Fiction

Description: Not all stories have happy endings. Everyone loves Mathias. Naturally, when he discovers it's his destiny to save the world, he dives in head first, pulling his best friend Aaslo along for the ride. However, saving the world isn't as easy, or exciting, as it sounds in the stories. The going gets rough and folks start to believe their best chance for survival is to surrender to the forces of evil, which isn't how the prophecy goes. At all. As the list of allies grows thin, and the friends find themselves staring death in the face they must decide how to become the heroes they were destined to be or, failing that, how to survive.

Description: Chloe Brown is a chronically ill computer geek with a goal, a plan, and a list. She's come up with seven directives to help her "Get a Life", and she's already completed the first: finally moving out of her family's mansion. She's ready to enjoy a drunken night out, ride a motorcycle, and other adventures. But it's not easy being bad, and Chloe knows just the man to help her complete her list. Redford 'Red' Morgan is a handyman with tattoos, a motorcycle, and sex appeal, who paints at night but hides his work. When she enlists Red to help her rebel, she discovers what really lies beneath his rough exterior. -- adapted from back cover

Description: "Is a Hanukkah miracle right around the corner? This year, Dr. Caleb Matsuda could do without holiday cheer. After an avalanche robbed him of his ability to practice surgery, he struggles to make it through each day. He may be intrigued by new colleague Garnet James, but she’s also a search-and-rescue volunteer who could be in danger at any moment. If only she wasn’t perfect for the man he used to be." -- Back cover.

Description: "From two beloved Minnesota musicians, a unique and moody collaboration in the form of a picture book for adults. Jack and the Ghost is a gothic, lyrical evocation of a shipwreck, ghosts, and living through grief in a North Shore town. Jack Cooper, last in a long family line of fishermen, lives alone in the remote North Shore town of Greyshore, haunted by grief. But he will discover what it means to be truly haunted when a ghostly woman appears to lure him to land’s end, to the beckoning waves that have broken his heart. In a tale weird and whimsical, as familiar as folklore and as strange as life itself, musical artists Chan Poling and Lucy Michell create a world where even the most hardened soul has to see that grief may be tough, but life is tougher. "-- Provided by publisher.

Description: After being hired to deliver poinsettias to Churchill's department store in downtown New Chapel, feisty flower shop owner Abby Knight finds herself mixed up in the disappearances of everyone's favorite Santa Claus, Mr. Churchill himself. Promising Churchill's daughter that the legendary Christmas Eve celebration will not go on without her father, Abby must recruit her whole staff at Bloomers, and even her family to help. But while the excitement builds and the town square fills with revelers, there is one person who must come to terms with his own holiday mystery, Abby's husband and partner, private investigator Marco Salvare. The clock is ticking down the minutes to the big celebrations and clues are quickly uncovered, but Abby and Marco soon realize there is much more at stake than one man's life. As the town gathers around for the lighting of the tree, and the suspect is just within arm's reach, Team Salvare is barred from the case. Little does Abby know that her next move won't just seal Santa's fate, but the fate of Christmas itself hangs in the balance.

Description: "Seventeen years after the fall of the Third Reich, Max Weill has never forgotten the atrocities he saw as a prisoner at Auschwitz--nor the face of Dr. Otto Schramm, a camp doctor who worked with Mengele on appalling experiments and who sent Max's family to the gas chambers. As the war came to a close, Schramm was one of the many high-ranking former-Nazi officers who managed to escape Germany for new lives in South America, where leaders like Argentina's Juan Perón gave them safe harbor and new identities. With his life nearing its end, Max asks his nephew Aaron Wiley--an American CIA desk analyst--to complete the task Max never could: to track down Otto in Argentina, capture him, and bring him back to Germany to stand trial. Unable to deny Max, Aaron travels to Buenos Aires and discovers a city where Nazis thrive in plain sight, mingling with Argentine high society. He ingratiates himself with Otto's alluring but wounded daughter, whom he's convinced is hiding her father. Enlisting the help of a German newspaper reporter, an Israeli agent, and the obliging CIA station chief in Buenos Aires, he hunts for Otto--a complicated monster, unexpectedly human but still capable of murder if cornered. Unable to distinguish allies from enemies, Aaron will ultimately have to discover not only Otto, but the boundaries of his own personal morality, how far he is prepared to go to render justice"-- Provided by publisher.

Description: "It's 1992 in Bleak Creek, North Carolina, a sleepy little place with all the trappings of an ordinary Southern town: two Baptist churches, friendly smiles coupled with silent judgments, and an unquenchable appetite for pork products. Beneath the town's cheerful faade, however, Bleak Creek teens live in constant fear of being sent to The Whitewood School, a local reformatory with a record of putting unruly teens back on the straight and narrow--a record so impeccable that almost everyone is willing to ignore the mysterious deaths that have occurred there over the past decade. At first, high school freshmen Rex McClendon and Leif Nelson believe what they've been told: that the students' strange demises were all just tragic accidents, the unfortunate consequence of succumbing to vices like Dungeons & Dragons and Nirvana. But when the shoot for their low-budget horror masterpiece, PolterDog, goes horribly awry--and their best friend, Alicia Boykins, is sent to Whitewood as punishment--Rex and Leif are forced to piece together the unsettling truth of the school and its mysterious founder, Wayne Whitewood. What the boys find--with recent NYU film school student Janine Blitstein and her cousin Donna (a former Whitewood student with secrets of her own) at their side--will leave them battling an evil beyond their wildest teenage imaginations, one that will shake Bleak Creek to its core"-- Provided by publisher.

Description: "What if ...? A large wolf escapes its captors. A cult leader breaks out of psychiatric care. A disillusioned woman is forced to end her self-imposed exile. Stefan Spjut's latest novel explores the ancient notion that our forests may be inhabited by beings we do not understand, creatures neither animal nor human, living in the shadows . . ."--Provided by publisher.

Description: "There are only a few rules in a White Elephant gift exchange: 1) Everyone brings a wrapped, unmarked gift. 2) Numbers are drawn to decide who picks first. 3) Gifts don't need to be pricey--and often they're downright tacky. But things are a little different in Aspen, Colorado, at the office holiday party for the real estate firm owned by Henry Calhoun and his wife Claudine. Each Christmas sparks a contest among the already competitive staff to see who can buy the most coveted gift: designer sunglasses, deluxe spa treatments, front row concert tickets -- nothing is off the table. The staff is even more competitive this year as Zara, the hottest young pop star out of Hollywood, is in town and Claudine is determined to sell her the getaway home of her dreams. Everyone is puzzled when a strange gift shows up in the mix: an antique cowboy statue. At least the sales agents are guessing it's an antique -- otherwise it'd be a terrible present. In fact, the gift makes sense only to Henry and Claudine. The statue is the weapon Henry used to commit a murder years ago, a murder that helped start his company and a murder that Claudine helped cover up. She swore that no one would ever be able to find the statue or trace it to their crime. So which of their employees did? Over the course of the evening, Henry and Claudine race to figure out who could have planted the weapon, and just what the night means for the secrets they've been harboring. Further adding to the drama is a snowstorm that closes nearby roads -- preventing anyone from leaving, as well as keeping law enforcement from the scene. And by the end of this crazy night, the police will most definitely be required..."-- Publisher's description.