Entertaining new novels are on display

In addition to the entertaining new novels below, don’t forget to go to our website and try the new downloadable eAudioBooks. Click on the tab Online Resources, then choose eAudio and follow the instructions.

Ladies of the Lake, by Haywood Smith ~ Sisters Dahlia, Iris, Violet, and Rose—all with grown children of their own—have a complicated relationship, so when their grand-mother’s will requires them to spend the whole summer—without friends or family—“camping in” at her run-down lodge on re mote Lake Clare in order to inherit the valuable land, old rivalries and new understanding emerge, with plenty of laughs along the way. Desperate to save her Buckhead home from foreclosure after being left in the lurch, recent divorcee Dahlia must complete the summer and sell her share immediately. Practical, even-tempered Violet will be no problem, but Iris has been Dahlia’s nemesis since she learned to say, “no” to her big sister. And super-sweet, quirky Garage Sale Queen Rose is so “green” she’d test the patience of a saint. As tempers flare and old secrets are revealed, four grown women discover that the past is never truly buried.

Spooner, by Pete Dexter ~ Warren Spooner was born after a prolonged delivery in a makeshift delivery room in a doctor’s office in Milledgeville, Georgia, on the first Saturday of December, 1956. His father died shortly afterward, long before Spooner had even a memory of his face, and was replaced eventually by a once-brilliant young naval officer, Calmer Ottosson, recently court-martialed out of service. This is the story of the lifelong tie between the two men, poles apart, of Spooner’s troubled childhood, troubled adolescence, violent and troubled adulthood and Calmer Ottosson’s inexhaustible patience, undertaking a life-long struggle to salvage his step-son, a man he will never understand. Each page is seasoned with Dexter’s trademark quirky humor, and one wonders – is this is really a sort of memoir?

Homer and Langley, by E. L. Doctorow ~ From Ragtime and Billy Bathgate to The Book of Daniel, World’s Fair, and The March, the novels of E. L. Doctorow comprise one of the most substantive achievements of modern American fiction. Now, with Homer & Langley, this master novelist has once again created an unforgettable work.
Homer and Langley Collyer are brothers-the one blind and deeply intuitive, the other damaged into madness, or perhaps greatness, by mustard gas in the Great War. They live as recluses in their once grand Fifth Avenue mansion, scavenging the city streets for things they think they can use.  Even though they want nothing more than to shut out the world, history seems to pass through their cluttered house in the persons of immigrants, prostitutes, society women, government agents, gangsters, jazz musicians . . . and their housebound lives are fraught with adventurous peril as they struggle to survive and create meaning for themselves.
Brilliantly conceived and gorgeously written, this is a compelling story – a family story that has a legend quality about it.  It is, truly, a surprising work from a great writer.

Evil at Heart: a thriller, by Chelsea Cain ~ Chelsea Cain’s novels featuring Portland detective Archie Sheridan and serial killer Gretchen Lowell have held fans through two nail-biting entries, Heartsick and Sweetheart, both of them multi-week New York Times bestsellers.  Gretchen Lowell is still on the loose.  Portland Herald reporter Susan Ward has uncovered a bizarre kind of Gretchen Lowell fan club, which celebrates the number of days she’s been free.

Archie Sheridan hunted her for a decade, and after his last ploy to catch her went spectacularly wrong, remains hospitalized months later. But when a new body is found accompanied by Gretchen’s trademark, all bets are off and Archie is forced back into action. Has the Beauty Killer returned to her gruesome ways, or has the cult surrounding her created a whole new evil?

Hardball, by Sara Paretsky ~ When V. I. Warshawski is asked to find a man who’s been missing for four decades, a search that she figured would be futile becomes lethal. Old skeletons from the city’s racially charged history, as well as haunting family secrets rise up to brush her back from the plate with a vengeance.  Afraid to learn that her adored father might have been a bent cop, V. I. still takes the investigation all the way to its frightening end