Books & Bites: February 2025

Set in the haunting landscape of eastern Australia, this is a stunningly accomplished debut novel about the inescapable past: the ineffable ties of family, the wars fought by fathers and sons, and what goes unsaid.

The lives of three women weave together across centuries

"A tender, deeply wise novel of a young woman who doesn't feel at home on this earth, by the author of Parakeet"

As ever, William Keeling's whimsical writing brings Belle, his gay hero, into a situation where comedy does not obscure stark moral issues to do with prejudice and bigotry that are as alive today as they were in Regency times.

Presents a collection of interconnecting narratives about a number of interesting and intriguing people who live at Blackbird House in Cape Cod, Massachusetts during the British occupation in the eighteenth century.

A richly atmospheric thriller set on an isolated Scottish island where nothing is as it seems and shocking twists lie around every corner.

After a discovery is made in a London art gallery, a woman living alone on an island that once was the home of a famous artist gets a visitor.

"The sixth Jackson Brodie mystery. Jackson and a familiar cast of characters must solve a string of art thefts"

These new, recent, and reformulated stories by Joyce Carol Oates, collected here for the first time, showcase a wide range of crime fiction and psychological suspense.

A timeless exploration of the human spirit, personal freedom, and the ever-shifting landscape of human connection.

Our criminal justice system viewed through the struggles of 10 wrongfully convicted people to achieve exoneration.

Ulysses S. Grant reflects on the crucial moments of his life as a husband, a father, a general, and a president while writing his memoirs and reckoning with his complicated legacy in this epic and intimate work of “superb historical fiction” (Booklist, starred review).

Bestselling Clark (The Lies I Tell) returns with a suspense story about ghostwriter Olivia Dumont. She is hired to finish her father's final book, in which he's ready to tell the story about the brutal murders of his siblings in 1975, for which he was the prime suspect

What if a friendship forged on the front lines of war defines a life forever? In the tradition of The Nightingale and Transcription, a searing epic based on the magnificent and true story of heroic Red Cross women

It is only after the sudden death of his wife, Birgit, that Kaspar discovers the price she paid years earlier when she fled East Germany to join him: she had to abandon her baby. Shattered by grief, yet animated by a new hope, Kaspar closes up his bookshop in present day Berlin and sets off to find her lost child in the east.

Chief Inspector Gamache novel series

Jude Fawley's hopes of a university education are lost when he is trapped into marrying the earthy Arabella, who later abandons him. Moving to the town of Christminster where he finds work as a stonemason, Jude meets and falls in love with his cousin Sue Bridehead, a sensitive, freethinking 'New Woman'.

A mesmerizing debut about a coolly manipulative woman and a wealthy "golden couple," from a stunning new voice in psychological suspense.

When a couple from Manhattan rent a house in the Hamptons for a summer vacation are asked for refuge from the Black owners of the house, the narrative veers into a frightening future.

A retired math teacher who inherits a run-down house on a Mediterranean island from a friend goes in search of answers.

Ebullient escapades propel this picaresque novel in which four boys embark on a journey across America where they encounter colorful characters and fulfill a quest.

"An uneasy but powerful read from bestselling author Liz Nugent that delves into the darkness visited upon a family of three working-class Irish brothers, exploring the ways in which families can wreak emotional damage across generations and doom men to give in to their own worst impulses in service to a culture that has abandoned them"

The acclaimed author of Finn “digs down to the bones of a classic and creates must-read modern literature” (Charles Frazier, New York Times best-selling author) with this “clever riff” (The Washington Post) on Dickens’ classic A Christmas Carol that explores of the relationship between Ebenezer Scrooge and Jacob Marley.

An opening night party turns deadly at a luxury resort located near an ancient forest.

A sweeping novel about a single house in the woods of New England, told through the lives of those who inhabit it across the centuries—“a time-spanning, genre-blurring work of storytelling magic” (The Washington Post)

Hailed for its coiled eroticism and the moral claims it makes upon the reader, this mesmerizing novel is a story of love and secrets, horror and compassion, unfolding against the haunted landscape of postwar Germany.

A chance encounter with a handsome banker in a jazz bar on New Year's Eve 1938 catapults Wall Street secretary Katey Kontent into the upper echelons of New York society.

A “razor-sharp, perfectly plotted” (The Sunday Times, London) tale of desire, suspicion, and obsession between two women staying in the same house in the Dutch countryside during the summer of 1961—a powerful exploration of the legacy of WWII and the darker parts of our collective past.

Lying in Wait Reclusive Sally Diamond causes outrage by trying to incinerate her dead father.

As a murder casts a pall on a town in Maine, Lucy Barton, Olive Kitteridge and Bob Burgess share stories and seek meaning.

The Women is that rarest of novels―at once an intimate portrait of a woman coming of age in a dangerous time and an epic tale of a nation divided by war and broken by politics, of a generation both fueled by dreams and lost on the battlefield.
“Women can be heroes, too.”