Check out these five popular adult titles that hit the shelves in February. To see more titles, including new titles in popular series, check out our new titles page.
Summaries provided by the publisher.
In this chilling new novel from bestselling author Simone St. James, something at The Sun Down Motel hasn't been right for a very long time, and Carly Kirk is about to find out why.
Upstate New York, 1982. Viv Delaney wants to move to New York City, and to help pay for it she takes a job as the night clerk at the Sun Down Motel in Fell, New York. But something isnʼt right at the motel, something haunting and scary.
Upstate New York, 2017. Carly Kirk has never been able to let go of the story of her Aunt Viv, who mysteriously disappeared from the Sun Down before she was born. She decides to move to Fell and visit the motel, where she quickly learns that nothing has changed since 1982. And she soon finds herself ensnared in the same mysteries that claimed her aunt.
Erik Larson, the author of the popular book The Devil in the White City, delivers a fresh and compelling portrait of Winston Churchill and London in The Splendid and the Vile.
On Winston Churchill’s first day as prime minister, Adolf Hitler invaded Holland and Belgium. Poland and Czechoslovakia had already fallen, and the Dunkirk evacuation was just two weeks away. For the next twelve months, Hitler would wage a relentless bombing campaign, killing 45,000 Britons. It was up to Churchill to hold his country together and persuade President Franklin Roosevelt that Britain was a worthy ally - and willing to fight to the end.
In The Splendid and the Vile, Erik Larson shows, in cinematic detail, how Churchill taught the British people “the art of being fearless.” It is a story of political brinkmanship, but it’s also an intimate domestic drama, set against the backdrop of Churchill’s prime-ministerial country home. Drawing on diaries, original archival documents, and once-secret intelligence reports - some released only recently - Larson provides a new lens on London’s darkest year through the day-to-day experience of Churchill and his family.
Never underestimate the power of a group of women in Mercy House: A Novel, by Alena Dillon.
Inside a century-old row house in Brooklyn, renegade Sister Evelyn and her fellow nuns preside over a safe haven for the abused and abandoned. Gruff and indomitable on the surface, warm and wry underneath, little daunts Evelyn, until she receives word that Mercy House will be investigated by Bishop Hawkins, a man with whom she shares a dark history. In order to protect everything they’ve built, the nuns must conceal many of their methods, which are forbidden by the Catholic Church. Amidst her fight, Evelyn discovers the extraordinary power of mercy and the grace it grants, not just to those who receive it, but to those strong enough to bestow it.
In The Authenticity Project: A Novel, by Clare Pooley, a solitary green notebook brings together six strangers, which leads to unexpected friendships.
Julian Jessop, an older eccentric, lonely artist, believes that most people aren't really honest with each other. But what if they were? And so he writes - in a plain, green journal - the truth about his own life and leaves it in his local café. It's run by the incredibly tidy and efficient Monica, who furtively adds her own entry and leaves the book in the wine bar across the street. Before long, the others who find the green notebook add the truths about their own deepest selves - and soon find each other In Real Life at Monica's Café. The Authenticity Project is just the tonic for our times that readers are clamoring for - and one they will take to their hearts and read with unabashed pleasure.
Oona Out of Order, by Margarita Montimore, is a remarkably inventive novel that explores what it means to live a life fully in the moment - even if those moments are out of sequence.
It’s New Year’s Eve 1982, and Oona Lockhart has her whole life before her. At the stroke of midnight, she will turn nineteen, and the year ahead promises to be one of consequence. Should she go to London to study economics or remain at home in Brooklyn to pursue her passion for music and be with her boyfriend? As the countdown to the New Year begins, Oona faints and awakens 32 years in the future in her 51-year-old body. Greeted by a friendly stranger in a beautiful house she’s told is her own, Oona learns that with each passing year she will leap to another age at random.
Hopping through decades, pop culture fads, and much-needed stock tips, Oona is still a young woman on the inside but ever-changing on the outside. Who will she be next year? Philanthropist? Club Kid? World traveler? Wife to a man she’s never met?
Bonus Title: Eve Dallas Returns in Golden in Death by J.D. Robb (Book #50)
Pediatrician Kent Abner received the package on a beautiful April morning. Inside was a cheap trinket, a golden egg that could be opened into two halves. When he pried it apart, highly toxic airborne fumes entered his body - and killed him.
After Eve Dallas calls the hazmat team - and undergoes testing to reassure both her and her husband that she hasn’t been exposed - it’s time to look into Dr. Abner’s past and relationships. Not every victim Eve encounters is an angel, but it seems that Abner came pretty close - though he did ruffle some feathers over the years by taking stands for the weak and defenseless. While the lab tries to identify the deadly toxin, Eve hunts for the sender. But when someone else dies in the same grisly manner, it becomes clear that she’s dealing with either a madman - or someone who has a hidden and elusive connection to both victims.
