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'Fabulous, full of wit, mystery, romance and small town politics... The characters are witty, quirky... The plot is twisty and…
engaging with lots of red herrings... I enjoyed hunting through the puzzle pieces alongside Maisie and Jack, but despite my best intentions, I couldn't guess the culprit' Reader review ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐Something is afoot in the little village of Bunting and someone is trying to kill the lady of the manor. Luckily, amateur sleuth Maisie Cooper is on the case. Maisie Cooper is done catching murderers, thank you very much. Having recently brought her brother's killers to justice, she's ready to go back to her glamorous life in Paris. But little does she know that the idyllic Sussex countryside is home to more than one criminal... When Maisie receives a letter asking for her help in the little village of Bunting from the lady of the manor, she is curious enough to accept. She is then shocked to discover that the very woman requesting her assistance is her estranged Aunt Phyllis, who believes that someone is out to kill her. Maisie must follow the clues to find the culprit before they strike again. As Maisie investigates alongside handsome Sergeant Wingard, she starts to wonder.:Why would someone want Aunt Phyllis dead? What could her eccentric aunt have possibly done to be the target for a killer? And does Maisie quite like all this detective business after all?Readers are gripped by Murder at Bunting Manor:'I loved the way that I was pulled into the mystery of the plot. I found myself constantly looking for potential clues which made it feel like a real puzzle to get stuck into. I had a lot of fun reading this book' Reader review ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐'Mixes classic whodunnit with cozy mystery elements... Kept me guessing... I thoroughly enjoyed it' Reader review ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐By Bobby Palmer. 2024
'Powerful' JOANNA GLEN'Beautiful' KATE SAWYER'A triumph' JENNIE GODFREYThe eagerly awaited new novel from Bobby Palmer, author of the critically acclaimed…
debut Isaac and the Egg.If you stood before sunrise in this wild old place, looking through the trees into the garden, here's what you'd see:A father and son, a fox standing between them.Jack, home for the first time in years, still determined to be the opposite of his father.Gerry, who would rather talk to animals than the angry man back under his roof.Everything that follows is because of the fox, and because Jack's mother is missing. It spans generations of big dreams and lost time, unexpected connections and things falling apart, great wide worlds and the moments that define us.If you met them in the small hours, you'd begin to piece together their story.'A magical, comforting read that touches on father-son relationships, male mental health and the healing power of nature' GOOD HOUSEKEEPING'A beautiful examination of love and loss' HEAT'Tender and touching' GLAMOUR PRAISE FOR ISAAC AND THE EGG'A tender story of love, grief and the transformative power of friendship' Guardian'Truly one of the most beautiful stories you will ever read' Joanna Cannon'Will linger longer after the final page' Independent'Unique, tender and funny' Pandora Sykes'A future classic' Clare Mackintosh'Like nothing I've ever read before' Stylist'An arresting debut novel about grief in the most wonderfully oblique way' Reverend Richard Coles'Just magic' Kate SawyerBy Chuck Palahniuk. 2018
New York Times Bestseller "An irreverent satirical fantasy about a sudden and violent upheaval.…Think Tom Robbins channeling Jonathan Swift." —David…
Takami, Seattle Times Adjustment Day is an ingenious darkly comic work in which Chuck Palahniuk does what he does best: skewer the absurdities in our society. Geriatric politicians bring the nation to the brink of a third world war to control the burgeoning population of young males, while working-class men dream of burying the elites. Adjustment Day’s arrival makes real the logical conclusion of every separatist fantasy, alternative fact, and conspiracy theory lurking in the American psyche.By Deji Olatunji aka ComedyShortsGamer. 2017
IT WAS ONLY MEANT TO BE A PRANK VIDEO...But now DEJI (AKA ComedyShortsGamer) has unleashed the forces of evil in…
Beijing's Forbidden City.Armed with nothing more than bravado and a talking dog, Deji must return a stolen dragon goblet to the tomb of the mighty Emperor before dawn, or face the end of the world!Standing in his way are gangs of triads, wild dog statues brought to life and skeleton ghosts, not to mention his startling ability to snatch defeat from the jaws of victory.But if Deji is going to survive the night he must triumph over his greatest foe of all, his brother, KSI.Can Deji overcome years of being a slacker and become a kung fu hero to save a world? Join him on his hilarious quest to prove to his parents that a lifetime playing Tekken wasn't a waste of time.By Jillian Medoff. 2018
“Periodically a writer captures the pattern of comedy and tragedy that peppers office life like alternating colors of carpet squares.…
. . . As smart as Medoff’s critique of corporate inanity is, it’s tempered by compassion for these people, who are ultimately tender with each other, too. . . . Medoff finds plenty of hurt—but strains of hope, too.” —Ron Charles, The WashingtonPostThe acclaimed and deeply felt novel that illuminates the pivotal role of work in our lives. Rosa Guerrero beat the odds as she rose to the top of the corporate world. An attractive woman of a certain age, the longtime chief of human resources at Ellery Consumer Research is still a formidable presence, even if her most vital days are behind her. A leader who wields power with grace and discretion, she has earned the devotion and loyalty of her staff. No one admires Rosa more than her doting lieutenant Leo Smalls, a benefits vice president whose whole world is Ellery.While Rosa is consumed with trying to address the needs of her staff within the ever-constricting limits of the company’s bottom line, her associate director, Rob Hirsch, a middle-aged, happily married father of two, finds himself drawing closer to his "work wife," Lucy Bender, an enterprising single woman searching for something—a romance, a promotion—to fill the vacuum in her personal life. For Kenny Verville, a senior manager with an MBA, Ellery is a temporary stepping-stone to bigger and better places—that is, if his high-powered wife has her way.Compelling, flawed, and heartbreakingly human, these men and women scheme, fall in and out of love, and nurture dreams big and small. As their individual circumstances shift, one thing remains constant—Rosa, the sun around whom they all orbit. When her world begins to crumble, the implications for everyone are profound, and Leo, Rob, Lucy, and Kenny find themselves changed in ways beyond their reckoning.Jillian Medoff explores the inner workings of an American company in all its brilliant, insane, comforting, and terrifying glory. Authentic, razor-sharp, and achingly funny, This Could Hurt is a novel about work, loneliness, love, and loyalty; about sudden reversals and unexpected windfalls; a novel about life.By George Shannon. 2001
A man is thrown in jail for picking up a rope. A student earns one hundred points on his math…
and history tests, yet fails both classes. A spider saves a fugitive from a legion of warriors. A farmer buys a cow, a horse, and a donkey, all with a single ear of corn.... Each of the eighteen stories in this book is true, technically. But each is also a lie.In his second collection of "true lies" from around the world, George Shannon challenges young readers to uncover the whole truth. But be careful: a word with more than one meaning can obscure the facts. And a hidden detail can mean the difference between honesty and a twisted truth that is, in its essence, a lie.Can you tell the difference?Can you discover:"What's the truth,the whole truth?And where's the lie?"By Leslie Carroll. 2007
Forty is fabulous for Tessa Craig. Heck, she has it all—a glamorous job as a political speechwriter, a Manhattan duplex,…
and a handsome boyfriend, Congressman David Weyburn, whose integrity, charisma, and good looks have made him his party's rising star. But her fabulosity fizzles when scandal strikes, and Tessa watches helplessly as her seemingly happy love life and successful career collapse like a house of cards.Tessa realizes it's time to embark on a new journey, one she should have made a long time ago. It's a trip that takes her to the Emerald Isle and back, leading her heart in unimagined directions. She makes new friends, unexpectedly adopts a new family (or do they adopt her?), and discovers unanticipated love with silver-tongued, green-eyed, aspiring pub owner, Jamie Doyle. And, most importantly, Tessa makes that uphill climb over the rainbow to find the ultimate pot of gold: Herself.By Günter Grass. 2009
One of the greatest modern novels, The Tin Drum is the story of thirty-year-old Oskar Matzerath, who has lived through…
the long Nazi nightmare and who, as the novel begins, is being held in a mental institution. Matzerath provides a profound yet hilarious perspective on both German history and the human condition in the modern world.In this edition, Breon Mitchell, acclaimed translator and scholar, draws from a wealth of detailed scholarship to produce a translation that is more faithful to Grass’s style and rhythm than the 1959 translation, restoring omissions and reflecting the complexity of the original work.After more than sixy years, The Tin Drum has, if anything, gained in power and relevance. All of Grass’s amazing evocations are still there, and still amazing: Oskar Matzerath, the indomitable drummer; his grandmother, Anna Koljaiczek; his mother, Agnes; Alfred Matzerath and Jan Bronski, his presumptive fathers; Oskar’s midget friends—Bebra, the great circus master and Roswitha Raguna, the famous somnambulist; Sister Scholastica and Sister Agatha, the Right Reverend Father Wiehnke; the Greffs, the Schefflers, Herr Fajngold, all Kashubians, Poles, Germans, and Jews—waiting to be discovered and re-discovered.By Chris Grabenstein. 2020
Bestselling author Chris Grabenstein and the Mystery Writers of America bring together twenty peerless puzzles—from bestselling authors such as Peter…
Lerangis, Stuart Gibbs, Lauren Magaziner, Kate Milford, and, of course, Grabenstein himself—in an anthology of mystery short stories that invite readers to try to unravel the riddles themselves. From tales of hapless superheroes and stolen squirrel monkeys to murderous triplets and haunted basements, these thrilling, puzzling, and hilarious cases have one thing in common—YOU get a chance to be the detective before the author reveals the solution.With twenty never-before-published mystery stories, this collection will leave young detectives sleuthing for more!By Thomas Swan. 1999
Rumor has it that a mysterious Fabergé Egg disappeared in the days just before the Russian Revolution. It's up to…
Scotland Yard art crime detective Jack Oxby to solve the mystery and find the infamous art treasure. Trouble is, whoever attempts to find the Fabergé Egg turns up dead. No matter for Oxby, the fearless hero of Thomas Swan's two previous art crime thrillers, The Da Vinci Deception and The Cezanne Chase.The Final Fabergé is a page-turning novel of suspense that fans of the British television series Lovejoy, the art history mysteries of Iain Pears, and the classic film The Thomas Crowne Affair, will thoroughly enjoy.By Carol Anshaw. 1997
Christine Snow, a successful Chicago therapist, sets out to find her vanished lover, the sultry and elusive travel photographer Taylor…
Hayes. Forging a trail that leads into the heart of Morocco, Seven Moves tracks Christine's gradual recognition that no one can ever really know another's soul. Bearing Anshaw's trademark style -funny, hip, and laser-sharp -this is "a tightly told tale that resists the bookmark as well as any thriller" (Chicago Sun-Times). A Reader's Guide is now available.By Beth Fantaskey. 2016
It&’s 1920s Chicago—the guns-and-gangster era of Al Capone—and it&’s unusual for a girl to be selling the Tribune on the…
street corner. But ten-year-old Isabel Feeney is unusual . . . unusually obsessed with being a news reporter. She can&’t believe her luck when she stumbles not only into a real-live murder scene, but also into her hero, the famous journalist Maude Collier. The story of how the smart, curious, loyal Isabel fights to defend the honor of her accused friend and latches on to the murder case like a dog on a pant leg makes for a winning, thoroughly entertaining middle grade mystery.By Andrew Sean Greer. 2013
From the critically acclaimed author of the New York Times bestseller The Confessions of Max Tivoli comes The Impossible Lives…
of Greta Wells, a rapturously romantic story of a woman who finds herself transported to the “other lives” she might have lived.After the death of her beloved twin brother and the abandonment of her long-time lover, Greta Wells undergoes electroshock therapy. Over the course of the treatment, Greta finds herself repeatedly sent to 1918, 1941, and back to the present. Whisked from the gas-lit streets and horse-drawn carriages of the West Village to a martini-fueled lunch at the Oak Room, in these other worlds, Greta finds her brother alive and well—though fearfully masking his true personality. And her former lover is now her devoted husband…but will he be unfaithful to her in this life as well? Greta Wells is fascinated by her alter egos: in 1941, she is a devoted mother; in 1918, she is a bohemian adulteress.In this spellbinding novel by Andrew Sean Greer, each reality has its own losses, its own rewards; each extracts a different price. Which life will she choose as she wrestles with the unpredictability of love and the consequences of even her most carefully considered choices?By Carol Anshaw. 1997
Olympic swimmer Jesse Austin is seduced and consequently edged out for a gold medal by her Australian rival. From there,…
Anshaw intricately traces three possible paths for Jesse, spinning exhilarating variations on the themes of lost love and parallel lives unlived. Dorothy Allison, author of Bastard Out of Carolina, writes, "I found myself wishing I could buy a dozen copies and start a discussion group, just so I'd be able to debate all the questions this astonishing novel provokes." A Reader's Guide is available.By Elizabeth Klehfoth. 2018
"This is going to be big." -Entertainment Weekly“Juicy, clever, and beguiling." -Cecily von Ziegsar, author of the Gossip Girl novelsA young woman…
haunted by a family tragedy is caught up in a dangerous web of lies and deception involving a secret society in this highly charged, addictive psychological thriller that combines the dishy gamesmanship of Gossip Girl with the murky atmosphere of The Secret History.One summer day, Grace Fairchild, the beautiful young wife of real estate mogul Alistair Calloway, vanished from the family’s lake house without a trace, leaving behind her seven-year old daughter, Charlie, and a slew of unanswered questions.Years later, seventeen-year-old Charlie still struggles with the dark legacy of her family name and the mystery surrounding her mother. Determined to finally let go of the past, she throws herself into life at Knollwood, the prestigious New England school she attends. Charlie quickly becomes friends with Knollwood’s "it" crowd.Charlie has also been tapped by the A’s—the school’s elite secret society well known for terrorizing the faculty, administration, and their enemies. To become a member of the A’s, Charlie must play The Game, a semester-long, diabolical high-stakes scavenger hunt that will jeopardize her friendships, her reputation, even her place at Knollwood.As the dark events of past and present converge, Charlie begins to fear that she may not survive the terrible truth about her family, her school, and her own life.By Monica Byrne. 1952
David Mitchell’s Cloud Atlas meets Octavia Butler’s Earthseed series, as acclaimed author Monica Byrne (The Girl in the Road) crafts…
an unforgettable piece of speculative fiction about where humanity came from, where we are now, and where we’re going—and how, in every age, the same forces that drive us apart also bind us together."A stone-cold masterpiece."—New ScientistThe Actual Star takes readers on a journey over two millennia and six continents—telling three powerful tales a thousand years apart, all of them converging in the same cave in the Belizean jungle.Braided together are the stories of a pair of teenage twins who ascend the throne of a Maya kingdom; a young American woman on a trip of self-discovery in Belize; and two dangerous charismatics vying for the leadership of a new religion, racing toward a confrontation that will determine the fate of the few humans left on Earth after massive climate change.In each era, a reincarnated trinity of souls navigates the entanglements of tradition and progress, sister and stranger, and love and hate—until all of their age-old questions about the nature of existence converge deep underground, where only in complete darkness can they truly see.By Eileen Myles. 1994
Available once again for a new generation of readers, the groundbreaking and candid coming-of-age novel in-real-time from one of America's…
most celebrated poets that is considered a cult classic.In this breathtakingly inventive autobiographical novel, Eileen Myles transforms life into a work of art. Told in her audacious voice, made vivid and immediate in her lyrical language, Chelsea Girls cobbles together memories of Myles’ 1960s Catholic upbringing with an alcoholic father, her volatile adolescence, her unabashed “lesbianity,” and her riotous pursuit of survival as a poet in 1970s New York.Suffused with alcohol, drugs, and sex; evocative in its depictions of the hardscrabble realities of a young artist’s life; and poignant with stories of love, humor, and discovery, Chelsea Girls is a funny, cool, and intimate account of a writer’s education, and a modern chronicle of how a young female writer shrugged off the chains of a rigid cultural identity meant to define her.By Alice Randall. 2020
An enthralling literary tour-de-force that pays tribute to Detroit's legendary neighborhood, a mecca for jazz, sports, and politics, Black Bottom…
Saints is a powerful blend of fact and imagination reminiscent of E.L. Doctorow's classic novel Ragtime and Marlon James' Man Booker Award-winning masterpiece, A Brief History of Seven Killings.From the Great Depression through the post-World War II years, Joseph “Ziggy” Johnson, has been the pulse of Detroit’s famous Black Bottom. A celebrated gossip columnist for the city’s African-American newspaper, the Michigan Chronicle, he is also the emcee of one of the hottest night clubs, where he’s rubbed elbows with the legendary black artists of the era, including Ethel Waters, Billy Eckstein, and Count Basie. Ziggy is also the founder and dean of the Ziggy Johnson School of Theater. But now the doyen of Black Bottom is ready to hang up his many dapper hats. As he lays dying in the black-owned-and-operated Kirkwood Hospital, Ziggy reflects on his life, the community that was the center of his world, and the remarkable people who helped shape it.Inspired by the Catholic Saints Day Books, Ziggy curates his own list of Black Bottom’s venerable "52 Saints." Among them are a vulnerable Dinah Washington, a defiant Joe Louis, and a raucous Bricktop. Randall balances the stories of these larger-than-life "Saints" with local heroes who became household names, enthralling men and women whose unstoppable ambition, love of style, and faith in community made this black Midwestern neighborhood the rival of New York City’s Harlem.Accompanying these “tributes” are thoughtfully paired cocktails—special drinks that capture the essence of each of Ziggy’s saints—libations as strong and satisfying as Alice Randall’s wholly original view of a place and time unlike any other.By Kiersten White, Jim Di Bartolo. 2014
From the remarkable imagination of acclaimed artist Jim Di Bartolo and the exquisite pen of bestselling author Kiersten White comes…
a spellbinding story of love, mystery, and dark conspiracy.From the remarkable imagination of acclaimed artist Jim Di Bartolo and the exquisite pen of bestselling author Kiersten White comes a spellbinding story of love, mystery, and dark conspiracy, told in an alternating narrative of words and pictures.Cora and Minnie are sisters living in a small, stifling town where strange and mysterious things occur. Their mother runs the local boarding house. Their father is gone. The woman up the hill may or may not be a witch.Thomas and Charles are brothers who've been exiled to the boarding house so Thomas can tame his ways and Charles can fight an illness that is killing him with increasing speed. Their family history is one of sorrow and guilt. They think they can escape from it . . . but they can't.Arthur is also new to the boarding house. His fate is tied to that of Cora, Minnie, Thomas, and Charles. He knows what darkness circles them, but can't say why, and doesn't even know if they can be saved.By Eugenia Kim. 2009
Finalist for the Dayton Literary Peace PrizeA Washington Post Best Book of the YearWinner of the 2009 Borders Original Voices Award In…
early-twentieth-century Korea, Najin Han, the privileged daughter of a calligrapher, longs to choose her own destiny. But her country is in tumult under Japan's harsh occupation, and her family's traditions, entitlements, and wealth crumble. Narrowly escaping an arranged marriage, Najin becomes a companion to a young princess, until Korea's last king is assassinated, and the centuries-old dynastic culture comes to its end. Najin pursues a coveted education and is surprised to find love. After one day of marriage, a denied passport separates her from her new husband, who journeys alone to America. As a decade passes and the world descends into war, Najin loses touch with her husband. Will the love they share be enough to sustain her through the deprivation her country continues to endure? The Calligrapher's Daughter is a "vivid, heartfelt portrait of faith, love and life for one family during a pivotal time in history" (Bookpage).