October 6, 2023
New Fiction
The Museum of Failures by Thrity Umrigar – When Remy Wadia left India for the United States, he carried his resentment of his cold and inscrutable mother with him and has kept his distance from her. Years later, he returns to Bombay, planning to adopt a baby from a young pregnant girl – and to see his elderly mother again before it is too late. She is in the hospital, has stopped talking, and seems to have given up on life. Struck with guilt for not realizing just how ill she had become, Remy devotes himself to helping her recover and return home. But one day in her apartment he comes upon an old photograph that demands explanation. As shocking family secrets surface, Remy finds himself reevaluating his entire childhood and his relationship to his parents, just as he is on the cusp of becoming a parent himself. Can Remy learn to forgive others for their human frailties, or is he too wedded to his sorrow and anger over his parents’ long-ago decisions?
The Ghost Illusion by Kat Martin – Eve St. Clair desperately needs help sorting reality from her fearful imaginings when ghostly voices seem to haunt the Victorian house in Sunderland, England, that she inherited from her uncle. Online research leads to a group that claims to offer just the aid she is seeking. But can Ransom King’s handpicked team of investigators truly banish Eve’s night terrors? Since the deaths of his wife and daughter, Seattle billionaire Ransom King has devoted himself to researching parapsychology and debunking the frauds who prey upon the bereaved. But Eve is a psychologist herself, clearly sane, and her sincerity is palpable. King senses a very real danger staking the beautiful divorcee. As his interest in her case turns deeply personal, he will move heaven and earth to uncover the truth – no matter how shocking – and save the woman he loves.
The Paris Assignment by Rhys Bowen – Londoner Madeleine Grant is studying at the Sorbonne in Paris when she marries charismatic French journalist Giles Martin. As they raise their son, Olivier, they hold on to a tenuous promise for the future. Until the thunder of war sets off alarms in France. Staying behind to join the resistance, Giles sends Madeleine and Olivier to the relative safety of England, where Madeleine secures a job teaching French at a secondary school. Yet nowhere is safe. After a devastating twist of fate resulting in the loss of her son, Madeleine accepts a request from the ministry to aid in the war effort. Seizing the smallest glimmer of hope of finding Giles alive, she returns to France. If Madeleine can stop just one Nazi, it will be the start of a valiant path of revenge. Though her perseverance, defiance, and heart will be tested beyond imagining, no risk is too great for a brave wife and mother determined to fight and survive against inconceivable odds.
The Golden Gate by Amy Chua – Berkeley, California, 1944: Homicide detective Al Sullivan has just left the bar of the swanky Claremont Hotel when a charismatic presidential candidate is assassinated in one of the rooms upstairs. A rich industrialist with enemies among anarchist factions on the far left, Walter Wilkinson could have been targeted by any number of groups. But strangely, Sullivan’s investigation summons the specter of another tragedy at the Claremont, ten years earlier: the death of seven-year-old Iris Stafford, a member of the Bainbridge family, one of the wealthiest in all of San Francisco. Some say she haunts the Claremont still. The tangled threads of the case keep leading Sullivan back to the three remaining Bainbridge heiresses, now adults: Iris’s stunning sister, Isabella, and her cousins Cassie and Nicole. But the heiresses are not the only ones with a stake in the outcome of Sullivan’s investigation. Berkeley’s ambitious district attorney, Wilkinson’s race-baiting political rivals, the heiresses’ formidable grandmother, and even China’s First Lady, Madame Chiang Kai-Shek, each threaten the detective’s relentless search for the truth. As the web of violence spreads beyond the glittering walls of the hotel, Sullivan will risk everything to unearth secrets rooted in the darkest moments of California’s past – one that casts a shadow over his own ambiguous history.