by drinking too much, sleeping with a married man, and speaking to a therapist she doesn't respect. But her old life catches up to her when Maddox reappears, claiming to have tracked down her dad. Stunned, Jeanie must decide whether to continue running from her past or to confront her father and finally find out what really happened that night, where her brother is, and why she was the one left behind.
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The Many Daughters of Afong Moy by Jamie Ford
GENRE: Historical Fiction
THE SYNOPSIS: Dorothy Moy breaks her own heart for a living.
As Washington’s former poet laureate, that’s how she describes channeling her dissociative episodes and mental health struggles into her art. But when her five-year-old daughter exhibits similar behavior and begins remembering things from the lives of their ancestors, Dorothy believes the past has truly come to haunt her. Fearing that her child is predestined to endure the same debilitating depression that has marked her own life, Dorothy seeks radical help.
Through an experimental treatment designed to mitigate inherited trauma, Dorothy intimately connects with past generations of women in her family: Faye Moy, a nurse in China serving with the Flying Tigers; Zoe Moy, a student in England at a famous school with no rules; Lai King Moy, a girl quarantined in San Francisco during a plague epidemic; Greta Moy, a tech executive with a unique dating app; and Afong Moy, the first Chinese woman to set foot in America.
As painful recollections affect her present life, Dorothy discovers that trauma isn’t the only thing she’s inherited. A stranger is searching for her in each time period. A stranger who’s loved her through all of her genetic memories. Dorothy endeavors to break the cycle of pain and abandonment, to finally find peace for her daughter, and gain the love that has long been waiting, knowing she may pay the ultimate price.
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We Should Not Be Afraid of the Sky by Emma Hooper
GENRE: Historical Fiction
THE SYNOPSIS: During the golden age of the Roman Empire, five young girls enjoy a modest childhood in their small Portuguese village. They race each other through lemon orchards and pick fresh fruit for the commander who overlooks his people from a large house on the hill. Though the girls are all raised by different families, there is one thing they know without a doubt: they are sisters.
What they don’t know is that their simple existence is about to be irrevocably changed. When soldiers abduct them from their village and bring them to the commander, the sisters are suddenly forced to confront long-buried secrets that reveal their lives to be anything but ordinary. Burgeoning on womanhood just as the Empire begins to show signs of crumbling around them, they soon find themselves at the centre of a deadly standoff and must part ways to fight their own battles if they're to have any chance of surviving.
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