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Cover ArtDominic Salt and his three children are caretakers of Shearwater, a tiny island not far from Antarctica. Home to the world’s largest seed bank, Shearwater was once full of researchers, but with sea levels rising, the Salts are now its final inhabitants. Until, during the worst storm the island has ever seen, a woman mysteriously washes ashore. Isolation has taken its toll on the Salts, but as they nurse the woman, Rowan, back to strength, it begins to feel like she might just be what they need. Rowan, long accustomed to protecting herself, starts imagining a future where she could belong to someone again. But Rowan isn’t telling the whole truth about why she set out for Shearwater. And when she discovers sabotaged radios and a freshly dug grave, she realizes Dominic is keeping his own secrets. As the storms on Shearwater gather force, they all must decide if they can trust each other enough to protect the precious seeds in their care before it’s too late -- and if they can finally put the tragedies of the past behind them to create something new, together.
 

Publisher's description: 
McConaghy's descriptions of the remote island and shifting points of view make for an atmospheric, suspenseful read. There are ghosts on the pages, reminding us of the horrors of mass hunting and the ghosts that climate change brings about. And yet, I finished the book most struck by the love and hope found within the pages.

Find Wild Dark Shore in our online catalog

This beautifully written coming-of-age tale had me hooked on every word. I greatly enjoyed being inside the mind of this young, curious, creative boy as he is having a life-altering summer without even being aware of it and learning lessons in the most painful of ways.

 

Publisher's description:

Summering with a fellow schoolboy on a great English estate, Leo, the hero of L. P. Hartley's finest novel, encounters a world of unimagined luxury. But when his friend's beautiful older sister enlists him as the unwitting messenger in her illicit love affair, the aftershocks will be felt for years. The inspiration for the brilliant Joseph Losey/Harold Pinter film starring Julie Christie and Alan Bates, The Go-Between is a masterpiece—a richly layered, spellbinding story about past and present, naiveté and knowledge, and the mysteries of the human heart.

 

Find The Go Between in our online catalog.

Cover ArtI'm not exaggerating when I say every other page contains at least one line that made me pause and appreciate Cline's talent. This story immerses the reader in several nail-biting scenarios reminiscent of themes in White Lotus and Parasite. If you liked those, I bet you'll enjoy The Guest.
 

Publisher's description:
Summer is coming to a close on the East End of Long Island, and Alex is no longer welcome. A misstep at a dinner party, and the older man she's been staying with dismisses her with a ride to the train station and a ticket back to the city. With few resources and a waterlogged phone, but gifted with an ability to navigate the desires of others, Alex stays on Long Island and drifts like a ghost through the hedged lanes, gated driveways, and sun-blasted dunes of a rarified world that is, at first, closed to her. Propelled by desperation and a mutable sense of morality, she spends the week leading up to Labor Day moving from one place to the next, a cipher leaving destruction in her wake.

Find The Guest in our online catalog

Cover ArtI read a review that described this book as "American Psycho but for hot girls," which is incredibly accurate. This is a horrible, twisted, fascinating look at gender and class in America, told from the perspective of an unreliable female narrator.
 
Publisher's description:
Irina obsessively takes explicit photographs of the average-looking men she persuades to model for her, scouted from the streets of Newcastle. Placed on sabbatical from her dead-end bar job, she is offered an exhibition at a fashionable London gallery, promising to revive her career in the art world and offering an escape from her rut of drugs, alcohol, and extreme cinema. The news triggers a self-destructive tailspin, centered around Irina's relationship with her obsessive best-friend, and a shy young man from her local supermarket who has attracted her attention.
Cover ArtThis was really, really good. Incredibly gripping, gritty, and captivating. I read it in about three days, which definitely helped get me out of a reading slump. Lots of great content about women, men, addiction, obsession, and more. This is a showstopping literary addition to the "unhinged millennial woman" genre, adding Nolan's name to the list of contemporary greats like Ottessa Moshfegh, Sally Rooney, and Melissa Broder.

Publisher's description: 
In the first scene of this provocative gut-punch of a novel, our unnamed narrator meets a magnetic writer named Ciaran and falls, against her better judgment, completely in his power. After a brief, all-consuming romance he abruptly rejects her, sending her into a tailspin of jealous obsession and longing. If he ever comes back to her, she resolves to hang onto him and his love at all costs, even if it destroys her.
 
Cover ArtAuthor Laura Sims returns with a tense thriller set in a public library. Drawing from her own experiences as a librarian, Sims realistically portrays the daily activities of the staff and patrons as a backdrop for the harrowing interactions between two of the staff. It's hard to put down!
 
Publisher's description:
No one knows Margo's real name. Her colleagues and patrons at a small-town public library only know her middle-aged normalcy, congeniality, and charm. They have no reason to suspect that she is, in fact, a former nurse with a trail of countless premature deaths in her wake. She has turned a new page, so to speak, and the library is her sanctuary, a place to quell old urges. That is, at least, until Patricia, a recent graduate and failed novelist, joins the library staff. Patricia quickly notices Margo's subtly sinister edge, and watches her carefully. When a patron's death in the library bathroom gives her a hint of Margo's mysterious past, Patricia can't resist digging deeper--even as this new fixation becomes all-consuming.
 
Cover ArtStarting this book and hearing all the amazing reviews set high expectations for me, and this book exceeded them! Set in a college environment, the main character navigates his way through a prestigious and close-knit group majoring in Greek. The lives of these six students gradually take a turn for the worse as their new ways of thinking bring them to face difficult situations and solutions. The character developments and plot-twists draw you in, keeping you on your toes, leaving the reader amazed.
- Altea, twelfth-grade teen volunteer
 
Publisher's description:
Richard Papen had never been to New England before his nineteenth year. Then he arrived at Hampeden College and quickly became seduced by the sweet, dark rhythms of campus life--in particular by an elite group of five students, Greek scholars, worldly, self-assured, and at first glance, highly unapproachable.
Cover ArtSometimes you just want to read a book about nice people. Characters living in the British Isles seem to know how to be especially kind to each other. Meredith's friends, in the suburbs of Glasgow, are just what she needs after 1,214 days of not being able to step out her front door.
 
Publisher's description: 

Not leaving her house in 1,214 days, Meredith Maggs is kept company by visits from her best friend, her online support group, and her treacherous memories of a traumatizing past, but when the world comes knocking at her door, she must find the courage to answer.

Find Meredith, Alone in our online catalog. 

Cover ArtOtherworldly psychological horror stories in the vein of Edgar Allan Poe or H. P. Lovecraft that conjure a dense dream-like atmosphere through rich, beautifully constructed prose. Strangely cathartic, despite the eerie subject matter. I would recommend reading right before going to sleep for the best experience.
 
Publisher's description: 
Thomas Ligotti's debut collection, Songs of a Dead Dreamer, and his second, Grimscribe, permanently inscribed a new name in the pantheon of horror fiction. Influenced by the strange terrors of Lovecraft and Poe and by the brutal absurdity of Kafka, Ligotti eschews cheap, gory thrills for his own brand of horror, which shocks at the deepest, existential, levels.
Ligotti's stories take on decaying cities and lurid dreamscapes in a style ranging from rich, ornamental prose to cold, clinical detachment. His raw and experimental work lays bare the unimportance of our world and the sickening madness of the human condition. Like the greatest writers of cosmic horror, Ligotti bends reality until it cracks, opening fissures through which he invites us to gaze on the unsettling darkness of the abyss below.
 
Cover ArtIn The Last White Man, the main protagonist Anders wakes up and discovers he has changed race. Mohsin Hamid explores the impact this has on the people of the unnamed American town where Anders lives. Powerful and thought- provoking, tightly crafted short novel.
 
Publisher's description: 
One morning, a man wakes up to find himself transformed. Overnight, Anders's skin has turned dark, and the reflection in the mirror seems a stranger to him. At first he shares his secret only with Oona, an old friend turned new lover. Soon, reports of similar events begin to surface. Across the land, people are awakening in new incarnations, uncertain how their neighbors, friends, and family will greet them. Some see the transformations as the long-dreaded overturning of the established order that must be resisted to a bitter end. In many, like Anders's father and Oona's mother, a sense of profound loss and unease wars with profound love. As the bond between Anders and Oona deepens, change takes on a different shading: a chance at a kind of rebirth--an opportunity to see ourselves, face to face, anew.
 
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