Author: Allott, Susan, author. Published: 2020 Call Number: F ALLOTT Format: Books Summary: "It is 1997, and in a basement flat in Hackney, Isla Green is awakened by a call in the middle of the night: her father phoning from Sydney. 30 years ago, in the suffocating heat of summer 1967, the Greens' next-door neighbor Mandy disappeared. At the time, it was thought she had fled a broken marriage and gone to start a new life; but now Mandy's family is trying to reconnect, and there is no trace of her. Isla's father Joe was allegedly the last person to see her alive, and now he's under suspicion of murder. Isla unwillingly plans to go back to Australia for the first time in a decade to support her father. The return to Sydney will plunge Isla deep into the past, to a quiet street by the sea where two couples live side by side. Isla's parents, Louisa and Joe, have recently emigrated from England--a move that has left Louisa miserably homesick while Joe embraces this new life. Next door, Steve and Mandy are equally troubled. Mandy doesn't want a baby, even though Steve--a cop trying to hold it together under the pressures of the job--is desperate to become a father. The more Isla asks about the past, the more she learns: about both young couples and the secrets each marriage bore. Could her father be capable of doing something terrible? How much does her mother know? What will happen to their family if Isla's worst fears are realized? And is there another secret in this community, one which goes deeper into Australia's colonial past, which has held them in a conspiracy of silence?" -- Amazon.
Author: Temple, Emily, author. Published: 2020 Call Number: F TEMPLE Format: Books Summary: "One year ago, the person Olivia adores most in the world, her father, left home for a meditation retreat in the mountains and never returned. Yearning to make sense of his shocking departure and to escape her overbearing mother, a woman as grounded as her father is mercurial, Olivia runs away from home and retraces his path to a place known as the Levitation Center. Once there, she enrolls in their summer program for troubled teens, which Olivia refers to as 'Buddhist Boot Camp for Bad Girls.' Soon, she finds herself drawn into the company of a close-knit trio of girls determined to transcend their circumstances, by any means necessary. Led by the elusive and beautiful Serena, and her aloof, secretive acolytes, Janet and Laurel, the girls decide this is the summer they will finally achieve enlightenment, and learn to levitate, to defy the weight of their bodies, to experience ultimate lightness."--
Author: Belle, Kimberly, author. Published: 2020 Call Number: F BELLE Format: Books Summary: "When Charlotte married older and wealthy widower Paul, it caused a ripple of gossip in their small lakeside town. They have a charmed life together, despite the cruel whispers about her trailer-park past and his first marriage. But everything starts to unravel when she discovers a young woman's body floating in the exact same spot where Paul's first wife tragically drowned."--Publisher.
Author: Blum, Howard, author. Published: 2020 Call Number: 940.53 Format: Books Summary: "The year is 1943, and the three Allied leaders--FDR, Churchill, and Stalin--are meeting for the first time at a top-secret conference in Tehran. But the Nazis have learned about the meeting, and Hitler sees it as his last chance to turn the tide. Although the war is undoubtedly lost, the Germans believe that perhaps a new set of Allied leaders might be willing to make a more reasonable peace. And so a plan is devised--code-named Operation Long Jump--to assassinate all three men. A team of Nazi commandos is assembled, trained, armed with special weapons, and parachuted into Iran with six days to complete the assignment. With no margin for error and little time to spare, the head of FDR's Secret Service detail must overcome his suspicions and instincts to work with a Soviet agent to save the three most powerful men in the world."--
Author: DeRoux, Margaux, author. Published: 2020 Call Number: F DEROUX Format: Regular print Summary: In the wake of her father's death, Rose Newlin finds solace in her work as a book restorer. Then, one rainy Connecticut afternoon, a struggling painter appears at her door. William Lomazzo brings with him a sixteenth-century treatise on art, which Rose quickly identifies as a palimpsest: a document written over a hidden diary that had purposely been scraped away. Yet the restoration sparks an unforeseen challenge when William--a married man--and Rose experience an instant, unspoken attraction. Five centuries earlier, Renaissance-era Venetians find themselves at the mercy of an encroaching Ottoman fleet preparing for a bloody war. Giovanni Lomazzo, a portrait artist grappling with tragedy, discovers that his vision is fading with each passing day. Facing the possibility of a completely dark world, Gio begins to document his every encounter, including what may be his final artistic feat: a commission to paint the enchanting courtesan of one of Venice's most powerful military commanders. Soon, however, Gio finds himself enraptured by a magnificent forbidden love. Spellbound by Gio's revelations, Rose and William are soon forced to confront the reality of their own mystifying connection.
Author: Higgins, Kristan, author. Published: 2020 Call Number: F HIGGINS Format: Books Summary: "Sometimes you have to break a family to fix it. From the New York Times bestselling author of Life and Other Inconveniences comes a new novel of heartbreaking truths and hilarious honesty about what family really means. Barb and John Frost are testy and bored with each other after fifty years of marriage. At least they have their daughters- Barb's favorite, Juliet; and John's darling, Sadie. The girls themselves couldn't be more different, but at least they got along, more or less. Until the day John has a stroke, and their house of cards came tumbling down. Now Sadie has to come home to care for her beloved dad-and face the love of her old life. Now Juliet has to wonder if people will notice that despite her perfect life, she's spending an increasing amount of time in the closet having panic attacks. And now Barb and John will finally have to face what's been going on in their marriage all along"--Provided by publisher.
Author: Bauermeister, Erica, author. Published: 2019 Call Number: F BAUERMEI Format: Books Summary: "Erica Bauermeister, the national bestselling author of The School of Essential Ingredients, presents a moving and evocative coming-of-age novel about childhood stories, families lost and found, and how a fragrance conjures memories capable of shaping the course of our lives. The Scent Keeper explores the provocative beauty of scent, the way it can reveal hidden truths, lead us to the person we seek, and even help us find our way back home. Emmeline lives an enchanted childhood on a remote island with her father, who teaches her about the natural world through her senses. What he won't explain are the mysterious scents stored in the drawers that line the walls of their cabin, or the origin of the machine that creates them. As Emmeline grows, however, so too does her curiosity, until one day the unforeseen happens, and Emmeline is vaulted out into the real world--a place of love, betrayal, ambition, and revenge. To understand her past, Emmeline must unlock the clues to her identity, a quest that challenges the limits of her heart and imagination. "--
Author: Sittenfeld, Curtis author. Published: 2018 Call Number: SITTENFELD Format: Books Summary: Curtis Sittenfeld has established a reputation as a sharp chronicler of the modern age who humanizes her subjects even as she skewers them. Now, with this first collection of short fiction, her "astonishing gift for creating characters that take up residence in readers' heads" (The Washington Post) is showcased like never before.--Dust jacket.
Author: Jeffery, Keith, author. Published: 2010 Call Number: 327.1241 Format: Books Summary: Britain's Secret Intelligence Service (also commonly known as MI6) was born a century ago amid fears of the rising power of other countries, especially Germany. The next forty years saw MI6 taking an increasingly important role in shaping the history of Europe and the world. MI6's early days were haphazard but it was quickly forged into an effective organization in the crucible of World War I. During these war years, MI6 also formed ties with the United States -- harbingers of a relationship that would become vital to both countries' security as the century progressed. These early years also saw the development of techniques that would become plot devices in a thousand books and films: forgery, invisible ink, disguises, concealing mechanisms, and much more. The interwar years were nominally peaceful, but Britain perceived numerous threats, all of which MI6 was expected to keep tabs on. The outbreak of World War II once again caught MI6 off balance, and high-profile blunders (and the memoirs of MI6 operatives such as Graham Greene) created an impression of ineffectiveness. At the same time, however, the service was pioneering cryptography at Bletchley Park (where the Enigma code would be broken) and devising the very methods and equipment that would inspire Ian Fleming's novels. In a way, the aftermath of World War II was as dramatic as the war itself had been, because 1945-49 saw not only the end of the British Empire but also the emergence of a new sort of conflict: the Cold War. We witness MI6 wrestling with these epic developments as it tightens its bonds with the newly christened CIA, changes that would dictate the shape of the service -- and the world -- for decades to come.
Author: Piven, Frances Fox, author. Minnite, Lorraine Carol, author. Groarke, Margaret, author. Published: 2009 Call Number: 324.62 Format: Books Summary: "In recent years, the Republican party, the Bush administration, and the conservative movement have made strategies to demobilize likely Democratic voters a key campaign tactic, even overshadowing the Republican efforts to mobilize the Republican party's base. From misinformation campaigns, new voter ID rules, and inordinately long lines at the polls to sloppy and inaccurate registration records and the abuse of felon disenfranchisement laws, party efforts to suppress voters have become the under-the-radar dynamic determining American elections. Keeping Down the Black Vote reveals that the effort to rig the system is not all that new. Party competition in America has frequently taken the form of blocking voters in the opposition, and race has often been at the heart of the game." "In this sharply argued new book, three of America's leading experts on party politics and elections revisit gripping stories of the rise of black voting power in the cities, including Harold Washington's historic bid for mayor of Chicago in 1983, and trace the voter suppression tactics that have been employed to counteract the contemporary mobilization of black voters across the nation over the last twenty-five years. Today, over forty years after the Voting Rights Act of 1965 demolished bars to voting for African Americans, the effort to prevent black people - as well as Latinos and the poor in general - from voting is resurging. New tactics to suppress the vote are invented, and old tactics are revived, ironically usually under the mantle of "election reform." Despite the historic election of an African American president, the dynamics of vote suppression and the methods rooted in the encumbering system of electoral administration still exist." "With clear analysis of the methods of contemporary voter suppression, Keeping Down the Black Vote is a plea for a system of election administration that fosters the most basic right in a democracy - the right to vote."--Jacket.
Author: Andrew, Christopher M., author. Published: 2009 Call Number: 327.1241 Format: Books Summary: "Defend the Realm" reveals the precise role of the Security Service in twentieth-century British history, from its foundation by Captain Kell of the British Army in October 1909, through two world wars, up to and including its present roles in counterespionage and counterterrorism.
Author: Haynes, John Earl, author. Klehr, Harvey, author. Vassiliev, Alexander, author. Redko, Philip, translator. Shabad, Steven, translator. Published: 2009 Call Number: 327.1247 Format: Books Summary: "This stunning book, based on KGB archives that have never come to light before, provides the most complete account of Soviet espionage in America ever written. In 1993, former KGB officer Alexander Vassiliev was permitted unique access to Stalin-era records of Soviet intelligence operations against the United States. Years later, living in Britain, Vassiliev retrieved his extensive notebooks of transcribed documents from Moscow. With these notebooks John Earl Haynes and Harvey Klehr have meticulously constructed a new, sometimes shocking, historical account. Along with general insights into espionage tactics and the motives of Americans who spied for Stalin, Spies resolves specific, long-seething controversies. The book confirms, among many other things, that Alger Hiss cooperated with Soviet intelligence over a long period of years, that journalist I.F. Stone worked on behalf of the KGB in the 1930s, and that Robert Oppenheimer was never recruited by Soviet intelligence. Spies also uncovers numerous American spies who were never even under suspicion and satisfyingly identifies the last unaccounted for American nuclear spies. Vassiliev tells the story of the notebooks and his own extraordinary life in a gripping introduction to the volume."--Publisher description.
Author: Larson, Erik, 1954- Published: 2004 2003 Call Number: 364.1523 LARSON Format: Books Summary: An account of the Chicago World's Fair of 1893 relates the stories of two men who shaped the history of the event--architect Daniel H. Burnham, who coordinated its construction, and serial killer Herman Mudgett.
Author: Highsmith, Patricia, 1921-1995. Published: 2001 1950 Call Number: F HIGHSMIT Format: Books Summary: The world of Patricia Highsmith has always been filled with ordinary people, all of whom are capable of very ordinary crimes. This theme was present from the beginning, when her debut, Strangers on a Train, galvanized the reading public. Here we encounter Guy Haines and Charles Anthony Bruno, passengers on the same train. But while Guy is a successful architect in the midst of a divorce, Bruno turns out to be a sadistic psychopath who manipulates Guy into swapping murders with him. "Some people are better off dead," Bruno remarks, "like your wife and my father, for instance." As Bruno carries out his twisted plan, Guy is trapped in Highsmith's perilous world, where, under the right circumstances, anybody is capable of murder.
Author: Myers, Walter Dean, 1937-2014. Myers, Christopher A. ill. Published: 1999 Call Number: Y MYERS Format: Books Summary: While on trial as an accomplice to a murder, sixteen-year-old Steve Harmon records his experiences in prison and in the courtroom in the form of a film script as he tries to come to terms with the course his life has taken.
Author: Hinton, S. E. Published: 1995 Call Number: Y PB HINTON Format: Books Summary: The struggle of three brothers to stay together after their parent's death and their quest for identity among the conflicting values of their adolescent society.
Author: Patterson, James, 1947- author. Paetro, Maxine, author. Published: 2020 Call Number: LP F PATTERSO Format: Large print Summary: Three victims, three bullets, three cities. The shooters' aim is as fearsomely precise as their target selection. When Lindsay realizes that the fallen men and women excel in a lucrative, criminal activity, she leads the charge in the manhunt for the killers. As the casualty list expands, fear and fascination with this suspicious shooting gallery galvanizes the country. The victims were no angels, but are the shooters villains . . . or heroes?
Author: Chiavaroli, Heidi, author. Published: 2020 Call Number: LP F CHIAVARO Format: Large print Summary: "Boston, 1773: Emma Malcolm's heart belongs to Noah Winslow. But her father has promised her to Samuel Clarke, a sadistic man. After Emma is drawn into the Boston Tea Party, Samuel blackmails her. Emma realizes she must protect those she loves, even if it means becoming Samuel's wife. Present Day:Lieutenant Hayley Ashworth is determined to be the first woman in the Navy SEALs. When an unexpected encounter with the man she once loved leads to the discovery of a tea chest and the document within, she wonders if perhaps true strength and freedom are buried deeper than she first realized. Two women, separated by centuries, must find the strength to fight for love and freedom."--Back cover.
Author: Brunstetter, Wanda E., author. Published: 2020 Call Number: LP F BRUNSTET Format: Large print Summary: "When Vernon King, his son, and son-in-law are involved in a terrible accident, three women are left to cope with their deaths, as they become the sole providers of the family they have left. The women's only income must come from the family greenhouse, but someone seems to be trying to force them out of business. Amy King has just lost her father and brother, and her mother needs her to help run the family's greenhouse. It doesn't seem fair to ask her to leave a job she loves, when there is still a sister and brother to help. But Sylvia is also grieving for her husband while left to raise three children, and Henry, just out of school, is saddled with all the jobs his father and older brother used to do. As Amy assumes her new role, she also asks Jared Riehl to put their courtship on hold. When things become even more stressful at the greenhouse, will Amy crumble under the pressure?"--
Author: Jance, Judith A., author. Published: 2020 Call Number: LP F JANCE Format: Large print Summary: Ali Reynolds and her team at High Noon Enterprises must race against the clock to save an archbishop as he faces mysterious death threats in the next "devilish page-turner" (People) in the New York Times bestselling series by J.A. Jance.
