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A SERIAL KILLER’S GUIDE TO MARRIAGE

Hazel and Fox have been married for more than 10 years, and they both adore their little daughter, Bibi. Hazel, an artist, has hung up her paintbrush to become a stay-at-home mom, and Fox is out breadwinning at an investment company every day. So what if they might have sex a little less often than […]

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THE LOST HOUSE

Obsession prompts Agnes Glin to journey from California, where she’s lived her whole life, to remote Bifröst, Iceland, in response to an offer from passionate true crime podcaster Nora Carver. Agnes’ grandfather, Einar Pálsson, was the chief suspect in one of Iceland’s most notorious unsolved cases, the murder of his wife, Marie Hvass, and their […]

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THE STARLIGHT HEIR

Suraya Saab’s dealings with royalty usually come in the form of commissions to make weapons imbued with some of the world’s last remaining slivers of magic. Now, however, a glittering envelope arrives with a different request: King Zarek wants her to travel to the capital city of Kaldari to meet the crown prince, along with […]

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HITLER’S DESERTERS

In conservative West Germany, courts in the 1950s and ’60s ruled that the commanders of the Wehrmacht and the Nazi regime’s judiciary had ruled fairly when sentencing deserters to be executed, decreeing that “the Wehrmacht had not been any harsher in enforcing military law than had the Americans and British.” That’s not quite right, notes […]

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BUILDING THE METROPOLIS

Between the late 19th and early 20th centuries, writes Wood, historian of American architecture and urbanism, New York City “grew into one of the world’s largest, most important, and dynamic cities.” Roughly 1 million buildings—an astonishing number—went up in the city during that period. In his deeply informed and informative account, Wood describes how population […]

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JURY DUTY IS MURDER

This novel take place in the aftermath of a high-profile trial, as 72-year-old retired teacher Helen Ryder (known to the other jurors as “Schoolmarm”) and other jurors reconnect after a series of suspicious deaths among their peers. Two months before, they voted to convict basketball player Roger “Buck” Dempsey for the murder of his wife, […]

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MOTHERS AND SONS

Haslett’s third novel is partly narrated by Peter Fischer, a New York City lawyer working for a nonprofit handling asylum cases. There, and in the rest of his life, he handles things with assurance but little joy—his lover, Cliff, has little more depth than a dating-app hookup, and he avoids conversations with his snarky and […]

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THE LIFE OF HEROD THE GREAT

Following on Moses, Man of the Mountain (1939), Hurston spent years studying the life of Herod the Great, the famed Jewish leader. Her editor rejected the resulting book, which wound up in a trunk and then, following her death, in flames—the trunk burned by a crew hired to clear out her house—and miraculously rescued by […]

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BLOODLINE

DI Joanna Piercy is thrilled that her longtime friend DS Mike Korpanski is returning to work in Staffordshire a year after having been badly injured. On the same day, an elderly man named Joseph Holden opens his door to a stranger with a gun and struggles to understand whether the man wants the valuable objects […]

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YOUR YEAR OF WONDERS

The author offers a unique perspective on personal and professional growth. His simple framework asserts that “Change happens. You grow. Then you win”; he blends social science with storytelling to reinforce these theories and offers examples from the careers of leaders such as IBM CEO Ginni Rometty and Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella. Tasler observes that […]