The Medusa Protocol (Assassins Anonymous #2), by Rob Hart
When Astrid, known in her assassin days as Azrael, stopped showing up to Assassins Anonymous, the group assumed her past had caught up with her. Only her sponsor Mark, formerly the deadliest killer in the world, holds out hope that she’s okay. Then, during a meeting, the group gets a sign, or rather, a pizza delivery. Is there another psychopath out there who actually likes olives on their pizza, or is Astrid trying to send Mark a message?
Meanwhile, Astrid wakes up in the cell of a black site prison, on a remote island. A doctor subjects her to mysterious experiments, plumbing the depths of her memory and looking for a vital clue from her past. She’ll do anything to escape, except…killing anyone. Hmm. Turns out it’s not easy to blow this joint without blowing anything, or anyone up.
Zeal, by Morgan Jerkins
Harlem, 2019. Ardelia and Oliver are hosting their engagement party. As the guests get ready to leave, he hands her a love letter on a yellowing, crumbling piece of paper . . .
Natchez, 1865. Discharged from the Union Army as a free man after the war’s end, Harrison returns to Mississippi to reunite with the woman he loves, Tirzah. Upon his arrival at the Freedmen’s Bureau, though, he catches the eye of a woman working there, who’s determined to thwart his efforts to find his beloved. After tragedy strikes, Harrison resigns himself to a life with her.
Meanwhile in Louisiana, the newly free Tirzah is teaching at the Freedmen’s School, and discovers an advertisement in the local paper looking for her. Though she knows Harrison must have placed it, and longs to find him, the risks of fleeing are too great, and Tirzah chooses the life of seeming security right in front of her.
When Ardelia meets Oliver, she finds his family’s history is as full of secrets and omissions as her own. Could their connection be a cosmic reconciliation satisfying the unfulfilled desires of their ancestors, or will the weight of the past, present and future tear them apart?
Spanning over a hundred and fifty years, Morgan Jerkins’s extraordinary novel intertwines the stories of these star-crossed lovers and their descendants.
Indelicate Deception, by V.S. Kemanis
Caty Robertson arrives in the world physically fragile and abundantly loved, destined to grow tall and strong like her parents. She’s raised in the glow of Daddy’s generous embrace of humanity and his entertaining stories about Caty’s mother, Lenore. But Caty doesn’t remember her mother, and Daddy is vague about the reasons for her absence.
The Doorman, by Chris Pavone
Chicky Diaz is everyone’s favorite doorman at the Bohemia, New York City’s world-famous home of celebrities, financiers, and the cultural elite.
In his epauletted suit, he mans the line between the turbulent streets outside the Bohemia and the far more sanguine world within. Not that the Bohemia’s residents care much, but Chicky has his own problems, the kind that mean that for tonight’s shift, for the first time in thirty years, Chicky will be carrying a gun. Because someone, tonight, is going to die.
The Wandering Season, by Aimie K. Runyan
Veronica Stratton, a specialty food broker with a business riding close to the margins, visits her parents in idyllic Estes Park for Christmas. With the holiday comes a DNA test from her younger sister and an engagement ring from her longtime boyfriend. The test confirms her secret that she's adopted. The ring rattles her even more, and she realizes that she might not be as ready to commit as she'd thought.
With so much that she'd counted on suddenly falling apart, Veronica is looking for an escape. Inspired by her best friend, she plans to go to Europe to see four of the places listed on her DNA ancestry report. She treks to County Mayo in Ireland; the Dordogne region of France; Copenhagen, Denmark; and Tuscany in Italy. She hopes to learn a bit about where her family lived and to make more connections for her struggling business, but she finds that each stop brings her visions of her ancestors that raise more questions than they answer. And among those pressing questions is how brooding Irish restauranteur Niall Callaghan will fit into her visions for the future.
The Banker, by Peter Colt
Boston, 1986. Spring in Boston is always a miserable affair, and Andy Roark’s latest case offers nothing to raise his spirits. The ex-military operative turned private investigator has been hired by a bank president to investigate three of his staff. One of them has embezzled over two million dollars – and Brock wants Roark to find out who’s living above their means.
Sounds exciting enough, but after two weeks' tedious surveillance uncovers a grand total of nothing, Roark gives it up as a bad job. Brock needs a forensic accountant on the case, not a PI.
But several weeks later, the bank is held up, and one of Brock’s suspects is murdered by the robber. Is there a connection? Roark can’t see how, but he’s never been a fan of coincidence.
With the case niggling at him, he relaunches an investigation on his own dime. Soon he’s rubbing shoulders with some very shady characters – and trying his best not just to solve the case, but also to come out of it alive.
A Case of Mice and Murder (The Trials of Gabriel Ward #1), by Sally Smith
When barrister Gabriel Ward steps out of his rooms at exactly two minutes to seven on a sunny May morning in 1901, his mind is so full of his latest case—the disputed authorship of bestselling children’s book Millie the Temple Church Mouse—that he scarcely registers the body of the Lord Chief Justice of England on his doorstep.
But even he cannot fail to notice the judge’s dusty bare feet, in shocking contrast to his flawless evening dress, nor the silver carving knife sticking out of his chest. In the shaded courtyards and ancient buildings of the Inner Temple, the hidden heart of London’s legal world, murder has spent centuries confined firmly to the casebooks. Until now . . .
The police can enter the Temple only by consent, so who better to investigate this tragic breach of law and order than a man who prizes both above all things? But murder doesn’t answer to logic or reasoned argument, and Gabriel soon discovers that the Temple’s heavy oak doors are hiding more surprising secrets than he’d ever imagined . . .
Arcana Academy (Arcana Academy #1), by Elise Kova
Clara Graysword has survived the underworld of Eclipse City through thievery, luck, and a whole lot of illegal magic. After a job gone awry, Clara is sentenced to a lifetime in prison for inking tarot cards-a rare power reserved for practitioners at the elite Arcana Academy.
Just when it seems her luck has run dry, the academy's enigmatic headmaster, Prince Kaelis, offers her an escape-for a price. Kaelis believes that Clara is the perfect tool to help him steal a tarot card from the king and use it to re-create an all-powerful card long lost to time.
In order to conceal her identity and keep her close, Kaelis brings Clara to Arcana Academy, introducing her as the newest first-year student and his bride-to-be.
Thrust into a world of arcane magic and royal intrigue, where one misstep will send her back to prison or worse, Clara finds that the prince she swore to hate may not be what he seems. But can she risk giving him power over the world? Or will she take it for herself?
I Seek a Kind Person: My Father, Seven Children and the Adverts that Helped Them Escape the Holocaust, by Julian Borger
In 1938, Jewish families are scrambling to flee Vienna. Desperate, they take out adverts offering their children into the safe keeping of readers of a British newspaper, the Manchester Guardian. The right words in the right order could mean the difference between life and death. Eighty-three years later, Guardian journalist Julian Borger comes across the advert that saved his father, Robert, from the Nazis. Robert had kept this a secret, like almost everything else about his traumatic Viennese childhood, until he took his own life.
Drawn to the shadows of his family's past and starting with nothing but a page of newspaper adverts, Borger traces the remarkable stories of his father, the other advertised children and their families, each thrown into the maelstrom of a world at war. From a Viennese radio shop to the Shanghai ghetto, internment camps and family homes across Britain, the deep forests and concentration camps of Nazi Germany, smugglers saving Jewish lives in Holland, an improbable French Resistance cell, and a redemptive story of survival in New York, Borger unearths the astonishing journeys of the children at the hands of fate, their stories of trauma and the kindness of strangers.
Vera Miles: The Hitchcock Blonde Who Got Away, by Christopher McKittrick
Vera The Hitchcock Blonde Who Got Away is the first full-length biography of the talented performer's life and extensive body of work. Integrating historical interviews and archival materials, author Christopher McKittrick reveals the struggles Miles faced as a working mother in the 1950s and 1960s and why she was compelled to step away from the lead role in Vertigo—a choice that irrevocably sundered her relationship with Hitchcock. Yet Miles would go on to appear in nearly two hundred television shows, including The Twilight Zone, The Fugitive, Ironside, and The Virginian, as well as numerous Disney films. She would work with some of the most talented actors in Hollywood—John Wayne, Bob Hope, and James Stewart among them—and would receive a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame. By highlighting Miles as the lead in her own story, McKittrick amplifies the voice of this remarkable and prolific actress who was far more than just a footnote in Hitchcock's film legacy.
The Rescuers: The Remarkable People Who Saved World Heritage, by Nancy Moses
This book profiles some of the handful of people who rescued significant cultural treasures that would or may have been otherwise lost to humankind. Some, like Dr. Assad, were on a noble mission, but that is not always the case. Some are motivated by profit, fame, gratitude, or personal advancement.
The ten stories in The Rescuers include a variety of objects, motivations, locations and historic periods. They include a Scottish prehistoric site; Soviet-era seed banking; mid-20th century photographic masterworks; African American and immigrant folk music; Alaskan Native ceremonial and cultural objects; and a German language, Czech author whose manuscripts now reside in an Israeli archive.
While each is a unique story, it is also representative of similar cases. Chapters explore some of the most controversial issues facing society appropriation, repatriation, indigenous rights, copyright law, racism, and the impact of tourism on fragile cultural sites.
Turning to Birds: The Power and Beauty of Noticing, by Lili Taylor
Accessible essays about searching for peace in the cacophony of birds and discovering a world of meaning in small moments—from award-winning actress Lili Taylor.
Most people don’t really know birds—or rather, they aren’t aware of them. Lili Taylor used to be one of those people. She knew birds existed. She thought about them, maybe even more than the average person. But she didn’t know them. And then something happened.
During a break from her work as an actor, Lili sought silence and instead found the bustling, symphonic world of birds. Through simply paying attention to them, Lili has been shown a parallel world that is wider and deeper, one of constant change and movement, full of life and the will to survive.
This book is part memoir, part love letter to the beauty and resilience of the natural world-- a reminder of the profound connections that exist between all living things. Taylor's lyrical prose and thoughtful meditations on both the art we make and the art we discover around us create a sense of intimacy and wonder, inviting readers to see the world through new eyes and to find joy in the most unexpected places.