By Tami Hoag

Taking over a serial murder case that has already claimed nine lives, Minneapolis investigators Sam Kovac and Nikki Liska struggle to identify the latest victim and follow clues to the bullies who tormented her and the twisted family dynamics that may have caused her death.

By Anne Tyler

A travel writer who hates to travel, and to whom "things just happen," becomes involved with an unusual woman following the desertion of his wife.

By Clare Mackintosh
Recommended By Stacey Mencher, Technology and Applications Manager

Disagreeing for the first time when their son falls ill and they receive conflicting doctor recommendations, a devoted couple finds a unique way for both of their preferences to become possible.

By Lori Ostlund

After leaving his partner in New Mexico to start a new life in San Francisco, ESL teacher Aaron Englund seeks closure from a rejection-marked childhood and his own questionable choices by exploring his relationships with fellow misfits in his youth.

By Jojo Moyes
Recommended By Evelyn Hershkowitz, Readers' Services Librarian

In the wake of an accident that leaves her back at home and in a support group, Louisa meets paramedic Sam Fielding, a man who might finally understand her, but she is forced to change her plans when someone from her past reappears.

By Karen Hesse

An Aleutian Islander recounts her suffering during World War II in American internment camps designed to "protect" the population from the invading Japanese.

By Caleb Carr
Series Laszlo Kreizler and John Schuyler Moore Novels

When a madman begins stalking victims on the streets of 1896 New York, a team of investigators is forced to apply radical and untested techniques that include fingerprinting and the controversial science of psychology.

By Jami Attenberg
Recommended By Lisa H., Readers' Services Librarian

Hiding the truth about her unhappiness and struggles with anxiety from everyone including her family, best friend and therapist, an alcoholic designer joins her loved ones in a reevaluation of family strength in the wake of a newborn’s heartbreaking ailment.

By Judith Frank
Recommended By Audrey Honigman, Library Clerk, Evelyn Hershkowitz, Readers' Services Librarian

When Daniel Rosen's twin brother and sister-in-law are killed in a bombing in Jerusalem, he and his husband Matthew are confronted with challenges that threaten their relationship as they try to adopt the couple's two children.

By Wendy Walker
Recommended By Lisa H., Readers' Services Librarian

Given a controversial drug to medically erase her memory of a violent assault, young Jenny Kramer struggles with difficult emotional memories that linger months later as her father becomes obsessed with revenge and her mother descends into denial.

By Dinaw Mengestu

Coming of age during an African revolution, a brilliant university student-turned-fighter eventually flees the escalating violence of his country to resettle in America, where he is haunted by his past and the memory of a charismatic leader’s devastating sacrifice.

By William Landay

When the remains of their mother's body are discovered twenty years after she went missing, three siblings must decide whether or not to believe their criminal defense attorney father is guilty of the murder or stand by him.

By Jennifer Niven

Meeting on the ledge of their school's bell tower, misfit Theodore Finch and suicidal Violet Markey find acceptance and healing that are overshadowed by Finch's fears about Violet's growing social world.

By Wallace Stegner
With Lisa Caputo, Assistant Library Director

Tuesday, May 24, 2011. 1 PM & 7:30 PM.

Retirees Joseph and Ruth Allston find their placid, rural California life disrupted by a hippie who builds a treehouse on their property and by a young married couple tragically affected by pregnancy and cancer.

By Megan Miranda
Recommended By Nathalie Levin, Children's Services Librarian

In a story told in reverse over the course of fifteen days, Nicolette Farrell, returning to her rural hometown ten years after the disappearance of her best friend, attempts to unravel the truth about the disappearance of another young woman.

By Caroline Angell

A young composer takes a job as a nanny caring for two young boys, but after a tragedy strikes the family, she realizes the children need her to face their loss and she must make a choice between her career and her love for them.

By Tiffany Jackson

Mary B. Addison killed a baby. Allegedly. She didn't say much in that first interview with detectives, and the media filled in the only blanks that mattered: a white baby had died while under the care of a churchgoing black woman and her nine–year–old daughter. The public convicted Mary and the jury made it official. But did she do it?

By Chang-rae Lee

A visit from his daughter and her fiancé from Oregon prompts Jerry Battle to reassess his life, his family relationships, his professional success, and his disengagement from those around him, as he reflects on his professional success and his love of flying solo, in a novel set in an upper-middle-class suburban Long Island community.

By Ayad Akhtar

A young Pakistani boy, whose parents left the fundamentalists behind when they came to America, finds transformation and a path to happiness through a family friend, Mina, who shows him the beauty and power of the Quran.

By Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie
Recommended By Audrey Honigman, Library Clerk, Evelyn Hershkowitz, Readers' Services Librarian

Separated by respective ambitions after falling in love in occupied Nigeria, beautiful Ifemelu experiences triumph and defeat in America while exploring new concepts of race, while Obinze endures an undocumented status in London until the pair is reunited in their homeland 15 years later, where they face the toughest decisions of their lives.

By Dan Chaon

Focusing on the condition of the modern family, a thematically linked collection of short fiction captures the lives, dreams, and fates of men, women, and children who live outside of the American Dream.

By Lena Mahmoud
Recommended By Neela Vass, Head of Acquisitions

After her mother is killed and her father disappears, Isra Shadi, whose parents were Palestinian and white, lives with her aunt and uncle, but when she is encouraged to leave and marry, she chooses a love from her past, as she is caught between two cultures and struggles for identity.

By Khaled Hosseini

Presents a story inspired by human love, how people take care of one another, and how choices resonate through subsequent generations.

By Kayla Rae Whitaker

Two women, who met in an art class in college and instantly became best friends, try to salvage their relationship after their successful animated filmmaking partnership nearly destroys their personal lives nearly a decade later.

By Jeff VanderMeer
Series Southern Reach Trilogy
Recommended By Cliff Hong, Library Page
With Stacey Mencher, Readers' Services Librarian

Monday, May 18, 2015. 7 PM.

Area X has claimed the lives of members of eleven expeditions. The twelfth expedition consisting of four women hopes to map the terrain and collect specimens, to record all their observations and, above all, to avoid being contaminated by Area X itself.

By Penny Vincenzi
Recommended By Rosemarie Germaine, Senior Library Clerk

“When the seemingly elated Cressida Forrest disappears without a trace the night before her lavish wedding, a frantic search for answers reveals a fragile web of sexual and financial secrets involving two families (From the Publisher).”

By Hilary Thayer Hamann
Recommended By Evelyn Hershkowitz, Readers' Services Librarian

"Hamann's debut traces the sensual, passionate, and lonely interior of a young woman artist growing up in windswept East Hampton at the end of the 1970’s (From the Publisher)."

By Fredrik Backman
Recommended By Isabel Zinman, Readers' Services Librarian

Taken hostage by a failed bank robber while attending an open house, eight anxiety–prone strangers—including a redemption–seeking bank director, two couples who would fix their marriages and a plucky octogenarian—discover their unexpected common traits.

By Russell Andrews

The brutal murder of a young female journalist draws Justin Westwood, a small-town Long Island cop, into a dangerous investigation into a conspiracy that forces him into a dangerous confrontation with his fellow cops, the FBI, and an oddball team of professional killers.

By Sue Miller

A series of summer house fires exposes deep social faults in the hometown of Frankie Rowley, who makes unsettling discoveries about her aging parents while engaging in an affair with a local journalist.

By Chad Harbach
Recommended By Evelyn Hershkowitz, Readers' Services Librarian
With Evelyn Hershkowitz, Readers' Services Librarian

Tuesday, February 26, 2013.  1:30 PM.

A baseball star at a small college near Lake Michigan launches a routine throw that goes disastrously off course and inadvertently changes the lives of five people, including the college president, a gay teammate, and the president's daughter.

By Camille Noe Pagán
Recommended By Rosemarie Germaine, Senior Library Clerk

“Marissa Rogers is forced to reevaluate her choices when her once-domineering best friend loses her memory in an accident, causing Marissa to confront painful shared memories (From the Publisher).”

By Jan-Philipp Sendker
Recommended By Audrey Honigman, Library Clerk
With Jackie Ranaldo, Head of Readers' Services

Tuesday, April 28, 2015. 1:30 PM.

"When a successful New York lawyer suddenly disappears without a trace, neither his wife nor his daughter has any idea where he might be—until they find a love letter he wrote many years before, to a Burmese woman who is unknown to them (From the Publisher)."

By Elizabeth Poliner
Recommended By Evelyn Hershkowitz, Readers' Services Librarian

Enjoying summertime weeks of freedom at a popular Jewish beach with their children, beautiful Ada thrives when away from her strict husband, while chef Vivie develops diplomatic skills and unmarried Bec is forced to choose between family beliefs and her passion for a married man.

By Mary Beth Keane
Recommended By Lisa H., Readers' Services Librarian

When a violent event forcibly ends their romance, the son and daughter of two NYPD rookies reconnect years later and struggle to prevent the past from triggering another separation.

By Emily X. R Pan
With Meghan Fangmann, Librarian, Pam Strudler, Librarian

Tuesday, August 6, 2019. 7:30 PM.

A teen grieving the loss of her mother travels to Taiwan to meet her maternal grandparents for the first time and search for her mother's spirit while uncovering tragic family secrets and struggling to reconcile the truth about how her mother's life really ended.

By Kate Christensen

Kicked out of the crumbling Brooklyn home that he thought was a happy one, poet Harry Quirk struggles to make sense of his literary, marital, financial and parental failures while trying to get back into his estranged wife's good graces.

By Ian McEwan

In 1935 England, thirteen-year-old Briony Tallis witnesses an event involving her sister Cecilia and her childhood friend Robbie Turner, and she becomes the victim of her own imagination, which leads her on a lifelong search for truth and absolution.

Became the movie: Atonement

By Jeff VanderMeer
Series Southern Reach Trilogy

John Rodriguez, head of the secret agency Southern Reach, is charged with exploring Area X, a remote area sequestered from civilization, as his team exposes disturbing truths about the area, with far-reaching consequences for himself and his agency.

By Ali Smith
Series Seasonal
Recommended By Sonia Grgas, Reference Librarian

A debut installment in a series about aging, time, love and the nature of stories examines the dynamics of pop culture, meditation and harvests in a world growing more bordered and exclusive.

By Hilma Wolitzer
With Ed Goldberg, Head of Reference, Lisa Jones, Readers' Services Librarian, Sonia Grgas, Health Reference Librarian, Ralph Guiteau, Readers' Services Librarian

The Afternoon and Evening Book Clubs unite for a special evening to celebrate a year of great books and discussions.

Tuesday, December 18. 7:30 PM.

“Inadvertently attracting several single women while mourning the death of his adored wife, Edward Schuyler is profiled in a singles ad by his stepchildren... (From the Publisher).”

By Amy Bloom
Recommended By Adrienne Rein, Library Clerk

Arriving in America alone after her family is destroyed in a Russian pogrom, Lillian Leyb receives word that her daughter Sophie might still be alive and embarks on a risky odyssey that takes her from New York's Lower East Side to Siberia to find the missing girl.

By William March

 “The Bad Seed remains a masterpiece of suspense that's as chilling, intelligent, and timely as ever before (From the Publisher).”

By Jonathan Carroll

Sharing the same hyper-realistic dream one night, five people from the same New England town wake up aware of their true identities as cosmic repairmen responsible for fixing the chaos brought about by the universe's sentient beings.

By Claire Vaye Watkins
Recommended By Sonia Grgas, Reference Librarian

"A debut collection of ten short works re-imagines the mythology of the American West and includes stories of a foreigner’s arrival at a prostitution ranch, a hermit’s attempt to rescue an abused teen, and a woman’s role in a friend’s degrading Vegas encounter (From the Publisher)."

By Pat Conroy
Recommended By John Shea, Library Page

“Living in Rome with his daughter, Jack McCall finds his grief following his wife’s suicide interrupted by the arrival of his sister-in-law and two friends seeking his help in tracking down a classmate who went underground as a Vietnam protester (From the Publisher).”

By Iris Rainer Dart

Follows thirty years of joy, sorrow, triumph, and tragedy in the changing and enduring relationship of two very different women - the conventional Bertie and Cee Cee, a flamboyant actress.

Became the movie: Beaches.

By Uzodinma Iweala
Recommended By Jackie, Head of Readers' Services

Recruited by a unit of guerrilla fighters after the brutal murder of his father by militants, a West African student falls under the spell of his dangerous commander, and finds his new life increasingly contrasting with his former existence.

By Lawrence Osborne

Taking in a stranger who is suffering from exposure during a white-hot summer on the Greek island of Hydra, the daughter of a wealthy art collector and her friend, an American vacationer, discover the man's story before their act of altruism takes a dangerous turn that exposes their true loyalties.

By Annie Ward
Recommended By Jackie, Head of Readers' Services

Starting a therapeutic journal in the aftermath of a scarring accident, former travel writer Maddie is forced to reckon with her husband's PTSD, her son's safety, and her family's complicated history with her best friend, Jo.