New Books 3/20/17
Interested in the latest brain research? Learn how addictive technologies and meditation work. Find out about a war hero or a hermit. Become engrossed in a murder mystery or dark secrets that destroy families. Imagine or predict the future. It’s all here.
Autumn by Ali Smith
The debut installment in a series about aging, time, and the nature of stories follows the experiences of a thirty-something lecturer in London who muses on love, art, and life through her relationship with her centenarian former neighbor.
Celine by Peter Heller
Establishing an excellent record as a missing-persons tracker who specializes in reuniting families to make amends for a loss in her own past, Celine searches for a presumed-dead photographer in Yellowstone only to be targeted by a shadowy figure who would keep the case unsolved.
Dangerous Games by Danielle Steel
A television journalist and an ex-Navy SEAL place their lives at risk during a perilous assignment involving a corrupt Vice President and his connections to the revered widow of a visionary, assassinated scion of a powerful political family.
Empire’s End by Chuck Wendig
A conclusion to the New York Times best-selling trilogy, set in the years after Return of the Jedi, follows the exploits of rebel pilot Norra Wexley and her team of Imperial hunters as they navigate the destruction of the Empire and the birth of the New Republic.
Homo Deus by Yuval Noah Harari
The New York Times best-selling author of Sapiens examines the civilized world’s phenomenal achievements in the areas of famine, disease and war while making provocative predictions about the evolutionary goals of the 21st century.
How Emotions are Made by Lisa Feldman Barrett
Barrett outlines new theories about how the brain constructs emotions to evaluate a growing potential for revolutionizing psychology, health care, law enforcement, and modern understandings about the human mind.
Humans, Bow Down by James Patterson
Surviving a terrible war between the victorious Robots and defeated humans who must submit to their new rulers or be banished to the desolate Reserve, Six, a feisty young survivor, launches a rebellion to save the human race.
Ill Will by Dan Chaon
A psychologist is unwittingly embroiled in two spectacular unsolved murders, three decades apart, when the foster brother convicted of killing their family years earlier is exonerated, making him question the testimony that led to the conviction.
In the Name of the Family by Sarah Dunant
When his cold and treacherous son, Cesare, grows out of control, Pope Alexander VI struggles to balance the demands of his thrice-married daughter and becomes a pawn in the schemes of her latest paramour before the family’s increasing sovereignty compels Rome to send envoy spies to their Italian city-state region.
Inferno: a Doctor’s Ebola Story by Steven Hatch
An American doctor provides a first-hand account of the Ebola epidemic—during which he served at a small Liberian hospital where he saw the disease tear apart families and kill both his colleagues and patients alike.
Irresistible: The Rise of Addictive Technology and the Business of Keeping us Hooked by Adam Alter
A professor of psychology and marketing at NYU presents an investigation into behavioral addiction in relation to digital technologies and discusses options to address the problem and regain control.
Piece of the World by Christina Baker Kline
Kline imagines the life story of Christina Olson, the subject of Andrew Wyeth’s painting “Christina’s World,” describing the simple life she led on a remote Maine farm, her complicated relationship with her family, and the illness that incapacitated her.
The Roanoke Girls by Amy Engel
Returning to her family’s Kansas estate in the hopes of discovering the fate of her missing cousin, Lane reconnects with a young man from her past and is confronted by dark family secrets that prompted her to flee years earlier.
Say Nothing by Brad Parks
When their children are abducted by a man who blackmails them to follow instructions at the risk of the children’s lives, a judge and his wife endure a terrorizing ordeal of no-holds-barred deceit and bond-breaking suspicions.
Seven Surrenders by Ada Palmer
In a future of near-instantaneous global travel and abundance where leaders conduct mathematically planned, secret murders to maintain a peaceful balance, a convict sentenced to wander the world in service to all teams up with a guilt-stricken counselor when both become privy to the existence of a supernatural child.
Shoot Like a Girl by Mary Jennings Hegar
An Air National Guard Major describes her experiences after being shot down on a Medevac mission in Afghanistan, recounting the courageous acts that saved lives and earned prestigious decorations before she began efforts to convince the U.S. government to allow women to serve openly on the front lines.
Silence Fallen by Patricia Briggs
Rendered a pawn against werewolf Adam and the Tri-Cities vampires, Mercy flees her captor and struggles to recruit allies while avoiding activities that could cause an interspecies war.
Song Rising by Samantha Shannon
A latest installment in the best-selling series that began with The Bone Season finds a clairvoyant underworld queen forging a tentative alliance with the Ranthem only to have her rule threatened by catastrophically powerful technology.
The Stranger in the Woods: the Extraordinary Story of the Last True Hermit by Michael Finkel
Finkel documents the true story of a man who endured a hardscrabble, isolated existence in a tent in the Maine woods, never speaking with others and surviving by stealing supplies from nearby cabins, for 27 years, in a portrait that illuminates the survival means he developed and the reasons behind his solitary life.
The Trophy Child by Paula Daly
An ambitious wife and mother who expects her family to achieve high goals no matter the cost is forced to confront her impossible standards as her husband and children rebel, exposing deep cracks in the family’s foundation.
Unplug: A Simple Guide to Meditation for Busy Skeptics and Modern Soul Searchers
by Suze Yalof Schwartz
A spiritual entrepreneur and founder and CEO of the popular LA-based meditation studio called Unplug Meditation offers a no-nonsense approach to unplugging from the chaos of our lives for just minutes a day though meditation, which can make us happier, healthier, more effective and even smarter.
The Violated by Bill Pronzini
When a registered sex offender who has been implicated in a string of attacks is found murdered in small California town, police chief Griffin Less and detective Robert Ortiz are pressured by a results-oriented mayor as they reconstruct events from the testimonies of the offender’s wife and the irate husbands of women victims.
