Fiction

The Flynn family is coming undone. Catherine and Bud's open marriage has reached its breaking point as their daughters spiral in their own chaotic orbits: Abigail, the eldest, is dating a man in his twenties nicknamed War Crime Wes; Louise, the middle child, maintains a secret correspondence with an online terrorist; the brilliant youngest, Harper, is being sent to wilderness reform camp due to her insistence that someone--or something--is monitoring the town's citizens. Casting a shadow across their lives, and their small coastal town, is Paul Alabaster, a billionaire shipping magnate. Rumors of corruption circulate, but no one dares dig too deep. No one except Harper, whose obsession with a mysterious shipping container sends the family hurtling into a criminal conspiracy--one that may just bring them closer together. (2/3)

After a private message containing sensitive information is accidentally shared with a neighborhood social media group, a resident becomes the focus of escalating hostility. As rumors spread and threats follow, a nearby murder raises questions about motive and mistaken identity. Set within a close-knit community, the novel explores the consequences of digital communication, secrecy, and fear through a suspense-driven narrative. (2/3)

The war stole Roza Meszaros's dreams of becoming a ballerina and her aristocratic family's fortune. But the penniless Hungarian countess's fate takes a hopeful turn when she meets an American soldier named Joe, who promises to marry her and take her to the States. After two years of waiting to obtain the necessary money and paperwork to emigrate, Roza finally arrives in Minnesota-and discovers Joe has married someone else. Determined to stay in America, Roza turns to popular newspaper columnist Cedric Adams to help her find a suitable husband. (2/3)

Her words used to set the page on fire. But a viral backlash over her latest film adaptation forced Petra Rose to take a hiatus, resulting in missed deadlines and an overdue mortgage. Branded a fraud and fame-hungry opportunist, she learned the hard way what happens when the Internet turns on you. And she's been uninspired to write ever since. Now, with her next suspense novel outlined and savings nearly gone, she retreats to a secluded lakeside cabin, hoping to find inspiration. It's Petra's last-ditch attempt to save her career--and herself. Then he shows up. Detective Nathaniel Saint arrives with disturbing news, his presence igniting a creativity in her she thought long since burned out. Petra's words return in a rush, and her fictional cop character begins to mirror the very real cop who's becoming her muse.

Set in East Harlem during the mid-1980s, this novel centers on three women whose lives intersect following the murder of a twelve-year-old boy. When a local resident reports the discovery of the child's body, the event reverberates throughout the neighborhood, affecting families, clergy, and community members. As the boy's mother seeks answers, issues of grief, friendship, drug activity, policing, and community activism emerge. Against the backdrop of New York City in 1986, the narrative portrays the social and economic challenges facing the neighborhood and examines collective responses to loss and injustice.

Meet Máriddja: eccentric, 85-years-old, with not much time left to live. When she is diagnosed with cancer, there is only one thing she can think of - how to keep the diagnosis from her husband Biera, and how to find someone who can take care of him once she's gone. She embarks on a series of outrageous actions that eventually require the police, the fire department, and the military to handle. Meet Kaj: a new transplant to the village, recently engaged to Mimmi, and now mourning the death of his mother Laura. One day, when Kaj unexpectedly finds a box of Sami handicrafts belonging to his mother, he unlocks something within himself he never quite anticipated, something that will change his life for years to come.

Shortly after our narrator, a writer named Julian, begins this compact book by discussing the workings of involuntary memory, he interrupts himself with a bulletin to the reader: "There will be a story--or a story within the story--but not just yet." Of course, whether Departure(s) is mostly fiction or not, there is a lot of its author in it, including Barnes's reckoning with the blood disorder he has been living with since he was diagnosed in 2020, his long preoccupation with dying and grief, and his mordant sense of the indignities and lost opportunities we're prey to in love. The story he promises to deliver is a love story, that of two friends he met at university in the 1960s, that time of touted but rarely experienced sexual freedom. Julian played matchmaker to Stephen (tall, gangling, uncertain) and Jean (tart and attractive); as the third wheel he was deeply invested in the success of their love and insulted when they broke up. Time is swift, and forty years later, he tries again, watching as their rekindled affair produces joys, betrayals, and disappointments of a different order. "Life and memory can be so . . . quixotic, don't you find?" Barnes uses both his novelistic memory and his (real?) personal diary entries to examine not just the quixotic relationship of Jean and Stephen but his writer's eye upon it, and how his efforts in their behalf add up in the end. Having promised them he'd never write about them, he breaks the promise to fulfill one, amply, to his readers, in this delightful and poignant novelist's game that only Julian Barnes knows how to play.

Tells the story of a woman who rose to fame after escaping a cult as a teenager, but whose future is threatened when dangerous secrets come back to haunt her.

2023, Eastern Ukraine. Veronika, a nurse, comes home to discover that her nine-year-old son, Valentyn, has disappeared. She is distraught--as is her daughter, Lilya--they have no idea where Valentyn has been taken or why. They each embark on a quest to find him--Lilya with the bold recklessness of an adolescent, Veronika with the fearless determination of a mother. But the enemy have eyes and ears everywhere and no one can be trusted. Almost no one. Hundreds of miles away, behind the scenes, a brilliant and stubborn outlaw is working to help them find Valentyn. Together they will have to confront this Symphony of Monsters, a real-life project that is more terrifying than fiction. By turns moving and gripping, from the very first page to the last, the reader is rooting for these everyday heroes caught in a plot that is bigger and more sinister than any of them can imagine.

Set in early nineteenth-century England, this historical novel follows a young widow who returns to a coastal village in Cornwall after being forced to leave London. As she seeks answers about her unknown origins, she becomes involved with local smugglers and coastal authorities amid rising tensions along the shore. When she aids an injured smuggler captain, personal loyalties, danger, and unresolved questions about her past draw her into conflict. Blending historical detail with elements of folklore, the novel explores identity, belonging, and the pull of the sea across the coasts of Cornwall and Brittany.