Why Underdogs Win

We all know that underdogs can win, that's what the David versus Goliath legend tells us, and we've seen it with our own eyes. Or have we? In David and Goliath, Malcolm Gladwell uncovers the hidden rules that shape the balance between the weak and the mighty, the powerful and the dispossessed. Gladwell examines the battlefields of Northern Ireland and Vietnam, takes us into the minds of cancer researchers and civil rights leaders, and digs into the dynamics of successful and unsuccessful classrooms all in an attempt to demonstrate how fundamentally we misunderstand the true meaning of advantages and disadvantages.

Thriller Told In Reverse

Gabriela waits desperately for news of her abducted daughter.  At last, the door opens but it's not the negotiators or the FBI.  It's the kidnapper and he has a gun.  How did it come to this?  Two days ago, Gabriela's life was normal. Then, out of the blue, she gets word that her six-year-old daughter has been taken. She's given an ultimatum: pay half a million dollars and find a mysterious document known as the "October List" within 30 hours, or she'll never see her child again.  A mind-bending novel with twists and turns that unfold from its dramatic climax back to its surprising beginning, The October List is Jeffery Deaver at his masterful, inventive best.

Fun, Encyclopedic Trip Through The Memorable Summer of 1927

The summer of 1927 began with one of the signature events of the twentieth century: on May 21, 1927, Charles Lindbergh became the first man to cross the Atlantic by plane nonstop, and when he landed in Le Bourget airfield near Paris, he ignited an explosion of worldwide rapture and instantly became the most famous person on the planet. Meanwhile, the titanically talented Babe Ruth was beginning his assault on the home run record, which would culminate on September 30 with his sixtieth blast, one of the most resonant and durable records in sports history. In between those dates a Queens housewife named Ruth Snyder and her corset-salesman lover garroted her husband, leading to a murder trial that became a huge tabloid sensation. Alvin “Shipwreck” Kelly sat atop a flagpole in Newark, New Jersey, for twelve days—a new record. The American South was clobbered by unprecedented rain and by flooding of the Mississippi basin, a great human disaster, the relief efforts for which were guided by the uncannily able and insufferably pompous Herbert Hoover. Calvin Coolidge interrupted an already leisurely presidency for an even more relaxing three-month vacation in the Black Hills of South Dakota. The gangster Al Capone tightened his grip on the illegal booze business through a gaudy and murderous reign of terror and municipal corruption. The first true “talking picture,” Al Jolson’s The Jazz Singer, was filmed and forever changed the motion picture industry. The four most powerful central bankers on earth met in secret session on a Long Island estate and made a fateful decision that virtually guaranteed a future crash and depression.  All this and much, much more transpired in that epochal summer of 1927, and Bill Bryson captures its outsized personalities, exciting events, and occasional just plain weirdness with his trademark vividness, eye for telling detail, and delicious humor. In that year America stepped out onto the world stage as the main event, and One Summer transforms it all into narrative nonfiction of the highest order.

Hilarious Feel Good Novel

Don , professor of genetics, has never been on a second date. He is a man who can count all his friends on the fingers of one hand, whose difficulty with social rituals has convinced him that he is simply not wired for romance. So when an acquaintance informs him that he would make a “wonderful” husband, his first reaction is shock. Yet he must concede to the statistical probability that there is someone for everyone, and he embarks upon The Wife Project. In the orderly, evidence-based manner with which he approaches all things, Don sets out to find the perfect partner. She will be punctual and logical—most definitely not a barmaid, a smoker, a drinker, or a late-arriver. But Rosie is all these things. She is also beguiling, fiery, intelligent—and on a quest of her own. She is looking for her biological father, a search that a certain DNA expert might be able to help her with. Don's Wife Project takes a back burner to the Father Project and an unlikely relationship blooms, forcing the scientifically minded geneticist to confront the spontaneous whirlwind that is Rosie—and the realization that love is not always what looks good on paper.  The Rosie Project  by Graeme Simsion is a moving and hilarious novel for anyone who has ever tenaciously gone after life or love in the face of overwhelming challenges.

Enthralling Civil War Novel

Born to slave-holding aristocracy in Richmond, Virginia, and educated by Northern Quakers, Elizabeth Van Lew was a paradox of her time. When her native state seceded in April 1861, Van Lew’s convictions compelled her to defy the new Confederate regime. Pledging her loyalty to the Lincoln White House, her courage would never waver, even as her wartime actions threatened not only her reputation, but also her life.  Van Lew’s skills in gathering military intelligence were unparalleled. She helped to construct the Richmond Underground and orchestrated escapes from the infamous Confederate Libby Prison under the guise of humanitarian aid. Her spy ring’s reach was vast, from clerks in the Confederate War and Navy Departments to the very home of Confederate President Jefferson Davis.  Although Van Lew was inducted posthumously into the Military Intelligence Hall of Fame, the astonishing scope of her achievements has never been widely known. In The Spymistress, Jennifer Chiaverini’s riveting tale of high-stakes espionage, a great heroine of the Civil War finally gets her due.

New Sandra Brown

Dawson Scott is a well-respected journalist recently returned from Afghanistan. Haunted by everything he experienced, he's privately suffering from battle fatigue which is a threat to every aspect of his life. But then he gets a call from a source within the FBI. A new development has come to light in a story that began 40 years ago. It could be the BIG story of Dawson's career one in which he has a vested interest.
Soon, Dawson is covering the disappearance and presumed murder of former Marine Jeremy Wesson, the biological son of the pair of terrorists who remain on the FBI's Most Wanted list. As Dawson delves into the story, he finds himself developing feelings for Wesson's ex-wife, Amelia, and her two young sons. But when Amelia's nanny turns up dead, the case takes a stunning new turn, with Dawson himself becoming a suspect. Haunted by his own demons, Dawson takes up the chase for the notorious outlaws. . .and the secret, startling truth about himself.   Deadline is Sandra Brown's most thrilling book in years.

Celebrate the Freedom to Read

Banned Books Week is an annual awareness campaign that celebrates the freedom to read, draws attention to banned and challenged books, and highlights persecuted individuals. The campaign stresses the importance of ensuring the availability of those unorthodox or unpopular viewpoints to all who wish to read them and the requirement to keep material publicly available so that people can develop their own conclusions and opinions.   Check out the official Banned Books YouTube channel and a list of the most frequently challenged books.  Celebrate the freedom to read by picking one up today!

Dramatic and Redemptive Memoir

As a child, Amanda escaped a violent household by reading issues of National Geographic and imagining herself in exotic locales. At nineteen, working as a cocktail waitress in Calgary, she began saving her tips so she could travel the globe. Aspiring to understand the world and live a significant life, she backpacked through Latin America, Laos, Bangladesh, and India, and emboldened by each adventure, went on to Sudan, Syria, and Pakistan. In war-ridden Afghanistan and Iraq she carved out a fledgling career as a television reporter. And then, in August 2008, she traveled to Somalia—“the most dangerous place on earth.” On her fourth day, she was abducted by a group of masked men along a dusty road.  Held hostage for 460 days, Amanda converts to Islam as a survival tactic, receives “wife lessons” from one of her captors, and risks a daring escape. Moved between a series of abandoned houses in the desert, she survives on memory—every lush detail of the world she experienced in her life before captivity—and on strategy, fortitude, and hope. When she is most desperate, she visits a house in the sky, high above the woman kept in chains, in the dark, being tortured.  Vivid and suspenseful, as artfully written as the finest novel, A House in the Sky is the searingly intimate story of an intrepid young woman and her search for compassion in the face of unimaginable adversity.

Epic Novel of the American Revolution

John Sevier had not taken much interest in the American Revolution, he was too busy fighting Indians in the Carolinas and taming the wilderness. But when an arrogant British officer threatened his settlement—promising to burn the farms and kill families—the war became personal.  That arrogant officer is Patrick Ferguson of the British Army—who is both charmingly antagonistic and surprisingly endearing. Inventor of the Ferguson rifle, and the devoted lover to his mistress, Virginia Sal, Patrick becomes a delightful anti-hero under McCrumb’s watchful eye.  Told through varying perspectives, King’s Mountain by Sharyn McCrumb is an elegant saga of the Carolina Overmountain Men—the militia organized by Sevier (who would later become the first governor of Tennessee) and their victory in 1780 against the Tories in a battle that Thomas Jefferson later called, "The turning point of the American Revolution."

Hilarious & Heartfelt Observations from One of America's Favorite Comedians

Billy Crystal is turning 65, and he's not happy about it. With his trademark wit and heart, he outlines the absurdities and challenges that come with growing old, from insomnia to memory loss to leaving dinners with half your meal on your shirt in his new book, Still Foolin' Em. In humorous chapters like "Buying the Plot" and "Nodding Off," Crystal not only catalogues his physical gripes, but offers a road map to his 77 million fellow baby boomers who are arriving at this milestone age with him. He also looks back at the most powerful and memorable moments of his long and storied life, from entertaining his relatives as a kid in Long Beach, Long Island, his years doing stand-up in the Village, up through his legendary stint at Saturday Night Live, When Harry Met Sally, and his long run as host of the Academy Awards. Readers get a front-row seat to his one-day career with the New York Yankees (he was the first player to ever "test positive for Maalox"), his love affair with Sophia Loren, and his enduring friendships with several of his idols, including Mickey Mantle and Muhammad Ali. He lends a light touch to more serious topics like religion ("the aging friends I know have turned to the Holy Trinity: Advil, bourbon, and Prozac"), grandparenting, and, of course, dentistry. As wise and poignant as they are funny, Crystal's reflections are an unforgettable look at an extraordinary life well lived.

Bill O’Reilly's Next Blockbuster

Millions of readers have thrilled to bestselling authors Bill O’Reilly and historian Martin Dugard’s Killing Kennedy and Killing Lincoln, page-turning works of nonfiction that have changed the way we read history. Now the anchor of The O’Reilly Factor details the events leading up to the murder of the most influential man in history: Jesus of Nazareth. Nearly two thousand years after this beloved and controversial young revolutionary was brutally killed by Roman soldiers, more than 2.2 billion human beings attempt to follow his teachings and believe he is God. Killing Jesus will take readers inside Jesus’s life, recounting the seismic political and historical events that made his death inevitable - and changed the world forever.  The book will be released on Tuesday.  Place your hold now!

Terrible Secrets of Literary Greats

A Fatal Likeness by Lynne Shepard proposes an alternative history for Frankenstein author Mary Shelley, her volatile husband and renowned poet Percy Bysshe Shelley and their cohorts. This multilayered story examines dark turns of mind and mysterious deaths that may be explained by missing papers detective Charles Maddox is charged with finding.  Although Maddox tackles the case in 1850, much of the novel takes us back in time to 1816, to the tumultuous summer that brought the Shelleys and Lord Byron together in a writers’ retreat filled with intrigue, infidelities and the ghost stories that gave life to Frankenstein. Shepherd also expands upon the untold story of Claire Clairmont, Mary’s stepsister, going back and forth between the naïve girl entranced by a world of poetry and the practical, self-protective woman Claire has become.  Obviously knowledgeable about history, Shepherd uses gaps in the record as a jumping-off point for her fiction, while still respecting the writers’ real-life stories. Lovers of literary mysteries and historical fiction will appreciate the balanced approach Shepherd takes in A Fatal Likeness.

Concise Humorous Novel

Norman Rush's Subtle Bodies takes place just before the outbreak of the second Iraq War and is set in motion by the death of Doug, the charismatic ringleader of a group of college friends who continued to live together for several years after graduation. Doug’s unique brand of humor unified the group, and their communal life was a kind of highly self-conscious performance art filled with private jokes and even a secret language.  Four of the now 40-something men are summoned to Doug’s Hudson River Valley estate to take part in an elaborate memorial service. Once a seamless community of acolytes following the direction of their self-appointed leader, they now struggle to find ways to connect. Ned, who is planning the coordination of a large antiwar demonstration in California, comes to New York begrudgingly, questioning the very significance of the group. Can what seemed essential at age 20 still be relevant at age 40?  His wife, Nina, follows him in hot pursuit. After years of childlessness, the couple is at a critical point in trying to get pregnant, and she is reluctant to let Ned go, even for a weekend.   The book is told by Ned and Nina in alternating chapters, with Ned struggling to understand just what made Doug so influential and Nina’s wisecracking irreverence for her husband’s mentor. In fact, it is her tart commentary and the way she gently pokes fun at what the group once held sacred that give this novel much of its quirky charm.

Thoughtful Novel from a National Book Award Winner

"Who’s going to love me?” Marie asks her brother Gabe in the hours after her first heartbreak. The girl has seen sad times already in her 1930s Brooklyn neighborhood: a girl who tumbles down a set of stairs to her death, a blind man left to umpire ball games for the neighborhood boys. But as her first love leaves her behind, Marie is confronted for the first time with the sorrow of an anonymous, unspectacular existence.  As Alice McDermott’s Someone skips across Marie’s life, the reader peers into such intimate moments as her first kiss, her first boyfriend, her first day working at a funeral home, the first time she meets her husband in the bedroom—moments that shape Marie into the woman she will become. The nonlinear story unfolds much like life itself: rambling in different directions, not always making it clear where you’re headed or why you’re along for the ride.  The Brooklyn neighborhood is nearly as much a character in Marie’s life as are its inhabitants. As a young woman, she refuses to even seek work outside of its boundaries. But as the neighborhood falls into disrepair, Gabe proves to be the child who is reluctant to leave.

Man Booker Prize Shortlist

 

A Tale for the Time Being by Ruth Ozeki: In a manga cafe in Tokyo's Electric Town, Nao has decided there's only one escape from theloneliness and pain of her life, as she's uprooted from her U.S. home, bullied at school, and watching her parents spiral deeper into disaster. But before she ends it all, she wants to accomplish one thing: to recount the story of her great-grandmother, a 104-year-old Zen Buddhist nun, in the pages of her secret diary. The diary, Nao's only solace, is her cry for help to a reader whom she can only imagine.

We Need New Names by NoViolet Bulawayo: Follows ten-year-old Zimbabwe native, Darling, as she escapes the closed schools and paramilitary police control of her homeland in search of opportunity and freedom with an aunt in America.

The Testament of Mary by Colm Tóibín: A provocative imagining of the later years of the mother of Jesus finds her living a solitary existence in Ephesus years after her son's crucifixion and struggling with guilt, and anger.

Lights. Camera. Mayhem.

Mega-star Robert Chase is famous for losing himself in his characters. When he and a group of actors descend on the Miami Police Department for "research," Chase becomes fixated on Dexter, the blood spatter analyst with a sweet tooth for doughnuts and a seemingly average life. To perfect his role, Chase is obsessed with shadowing Dexter's every move and learning what really makes him tick. There is just one tiny problem . . . Dexter's favorite hobby involves hunting down the worst killers to escape legal justice, and introducing them to his special brand of playtime. It's a secret best kept out of the spotlight and away from the prying eyes of bloated Hollywood egos if Dexter wants to stay out of the electric chair. The last thing he needs is bright lights and the paparazzi. . . but even Dexter isn't immune to the call of fame.  Jeff Lindsay's razor sharp, devilish wit, and immaculate pacing prove that he is in a class of his own, and this Dexter's Final Cut is his most masterful creation yet.

Family Ties Tested And Transformed

Kaleidoscopic, fast-paced, and filled with Terry McMillan’s inimitable humor,Who Asked You? opens as Trinetta leaves her two young sons with her mother, Betty Jean, and promptly disappears. BJ, a trademark McMillan heroine, already has her hands full dealing with her other adult children, two opinionated sisters, an ill husband, and her own postponed dreams—all while holding down a job delivering room service at a hotel. Her son Dexter is about to be paroled from prison; Quentin, the family success, can’t be bothered to lend a hand; and taking care of two lively grandsons is the last thing BJ thinks she needs. The drama unfolds through the perspectives of a rotating cast of characters, pitch-perfect, each playing a part, and full of surprises.  Who Asked You? casts an intimate look at the burdens and blessings of family and speaks to trusting your own judgment even when others don’t agree. McMillan’s signature voice and unforgettable characters bring universal issues to brilliant, vivid life.

Electrifying Debut Novel

Josephine has her family under control. With two beautiful daughters, a brilliantly intelligent son, a tech-guru of a husband and a historical landmark home, her life is perfect.  But living in this matriarch’s cheerful, yet subtly controlling world hasn’t been easy for her family, and when her oldest daughter, Rose, runs off with a mysterious boyfriend, Josephine tightens her grip, gradually turning her home into a sort of prison.  Resentful of her sister’s newfound freedom, Violet turns to philosophy, drugs, and fasting, eventually landing herself in the psych ward. Meanwhile, her brother Will shrinks further into a world of self-doubt. Recently diagnosed with Aspergers and epilepsy, he’s separated from the other kids around town and is homeschooled to ensure his safety. Their father, Douglas, finds resolve in the bottom of the bottle—an addict craving his own chance to escape. Josephine struggles to maintain the family’s façade, but when a violent incident leads to a visit from child protective services, the truth about the family might finally be revealed. Written with the style, dark wit and shrewd psychological insight that made her memoir Smashed a bestseller, Koren Zailckas’s first novel, Mother Mother, is unforgettable. 

Thrilling Historical Fiction

Six months after the formation of the NYPD, its most reluctant and talented officer, Timothy Wilde, thinks himself well versed in his city’s dark practices—until he learns of the gruesome underworld of lies and corruption ruled by the "blackbirders,” who snatch free Northerners of color from their homes, masquerade them as slaves, and sell them South to toil as plantation property.  The abolitionist Timothy is horrified by these traders in human flesh. But in 1846, slave catching isn’t just legal—it’s law enforcement.  When the beautiful and terrified Lucy Adams staggers into Timothy’s office to report a robbery and is asked what was stolen, her reply is, "My family.” Their search for her mixed-race sister and son will plunge Timothy and his feral brother, Valentine, into a world where police are complicit and politics savage, and corpses appear in the most shocking of places. Timothy finds himself caught between power and principles, desperate to protect his only brother and to unravel the puzzle before all he cares for is lost. Lyndsay Faye's Seven For A Secret, is a brilliant new mystery that readers of all ages will enjoy.  

Books For Video Game Lovers

 

For the Win by Cory Doctorow: This timely and intriguing thriller revolving around the very real economies of massive multiplayer online games will appeal to both teens and adults. When teenagers around the globe end up on the wrong side of a virtual economy, they have to use their wits to survive. Battling real-world corporations in true cyberpunk style, they employ every trick they have to crash the markets of all the online games in the world. Doctorow’s fast-paced novel blurs the lines between what’s real and what’s a game, using the mechanics of online games to speculate on a fascinating future.

Ready Player One by Ernest Cline: James Halliday, the creator of the world’s favorite pastime, a massive multiplayer online game, dies and leaves behind a quest for his devoted fans. Hidden away in OASIS—and locked behind puzzles related to the pop culture of the late 20th century that Halliday loved—is an astounding prize. Living in a grimly dystopian 2044, Wade Watts dreams of finding the treasure and escaping the slums of his stacked trailer park home. But he has to beat other, better-equipped seekers, Halliday scholars, and even corporations trying to take him down.

You by Austin Grossman: When game designer Russell Marsh joins the video company his old friends created, he’s happy to be working in a familiar setting. But he soon needs to know what happened to his friend Simon, who died mysteriously just after the company hit it big. When Russell finds a strange glitch in his newest game, the mystery gets bigger than he could have ever imagined, leading him through virtual worlds, real-life boardrooms, even back to childhood computer camp. Grossman draws on his own experiences as a game designer to write one of the most interesting and literary novels about video games to date.

Epic Intimate Family Saga

At the center of Jonathan Lethem’s Dissident Gardens stand two women: Rose and Miriam Zimmer.  Rose, the aptly nicknamed Red Queen of Sunnyside, Queens, an unreconstructed Communist who savages neighbors, family, and political comrades with the ferocity of her personality and the absolutism of her beliefs. Her precocious and willful daughter, Miriam, equally passionate in her activism, flees Rose’s influence to embrace the counterculture of Greenwich Village.  These women cast spells over the men in their lives: Rose’s aristocratic husband, Albert; her cousin, the feckless chess hustler Lenny; Cicero, the brilliant son of her black cop lover; Miriam’s (slightly fraudulent) Irish folksinging husband, Tommy; their bewildered son, Sergius. Flawed and idealistic, Lethem’s characters struggle to inhabit the utopian dream in an America where radicalism is viewed with bemusement, hostility, or indifference.  As the decades pass—from the parlor communism of the ’30s, McCarthyism, the civil rights movement, ragged ’70s communes, the romanticization of the Sandinistas, up to the Occupy movement of the moment—we come to understand through Lethem’s extraordinarily vivid storytelling that the personal may be political, but the political, even more so, is personal.

New Temperance Brennan Novel

#1 New York Times bestselling author Kathy Reichs returns with her sixteenth riveting novel featuring forensic anthropologist Tempe Brennan, whose examination of a young girl killed in a hit and run in North Carolina triggers an investigation into international human trafficking.When Charlotte police discover the body of a teenage girl along a desolate stretch of two-lane highway, Temperance Brennan fears the worst. The girl’s body shows signs of foul play. Inside her purse police find the ID card of a prominent local businessman, John-Henry Story, who died in a horrific flea market fire months earlier. Was the girl an illegal immigrant turning tricks? Was she murdered?  Find out in Bones Of The Lost!

Irresistible Essays

Sister Mother Husband Dog  is a breezy collection of essays from Delia Ephron.  According to a family joke, Delia "shared half a brain" with her late, famous sister, Nora.  Like Nora's essay collections, topics in Delia's book are wide ranging and wholly amusing.  Featuring great one liners, random tangents, and outrageous stories about the author's family, the book also covers complex topics like Nora's death.  If you are of an Ephron sensibility, this book will give you more of what you love best!

Do You Love Orange Is The New Black?

If you find yourself eagerly anticipating the next season of the dramedy Orange Is The New Black, check out these books.

No Choirboy: Murder, Violence, and Teenagers on Death Row by Susan Kuklin: A depressing but compelling read, No Choirboy chronicles the lives of teenage inmates living on death row, exploring the inequalities that frequently lead them there.

Running the Books: The Adventures of an Accidental Prison Librarian by Avi Steinberg: Avi Steinberg recounts his time as the librarian for a tough Boston prison, which lead him to places he never would have guessed (including being robbed by a recently paroled ex-con). For a different perspective from someone with a unique experience with inmates, this book is a great read.

Inside: Life Behind Bars in America by Michael G. Santos: One of many books about the current state of American incarceration, Inside is unique in that it’s written by someone who has spent enough time inside to be a true expert on the subject. Michael Santos paints a picture of a complex and disturbing system that  Orange Is The New Black only begins to capture.

Inspired By Real Life Events

In many ways, Reeve looks like a typical twenty-two year old girl. She’s finally landed her own apartment, she waitresses to pay the bills, and she wishes she wasn’t so nervous around new people.  But Reeve is anything but normal.  Ten years ago, she was kidnapped and held captive. After a lucky escape, she’s spent the last six years trying to rebuild her life, a recovery thanks in large part to her indispensable therapist Dr. Lerner. But when he asks her to help another girl rescued from a similar situation, Reeve realizes she may not simply need to mentor this young victim—she may be the only one who can protect her from a cunning predator who is still out there, watching every move.  From the author of the #1 non-fiction bestseller Perfect Victim: The True Story of the Girl in the Box comes a novel that draws you into a chilling and engrossing world. With powerfully gripping characters and an ending that is a masterpiece of deception, Carla Norton's The Edge of Normal is a stunning debut thriller. 

Desperate Choices

If you had to decide whether a person should live or die, what would you do? This is the central theme of Sheri Fink's Five Days at Memorial, a gripping account of how doctors, nurses and their patients at a New Orleans hospital endured unbearable conditions after Hurricane Katrina struck in 2005. Flooding, loss of electricity, sweltering heat, dwindling medical supplies and anarchy in the streets were among the issues confronting doctors and nurses. The situation eventually deteriorated far enough that some workers were placed in the position of deciding whether to let critically ill patients suffer, or hasten their deaths. They chose to administer morphine and other drugs, ending the lives of at least 18 patients.  Five Days at Memorial chronicles the events leading up to these deaths, and the ensuing criminal investigation and trial of those deemed responsible. Readers will come away with a greater understanding of the difficult circumstances residents of New Orleans faced during Katrina, and will also confront important moral and ethical questions. Fink asks us to consider: If we had been there during those dark, desperate days at Memorial, would we have made a different choice?

Wall Street Comes To Washington

On the darkest night of 1945, a B-24 navigator assists in the liberation of a German concentration camp. His trauma is prologue to destiny.  Fast-forward to present-day Manhattan: Warren Hunter, reigning master of the financial universe, is poised to close the world’s first trillion-dollar deal. ViroSat is the Street’s biggest-ever technology play—the creation of an entirely new global communication system. It promises to catapult Hunter’s investment bank and the global economy into a bright future. His company will be worth more than entire nations…if the deal goes through.  ViroSat captures the attention of Washington political aide Julia Toussaint, who uses back channels to learn all she can about the deal for her ambitious Senator boss. Meanwhile, battered tech start-up veteran Rick Yeager has just landed a dream job at a mysterious but well-connected financial firm whose partners also want a piece of the action.  Warren, Julia, and Rick are soon caught in a web of intrigue, money, power, and dangerous secrets. Coincidences are not what they seem as the past collides with the present in a way that will change their lives forever.  Written by an insider from both Washington and Wall Street, Michael Pocalyko’s The Navigator is a furiously-paced parable of our troubled age

Big Titles This Month

Someone by Alice McDermott: Looks at one woman's life from childhood to old age, working through the middle of the twentieth century in Brooklyn through the well described everyday and the growth of one character over time. It has been seven years since McDermott's last novel, and the literary world is looking to see her weave magic with this one.

The Longest Ride  by Nicholas Sparks: Fans know what kind of book to expect with his yearly release -- bittersweet romance that will evoke tears at least once. This novel tells two parallel love stories and has been compared to The Notebook.

Doctor Sleep by Stephen King: King revisits the character of Danny Torrance, who is now a middle aged adult working at a nursing home. He must protect a 12 year old girl he befriends from those who prolong their lives by torturing children of the shining. This sequel to The Shining should be the biggest book release of the month, if not one of the biggest of the year.

Unforgettable Storytelling

It’s September 1951: years since George and Margaret lost their son James when he was thrown from a horse; months since James’s widow Lorna took off and remarried thug Donnie. Now Margaret is steadfast, resolved to find and retrieve her grandson Jimmy—the one person in this world keeping her son’s memory alive—while George, a retired sheriff, is none too eager to stir up trouble with Donnie Weboy. Unable to sway his wife from her mission, George takes to the road with Margaret by his side, traveling through the Dakota badlands to Bentrock, Montana, in unstoppable pursuit. When Margaret tries to convince Lorna to return home to North Dakota, bringing little Jimmy with her, the Blackledges find themselves mixed up with the entire Weboy clan, a fearsome family determined not to give the boy up without a fight.  With gutsy characters and suspense-filled prose, Larry Watson's  Let Him Go speaks to the extraordinary measures we take for family and the overpowering instinct to protect those we love.