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Enoch Pratt Free Library

Enoch Pratt Free Library

Fiction Department Collection and State Library Resources

Fiction Staff Picks 2009

Staff Picks for December 2009

Flipping Out

Flipping Out

Marshall Karp

L. A. cops Michael Lomax and Terry Biggs must investigate a series of murders threatening those they love - a killer is targeting policemen’s wives. Are the murders related to the house-flipping scheme the women were running with a popular mystery writer?

Darling Jim

Darling Jim

Christian Moerk

A postman makes a gruesome discovery in a quiet Dublin house: the bodies of two young women and their aunt. The two sisters’ hidden diaries tell the story of how their lives took a dark turn once they encountered the charming but sinister wandering storyteller known as Darling Jim.

Stone's Fall

Stone's Fall

Iain Pears

In 1909 London, journalist Matthew Braddock is employed by the widow of wealthy industrialist John Stone to find the secret child mentioned in his will. The further Braddock investigates, the more he finds that the people involved seem to be intent on concealing the real truth from him.

Staff Picks for November 2009

Mama Dearest

Mama Dearest

E. Lynn Harris

Fading diva Yancey Harrington meets and is immediately impressed by
S. Marcus Pinkerton, who wants to produce a reality TV show that he claims will rejuvenate her career. Simultaneously, Yancey’s mother, Ava, is released from prison with a devious plan for revenge.

The Lost Art of Gratitude

The Lost Art of Gratitude

Alexander McCall Smith

In the sixth novel in Alexander McCall Smith's Isabel Dalhousie series, the title character -- an Edinburgh philosopher and well-meaning intervener in the affairs of others – comes to the aid of Minty Auchterlonie, a self-centered investment banker, who asks for help with an ex-lover who she says is harassing her.

Sag Harbor

Sag Harbor

Colson Whitehead

The year is 1985 and fifteen-year-old Benji Cooper, one of the only black students at his elite Manhattan private school, leaves the city to spend three largely unsupervised months living with his younger brother Reggie in an enclave of Long Island's Sag Harbor, the summer home to many African American urban professionals.

Staff Picks for October 2009

Even Money

Even Money

Dick Francis, Felix Francis

Ed Talbot, a bookmaker working the English racing circuit, is shocked when a stranger introduces himself as Ed’s father – who Ed had been told died 30 years ago. When Ed witnesses his father’s fatal stabbing, he finds himself in a race to save his own life.

Woman With Birthmark

Woman With Birthmark

Hakan Nesser

Swedish Police Chief Inspector Van Veeteran and his team are bewildered by the murder of a man shot twice in the heart and twice below the belt. Their frustration increases when a second victim suffers the same fate.

Shanghai Girls

Shanghai Girls

Lisa See

It’s 1937 in Shanghai and sisters May and Pearl are leading lives of glamour and freedom. All that changes abruptly when their father announces he’s arranged marriages for them with Chinese businessmen who live in California.

Staff Picks for September 2009

Laura Rider's Masterpiece

Laura Rider's Masterpiece

Jane Hamilton

An aspiring romance writer jumpstarts her career by aiding an affair between her husband and a public radio host.

Smooth Talking Stranger

Smooth Talking Stranger

Lisa Kleypas

Visiting Texas, Ella loses her heart to her sister’s abandoned baby and a charming millionaire.

Fine Just the Way It Is

Fine Just the Way It Is

Annie Proulx

In these lushly written stories, Westerners contend with fierce foes in the land and in themselves.

Staff Picks for August 2009

Steal Across the Sky

Steal Across the Sky

Nancy Kress

Previously unknown aliens appear above Earth, communicating to say that they have commited a crime against the human race and wish to atone for it.
Check catalog

A Lion Among Men

A Lion Among Men

Gregory Maguire

In the third of Maguire’s reimaginings of A Wizard of Oz, Brr, known as the Cowardly Lion, is sent to interview an ancient seer but ends up relating the story of his own life.

Anathem

Anathem

Neal Stephenson

In a world with parallels to our own, a young monk living in a reclusive monastery dedicated to science and math receives hints that something unprecedented is going on in the outside world.
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Staff Picks for July 2009

Life Sentences

Life Sentences

Laura Lippman

Baltimore writer Cassandra Fallows discovers the truth about her past in this haunting and multi-layered thriller.

Look Again

Look Again

Lisa Scottoline

When reporter Ellen Gleeson gets a "Have You Seen This Child?" flyer in the mail, her heart stops--the child in the photo is identical to her adopted son, Will. She investigates the story behind the flyer, uncovering clues no one was meant to discover, and when she digs too deep, she risks losing her own life--and that of the son she loves.

Staff Picks for June 2009

A Spoonful of Poison

A Spoonful of Poison

M.C. Beaton

Agatha Raisin unwittingly drums up business for her detective agency after promoting a local church fundraiser where some homemade LSD-laden jam is sold with lethal results.

Sweetheart

Sweetheart

Chelsea Cain

Even imprisoned, beautiful and sadistic serial killer Gretchen Lowell obsesses her torture victim, Detective Archie Sheridan. Sheridan knows the only way to satisfy his need is to submit himself to Gretchen's murderous domination once again.

The Turnaround

The Turnaround

George Pelecanos

On a steamy day in 1972, three high white teenagers drive into an African-American neighborhood and taunt three young black men, leading to an episode of deadly racial violence. Thirty-five years later, two of the survivors, one white and one black, meet again seeking reconciliation only to find that what goes around, comes around.

Staff Picks for May 2009

When Will There Be Good News?

When Will There Be Good News?

Kate Atkinson

When she was a child, JoAnna Mason’s family suffered a terrible tragedy. Now she and her baby have disappeared. Nanny Reggie Chase asks Jackson Brodie to find them, a request he can’t reject since Reggie has just saved his life.
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The Brass Verdict

The Brass Verdict

Michael Connelly

After the first lawyer is killed, Mickey Haller takes over the defense of a Hollywood producer accused of double murder. He quickly learns that there’s more than just these killings involved as he and veteran cop Harry Bosch reluctantly join forces.
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Life is Short But Wide

Life is Short But Wide

J. California Cooper

91-year-old Hattie B. Brown chronicles the lives of two families throughout the 20th century in Wideland, Oklahoma in "a story about love: hard-to-find, hard-to-get, hard-to-keep love."
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Staff Picks for April 2009

Goldengrove

Goldengrove

Francine Prose

A 13-year-old has a strange affair with the boyfriend of her lately deceased sister.

Home

Home

Marilynne Robinson

After leaving in disgrace 20 years earlier, a Protestant minister's son comes home.
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American Wife

American Wife

Curtis Sittenfeld

A small-town librarian marries a rising politician whose values contradict her own.

Staff Picks for March 2009

The Outlander

The Outlander

Gil Adamson

Widowed by her own hand, Mary Boulton flees into the wilds of Canada to escape her brothers-in-law who are bent on revenge.

Enlightenment

Enlightenment

Maureen Freely

A journalist travels back to Istanbul to help the wife of a former lover and finds herself drawn into a story that began with a thirty-year-old murder that may or may not have taken place.

A Mercy

A Mercy

Toni Morrison

As a child, Florens was given away by her enslaved mother in order to give her a chance at a better life – an act with future consequences for Florens and the Northern household she now belongs to.

Staff Picks for February 2009

Fire and Ice

Fire and Ice

Julie Garwood

Journalist Sophie Rose, the daughter of notorious, high-profile thief Bobby Rose, leaves her job at a major Chicago newspaper for a small local paper. When she stumbles into the middle of a bizarre story, she follows the trail of the mystery north to Prudhoe Bay, Alaska, accompanied by a bodyguard, sexy FBI agent Jack Prescott.
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Deaf Sentence

Deaf Sentence

David Lodge

Desmond Bates is a retired college professor facing his own aging and infirmities, and his hearing loss embroils him in a sticky situation with a beautiful, manipulative young woman.

In the Night of the Heat

In the Night of the Heat

Blair Underwood

Threatened with death after acquittal for murder, football superstar T. D. Jackson asks struggling African American actor and former gigolo Tennyson Hardwick for protection. Tennyson turns him down, but when Jackson is found dead in his home, Tennyson is drawn into the investigation.
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Staff Picks for January 2009

The Girl of His Dreams

The Girl of His Dreams

Donna Leon

The drowned, unclaimed body of an 11-year-old gypsy girl forces Commissario Brunetti to rethink Venetian laws supposedly protecting minorities.

Cost

Cost

Roxana Robinson

Julia Lambert’s art career is just taking off when she finds herself sandwiched between her parents’ gentle decline and her son’s unstoppable heroin addiction.

The Story of Edgar Sawtelle

The Story of Edgar Sawtelle

David Wroblewski

Edgar, born mute, and his parents raise a superior breed of companion dog. Tragedy strikes. Edgar and the dogs suspect murder but their failure to communicate forces them to flee for their lives.

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