#psychological

New Books Tuesday @ RRPL

semanurLeave a comment

Here are some of the new books coming to our shelves this week for you to add to your book list!

MIND GAMES

With the ability to see into minds and souls, Thea, who brought her parents’ killer to justice years ago, discovers the inmate who shattered her childhood has the same ability when she can hear his twisted thoughts and witness his evil acts from miles away as he plots his revenge.

YOU LIKE IT DARKER

Delving into the darker part of life—both metaphorical and literal, the legendary storyteller and expert in short fiction presents this exhilarating collection of 12 tales, many never-before-published, about fate, mortality, luck and the folds in reality where anything can happen.

ONE PERFECT COUPLE

Landing on a tropical paradise where they’ll compete against four other couples to win a cash prize, Lyla and Nico, starring on the new reality TV show, One Perfect Couple, find themselves trapped on a storm-swept island where they all must band together for survival as a killer walks among them.

LIES AND WEDDINGS

Forced to attend his sister’s wedding to seduce a woman with money and get his family out of debt, Rufus, the future Earl of Greshambury, finds their plans and their reputation going up in flames when a secret tryst and tragedy become known, revealing a shocking twist.

THE LAST MURDER AT THE END OF THE WORLD

On an isolated island where 122 villagers and three scientists live in peaceful harmony, one of the scientists is found brutally murdered, which triggers a security system, giving the islanders only 107 hours to solve the murder or be smothered by the fog that destroyed the planet.

THE GUNCLE ABROAD

With his brother getting remarried in Italy, Patrick takes his niece and nephew back under his wing, and as they travel through Europe, he tries his best to help them understand love, while dealing with a groom with cold feet, his over-flirtatious sister and other disasters.

PATTON’S PRAYER

The New York Times best-selling author of Against All Odds takes us back to December 1944 where General George Patton, a devout Christian in desperate need of a miracle, printed and distributed a prayer to the 250,000 men under his command to help turn the tide of the war.

DEATH BEHIND EVERY DOOR

Posing as a tourist, an FBI special agent visits a Scottish castle that’s been turned into a bed and breakfast to infiltrate a society of twisted killers named after the man believed to be America’s first serial killer.

~Semanur

New Books Tuesday @ RRPL

semanurLeave a comment

Here we have some new exciting releases for you to take a look at this week!

THE OTHER SIDE OF THE DISAPPEARING

Accompanying her sister on a search for their mother, who ran off with an accomplished con man years earlier, Jess, as they make their way across the country, unraveling the mystery of where the couple disappeared to and why, discovers a willingness to expand beyond the walls she’s so carefully built.

THE TRUTH ABOUT THE DEVLINS

The charming disappointment in the prominent Devlin family, TJ Devlin finds his world turned upside down when his lawyer brother confesses he has just killed one of his clients and, seizing this chance to prove his worth, becomes entangled in a deadly web of deception and murder to save his brother.

CHEATER

San Diego Detective Kit McKittrick investigates a nursing home with numerous skeletons in the closet after a resident is found stabbed to death with his apartment ransacked, in the second novel of the series following Cold Blooded Liar.

THE ANGEL OF INDIAN LAKE

Jade returns to Proofrock, Idaho, to build a life after the years of sacrifice—only to find the Lake Witch is waiting for her. Indian Lake trilogy.

THE WILD SIDE

Called back to the Office of Special Investigations for a highly specialized assignment, school guidance counselor Melanie Drake must pose as an escort to infiltrate a dangerous international group of billionaires during a decadent dinner to collect information vital to national security.

EVERYONE IS WATCHING

From the New York Times best-selling author of The Overnight Guest comes a twisty locked-room thriller about a mysterious, high-stakes game show that proves life-threatening.

STUDIES AT THE SCHOOL BY THE SEA

Even though literature teacher Maggie Adair loves her life at the prestigious Downey House boarding school on the gloriously sunny, windy English coast, lately she’s been feeling restless, lured by the promise of a different life back in her Scottish hometown.

~Semanur

New Books Tuesday @ RRPL

semanurLeave a comment

Here are some of the new books coming to our shelves this week for you to add to your book list! Click on the book title to go to our catalog and place a hold!

THE PRINCESS OF LAS VEGAS

Living in the Buckingham Palace Casino, Crissy Dowling, a Princess Diana impersonator with her own musical cabaret, finds her carefully constructed kingdom crashing down around her when the owner of the casino is brutally murdered and she is drawn in a world of organized crime, cryptocurrency and obsession.

THE #1 LAWYER

A small-town lawyer with a big-time reputation, Stafford Lee Penney, Mississippi’s #1 lawyer who has never lost a case, when his wife is scandalously killed, spirals into a legal and personal legal streak, ruining his career, and making him the nation’s #1 suspect.

EXPIRATION DATE

Every time she meets a new man, Daphne Bell receives a slip of paper with his name and a number on it—the exact amount of time they will be together; usually she is right, but when she meets Jake, her whole system is thrown for a loop.

JAMES

Describes the events of The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn through the eyes of the enslaved Jim, who decides to hide on nearby Jackson Island after learning he is to be sold to a man in New Orleans.

THE MORNINGSIDE

Settling at The Morningside, a crumbling luxury tower in Island City, Silvia, struggling with her new reality, becomes obsessed with the mysterious older woman who lives in the penthouse and is determined to unravel the truth about this woman’s life, and her own haunted past.

GOOD HALF GONE

After witnessing her twin sister get kidnapped years prior, Iris Walsh decides to intern at a hospital for the criminally insane where she believes the perpetrator is being held and discovers something even more sinister going on.

KILL FOR ME, KILL FOR YOU

Two ordinary women make a dangerous pact to take revenge for each other after being pushed to the brink.

~Semanur

New Books Tuesday @ RRPL

semanurLeave a comment

Here are some of the new books coming to our shelves this week for you to add to your book list!

HOLMES, MARPLE & POE

Brendan Holmes, Margaret Marple and Auguste Poe open a private investigating company together and their daring methodology and news-making solved cases would make their last-namesakes proud and attract the attention of an NYPD detective.

THE HEIRESS

After North Carolina’s richest—and most notorious—heiress dies, her adopted son, Camden, rejects his inheritance until 10 years later, when his uncle’s death pulls him and his wife back into the family fold at Ashby House where he realizes the bonds of family stretch far beyond the grave.

DEEP FREEZE

After surviving a bus accident, veteran Joh Reiff awakens in the hospital alive and suspicious that the doctors aren’t telling him something, in the first novel of a new series by the author of the “Breakthrough” series.

COLD VICTORY

Two women in 1947 Helsinki, one American and one Russian, have their loyalties and friendship put to the test when their husbands drunkenly challenge each other to a secret cross-country ski race at an embassy party pitting freedom against communism.

THE NIGHT ISLAND

When a mysterious informant disappears, Talia March, searching for a list of people like her and her friends, is forced to team up with Luke Rand, a hunted and haunted man chasing the same list, when they are both targeted by a killer.

GOODBYE GIRL

A Miami criminal defense lawyer helps a Grammy-winning popstar who signed an onerous contract as a teen that leaves her ex-husband with all her royalties, in the eighteenth novel of the series following Twenty.

HOLIDAY COUNTRY

Spending the summer in Turkey with her family, Ada begins to imagine a different future for her mother after a mysterious man from her past returns and must come to terms with her own attraction to him.

~Semanur

New Books Tuesday @ RRPL

semanurLeave a comment

Here are some of the new books coming to our shelves this week for you to add to your book list!

IF YOU WOULD HAVE TOLD ME

The three-time Emmy nominee, producer and musician reflects on his long career and how he beat the odds to become one of today’s most successful and beloved actors.

THE SECRET

In 1992, when eight respectable, upstanding people are found dead across the US, Jack Reacher, assigned as the Army’s representative, must discover the link between these victims and who killed them, navigating around the ulterior motives and deciding if he should bring the bad guys to justice the official way or his way.

LET US DESCEND

In the years before the Civil War, Annis, sold south by the white enslaver who fathered her, struggles through the miles-long march, seeks comfort from memories of her mother and stories of her African warrior grandmother, opening herself to a world beyond this world.

HERCULE POIROT’S SILENT NIGHT

In 1931, the world’s greatest detective, Hercule Poirot, finds his plans for a much-needed, restful Christmas holiday thwarted by a murder investigation and has less than a week to solve the crime and prevent more murders while someone plans to wreak holiday havoc on his life.

SISTERS UNDER THE SUN

Prisoners of war in 1942, Australian nurse Nesta James and Norah Chambers held in the notorious Camp Palembang, deep in the jungle of Sumatra battle disease, starvation and unimaginable brutality meted out by Japanese soldiers, but find, in themselves and in each other, the courage and resourcefulness to survive.

LOST & HOUND

When a dead body is placed directly in the path of an early season hunt, “Sister” Jane Arnold, with the Jefferson Hunt Club busier than ever, must decipher cryptic clues left for her and her friends before any of them wind up dead.

CHRISTMAS PRESENTS

The only surviving victim of a killer suspected in the disappearance of two sisters, bookstore owner Madeline Martin, when a true-crime podcaster opens up the cold case, must return to a past she hoped was dead to expose the terrifying truth when more young women go missing.

~Semanur

New Books Tuesday @ RRPL

semanurLeave a comment

Here are some of the new books coming to our shelves this week for you to add to your book list!

SECOND ACT

Out of a job and humiliated, Andy Westfield, the head of a prestigious movie studio, flees to a tiny, forgotten coastal town in England where he hires a former journalist to help get his affairs in order and in a surprising turn of events, finds a miracle that could change both their lives.

JUDGMENT PREY

Lucas Davenport and Virgil Flowers team up to solve another challenging case in this edge-of-your-seat thriller.

MIDNIGHT IS THE DARKEST HOUR

When a skull found deep in the Louisiana bayou reunites her with a man from her past with a dark reputation, the daughter of the town’s fire-and-brimstone preacher will do anything to protect those she loves from the real evil that walks among them.

THE NIGHT HOUSE

When he is sent to live with his aunt and uncle in the remote, insular town of Ballantyne, 14-year-old Richard Elauved, when he is suspected in the disappearances of two classmates, must prove his innocence and preserve his sanity as he grapples with the dark magic that is possessing the town.

A TRAITOR IN WHITEHALL

In 1940, Evelyne Redfern, a secretary for Prime Minister Winston Churchill in the cabinet war rooms, uses all of her amateur sleuthing expertise garnered from years of reading mysteries to solve a murder, teaming up with a cagey minister’s aide to expose a traitor in their midst.

STARLING HOUSE

Determined to find a better life for her younger brother Jasper, Opal, when she gets the chance to step inside the Starling House, the estate of the 19th-century author of her favorite book, and make some extra cash, finds things taking a sinister turn.

MY DARLING GIRL

Taking in her estranged mother who only has weeks to live, Alison, with memories of her violent abuse coming back to haunt her, discovers her mother is not quite who she seems as strange things start happening, forcing her to decide how far she’s willing to go to protect her family.

~semanur

New Books Tuesday @ RRPL

semanurLeave a comment

Here are some of the new books coming to our shelves this week for you to add to your book list!

THE BREAKAWAY

While leading a group bike trip from NYC to Niagara Falls, 34-year-old Abby Stern, newly engaged, encounters Sebastian, the one-night stand she never thought she’d see again, and, determined to keep him at arm’s length over the next two weeks, finds her certainties about herself and the nature of love challenged.

GOOD BAD GIRL

When a baby is stollen from a stroller and someone at a nursing home is murdered, four women who distrust each other must investigate together, in the new novel by the best-selling author of Daisy Darker.

LEARNED BY HEART

Based on a true story and a five-million-word secret journal, this extraordinary work of fiction follows an orphaned heiress, banished from India to England, and a brilliant, troublesome tomboy who meet at the Manor School for young ladies in 1805 York where they fall secretly, deeply and dangerous in love.

HAPPINESS FALLS

Mia isn’t initially concerned when her family fails to return from a walk, until her mute brother Eugene, who suffers from a rare genetic condition, returns bloody and alone and is unable to describe what happened to their father.

THE GIRL IN THE EAGLE’S TALONS

Named guardian to her niece, whose mother has disappeared, Lisbeth Salander, while keeping the remarkably gifted teenager safe, comes to Mikael Blomkvist’s aid when rumors about the man his daughter is about to marry lead to violence, plunging them both into a world of conspiracy and betrayal in the ice-bound wilderness.

THE HIKE

When she and her three best friends go hiking in the stunning mountains of Norway, Liz, as they venture deeper into the wilderness, discovers this remote place hides secrets darker than they could’ve ever imagined and, if they aren’t careful, not all of them will make it out alive.

EIGHTEEN DAYS IN OCTOBER

This major new history of the Yom Kippur War draws on formerly classified records to tell the story of the 1973 war that shaped the modern Middle East. 

~Semanur

New Books Tuesday @ RRPL

semanurLeave a comment

Here are some of the new books coming to our shelves this week for you to add to your book list!

LION & LAMB

Rival PIs, Veena Lion and Cooper Lamb work the same intense headline-making case involving an Eagles starting quarterback and his even more famous wife, a Grammy-winning singer, and together, knowing every secret in Philadelphia, prove how two wrongs can make a right.

THE INVISIBLE HOUR

Abandoning the rules of the Community, an oppressive cult in western Massachusetts where contact with the outside world is forbidden and books are considered evil, Mia Jacob, after secretly reading The Scarlet Letter, discovers the power of the written word, which leads her on a journey of love, heartbreak and self-discovery.

TIDES OF FIRE

When the Titan Project, an international research station off the coast of Australia, is attacked, setting in motion a large-scale geological disaster, Sigma Force races against time to stop the world from burning, uncovering something that will shake the very foundations of humanity.

THE TRADE OFF

The Globe’s rookie reporter, Jess, when the paper destroys the life of a celebrity, is determined to show the world what the tabloid is capable of by uncovering the truth, but she must watch her back because someone is prepared to kill to bury it.

THORNHEGDE

Returning to the human world to offer a blessing of protection to a newborn child, a mission that goes completely sideways, kind-hearted Toadling, centuries later, when a gentle knight arrives to break the curse, will do anything to uphold it.

BENEATH DARK WATERS

The public prosecutor working on a high-profile sexual assault case becomes desperate to keep his son safe after he is targeted in a kidnapping attempt in the latest novel of the series following Cold Blooded Liar.

THE PRESIDENT’S WIFE

When her husband, President Woodrow Wilson, starts losing concentration and becomes confused, Edith Bolling, unwilling to let his presidency fail, steps in behind the scenes, supporting him in every way while concealing his true condition.

~Semanur

Book Review: The Block Party

MelindaLeave a comment

Scandals, lies, and nosy neighbors abound on Alton Road. The exclusive cul-de-sac is known for their yearly summer block party blow out, planned to perfection. The only thing unplanned? Murder.

Told over the course of a year, The Block Party by Jamie Day follows the residents of Alton Road as their secrets come to light. Main character Alex is a mediator and the neighborhood sounding board. But underneath her seemingly sound advice is an alcohol dependency that has her hiding her recycling from view.

Her daughter, Lettie, is a high schooler set on changing her consumerist neighbors into climate-conscious consumers, but it’s an uphill climb.

The supporting cast of neighbors include Alex’s sister Emily, new neighbors The Kumars, the pesky Bug Man, and the mysteriously widowed Brooke.

The main question remains- who has been killed, and who is the killer? No street is safe, as evidenced by the community’s neighborhood page.

Suspenseful but slow-plotted, if you enjoyed the antics of the residents of Wisteria Lane on Desperate Housewives, this book is a great summer read for you!

The Block Party comes out on July 18. Request a copy here.

*I received a review copy from St. Martin’s Press and Edelweiss. This is my honest review. 

-Melinda