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THE SPEAR AND THE SENTINEL

War veteran and widower “Voodoo” leads a group of hackers and “wrench-turners” for the United States Naval Special Warfareunit at the Directorate in San Diego. His skills earned him a spot in a rescue operation the previous year in Japan; now, the CIA station chief in Japan wants the same team for a mission in […]

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NINE MINUTES ELEVEN SECONDS

The novel follows Madison Cooper, who’s just started a new job at Know Inc., replacing someone who died in a hit-and-run incident. Her father died in the 9/11 attacks, leaving her with lasting trauma and questions about that day. While attending a support group, she encounters Will, a professional hacker, who helps her uncover that […]

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BIBLIOPHOBIA

Though she attempted suicide three times between the ages of 10 and 18, Chihaya writes, “One thing I was pretty sure about [the term] ‘nervous breakdown’ was that it was not for people like me.” The child of a Japanese immigrant and a Japanese Canadian woman who “didn’t really believe in the concept of mental […]

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SOMEONE FROM THE PAST

It’s certainly her most sharply focused. Alarmed that a series of anonymous threats she’s been receiving have escalated, London magazine editor Sarah Lampson asks Nancy Graham, her old roommate and colleague at Diagonal Press, to help figure out which of her former lovers is intent on killing her. But it’s already too late, for one […]

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MAZE PLAY

What fun! Fans of challenging seek-and-find puzzles will love this clever book, comprised of 10 “fantastical connected mazes” set out on double-page spreads. Each maze is packed with tiny, cleverly illustrated details and minuscule human figures (they’re generally too small to discern skin color), set against a variety of scenes, among them the Magic Forest, […]

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THE SUMMER GUESTS

In 1972, a Purity policeman watches a driver mow down and kill three innocent people on Main Street. Then the madman shoots the officer, and soon they are all dead. Investigators never learn why such an ordinary, apparently law-abiding citizen suddenly committed such a ghastly act, and the sad story gradually fades. Jump a half-century […]

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SUKA’S FARM

Kwan lives on a quiet mountainside in 1941. Whether his family eats depends on what his father, a woodcarver, and his mother, a painter, can sell at the farmers market. After Kwan overhears his parents worrying over the lack of food in their onggi pot, he ignores their warnings to stay away from Suka’s Farm […]

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JOB JUNKY

Ridolfo started working when he was only 12 years old, manning the counter at his parents’ grocery store, the humble beginning to an extraordinarily long, diverse list of jobs. Before he broke into show business as an actor and an indie filmmaker, he had no choice but to support himself with a “lifetime of phantom […]

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MARBLE HALL MURDERS

Now that Susan’s back from Crete and her latest romance, her boss at Causton Books, Michael Flynn, wants her to work with Eliot Crace, a failed mystery author who’s writing a sequel to the late Alan Conway’s tales of detective Atticus Pünd, which she knows far too much about already. As she reads Eliot’s first […]

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DISPATCHES FROM THE COUCH

The author suffered sexual abuse at the hands of Mr. Jay, a next-door neighbor and trusted family friend. The assaults began before the Hettes started kindergarten and continued for years. The psychological fallout from such “capital-T Trauma” was profound—as an adult, the author became a relentless workaholic, precluding genuine intimacy or authentic friendship with others. […]