Portrait Of A Spy, by Daniel Silva

For Gabriel Allon and his wife, Chiara, it was supposed to be the start of a pleasant weekend in London—a visit to a gallery in St. James’s to authenticate a newly discovered painting by Titian, followed by a quiet lunch. But a pair of deadly bombings in Paris and Copenhagen has already marred this autumn day. And while walking toward Covent Garden, Gabriel notices a man he believes is about to carry out a third attack. Before Gabriel can draw his weapon, he is knocked to the pavement and can only watch as the nightmare unfolds. Haunted by his failure to stop the massacre of innocents, Gabriel returns to his isolated cottage on the cliffs of Cornwall, until a summons brings him to Washington and he is drawn into a confrontation with the new face of global terror. At the center of the threat is an American-born cleric in Yemen to whom Allah has granted “a beautiful and seductive tongue.” A gifted deceiver, who was once a paid CIA asset, the mastermind is plotting a new wave of attacks. Gabriel and his team devise a daring plan to destroy the network of death from the inside, a gambit fraught with risk, both personal and professional. To succeed, Gabriel must reach into his violent past. A woman waits there—a reclusive heiress and art collector who can traverse the murky divide between Islam and the West. She is the daughter of an old enemy, a woman joined to Gabriel by a trail of blood. . . . Set against the disparate worlds of art and intelligence, Portrait of a Spy moves swiftly from the corridors of power in Washington to the glamorous auction houses of New York and London to the unforgiving landscape of the Saudi desert. Featuring a climax that will leave readers haunted long after they turn the final page, this deeply entertaining story is also a breathtaking portrait of courage in the face of unspeakable evil—and Daniel Silva’s most extraordinary novel to date. 

The Gap Year, by Sarah Bird

In The Gap Year, told with perfect pitch from both points of view, we meet Cam Lightsey, lactation consultant extraordinaire, a divorcée still secretly carrying a torch for the ex who dumped her, a suburban misfit who’s given up her rebel dreams so her only child can get a good education. We also learn the secrets of Aubrey Lightsey, tired of being the dutiful, grade-grubbing band geek, ready to explode from wanting her “real” life to begin, trying to figure out love with boys weaned on Internet porn. When Aubrey meets Tyler Moldenhauer, football idol–sex god with a dangerous past, the fuse is lit. Late-bloomer Aubrey metastasizes into Cam’s worst silent, sullen teen nightmare, a girl with zero interest in college. Worse, on the sly Aubrey’s in touch with her father, who left when she was two to join a celebrity-ridden nutball cult. As the novel unfolds—with humor, edge-of-your-seat suspense, and penetrating insights about love in the twenty-first century—the dreams of daughter, mother, and father chart an inevitable, but perhaps not fatal, collision.

The Orchard, by Jeffrey Steakoff

Grace Lyndon is a rising ingenue in the world of perfumes and flavors; a stiletto-wearing, work-a-holic in Atlanta, she develops aromas and tastes to enthrall the senses. Dylan Jackson is a widowed single father whose heart and hands have been calloused in the fields of his North Georgia apple farm. When Grace happens to taste an apple picked from Dylan’s trees, it changes both their lives forever. Determined to track down the apple’s origin, Grace sets off in the middle of the night where she finds not only a beautiful mountain orchard in the clouds, but the mysterious man who owns it. In Stepakoff’s heartbreaking eloquence, their sudden yet undeniable attraction is threatened—leaving readers with a momentous finale.

One Summer, by David Baldacci

It’s almost Christmas, but there’s no joy in the house of terminally ill Jack and his family. With only a short time to live he spends his last days preparing to say goodbye to his devoted wife Lizzie and their three children. Then unthinkable tragedy strikes: Lizzie is killed in a car accident. With no one able to care for them, the children are separated from one another and sent to live with family members. Just when all seems lost, Jack begins to recover in a miraculous turn of events. He rises from what should have been his deathbed, determined to bring his fractured family back together. Struggling to rebuild their lives after Lizzie’s death, he reunites everyone at Lizzie’s childhood home on the oceanfront of South Carolina. And there—over one unforgettable summer, Jack learns how to love again, and he and the children learn how to become a family once more.

Split Second, by Catherine Coulter

A serial killer is on the loose, and it’s up to FBI agents Dillon Savich and Lacey Sherlock to bring him down. They soon discover that the killer has blood ties to the infamous and now long-dead monster Ted Bundy. Savich and Sherlock are joined by agents Lucy Carlyle and Cooper McKnight, and the chase is on. At the same time, Agent Carlyle learns from her dying father that her grandfather didn’t simply walk away from his family twenty-two years ago: he was, in fact, murdered by his wife, Lucy’s grandmother. Determined to find the truth, Lucy moves into her grandmother’s Chevy Chase mansion. What she finds, however, is a nightmare. Not only does she discover the truth of what happened all those years ago, but she faces a new mystery as well, a strange ring that holds powers beyond her understanding. As the hunt for the serial killer escalates, Savich realizes he’s become the killer’s focus, and perhaps the next victim. It’s up to Lucy to stop this madness before it’s too late. 

Dreams Of The Dead, by Perri O’Shaunessy

In addition to coping with her demanding, sometimes creepy, clients, Nina Reilly is dealing with prickly personal issues involving her sixteen-year-old son Bob, his estranged father, and her investigator, confidante, and sometimes lover Paul van Wagoner. Then, in walks disaster. The millionaire owner of a Tahoe ski resort, Philip Strong is the father of Jim Strong, a sociopath who devastated many innocent lives, including Nina’s. Two years earlier, she had to defend Jim against charges of murder. He shattered her life, then vanished. Paul van Wagoner made sure of it. Now in negotiations to sell his ski resort, Philip has received a letter purportedly from his fugitive son in extradition-free Brazil, demanding his share of the profits. Philip is convinced it’s authentic. Nina’s certain it’s a con, but to prove that means exposing the secrets of someone very close to her. Then two local women are brutally murdered. Nina begins to question their links to her new client, and the truth about Jim Strong’s sudden disappearance. As Nina’s worst fears flood back, with time running out, she’s about to discover that the dreams of the dead can still destroy the living. 

Burnt Mountain, by Anne Rivers Siddon

Growing up, the only place tomboy Thayer Wentworth felt at home was at her summer camp – Camp Sherwood Forest in the North Carolina Mountains. It was there that she came alive and where she met Nick Abrams, her first love…and first heartbreak. Years later, Thayer marries Aengus, an Irish professor, and they move into her deceased grandmother’s house in Atlanta, only miles from Camp Edgewood on Burnt Mountain where her father died years ago in a car accident. There, Aengus and Thayer lead quiet and happy lives until Aengus is invited up to the camp to tell old Irish tales to the campers. As Aengus spends less time at home and becomes more distant, Thayer must confront dark secrets-about her mother, her first love, and, most devastating of all, her husband. 

The Darling Dahlias and The Naked Ladies, by Susan Wittig Albert

It’s 1930 and Darling, Alabama, along with the rest of the nation, is trying to recover from the crash of the stock market. Verna Tidwell, Elizabeth “Liz” Lacy, and Ophelia Snow lead the Dahlias (the town’s garden club) to help cheer up residents by adding color and beauty to the town through their various gardening projects. There are two newcomers in town, Nona Jean Jamison and her reclusive friend Miss Lake, and rumors about the two ladies are flying around the town. Verna is convinced she had seen the two women years earlier performing in scanty costumes in New York’s Ziegfield Frolic. Nona Jean denies this, but when she cuts and dies her beautiful platinum hair a subdued brown, Liz, Verna, and some of the other Dahlias suspect Nona a/k/a “Lorelei LaMotte” may be hiding much more than a former occupation as a dancer. The Dahlias are determined to find out the truth in order to keep the mysterious ladies, as well as the rest of the town, out of danger. 

Betrayal Of Trust, by J.A. Jance

Seattle investigator J. P. Beaumont uncovers a dark and deadly conspiracy that reaches deep into the halls of state government. At first glance, the video appears to be showing a childish game: a teenage girl with dark wavy hair smiles for the camera, a blue scarf tied around her neck. All of a sudden things turn murderous, and the girl ends up dead. It’s as bad as a snuff film can get, and what’s worse, the clip has been discovered on a phone that belongs to the grandson of Washington State’s governor. However, the boy, who has a troubled background, swears that he’s never seen the victim before. Fortunately, the governor is able to turn to an old friend, J. P. Beaumont, for help. The Seattle private investigator has witnessed many horrific acts over the years, but this one ranks near the top. Even more shocking is that the crime’s multiple perpetrators could be minors. Along with Mel Soames, his partner in life as well as on the job, Beaumont soon determines that what initially appears to be a childish prank gone wrong has much deeper implications. But Mel and Beau must follow this path of corruption to its very end, before more innocent young lives are lost. 

Fallen, by Lauren Kate

Grade 8 Up—Luce must spend her senior year at reform school after her boyfriend dies in a mysterious fire. She suspects that the dark shadows that have tormented her all her life had something to do with it. When she meets supernaturally gorgeous Daniel, she feels a familiar longing, making her believe they have met before. Although Cam is clearly interested in her, Luce only wants Daniel, who runs both hot and cold. He tries to keep Luce at a distance, telling her that the truth would kill her as it has many times before. The first chapter is gripping and foreshadows the supernatural elements to come. The plot revolves around lovers who find one another, only to lose one another over and over again in a story that spans centuries. Instead of vampires, though, these are fallen angels. 

Beauty Queens, by Libba Bray

A small group of Miss Teen Dream beauty contestants survive a plane crash and find themselves without their coaches, parents, or Corporation products, stranded on an island. Miss Texas takes charge and attempts to organize the group. She’s a hardcore pageant girl and even after the crash, she has her eyes on the prize. Mixed in with the survivors is Miss New Hampshire, Adina. She is a journalist at her high school and signed up for the pageant as part of an elaborate scheme to expose it for the shallow, sexist event that it is. As the book goes on, we begin to discover the secrets and dreams of all the other girls on the island. None of them are just “pretty girls”. Each of them has a life and decisions that has brought them to this point. And they will have to find their strength to survive what the island is about to throw at them.