November 2020 Adult Top 10 Picks

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  1. Little Cruelties
    by Liz Nugent
    Simon & Schuster
    Nov 24, 2020
    FICTION / Thrillers / Suspense
    Paperback / softback
    Little Cruelties
    by Liz Nugent
    Simon & Schuster
    Nov 24, 2020
    FICTION / Thrillers / Suspense
    Paperback / softback
    Hailed by #1 New York Times bestselling author A.J. Finn as “a dark jewel of a novel,” Liz Nugent’s new work of fiction follows three Irish brothers, and delves into the many ways families can wreak emotional havoc across generations.

    All three of the Drumm brothers were at the funeral.
    Only one of us was in the coffin.

    William, Brian, and Luke: three boys bound by blood but split by fate, trained from birth by their wily mother to compete for her attention. They play games, as brothers do...yet even after the Drumms escape into the world beyond their windows, those games—those little cruelties—grow more sinister, more merciless, more dangerous. And with their lives entwined like the strands of a noose, only two of the brothers will survive.

    Crisply written and quickly paced, perfect for readers of both sophisticated literary fiction and breathtaking suspense, Little Cruelties gazes unflinchingly into the darkness: the darkness collecting in the corners of childhood homes, hiding beneath marriage beds, clasped in the palms of two brothers shaking hands. And it confirms Liz Nugent, whose novels have been celebrated as “captivating” (People) and “highly entertaining” (The Washington Post), as one of the most exciting, perceptive voices in contemporary fiction.
    View this title on BNC CataList
  2. Ready Player Two
    by Ernest Cline
    Ballantine Books
    Nov 24, 2020
    FICTION / Science Fiction / Action & Adventure
    Hardback
    Ready Player Two
    by Ernest Cline
    Ballantine Books
    Nov 24, 2020
    FICTION / Science Fiction / Action & Adventure
    Hardback
    #1 NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • The thrilling sequel to the beloved worldwide bestseller Ready Player One, the near-future adventure that inspired the blockbuster Steven Spielberg film.

    NAMED ONE OF THE BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR BY THE WASHINGTON POST • “The game is on again. . . . A great mix of exciting fantasy and threatening fact.”—The Wall Street Journal

    AN UNEXPECTED QUEST. TWO WORLDS AT STAKE. ARE YOU READY?

    Days after winning OASIS founder James Halliday’s contest, Wade Watts makes a discovery that changes everything.

    Hidden within Halliday’s vaults, waiting for his heir to find, lies a technological advancement that will once again change the world and make the OASIS a thousand times more wondrous—and addictive—than even Wade dreamed possible.

    With it comes a new riddle, and a new quest—a last Easter egg from Halliday, hinting at a mysterious prize.

    And an unexpected, impossibly powerful, and dangerous new rival awaits, one who’ll kill millions to get what he wants.

    Wade’s life and the future of the OASIS are again at stake, but this time the fate of humanity also hangs in the balance.

    Lovingly nostalgic and wildly original as only Ernest Cline could conceive it, Ready Player Two takes us on another imaginative, fun, action-packed adventure through his beloved virtual universe, and jolts us thrillingly into the future once again.
    View this title on BNC CataList
  3. Joni Mitchell Backstage Pass
    by Michael A O'Neill Canada
    Danann Books
    Nov 12, 2021
    MUSIC / Genres & Styles / Folk & Traditional
    Hardback
    Joni Mitchell Backstage Pass
    by Michael A O'Neill Canada
    Danann Books
    Nov 12, 2021
    MUSIC / Genres & Styles / Folk & Traditional
    Hardback
    One of the most important female recording artist of the last 50 years Joni Mitchell began singing in small nightclubs in her hometown of Saskatoon, Saskatchewan, and throughout western Canada, before busking in the streets and nightclubs of Toronto, Ontario. In 1965, she moved to the United States and began touring. Settling in Southern California, Mitchell, with popular songs like “Big Yellow Taxi” and “Woodstock”, helped define an era and a generation. Mitchell’s fifth album, For the Roses, was released in 1972. She then switched labels and began exploring more jazz-influenced melodic ideas, by way of lush pop textures, on 1974’s Court and Spark, which featured the radio hits “Help Me” and “Free Man in Paris” and became her best-selling album. Mitchell is the sole producer credited on most of her albums, including all her work in the 1970s. A blunt critic of the music industry, she quit touring and released her 17th, and reportedly last, album of original songs in 2007. With roots in visual art, Mitchell has designed most of her own album covers. She describes herself as a “painter derailed by circumstance”.
    View this title on BNC CataList
  4. Agatha Arch is Afraid of Everything
    by Kristin Bair
    Alcove Press
    Nov 10, 2020
    FICTION / Family Life / Marriage & Divorce
    Paperback / softback
    Agatha Arch is Afraid of Everything
    by Kristin Bair
    Alcove Press
    Nov 10, 2020
    FICTION / Family Life / Marriage & Divorce
    Paperback / softback
    A quirky, nervous wreck of a New England mom is forced to face her many fears in this touching, “uproarious send-up of modern suburbia” for fans of Where'd You Go, Bernadette and Elinor Oliphant Is Completely Fine (People).

    Agatha Arch's life shatters when she discovers her husband in their backyard shed, in flagrante delicto, giving the local dog walker some heavy petting. Suddenly, Agatha finds herself face to face with everything that frightens her...and that's a loooooong list.

    Agatha keeps those she loves close. Everyone else, she keeps as far away as possible. So she's a mystery to nearly everyone in her New England town. To her husband, she's a saucy, no-B.S. writer. To her Facebook Moms group, she's a provocateur. To her neighbor, she's a standoffish pain in the butt. To her sons, she's chocolate pudding with marshmallows. And to her shrink, she's a bundle of nerves on the brink of a cataclysmic implosion.

    Defying her abundant assortment of anxieties, Agatha dons her "spy pants"--a pair of khakis whose many pockets she crams with binoculars, fishing line, scissors, flashlight, a Leatherman Super Tool 300 EOD, candy, and other espionage essentials--and sets out to spy on her husband and the dog walker. Along the way, she finds another intriguing target to follow: a mysterious young woman who's panhandling on the busiest street in town.

    It's all a bit much for timorous Agatha. But with the help of her Bear Grylls bobblehead, a trio of goats, and a dog named Balderdash, Agatha may just find the courage to build a better life.
    View this title on BNC CataList
  5. The Kingdom
    by Jo Nesbo
    Random House Canada
    Nov 10, 2020
    FICTION / Thrillers / Psychological
    Hardback
    The Kingdom
    by Jo Nesbo
    Random House Canada
    Nov 10, 2020
    FICTION / Thrillers / Psychological
    Hardback
    Jo Nesbo, author of the bestselling Harry Hole crime series, is back with a vivid psychological thriller about the bond between orphaned brothers. How far would you go to be your brother's keeper?

    Before Roy's father died in the car crash that also killed Roy's mother, he told his teenaged son that it was his job to protect his little brother, Carl, from the world and from Carl's own impulsive nature. Roy took that job seriously, especially after the two were orphaned. But a small part of him was happy when Carl decided that the tiny town of Os in the mountains of Norway wasn't big enough to hold him and took off to Canada to make his fortune. Which left Roy to pursue the quiet life he loved as a mechanic in the place where they grew up.

    Then suddenly an older Carl is back, full of big plans to develop a resort hotel on the family land, promising that not only will the brothers strike it rich, but so will the town. With him is his fierce and beautiful wife, Shannon, an architect he met on his travels, a woman who soon breaks down the lonely Roy's walls. And Carl's reappearance sparks something even more dangerous than envy in his brother's heart--it sparks fear. Carl's homecoming threatens to shake loose every carefully buried family secret.

    As psychologically acute as it is disturbing, with plot twists you never see coming, Jo Nesbo's new novel is the work of a master of noir at the top of his game.
    View this title on BNC CataList
  6. Dearly
    by Margaret Atwood Canada
    McClelland & Stewart
    Nov 10, 2020
    POETRY / Women Authors
    Hardback
    Dearly
    by Margaret Atwood Canada
    McClelland & Stewart
    Nov 10, 2020
    POETRY / Women Authors
    Hardback
    NATIONAL BESTSELLER

    The collection of a lifetime from the bestselling novelist and poet.

    By turns moving, playful and wise, the poems gathered in Dearly are about absences and endings, ageing and retrospection, but also about gifts and renewals. They explore bodies and minds in transition, as well as the everyday objects and rituals that embed us in the present. Werewolves, sirens and dreams make their appearance, as do various forms of animal life and fragments of our damaged environment.

    Before she became one of the world's most important and loved novelists, Atwood was a poet. Dearly is her first collection in over a decade. It brings together many of her most recognizable and celebrated themes, but distilled - from minutely perfect descriptions of the natural world to startlingly witty encounters with aliens, from pressing political issues to myth and legend. It is a pure Atwood delight, and long-term readers and new fans alike will treasure its insight, empathy and humour.
    View this title on BNC CataList
  7. This Time Next Year We'll Be Laughing
    by Jacqueline Winspear
    Soho Press
    Nov 10, 2020
    BIOGRAPHY & AUTOBIOGRAPHY / Memoirs
    Hardback
    This Time Next Year We'll Be Laughing
    by Jacqueline Winspear
    Soho Press
    Nov 10, 2020
    BIOGRAPHY & AUTOBIOGRAPHY / Memoirs
    Hardback
    A 2021 Edgar Award Nominee for Best Critical/Biographical

    “Jacqueline Winspear has created a memoir of her English childhood that is every bit as engaging as her Maisie Dobbs novels, just as rich in character and detail, history and humanity. Her writing is lovely, elegant and welcoming.”—Anne Lamott

    The New York Times bestselling author of the Maisie Dobbs series offers a deeply personal memoir of her family’s resilience in the face of war and privation.


    After sixteen novels, Jacqueline Winspear has taken the bold step of turning to memoir, revealing the hardships and joys of her family history. Both shockingly frank and deftly restrained, her story tackles the difficult, poignant, and fascinating family accounts of her paternal grandfather’s shellshock; her mother’s evacuation from London during the Blitz; her soft-spoken animal-loving father’s torturous assignment to an explosives team during WWII; her parents’ years living with Romany Gypsies; and Winspear’s own childhood picking hops and fruit on farms in rural Kent, capturing her ties to the land and her dream of being a writer at its very inception.

    An eye-opening and heartfelt portrayal of a post-War England we rarely see, This Time Next Year We’ll Be Laughing chronicles a childhood in the English countryside, of working class indomitability and family secrets, of artistic inspiration and the price of memory.
    View this title on BNC CataList
  8. Extraordinary Canadians
    by Peter Mansbridge Canada
    Simon & Schuster
    Nov 10, 2020
    BIOGRAPHY & AUTOBIOGRAPHY / Memoirs
    Hardback
    Extraordinary Canadians
    by Peter Mansbridge Canada
    Simon & Schuster
    Nov 10, 2020
    BIOGRAPHY & AUTOBIOGRAPHY / Memoirs
    Hardback
    From Peter Mansbridge, the beloved former anchor of CBC’s The National, and Mark Bulgutch, former CBC producer, comes a collection of first-person stories about remarkable Canadians who embody the values of our great nation—kindness, compassion, courage, and freedom—and inspire us to do the same.

    In this timely and heartwarming volume of personal stories, Peter Mansbridge and former CBC producer Mark Bulgutch bring together inspiring Canadians from across the country, who in their own way, are making Canada a better place for all.

    Hear Gitxsan activist Cindy Blackstock describe her childhood in northern British Columbia where she straddled two communities—Indigenous and non-Indigenous—and her subsequent fight for equitable health care for all children as the executive director of the First Nations Child and Family Caring Society. Meet Matt Devlin, the US broadcaster who found a new home in Canada when he got a job with the Toronto Raptors, and read how he helped calm the crowd when a gunman began shooting in Nathan Phillips Square after the team’s NBA championship win. From the young woman living with Crohn’s disease—and proudly modeling her ostomy bag—to the rabbi whose family fled Nazi Germany—and who now gives the benediction on Parliament Hill each Remembrance Day—Extraordinary Canadians celebrates the people who have overcome adversity and broken down barriers to champion the rights and freedoms of everyone who calls Canada home.

    Featuring voices from all walks of life—advocates, politicians, doctors, veterans, immigrants, business leaders, and more—this collection gets to the heart of what it means to be Canadian. These stories will change the way you see your country and make you fall in love with Canada all over again.
    View this title on BNC CataList
  9. The Fires of Vengeance
    by Evan Winter
    Orbit
    Nov 10, 2020
    FICTION / Fantasy / Action & Adventure
    Hardback
    The Fires of Vengeance
    by Evan Winter
    Orbit
    Nov 10, 2020
    FICTION / Fantasy / Action & Adventure
    Hardback
    In this "relentlessly gripping, brilliant" epic fantasy (James Islington), an ousted queen must join forces with a young warrior in order to reclaim her throne and save her people.

    Tau and his Queen, desperate to delay the impending attack on the capital by the indigenous people of Xidda, craft a dangerous plan. If Tau succeeds, the Queen will have the time she needs to assemble her forces and launch an all out assault on her own capital city, where her sister is being propped up as the 'true' Queen of the Omehi.

    If the city can be taken, if Tsiora can reclaim her throne, and if she can reunite her people then the Omehi have a chance to survive the onslaught.

    "This gritty series set in a South African–inspired fantasy world is an intense reading experience, and the second book is just as phenomenal as the first."—BuzzFeed News

    "The Fires of Vengeance is epic fantasy at its finest."
    —Winter Is Coming

    The Books of The Burning Series
    The Rage of Dragons
    The Fires of Vengeance
    The Lord of Demons
    View this title on BNC CataList
  10. A Galway Epiphany
    by Ken Bruen
    Mysterious Press
    Nov 13, 2020
    FICTION / Mystery & Detective / General
    Hardback
    A Galway Epiphany
    by Ken Bruen
    Mysterious Press
    Nov 13, 2020
    FICTION / Mystery & Detective / General
    Hardback

    In the newest novel in Bruen’s thrilling series, ex-cop turned private eye Jack Taylor is pulled out of his quiet new life on a farm by three mysteries that soon prove dangerously linked

    Jack Taylor has finally escaped the despair of his violent life in Galway in favor of a quiet retirement in the country with his friend Keefer, a former Rolling Stones roadie, and a falcon named Maeve. But on a day trip back into the city to sort out his affairs, Jack is hit by a truck in front of Galway’s Famine Memorial, left in a coma but mysteriously without a scratch on him.

    When he awakens weeks later, he finds Ireland in a frenzy over the so-called “Miracle of Galway.” People have become convinced that the two children spotted tending to him are saintly, and the site of the accident sacred. The Catholic Church isn’t so sure, and Jack is commissioned to help find the children to verify the miracle or expose the stunt.

    But Jack isn’t the only one looking for these children. A fraudulent order of nuns needs them to legitimatize its sanctity and becomes involved with a dangerous arsonist. Soon, the building in which the children are living burns down. Jack returns to his old tricks, and his old demons, as his quest becomes personal.

    Sharp and sardonic as ever, “the Godfather of the modern Irish crime novel” (Irish Independent) is at his brutal and ceaselessly suspenseful best in A Galway Epiphany.

    View this title on BNC CataList

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