The ghost orchid

Jonathan Kellerman
LAPD homicide lieutenant Milo Sturgis sees it all the time: Reinvention’s a way of life in a city fueled by fantasy. But try as you might to erase the person you once were, there are those who will never forget the past . . . and who can still find you.

A pool boy enters a secluded Bel Air property and discovers two bodies floating in the bright blue water: Gio Aggiunta, the playboy heir to an Italian shoe empire, and a gorgeous, even wealthier neighbor named Meagin March. A married neighbor.

An illicit affair stoking rage is a perfect motive. But a “double” in this neighborhood of gated estates isn’t something you see every day. The house is untouched. No forced entry, no forensic evidence. The case has “that feeling,” and when that happens, Milo turns to his friend, the brilliant psychologist Alex Delaware.

As Milo and Alex investigate both victims, they discover two troubled pasts. And as they dig deeper, Meagin March’s very identity begins to blur. Who was this glamorous but conflicted woman? Did her past catch up to her? Or did Gio’s family connections create a threat spanning two continents?

Chasing down the answers leads Alex and Milo on an exploration of L.A.’s darkest side as they contend with one of the most shocking cases of their careers and learn that that some secrets are best left buried in the past.

City in ruins

Don Winslow
Sometimes you have to become what you hate to protect what you love. Danny Ryan is rich. Beyond his wildest dreams rich. The former dock worker, Irish mob soldier and fugitive from the law is now a respected businessman – a Las Vegas casino mogul and billionaire silent partner in a group that owns two lavish hotels. Finally, Danny has it a beautiful house, a child he adores, a woman he might even fall in love with. Life is good. But then Danny reaches too far.

When he tries to buy an old hotel on a prime piece of real estate with plans to build his dream resort, he triggers a war against Las Vegas power brokers, a powerful FBI agent bent on revenge and a rival casino owner with dark connections of his own. Danny thought he had buried his past, but now it reaches up to him from the grave to pull him down. Old enemies surface, and when they come for Danny they vow to take everything – not only his empire, not just his life, but all that he holds dear, including his son.

To save his life and everything he loves, Danny must become the ruthless fighter he once was – and never wanted to be again. Ranging from the gritty back rooms of Providence, RI to the power corridors of Washington, DC and Wall Street to the golden casinos of Las Vegas, City in Ruins is an epic crime novel of love and hate, ambition and desperation, vengeance and compassion.

All the golden light

Siobhan O’Brien
A stirring, dramatic story about finding connection, meaning and beauty in a time of darkness … and the craving and savagery of the heart. 1918, Belowla, south coast New South Wales. As the Great War grinds to an end, Adelaide Roberts accompanies her father to a rugged island off the south coast of New South Wales to deliver much-needed supplies. While loss and deprivation have decimated the country, Ada is determined to live a life of purpose and hope, and dreams of living independently.

On the windswept rocky outcrop, she meets lighthouse keeper Emmett Huxley, a dark-eyed outsider haunted by his service in France, taking refuge from the damage of the war. Adelaide and Emmett are inexorably drawn together, but Adelaide discovers plans have been made for her with a decorated returned soldier, Donal Blaxland, a local landowner with a large tobacco plantation.

When police charges are suddenly brought against the lighthouse keeper, Adelaide is forced to make a choice about her future, and discovers that Donal harbours terrible secrets of his own. She finds herself a prisoner to the trauma and suffering that war has wreaked on the returned soldier.

As she begins to understand the depths of Donal’s desperation, Adelaide knows she must leave – and between the treacherous waters of the coast and the rocky outcrops of an ancient land, Adelaide fights for her survival, determined to live and love on her own terms.

A moving, uplifting story about love and suffering, trauma and addiction – and hope in the darkest of times.

Wolf hall

Hilary Mantel
England in the 1520s is a heartbeat from disaster. If the king dies without a male heir, the country could be destroyed by civil war. Henry VIII wants to annul his marriage of twenty years and marry Anne Boleyn. The pope and most of Europe opposes him. Into this impasse steps Thomas Cromwell: a wholly original man, a charmer and a bully, both idealist and opportunist, astute in reading people, and implacable in his ambition. But Henry is volatile: one day tender, one day murderous. Cromwell helps him break the opposition, but what will be the price of his triumph?


Moment of truth

Mandy Magro
The past she can’t remember just won’t let her go … Alexis Brown was thirteen when her parents were killed, but her memory of anything that happened that night was lost when she hit her head. The police labelled it a murder-suicide, but Alexis has grown up believing her loving father could never have killed her mother. So when, seventeen years later, Alexis receives an anonymous note telling her the police were wrong and her parents were both murdered she’s determined to return to Blue Ridge and find out the truth.

Inheriting his grandfather’s horse training farm after Charlie is diagnosed with dementia, Ethan King faces hard work to resuscitate the failing Diamond Acres. The farm has been in decline since the violent acts at the cottage created such a scandal.

When Alexis arrives at the newly renovated cottage, hoping to awaken her lost memories. She can’t help but notice how strong and handsome her childhood friend has become. But she’s not here for love, as soon as the truth is uncovered she has to return to her life, and falling for Ethan would only leave her with a broken heart.

For Ethan getting to know the resilient woman that Alexis has blossomed into leaves his world upside down. But as they spend the days together and with their mutual love for horses, it doesn’t take long for Alexis and Ethan to discover their friendship is much more than they’d first thought … But will it all be threatened by a shocking secret from all those years ago?

The house at the bottom of the hill

Jennie Jones
The mysterious death of her mother has left Charlotte Simmons on edge and off-balance for too long. The only way to move forward is to get answers, and those answers can only be found in one place. So Charlotte buys a Bed & Breakfast establishment in Swallow’s Falls, a small town in Australia’s Snowy Mountains, as a ploy to get close to the man who might have the answers. She’ll jazz up the old place, flip it, get her answers, and be gone in two-months – max.

What she doesn’t count on is opposition from the dogmatic and slightly eccentric members of the town council, and the hotshot owner of Kookaburra’s Bar & Grill and his two-hundred-squats-a-day physique whose mouth offers to act as mediator, but his eyes promise something so much more.

Easy-going Daniel Bradford knows progress is slow in Swallow’s Fall. He’s finally about to put his plans into place to upgrade the hotel when a prim-and-proper, citified redhead blows into town, putting everyone on edge. The only way to contain the trouble she’s about to cause is to contain her – but he knows trouble when he sees it, and soon it becomes very clear that there’s absolutely nothing containable about Charlotte, or the way he feels about her.

The funny thing about Norman Foreman

Julietta Henderson
Twelve-year-old Norman Foreman and his best friend, Jax, are a legendary comedic duo in waiting, with a plan to take their act all the way to the Edinburgh Fringe. But when Jax dies, Norman decides the only fitting tribute is to perform at the festival himself. The problem is, Norman’s not the funny one. Jax was.

There’s also another, far more colossal objective on Norman’s new plan that his single mom, Sadie, wasn’t ready for: he wants to find the father he’s never known. Determined to put a smile back on her boy’s face, Sadie resolves to face up to her own messy past, get Norman to the Fringe and help track down a man whose identity is a mystery, even to her.

Julietta Henderson’s delightfully charming, tender and uplifting debut takes us on a road trip with a mother and son who will live in the reader’s heart for a long time to come, and teaches us that—no matter the odds—we must always reach for the stars.

A life of her own

Ellen Feldman
When life doesn’t give you a happily ever after …New York City, 1945. The war is over, the men are coming home and life can go back to normal for young Fanny Fabricant. But when she loses her rosy future in a single instant, she is forced to reinvent her life and raise her daughter alone by sheer will and courage. Brought up to be a ‘nice girl’, to never step out of bounds, and educated for a career as a wife and mother, Fanny quickly learns that the real world isn’t so straightforward.

When Fanny gets a job working for the queen of radio dramas, she finally has a sense of control over her destiny – until two very different men enter her life, giving Fanny an impossible choice. Will she play it safe, or do what she knows is right?Ellen Feldman, the international bestselling author of Paris Never Leaves You, presents a gripping tale of ethics, love and self-determination in a vivid historical setting – a story of heart, history and impossible choices.

Outback heroines

Sue Williams

Tragedy, tears, triumph and laughter . . Australia’s women of the land have seen, battled and overcome it all. They’re all extraordinary women, experiencing extraordinary hardships and meeting extraordinary challenges to survive and thrive in an extraordinary part of Australia.

Across the harsh, dusty, drought-riven, fire-ravaged outback, women fight against the odds every day . . . and often emerge even stronger.

Ruin beach

Kate Rhodes
DI Ben Kitto has become the Scilly Islands’ Deputy Chief of Police. As the island’s lazy summer takes hold, he finds himself missing the excitement of the murder squad in London. But when a body is found anchored to the rocks of a nearby cave, it appears he’s spoken too soon. The island of Tresco, and the deep and murky waters that surround it, hold a dark secret. One that someone seems desperate to uncover . . .


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