March 31, 2023
New Fiction
The Story of Us by Catherine Hernandez – Mary Grace Concepcion has left her family in Manila to find a better life for them all. After three years in Hong Kong, Mary Grace arrives in Toronto in the dead of winter to work as a live-in nanny. As she rises at 5 a.m. each day to care for other people’s children, she reminds herself of the reason for sacrifice. In two years, if all goes well, she can bring Ale, her husband, to Canada to join her. But this vast new city, so different from the heat and bustle of their San Marcelino neighbourhood back home, is as cold and bewildering as the false smiles and growing demands of her employers, who soon drop her without a second thought. Mary Grace must find new work to keep her visa and her dream of reunification with her family alive. Although, after so much time away, she wonders if her family is falling apart. It isn’t until Mary Grace begins caring for Liz, an Alzheimer’s patient, in a quiet bungalow beside the Rouge River in Scarborough, that she begins to build a surprising new community for herself. The floodgates of memory are opened, for Mary Grace and for Liz, about the women who have given them strength and love in the past and who hold the promise of what the future could be.
Pineapple Street by Jenny Jackson - Darley, the eldest daughter in the well connected, old money Stockton family, followed her heart, trading her job and her inheritance for motherhood but giving up far too much in the process; Sasha, a middle-class New England girl, has married into the Brooklyn Heights family, and finds herself cast at the arriviste outsider; and Georgiana, the baby of the family, has fallen in love with someone she can’t have and must decide what kind of person she wants to be.
The Writing Retreat by Julia Bartz – Alex has all but given up on her dreams of becoming a published author when she receives a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity: attend an exclusive month long writing retreat at the estate of feminist horror writer Roza Vallo. Even the knowledge that Wren, her former best friend and current rival, is attending doesn’t dampen her excitement. But when the attendees arrive, Roza drops a bombshell – they must all complete an entire novel from scratch during the next month, and the author of the best one will receive a life-changing seven-figure publishing deal. Determined to win this seemingly impossible contest, Alex buckles down and tries to ignore the strange happenings at the estate, including Roza’s erratic behavior, Wren’s cruel mind games, and the alleged haunting of the mansion itself. But when one of the writers vanishes during a snowstorm, Alex realizes that something very sinister is afoot. With the clock running out, she must discover the truth – or suffer the same fate.
Unnatural History by Jonathan Kellerman – Los Angeles is a city of stark contrast, the palaces of the affluent coexisting uneasily with the hellholes of the mad and the needy. That shadow world and the violence it breads draw brilliant psychologist Dr. Alex Delaware and Detective Milo Sturgis into an unsettling case of altruism gone wrong. On a superficially lovely morning, a woman shows up for work with her usual enthusiasm. She’s the newly hired personal assistant to a handsome, wealthy photographer and is read to greet her boss with coffee and good cheer. Instead, she finds him slumped in bed, shot to death. The victim had recently received rave media attention for his latest project: images of homeless people in their personal “dream” situations, elaborately costumed and enacting unfulfilled fantasies. There are some, however, who view the whole thing as nothing more than crass exploitation, citing token payments and the victim’s avoidance of any long-term relationships with his subjects. Has disgruntlement blossomed into homicidal rage? Or do the roots of violence reach down to the victim’s family – a clan, sired by an elusive billionaire, that is bizarre in its own right? Then new murders arise, and Alex and Milo begin peeling back layer after layer of intrigue and complexity, culminating in one of the deadliest threats they’ve ever faced.