River Readers

Brilliant high school misfit Quentin Coldwater is leading an average life until he gets invited to sit for exams at a magical college. He is one of the few who passes the exam. Evenutually he learns that the Filori books (similar to Narnia) that he loved growing up are descriptions of a real place. Its been described as Harry Potter on Irish Whiskey.

Deese, the enforcer for a loan shark, is arrested after a visit to a delinquent account goes sideways. When he later escapes, it leads federal agents Bob and Rae to a gruesome discovery on Deese's Louisiana property. U.S. Marshal Lucas Davenport is called in to assist in tracking him and the burglary team he has joined to California and ultimately to Las Vegas. Bob suggests that the pursuit is too easy -- but is proven wrong. The team has to battle shootouts, heat, kidnapping, and technology in tracking down their prey.

Downing's debut thriller offers a chilling look into the marriage of two psychopaths. Our unnamed narrator (known mostly by an alias, Quentin) likes to pick up women in bars while pretending to be deaf. His wife, Millicent, is perfectly fine with this because he brings them home for her to torture and murder. When the freshly killed body of a young woman is found, nearly a full year after Millicent was supposed to have dumped her, Quentin realizes that Millicent is apparently playing a different game than he thought.

*Starred Review* In 1967, an escaped prisoner, drifter, and racist, while voluntarily working on the presidential campaign for George Wallace in California, got the idea of stalking and killing Martin Luther King Jr. Using the alias Eric Galt, he traveled to his native South and kept track of King as the civil rights leader marched in Memphis for the striking garbage collectors. Galt, whose real name was James Earl Ray, methodically planned and executed the assassination then fled to Canada and Europe, hoping eventually to immigrate to South Africa.

Before George Washington was president, he was also the commander of the revolutionary army. Not as well known, is the conspiracy to kidnap or kill Washington at the beginning of the war. Why the plot failed is due to the introduction of counterintelligence -- along with many coincidence and a dose of dumb luck. The story is told, pieced together from writings, records, and letters, in an engaging radio serial style, with each chapter setting up the next portion of the story.

Alicia Berenson is a famous painter, living a life that many envy with her handsome fashion-photographer husband, Gabriel. With a gorgeous house, complete with a painting studio, and that perfect marriage, Alicia couldn't be happier. Until one day Gabriel comes home late from work, and Alicia shoots him in the face. In the brutal aftermath that leads to an indefinite stay in a psychiatric hospital, Alicia mutely accepts her punishment. Forensic psychotherapist Theo Faber is put in charge of her therapy; however, since the night of the shooting, she hasn't spoken a word.

CIA agent Sam Capra receives a frantic call from his wife to leave the office, and escapes moments before there is an explosion killing everyone. He see his pregnant wife Lucy being taken from the scene -- and then becomes the focus of the investigation. Was Lucy kidnapped, or has she turned traitor? Sam is determined to find his wife and their baby, but in order to track her he must go rogue and rely on his history, CIA experience, his athletics skills in parkour and some unlikely allies in order to clear her name and find out who is responsible in the first of six titles.

Owens (The Eye of the Elephant: An Epic Adventure in the African Wilderness), an experienced nature writer, puts her background to good use in her debut novel. Her descriptions of the Carolina coastal marsh add vibrancy to this story of Kya Clark, known as the Marsh Girl, who has survived alone there for years. Kya's story is intertwined with a 1969 murder mystery in which Kya is the chief suspect. The nature writing is lyrical, and narrator Cassandra Campbell does it justice.

"The Tattooist of Auschwitz is an extraordinary document, a story about the extremes of human behavior existing side by side: calculated brutality alongside impulsive and selfless acts of love. I find it hard to imagine anyone who would not be drawn in, confronted and moved. I would recommend it unreservedly to anyone, whether they'd read a hundred Holocaust stories or none." - Graeme Simsion, internationally-bestselling author of The Rosie Project

It all starts with a ring in a pawn shop -- a ladies West Point ring engraved with SRS. Jack Reacher knows, based on his experience and the year, it is not a thing given up lightly and decides to track the owner. The ex-MP's follows the ring across several states and a variety of unsavory characters as he discovers more about its owner's life. This title in author Lee Child's best-selling series relies less on non-stop action and more on procedure to answer questions, right some wrongs, and eventually leads to a showdown at the midnight line.

It is 1914, and the world has been on the brink of war so often, many New Yorkers treat the subject with only passing interest. Eliza Ferriday is thrilled to be traveling to St. Petersburg with Sofya Streshnayva, a cousin of the Romanovs. The two met years ago one summer in Paris and became close confidantes. Now, Eliza embarks on the trip of a lifetime, home with Sofya to see the splendors of Russia: the church with the interior covered in jeweled mosaics, the Rembrandts at the tsar's Winter Palace, the famous ballet.

We all know about the mass shooting at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, FL, the movement it sparked, and the teens who continue to speak truth to power. But do we really know the young people behind the tweets and interviews? Journalist Cullen (Columbine) tries to answer that question, documenting the impact of the tragedy and pain that swept through the community, as well as the movement that served as a lifeline for all involved.

Inspired by actual historical events, internationally best-selling Jenoff (The Orphan's Tale , 2017) reaches back in time to craft another gripping WWII-era tale. In 1946, still grieving from the tragic loss of her husband, Grace Healey stumbles across an abandoned suitcase in Manhattan's Grand Central Terminal. Overwhelmed by curiosity, she opens the suitcase, discovering a cache of photographic portraits of 12 women.

New York Times best-selling Harper's two earlier novels were both constructed around the harsher extremes of the Australian outback, and in this one we experience the isolated and inhospitable desert in Queensland. It is a brutal existence for the ranchers who live and work there, in relentless heat, hours away from any vestige of civilization. When the sun-baked body of Cam Bright, experienced at desert survival, is found by his brothers adjacent to a lone headstone in the middle of nowhere, marking the stockman's grave, they are hard pressed to find an explanation.

Twins born on the Summerbourne estate never survive, at least according to local lore, until the births of Seraphine Mayes and her twin brother, Danny. However, just a few hours after giving birth to the twins, their mother, Ruth, commits suicide by throwing herself from the estate's high cliffs and perishing amidst the rocks and ocean spray below. Twenty-five years later, Seraphine begins searching for the truth of that mysterious day, beginning with the family's au pair, Laura, who fled Summerbourne on the same day of Seraphine and Danny's birth and their mother's death.