The Pact by Jodi Picoult

Chris Harte has known Emily Gold since the day she was born, and from that time on, they were inseparable, forever linking the Harte and the Gold families as more than just neighbors. Sharing dinners, family parties, and holidays together the Hartes and Golds were a significant portion of one another's lives. When Chris and Emily began to date, it had always been assumed that they were meant to wind up together as soulmates. Aside from having a love like no other, Emily and Chris had everything going for them. Chris was an excellent student and Emily a gifted painter, both applying for colleges.

So imagine the surprise of the Harte and Gold families when they receive late-night calls from the hospital stating that Emily is dead at age 17 from a single gunshot wound to the head, most likely coming from a gun Chris took from his father's gun safe. When there's still another bullet in the chamber of the gun and Chris tells police that it was intended for a suicide pact, Chris Harte suddenly becomes the primary suspect.

Jodi Picoult's The Pact is full of intrigue, suspense, and legal drama that will keep you turning the page.

Rules of Civility by Amore Towles

In the late 1930s, New York City could be an exciting or desperate place to live, depending on your income and background. Katey Kontent, daughter of a Russian immigrant, and Eve Ross, a Midwestern transplant, were in the desperate group. But they were enterprising young women and knew how to stretch their limited resources: by sharing a room at a boarding house, sharing wardrobes, sneaking into movie theaters and stretching three dollars at a jazz club on Saturday night. When they met Tinker Grey, a handsome young banker with classy clothes and an apartment in the high rent district, they were able to expand their social life to include many well-to-do young people and fancier establishments. Unfortunately, an automobile accident disrupted their lives and their outlook on life changed. Eve, badly injured, eventually went her own way. Tinker, feeling guilty, came and went in Katey's life. But Katey, smart, capable and sensible, succeeded on her own, finding better jobs and expanding her circle of friends and acquaintances. Rules of Civility by Amor Towles paints an intriguing picture of depression-era New York City and its residents of all social classes.

The Ploughmen by Kim Zupan

Two men who have very little in common are thrown together by crime and punishment in the Montana penal system. Valentine Milimaki is a young Copper County sheriff assigned to guard psychopathic serial killer, John Gload, an old man finally caught after years of criminal activity.  They are able to make a connection despite their very great differences. Both grew up essentially motherless on hardscrabble Montana farms. Both love their wives but have trouble with their relationships. And neither one can sleep. Gload was a ruthless killer who robbed and mutilated his victims to cover up his crimes. He had been a careful killer, so although he began his life of crime as a young teen, he was not caught until he reached his seventies. After Gload’s arrest, Milimaki must sit guard outside of Gload’s cell, listening to him chain smoke and talk about his past, all the while worrying about his wife, who seems about to leave him. Other deputies try to interfere with their odd relationship, believing the deputy to be too soft to handle a killer. They don’t realize that Gload can still be just as dangerous in prison as he was out of it.   In The Ploughmen, Kim Zupan has written, in a spare style, a thriller and an evocative description of Montana’s landscape as well as its rural inhabitants.

Dept. of Speculation by Jenny Offill

In Department of Speculation, author Jenny Offill employs an unusual style to tell the story of a marriage. In this book, the wife (all characters are unnamed) records thoughts and experiences about her life in New York City.  She ruminates about earlier suitors, how her husband wooed and won her, the birth of their child, the stress of living with bedbugs and, eventually, the strain of infidelity on a marriage, even a marriage with what seems to be an ideal partner. With small observations about Buddhism, stars, Antarctic exploration, space travel and other diverse subjects, Jenny Offill tells a modern day love story in lyrical, poetic language. 

Check out Dept. of Speculation at the library today!

Bird Skinner by Alice Greenaway

Jim Kennoway is a curmudgeon, an angry seventy year old loner. In the summer of 1973, after losing a leg to disease and unhealthy living, he decides to live alone at his family’s beach house on Fox Island off the coast of Maine. Here his lack of mobility and heavy drinking make him even angrier. He relishes a solitary life until August when a young woman from the Solomon Islands arrives for a visit. Cadillac is the daughter of Tosca Baketi, who was Jim’s native scout and guide when he fought in the South Pacific during World War II. She is on her way to study at Yale’s medical school. A state department agency has decided she should spend a month with Jim to get accustomed to life in the United States. Jim, who was unaware of her existence and never really thought of Tosca since the war, is not happy about her presence. Sensing and respecting his aversion to company, she keeps her distance. He does his best to be hospitable. Over the course of time he comes to like and admire Cadillac. He also mulls over his life story, not just the time spent with Tosca during the war but also his childhood, marriage and academic career studying birds. All his life Jim had been a loner and passionate about his likes and dislikes. He had been a world traveler, familiar with Southeast Asia and the islands of the South Pacific before the onset of the war. But now, having lost his wife, his leg and his profession, his world has shrunk to Fox Island. His likes have narrowed to liquor, cigarettes, birds, Hemingway and Treasure Island. Human nature is complicated. Cadillac, descended from headhunters and cannibals, is sweet-natured and accommodating. Jim, whose father was a doctor and grandfather an industrialist, has been cruel and even savage during his lifetime. Bird Skinner by Alice Greenaway examines the emotional lives of people caught in the web of history and their own weaknesses. 

Check out The Bird Skinner @ the library!

How to be a Good Wife by Emma Chapman

Marta is a middle-aged housewife living outside a village in a Scandinavian country. She is quite isolated, having no friends or relatives or even memories of her own. She is totally reliant on her husband Hector and his mother for companionship and support. Hector’s mother had given Marta her book “How to be a Good Wife” for a wedding gift, a book that dispenses old-fashioned advice about wifely and home-making obligations and Marta obediently lives her life according to its rules. When her adult son finishes school and moves to the city, Marta surreptitiously stops taking the pills Hector has insisted she take her entire married life. He has told her she is not well but provides no real details and she no longer believes him.  Without the pills, she begins to hallucinate, seeing visions of people, particularly a young woman, lurking in the closet, the bathroom, the bedroom, the kitchen. Clearly these visions are a result of her refusal to take her drugs, but is she experiencing psychotic episodes or repressed memories? Marta becomes convinced that Hector is medicating her in order to manipulate her personality and her memories. But the reader cannot be sure if she is right. Hector may be cool and distant and secretive, but he also seems to genuinely care for Marta’s well-being. In How to be a Good Wife, Emma Chapman has written a psychological mystery that keeps the reader off balance right to the end of the book.

Check out How to be a Good Wife @ the library!

Into the Darkest Corner by Elizabeth Haynes

Catherine Bailey meets Lee, a gorgeous police officer whose charismatic nature makes everyone like him.  She falls in love but soon his true character shines through and she becomes scared of him and his controlling ways.  She plans an escape which goes wrong.  Fast forward four years later.  Lee is behind bars but Catherine’s life has been changed forever.  Suffering from both post-traumatic stress and obsessive compulsive disorder she is spending her time living in fear.  Lee is released from prison and Catherine knows he will come after her.  Told in alternating chapters of flashbacks and present time this novel will cause you to think twice about domestic violence.  Checkout Into the Darkest Corner@ the library!

The Map of True Places by Brunonia Barry

Zee Finch, a respected psychotherapist, has a patient commit suicide.  She feels responsible and the death brings back memories of her own mother’s suicide.  Her engagement is also falling apart and her dad has late stage Parkinson’s.  As she tries to make sense of her life, she realizes she doesn’t know what she wants to do with her furture.  Zee is easy to relate to and her journey is compelling. Check out The Lace Reader as well, which features some of the same characters as The Map of True Places.