New Fiction September '21

FBI Special Agent Nina Guerrera escaped a serial killer's trap at sixteen. Years later, when she's jumped in a Virginia park, a video of the attack goes viral. Legions of new fans are not the only ones impressed with her fighting skills. The man who abducted her eleven years ago is watching. Determined to reclaim his lost prize, he commits a grisly murder designed to pull her into the investigation... but his games are just beginning. And he's using the internet to invite the public to play along. His coded riddles may have made him a depraved social media superstar--an enigmatic cyber-ghost dubbed "the Cipher"--but to Nina he's a monster who preys on the vulnerable. Partnered with the FBI's preeminent mind hunter, Dr. Jeffrey Wade, who is haunted by his own past, Nina tracks the predator across the country. Clue by clue, victim by victim, Nina races to stop a deadly killer while the world watches.

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Detectives dig into the dark side of Toronto when a serial killer targets homeless people who are camped out near one of the city's most exclusive enclaves in this latest crime thriller from author Robert Rotenberg.

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The story begins in 1618, in the small town of Leonberg where Katharina Kepler is accused of being a witch. Katharina is an illiterate widow, known by her neighbours for her herbal remedies. So when the deranged and insipid Ursula Reinbold accuses Katharina of offering her a bitter, witchy drink that has made her ill, Katharina is in trouble. Facing the threat of financial ruin, torture, and even execution, Katharina tells her side of the story to her friend and next-door neighbour Simon, a reclusive widower imperiled by his own secrets.

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Teddy Crutcher has won Teacher of the Year at the esteemed Belmont Academy, home to the best and brightest. Teddy really can't be bothered with the death of a school parent that's looking more and more like murder or the student digging a little too deep into Teddy's personal life. All he wants is for his colleagues - and the endlessly meddlesome parents - to stay out of his way. It's really too bad that sometimes excellence can come at such a high cost.

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1920s, Mississippi. Ada promised herself she would never go back to the Trace, to her hard life on the swamp and her harsh father. But now, she finds herself with nowhere to go but back home. Matilda is from the other side of the Trace. She forms a plan to go north, to pack up the secrets she's holding about her life in the South and hang them on the line for all to see in Ohio. As the two girls are drawn deeper into a dangerous world of bootleggers and moral corruption, they must come to terms with the complexities of their tenuous bond and a hidden past that links them in ways that could cost them their lives.

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Three months ago, Lena Nguyen's estranged twin sister, Cambry, drove to a remote bridge sixty miles outside of Missoula, Montana, and jumped two hundred feet to her death. At least, that is the official police version. Lena will do anything to uncover the truth. But as her twin's final hours come into focus, Lena's search turns into a harrowing, tooth-and-nail fight for her own survival - one that will test everything she thought she knew about her sister and herself.

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Elin Henriksen is a middle-aged single parent under pressure. There is an upcoming ceremony at the Art Museum. In ten days, a gallery will be named after her late father, Tig Henriksen, a modernist furniture designer whose sought-after cult pieces hide a troubled narrative. Struggling with the paradoxes of truth and clarity, love and witness, genius and ambition, and her own ambivalent connection to her confessor, she inches toward confronting not just the explosive potential of memory but the costly fallout of silence.

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"Raised to be obedient by a stern grandmother in a blue-collar town in Massachusetts, Rosie accepts a scholarship to art school in New York City in the 1980s. One morning at a museum, she meets a worldly man twenty years her senior, with access to the upper crust of New England society. Bennett is dashing, knows that 'polo' refers only to ponies, teaches her which direction to spoon soup, and tells of exotic escapades with Truman Capote and Hunter S. Thompson. Soon, Rosie is living with him on a swanky estate on Connecticut's Gold Coast, naively in sway to his moral ambivalence. A daughter; Miranda; is born, just as his current con goes awry forcing them to abscond in the middle of the night to the untamed wilderness of northern Vermont. Almost immediately, Bennett abandons them in an uninsulated cabin without a car or cash for weeks at a time, so he can tend a teaching job that may or may not exist at an elite college. Rosie is forced to care for her young daughter alone, and to tackle the stubborn intricacies of the wood stove, snowshoe into town, hunt for wild game, and forage in the forest. As Rosie and Miranda's life gradually begins to normalize, Bennett's schemes turn malevolent, and Rosie must at last confront his twisted deceptions. Her actions have far-reaching and perilous consequences."--Provided by publisher.

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It is 1987 and a small Irish community is preparing for a wedding. The day before the ceremony, a group of young friends, including the bride and groom, are involved in an accident. Three survive. Three are killed. The lives of the families are shattered and the rifts between them ripple throughout the small town. The secrets - the unspoken longings and regrets that have come to haunt those left behind - will not be silenced.

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For Jackie Pierce, everything changed the summer of 1979, when she spent three months of infinite freedom at her uncle's sprawling estate - then her cousin silently slipped away one night. Twenty years later, Jackie unexpectedly inherits The Sandcastle and returns to the iconic estate for a short visit to ready it for sale. When a piece of the past resurfaces and sparks new questions about Willa's disappearance, Jackie must discover if the dark secret she's kept ever since is even the truth at all.

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"A gorgeous, jewel of a novel about a mother caring for her two sons while everything else--her marriage, the fishing industry her New England community relies on--threatens to crumble around her. After a fishing accident leaves her husband hospitalized across the border in Canada, Jill is left to look after "the wolves"--her two teenage boys--alone. Nothing comes easy in their remote corner of Maine: money is tight, her son Sam is getting into more trouble by the day, and Jill begins to suspect her marriage isn't as stable as she once believed. As one disaster gives way to the next, Jill worries it's not enough to be a caring wife and mother anymore--not enough to show up when needed, nudge her boys in the right direction, and believe everything will be okay. But how to protect this life she loves, this household, this family? With remarkable poise and startling beauty, Landslide ushers us into a modern household where Instagram posts, sex-positivity talks, and old fishing tales become a kind of love language for a family. Conley's stunning portrait of a family at odds is as compelling as it is moving, and asks how to remain devoted when the eye of the storm closes in"-- Provided by publisher.

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When Paige Meyer gets an email from a DNA testing website announcing that her father is a man she never met, she is convinced there must be a mistake. But as she digs deeper into her mother's past and her own feelings of being the odd child out growing up, Paige begins to question everything she thought she knew.

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Shelby Tebow is the first to go missing. Not long after, Meredith Dickey and her six-year-old daughter, Delilah, vanish just blocks away from where Shelby was last seen, striking fear into their once-peaceful community. Are these incidents connected? After an elusive search that yields more questions than answers, the case eventually goes cold. Now, eleven years later, Delilah shockingly returns. Everyone wants to know what happened to her, but no one is prepared for what they’ll find… In this smart and chilling thriller, master of suspense and New York Times bestselling author Mary Kubica takes domestic secrets to a whole new level, showing that some people will stop at nothing to keep the truth buried.

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For years Jess believed that Joe--the father of her child and the only man she ever loved--had abandoned her during her greatest time of need. That belief nearly destroyed her. Seventeen years later, when cleaning out her mother's house, Jess unpacks a box of cards and letters hidden in the attic and makes a discovery that changes everything about life as she knows it. Shaken but empowered, Jess--and her two stalwart best friends--set out on a remarkable journey to follow a set of faded postmarks around the world. Is Joe still alive? Does he know that Jess never forgot him? Maybe their love story isn't over. Maybe one day they'll find each other again...

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Orkney, 1940. Five hundred Italian prisoners-of-war arrive to fortify these remote and windswept islands. Resentful islanders are fearful of the enemy in their midst, but not orphaned twin sisters Dorothy and Constance. Already outcasts, they volunteer to nurse all prisoners who are injured or fall sick. Soon Dorothy befriends Cesare, an artist swept up by the machine of war and almost broken by the horrors he has witnessed. She is entranced by his plan to build an Italian chapel from war scrap and sea debris, and something beautiful begins to blossom. But Con, scarred from a betrayal in her past, is afraid for her sister; she knows that people are not always what they seem. Soon, trust frays between the islanders and outsiders, and between the sisters--their hearts torn by rival claims of duty and desire. A storm is coming ...

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It's 1965, and life has taken a turn for eighteen-year-old Anton Addison-Rice a year after his brother died in a tragic accident, Anton is still wounded - physically and emotionally. Alone for the holidays, he catches a glimpse of his neighbor Edith across the street one evening and realizes that she's in danger. Anton is determined to help Edith leave her abusive marriage. Frightened and fifteen years Anton's senior, Edith is slow to trust. But when she needs a safe place to stay, she lets down her guard, and over the course of ten days an unlikely friendship grows. As Anton falls hopelessly and selflessly in love, Edith fears both her husband finding her and Anton getting hurt. She must disappear without telling anyone where she's going - even Anton. If keeping Edith safe means letting her go, Anton will say goodbye forever. Or so he believes. What would happen, though, if one day their paths should cross again?

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Thomas Wazhushk is the night watchman at the jewel bearing plant, the first factory located near the Turtle Mountain Reservation in rural North Dakota. He is also a Chippewa Council member who is trying to understand the consequences of a new 'emancipation' bill on its way to the floor of the United States Congress. It is 1953 and he and the other council members know the bill isn't about freedom; Congress is fed up with Indians. The bill is a 'termination' that threatens the rights of Native Americans to their land and their very identity. How can the government abandon treaties made in good faith with Native Americans 'for as long as the grasses shall grow, and the rivers run'?

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Brecken Hill in upstate New York is an expensive place to live. You have to be rich to have a house there. And they don't come much richer than Fred and Sheila Mercer. But even all their money can't protect them when a killer comes to call. The Mercers are brutally murdered the night after Easter dinner with their three adult kids. Each child stands to inherit millions. Did one of them snap after that dreadful evening? Or was it someone else who crept in with the worst of intentions?

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It all happens so quickly. One day you're living the dream, commuting to work by ferry with your charismatic neighbour Kit in the seat beside you. The next, Kit hasn't turned up for the boat and his wife, Melia, has reported him missing. When you get off at your stop, the police are waiting. Another passenger saw you and Kit arguing on the boat home the night before and the police say that you had a reason to want him dead. Whatever danger followed you home last night, you are innocent, totally innocent. Aren't you?

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Annie Stoddard was the smartest girl in her small public high school in Georgia, but now that she's at Carter, it feels like she's got 'Scholarship Student' written on her forehead. Bea Powers put aside misgivings about attending college in the South as a biracial student intake part in Carter's Justice Scholars program. But even within that rarefied circle of people trying to change the world, it seems everyone has a different idea of what justice is. Stayja York goes to Carter every day, too, but she isn't a student. She works at the Coffee Bean, doling out almond milk lattes to entitled co-eds while trying to put out fires on the home front and save for her own education. Their three lives intersect when Annie accuses fourth-year student Tyler Brand of sexual assault. Once Bea is assigned as Tyler's student advocate, the girls find themselves on opposite sides as battle lines are drawn across the picture-perfect campus and Stayja finds herself invested in the case's outcome as well.

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"The Renter, Michael Tregebov's fourth novel, is set in Winnipeg Beach, Manitoba's version of cottage country, ca. 1968. Once the preserve of the city's establishment, by the time the events of the novel take place, Winnipeg Beach has declined to the point that even the city's middle classes, including its prosperous Jewish citizens, could afford addresses there. Michael Tregebov's would-be hero in The Renter is a young man sporting a summer tan, Keds and crisp short-sleeved white shirts, and toting a transistor radio. Bret Yeatman is out to recoup the social position his father lost through financial ruin, and is determined to realize his fantasy by marrying up and into the well-to-do family of his first perfect love, Sandra Sugarman, and renouncing his easy, promiscuous life in the drug trade. But his fantasy collides with Sandra's own -- stars are crossed, and the fates will have their day."-- Provided by publisher.

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Three years ago, Jason Bourne embarked on a mission in Estonia to rescue a Russian scientist and activist, the leader of an anti-Putin protest movement, who'd recently been smuggled out of St. Petersburg in the midst of an FSB manhunt. He failed. Now, three years later, Bourne learns the Estonian mission was a set-up. The target is still in hiding in Russia and the Russian state intelligence agency is desperately seeking her. Bourne must find her first, but his race to correct the errors of the past will lead him to one inevitable conclusion: some secrets should stay buried.

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In a small London bedsit, a radio is playing. A small dining table is set for three, and curled up on the sofa is a body... Jenn is the one who discovers the woman, along with the bailiffs. All indications suggest that the tenant -- Sarah Jones -- was pretty, charismatic and full of life. So how is it possible that her body has lain undiscovered for ten whole months?

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Elspeth, Meggy and Xavier are locked in a flat. They don't know where they are, and they don't know why they're there. They only know that the shadow man has taken them, and he won't let them go. Desperate to escape, the three of them must find a way out of their living hell, even if it means uncovering a very dark truth. Because the shadow man isn't a nightmare. He's all too real.

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"The author of South of Superior returns to that same territory and landscape with this story of a woman who, on the verge of losing the land and home that defines her, finds her way to a brighter future when she learns the power of giving to and accepting help from the community around her"-- Provided by publisher.

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