Fiction Pick of the Week: Trouble & Triumph

Trouble & Triumph by Tip "T.I." Harris with David Ritz
When his mother, Charlotte, was killed, Paul "Power" Clay and his closest friend, Tanya "Beauty" Long, fell under the spell of a savvy and ruthless Atlanta businessman named Slim, who promised to protect them. Wise beyond her years, Beauty always knew that the only person she could rely on was herself. It didn't take long for the levelheaded young woman to recognize the simmering violence beneath Slim's street charm. But getting away from him wasn't easy, and it came at a heartbreaking price: turning her back on Power. Escaping to the glamorous catwalks of the Big Apple, she's worked her breathtaking good looks and quick wit to build a thriving fashion business. Despite her success, she's still haunted by the pain of leaving Power behind. Money and new men cannot erase the memory of the true love she denied. To Power, Slim's world held everything he thought he wanted: women, wealth, power, authority. He discovered too late that Slim Simmons isn't just a businessman--he's a ruthless killer who will turn on anyone he thinks is getting in his way. He is the monster who murdered Charlotte. Now he controls the fate of her only son.

Teen Pick of the Week: The Edge of Nowhere

The Edge of Nowhere by Elizabeth George
Becca King is on the run. Her ability to hear "whispers"--the thoughts of others--has put her at risk from her stepfather, whose criminal activities she's discovered. When she arrives on Whidbey Island, beautiful, wilds, and a world apart, she embarks on a life very different from her old one, with new friends that include Seth, a kindhearted dropout turned gypsy jazz musician; Derric, a Ugandan boy adopted by a local family; Diana, with whom she shares psychic powers; and Debbie, who makes a habit of helping runaways.

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Mysteries and Horror!

The Woman Who Died a Lot by Jasper Fforde
The bookworld's leading enforcement officer, Thursday Next, has been forced into semi-retirement following an assassination attempt. When Thursday's former SpecOps division is reinstated, she assumes the obvious choice to lead the Literary Detectives. But our banged-up heroine is no spring chicken, and her old boss has a cushier job in mind for her: chief librarian of the Swindon All-You-Can-Eat at Fatso's Drink Not Included Library. But where Thursday goes, trouble follows, and pretty soon impressively engineered synthetic Thursdays called Day Players are not only waking up in the stacks, they're downloading her very consciousness.

Dick Francis's Bloodline by Felix Francis
When race-caller and television presenter Mark Shillingford calls a race in which his twin sister, Clare, an accomplished and successful jockey, comes in second when she could have won, he believes the worst: that she lost on purpose, that the race was fixed. That night, he confronts Clare with his suspicions, she storms off after an explosive argument--and it's the last time he sees her alive. Hours later, she jumps to her death from the balcony  of a London hotel...or so it seems.

Red Rain by R.L. Stine
Travel writer Lea Sutter finds herself on a small island off the coast of South Carolina, the wrong place at the wrong time. A merciless, unanticipated hurricane cuts a path of destruction through the island and Lea barely escapes with her life. In the storm's aftermath, she discovers two orphaned boys--twins. Filled with a desire to do something to help, to make something good of all she witnessed, Lea impulsively decides to adopt them. The boys, Samuel and Daniel, seem amiable and immensely grateful; Lea's family back on Long Island--husband Mark, a child psychologist, and their two children, Ira and Elena--aren't quite so pleased. But even they can't anticipate the twins' true nature--or predict that, within a few weeks time, Mark will wind up implicated in two brutal murders, with the police narrowing in.

Teen Pick of the Week: Wish

Wish by Joseph Monninger
Bee's brother, Tommy, knows everything there is to know about sharks. He also knows that his life will be cut short by cystic fibrosis. And so does Bee. That's why when a wish foundation sends him on a trip to swim with great white sharks, Bee vows to make it an unforgettable memory. But wishes don't always come true. At least, not as expected. Only when Bee takes Tommy to meet a famous shark attack survivor and hard-core surfer does Tommy have the chance to live one day to the fullest. And in the sun-kissed ocean off a California beach, Bee discovers that she has a few secret wishes of her own...

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Garlock, Thor, and McCarthy

By Starlight by Dorothy Garlock
Struggling through the Depression, Maddy Aldridge agrees to run an illegal speakeasy in order to save her family's mercantile store. Keeping her dangerous new business partner at arm's length is no easy task, but her bravery faces its biggest test when Jack Rucker unexpectedly comes home. He left town seven years ago, breaking his promise--and her heart--when he didn't return so they could get married and start a family. Now Jack is willing to do anything to earn her forgiveness...anything except reveal one important truth: that he's a Prohibition agent on an undercover mission.

Full Black by Brad Thor
Born in the shadows and kept from heads of state, some missions are so deadly, so sensitive, that they simply don't exist. When one such mission goes horribly wrong, only former Navy SEAL Team 6 member turned covert counter-terrorism operative Scot Harvath can carry out an audacious plan to prevent one of the biggest terrorist threats the United States has ever faced: complete and total collapse. But as the identities of the perpetrators are laid stunningly bare, Harvath will be left with only one means to save America.

The Other Half of Me by Morgan McCarthy
Growing up in their family's ancestral home in Wales, Jonathan Anthony and his little sister, Theo, are inseparable. Together they explore the wild acres of Everdon, inventing magical worlds and buttressing each other against the loneliness of life with their alcoholic mother, Alicia, and a shifting cast of gossiping cooks and maids. When a family tragedy brings their glamorous grandmother, Eve, home from America, Jonathan and Theo are initially elated by the attention she lavishes on them. But soon it becomes clear that there is more to the Anthony family history than either Eve or Alicia will acknowledge, trapping Jonathan and Theo in a web of dark secrets that have haunted Everdon for generations.

Teen Pick of the Week: Raven Boys

The Raven Boys by Maggie Stiefvater
Every year, Blue Sargent stands next to her clairvoyant mother as the soon-to-be-dead walk past. Blue never sees them--until this year, when a boy emerges from the dark and speaks to her. His name is Gansey, and he's a rich student at Aglionby, the local private school. Blue has a policy of staying away from Aglionby boys. Known as Raven Boys, they can only mean trouble. But Blue is drawn to Gansey, in a way she can't entirely explain. He is on a quest that has encompassed three other Raven Boys: Adam, the scholarship student who resents the privilege around him; Ronan, the fierce soul whose emotions range from anger to despair; and Noah, the taciturn watcher who notices many things but says very little. For as long as she can remember, Blue has been warned that she will cause her true love to die. She doesn't believe in true love and never thought this would be a problem. But as her life becomes caught up in the strange and sinister world of the Raven Boys, she's not so sure anymore.

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London, Al Tafar, and NYC

Beautiful Lies by Clare Cook
London 1887. For Maribel Campbell Lowe, the beautiful bohemian wife of a maverick politician, it is the year to make something of yourself. A self-proclaimed Chilean heiress educated in Paris, she is torn between poetry and the new art of photography. But it is soon plain that Maribel's choices are not so simple. As her husband's career hangs by a thread, her real past, and the family she abandoned, come back to haunt them both: When the notorious newspaper editor Alfred Webster begins to take an uncommon interest in Maribel, she fears he will not only destroy Edward's career but both of their reputations.

The Yellow Birds by Kevin Powers
"The war tried to kill us in the spring." So begins this powerful account of friendship and loss. In Al Tafar, Iraq, twenty-one-year-old Private Bartle and eighteen-year-old Private Murphy cling to life as their platoon launches a bloody battle for the city. Bound together since basic training when Bartle makes a promise to bring Murphy safely home, the two have been dropped into a war neither is prepared for. In the endless days that follow, the two young soldiers do everything to protect each other from the forces that press in on every side: the insurgents, physical fatigue, and the mental stress that comes from constant danger. As reality begins to blur into a hazy nightmare, Murphy becomes increasingly unmoored from the world around him, and Bartle takes actions he could have never imagined.

Trust Your Eyes by Linwood Barclay
Thomas Kilbride is a map-obsessed schizophrenic so affected that he rarely leaves the self-imposed bastion of his bedroom. But with a computer program called Whirl360, he travels the world while never so much as stepping out the door. He pores over and memorizes the streets of the world. He examines every address as well as the people who are frozen in time on his computer screen. Then he sees something that anyone else might have noticed--but has not--in a street view of downtown New York City: an image in a window. An image that looks like a woman being murdered.