March 7, 2025
New Fiction
The Last Days of Kira Mullan by Nicci French – After suffering a psychotic breakdown that ruined friendships, stalled her fledgling restaurant, and forced her to move out of her comfortable flat, Nancy North will do anything to get back to normal. Nancy is taking her pills, seeing her therapist, and avoiding unnecessary stress, but something is still very, very wrong. On the first day in her new flat with her partner, Felix, she hears them again, the mysterious voices that triggered her first episode. It could just be the sounds of water in the pipes, or the screaming baby across the hall, but deep down she knows something more sinister is at play. Her fears are confirmed when Kira, the young women from downstairs, is found dead. Felix, her neighbors, and even the police insist it’s a tragic suicide, but the pieces aren’t adding up for Nancy. Meanwhile, Detective Inspector Maud O’Connor has misgivings about her colleagues’ investigation of Kira’s death - the boys’ club seems intent on closing the case as quickly as possible. As tensions reach an explosive breaking point, the line between fact and delusion becomes dangerously blurred, but Maud will stop at nothing to ensure that the truth comes to light.
The Boxcar Librarian by Brianna Labuskes – When Works Progress Administration editor Millie Lang finds herself on the wrong end of a potential political scandal, she’s shipped off to Montana to work on the state’s American Guide Series – travel books intended to put the nation’s destitute writers to work. Millie arrives to an eclectic staff claiming their missed deadlines are due to sabotage, possibly from the state’s powerful Copper Kings, who don’t want their long and bloody history with the union organizers aired for the rest of the country to read. But Millie begins to suspect that the answer might instead lie with the town’s mysterious librarian, Alice Monroe. More than a decade earlier, Alice Monroe created the Boxcar Library in order to deliver books to isolated mining towns where men longed for entertainment and connection. She thought she found the perfect librarian to staff the train car in Colette Durand, a miner’s daughter with a shotgun and too many secrets behind her eyes. Now, no one in Missoula will tell Millie why both Alice and Colette went out on the inaugural journey of the Boxcar Library, but only Alice returned. The three women’s stories dramatically converge in the search to uncover what someone is so desperately trying to hide: what happened to Colette Duran.
Dandelion by Chai Yun Liew – When Lily was eleven years old, her mother, Swee Hua, walked away from the family, never to be seen or heard from again. Now a new mother herself, Lily becomes obsessed with finding out what happened to Swee Hua. She recalls the spring of 1987, growing up in a small British Columbia mining town as one of only a handful of Asian families; Lily’s previously stateless father wanted them to blend seamlessly into Canadian life, while her mother, alienated and isolated, longed to return to Brunei. Years later, still affected by Swee Hua’s disappearance, Lily’s family is stubbornly silent to her questioning. But eventually, an old family friend provides a clue that sends Lily to Southeast Asia to find out the truth.
One Good Thing by Georgia Hunter – 1940, Northern Italy. Lili and Esti have been best friends since meeting at the University of Ferrara; when Esti’s son, Theo, is born, they become as close as sisters. A war is being fought across borders and Mussolini’s Racial Laws, targeting Italy’s Jews, have Lili on edge. Still, life somehow goes on – until Germany invades and the friends find themselves in occupied territory. Esti, older and fiercely self-assured, convinces Lili to flee to the countryside to help hide a group of young refugees, then to a convent in Florence, where they pose as nuns and forge papers for the underground. When disaster strikes, Esti asks Lili to take a much bigger step: To go on the run with Theo. To protect him while Esti can’t. Terrified to travel on her own, Lili sets out on an epic journey south toward Allied territory, through Nazi-occupied villages and bombed-out cities, doing everything she can to keep Theo safe.