March 22, 2024
The Underground Library by Jennifer Ryan – When the new deputy librarian, Juliet Lansdown, finds that Bethnal Green Library isn’t the bustling hub she is expecting, she’s determined to breathe life back into it. But can she show the men in charge that a woman is up to the task of running the library, especially when a confrontation with her past threatens to rerail her? Katie Upwood is thrilled to be working at the library, although she is only there until she heads off to university in the fall. But after the death of her beau on the front line and amid tumultuous family strife, she finds herself harboring a life-changing secret with no one to turn to for help. Sofie Baumann, a young Jewish refugee, came to London on a domestic service visa only to find herself working as a maid for a man who treats her abominably. She escapes to the library every chance she can, finding friendship among the literary community as well as aid in finding her sister, who is still trying to flee occupied France. When a slew of bombs destroy the library, Juliet relocates the stacks to the local Underground station where the neighborhood’s residents shelter nightly, intent on lending out stories to keep spirits up. But tragedy after tragedy threatens to unmoor the women and sever the ties of their community. Will Juliet, Katie and Sofie be able to overcome their own troubles to save the library? Or will the beating heart of their neighborhood be lost forever?
Listen For the Lie by Amy Tintera – Lucy and Savvy were the golden girls of their small Texas town: pretty, smart, and enviable. Lucy married a dream guy with a big ring and an even bigger new home. Savvy was the social butterfly loved by all and, if you believe the rumors, especially popular with the men in town. But after Lucy is found wandering the streets, covered in her best friend Savvy’s blood, everyone thinks she is a murderer. It’s been years since that horrible night, a night Lucy can’t remember anything about, and she has since moved to LA and started a new life. But now the phenomenally huge hit true crime podcast Listen For The Lie and its too-good-looking host, Ben Owens, have decided to investigate Savvy’s murder for the show’s second season. Lucy is forced to return to the place she vowed never to set foot in again to solve her friend’s murder, even if she is the one who did it. The truth is out there, if we just listen.
Leave No Trace by A.J. Landau – In a daring, brutal act of terrorism, an explosion rocks and topples the Statue of Liberty. Special Agent Michael Walker of the National Park Service is awakened by his boss with that news and sent to New York as the agent in charge. Not long after he lands, he learns two things: one, that Gina Delgado of the FBI has been placed in charge of the investigation as the lead of the Joint Terrorism Task Force, and two, that threats of a second terrorism attack are already being called in to the media. While barred from the meetings of the Joint Task Force due to his lack of security clearance, Walker finds a young boy among the survivors with a critical piece of information - a video linking the attackers to the assault. As a domestic terrorist group, lead by a shadowy figure known only as Jeremiah, begins to unleash their plan of attack against America’s cultural symbols, powerful forces within the government are misdirecting the investigation to further their own agenda. As walker begins to uncover his own tragic connection to the terrorists, it becomes much more than an investigation to him. It becomes a personal mission to uncover and thwart the terrorists’ next attack, one so substantial that the nation’s own future is at stake.
The Rumor Game by Thomas Mullen – Reporter Anne Lemire writes the Rumor Clinic, a newspaper column that disproves the many harmful rumors floating around town, some of the spread by Axis spies and others just gossip mixed with fear and ignorance. Tired of chasing silly stories about Rosie Riveters’ safety on the job, she wants to write about something bigger. Special Agent Devon Mulvey, one of the few Catholics at the FBI, spends his weekdays preventing industrial sabotage and his Sundays spying on clerics with suspect loyalties – and his evenings wooing the many lonely women whose husbands are off at war. When Anne’s story about Nazi propaganda intersects with Devon’s investigation into the death of a factory worker, the two are led down a dangerous trail of espionage, organized crime, and domestic fascism – one that implicates their own tangled pasts and threatens to engulf the city in violence.