Summer Reading

Half-hidden by forest and overshadowed by threatening peaks, Le Sommet has always been a sinister place. Long plagued by troubling rumors, the former abandoned sanatorium has since been renovated into a five-star minimalist hotel.
An imposing, isolated getaway spot high up in the Swiss Alps is the last place Elin Warner wants to be. But Elin's taken time off from her job as a detective, so when her estranged brother, Isaac, and his fiancée, Laure, invite her to celebrate their engagement at the hotel, Elin really has no reason not to accept.
Arriving in the midst of a threatening storm, Elin immediately feels on edge--there's something about the hotel that makes her nervous. And when they wake the following morning to discover Laure is missing, Elin must trust her instincts if they hope to find her. With the storm closing off all access to the hotel, the longer Laure stays missing, the more the remaining guests start to panic. Elin is under pressure to find Laure, but no one has realized yet that another woman has gone missing. And she's the only one who could have warned them just how much danger they are all in. . .

A chorus of extraordinary voices comes together to tell one of history’s great epics: the four-hundred-year journey of African Americans from 1619 to the present—edited by Ibram X. Kendi, author of How to Be an Antiracist, and Keisha N. Blain, author of Set the World on Fire.

For fans of Sorry to Bother You and The Wolf of Wall Street—a crackling, satirical debut novel about a young man given a shot at stardom as the lone Black salesman at a mysterious, cult-like, and wildly successful startup where nothing is as it seems.

The bestselling author of Leonardo da Vinci and Steve Jobs returns with a gripping account of how Nobel Prize winner Jennifer Doudna and her colleagues launched a revolution that will allow us to cure diseases, fend off viruses, and have healthier babies.

Get ready for one of the most inventive and entertaining novels of 2019—an edge-of-your-seat Victorian-era thriller, where the controversial publication On the Origin of Species sets off a string of unspeakable crimes.

Amos Decker — the FBI consultant with a perfect memory — returns to solve a gruesome murder in a booming North Dakota oil town in the newest thriller in David Baldacci's #1 New York Times bestselling Memory Man series.

Award-winning author Willy Vlautin explores the impact of trickle-down greed and opportunism of gentrification on ordinary lives in this scorching novel that captures the plight of a young woman pushed to the edge as she fights to secure a stable future for herself and her family.

A dazzling novel about all the choices that go into a life well lived, from the internationally bestselling author of Reasons to Stay Alive and How To Stop Time.Somewhere out beyond the edge of the universe there is a library that contains an infinite number of books, each one the story of another reality.

The Four Winds is an indelible portrait of America and the American dream, as seen through the eyes of one indomitable woman whose courage and sacrifice will come to define a generation.

Looking well beyond issues of race, The Vanishing Half considers the lasting influence of the past as it shapes a person's decisions, desires, and expectations, and explores some of the multiple reasons and realms in which people sometimes feel pulled to live as something other than their origins. As with her New York Times-bestselling debut The Mothers, Brit Bennett offers an engrossing page-turner about family and relationships that is immersive and provocative, compassionate and wise.

Michio Kaku, renowned theoretical physicist and #1 New York Times bestselling author of The Future of the Mind and The Future of Humanity, tells the story of the greatest quest in all of science.

From the Academy Award®–winning actor, an unconventional memoir filled with raucous stories, outlaw wisdom, and lessons learned the hard way about living with greater satisfaction.

Fast-paced and elegantly written, The Queen's Gambit is a thriller masquerading as a chess novel—one that's sure to keep you on the edge of your seat.

A daring young woman pushes back against societal constraints in a feminist, coming-of-age Western romance from New York Times bestselling author Susan Andersen.

As President Trump's National Security Advisor, John Bolton spent many of his 453 days in the room where it happened, and the facts speak for themselves.
The result is a White House memoir that is the most comprehensive and substantial account of the Trump Administration, and one of the few to date by a top-level official. With almost daily access to the President, John Bolton has produced a precise rendering of his days in and around the Oval Office.

The award-winning author of The Miseducation of Cameron Post makes her adult debut with this highly imaginative and original horror-comedy centered around a cursed New England boarding school for girls—a wickedly whimsical celebration of the art of storytelling, sapphic love, and the rebellious female spirit.

A gorgeously written family saga about a Puerto Rican woman who finds herself gifted (or cursed?) with a strange ability.

Danger lurks within a close-knit group of London artists as a puppet master plots the fate of a beautiful actress in this psychological thriller.

London actress Rebecca Laurence is center stage and shining in her role as Ophelia. For one audience member in particular, she is like a ballerina impaled in a musical box—one that he longs to add to his collection. Amid the thundering applause, he watches closely. Later, Rebecca meets the charismatic Seth Gardner. As attraction grows between them, he invites her to join his Friday Folly, a group of artistic friends. But as Rebecca is drawn into the web of tangled relationships all is not as it appears. The scene is set for one climactic night that will rip the group apart. Consumed by loss and surrounded by secrets, Rebecca must now escape the grip of the Folly if she intends to survive. And meanwhile, one man continues to watch.

In an alternate Victorian England, clockwork cyborgs provide the primary source of labor for the upper class. Known as biomatons, they are property by law and have been manipulated and mind-controlled into subservience.
Taryn Roft, a 17-year-old girl, attending classes at Grafton's School of Mechanicks in London has a secret. What's even worse—she cannot remember anything before her twelfth birthday.
When a mysterious privateer discovers her secret, he offers her an ultimatum: accompany him to his airship, or her secret will be revealed to everyone. For Taryn, it's not much of a choice. Facing prejudice and cruelty may be nothing new to the only girl at an all-boys' school, but the further from home she gets, the darker her situation becomes.

Angel reaches celebrity status with his own show, but his monster hunting doesn't just happen on TV! Balancing stardom with actual vampire status isn't easy though, and when he crosses paths with a mysterious figure from Sunnydale, Angel uncovers the greatest threat he's ever faced! Eisner Award-nominated writer Christopher Cantwell (Iron Man, Dr. Doom, AMC's Halt and Catch Fire) and Russ Manning Award nominated artist Daniel Bayliss (Jim Henson's Labyrinth: Coronation) bring fan-favorite characters into a brand new corner of the Buffyverse! Collects Angel #1-4.

She has the chance for a new life, but will she take it?

When their mother dies of pneumonia, Ellie and her younger sister Dora are left alone in the world. Their hard-drinking, womanizing father has abandoned them, and they cannot afford the rent on their East End tenement alone. Ellie is proud but she cannot turn down an offer of help from Doctor Lowe, a kindly man who sees Ellie as the replacement for his own recently deceased daughter.

Though Doctor Lowe's motives are misguided, his kindness offers Ellie and Dora an opportunity to escape the poverty of their background and make something of themselves. But will Ellie risk her chance at a new life for revenge on her father?

An enthralling Victorian saga of family and female independence, perfect for fans of Maggie Hope and Val Wood.

If your taste in autobiography is only for the rich and famous, then this is the wrong book for you. However, if you are curious about someone who has had a possibly strange start in life, followed – maybe as a result – by a low-key, hell of a teenage life that may have led to a narrowing of later life choices, you're looking in the right place.
Fate only confirmed a hard choice already made by me to not breed, for more than one reason. This did, however, open up more travel opportunities than I might have had otherwise. Then there is that one person, my partner for the last thirty years, who has stopped me from going off the rails, unlike my father. With seemingly more limited options, my mental make-up dictating these, this carousel of a life story shows how sometimes poor health is overcome or sidestepped, with an addition of a little humour where I find it. My politics and Brexit views are shaped by life and work experiences. Varied travelogues are mingled in along the way. From the jungles of Borneo to the American Northwest, this book takes a look at what floats my boat. If you disagree entirely, at least you would have made a more informed judgement! Make your own mind up from what is presented or look closer as encouraged.

Twenty-five years ago, police were called to 16 Cheyne Walk with reports of a baby crying. When they arrived, they found a healthy ten-month-old happily cooing in her crib in the bedroom. Downstairs in the kitchen lay three dead bodies, all dressed in black, next to a hastily scrawled note. And the four other children reported to live at Cheyne Walk were gone.

In The Family Upstairs, the master of "bone-chilling suspense" (People) brings us the can't-look-away story of three entangled families living in a house with the darkest of secrets.

Transcendent Kingdom is a deeply moving portrait of a family of Ghanaian immigrants ravaged by depression and addiction and grief—a novel about faith, science, religion, love. Exquisitely written, emotionally searing, this is an exceptionally powerful follow-up to Gyasi's phenomenal debut.

1866, Dakota Territory. Red Cloud's coalition of tribes is battling the U.S. Army to reclaim hunting grounds in the Powder River Valley. Against this background, Wolves of Eden sets four men on a deadly collision course in a narrative that explores the cruelty of warfare, the power of love and the resilience of the human spirit. Lieutenant Martin Molloy and his loyal orderly are sent west to investigate a triple murder at a frontier fort, and Irish immigrant brothers Thomas and Michael O'Driscoll, who survived the brutal frontlines of the Civil War, find themselves as both hunters and the hunted in another bloody campaign.

Focusing on the valiant struggles for social and economic justice in Guatemala, Nicaragua, El Salvador, and Honduras, Chomsky restores these vivid and gripping events to popular consciousness. Tracing the roots of displacement and migration in Central America to the Spanish conquest and bringing us to the present day, she concludes that the more immediate roots of migration from El Salvador, Guatemala, and Honduras lie in the wars and in the US interventions of the 1980s and the peace accords of the 1990s that set the stage for neoliberalism in Central America.