International bestselling author Patricia Cornwell delivers pulse-pounding thrills in a series featuring a brilliant and unusual new heroine, cutting-edge cybertechnology, and stakes that are astronomically high.
On the eve of a top secret space mission, Captain Calli Chase detects a tripped alarm in the tunnels deep below a NASA research center. A NASA pilot, quantum physicist, and cybercrime investigator, Calli knows that a looming blizzard and government shutdown could provide the perfect cover for sabotage, with deadly consequences.
As it turns out, the danger is worse than she thought. A spatter of dried blood, a missing security badge, a suspicious suicide—a series of disturbing clues point to Calli’s twin sister, Carme, who’s been MIA for days.
Desperate to halt the countdown to disaster and to clear her sister’s name, Captain Chase digs deep into her vast cyber security knowledge and her painful past, probing for answers to her twin’s erratic conduct. As time is running out, she realizes that failure means catastrophe—not just for the space program but for the safety of the whole nation.
Editor Notes:
Spoiler:
Like millions of readers around the world, I’ve long been a fan of Patricia Cornwell’s Dr. Kay Scarpetta, who ushered forensic science into popular culture and became a literary role model for a generation. With Quantum, Cornwell introduces us to a captivating new heroine for the twenty-first century in an of-the-moment story that will change the way we think about cybertechnology and space science.
A brilliant physicist, keen-eyed NASA investigator, fearless pilot, and aspiring astronaut, Captain Calli Chase is in many ways a spiritual heir to Scarpetta. She’s also a twin, and the mystery that fuels this story centers around the whereabouts and potentially sinister activities of her sister, Carme, a decorated military officer who also aspires to the stars. In trying to clear her sister’s name, Calli will be forced to reckon with secrets from her past as well as a vast conspiracy that puts national security in jeopardy.
A high-stakes thriller that blends groundbreaking technology, complex twists, and a compelling emotional story, Quantum launches us into the world of Captain Chase at Mach speed. The adventure continues next summer with Spin, and I can’t wait to see where Patricia takes us then. - Gracie Doyle, Editor
From the bestselling author of Whisper Me This comes a haunting and lyrical novel about the promises we make and the forgiveness we need when we break them.
One tragic twist of fate destroyed Braden Healey’s hands, his musical career, and his family. Now, unable to play, adrift in an alcoholic daze, and with only fragmented memories of his past, Braden wants desperately to escape the darkness of the last eleven years.
When his ex-wife and son are killed in a car accident, Braden returns home, hoping to forge a relationship with his troubled seventeen-year-old daughter, Allie. But how can he hope to rescue her from the curse that seems to shadow his family?
Ophelia “Phee” MacPhee, granddaughter of the eccentric old man who sold Braden his cello, believes the curse is real. She swore an oath to her dying grandfather that she would ensure Braden plays the cello as long as he lives. But he can’t play, and as the shadows deepen and Phee finds herself falling for Braden, she’ll do anything to save him. It will take a miracle of forgiveness and love to bring all three of them back to the healing power of music.
Editor Notes:
Spoiler:
Ophelia “Phee” MacPhee has a problem. The granddaughter of a craftsman of stringed instruments, she has sworn to be the guardian of the mysterious contracts her grandfather made with a few of his instruments’ owners. This has become difficult and emotionally taxing in more ways than she ever imagined. Braden Healey also has a problem. A gifted cellist, he has been trying to drink away his pain after losing both his ability to play and his ex-wife and son to a tragic accident.
When Phee’s and Braden’s worlds collide, they learn what tears us apart can also stitch us together. And that Braden’s making peace with his music and with his estranged daughter is the only way for either of them to find forgiveness, healing, and another chance at living.
Kerry Anne King has penned a unique and memorable story that moved me, and has haunted me since the day I first read it. While we all endure what seem like unbearable life events, we find hope and beauty in the simplest things, like Braden and Phee do with music. May you find it, as I did, in the pages of this book. - Jodi Warshaw, Editor
From the bestselling author of The Beekeeper’s Promise comes a gripping story of three young women faced with impossible choices. How will history – and their families – judge them?
Paris, 1940. With the city occupied by the Nazis, three young seamstresses go about their normal lives as best they can. But all three are hiding secrets. War-scarred Mireille is fighting with the Resistance; Claire has been seduced by a German officer; and Vivienne’s involvement is something she can’t reveal to either of them.
Two generations later, Claire’s English granddaughter Harriet arrives in Paris, rootless and adrift, desperate to find a connection with her past. Living and working in the same building on the Rue Cardinale, she learns the truth about her grandmother – and herself – and unravels a family history that is darker and more painful than she ever imagined.
In wartime, the three seamstresses face impossible choices when their secret activities put them in grave danger. Brought together by loyalty, threatened by betrayal, can they survive history’s darkest era without being torn apart?
Editor Notes:
Spoiler:
I’ve read many books about the courage displayed during World War Two, but nothing has quite captivated my attention like The Dressmaker’s Gift. If you’re looking for an immersive historical drama focusing on the selfless actions women took, doing whatever they could do to help in the war effort, look no further.
Set in a war-torn France continually savaged by Nazi soldiers, The Dressmaker’s Gift follows the lives of three young women who work for a Parisian couturier, residing in the attic bedrooms above the shop on the Boulevard Saint-Germain, who lead a parallel existence: designing clothes for wealthy German women, while secretly working with the resistance movement, fiercely determined to do all they can for the freedom of their country. Fiona Valpy masterfully moves between generations to tell a riveting tale of the work of resistance fighters through the eyes of these women, effortlessly creating characters who get under the skin of the reader, sweeping us headlong into their noble acts of defiance.
The secret lives of these brave women are nothing short of extraordinary and utterly inspirational. And such is the research that goes into Fiona’s novels: there is a power in knowing that in writing this book, Fiona is doing justice to the absorbing and amazing stories of so many women, relaying their heroism and the suffering they endured in the search for liberty.
This mesmerizing novel is perfect for book clubs, with the admirable spirit of the French people and their sacrifice sure to leave you enthralled, and in my case, incredibly humbled. - Sammia Hamer, Editor
Little Voices by Vanessa Lillie [Genre: Psychological Thriller]
Quote:
The voice in her head says he’s guilty. She knows he’s innocent.
Devon Burges is in the throes of a high-risk birth when she learns of her dear friend’s murder. The police quickly name another friend as the chief suspect, but Devon doesn’t buy it—and despite her difficult recovery, she decides to investigate.
Haunted by postpartum problems that manifest as a cruel voice in her head, Devon is barely getting by. Yet her instincts are still sharp, and she’s bent on proving her friend’s innocence.
But as Devon digs into the evidence, the voice in her head grows more insistent, the danger more intense. Each layer is darker, more disturbing, and she’s not sure she—or her baby—can survive what lies at the truth.
Editor Notes:
Spoiler:
When babies are born, we expect their mothers to whisper to the infants in their arms, not whisper to the judgmental voices in their heads.
But Devon Burges can’t seem to quiet the voice that says she’s a bad parent, and that if she had died giving birth, maybe, somehow her friend Belina wouldn’t have been murdered. And then she wouldn’t be here, failing at parenting, making a mess of a police investigation, and dredging up old memories that no one wants to discuss.
Author Vanessa Lillie has created a propulsive mystery that is about both a woman’s complicated investigation of her friend’s murder and her sometimes-losing battle with postpartum depression. Devon wants to believe that her internal monologue won’t affect her external actions, but it’s the intersection of these two worlds that makes this one of the most compelling mysteries I’ve read this year.
Lillie crafts a narrative that calls into question everything we know about our friends, and more important, everything we know about ourselves. Somehow Lillie manages to deliver not one but two twists, which had me flipping back through the pages to read again. - Jessica Tribble, Editor
The author of the Millennium novels laid out the clues. Now a journalist is following them.
When Stieg Larsson died, the author of The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo had been working on a true mystery that out-twisted his Millennium novels: the assassination on February 28, 1986, of Olof Palme, the Swedish prime minister. It was the first time in history that a head of state had been murdered without a clue who’d done it—and on a Stockholm street at point-blank range.
Internationally known for his fictional far-right villains, Larsson was well acquainted with their real-life counterparts and documented extremist activities throughout the world. For years he’d been amassing evidence that linked their terrorist acts to what he called “one of the most astounding murder cases” he’d ever covered. Larsson’s archive was forgotten until journalist Jan Stocklassa was given exclusive access to the author’s secret project.
In The Man Who Played with Fire, Stocklassa collects the pieces of Larsson’s true-crime puzzle to follow the trail of intrigue, espionage, and conspiracy begun by one of the world’s most famous thriller writers. Together they set out to solve a mystery that no one else could.
Editor Notes:
Spoiler:
What happens when one of the world’s greatest thriller writers takes on the real-life unsolved assassination of his country’s prime minister?
Stieg Larsson, author of the smash success Millennium Trilogy, featuring The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo, was in real life a tireless fighter against the forces of racism and fascism whose passion project was solving the 1986 murder of Sweden’s prime minister Olof Palme.
When Larsson’s untimely death derailed the project, his research was shelved and forgotten—until another journalist, Jan Stocklassa, happened upon it and was immediately hooked. Intrigued by Larsson’s investigation and obsessed by the crime himself, Stocklassa took up the quest for answers—and vowed to follow it wherever it led. Theories abounded about who had shot Olof Palme as he walked home from the movies with his wife one winter evening in Stockholm. Was it the CIA, the South African apartheid regime, the Russians—or some homegrown, Palme-hating group able to track his every move? - Elizabeth DeNoma, Editor
They have the perfect marriage. Did one of them kill to get it?
Prep school sweethearts Ian and Andi Copeland are envied by everyone they know. They have successful businesses, a beautiful house in St. Louis, and their eldest daughter, Cassidy, is following in their footsteps by attending prestigious Glenlake Academy. Then, a submerged car is dredged from the bottom of a swimming hole near the campus. So are the remains of a former writer-in-residence who vanished twenty years ago—during Ian and Andi’s senior year.
When Cassidy’s journalism class begins investigating the death, Ian and Andi’s high school secrets rise to the surface. Each has a troubled link to the man whose arrival and sudden disappearance once set the school on edge. And each had a reason to want him gone. As Cassidy unwittingly edges closer to the truth, unspoken words, locked away for decades, will force Ian and Andi to question what they really know—about themselves, about the past, and about a marriage built on a murderous lie.
Editor Notes:
Spoiler:
It’s been just over twenty years since I graduated high school (and I admit to gasping aloud at that realization...), but there are some memories that remain vivid: goofing off in calculus; waiting backstage during the spring musical; speeding out of the parking lot, packed into a friend’s car as we headed off on a Friday to cause a ruckus.
But I never killed anyone—and so far as I know, neither did any of my friends.
High school sweethearts Andi and Ian Copeland made plenty of memories at the elite Glenlake Academy twenty years ago. Ian was a popular kid, and Andi was a budding writer whose famous father pulled strings to get her into the lauded writing program on campus. Sure, they broke up for a bit during their senior year, but that happens in a lot of young relationships. Temptation, passion, jealousy, possessiveness, and impulsiveness—their emotions ran the gamut, but Andi and Ian’s high school drama didn’t turn murderous. Right?
The dead body at the bottom of the lake may prove otherwise.
Drowning with Others revisits the sunny, golden recollections of prep school youth and casts some sinister shadows. The whirling suspicions and shifting theories are riveting as Andi and Ian reexamine their formative years—and reassess the person they married. - Alison Dasho, Editor
A young witch emerges from a curse to find her world upended in this gripping fantasy of betrayal, vengeance, and self-discovery set in turn-of-the-century France.
For centuries, the vineyards at Château Renard have depended on the talent of their vine witches, whose spells help create the world-renowned wine of the Chanceaux Valley. Then the skill of divining harvests fell into ruin when sorcičre Elena Boureanu was blindsided by a curse. Now, after breaking the spell that confined her to the shallows of a marshland and weakened her magic, Elena is struggling to return to her former life. And the vineyard she was destined to inherit is now in the possession of a handsome stranger.
Vigneron Jean-Paul Martel naively favors science over superstition, and he certainly doesn’t endorse the locals’ belief in witches. But Elena knows a hex when she sees one, and the vineyard is covered in them. To stay on and help the vines recover, she’ll have to hide her true identity, along with her plans for revenge against whoever stole seven winters of her life. And she won’t rest until she can defy the evil powers that are still a threat to herself, Jean-Paul, and the ancient vine-witch legacy in the rolling hills of the Chanceaux Valley.
Editor Notes:
Spoiler:
It starts with a toad. A slimy one, too, warts and all. But as you may have guessed, with witches involved, this toad just happens to be enchanted. This toad, in fact, is the witch—and now that she’s free, she’s out for revenge against whoever has cursed her.
Elena Boureanu, former toad, is a vine witch. Her magic is responsible for creating some of the best wine of the age, and her legacy is all but ruined when she finally returns home. The vineyard’s new owner may be handsome, but he’s a city man of science who knows nothing about the valley’s vine witch tradition. And on top of that, Elena can clearly detect dark magic surrounding the estate. She knows her own curse must be connected to the hex on the fields, and she vows to put her world back into balance.
Elena’s story of redemption may be fantasy, but it feels real enough to touch. Reading this novel is like falling into an Instagram picture—atmospheric, and surrounded by the smells and tastes of the natural world. I hope you’ll fall with me. - Adrienne Procaccini, Editor
Along the Tapajós by Fernando Vilela (Author, Illustrator), Daniel Hahn (Translator) [Genre: Children's]
Quote:
Cauă and Inaę are a brother and sister who live in a small community along the Tapajós River in Brazil. Here, the homes are on stilts and everyone travels around by boat—even to school! When the rainy season comes, they must leave their village and relocate to higher ground for a while. But after moving this year, Cauă and Inaę realize they’ve left behind something important: their pet tortoise, Titi! Unlike turtles, tortoises can’t swim, and Cauă and Inaę are really worried. So the pair sneaks back at night on a journey along the river to rescue him. Will they be able to save Titi?
This picture book, first published in Brazil, offers kids a unique look into the lives of children who live along Brazil’s beautiful Tapajós River.
Editor Notes:
Spoiler:
When this book first crossed my desk, I was immediately intrigued by the style of the artwork. The story takes readers into the world of families living along the Tapajós River in Brazil, who must move each year when the rains come. Brother and sister Cauă and Inaę steal away from their rainy season home in the night, back to the river to save their forgotten pet.
I love how this book gives a glimpse into a different way of life, while also showing that Cauă and Inaę are just like kids everywhere—they feel excitement for the change in season, they fear for the pet they’ve left behind, they support each other as siblings (and scheme a little!), and then, when their grand adventure is over, they worry about what kind of trouble they might be in when they get home. I hope your kids will enjoy taking this trip along the Tapajós with Cauă and Inaę, and maybe even learn something new about this unique region of the world. - Marilyn Brigham, Editor
Device: Oasis 2,Voyage, Kindlle hdx 8.9, Ipad mini 4. Air 2
Thanks for posting this Manabi
I agree there should be more Science Fiction offred and other genres like Memoirs or something else each month. I was surprised Quantum wasn't in the science fiction genre but also a thriller. I'll try it but I won't be able to include it in my Sci fi challenge this year.
For the second book not sure yet, perhaps Drowning With Others ( Suspense) or The Dress Makers Gift ( Historical Fiction )
Note: other commenters say that QUANTUM is a cliff-hanger, forcing you to buy the subsequent book. Presuamably at full price.
Ah, thank you. Would explain why it is coming to KU, just so they can put it in first reads. That is a reason for me to avoid it. I don't buy into the click and bait. Similarly I avoid every series that only has the first book in KU, and none of the others.
Note: other commenters say that QUANTUM is a cliff-hanger, forcing you to buy the subsequent book. Presuamably at full price.
Don't matter you cant get it Yet! "This title will be released on August 25, 2020." But then that how series are. I do wonder IF she done with Kay series...tho it was getting Dull
Ah, thank you. Would explain why it is coming to KU, just so they can put it in first reads. That is a reason for me to avoid it. I don't buy into the click and bait. Similarly I avoid every series that only has the first book in KU, and none of the others.
That was my initial thought, too, but once I'd read more about The Man Who Played with Fire I decided against that book. The top review is quite useful, noting that the first part of the book contains Stieg Larsson's research, then the second part tells the tale the research uncovered in story form. That reviewer, despite giving the book four stars, said that while much of the book was engrossing there was "too much detail, and too many words". For me personally, that's something I'd never finish, nor enjoy.
That left me with only The Vine Witch, so I also got Quantum in the end, even though I don't like the cliff-hanger ending. It still sounded more palatable than The Man Who Played with Fire.
That left me with only The Vine Witch, so I also got Quantum in the end, even though I don't like the cliff-hanger ending. It still sounded more palatable than The Man Who Played with Fire.
That is a good point. And never know, maybe Spin is also going to come to Prime Reading or KU. The Banner says: An electrifying new series, Quantum, free with Prime. It can go either way. If it turns out to be a good read, might just be worth it to buy the next one. At the least I can hope that it is a cliffhanger for the main story arc, and not a single book split into two. Sounds like it is one book split into two. Doesn't matter. Maybe I just wait to read it until next one comes out in the summer.
Last edited by DuckieTigger; 09-06-2019 at 10:45 AM.
09-02-2019, 09:40 PM
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