Fayetteville Free Library Reading Room

Silks
By: Dick Francis

Mystery Fiction

When defense lawyer Geoffrey Mason hears the judge’s ruling at London’s Old Bailey, he quietly hopes that a substantial sentence will be handed down to his arrogant young client. That Julian Trent only receives eight years seems all too lenient. Little does Mason realize that he’ll be looking Trent in the eyes again much sooner than that.

Setting aside his barrister’s gown and wig, Mason heads to Sandown racetrack to don his colorful racing silks. As an amateur jockey, he fulfills his true passion by pounding the turf in the heat of a steeplechase. Yet when a fellow rider is brutally murdered—a pitchfork driven through his chest—Mason’s racing hobby soon becomes too close to his work. The prime suspect is one of their brethren, champion jockey Steve Mitchell, and the evidence against him seems overwhelming.

Mason is reluctant to heed Mitchell’s plea for legal help—but he soon finds himself at the center of a sinister web of violence, threats and intimidation. Mason is left fighting a battle of right and wrong, and more immediately, a battle of life and death…his own.

Released on August 26, 2008

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Fade Aaway
By: Harlan Coben

Suspense Fiction

The home was top-notch New Jersey suburban. The living room was Martha Stewart. The basement was Legos—and blood. For sports agent Myron Bolitar, the disappearance of a man he’d once competed against was bringing back memories—of the sport he and Greg Downing had both played and the woman they both loved. Now, among the stars, the wanna-bes, the gamblers and groupies, Myron is unraveling the strange, violent life of a sports hero gone wrong, and coming face-to-face with a past he can’t relive, and a present he may not survive.

Released on August 26, 2008

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Being Elizabeth
By: Barbara Taylor Bradford

Fiction

At age twenty-five, Elizabeth Deravenel finds herself in a position few women her age could image: the head of Deravenels, a business empire that spans the globe. It’s a company whose reach is wide and whose secrets are deep. Deravenels has roots that go far back in her family’s history, and she knows the price that many had to pay to see it reach the success it is today. And Elizabeth is the youngest executive in the company she now leads. Surrounded by rumors and disloyalty, she knows that there are many people who would give anything to take down the company — and her with it. With her enemies circling, she finds herself at a crossroad of choices involving her mind, her heart, and her destiny. As scandal surrounds the one man she’s ever loved, Elizabeth discovers how the next move she makes could have deadly and final consequences.

Released on August 19, 2008

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Mercedes Coffin
By: Faye Kellerman

Msytery Fiction

Billionaire genius Genoa Greeves never got over the shocking death of her favorite teacher, Bennett “Dr. Ben” Alston Little, murdered execution-style and stuffed into the trunk of his Mercedes-Benz. No arrests were ever made, no killer charged for the brutal crime. Fifteen years later, the high-tech CEO reads about another execution-style murder; this time the victim is a Hollywood music producer named Primo Ekerling. There is no obvious connection, but the case is eerily similar to Little’s and Genoa feels the time is right to close Dr. Ben’s case once and for all—offering the L.A.P.D. a substantial financial “incentive” if justice is finally served for Little.

Decker’s team of top investigators not only includes his favorite homicide detectives, Scott Oliver and Marge Dunn, but also his newly minted Hollywood detective daughter, Cindy Kutiel, whose help proves to be invaluable. His wife, Rina Lazarus, continues to be his backbone of support, offering a cool, rational outlook despite her growing concern for her husband’s welfare and safety. Rina’s worries and fears begin to build at a fevered pitch as past and present collide with a vengeance, catapulting an unsuspecting Peter Decker closer and closer to the edge of an infinite dark abyss.

A relentlessly gripping tale spun by a master, Faye Kellerman’s The Mercedes Coffin races through a dangerous urban world of fleeting fame and false dreams, making heart-pumping hairpin turns at each step of a terrifying journey, where truth and justice are fine lines between life and death

Released on August 12, 2008

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Smoke Screen
By: Sandra Brown

Suspense Fiction

When newswoman Britt Shelley wakes up to find herself in bed with Jay Burgess, a rising star detective in the Charleston PD, she remembers nothing of how she got there…or of how Jay wound up dead. With Jay Burgess’s shocking death, Britt Shelley claims that she has no memory of her night with him. As the investigation into Jay’s death intensifies, and suspicion against Britt Shelley mounts, Raley realizes that the newswoman, Jay’s last sexual conquest, might be his only chance to get personal vindication — and justice for the seven victims of the police station fire.

Friends are exposed as foes, heroes take on the taint of criminals, and no one can be trusted completely. A tale about audacious corruption — and those with the courage to expose it — Smoke Screen is Sandra Brown’s most searing and intense novel yet.

Released on August 12, 2008

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Foreign Body
By: Robin Cook

Fiction/Medical Thriller

Jennifer Hernandez is a fourth-year medical student at UCLA, just completing an elective in general surgery, whose world is shattered during a break in an otherwise ordinary day. While relaxing in the surgical lounge of L.A.’s Cedars-Sinai Medical Center, she half-listens to a piece on medical tourism, where first-world citizens travel to third-world countries for surgery. But when she hears her beloved grandmother’s name mentioned, her own heart nearly stops: the CNN reporter says Maria Suarez-Hernandez had died, a day after undergoing a hip replacement in New Delhi’s Queen Victoria Hospital.

Maria had raised Jennifer and her brothers from infancy, and their bond was unshakable. Still, the news that Maria had traveled to India was a shock to Jennifer, until she realized that it was the only viable option for the hardworking yet uninsured woman. Devastated, and desperate for answers, Jennifer takes emergency leave from school and heads to India, where relations with local officials go from sympathetic to sour as she presses for more information. With the discovery of other unexplained deaths followed by hasty cremations, Jennifer reaches out to her mentor, New York City medical examiner Dr. Laurie Montgomery, who has her own deep connection to Maria.

Laurie, along with her husband, Dr. Jack Stapleton, rushes to the younger woman’s side, discovering a sophisticated medical facility with little margin for error. As the death count grows, so do the questions, leading Laurie and Jennifer to unveil a sinister, multilayered conspiracy of global proportions.

Released on August 5, 2008

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Tribute
By: Nora Roberts

Fiction

Virginia’s Shenandoah Valley is a long way from Hollywood. And that’s exactly how Cilla McGowan wants it. Cilla, a former child star who has found more satisfying work as a restorer of old houses, has come to her grandmother’s farmhouse, tools at her side, to rescue it from ruin. Sadly, no one was able to save her grandmother, the legendary Janet Hardy. An actress with a tumultuous life, Janet entertained glamorous guests and engaged in decadent affairs—but died of an overdose in this very house more than thirty years earlier. To this day, Janet haunts Cilla’s dreams. And during waking hours, Cilla is haunted by her melodramatic, five-times-married mother, who carried on in the public spotlight and never gave her a chance at a normal childhood. By coming east, rolling up her sleeves, and rehabbing this wreck of a house, Cilla intends to find some kind of normalcy for herself.

Released on July 8, 2008

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Silent Thunder
By: Iris Johansen

Fiction/Mystery

Hannah Bryson, a top-notch submarine designer, and her brother, Conner, must make sure that a Russian nuclear submarine, the Silent Thunder, recently purchased by the U.S. government for use as a maritime museum, is safe for visitors. Working alone on the sub in a Maine harbor, the two make a strange discovery that’s swiftly followed by a deadly attack. Others, both Russian and American, want what the Brysons have uncovered and will stop at nothing to obtain it. One Russian, Nicolas Kirov, has a special interest in the submarine as well as a growing interest in the feisty, beautiful Hannah. The constantly bickering Hannah and Kirov are forced to work together for a common goal as they fight various enemies and, of course, fall in love.

Released on July 8, 2008

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Last Patriot
By: Brad Thor

Fiction/Thriller

In Thor’s intriguing seventh Scot Horvath novel, Scot, a former navy SEAL who’s recently quit working for Homeland Security, pursues a mystery involving a recently discovered ancient Koran. Differing from the original, this Koran suggests a secret exists that, if revealed, will change the entire nature of the warlike extremist versions of Islam. In a pulse-pounding, adrenaline-charged tour de force, Navy SEAL turned covert Homeland Security operative Scot Harvath must race to locate an ancient secret that has the power to stop militant Islam dead in its tracks.

Released on July 1, 2008

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My Sister, My Love: The Intimate Story of Skyler Rampike
By: Joyce Carol Oates

Fiction

This book is an unexpurgated first-person narrative of nineteen-year-old Skyler Rampike, the only surviving child of an “infamous” American family. A decade ago the Rampikes were destroyed by the murder of Skyler’s six-year-old ice-skating champion sister, Bliss, and the media scrutiny that followed. Part investigation into the unsolved murder; part elegy for the lost Bliss and for Skyler’s own lost childhood; and part corrosively funny exposé of the pretensions of upper-middle-class American suburbia, this captivating novel explores with unexpected sympathy and subtlety the intimate lives of those who dwell in Tabloid Hell.

Released on July 1, 2008

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Rogue
By Danielle Steel

Fiction

Having had just about enough of the gadabout ways of dot-com millionaire and perpetual Peter Pan, Blake Williams, Maxine, 42, divorced him five years ago and is raising their three children (ages 13, 12 and six) while running a thriving psychiatric practice specializing in childhood trauma and adolescent suicide. Blake, meanwhile, is continent-hopping among houses in London, Morocco and New York, bedding nubile young things. Maxine and Blake have remained friends, but when a horrific teen suicide case leads Maxine to meet doctor and childless divorcé Charles West, she finally falls for the type of man she thinks she’s always wanted: serious, responsible and a bit stuffy. A disaster makes Blake rethink his lifestyle, however, and Maxine suddenly has a choice to make. While Steel never locks in on her characters’ emotions, she keeps the pages turning and offers a satisfying twist at book’s end that most readers won’t see coming.

Released on June 24, 2008

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Fearless Fourteen
By: Janet Evanovich

Mystery/Fiction

New Jersey bounty hunter Stephanie Plum finds herself saddled with the teenage son of Loretta Rizzi. When Mario “Zook” Rizzi and his obsession with the online role-playing game “Minionfire” become too much for Stephanie to handle, the pair camp out at Trenton cop Joe Morelli’s house. Stephanie also takes a job with the mysterious Ranger, helping him “babysit” Brenda, a fading music star in town for a concert. After Loretta is kidnapped, Stephanie and Morelli discover that to ensure Loretta’s safety, they’ll have to find the $9 million that disappeared after a bank robbery committed by Loretta’s recently paroled brother, Dom. A mild-mannered stalker and the upcoming nuptials of Stephanie’s colleague Lula to Ranger’s right-hand man, Tank, add to the crazy fun.

Released on June 17, 2008

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