February 3, 2023
New Fiction
The Girls Who Disappeared by Claire Douglas – In a rural Wiltshire town lies the Devil’s Corridor – a haunted road that has witnessed eerie happenings, from unexplained deaths to the sounds of a child crying in the night. In this bucolic stretch of Southwest England famous for its otherworldly sites, nothing is more puzzling than the Olivia Rutherford case. Four girls were driving home. After their car crashed only one – Olivia – was found. What happened to the girls who disappeared? On the twentieth anniversary of the tragedy, journalist Jenna Halliday has arrived in Wiltshire to cover the case. The locals aren’t happy with this outsider determined to dig into the past – least of all Olivia. Soon, Jenna starts receiving menacing notes. The locals have made it clear she’s not welcome, but someone is going to make her leave one way or another. Jenna’s been warned: she must get out of this town before she suffers a dark fate…and becomes another mystery attached to this place.
Authentically, Izzy by Pepper Basham – Dear Reader, My name is Isabelle Louisa Edgewood – Izzy, for short. I live by blue-tinted mountains, where I find contentment in fresh air and books. Oh, and coffee and tea, of course. And occasionally in being accosted by the love of my family. (You’ll understand my verb choice in the phrase later.) I dream of opening my own bookstore, but my life, particularly my romantic history, has not been the stuff of fairy tales. Which is probably why my pregnant, misled, matchmaking cousin – who, really, is more like my sister – signed me up for an online dating community. The trouble is…it worked. I’ve met my book-quoting Mr. Right, and our correspondence has been almost too good to be true. But Brodie lives across an ocean. And just the other day, a perfectly nice author and professor named Eli came into the library where I work and asked me out for coffee. I feel a rom-com movie with a foreboding disaster nipping at my heels. But I’ve played it safe for a long time. Maybe it’s time for me to be as brave as my favorite literary heroines. Maybe it’s time to take the adventures from the page to real life. Wish me luck. Authentically, Izzy.
Pandora by Susan Stokes-Chapman – London, 1799. Dora Blake, an aspiring jewelry artist, lives with her odious uncle atop her late parents’ once-famed shop of antiquities. After a mysterious Greek vase is delivered, her uncle begins to act suspiciously, keeping the vase locked in the store’s basement, away from prying eyes-including Dora’s. Intrigued by her uncle’s peculiar behavior, Dora turns to young, ambitious antiquities scholar Edward Lawrence, who eagerly agrees to help. Edward believes the ancient vase is the key that will unlock his academic future; Dora sees it as a chance to establish her own name. But what Edward discovers about the vase has Dora questioning everything she has believed about her life, her family, and the world as she knows it. As Dora uncovers the truth, she comes to understand that some doors are locked and some mysteries are buried for a reason while others are closer to the surface than they appear.
Everyone in my Family has Killed Someone by Benjamin Stevenson – Ernie Cunningham, crime fiction aficionado, is a reluctant guest at his family reunion. Family reunions aren’t for everyone, of course. But Ern’s part of a notorious crime family – and three years ago, he witnessed his brother kill a man and immediately turned him in to the police. Now Ern’s brother is being released from prison and the family is gathering to welcome him home. As if that weren’t bad enough, the reunion is taking place at a remote mountain resort. The day before Ern’s brother is set to arrive, a man’s body is found frozen on the slopes. While most Cunninghams assume the man simply collapsed and died of hypothermia during the night, Ern’s stepsister spots a strange detail – the man’s airways are clogged with ash. He appears to have died by fire…in a pristine snowfield…without a single burn mark on him. The longer the body goes unidentified, the more overwhelmed the local policeman becomes, and the more Ern realizes it’s up to him to find the murderer. Holmes, Christie, Chesterton: he’s read them all. He knows what patterns to look for, what rules killers follow. And, of course, he knows his own family. Every member of which, as he’s told us from the start, has killed someone.