Shelby Van Pelt

Hardcover (1 to 2 lbs)

Illinois

A Novel

"Remarkably Bright Creatures is a beautiful examination of how loneliness can be transformed, cracked open, with the slightest touch from another living thing." -- Kevin Wilson, author of Nothing to See Here

For fans of A Man Called Ove, a charming, witty and compulsively readable exploration of friendship, reckoning, and hope that traces a widow's unlikely connection with a giant Pacific octopus

After Tova Sullivan's husband died, she began working the night shift at the Sowell Bay Aquarium, mopping floors and tidying up. Keeping busy has always helped her cope, which she's been doing since her eighteen-year-old son, Erik, mysteriously vanished on a boat in Puget Sound over thirty years ago.

Tova becomes acquainted with curmudgeonly Marcellus, a giant Pacific octopus living at the aquarium. Marcellus knows more than anyone can imagine but wouldn't dream of lifting one of his eight arms for his human captors--until he forms a remarkable friendship with Tova.

Ever the detective, Marcellus deduces what happened the night Tova's son disappeared. And now Marcellus must use every trick his old invertebrate body can muster to unearth the truth for her before it's too late. 

Shelby Van Pelt's debut novel is a gentle reminder that sometimes taking a hard look at the past can help uncover a future that once felt impossible.

Remarkably Bright Creatures

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Emiko Jean

“The Return of Ellie Black is a page-turning suspense novel, a shrewd character study, and a captivating mystery, all at the same time. The last fifty pages are magnetic. I couldn’t put it down until I’d experienced every last twist and turn.” —STEPHEN KING Detective Chelsey Calhoun’s life is turned upside down when she gets the call Ellie Black, a girl who disappeared years earlier, has resurfaced in the woods of Washington state—but Ellie’s reappearance leaves Chelsey with more questions than answers. It’s been twenty years since Detective Chelsey Calhoun’s sister vanished when they were teenagers, and ever since she’s been searching: for signs, for closure, for other missing girls. But happy endings are rare in Chelsey’s line of work. Then a glimmer: local teenager Ellie Black, who disappeared without a trace two years earlier, has been found alive in the woods of Washington State. But something is not right with Ellie. She won’t say where she’s been, or who she’s protecting, and it’s up to Chelsey to find the answers. She needs to get to the bottom of what happened to Ellie: for herself, and for the memory of her sister, but mostly for the next girl who could be taken—and who, unlike Ellie, might never return. The debut thriller from New York Times bestselling author Emiko Jean, The Return of Ellie Black is both a feminist tour de force about the embers of hope that burn in the aftermath of tragedy and a twisty page-turner that will shock and surprise you right up until the final page.

The Return of Ellie Black

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Carola Lovering

Read once. Book of the month (BOTM) edition. 

Heavy Hardcover (2 to 4 lbs)

From the author of the Hulu sensation Tell Me Lies comes an obsessive, addictive novel about female friendship, a missing baby, and the toxic, secret history between two women.

Bye, Baby

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Gillian McAllister

From the author of the Reese's Book Club Pick and the New York Times bestseller Wrong Place Wrong Time comes a new heart-stopping thriller in which a missing-person case unravels deeper, darker secrets that hit too close to home and can only lead to more danger for the detective and an impossible moral choice: What will she do? There's a man out there. His weapon isn't a gun, or a knife. It's a secret. OLIVIA: 22 years old. No history of running away. Last seen on CCTV, entering a dead-end alley. And not coming back out again. Missing for one day and counting . . . JULIA; The detective heading up the case. She knows what to expect. A desperate family, a ticking clock, and long hours away from her daughter. But Julia has no idea how close to home this case is going to get. Because her family's safety depends on one thing: Julia must not find out what happened to Olivia and must frame somebody else for her murder . . . What would you do?

Just Another Missing Person

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Rose Carlyle

"Originally published in Australia in 2020 by Allen & Unwin."--Title page verso.

The Girl in the Mirror

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Erica Katz

From the author of The Boys' Club, a gripping novel set in the high-stakes world of art forgery that moves across the globe, from the trendy art galleries of Manhattan's Chelsea neighborhood to the high-flying international art fairs of Hong Kong. Can you spot the difference? Emma Caan is a fake. She's a forger, an artist who specializes in nineteenth-century paintings. But she isn't a criminal; her copies are commissioned by museums and ultra-wealthy collectors protecting their investments. Emma's more than mastered a Gauguin brushstroke and a van Gogh wheat field, but her work is sometimes a painful reminder of the artistic dreams she once chased for herself, when she was younger and before her family and her world fell apart. When oligarch art collector Leonard Sobetsky unexpectedly appears with an invitation, Emma sees a way out--a new job, a new path for herself, and access to the kind of money she needs to support her unstable and recently widowed mother. But every invitation incurs an obligation . . . and Emma isn't prepared for what's to come. As she's pulled further into Leonard's opulent scene, she will discover what's lurking beneath the glitz and glamour. When she does, the past she's worked hard to overcome will collide with the present, making her wonder how much of her carefully curated life is just as fake as her forgeries . . .

Fake

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Kimberly McCreight

In this relentlessly twisty literary thriller from New York Times bestselling author Kimberly McCreight, a desperate intervention brings together a group of college friends 10 years after graduation--a reunion marked by lies, betrayal, and murder. Everyone has those friends. Doesn't matter how long it's been, or how badly they've occasionally behaved, or how late it is when that call finally comes--you show up. No questions asked. Honestly, that's how the five of us ended up here in the Catskills. We did have the best of intentions. Especially after what happened to Alice all those years ago, we can't bear to think of losing anyone else. In fact, we'll do anything to make sure that doesn't happen. We'll go so much farther than we ever thought we would. In the end, maybe that's what caught up with us. That, and the fact that we're such a complicated group--so much history and so many big personalities. Secrets, too, that can slip out at the most inopportune moments. Of course, we love each other despite all of those things. We love each other no matter what. There's something so beautiful about that kind of unconditional love. It can turn ugly, though. Or maybe that's just us. After all, we've already been through so much together. And we have so very much to hide.

Friends Like These

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Clare Pooley

Light Paperback (1 lb or less)

"A warm, charming tale about the rewards of revealing oneself, warts and all." --People The story of a solitary green notebook that brings together six strangers and leads to unexpected friendship, and even love Julian Jessop, an eccentric, lonely artist and septuagenarian believes that most people aren't really honest with each other. But what if they were? And so he writes--in a plain, green journal--the truth about his own life and leaves it in his local café. It's run by the incredibly tidy and efficient Monica, who furtively adds her own entry and leaves the book in the wine bar across the street. Before long, the others who find the green notebook add the truths about their own deepest selves--and soon find each other In Real Life at Monica's Café. The Authenticity Project's cast of characters--including Hazard, the charming addict who makes a vow to get sober; Alice, the fabulous mommy Instagrammer whose real life is a lot less perfect than it looks online; and their other new friends--is by turns quirky and funny, heartbreakingly sad and painfully true-to-life. It's a story about being brave and putting your real self forward--and finding out that it's not as scary as it seems. In fact, it looks a lot like happiness. The Authenticity Project is just the tonic for our times that readers are clamoring for--and one they will take to their hearts and read with unabashed pleasure.

The Authenticity Project

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Oversized Hardcover (4 to 6 lbs)

Bridge

Jonathan Evison

Never read. Book of the month (BOTM) edition. 

From one of America’s greatest, most creative novelists comes Again and Again, a poignant and endlessly surprising story about love lost, found, and redeemed Eugene “Geno” Miles is living out his final days in a nursing home, bored, curmudgeonly, and struggling to connect with his new nursing assistant, Angel, who is understandably skeptical of Geno’s insistence on having lived not just one life but many—all the way back to medieval Spain, where, as a petty thief, he first lucked upon true love only to lose it, and spend the next thousand years trying to recapture it. Who is Geno? A lonely old man clinging to his delusions and rehearsing his fantasies, or a legitimate anomaly, a thousand-year-old man who continues to search for the love he lost so long ago? As Angel comes to learn the truth about Geno, so, too, does the reader, and as his miraculous story comes to a head, so does the biggest truth of all: that love—timeless, often elusive—is sometimes right in front of us.

Again and Again

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Darby Kane

And Then There Were None meets I Know What You Did Last Summer in #1 international bestseller Darby Kane's latest gripping and twisty thriller set on a private island in Maine where secrets piled upon secrets and lies upon lies are all revealed in one fateful weekend. Emily Hunt went missing from her affluent liberal arts school on graduation weekend. Her body was found floating in a river, and a quiet loner who most people on campus really didn't know committed suicide. A tenuous link--one text--bound the two dead students together and was enough for law enforcement to close the case. But they got it wrong and now someone is determined to set it right. Twelve years later, college friends gather to celebrate an engagement over a long overdue getaway on a swanky private island in Maine--with only one way in and one way out. Sierra Prescott, invited as a guest and unconnected to past events, is the only person who soon senses not all is what it seems. The tension in the air is ignited when they find a dead man in the trunk of a car with a note: time to tell the truth. And things only get worse. As a torrential storm strands them together, the group's buried stories begin to surface and secrets are bartered. To survive this deadly party, they'll need to stop a killer before they become prey.

The Engagement Party

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Ally Carter

Knives Out gets a holiday rom-com twist in this rivals-to-lovers romance-mystery from New York Times bestselling author Ally Carter. The bridge is out. The phones are down. And the most famous mystery writer in the world just disappeared out of a locked room two days before Christmas. Meet Maggie Chase and Ethan Wyatt: She's the new Queen of the Cozy Mystery. He's Mr. Big-time Thriller Guy. She hates his guts. He thinks her name is Marcie (no matter how many times she's told him otherwise.) 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: Eleanor Ashley, the Duchess of Death herself. 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? As the snow gets deeper and the stakes get higher, every clue will bring Maggie and Ethan closer to the truth--and each other. Because, this Christmas, these two rivals are going to have to become allies (and maybe more) if they have any hope of saving Eleanor. Assuming they don't kill each other first.

The Most Wonderful Crime of the Year

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Emma Grey

If you knew then what you know now, would you make the same choices? Imagine having a second chance with the one you never forgot. From the author of the global breakout bestseller The Last Love Note comes the story of a young woman struggling to piece her life back together in the wake of a tragic accident, and the man who gives up everything to help her. When Evie Hudson wakes in an unfamiliar hospital room, she thinks she's fresh out of a teenage party with her best friend, Bree. Except, Bree isn't around anymore and high school was years ago. Evie had just survived the crash that killed her husband, Oliver--whom she can't remember either. After suffering a traumatic loss of memory, she's left to connect the dots. But how? Enter: Drew, a promising photographer whose chance encounter with Evie unravels the elusive details of her marriage and her husband's death. As Drew watches Evie stitch the story of her life together, secrets emerge that might shatter both of their worlds. This tangled second-chance romance leads Evie to question every decision she ever made. This time around, she's seeing all the things she missed-and the life she gets to choose...again.

Pictures of You

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Lucy Foley

Jess needs a fresh start. Her half-brother Ben didn't sound thrilled when she asked if she could crash with him for a bit, but he didn't say no. Only when she shows up he's not there. The longer Ben stays missing, the more Jess starts to dig into her brother's situation, and the more questions she has. Jess may have come to Paris to escape her past, but it's starting to look like it's Ben's future that's in question. Everyone's a neighbour. Everyone's a suspect. And everyone knows something they're not telling. Author of "The Guest List." Print run 300,000.

The Paris Apartment

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Ruth Emmie Lang

Never read. BOTM (book of the month) edition. 

Ohioana Book Award finalist Ruth Emmie Lang returns with a new cast of ordinary characters with extraordinary abilities in The Wilderwomen.

Five years ago, Nora Wilder disappeared. The older of her two daughters, Zadie, should have seen it coming, because she can literally see things coming. But not even her psychic abilities were able to prevent their mother from vanishing one morning.

Zadie's estranged younger sister, Finn, can't see into the future, but she has an uncannily good memory, so good that she remembers not only her own memories, but the echoes of memories other people have left behind. On the afternoon of her graduation party, Finn is seized by an "echo" more powerful than anything she's experienced before: a woman singing a song she recognizes, a song about a bird...

When Finn wakes up alone in an aviary with no idea of how she got there, she realizes who the memory belongs to: Nora.

Now, it's up to Finn to convince her sister that not only is their mom still out there, but that she wants to be found. Against Zadie's better judgement, she and Finn hit the highway, using Finn's echoes to retrace Nora's footsteps and uncover the answer to the question that has been haunting them for years: Why did she leave?

But the more time Finn spends in their mother's past, the harder it is for her to return to the present, to return to herself. As Zadie feels her sister start to slip away, she will have to decide what lengths she is willing to go to find their mother, knowing that if she chooses wrong, she could lose them both for good.

The Wilderwomen

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Kia Abdullah

Light Hardcover (1 lb or less)

A twisty and consuming thriller, Perfectly Nice Neighbors asks: When your dream home comes with nightmare neighbors, how far will you go to keep your family safe? Salma Khatun is hopeful about Blenheim, the suburban development into which she, her husband, and their son have just moved. The Bangladeshi family needs a fresh start, and Blenheim feels like just the place. Soon after they move in, Salma spots her white neighbor, Tom Hutton, ripping out the anti-racist banner her son put in the front garden. Avoiding confrontation, Salma takes the banner inside and puts it in her window. But the next morning, she wakes up to find her window smeared with paint. When she does speak to Tom, battle lines are drawn between the two families. As racial and social tensions escalate and the stakes rise, it’s clear that a reckoning is coming . . . And someone is going to get hurt.

Perfectly Nice Neighbors

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Silvia Moreno-Garcia

From the New York Times bestselling author of Mexican Gothic comes a riveting noir about a daydreaming secretary, a lonesome thug, and the mystery of the missing woman that brings them together. 1970s Mexico City. Maite is a secretary who lives for one thing: the latest issue of Secret Romance. While student protests and political unrest consume the city, Maite escapes into stories of passion and danger. Her next-door neighbor, Leonora, a beautiful art student, seems to live a life of intrigue and romance that Maite envies. When Leonora disappears under suspicious circumstances, Maite finds herself searching for the missing woman--and journeying deeper into Leonora's secret life of student radicals and dissidents. Meanwhile, someone else is also looking for Leonora at the behest of his boss, a shadowy figure who commands goon squads dedicated to squashing political activists. Elvis is an eccentric thug who longs to escape his own life: He loathes violence and loves old movies and rock 'n' roll. But as Elvis searches for the missing woman, he comes to observe Maite from a distance--and grows more and more obsessed with this woman who shares his love of music, and the unspoken loneliness of his heart. Now as Maite and Elvis come closer to discovering the secrets behind Leonora's disappearance, they can no longer escape the danger that threatens to consume their lives, with hitmen, government agents, and Russian spies aiming to protect Leonora's secrets--at gunpoint. Their lives become more colorful than comics, more passionate than a pop song, and stranger than pulp fiction.

Velvet Was the Night

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Chibundu Onuzo

A REESE'S BOOK CLUB PICK “A beautiful exploration of the often complex parameters of freedom, prejudice, and individual sense of self. Chibundu Onuzo has written a captivating story about a mixed-race British woman who goes in search of the West African father she never knew . . . [A] beautiful book about a woman brave enough to discover her true identity.” —Reese Witherspoon “Onuzo’s sneakily breezy, highly entertaining novel leaves the reader rethinking familiar narratives of colonization, inheritance and liberation.” —The New York Times Book Review An Amazon Spotlight Pick of the Month • Named a Best Book of the Month by Entertainment Weekly, Harper's Bazaar, and Time • Named a Most Anticipated Book of the Month by Goodreads, PopSugar, PureWow, LitHub, Minneapolis Star-Tribune, and Buzzfeed A woman wondering who she really is goes in search of a father she never knew—only to find something far more complicated than she ever expected—in this “stirring narrative about family, our capacity to change and the need to belong” (Time). Anna is at a stage of her life when she's beginning to wonder who she really is. In her 40s, she has separated from her husband, her daughter is all grown up, and her mother—the only parent who raised her—is dead. Searching through her mother's belongings one day, Anna finds clues about the African father she never knew. His student diaries chronicle his involvement in radical politics in 1970s London. Anna discovers that he eventually became the president—some would say dictator—of a small nation in West Africa. And he is still alive... When Anna decides to track her father down, a journey begins that is disarmingly moving, funny, and fascinating. Like the metaphorical bird that gives the novel its name, Sankofa expresses the importance of reaching back to knowledge gained in the past and bringing it into the present to address universal questions of race and belonging, the overseas experience for the African diaspora, and the search for a family's hidden roots. Examining freedom, prejudice, and personal and public inheritance, Sankofa is a story for anyone who has ever gone looking for a clear identity or home, and found something more complex in its place.

Sankofa

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Julie Clark

"A mindbender." -Jessica Knoll

"Riveting...a winner." -Laura Dave

"A knockout." -Mary Kubica

From the New York Timesbestselling author of The Last Flightcomes a twisted con-woman thriller about two women out for revenge--or is it justice?

Two women. Many aliases.

Meg Williams. Maggie Littleton. Melody Wilde.Different names for the same person, depending on the town, depending on the job. She's a con artist who erases herself to become whoever you need her to be--a college student. A life coach. A real estate agent. Nothing about her is real. She slides alongside you and tells you exactly what you need to hear, and by the time she's done, you've likely lost everything.

Kat Roberts has been waiting ten years for the woman who upended her life to return. And now that she has, Kat is determined to be the one to expose her. But as the two women grow closer, Kat's long-held assumptions begin to crumble, leaving Kat to wonder who Meg's true target is.

The Lies I Tellis a twisted domestic thriller that dives deep into the psyches and motivations of two women and their unwavering quest to seek justice for the past and rewrite the future.

Praise for The Last Flightby Julie Clark:

"Thoroughly absorbing...the characters get under your skin." -The New York Times

"Highly thrilling." -Entertainment Weekly

"You won't be able to put it down." -People.com

The Lies I Tell

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Alexis Schaitkin

A New York Times Notable Book of 2020 "'Saint X' is hypnotic. Schaitkin's characters...are so intelligent and distinctive it feels not just easy, but necessary, to follow them. I devoured [it] in a day." –Oyinkan Braithwaite, New York Times Book Review When you lose the person who is most essential to you, who do you become? Recommended by Entertainment Weekly, included in Good Morning America's 20 Books We're Excited for in 2020 & named as one of Vogue's Best Books to Read This Winter, Bustle's Most Anticipated Books of February 2020, and O Magazine's 14 of the Best Books to Read This February! Hailed as a “marvel of a book” and “brilliant and unflinching,” Alexis Schaitkin’s stunning debut, Saint X, is a haunting portrait of grief, obsession, and the bond between two sisters never truly given the chance to know one another. Claire is only seven years old when her college-age sister, Alison, disappears on the last night of their family vacation at a resort on the Caribbean island of Saint X. Several days later, Alison’s body is found in a remote spot on a nearby cay, and two local men–employees at the resort–are arrested. But the evidence is slim, the timeline against it, and the men are soon released. The story turns into national tabloid news, a lurid mystery that will go unsolved. For Claire and her parents, there is only the return home to broken lives. Years later, Claire is living and working in New York City when a brief but fateful encounter brings her together with Clive Richardson, one of the men originally suspected of murdering her sister. It is a moment that sets Claire on an obsessive pursuit of the truth–not only to find out what happened the night of Alison’s death but also to answer the elusive question: Who exactly was her sister? At seven, Claire had been barely old enough to know her: a beautiful, changeable, provocative girl of eighteen at a turbulent moment of identity formation. As Claire doggedly shadows Clive, hoping to gain his trust, waiting for the slip that will reveal the truth, an unlikely attachment develops between them, two people whose lives were forever marked by the same tragedy. For readers of Emma Cline’s The Girls and Lauren Groff’s Fates and Furies, Saint X is a flawlessly drawn and deeply moving story that culminates in an emotionally powerful ending.

Saint X

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Laura Dave

"When her husband of a year disappears, Hannah quickly learns he is not who he said he was and is left to sort out the truth with just one ally- her husband's teenage daughter, who hates her"--

The Last Thing He Told Me

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One Italian Summer

Xochitl Gonzalez

Olga Dies Dreaming

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Adrienne Young

"Lush with secrets, magic, and a past that won't stay where it belongs, this novel is (quite fittingly) spellbinding."--JODI PICOULT, author of Wish You Were Here

From New York Times bestselling author Adrienne Young comes a deeply atmospheric story about ancestral magic, an unsolved murder, and a second chance at true love.

Emery Blackwood's life changed forever the night her best friend was found dead and the love of her life, August Salt, was accused of murdering her. Years later, she is doing what her teenage self swore she never would: living a quiet existence on the misty, remote shores of Saoirse Island and running the family's business, Blackwood's Tea Shoppe Herbal Tonics & Tea Leaf Readings. But when the island, rooted in folklore and magic, begins to show signs of strange happenings, Emery knows that something is coming. The morning she wakes to find that every single tree on Saoirse has turned color in a single night, August returns for the first time in fourteen years and unearths the past that the town has tried desperately to forget.

August knows he is not welcome on Saiorse, not after the night everything changed. As a fire raged on at the Salt family orchard, Lily Morgan was found dead in the dark woods, shaking the bedrock of their tight-knit community and branding August a murderer. When he returns to bury his mother's ashes, he must confront the people who turned their backs on him and face the one wound from his past that has never healed--Emery. But the town has more than one reason to want August gone, and the emergence of deep betrayals and hidden promises spanning generations threaten to reveal the truth behind Lily's mysterious death once and for all.

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