We’re in a golden age of horror. Here are 10 books that stood out in a year filled with fantastic releases.
We’re in a golden age of horror. Here are 10 books that stood out in a year filled with fantastic releases.
Author: Tuck, Lily, 1938- author.
Published: 2025
Call Number: F TUCK
Format: Books
Summary: "First glimpsed riding on the back of a boy's motorcycle, fourteen-year-old Czeslawa comes to life in this mesmerizing novel by Lily Tuck, who imagines her upbringing in a small Polish village before her world imploded in late 1942. Stripped of her modest belongings, shorn, and tattooed number 26947 on arriving at Auschwitz, Czeslawa is then photographed. Three months later, she is dead. How did this happen to an ordinary Polish citizen? This is the question that Tuck grapples with in this haunting novel, which frames Czeslawa's story within the epic tragedy of six million Poles who perished during the German occupation. A decade prior to writing The Rest Is Memory, Tuck read an obituary of the photographer Wilhelm Brasse, who took more than 40,000 pictures of the Auschwitz prisoners. Included were three of Czeslawa Kwoka, a Catholic girl from rural southeastern Poland. Tuck cut out the photos and kept them, determined to learn more about Czeslawa, but she was only able to glean the barest facts: the village she came from, the transport she was on, that she was accompanied by her mother and her neighbors, her tattoo number, and the date of her death. From this scant evidence, Tuck's novel becomes a remarkable kaleidoscopic feat of imagination, something only our greatest novelists can do"--
Author: Hogan, Thatcher, 1950- author.
Published: 2024
Call Number: 912.747
Format: Books
Summary: "Featuring more than a hundred maps and illustrations, Mapping the Adirondacks is the first book to focus solely on Verplanck Colvin's original survey of the Adirondack Region, a monumental project that would help define and protect the land for generations to come"-- "New York State?'s famous Adirondack landscape is immense, spanning over six million acres of public forests, lakes, rivers, mountains, and private lands. In full color featuring hundreds of detailed maps and photos, Mapping the Adirondacks celebrates it all with the first clear account of the original surveyor who explored and fully comprehended it--Verplanck Colvin. 'Everywhere below,' Colvin wrote, 'were lakes and mountains so different from all maps, yet so immovably true.' His monumental accomplishment helped motivate the citizens of New York in 1894 to legally protect it for generations to come." --Amazon.com
Author: Mahnke, Aaron, author. Marks, Harry C., author.
Published: 2024
Call Number: 030
Format: Books
Summary: "The new book based on the long-running hit podcast by Aaron Mahnke, which has translated into over 120-million downloads to date, and a monthly average of over 2 million listeners. The podcast, Aaron Mahnke's Cabinet of Curiosities, has delighted millions of listeners for years with tales of the wonderful, astounding, and downright bizarre people, places, and things throughout history. Now, in Cabinet of Curiosities the book, learn the fascinating story of the invention of the croissant in a country that was not France, and relive the adventures of a dog that stowed away and went to war, only to help capture a German spy. Along the way, readers will pass through the American state of Franklin, watch Abraham Lincoln's son be rescued by his assassin's brother, and learn how too many crash landings inspired one pilot to leave the airline industry and trek for the stars. For the first time ever, Aaron has gathered scores of his favorites in print, and curated them into a beautiful, topical collection for devoted followers and new fans alike"--
Author: Bhogal, Ruby, author.
Published: 2024
Call Number: 641.71
Format: Books
Summary: Great British Bake Off finalist Ruby Bhogal is here to delight us with a flexible approach to baking tasty, sweet treats that give you double helpings of temptation. She brings us 50 like-for-like recipes, with a plant-based and non- plant-based version for each bake. "We all remember watching in horror as Ruby's showstopper cake collapsed on the first-ever Vegan Week on the Great British Bake Off. Instead of slinking off with her tail between her legs, she was determined to master the art of baking and bake, bake, bake again until she could say with confidence that her recipes were failproof. Sharing new bakes and videos online, Ruby discovered a growing demand for adaptable recipes without eggs, dairy, or a full plant-based twist. She wanted her bakes to cater to everyone's needs, no matter the dietary preference..." --Amazon.com
Author: Smith, Tanya, 1960- author.
Published: 2024
Call Number: B SMITH
Format: Books
Summary: "In Never Saw Me Coming, Tanya Smith shares her deeply personal and remarkable story of how she went from a precocious young girl to a money-grabbing, computer-savvy wiz. It starts out as a keen interest in technology and innocently acquiring phone numbers to Michael Jackson, as well as other celebrities, and moves to her successfully stealing and depositing $5,000 into her grandmother's banking account. By the time she is 18, the risk taker has confiscated millions in cash. The FBI is hot on her tail and hauls her in for an interview, demanding Smith let them know who she's working for, "as these are not the kind of crimes Black people are smart enough to commit." Their words, indicating that intelligence was determined by race, severely offended Smith. Up for the challenge, she proves the FBI wrong and over time steals $40 million dollars, while securing diamonds, gold bars, and other commodities. Her lifestyle attracts the wrong kind of people, even those who set out to kill her. Law enforcement persisted, ultimately dubbing Smith "one of the single biggest threats to the entire United States banking system." She receives an outrageous prison sentence--the longest for a white-collar offense--and is eventually released by mounting her own brilliant defense."--Amazon.
Author: Tierney, Marie, author.
Published: 2024
Call Number: F TIERNEY
Format: Books
Summary: "Fourteen-year-old Ava Bonney is unlike other children. She has an obsessive interest in the rate at which dead animals decompose. The motorway she lives by regularly offers up roadkill, and in the dead of night, Ava likes nothing more than to pull her latest discovery into her roadside den and record her findings. One night, she stumbles across the body of her classmate Mickey Grant, and fearing that her secret ritual could be revealed, she makes an anonymous call to the police. When Detective Seth Delahaye is given the case, Ava won't step back -- not when teenagers in her sleepy South Birmingham town are going missing. How hard can it be to track a killer? Marie Tierney's debut, Deadly Animals, is a beautiful novel about a small community's descent into devastation and desperation -- and the bravery of youth in the face of darkness"--
Author: Erikson, Thomas, 1965- author.
Published: 2024
Call Number: 158.2
Format: Books
Summary: "Protect yourself against lies and deception with bestselling author Thomas Erikson's proven behavioral science methods-- Do you ever have the feeling that your friend isn't telling you the whole story? Or that your colleague's answer doesn't quite add up? Whether in your personal or social life, professional life, or on the news or media, sorting the lies from the truth can be exhausting and make you feel constantly on edge. In the next installment of the Surrounded by Idiots series, Thomas Erikson shows you how to identify and deal with the liars in your life. With the help of the simple, four-color behavioral model made famous in Surrounded by Idiots, readers will learn to protect themselves against deception and insincerity. Filled with sophisticated wisdom and Erikson's trademark humor, Surrounded by Liars arms readers with the practical knowledge needed to feel confident in their ability to discern the truth and live a calmer, more reliable life"--
Author: Moss, Korina, author.
Published: 2024
Call Number: PB MOSS
Format: Books
Summary: "The small town of Yarrow Glen's neighbor, Lockwood, hosts an annual Labor Day weekend bash: Dairy Days. And Willa Bauer and her cheese shop, Curds & Whey, refuse to miss out on the fun. Willa is thrilled to celebrate her favorite thing--she is a cheesemonger after all--and this festival goes all out: butter sculptures, goat races, cheese wheel relays, even a Miss Dairy pageant. Too bad the pageant runner, Nadine, is treating Dairy Days prep like it's fondue or die and is putting everyone around her on edge. When Willa finds Nadine's dead body under years' worth of ceramic milk jugs, the police aren't sure whether the death was an accident. But fingers are pointing at Willa's employee, Mrs. Schultz, who steps in to help the pageant after Nadine's death. Someone wanted Nadine out of the whey, and Willa is going to find out who." --
Author: K'wan, author.
Published: 2024
Call Number: F KWAN
Format: Books
Summary: He's smart, he's handsome, he's dangerous . . . He is the Black Godfather, and dope pushers beware! Grimm's childhood wasn't unlike any of the other kids in his dirt-poor neighborhood: hard times and hard lives. However, while his best friends, Spoon and Goldie, were out getting into mischief, Grimm was in the house, studying or reading. After a fast-tracked graduation, Grimm enlisted in the Marines. He endured seven years trapped in a South American prison camp, subject to torture, starvation, and, most notably, a deadly underground fighting circuit. By the time he was rescued, he emerged as a 210-pound weapon of mass destruction. Upon Grimm's return, he finds that his neighborhood has changed. His mother is a broken shell of her former self. His best friend Spoon is now an up-and-coming hustler and pimp, and Goldie has become a prostitute. It's up to Grimm to fix his family and his community. He embarks on a mission to push some of the low-level dealers and users out of the neighborhood with the help of some of his veteran buddies. Grateful neighbors start referring to him as the "Black Godfather" because of the way he takes care of his people. This sets the scene for a confrontation between Grimm and Spoon. The two once best friends are now bitter rivals, locked in a personal war in the streets. It's a long and hard-fought battle, but it's only the beginning of a greater war.--Back cover
Author: Patterson, James, 1947- author. Eversmann, Matt, author. Malloy, Tim (Journalist), author. Mooney, Chris, author.
Published: 2024
Call Number: 355.134
Format: Books
Summary: "U.S. soldiers who served in overseas conflicts--from World War II, Korea, and Vietnam to Iraq and Afghanistan--share true stories of the actions that earned them some of America's most distinguished military medals, up to and including the Medal of Honor. They never acted alone, but always in the spirit of camaraderie, patriotism, and for the good of our beloved country. There has never been a better time for all of us to think about duty, sacrifice, and what it means to be an American hero."--Publisher.
Author: Cornwell, Patricia Daniels, author.
Published: 2024
Call Number: F CORNWELL
Format: Books
Summary: "Summoned to an unnerving, abandoned theme park to retrieve a body, Dr Kay Scarpetta is devastated to learn that the victim is a man she once loved. While teaching in Rome during the early days of her career, Scarpetta had an intense love affair with Sal Giordano that led to a lifelong friendship. The murder scene is bizarre, with a crop circle of petals around the body, and Giordano's skin is strangely red. Scarpetta's niece Lucy believes he was dropped from an unidentified flying craft. Scarpetta knows an autopsy can reveal the dead's secrets, but she is shocked to find her friend seems to have deliberately left her a clue. As the investigators are torn between suspicions of otherworldly forces, and of Giordano himself, Scarpetta detects an explanation closer to home that, in her mind, is far more evil"--
Author: Sanders, Angela M., author.
Published: 2024
Call Number: PB SANDERS
Format: Books
Summary: "Surprised by an unexpected visit from her oddly pensive mother, Josie hopes to distract her with a visit to the Aerie, the clifftop manor where the recently passed Reverend Clarence Duffy lived. Inside, however, Josie hears hissed warnings from boxes of the preacher's old books--and once home, from the library's detective novels. When Wilfred residents start to receive threatening letters the next day, the witch-in-training is determined to uncover the missives' author... But not before the dead body of one of the reverend's sons is discovered at the bottom of the cliff. Unsettled by the Wilfred residents' crumbling friendships--and by her mother's reason for her visit--Josie has her hands full of dilemmas. Sheriff Sam is no help--he laughs off the letter he receives. Then Josie finds one addressed to her, stating that the author "knows her secret." Josie must trust her fledgling sorcery--as well as a bit of magic from a surprising source--to uncover the poison pen before anyone else receives a deadly delivery..."--
Author: Asante, MK, 1981- author.
Published: 2024
Call Number: 362.8808
Format: Books
Summary: "In the vein of The Fire Next Time and Between the World and Me, Nephew by best-selling author M.K. Asante is a poetic, raw, and inspirational love letter to his nephew who was shot 5 times and survived - it's about overcoming odds, finding your voice, and the power of music and family"-- "Waiting in the emergency room at Temple University Hospital in North Philadelphia where his eighteen-year-old nephew, Nasir, lay unconscious after being shot nine times, MK Asante began pouring his heart and soul into a series of letters to a beautiful, dying Black boy so full of life. As Nasir fought for survival, MK realized there was so much--too much--that he had kept from his nephew, starting with the truth about his father, MK's brother, Uzi, whom Nasir had never met. MK could no longer remain silent because in many ways, his nephew was repeating the mistakes of the past. MK began his confessional to repair family bonds--to save Nasir from the same streets that stole his father and to introduce him to the man and family history the young man had never known. The result is this beautiful, poignant, and honest family memoir." --Amazon.com
Author: Patterson, James, 1947- author. Sitts, Brian, author.
Published: 2024
Call Number: LP F PATTERSO
Format: Large print
Summary: "When professor turned crime-fighter Brandt "'Doc'" Savage and his girlfriend Kira Sunlight land on a desert island in the middle of the Atlantic, they think they've found a perfect utopia. An escape from their tumultuous pasts. But they don't have long to enjoy their newfound peace before they are violently separated and dragged to opposite ends of the Earth. Doc's search for Kira takes him from the coast of Brazil to northern Europe and the jungles of the Congo, and he discovers they are entangled in a global conspiracy that is bigger he ever could have imagined"--Back cover.
Author: Sullivan, John Joseph, 1959- author. Mattis, James M., writer of foreword.
Published: 2024
Call Number: 947.7086
Format: Books
Summary: For weeks before the invasion of Ukraine, U.S. Ambassador to Russia John Sullivan was warning that it would happen. When troops finally crossed the border, he was woken in the middle of the night by an employee at Embassy Moscow with a prearranged code. The signal was even more bracing than the cold of that February night: it meant that Sullivan needed to collect his bodyguards and get to the embassy as soon as possible. The war had begun, and U.S.-Russia relations would never be the same. In Midnight in Moscow, Sullivan offers a memoir of his last post, as well as a broader argument about how our relationship with Russia has deteriorated over the past three years and where it's going. His arrival in Moscow coincided almost exactly with a dramatic series of escalations by the Kremlin. He saw firsthand how the Russian leadership repeatedly lied about their intentions to invade Ukraine in the weeks leading up to the attack-while also devoting huge numbers of personnel and vast resources to undermining the U.S. diplomatic presence in Russia. But it was not until Vladimir Putin gave the order to launch a full-scale invasion of Ukraine on February 25, 2022 that Sullivan had to admit that Russia was not just at war with its neighbor: it was also at war, in a very real sense, with the United States, and with everything that it represents. Russian leaders' treachery and naked hostility, he says, is definitive proof that there can be no negotiation with Putin's regime or with the Russians at large until their government is thoroughly transformed. A unique perspective on a pivotal moment in world history, Midnight in Moscow also draws shocking historical parallels to explain why we need to stand up to Moscow--and how far we should be prepared to go in that confrontation.--
Author: Ackerman, Sara, author.
Published: 2024
Call Number: F ACKERMAN
Format: Books
Summary: 'Iwa Young, a field biologist dedicated to protecting her rainforest home from a proposed Eco Resort, finds her focus tested when Dane Parsons, a big wave surfer, offers to help her cause, despite her rule against dating surfers. Their evolving relationship unfolds amidst thrilling surf adventures from Maui to Portugal. "They say opposites attract, but are they meant to last? 'Iwa Young's life is high in the Maui rainforest. As a field biologist, she's happiest in the company of trees and birds and waterfalls. When a developer arrives with plans for a so-called eco resort in the middle of a forest full of endangered species, 'Iwa puts all her energy into the fight to protect it. But a chance encounter threatens to distract her. His name is Dane Parsons, a big-wave surfer from California. 'Iwa has a few unbreakable rules, and at the top of her list: never date a surfer..." --Amazon.com
Author: Margolin, Phillip, author.
Published: 2024
Call Number: F MARGOLIN
Format: Books
Summary: "A new standalone legal thriller from the international bestselling author of GONE, BUT NOT FORGOTTEN. Charlie Webb is a third rate lawyer who graduated from a third rate law-school and, because he couldn't get hired by any of the major law firms, has opened his own law firm, where he gets by handling cases for dubious associates from his youth and some court appointed cases. Described as "a leaky boat floating down the stream of life," Charlie has led an unremarkable life, personally and professionally. Until he's appointed to be the attorney for a decidedly crackpot artist who calls himself Guido Sabatini (born Lawrence Weiss). Sabatini has been arrested - again - for breaking into a restaurant and stealing back a painting he sold them because he was insulted by where it was displayed. But as Lawrence Weiss, he's also an accomplished card shark and burglar and while he was there, he stole a thumb drive from the owner's safe. Not knowing what else Sabatini has stolen, Webb negotiates the return of the painting and "other items' for the owner dropping charges against Sabatini. But the contents of the flash drive threatens very powerful figures who are determined to retrieve it, the restaurant owner (Gretchen Hall) and her driver (Yuri Makarov) are being investigated for the sex trafficking of minors, and there are others who have a violent grudge against Sabatini. When a minor theft case becomes a double homicide, and even more, Charlie Webb, an insignificant lawyer assigned to an insignificant case, is faced with the most important, and deadliest, case of his life. Going back to his long-time bestselling roots, Phillip Margolin returns with a brilliant standalone legal thriller in the tradition of John Grisham"--
Author: Price, Richard, 1949- author.
Published: 2024
Call Number: F PRICE
Format: Books
Summary: "East Harlem, 2008. In an instant, a five-story tenement collapses into a fuming hill of rubble ... As the city's rescue services and media outlets respond, the surrounding neighborhood descends into chaos. By day's end, six bodies have been recovered but many of the other tenants are missing. In Lazarus Man, Richard Price ... creates intertwining portraits of a group of compelling and singular characters whose lives are permanently affected by the disaster"--
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