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Psychological fiction

  • Author:
    Kirman, Laura, Logan, T. M.
    Summary:

    It was supposed to be the perfect vacation, dreamed up by Kate as the ideal way to turn 40: four best friends and their husbands and children, spending a week in a luxurious villa under the blazing sunshine of Provence. But there is trouble in paradise. Kate suspects that her husband is having an affair and that the other woman is one of her best friends. One of these women is willing to sacrifice years of friendship and destroy her family. But which one? As Kate closes in on the truth in the stifling Mediterranean heat, she realizes, too late, that the stakes are far higher than she ever imagined. And someone in the villa may be prepared to kill to keep their lies hidden.

  • Author:
    Estleman, Loren D.
    Summary:

    Revolutionizing traditional mortuary practices, Richard Connable develops a method of preserving the human dignity of the deceased. His wife Lucy struggles to keep their marriage whole as she stands by his side and supports him while he builds a reputation and becomes the premier undertaker for the rich and powerful. But when Richard is called from retirement to discretely disguise the suicide of an important American financier, Lucy sets out on a secret mission too.

  • Author:
    Abbott, Megan
    Summary:

    With their long necks and matching buns and pink tights, Dara and Marie Durant have been dancers since they can remember. Growing up, they were homeschooled and trained by their glamorous mother, founder of the Durant School of Dance. After their parents' death in a tragic car accident nearly a dozen years ago, the sisters began running the school together, along with Charlie, Dara's husband and once their mother's prized student. Marie, warm and soft, teaches the younger students; Dara, with her precision, trains the older ones; and Charlie, sidelined from dancing after years of injuries, rules over the back office. Circling around one another, the three have perfected a dance, six days a week, that keeps the studio thriving. But when a suspicious accident occurs, just at the onset of the school's annual performance of The Nutcracker--a season of competition, anxiety, and exhilaration--an interloper arrives and threatens the sisters' delicate balance.

  • Author:
    Reid, Rebecca
    Summary:

    When a young woman embarks on what she thinks is the relationship of a lifetime, her new husband insists they follow one rule: they don't talk about the past. But it's a rule that has dangerous consequences.

  • Author:
    Jewell, Lisa
    Summary:

    When she was nine years old, Melody Browne's house burned down, and it took all of her childhood memories with it. Now she's a single mother of a teenage boy living in Central London. She hasn't seen her parents since she left home at fifteen, but she doesn't mind. She's better off on her own. She works as a dinner lady at her son's school and has no idea where her humdrum life is heading. But one summer's night, a hypnotist inadvertently unlocks memories of her childhood, and her whole life is turned upside down. At first, these new memories mean nothing to her, but as Melody slowly begins to piece together the real story of her childhood, she begins to uncover mystery after mystery and wonders if she'll ever know the truth about her past...

  • Author:
    Livingston, Billie
    Summary:

    If you act like Marlene, you end up like Marlene — messed up, lonely and broke. No wonder Samantha rejects her mother’s lifestyle. In The Trouble With Marlene, mother and daughter share one thing — thoughts of suicide. Marlene never stops talking about it, but for Samantha, it’s a private affair. There’s one other private thought for Samantha: putting a pillow over her mother’s face and bringing the madness to an end. How far is she prepared to take her fantasy?

  • Author:
    Raabe, Melanie, Taylor, Imogen
    Summary:

    The famous novelist Linda Conrads, 38, is a mystery to her fans and the media. She hasn’t set foot over the threshold of her villa on Lake Starnberg for more than eleven years, and yet she’s extremely successful. Her life, though comfortable, is highly artificial and her grip on reality is fragile. Only very few know that she is tormented by a dark memory.When she was young, Linda found her sister Anna in a pool of her own blood and saw the murderer fleeing. His face haunts her dreams. So it is a tremendous shock for her one day when that exact face appears on her television screen — it belongs to the high-profile journalist Victor Lenzen. She decides to set a trap to catch Victor by writing a novel based on the death of her sister and promote the book through one interview —with Victor. But what actually happened that night many years ago?

  • Author:
    D'Izzia, Guglielmo
    Summary:

    De Angelis, an inscrutable northerner, is travelling to a small town perched in Sicily's hinterland to negotiate a real estate transaction, only to find himself embroiled in a criminal conspiracy. While en route, the train he's on mysteriously breaks down, forcing him to spend the night in a squalid whistle stop. What follows is a web of unsettling events, involving child prostitution and brazen killings. And at the heart of it: an alluring blue-eyed girl, Marinella. The chance encounter with the eleven-year-old traps him in a psychological and moral cul-de-sac, leaving him no choice but to confront the type of man he really is. Told in a cinematic, darkly humorous genre-bending prose, The Transaction traces De Angelis' Kafkaesque descent into deviancy.

  • Author:
    Medved, Maureen
    Summary:

    Naked under a tattered shower curtain, fifteen-year old Tracey Berkowitz has been sitting in the back of a bus for two days, looking for her brother, Sonny, who thinks he is a dog. Tracey's stories begin to twist and intertwine truth with lies, absorbing the reader into the games and delusions she uses to escape her despair. The Tracey Fragments is a raw, moving account that immerses the reader into the labyrinth of a troubled, adolescent psyche, full of twists and turns, fear and uncertainty, trust and betrayal. Maureen Medved adapted her novel into a film screenplay that was directed by acclaimed filmmaker Bruce McDonald. At the Berlin Film Festival in early 2007, the motion picture won the Manfred Salzgeber Prize for an innovative film that broadens the boundaries of cinema.

  • Author:
    Dickinson, Robert
    Summary:

    When a tour bus takes a group to the mall, it is expected to be a normal excursion, until the tour rep notices one person missing. Most disturbingly, she is a woman who, according to the records, did not go missing.

  • Author:
    Kaufman, Andrew
    Summary:

    Part modern fable, part detective novel, a journey through grief in the imaginary world of Metaphoria. One cold winter night, Charlie shares a cab with a stranger in a purple hat. As they talk, a cloud of purple smoke overwhelms him and he wakes up to find himself behind the only desk in the Epiphany Detective Agency. Charlie, as it turns out, is trapped in Metaphoria, an otherworldly place that reality has forgotten, a place where everything means something else. His first client is Shirley Kintsugi, who insists on hiring Charlie to find her husband's missing heart. In fact, she's so insistent that she replaces Charlie's heart with a bomb. He has twenty-four hours to find Twiggy Kintsugi's heart - and its meaning - or his own will explode. Tender and brutal, optimistic and despairing, this modern fable by the author of the cult hit All My Friends Are Superheroes takes a fresh look at what it means to fall into, and out of, love.

  • Author:
    Keogh, Valerie
    Summary:

    When Beth, Megan, and Joanne meet at university, they become inseparable friends who'd do anything for one another-even agreeing to keep what happens one shocking night a secret. Now in their forties and outwardly successful, each of the three has dealt with what happened in their own way. But secrets and lies leave their mark. When Megan decides to tell her fiancé the truth about that night, it threatens to ruin the lives of everyone around her. But someone is prepared to do anything to stop that from happening...

  • Author:
    PICOULT, Jodi
    Summary:

    When Daniel Stone was a child, he was teased mercilessly, but he fought back and became a 'bad kid', full of anger, until he got a girl pregnant and reinvented himself. However, fifteen years later when his daughter is date raped, Daniel finds himself struggling with a rage that could destroy him and his family.

  • Author:
    Giangrande, Carole
    Summary:

    Matthew Reilly is a lonely priest haunted by secrets. Young Alison is the shy and devoted keeper of Daisy, a falcon that suffered an accident and can no longer fly. When they meet in a Boston parish, Matt tells Alison about the day a decade ago when he missed the plane out of Logan Airport that tore into one of the Twin Towers. What he hasn't told her is that among the victims was a son that no one knew he'd fathered. With no confidantes and close to exhaustion, Matt suffers a heart attack, forcing him to reflect on what's become of his life. He recalls a teaching stint in Toronto a year earlier, his encounter with Gavin, a troubled and predatory man, and his discovery that his son had a male partner who had perished with him. He remembers returning to Boston, only to be perplexed by Alison and the affection that she and her beloved falcon draw from the homeless people who live on the Boston Common, but Matt has forgotten a momentary but fateful encounter with Alison eight years earlier in Toronto and it's only when her falcon frightens a child in the parish that even Alison begins to recall her terrifying ordeal years ago as a homeless person in Toronto.

  • Author:
    See, Lisa
    Summary:

    2018 Audie Award Finalist The thrilling new novel from #1 New York Times bestselling author Lisa See explores the lives of a Chinese mother and her daughter who has been abandoned and adopted by an American couple. Li-yan and her family align their lives around the seasons and the farming of tea. There is ritual and routine, and it has been ever thus for generations. Then one day a jeep appears at the village gate-the first automobile any of them have seen-and a stranger arrives. In this remote Yunnan village, the stranger finds the rare tea he has been seeking and a reticent Akha people. In her biggest seller, Snow Flower and the Secret Fan, See introduced the Yao people to her audience. Here she shares the customs of another Chinese ethnic minority, the Akha, whose world will soon change. Li-yan, one of the few educated girls on her mountain, translates for the stranger and is among the first to reject the rules that have shaped her existence. When she has a baby outside of wedlock, rather than stand by tradition, she wraps her daughter in a blanket, with a tea cake hidden in her swaddling, and abandons her in the nearest city. After mother and daughter have gone their separate ways, Li-yan slowly emerges from the security and insularity of her village to encounter modern life while Haley grows up a privileged and well-loved California girl. Despite Haley's happy home life, she wonders about her origins; and Li-yan longs for her lost daughter. They both search for and find answers in the tea that has shaped their family's destiny for generations. A powerful story about a family, separated by circumstances, culture, and distance, Tea Girl of Hummingbird Lane paints an unforgettable portrait of a little known region and its people and celebrates the bond that connects mothers and daughters.

  • Author:
    McKenzie, Mia
    Summary:

    At one time a wild young girl and a brilliant artist, Ava Delaney changes dramatically after a violent event that rocks her entire family. Once loved and respected in their community and in their church, the Delaneys are ostracized by their neighbors, led by their church leader, and a seventeen year feud ensues.

  • Author:
    Shraya, Vivek
    Summary:

    Everyone talks about falling in love, but falling in friendship can be just as captivating. When Neela Devaki's song is covered by internet-famous artist Rukmini, the two musicians meet and a transformative friendship begins. But as Rukmini's star rises and Neela's stagnates, jealousy and self-doubt creep in. With a single tweet, their friendship implodes, one career is destroyed, and the two women find themselves at the center of an internet firestorm. Celebrated multidisciplinary artist Vivek Shraya's second novel is a stirring examination of making art in the modern era, a love letter to brown women, an authentic glimpse into the music industry, and a nuanced exploration of the promise and peril of being seen.

  • Author:
    Robinson, C. Kelly
    Summary:

    Deacon Davis struggles to regain his dignity after his debilitating speech impediment provokes his forced resignation from the first African American political party. Haunted by the fact that his handicap prevents him from upholding his father's legacy of advocating civil rights, he seeks professional help. Maria Oliver, a smart and sexy speech therapist, is just now recovering from a shadowy past. Under the comforting influence of Maria, Deacon begins to take control of not only his speech but his life, and Maria discovers a trust and comfort that she has never known.

  • Author:
    Raabe, Melanie
    Summary:

    He calls himself your husband. But you're the only one who knows the truth. Several years ago, your husband, and the father of your young son, disappeared. Since then, you've dreamt of his return; railed against him for leaving you alone; grieved for your marriage; and, finally, vowed to move on. One morning, the phone rings. When you answer, a voice at the other end tells you your husband's on a plane bound for home, and that you'll see him tomorrow. You've imagined this reunion countless times. Of course you have. But nothing has prepared you for the reality. For the moment you realise you don't know this man. Because he isn't your husband; he's a complete stranger -- and he's coming home with you. Even worse, he seems to know about something very bad you once did -- something no one else could possibly know about . . . Could they? From Melanie Raabe, the author of The Trap, The Stranger Upstairs is another dazzling, dizzying psychological thriller guaranteed to keep you guessing until the very last page.

  • Author:
    Camus, Albert
    Summary:

    With millions of copies sold The Stranger is one of the most widely read novels in the world. It stands as perhaps the greatest existentialist tale ever conceived. When a young Algerian named Meursault kills a man, his subsequent imprisonment and trial are puzzling and absurd. This remarkable translation by Matthew Ward has been considered the definitive English version since its original publication.

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