FICTION - Leisure Books Received in APRIL 2014

FICTION - Leisure Books Received in APRIL 2014

The Accident
Pavone, Chris

As dawn approaches in New York, literary agent Isabel Reed is turning the final pages of a mysterious, anonymous
manuscript, racing through the explosive revelations about powerful people, as well as long-hidden secrets about her
own past. In Copenhagen, veteran CIA operative Hayden Gray, determined that this sweeping story be buried, is
suddenly staring down the barrel of an unexpected gun. And in Zurich, the author himself is hiding in a shadowy expat
life, trying to atone for a lifetime’s worth of lies and betrayals with publication of The Accident, while always looking over
his shoulder. Over the course of one long, desperate, increasingly perilous day, these lives collide as the book begins its
dangerous march toward publication, toward saving or ruining careers and companies, placing everything at risk—and
everyone in mortal peril. The rich cast of characters—in publishing and film, politics and espionage—are all forced to
confront the consequences of their ambitions, the schisms between their ideal selves and the people they actually
became. The action rockets around Europe and across America, with an intricate web of duplicities stretching back a
quarter-century to a dark winding road in upstate New York, where the shocking truth about the accident itself is buried.
Gripping, sophisticated, layered, and impossible to put down, The Accident proves once again that Chris Pavone is a true
master of suspense.

American Romantic
Just, Ward

Harry Sanders is a young foreign service officer in 1960s Indochina when a dangerous and clandestine meeting with
insurgents—ending in quiet disaster—and a brief but passionate encounter with Sieglinde, a young German woman,
alter the course of his life. Absorbing the impact of his misstep, Harry returns briefly to Washington before eventual
assignments in Africa, Scandinavia, and the Mediterranean. He marries the captivating May, who is fleeing her own
family disappointments in worn-out upper New England and looking for an escape into Harry’s diplomatic life. On the
surface, they are a handsome, successful couple—but the memory of Sieglinde persists in Harry’s thoughts, and May has
her own secrets too. As Harry navigates the increasingly treacherous waters of diplomacy in an age of interminable
conflict, he also tries to bridge the distances between himself and the two alluring women who have chosen to love him.
Ward Just, returning to his trademark territory of Forgetfulness and The Weather in Berlin, delivers an utterly compelling
story of Americans trying to run the world, yet failing to master their lives.

Blossom Street Brides
Macomber, Debbie

Wedding bells are ringing in the tight-knit community that gathers around A Good Yarn, a store in a pretty Seattle
neighborhood. Knitters come to the store to buy yarn and patterns but somehow they leave richer in friendship and
love. Lauren Elliott has waited years for her long-term boyfriend, Todd, to propose, yet he seems more focused on his
career than their relationship. When Lauren learns that her younger sister is pregnant before she herself even has an
engagement ring, she feels overjoyed yet disheartened. Knowing she can’t put her future on hold, Lauren prepares to
make a bold choice—one that leads her to a man she never dreamed she’d meet. Newly married to her second husband,
Max, Bethanne Scranton is blissfully in love. But with Max’s job in California and Bethanne’s in Seattle, their long-
distance marriage is becoming difficult to maintain. To complicate matters, Bethanne’s cunning ex will do anything to
win her back. Lydia Goetz, too, is wonderfully happy with her husband, Brad, though lately she worries about the future
of A Good Yarn. As she considers how to bring in business, she discovers that someone has beaten her to the punch.
Baskets of yarn are mysteriously popping up all over town, with instructions to knit a scarf for charity and bring it into
Lydia’s store. Never before has her shop received so much attention, but who hatched this brilliant plan? As three
women’s lives intersect in unexpected ways, Lydia, Lauren, and Bethanne realize that love heals every heart, and the
best surprises still lay ahead.

By Its Cover
Leon, Donna

Donna Leon’s critically acclaimed, internationally bestselling Commissario Guido Brunetti series has attracted readers
the world over with the beauty of its setting, the humanity of its characters, and its fearlessness in exploring politics,
morality, and contemporary Italian culture. In the pages of Leon’s novels, the beloved conversations of the Brunetti
family have drawn on topics of art and literature, but books are at the heart of this novel in a way they never have been
before. One afternoon, Commissario Guido Brunetti gets a frantic call from the director of a prestigious Venetian library.
Someone has stolen pages out of several rare books. After a round of questioning, the case seems clear: the culprit must
be the man who requested the volumes, an American professor from a Kansas university. The only problem—the man
fled the library earlier that day, and after checking his credentials, the American professor doesn’t exist. As the
investigation proceeds, the suspects multiply. And when a seemingly harmless theologian, who had spent years reading
at the library turns up brutally murdered, Brunetti must question his expectations about what makes a man innocent, or
guilty.

Carnal Curiosity
Woods, Stuart

Stone Barrington seems to have a knack for being in the wrong place at the wrong time. When Manhattan’s elite are
beset by a series of clever crimes—and Stone is a material witness—he and his former partner Dino Bacchetti find
themselves drawn into the world of high-end security and fraud, where insider knowledge and access are limited to a
privileged few, and the wealthy are made vulnerable by the very systems meant to keep them safe. As Stone and Dino
delve deeper into their investigation, they learn that the mastermind behind the incidents may have some intimate ties
to Stone . . . and that the biggest heist is still to come.

Cavendon Hall
Bradford, Barbara Taylor

From the #1 New York Times bestselling author comes an epic saga of intrigue and mystique set in Edwardian England.
Cavendon Hall is home to two families, the aristocratic Inghams and the Swanns who serve them. Charles Ingham, the
sixth Earl of Mowbray, lives there with his wife Felicity and their six children. Walter Swann, the premier male of the
Swann family, is valet to the earl. His wife Alice, a clever seamstress who is in charge of the countess's wardrobe, also
makes clothes for the four daughters. For centuries, these two families have lived side-by-side, beneath the backdrop of
the imposing Yorkshire manor. Lady Daphne, the most beautiful of the Earl’s daughters, is about to be presented at
court when a devastating event changes her life and threatens the Ingham name. With World War I looming, both
families will find themselves tested in ways they never thought possible. Loyalties will be challenged and betrayals will
be set into motion. In this time of uncertainty, one thing is sure: these two families will never be the same again.
Cavendon Hall is Barbara Taylor Bradford at her very best, and its sweeping story of secrets, love, honor, and betrayal
will have readers riveted up to the very last page.

The Collector
Roberts, Nora

Lila Emerson is a budding writer who supports herself by house-sitting. While on the job, she adds variety to her quiet
life by habitually indulging in harmless voyeurism. One night, spying on her neighbors with binoculars, she witnesses a
homicide that law enforcement officials later assure her was the first half of a murder-suicide. Disturbed by the killing,
she goes to the police station where she meets artist Ashton Archer, the brother of the man who purportedly killed
himself. Ash longs to paint her as intensely as he hungers to touch her. But their investigation draws them into a rarified
circle where priceless antiques are bought, sold, gambled away, and stolen, where what you possess is who you are, and
where what you desire becomes a deadly obsession. He believes that his sibling was incapable of such violence and is
convinced that he was murdered. Together these newfound allies search for the truth about the crime and wrestle with
their own emotions about each other. A full-length Nora Roberts standalone novel replete with romance and suspense.

Death on Blackheath
Perry, Anne

Anne Perry’s superb New York Times bestselling novels set in the glorious reign of Victoria are loved by readers far and
wide. Now, with this new Charlotte and Thomas Pitt mystery, Perry returns us to that charmed era, when wealth and
power rule—but where, alas, poisonous corruption lies coiled in the heart of the empire. As commander of the powerful
Special Branch, Thomas Pitt has the job of keeping Britain safe from spies and traitors. So there’s no obvious reason why
he is suddenly ordered to investigate two minor incidents: the blood, hair, and shards of glass discovered outside the
home of naval weapons expert Dudley Kynaston, and the simultaneous disappearance of Mrs. Kynaston’s beautiful
lady’s maid.

Destroyer Angel
Barr, Nevada

Anna Pigeon, a ranger for the U.S. Park Services, sets off on vacation—an autumn canoe trip in the to the Iron Range in
upstate Minnesota. With Anna is her friend Heath, a paraplegic; Heath’s fifteen-year-old daughter, Elizabeth; Leah, a
wealthy designer of outdoor equipment; and her daughter, Katie, who is thirteen. For Heath and Leah, this is a
shakedown cruise to test a new cutting edge line of camping equipment. The equipment, designed by Leah, will make
camping and canoeing more accessible to disabled outdoorsmen. On their second night out, Anna goes off on her own
for a solo evening float on the Fox River. When she comes back, she finds that four thugs, armed with rifles, pistols, and
knives, have taken the two women and their teenaged daughters captive. With limited resources and no access to the
outside world, Anna has only two days to rescue them before her friends are either killed or flown out of the country, in
Destroyer Angel by Nevada Barr.

The Goldfinch
Tartt, Donna

Theo Decker, a 13-year-old New Yorker, miraculously survives an accident that kills his mother. Abandoned by his father,
Theo is taken in by the family of a wealthy friend. Bewildered by his strange new home on Park Avenue, disturbed by
schoolmates who don't know how to talk to him, and tormented above all by his longing for his mother, he clings to the
one thing that reminds him of her: a small, mysteriously captivating painting that ultimately draws Theo into the
underworld of art. As an adult, Theo moves silkily between the drawing rooms of the rich and the dusty labyrinth of an
antiques store where he works. He is alienated and in love--and at the center of a narrowing, ever more dangerous
circle. The Goldfinch is a mesmerizing, stay-up-all-night and tell-all-your-friends triumph, an old-fashioned story of loss
and obsession, survival and self-invention, and the ruthless machinations of fate.

Hunting Eve
Johansen, Iris

Eve Duncaon is back. The Hunt is on. She was taken for a reason. Chosen for her skills as a forensic sculptor. Abducted
by the deranged father of a serial killer and forced to reconstruct his dead son’s skull from bone fragments. Now Eve
Duncan has escaped her captor—and she’s running for her life. Alone. Unarmed. In the mountains of Colorado, Eve must
use all of her strength, courage, and wits to survive this madman’s obsession. But Jim Doane is not the only player in the
game. While Joe Quinn, Jane MacGuire, and Kendra Michaels search for Eve in the abandoned mining town that could
be her ultimate refuge—or her grave—a stranger with ties to her long-ago past is closing in, circling like a wolf, and
HUNTING EVE.

If You Don’t Know Me
Morrison, Mary B.

New York Times bestselling author Mary B. Morrison delivers a scandalous story of two women, a sizzling wager, and the
fallout that's turned lives upside down. Now, with the only man they've ever wanted at stake, who will go one step too
far to claim him? I'm the woman Madison's husband truly loves. And I'll match her game for game to make him mine.

Sindy Singleton isn't about to lose Chicago DuBois to Madison again. But getting him to open his heart once more won't
be enough to satisfy her. Enlisting the help of Chicago's worst enemy is the fastest way she knows to expose Madison's
most brazen deception yet. But Madison has more than one devastating card to play. . . I don't care what mistakes I've
made. I'll do whatever it takes to get my perfect marriage back. If there's one thing Madison has learned from her
disastrous bet, it's how to turn catastrophe into opportunity. Playing on Chicago's fatherly instincts will maintain her
access to the DuBois fortune--and keep her family's empire successful. Using sweet Sindy's niceness against her will
knock her out of the running. And the cherry on top: Madison's got the perfect scheme to finally take care of her ex-
lover, her rivals, and the husband she'll never let go. . .

The Intern’s Handbook: a thriller
Kuhn, Shane

John Lago is a very bad guy. But he’s the very best at what he does. And what he does is infiltrate top-level companies
and assassinate crooked executives while disguised as an intern. Interns are invisible. That’s the secret behind HR, Inc.,
the elite “placement agency” that doubles as a network of assassins for hire who take down high-profile targets that
wouldn’t be able to remember an intern’s name if their lives depended on it. At the ripe old age of almost twenty-five,
John Lago is already New York City’s most successful hit man. He’s also an intern at a prestigious Manhattan law firm,
clocking eighty hours a week getting coffee, answering phones, and doing all the grunt work actual employees are too
lazy to do. He was hired to assassinate one of the firm’s heavily guarded partners. His internship provides the perfect
cover, enabling him to gather intel and gain access to pull off a clean, untraceable hit. Part confessional, part DIY
manual, The Intern’s Handbook chronicles John’s final assignment, a twisted thrill ride in which he is pitted against the
toughest—and sexiest—adversary he’s ever faced: Alice, an FBI agent assigned to take down the same law partner he’s
been assigned to kill.

I’ve Got You Under My Skin
Clark, Mary Higgins

When Laurie Moran’s husband was brutally murdered; only three-year-old Timmy saw the face of his father’s killer. Five
years later his piercing blue eyes still haunt Timmy’s dreams. Laurie is haunted by more—the killer’s threat to her son as
he fled the scene: “Tell your mother she’s next, then it’s your turn . . .” Now Laurie is dealing with murder again, this
time as the producer of a true-crime, cold-case television show. The series will launch with the twenty-year-old unsolved
murder of Betsy Powell. Betsy, a socialite, was found suffocated in her bed after a gala celebrating the graduation of her
daughter and three friends. The sensational murder was news nationwide. Reopening the case in its lavish setting and
with the cooperation of the surviving guests that night, Laurie is sure to have a hit on her hands. But when the estranged
friends begin filming, it becomes clear each is hiding secrets . . . small and large. And a pair of blue eyes is watching
events unfold, too . .

Keep Quiet
Scottoline, Lisa

Scottoline delivers an emotionally gripping and complex story about one man’s split-second decision to protect his son –
and the devastating consequences that follow. Jake Buckman’s relationship with his sixteen-year-old son Ryan is not an
easy one, so at the urging of his loving wife, Pam, Jake goes alone to pick up Ryan at their suburban movie theater. On
the way home, Ryan asks to drive on a deserted road, and Jake sees it as a chance to make a connection. However, what
starts as a father-son bonding opportunity instantly turns into a nightmare. Tragedy strikes, and with Ryan’s entire
future hanging in the balance, Jake is forced to make a split-second decision that plunges them both into a world of guilt
and lies. Without ever meaning to, Jake and Ryan find themselves living under the crushing weight of their secret, which
threatens to tear their family to shreds and ruin them all. Powerful and dramatic, Keep Quiet will have readers and book
clubs debating what it means to be a parent and how far you can, and should, go to protect those you love.

Mars, Inc.: The Billionaire’s Club
Bova, Ben

How do you get to the Red Planet? Not via a benighted government program trapped in red tape and bound by
budget constrictions, that’s for sure. No, what it will take is a helping of adventure, science, corporate
powerplays, a generous dollop of seduction—both in and out of the boardroom—and money, money, money!
Art Thrasher knows this. He is a man with a driving vision: send humans to Mars. The government has utterly
failed, but Thrasher has got the plan to accomplish such a feat: form a “club” or billionaires to chip in one
billion a year until the dream is accomplished. But these are men and women who are tough cookies, addicted
to a profitable bottom-line, and disdainful of pie-in-the-sky dreamers who want to use their cash to make
somebody else’s dreams come true. But Thrasher is different from the other dreamers in an important regard:
he’s a billionaire himself, and the president of a successful company. But it’s going to take all his wiles as a
captain of industry and master manipulator of business and capital to overcome setbacks and sabotage—and get
a rocket full of scientist, engineers, visionaries, and dreamers on their way to the Red Planet. The man for the
job has arrived. Art Thrasher is prepared to do whatever it takes to get humans on Mars—or die trying!

Missing You
Coben, Harlan

It's a profile, like all the others on the online dating site. But as NYPD Detective Kat Donovan focuses on the
accompanying picture, she feels her whole world explode, as emotions she’s ignored for decades come crashing down
on her. Staring back at her is her ex-fiancé Jeff, the man who shattered her heart—and who she hasn’t seen in 18 years.
Kat feels a spark, wondering if this might be the moment when past tragedies recede and a new world opens up to
her. But when she reaches out to the man in the profile, her reawakened hope quickly darkens into suspicion and then
terror as an unspeakable conspiracy comes to light, in which monsters prey upon the most vulnerable. As the body
count mounts and Kat's hope for a second chance with Jeff grows more and more elusive, she is consumed by an
investigation that challenges her feelings about everyone she ever loved—her former fiancé, her mother, and even her
father, whose cruel murder so long ago has never been fully explained. With lives on the line, including her own, Kat
must venture deeper into the darkness than she ever has before, and discover if she has the strength to survive what
she finds there.

Night Diver
Lowell, Elizabeth

After a family tragedy, Kate Donnelly left the Caribbean behind forever. But a series of bad management decisions has
left her family's diving and marine-recovery business drowning in red ink. Now her brother pleads with her to come back
to the island nation of St Vincent. Without Kate's financial expertise, the iconic treasure-hunting enterprise started by
her grandfather will go under. Unable to say no to the little family she has left, Kate heads back to the beautiful and
terrifying ocean that still haunts her nightmares. Holden Cameron was addicted to the adrenaline rush of active duty—
including narrowly surviving an underwater explosives accident. The last thing the former British military diver wants is
to babysit a family of thieves on a tropical island—even if they are the world-famous Diving Donnellys. But in his new
civilian job, Holden must investigate the suspicious activity surrounding a Donnelly dive to recover treasure from the
ancient wreck of a pirate ship. When equipment, treasure, and even divers begin to disappear, Kate and Holden form an
uneasy alliance to uncover the truth. But the deeper they plummet into the mystery, the closer they come to each
other. Soon they are sharing their deepest fears and darkest secrets—and a combustible chemistry too hot to ignore.

NYPD Red 2
Patterson, James & Karp, Marshall

When NYPD Red arrives at a crime scene, everyone takes notice. Known as the protectors of the rich, famous, and
connected, NYPD Red is the elite task force called in only for New York City's most high-profile crimes. And Detective
Zach Jordan is the best of the best, a brilliant and relentless pursuer of justice. He puts professionalism above all,
ignoring his feelings for his partner, Detective Kylie MacDonald, the woman who broke his heart when they first met in

the academy. But even with their top-notch training, Zach and Kylie aren't prepared for what they see when they're
called to a crime scene in the heart of Central Park. They arrive to find a carousel spinning round and round, its painted
horses grinning eerily in the early morning dark. There is only one rider: a brutally slaughtered woman, her body tied up
and dressed in a Hazmat suit, on display for the world to see. The victim, a woman of vast wealth and even greater
connections, is the fourth in a string of shocking murders that have hit the city. As the public pressure mounts, and
political and personal secrets of the highest order hang in the balance, Zach and Kylie must find out what's really behind
the murderer's rampage. But Kylie has been acting strange recently--and Zach knows whatever she's hiding could
threaten the biggest case of their careers.

Power Play
Steel, Danielle

Even though Harvard-educated Fiona Carson has proven herself under fire as CEO of National Technology Advancement,
a multibillion-dollar high-tech company based in Palo Alto, California, she still has to meet the challenges of her world
every day. Devoted single mother, world-class strategist, and tough negotiator, Fiona weighs every move she makes,
and reserves any personal time for her children. Isolation and constant pressure are givens for her as a woman in a
man’s world. Miles away in Marin County, Marshall Weston basks in the fruits of his achievements. At his side is his wife,
Liz, the perfect corporate spouse, who has gladly sacrificed her own law career to raise their three children and support
Marshall at every step. Smooth, shrewd, and irreproachable, Marshall is a model chief executive, and the power he
wields only enhances his charisma and is his drug of choice. And to maintain his position, he harbors secrets that could
destroy his life at any moment. His world is one of high risks. Like many women in her position, Fiona has sacrificed her
personal life for her career, while Marshall dances dangerously close to the edge and flirts with scandal every day. Both
must face their own demons, and fight off those who are jealous of their success. Their lives as CEOs of major companies
come at a high price. And just how high a price are they willing to pay? Who are they willing to sacrifice to stay on top?
Those they love, or themselves? Danielle Steel’s gripping, emotionally layered novel explores the seductive and
damaging nature of power. Success and greed, trust and deception, love and loss—all come to a head in this compelling
drama of family, careers, infidelity, and the sacrifices some people make to hold on to power . . . or to let it go.

Stone Cold
Box, C. J.

Everything about the man is a mystery: the massive ranch in the remote Black Hills of Wyoming that nobody ever visits,
the women who live with him, the secret philanthropies, the private airstrip, the sudden disappearances. And especially
the persistent rumors that the man’s wealth comes from killing people. Joe Pickett, still officially a game warden but
now mostly a troubleshooter for the governor, is assigned to find out what the truth is, but he discovers a lot more than
he’d bargained for. There are two other men living up at that ranch. One is a stone-cold killer who takes an instant
dislike to Joe. The other is new—but Joe knows him all too well. The first man doesn’t frighten Joe. The second is
another story entirely.

Waiting for Wednesday
French, Nicci

Nicci French’s Blue Monday and Tuesday’s Gone introduced the brilliant yet reclusive psychotherapist Frieda Klein to
widespread critical acclaim, but Waiting for Wednesday promises to be her most haunting case yet. Ruth Lennox,
housewife and mother of three, is found dead in a pool of her own blood. Detective Chief Inspector Karlsson can’t piece
together a motive and calls in Frieda, hoping her talents will offer a new angle on the case. When it emerges that the
mother was hiding a scandalous secret, her family closes ranks. Frieda herself is distracted, still reeling from an attempt
on her life, and struggling with her own rare feelings of vulnerability. Then a patient’s chance remark sends Frieda down
a dangerous path that seems to lead to a serial killer who’s long escaped detection. Is Frieda getting closer to unraveling
either case? Or is she just the victim of her own paranoid, fragile mind? Because, as Frieda knows, every step closer to a
killer is one more step into a darkness from which there may be no return . . . Flawlessly executed, Waiting for
Wednesday is a penetrating, twisted novel of murder and neurosis with a jaw-dropping climax that will linger in readers’
minds long after they have turned the last page.

A Wanted Woman
Dickey, Eric Jerome

She is a woman of a thousand faces, an assassin who could be anyone, anywhere. The Trinidad contract was supposed
to be simple: to make a living man become a dead man. When the job goes bad under the watchful eye of a bank
security camera, there is nowhere for agent MX-401, known as Reaper, to hide from the fearsome local warlords, the
Laventille Killers. Her employers, the Barbarians, send her to Barbados, the next island over, barely two hundred miles
away, with the LK’s in hot pursuit of the woman who took many of their own. With the scant protection of a dank safe
house, no passport, and no access to funds, an island paradise becomes her prison. While she trawls for low-profile
assignments to keep her skills sharp and a few dollars in her pocket, Reaper discovers that family ties run deep, on both
sides of the fight. Will the woman everyone wants, who has lived countless lives in the service of others, finally discover
who she really is?

The Weight of Blood
McHugh, Laura

The town of Henbane sits deep in the Ozark Mountains. Folks there still whisper about Lucy Dane’s mother, a bewitching
stranger who appeared long enough to marry Carl Dane and then vanished when Lucy was just a child. Now on the brink
of adulthood, Lucy experiences another loss when her friend Cheri disappears and is then found murdered, her body
placed on display for all to see. Lucy’s family has deep roots in the Ozarks, part of a community that is fiercely protective
of its own. Yet despite her close ties to the land, and despite her family’s influence, Lucy—darkly beautiful as her mother
was—is always thought of by those around her as her mother’s daughter. When Cheri disappears, Lucy is haunted by the
two lost girls—the mother she never knew and the friend she couldn’t save—and sets out with the help of a local boy,
Daniel, to uncover the mystery behind Cheri’s death. What Lucy discovers is a secret that pervades the secluded
Missouri hills, and beyond that horrific revelation is a more personal one concerning what happened to her mother
more than a decade earlier. The Weight of Blood is an urgent look at the dark side of a bucolic landscape beyond the
arm of the law, where a person can easily disappear without a trace.

Without Warning
Rosenfelt, David

Years ago, Katie Sanford’s husband was convicted of the murder of Jenny Robbins, and then died himself in prison. It’s a
small town and memories are long, and Katie and Jenny’s husband, Chief of Police Jake Robbins, have had to work at
putting the tragedy behind them. But it's all brought up again in the wake of a hurricane which has just wreaked havoc
on their quiet Maine town. Since its founding, Wilton has had a quaint tradition of creating a time capsule every fifty
years, and the storm unearthed the most recent capsule. As the editor of the local paper, Katie joins Chief Robbins to
supervise its opening. Neither of them is prepared for the macabre set of predictions, dating back to months before
Jenny’s murder, that they find inside. Someone predicted her death, as well as eleven other tragedies, which are still
occurring even long after the death of Katie’s husband. At last, after all these years, Katie has reason to hope that her
husband might not have been guilty of Jenny’s murder after all. But as she and Jake race to stop the next predictions
from coming true, they find themselves caught in a terrifying mind game with no rules…and life or death consequences.