Fiction

Description: "One August afternoon, on the shoreline of the Kamchatka peninsula at the northeastern edge of Russia, two girls -- sisters, eight and eleven -- go missing. In the ensuing weeks, then months, the police investigation turns up nothing. Echoes of the disappearance reverberate across a tightly woven community, with the fear and loss felt most deeply among its women. Taking us through a year in Kamchatka, Disappearing Earth enters with astonishing emotional acuity the worlds of a cast of richly drawn characters, all connected by the crime: a witness, a neighbor, a detective, a mother. We are transported to vistas of rugged beauty -- densely wooded forests, open expanses of tundra, soaring volcanoes, and the glassy seas that border Japan and Alaska -- and into a region as complex as it is alluring, where social and ethnic tensions have long simmered, and where outsiders are often the first to be accused." -- Provided by publisher.

Description: "In his youth, Richard "Dodge" Forthrast founded Corporation 9592, a gaming company that made him a multibillionaire. Now in his middle years, Dodge appreciates his comfortable, unencumbered life, managing his myriad business interests, and spending time with his beloved niece Zula and her young daughter, Sophia. One beautiful autumn day, while he undergoes a routine medical procedure, something goes irrevocably wrong. Dodge is pronounced brain dead and put on life support, leaving his stunned family and close friends with difficult decisions. Long ago, when a much younger Dodge drew up his will, he directed that his body be given to a cryonics company now owned by enigmatic tech entrepreneur Elmo Shepherd. Legally bound to follow the directive despite their misgivings, Dodge's family has his brain scanned and its data structures uploaded and stored in the cloud, until it can eventually be revived. In the coming years, technology allows Dodge's brain to be turned back on. It is an achievement that is nothing less than the disruption of death itself. An eternal afterlife--the Bitworld--is created, in which humans continue to exist as digital souls. But this brave new immortal world is not the Utopia it might first seem... Fall, or Dodge in Hell is pure, unadulterated fun: a grand drama of analog and digital, man and machine, angels and demons, gods and followers, the finite and the eternal. In this exhilarating epic, Neal Stephenson raises profound existential questions and touches on the revolutionary breakthroughs that are transforming our future. Combining the technological, philosophical, and spiritual in one grand myth, he delivers a mind-blowing speculative literary saga for the modern age."-- Provided by publisher.

Description: "Lily Bushwold thought she’d found the antidote to endless foster care and group homes: a teaching job in Cochabamba, Bolivia. As soon as she could steal enough cash for the plane, she was on it. When the gig falls through and Lily stays in Bolivia, she finds bonding with other broke, rudderless girls at the local hostel isn’t the life she wants either. Tired of hustling and already world-weary, crazy love finds her in the form she least expected: Omar, a savvy, handsome local man who’d abandoned his life as a hunter in Ayachero—a remote jungle village—to try his hand at city life. When Omar learns that a jaguar has killed his four-year-old nephew in Ayachero, he gives Lily a choice: Stay alone in the unforgiving city, or travel to the last in a string of ever-more-isolated river towns in the jungles of Bolivia. Thirty-foot anaconda? Puppy-sized spiders? Vengeful shamans with unspeakable powers? Love-struck Lily is oblivious. She follows Omar to this ruthless new world of lawless poachers, bullheaded missionaries, and desperate indigenous tribes driven to the brink of extinction. To survive, Lily must navigate the jungle--its wonders as well as its terrors—using only her wits and resilience." -- Jacket

Description: "1928. Riffling through a cupboard, Matilda Simpkin comes across a small wooden club--an old possession that she hasn't seen for more than a decade. Immediately, memories come flooding back to Mattie--memories of a thrilling past, which only further serve to remind her of her chafingly uneventful present. During the Women's Suffrage Campaign, she was a militant who was jailed five times and never missed an opportunity to return to the fray. Now in middle age, the closest she gets to the excitement of her old life is the occasional lecture on the legacy of the militant movement. After running into an old suffragette comrade who has committed herself to the wave of Fascism, Mattie realizes there is a new cause she needs to fight for and turns her focus to a new generation of women. Thus the Amazons are formed, a group created to give girls a place to not only exercise their bodies but their minds, and ignite in young women a much-needed interest in the world around them. But when a new girl joins the group, sending Mattie's past crashing into her present, every principle Mattie has ever stood for is threatened"-- Provided by publisher.

Description: First Son Alex Claremont-Diaz, with his sister and the Veep's genius granddaughter, are the White House Trio, a beautiful millennial marketing strategy for his mother, President Ellen Claremont. Then photos of a confrontation with his longtime nemesis Prince Henry at a royal wedding leak to the tabloids. The plan for damage control: stage a fake friendship between the First Son and the Prince. Alex soon discovers that beneath Henry's Prince Charming veneer, there's a soft-hearted eccentric with a dry sense of humor and more than one ghost haunting him. As President Claremont kicks off her re-election bid, Alex finds himself hurtling into a relationship with Henry that could derail the campaign and upend two nations. -- adapted from back cover

Description: "Cussy Mary Carter is the last of her kind, her skin the color of a blue damselfly in these dusty hills. But that doesn't mean she's got nothing to offer. As a member of the Pack Horse Library Project, Cussy delivers books to the hill folk of Troublesome, hoping to spread learning in these desperate times. But not everyone is so keen on Cussy's family or the Library Project, and the hardscrabble Kentuckians are quick to blame a Blue for any trouble in their small town. The Book Woman of Troublesome Creek is a story of raw courage, fierce strength, and one woman's determination to bring a little bit of hope to the darkly hollers"-- Provided by publisher.

Description: Tiffy and Leon share an apartment. Tiffy and Leon have never met. After a bad breakup, Tiffy Moore needs a place to live. Fast. And cheap. But the apartments in her budget have her wondering if astonishingly colored mold on the walls counts as art. Desperation makes her open minded, so she answers an ad for a flatshare. Leon, a night shift worker, will take the apartment during the day, and Tiffy can have it nights and weekends. He'll only ever be there when she's at the office. In fact, they'll never even have to meet. Tiffy and Leon start writing each other notes--first about what day is garbage day, then politely establishing what leftovers are up for grabs and debating the evergreen question of whether the toilet seat should stay up or down. Even though they are opposites, they soon become friends. And then maybe more. But falling in love with your roommate is probably a terrible idea--especially if you've never met.

Description: Ailsa Calder has inherited half of a house. The other half belongs to a man who disappeared without a trace twenty-seven years ago--her father. Leaving London behind to settle the inheritance from her mother's estate, Ailsa returns to her childhood home, nestled among the craggy peaks of the Scottish Highlands, joined by the half-sister who's almost a stranger to her. Ailsa can't escape the claustrophobic feeling that the house itself is watching her--as if her past hungers to consume her. She also can't ignore how the neighborhood animals refuse to set foot within the gates of the garden. When the first nighttime intruder shows up, Ailsa fears that the manor's careless rugged beauty could cost her everything.

Description: "India, 1922: It is rainy season in the lush, remote Satara mountains southeast of Bombay, where the kingdom of Satapur is tucked away. A curse seems to have fallen upon Satapur's royal family, whose maharaja died of a sudden illness shortly before his teenage son was struck down in a tragic accident. The kingdom is now ruled by an agent of the British Raj on behalf of Satapur's two maharanis, the dowager queen and the maharaja's widow. The royal ladies are in dispute over the education of the young crown prince, and a lawyer's council is required--but the maharanis live in purdah and do not speak to men. Just one person can help them: Perveen Mistry, India's only female lawyer. Perveen is determined to bring peace to the royal house and make a sound recommendation for the young prince's future, but knows she is breaking a rule by traveling alone as a woman into the remote countryside. And she arrives to find that the Satapur palace is full of cold-blooded power plays and ancient vendettas. Too late, she realizes she has walked into a trap. But whose? And how can she protect the royal children from the palace's deadly curse?"-- Provided by publisher.

Description: "In a dense star cluster, the solar winds blow fiercely. The star-sailing ship HMSS Daring runs at full sheet on a secret mission from the Emperor himself: to hunt down and destroy a festering pirate threat. Armed with a letter of marque allowing them to collect the bounty of enemy vessels, the crew has been told to find the pirates' base by any means necessary. Dashing second-in-command Liam Blackwood and plucky quartermaster Amelia Virtue lead the infiltration of shady civilian merchant networks to gather intelligence, all while keeping Daring's true identity hidden. But trouble begins when Daring’s enigmatic captain makes a series of questionable choices, and rumblings of discontent ripple up from the crew. Liam and Amelia must discover the truth about their commander, their mission, and the real enemy threat before they fall prey to the very pirates they're supposed to be tracking." -- Back cover