August 20, 2021
Three Words for Goodbye by Hazel Gaynor & Heather Webb – Europe is in turmoil and a second world war seems inevitable, but Violet Bell has unfinished business and needs her granddaughter’s help. Estranged sisters Clara and Madeleine Sommers reluctantly agree to travel to Paris, Venice, and Vienna together, echoing a journey Violet took forty years earlier inspired by famed reporter and globe-trotter Nellie Bly. In each city they’ll deliver a letter in which Violet will say goodbye to one of the most important people in her life. Clara, ever dutiful, sees the trip as an inconvenient detour before her wedding to millionaire Charles Hancock, but it is also a chance to embrace her love of art, which her fiancé does nothing to encourage. Budding journalist Madeleine relishes the opportunity to develop her ambitions as a writer, determined to report on the growing threat of Hitler’s Nazi party and Mussolini’s control in Italy. Constantly at odds with each other as they travel on the luxurious Queen Mary and the Orient Express, and explore the sights of Paris and Venice, Clara and Madeleine wonder if they can honor Violet’s wish, until a shocking family secret brings them closer together. But when they reach Vienna to deliver the final letter, old grudges threaten their reconciliation again. As political and sibling tensions rise, the pair are glad to return to America, but fate has a final hand to play in their journey home aboard the Hindenburg.
Dark Roads by Chevy Stevens – The Cold Creek Highway stretches for five hundred miles through rugged wilderness. For decades, young women traveling the road have gone missing. Motorists and hitchhikers, those passing through or living in one of the small towns scattered along the region, have fallen prey time and again, and no killer or abductor who has stalked the highway has ever been brought to justice. Hailey McBride calls Cold Creek home. Her father taught her to respect nature, how to live and survive off the land, and to never travel the highway alone. Now he’s gone, leaving her a teenage orphan in the care of her aunt, whose police officer husband uses his badge as a means to bully and control Hailey. Overwhelmed by grief and forbidden to work, socialize, or date, Hailey vanishes into the mountainous terrain, hoping everyone will believe she’s left town. Rumors spread that she was taken by the highway killer – who’s claimed another victim over the summer. One year later, Beth Chevalier arrives in Cold Creek, where her sister, Amber, lived-and where she was murdered. Estranged from her parents and seeking closure, Beth takes a waitressing job at the local diner, just as Amber did, desperate to understand what happened to her and why. But Beth’s search for answers puts a target on her back – and threatens to reveal the truth behind Hailey’s disappearance.
Radar Girls by Sara Ackerman – Daisy Wilder prefers the company of horses to people, bare feet and salt water to high heels and society parties. Then, in the dizzying aftermath of the attack on Pearl Harbor, Daisy enlists in a top secret program, replacing male soldiers in a war zone for the first time. Under fear of imminent invasion, the WARDs guide pilots into blacked out airstrips and track unidentified planes across Pacific skies. But not everyone thinks women are up to the job, and the new recruits must rise above their differences and work side by side despite the resistance and heartache they meet along the way. With America’s future on the line, Daisy is determined to prove herself worthy, and with the man she’s falling for out on the front lines, she cannot fail. From radar towers on remote mountaintops to flooded bomb shelters, she’ll need her new team when the stakes are highest. Because the most important battles are fought – and won – together.
The Paper Palace by Miranda Cowley Heller – It is a perfect August morning when Elle Bishop awakens in the Back Woods Cape Cod cabin where her family has spent every summer for generations. But this morning is different: last night Elle and her oldest friend had a secret passionate encounter outside in the darkness while their spouses chatted away inside. Now Elle will have to decide between the world she has made with her much-loved husband, Peter, and the life she’d always imagined would be hers with her childhood love, Jonas, if a tragic event had not forever changed the course of their lives.