Martha Waters

Light Paperback (1 lb or less)

California

A Novel

"The widowed Diana, Lady Templeton and Jeremy, Marquess of Willingham are infamous among English high society as much for their sharp-tongued bickering as their flirtation. One evening, an argument at a ball turns into a serious wager: Jeremy will marry within the year or Diana will forfeit one hundred pounds. So shortly after, just before a fortnight-long house party at Elderwild, Jeremy's country estate, Diana is shocked when Jeremy appears at her home with a very different kind of proposition. After his latest mistress unfavorably criticized his skills in the bedroom, Jeremy is looking for reassurance, so he has gone to the only woman he trusts to be totally truthful. He suggests that they embark on a brief affair while at the house party-Jeremy can receive an honest critique of his bedroom skills and widowed Diana can use the gossip to signal to other gentlemen that she is interested in taking a lover. Diana thinks taking him up on his counter-proposal can only help her win her wager. With her in the bedroom and Jeremy's marriage-minded grandmother, the formidable Dowager Marchioness of Willingham, helping to find suitable matches among the eligible ladies at Elderwild, Diana is confident her victory is assured. But while they're focused on winning wagers, they stand to lose their own hearts"--

To Love and to Loathe

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Nita Prose

Light Hardcover (1 lb or less)

A charmingly eccentric hotel maid discovers a guest murdered in his bed. Solving the mystery will turn her once orderly world upside down in this utterly original debut. Molly Gray is not like everyone else. She struggles with social skills and misinterprets the intentions of others. Her gran used to interpret the world for her, codifying it into simple rules that Molly could live by. Since Gran died a few months ago, twenty-five-year-old Molly has had to navigate life's complexities all by herself. No matter--she throws herself with gusto into her work as a hotel maid. Her unique character, along with her obsessive love of cleaning and proper etiquette, make her an ideal fit for the job. She delights in donning her crisp uniform each morning, stocking her cart with miniature soaps and bottles, and returning guest rooms at the Regency Grand Hotel to a state of perfection. But Molly's orderly life is turned on its head the day she enters the suite of the infamous and wealthy Charles Black, only to find it in a state of disarray and Mr. Black himself very dead in his bed. Before she knows what's happening, Molly's unusual demeanor has the police targeting her as their lead suspect. She quickly finds herself caught in a web of deception, one she has no idea how to untangle. Fortunately for Molly, friends she never knew she had unite with her in a search for clues to what really happened to Mr. Black--but will they be able to find the real killer before it's too late? A Clue-like, locked-room mystery and a heartwarming journey of the spirit, The Maid explores what it means to be the same as everyone else and yet entirely different--and reveals that all mysteries can be solved through connection to the human heart.

The Maid

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Hardcover (1 to 2 lbs)

Has Anyone Seen Charlotte Salter?

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Cyril Hare

The snow is thick, the phone line is down, and no one is getting in or out of Warbeck Hall. With friends and family gathered round the fire, all should be set for a perfect Christmas, but as the bells chime midnight, a mysterious murder takes place.

Who can be responsible? The scorned young lover? The lord's passed-over cousin? The social climbing politician's wife? The Czech history professor? The obsequious butler? And perhaps the real question is: can any of them survive long enough to tell the tale?

An English Murder

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Disha Bose

"A twisty tale of murder and love gone wrong, rife with bone-chilling revelations . . . This is a riveting debut, and Disha Bose is a writer to watch."--Joshilyn Jackson, New York Times bestselling author of Mother May I

She was the perfect wife, with the perfect life. You would kill to have it.

Ciara Dunphy has it all--a loving husband, well-behaved children, and a beautiful home. Her circle of friends in their small Irish village go to her for tips about mothering, style, and influencer success--a picture-perfect life is easy money on Instagram. But behind the filters, reality is less polished.

Enter Mishti Guha: Ciara's best friend. Ciara welcomed Mishti into her inner circle for being . . . unlike the other mothers in the group. Discontent in a marriage arranged for her by her parents back in Calcutta, Mishti now raises her young daughter in a country that is too cold, among children who look nothing like her. She wants what Ciara has--the ease with which she moves through the world--and, in that sense, Mishti might be exactly like the other mothers.

And there's earth mother Lauren Doyle: born, bred, and the butt of jokes in their village. With her disheveled partner and children who run naked in the yard, they're mostly a happy lot, though ostracized for being the singular dysfunction in Ciara's immaculate world. When Lauren finds an unlikely ally in Mishti, she decides that her days of ridicule are over.

Then Ciara is found murdered in her own pristine home, and the house of cards she'd worked so hard to build comes crumbling down. Everyone seems to have something to gain from Ciara's death, so if they don't want the blame, it may be the perfect time to air their enemies' dirty laundry.

In this dazzling debut novel, Disha Bose revolutionizes age-old ideas of love and deceit. What ensues is the delicious unspooling of a group of women desperate to preserve themselves.

Dirty Laundry

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Jenny Jackson

A deliciously funny, sharply observed debut of family, love, and class, this zeitgeisty novel follows three women in one wealthy Brooklyn clan

"A vibrant and hilarious debut...Pineapple Street is riveting, timely, hugely entertaining and brimming with truth." --Cynthia D'Aprix Sweeney, New York Times bestselling author of The Nest

Darley, the eldest daughter in the well-connected old money Stockton family, followed her heart, trading her job and her inheritance for motherhood but giving up far too much in the process; Sasha, a middle-class New England girl, has married into the Brooklyn Heights family, and finds herself cast as the arriviste outsider; and Georgiana, the baby of the family, has fallen in love with someone she can't have, and must decide what kind of person she wants to be. 

Rife with the indulgent pleasures of life among New York's one-percenters, Pineapple Street is a smart, escapist novel that sparkles with wit. Full of recognizable, loveable--if fallible--characters, it's about the peculiar unknowability of someone else's family, the miles between the haves and have-nots, and the insanity of first love--all wrapped in a story that is a sheer delight.

Pineapple Street

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Peace Adzo Medie

There is a small amount of sticker residue on the front cover. 

A REESE WITHERSPOON x HELLO SUNSHINE BOOK CLUB PICK A NEW YORK TIMES NOTABLE BOOK OF THE YEAR A Time Magazine Must-Read Book of 2020 One of BuzzFeed's "29 Books We Couldn’t Put Down This Year" A Must-Read Novel: The New York Times Book Review * BuzzFeed * Marie Claire * Parade * Travel + Leisure * Ms. Magazine * Bustle * The Millions * Book Riot * Christian Science Monitor * HelloGiggles “[A] mesmerizing debut novel.” —The New York Times Book Review “A story that kept me tied to the page, told in masterful, seamless prose.” —BuzzFeed “I love this book so much I turned the pages so fast . . . It’s all about the search for independence and being true to yourself and who you really are.” —Reese Witherspoon Afi Tekple is a young seamstress in Ghana. She is smart; she is pretty; and she has been convinced by her mother to marry a man she does not know. Afi knows who he is, of course—Elikem is a wealthy businessman whose mother has chosen Afi in the hopes that she will distract him from his relationship with a woman his family claims is inappropriate. But Afi is not prepared for the shift her life takes when she is moved from her small hometown of Ho to live in Accra, Ghana’s gleaming capital, a place of wealth and sophistication where she has days of nothing to do but cook meals for a man who may or may not show up to eat them. She has agreed to this marriage in order to give her mother the financial security she desperately needs, and so she must see it through. Or maybe not? His Only Wife is a witty, smart, and moving debut novel about a brave young woman traversing the minefield of modern life with its taboos and injustices, living in a world of men who want their wives to be beautiful, to be good cooks and mothers, to be women who respect their husbands and grant them forbearance. And in Afi, Peace Medie has created a delightfully spunky and relatable heroine who just may break all the rules.

His Only Wife

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Kellye Garrett

Slight wear on the cover but the spine is uncracked. 

In this "crackling domestic suspense" filled with "wry humor and deft pacing" (Alyssa Cole), no one bats an eye when a Black reality TV star is found dead--except her estranged half-sister, whose refusal to believe the official story leads her on a dangerous search for the truth.



Edgar Award Finalist for Best Novel * Lefty Award Winner for Best Mystery Novel * A Book of the Month Club Pick * An Oxygen Book Club Pick * A Today Show Spring Fiction Pick * A New York Post Best New Book of the Week * A New York Public Library Best Book of the Year * A South Florida Sun-Sentinel Best Mystery of the Year * A CrimeReads Best Psychological Thriller of the Year



"A mystery that has everything I love most: an intriguing set up; an absorbing storyline that kept me guessing; a satisfying ending; and, most of all, incredibly well-developed characters I kept thinking about long after I finished the book." ―Jasmine Guillory, Today Show



"I found out my sister was back in New York from Instagram. I found out she'd died from the New York Daily News."



When the body of reality TV star Desiree Pierce is found on a playground in the Bronx the morning after her twenty-fifth birthday party, the police and the media are quick to declare her death an overdose. A tragedy, certainly, but not a crime.



Yet Columbia grad student Lena--principled, headstrong, and allergic to the spotlight--knows that can't be the case. Despite the bitter truth that the two hadn't spoken in two years, they were half-sisters. Lena knew Desiree. And Desiree would never travel above 125th Street. Something is very wrong with the facts. So why is no one listening?



While the two sisters had been torn apart by Desiree's partying and by their difficult father, Lena becomes determined to find justice for Desiree. Even if that means untangling her family's darkest secrets--or ending up dead herself.



"A briskly plotted, socially astute thriller." ―Los Angeles Times 



"Equal parts charm and heartbreak, with razor-sharp insights on class, race, and family." --Laura Lippman



"Dishes up the glitz of the haves and the struggles of the have-nots, infusing classic noir storytelling with Big Apple glamour--#pageturner." --Oprah Daily



"A twisty murder mystery with nuance and heart." ―BookPage

 

"Noir for the media-struck generation...Original and witty." ―National Public Radio

Like a Sister

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A Dr Ruth Galloway Mystery

The Crossing Places 

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#paperback #mystery #fiction #nellpattison #thriller 

The Silent House

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#litfic #shortstories
Some light pencil underlining. Student copy

Seven Stories by Andre Dubus

Seven stories of people facing turning points in their lives feature a grief-stricken father, a brother whose mother has just left home, and a woman whose many lovers cause her to doubt she will ever truly know love.

In the Bedroom

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#sisters #complicatedfamily #memoir #hardcover #adoption

A Memoir

In the early 1980s, Mary Hall is a little girl growing up in poverty in Camden, New Jersey, with her older brother Jacob and parents who, in her words, were "great at making babies, but not so great at holding on to them." After her father leaves the family, she is raised among a commune of mothers in a low-income housing complex. Then, no longer able to care for the only daughter she has left at home, Mary's mother sends Mary away to Oklahoma to live with her maternal grandparents, who have also been raising her younger sister, Rebecca. When Mary is legally adopted by her grandparents, the result is a family story like no other. Because Mary was adopted by her grandparents, Mary's mother, Peggy, is legally her sister, while her brother, Jacob, is legally her nephew.

Living in Oklahoma with her maternal grandfather, Mary gets a new name and a new life. But she's haunted by the past: by the baby girls she's sure will come looking for her someday, by the mother she left behind, by the father who left her. Mary is a college student when her sisters start to get back in touch. With each subsequent reunion, her family becomes closer to whole again. Moving, haunting, and at times wickedly funny, Bastards is about finding one's family and oneself.

Bastards

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#paperback #suspense #spy #mossad #israel

After attending her father's funeral, former Mossad agent Rachel Goldschmitt empties her bank account and disappears. But when she makes a cryptic phone call to her former handler, Ehud, the Mossad sends him to track her down. Finding no leads, he must retrace her career as a spy to figure out why she abandoned Mossad before she can do any damage to Israel. But he soon discovers that after living under cover for so long, an agent's assumed identity and her real one can blur, catching loyalty, love, and truth between them. In the midst of a high-risk, high-stakes investigation, Ehud begins to question whether he ever knew his agent at all.

The English Teacher

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#1 International Bestseller Shortlisted for the 2020 Australian Prime Minister's Literary Award * Shortlisted for the Stella Prize 2020 * Longlisted for the 2020 Miles Franklin Award “The Big Chill with a dash of Big Little Lies . . . Knife-sharp and deeply alive.” —The Guardian (London) “An insightful, poignant, and fiercely honest novel about female friendship and female aging.” —Sigrid Nunez, National Book Award–winning author of The Friend “Friendship, ambition, love, sexual politics and death: it’s all here in one sharp, funny, heartbreaking, and gorgeously written package. I loved it.” —Paula Hawkins, author of The Girl on the Train Three women in their seventies reunite for one last, life-changing weekend in the beach house of their late friend. Four older women have a lifelong friendship of the best kind: loving, practical, frank, and steadfast. But when Sylvie dies, the ground shifts dangerously for the remaining three. They are Jude, a once-famous restaurateur; Wendy, an acclaimed public intellectual; and Adele, a renowned actress now mostly out of work. Struggling to recall exactly why they’ve remained close all these years, the grieving women gather at Sylvie’s old beach house—not for festivities this time, but to clean it out before it is sold. Can they survive together without her? Without Sylvie to maintain the group’s delicate equilibrium, frustrations build and painful memories press in. Fraying tempers, an elderly dog, unwelcome guests, and too much wine collide in a storm that brings long-buried hurts to the surface—and threatens to sweep away their friendship for good. The Weekend explores growing old and growing up, and what happens when we’re forced to uncover the lies we tell ourselves. Sharply observed and excruciatingly funny, this is a jewel of a book: a celebration of tenderness and friendship from an award-winning writer.

The Weekend

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#paperback #drama #thriller #complicatedfamily #cult #trauma

AN INSTANT NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER “Pitch-perfect... Dean tells this story with such nuance and humanity, you’re desperate to step into its pages." —The New York Times “Heart-stopping psychological drama… A modern-day classic." —Jeffery Deaver, New York Times bestselling author “A gripping story about family dynamics and the nature of human psychology.” —Good Housekeeping She thought she had escaped her past. But there are some things you can’t outrun. Lex Gracie doesn't want to think about her family. She doesn't want to think about growing up in her parents' House of Horrors. And she doesn't want to think about her identity as Girl A: the girl who escaped, the eldest sister who freed her older brother and four younger siblings. It's been easy enough to avoid her parents--her father never made it out of the House of Horrors he created, and her mother spent the rest of her life behind bars. But when her mother dies in prison and leaves Lex and her siblings the family home, she can't run from her past any longer. Together with her sister, Evie, Lex intends to turn the home into a force for good. But first she must come to terms with her siblings--and with the childhood they shared. What begins as a propulsive tale of escape and survival becomes a gripping psychological family story about the shifting alliances and betrayals of sibling relationships--about the secrets our siblings keep, from themselves and each other. Who have each of these siblings become? How do their memories defy or galvanize Lex's own? As Lex pins each sibling down to agree to her family's final act, she discovers how potent the spell of their shared family mythology is, and who among them remains in its thrall and who has truly broken free. For readers of Room and Sharp Objects, an absorbing and psychologically immersive novel about a young girl who escapes captivity–but not the secrets that shadow the rest of her life.

Cameron Pastor

@cameron2264

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Martha Waters

To Love and to Loathe

Nita Prose

The Maid

Nicci French

Has Anyone Seen Charlotte Salter?

Cyril Hare

An English Murder

Disha Bose

Dirty Laundry

Jenny Jackson

Pineapple Street

Peace Adzo Medie

His Only Wife

Kellye Garrett

Like a Sister

Elly Griffiths

The Crossing Places

Nell Pattison

The Silent House

Andre Dubus; Andre Dubus

In the Bedroom

Mary Anna King

Bastards

Yiftach Reicher Atir; Philip Simpson (Translator)

The English Teacher

Charlotte Wood

The Weekend

Abigail Dean

Girl A

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Martha Waters

To Love and to Loathe

Nita Prose

The Maid

Nicci French

Has Anyone Seen Charlotte Salter?

Cyril Hare

An English Murder

Disha Bose

Dirty Laundry

Jenny Jackson

Pineapple Street

Peace Adzo Medie

His Only Wife

Kellye Garrett

Like a Sister

Elly Griffiths

The Crossing Places

Nell Pattison

The Silent House

Andre Dubus; Andre Dubus

In the Bedroom

Mary Anna King

Bastards

Yiftach Reicher Atir; Philip Simpson (Translator)

The English Teacher

Charlotte Wood

The Weekend

Abigail Dean

Girl A

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