May 12, 2023

New Fiction

Someone is Always Watching by Kelley Armstrong – Blythe and her friends – Gabrielle, and brother and sister Tucker and Tanya – have always been a tight-knit group, attending a local high school and falling in and out of love with each other.  But an act of violence has caused a rift between Blythe and Tucker…and unexpected bursts of aggression and disturbing nightmares have started to become more frequent in their lives.  The strange happenings culminate in a shocking event at school: Gabrielle is found covered in blood in front of their deceased principal, with no memory of what happened.  Cracks in their friendship, as well as in their own memories, start appearing threatening to expose long-forgotten secrets that could change the group’s lives forever.  How can Blythe and her friends trust each other when they can’t even trust their own memories?

Happy Place by Emily Henry – Harriet and Wyn have been the perfect couple since they met in college – they go together like salt and pepper, honey and tea, lobster and rolls.  Except now – for reasons they’re still not discussing-they don’t.  The broke up five months ago…and still haven’t told their best friends.  Which is how they find themselves sharing a bedroom at the Maine cottage that has been their friend group’s yearly getaway for the last decade.  Their annual respite from the world, where for one vibrant, blissful week, they leave behind their daily lives; have copious amounts of cheese, wine, and seafood; and soak up the salty coastal air with the people who understand them most.  Only this year, Harriet and Wyn are lying through their teeth while trying not to notice how desperately they still want each other.  Because the cottage is for sale, and this is the last week they’ll all have together in this place.  They can’t stand to break their friends’ hearts, and so they’ll play their parts.  Harriet will be the driven surgical resident who never starts a fight, and Wyn will be the laidback charmer who never lets the cracks show.  It’s a flawless plan (if you look at it from a great distance and through a pair of sunscreen-smeared sunglasses).  After years of being in love, how hard can it be to fake it for one week…in front of those who know you best?

Those Empty Eyes by Charlie Donlea – Alex Armstrong has changed everything about herself – her name, her appearance, her backstory.  She’s no longer the terrified teenager a rapt audience saw on television, emerging in handcuffs from the quiet suburban home the night her family was massacred.  That girl, Alexandra Quinlan, nicknamed Empty Eyes by the media, was accused of the killings, fought to clear her name, and later took the stand during her highly publicized defamation lawsuit that captured the attention of the nation.  It’s been ten years since, and Alex hasn’t stopped searching for answers about the night her family was killed, even as she continues to hide her real identity from true crime fanatics and grasping reporters still desperate to locate her.  As a legal investigator, she works tirelessly to secure justice for others, too.  People like Matthew Claymore, who’s under suspicion in the disappearance of his girlfriend, a student journalist named Laura McAllister.  Laura was about to break a major story about rape and cover-ups on her college campus.  Alex believes Matthew is innocent, and unearths stunning revelations about the university’s faculty, fraternity members, and powerful parents willing to do anything to protect their children.  Most shocking of all-as Alex digs into Laura’s disappearance, she realizes there are unexpected connections to the murder of her own family.  For as different as the crimes may seem, they each hinge on one sinister truth: no one is quite who they seem to be…

Community Board by Tara Conklin – Darcy Clipper, prodigal daughter, nearly thirty, has returned home to Murbridge, Massachusetts, after her life took an unwelcome left turn.  Murbridge, Darcy is convinced, will welcome her home and provide a safe space in which she can nurse her wounds and harbor grudges, both real and imagined.  But Murbridge, like so much else Darcy thought to be fixed and immutable, has changed.  And while Darcy’s first instinct might be to hole herself up in her childhood bedroom, subsisting on Chef Boyardee and canned chickpeas, it is human nature to do two things: seek out meaningful human connection, and respond to anonymous internet posts.  As Murbridge begins to take shape around Darcy, both online and in person, she considers that most fundamental of American questions: What can she ask of her community? And what does she owe it in return?