February 2018 Adult Top 10 Picks

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  1. The Great Alone
    by Kristin Hannah
    St. Martin's Press
    Feb 06, 2018
    FICTION / Women
    Hardback
    The Great Alone
    by Kristin Hannah
    St. Martin's Press
    Feb 06, 2018
    FICTION / Women
    Hardback

    #1 New York Times Instant Bestseller

    In Kristin Hannah’s The Great Alone, a desperate family seeks a new beginning in the near-isolated wilderness of Alaska only to find that their unpredictable environment is less threatening than the erratic behavior found in human nature.

    Alaska, 1974. Ernt Allbright came home from the Vietnam War a changed and volatile man. When he loses yet another job, he makes the impulsive decision to move his wife and daughter north where they will live off the grid in America’s last true frontier.

    Cora will do anything for the man she loves, even if means following him into the unknown. Thirteen-year-old Leni, caught in the riptide of her parents’ passionate, stormy relationship, has little choice but to go along, daring to hope this new land promises her family a better future.

    In a wild, remote corner of Alaska, the Allbrights find a fiercely independent community of strong men and even stronger women. The long, sunlit days and the generosity of the locals make up for the newcomers’ lack of preparation and dwindling resources.

    But as winter approaches and darkness descends, Ernt’s fragile mental state deteriorates. Soon the perils outside pale in comparison to threats from within. In their small cabin, covered in snow, blanketed in eighteen hours of night, Leni and her mother learn the terrible truth: they are on their own.

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  2. Surprise Me
    by Sophie Kinsella
    The Dial Press
    Feb 13, 2018
    FICTION / Humorous / General
    Hardback
    Surprise Me
    by Sophie Kinsella
    The Dial Press
    Feb 13, 2018
    FICTION / Humorous / General
    Hardback
    NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • A witty and emotionally charged novel that delves into the heart of a marriage, and how those we love and think we know best can sometimes surprise us the most

    “A delightful take on the mixed blessings of marital longevity.”—People

    After ten years together, Sylvie and Dan have a comfortable home, fulfilling jobs, and beautiful twin girls, and they communicate so seamlessly they finish each other’s sentences. They have a happy marriage and believe they know everything there is to know about each other. Until it’s casually mentioned to them that they could be together for another sixty-eight years . . . and panic sets in.

    They decide to bring surprises into their marriage to keep it fresh and fun. But in their pursuit of Project Surprise Me—from unexpected gifts to restaurant dates to sexy photo shoots—mishaps arise, with disastrous and comical results. Gradually, surprises turn to shocking truths. And when a scandal from the past is uncovered, they begin to wonder if they ever really knew each other at all.

    With a colorful cast of eccentric characters, razor-sharp observations, and her signature wit and charm, Sophie Kinsella presents a humorous yet moving portrait of a marriage—its intricacies, comforts, and complications. Surprise Me reveals that hidden layers in a close relationship are often yet to be discovered.

    Praise for Surprise Me

    “Genuinely funny.”—The New York Times Book Review

    “Unexpected and wholly satisfying.”USA Today

    “In her signature fashion, Sophie Kinsella brings a cast of quirky, funny characters to this new work. [She] keeps the laughs coming. . . . Readers will follow the story with bated breath as the couple struggle to make their marriage right after everything they thought they knew about each other proves wrong.”Library Journal

    “Heartfelt . . . What at first seems like a light novel about familiar woes turns into a deeper story about trust, family, and perception.”Publishers Weekly

    “Winsome and zesty, Kinsella’s latest delivers all the hallmarks her many fans have come to expect.”Booklist

    “Pure fun . . . a hilariously moving look at marriage and the power of mixing things up.”Kirkus Reviews
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  3. White Houses
    by Amy Bloom
    Random House
    Feb 13, 2018
    FICTION / Literary
    Hardback
    White Houses
    by Amy Bloom
    Random House
    Feb 13, 2018
    FICTION / Literary
    Hardback
    For readers of The Paris Wife and The Swans of Fifth Avenue comes a “sensuous, captivating account of a forbidden affair between two women” (People)—Eleanor Roosevelt and “first friend” Lorena Hickok.

    NAMED ONE OF THE BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR BY Financial Times San Francisco Chronicle • New York Public Library • Refinery29 Real Simple

    Lorena Hickok meets Eleanor Roosevelt in 1932 while reporting on Franklin Roosevelt’s first presidential campaign. Having grown up worse than poor in South Dakota and reinvented herself as the most prominent woman reporter in America, “Hick,” as she’s known to her friends and admirers, is not quite instantly charmed by the idealistic, patrician Eleanor. But then, as her connection with the future first lady deepens into intimacy, what begins as a powerful passion matures into a lasting love, and a life that Hick never expected to have. She moves into the White House, where her status as “first friend” is an open secret, as are FDR’s own lovers. After she takes a job in the Roosevelt administration, promoting and protecting both Roosevelts, she comes to know Franklin not only as a great president but as a complicated rival and an irresistible friend, capable of changing lives even after his death. Through it all, even as Hick’s bond with Eleanor is tested by forces both extraordinary and common, and as she grows as a woman and a writer, she never loses sight of the love of her life.

    From Washington, D.C. to Hyde Park, from a little white house on Long Island to an apartment on Manhattan’s Washington Square, Amy Bloom’s new novel moves elegantly through fascinating places and times, written in compelling prose and with emotional depth, wit, and acuity.

    Praise for White Houses

    “Amy Bloom brings an untold slice of history so dazzlingly and devastatingly to life, it took my breath away.”—Paula McLain, author of The Paris Wife

    “Vivid and tender . . . Bloom—interweaving fact and fancy—lavishes attention on [Hickok], bringing Hick, the novel’s narrator and true subject, to radiant life.”O: The Oprah Magazine

    “Radiant . . . an indelible love story, one propelled not by unlined youth and beauty but by the kind of soul-mate connection even distance, age, and impossible circumstances couldn’t dim . . . Bloom’s goal is less to relitigate history than to portray the blandly sexless figurehead of First Lady as something the job rarely allows those women to be—a loving, breathing human being. And she does it brilliantly.”Entertainment Weekly
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  4. Cut You Down
    by Sam Wiebe Canada
    Random House Canada
    Feb 13, 2018
    FICTION / Thrillers / Crime
    Paperback / softback
    Cut You Down
    by Sam Wiebe Canada
    Random House Canada
    Feb 13, 2018
    FICTION / Thrillers / Crime
    Paperback / softback
    Cut You Down is prize-winning novelist Sam Wiebe's second riveting Wakeland mystery.

    Vancouver PI Dave Wakeland returns, hot on the trail of a missing college student who may or may not have stolen half a million dollars. What starts as a straightforward runaway case soon gives way to a tangled mess of dirty money, betrayal, and murder, pitting the resourceful but over-his-head detective against suburban gangsters, a corrupt cop, and a contract killer with a fondness for blades--one of which seems destined for Wakeland's throat...

    Sam Wiebe's morally challenged young detective takes up a cross-border chase that twists and surprises like only Vancouver's next master of crime could write. Never one to back down from the big issues plaguing his city of shining towers and forgotten corners, Wiebe returns with a vicious caper that threatens to leave no one--not his rogue detective, nor Wakeland's family and friends (or even a few of his enemies)--standing.
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  5. The Gone World
    by Tom Sweterlitsch
    G.P. Putnam's Sons
    Feb 06, 2018
    FICTION / Science Fiction / Apocalyptic & Post-Apocalyptic
    Hardback
    The Gone World
    by Tom Sweterlitsch
    G.P. Putnam's Sons
    Feb 06, 2018
    FICTION / Science Fiction / Apocalyptic & Post-Apocalyptic
    Hardback
    Inception meets True Detective in this science fiction thriller of spellbinding tension and staggering scope that follows a special agent into a savage murder case with grave implications for the fate of mankind...

    “I promise you have never read a story like this.”—Blake Crouch, New York Times bestselling author of Dark Matter


    Shannon Moss is part of a clandestine division within the Naval Criminal Investigative Service. In western Pennsylvania, 1997, she is assigned to solve the murder of a Navy SEAL's family—and to locate his vanished teenage daughter. Though she can't share the information with conventional law enforcement, Moss discovers that the missing SEAL was an astronaut aboard the spaceship U.S.S. Libra—a ship assumed lost to the currents of Deep Time. Moss knows first-hand the mental trauma of time-travel and believes the SEAL's experience with the future has triggered this violence.

    Determined to find the missing girl and driven by a troubling connection from her own past, Moss travels ahead in time to explore possible versions of the future, seeking evidence to crack the present-day case. To her horror, the future reveals that it's not only the fate of a family that hinges on her work, for what she witnesses rising over time's horizon and hurtling toward the present is the Terminus: the terrifying and cataclysmic end of humanity itself.

    Luminous and unsettling, The Gone World bristles with world-shattering ideas yet remains at its heart an intensely human story.
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  6. A Long Way from Home
    by Peter Carey
    Random House Canada
    Feb 27, 2018
    FICTION / Literary
    Hardback
    A Long Way from Home
    by Peter Carey
    Random House Canada
    Feb 27, 2018
    FICTION / Literary
    Hardback
    Over the course of his stellar writing life, Peter Carey has explored his homeland of Australia in such highly acclaimed novels as Oscar and Lucinda, True History of the Kelly Gang and Amnesia. Writing at the peak of his powers, Carey takes us on an unforgettable journey that maps his homeland's secrets in this extraordinary new novel.

    Wildly inventive, funny and profoundly moving, A Long Way from Home opens in 1953 with the arrival of the tiny, handsome Titch Bobs, his beautiful doll of a wife, Irene, and their two children in the small town of Bacchus Marsh. Titch is the best car salesman in southeastern Australia. Irene loves her husband, and loves to drive fast. Together they enter the Redex Trial, a brutal endurance race around the ancient continent, over roads no car is designed to survive. With them is their neighbour and navigator, Willie Bachhuber, a quiz show champion and failed school teacher who calls the turns and creek crossings on a map that will lead them, without warning, away from the white Australia they all know so well. Just like the novel, Peter Carey's new masterpiece, begins in one way and takes you somewhere you never thought you'd be. Often funny, the book is also and always a page-turner, surprising you with history these characters never even knew themselves. Its profound reckoning with Australia's brutal treatment of the continent's aboriginal people will also resonate strongly with Canadian readers.
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  7. The Undertaker's Daughter
    by Sara Blaedel
    Grand Central Publishing
    Feb 06, 2018
    FICTION / Thrillers / Suspense
    Hardback
    The Undertaker's Daughter
    by Sara Blaedel
    Grand Central Publishing
    Feb 06, 2018
    FICTION / Thrillers / Suspense
    Hardback
    A thrilling novel from #1 international bestselling author Sara Blaedel, author of The Forgotten Girls

    "One of the best I've come across." -- Michael Connelly

    "Sara Blaedel is a force to be reckoned with. She's a remarkable crime writer who time and again delivers a solid, engaging story that any reader in the world can enjoy." -- Karin Slaughter

    "One can count on emotional engagement, spine-tingling suspense, and taut storytelling from Sara Blaedel." -- Sandra Brown

    Already widowed by the age of forty, Ilka Nichols Jensen, a school portrait photographer, leads a modest, regimented, and uneventful life in Copenhagen. Until unexpected news rocks her quiet existence: Her father--who walked out suddenly and inexplicably on the family more than three decades ago--has died. And he's left her something in his will: his funeral home. In Racine, Wisconsin.

    Clinging to this last shred of communication from the father she hasn't heard from since childhood, Ilka makes an uncharacteristically rash decision and jumps on a plane to Wisconsin. Desperate for a connection to the parent she never really knew, she plans to visit the funeral home and go through her father's things--hoping for some insight into his new life in America--before preparing the business for a quick sale.

    But when she stumbles on an unsolved murder, and a killer who seems to still be very much alive, the undertaker's daughter realizes she might be in over her head . . .
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  8. The Bad Daughter
    by Joy Fielding Canada
    Doubleday Canada
    Feb 27, 2018
    FICTION / Thrillers / Suspense
    Hardback
    The Bad Daughter
    by Joy Fielding Canada
    Doubleday Canada
    Feb 27, 2018
    FICTION / Thrillers / Suspense
    Hardback
    What first appears to be a random home invasion and brutal attack reveals a family's dark secrets in this domestic ticking-clock suspense novel from the New York Times bestselling author of See Jane Run.

    A voice mail from her estranged sister, Melanie, sends Robin's heart racing and her mind spiraling in a full-blown panic attack. Melanie's message is dire: Their father, his second wife, and his twelve-year-old stepdaughter have been shot--likely in a home invasion--and lie in the hospital in critical condition.

    It's been more than five years since Robin turned her back on her father when he married her best friend. Five years since she said goodbye to her hometown of Red Bluff, California, and became a therapist. More than two years since Robin and Melanie have spoken. Yet even with all that distance and time and acrimony, the past is always with Robin.
    Now she must return to the family she left behind. As she attempts to mend fences while her father clings to life, Robin begins to wonder if there is more to the tragedy than a botched burglary attempt. It seems that everyone--Robin's mercurial sister, her less-than-communicative nephew, her absent brother, and even Tara, her father's wife--has something to hide. And someone may have put them all in grave danger.

    New York Times bestselling author Joy Fielding has written a gripping edge-of-your-seat thriller of family intrigue and dark secrets. The Bad Daughter explores the deadly differences between the lies we want to believe and the truths we wish not to know.
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  9. Sadness Is a White Bird
    by Moriel Rothman-Zecher
    Atria Books
    Feb 13, 2018
    FICTION / Literary
    Hardback
    Sadness Is a White Bird
    by Moriel Rothman-Zecher
    Atria Books
    Feb 13, 2018
    FICTION / Literary
    Hardback
    **A 2019 Dayton Literary Peace Prize Finalist**
    **A 2018 National Jewish Book Award Finalist for Debut Fiction**

    “Nuanced, sharp, and beautifully written, Sadness Is a White Bird manages, with seeming effortlessness, to find something fresh and surprising and poignant in the classic coming-of-age, love-triangle narrative, something starker, more heartbreaking: something new.” —Michael Chabon

    “Unflinching in its honesty, unyielding in its moral complexity.” —Pulitzer Prize–winning author Geraldine Brooks

    In this lyrical and searing debut novel written by a rising literary star and MacDowell Fellow, a young man is preparing to serve in the Israeli army while also trying to reconcile his close relationship to two Palestinian siblings with his deeply ingrained loyalties to family and country.

    The story begins in an Israeli military jail, where—four days after his nineteenth birthday—Jonathan stares up at the fluorescent lights of his cell, and recalls the series of events that led him there.

    Two years earlier: Moving back to Israel after several years in Pennsylvania, Jonathan is ready to fight to preserve and defend the Jewish state, which his grandfather—a Salonican Jew whose community was wiped out by the Nazis—helped establish. But he is also conflicted about the possibility of having to monitor the occupied Palestinian territories, a concern that grows deeper and more urgent when he meets Nimreen and Laith—the twin daughter and son of his mother’s friend.

    From that winter morning on, the three become inseparable: wandering the streets on weekends, piling onto buses toward new discoveries, laughing uncontrollably. They share joints on the beach, trading snippets of poems, intimate secrets, family histories, resentments, and dreams. But with his draft date rapidly approaching, Jonathan wrestles with the question of what it means to be proud of your heritage and loyal to your people, while also feeling love for those outside of your own tribal family. And then that fateful day arrives, the one that lands Jonathan in prison and changes his relationship with the twins forever.

    Powerful, important, and timely, Sadness Is a White Bird explores one man’s attempts to find a place for himself, discovering in the process a beautiful, against-the-odds love that flickers like a candle in the darkness of a never-ending conflict.
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  10. Wisdom in Nonsense
    by Heather O'Neill Canada
    University of Alberta Press
    Jan 19, 2018
    BIOGRAPHY & AUTOBIOGRAPHY / Literary Figures
    Paperback / softback
    Wisdom in Nonsense
    by Heather O'Neill Canada
    University of Alberta Press
    Jan 19, 2018
    BIOGRAPHY & AUTOBIOGRAPHY / Literary Figures
    Paperback / softback
    I broke all the rules that my dad gave me. It was he who had given me, in part, the confidence to think of my life as being worthy to mix with those of the geniuses. —Heather O’Neill With generosity and wry humour, novelist Heather O’Neill recalls several key lessons she learned in childhood from her father: memories and stories about how crime does pay, why one should never keep a diary, and that it is good to beware of clowns, among other things. Her father and his eccentric friends—ex-bank robbers and homeless men—taught her that everything she did was important, a belief that she has carried through her life. O’Neill’s intimate recollections make Wisdom in Nonsense the perfect companion to her widely praised debut novel, Lullabies for Little Criminals (HarperCollins). Introduction by Kit Dobson.
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