Every ​Seventh Wave

Amy A. Bartol - Indebted
I ​hang my head in sorrow for just a moment when I know I am truly alone. I feel like I’m going to my execution, just as he had said. Then I move forward again. I hop a fence of fieldstone and cross a field dotted with Queen Anne’s lace. Goose bumps rise on my arms as I pass the cluster of windmills that I have seen in a dream. The scent is sweet in the field though, not the scent of heat, like it had been when it was forced upon me in visions. I gaze down the hill, beyond the small, whitewashed house that I knew would be there. The church looms dark and grim with its rough-hewn, timber façade, capped by tall, oblong spires reaching to the sky. Black, ominous clouds have collected above the roofline, as if Heaven is showing me the way.

Amy A. Bartol - Inescapable
My ​name is Evie Claremont and this was to be the making of me--my freshman year of college. I had been hoping that once I had arrived on Crestwood's campus, the nightmare that I've been having would go away. It hasn't. I may be an inexperienced seventeen-year-old, but I'm grounded...sane. Since meeting sophomore Reed Wellington, however, nothing makes any sense. Whenever he is near, I feel an attraction to him--a magnetic kind of force pulling me towards him. I know what you're thinking...that sounds fairly awesome. Yeah, it would--if he liked me, but Reed acts as if I'm the worst thing that's ever happened to Crestwood...or him. But, get this, for some reason every time I turn around he's there, barging into my life. What is the secret he is keeping from me? I'm hoping that it is anything but what I expect: that he is not exactly normal...and neither am I. So maybe Crestwood won't be the making of me, but it could be the breaking of me. I have been left to wonder if the dark future my dream is foretelling is...inescapable.

Amy A. Bartol - Intuition
I ​don’t open my eyes so I can’t see him, but I can smell him. He thickens the air I breathe, choking me with his scent…his aroma. I shiver. I have to resist. If I’m not strong, then I will be relegated to the same fate as this predator whose sickness infects me even now. But now, I crave him and he knows that; he has been counting on my need to end the gnawing pain. How he would savor my surrender. I’m alive, but how much longer will it take until I beg him not to be?

Mary Stewart - This ​Rough Magic
When ​Lucy Waring came to Corfu to visit her sister Phyllida Forli, she was elated to discover that the castello above their villa had been rented to Sir Julian Gale. A very minor cog in the London theatre, Lucy not unnaturally felt something close to reverence for Sir Julian, one of the brilliant lights of England's theatrical world. But any hope of meeting him was quickly dashed by Phyl, who indicated, with uncharacteristic vagueness, that not all was well with the great man and that his composer son, Max, discouraged visitors, particularly strangers . . . Lucy encounted Max Gale the first morning of her arrival—and a tempestuous meeting it was. For Lucy had made friends with an enchanting dolphin by whom she had first been thoroughly frightened then completely captivated. It was when she was sunning on the rocks above the cove that the shots came, and the only person in view was Max Gale . . . Thus begins a series of mystifying and thoroughly frightening events which tinge the otherwise sparkling setting of Corfu with the dark hues of violence. In every way This Rough Magic measures up to its predecessors—in spirited characterization, vivid description, glowing romance and unrelenting excitement. This is storytelling at its best. —jacket William Morrow edition, 1964

Jodi Picoult - Salem ​Falls
When ​Jack St. Bride arrives in the small town of Salem Falls, all he wants is to escape his past. He's spent the last eight months in jail, after being falsely accused of having an affair with an underage student at the school where he taught. In Salem Falls, he gets a job as a dishwasher at a local diner and tentatively begins a romance with the diner's owner, Addie, who is still mourning the death of her young daughter, born after Addie was raped in high school by three drunk boys. As she and Jack fall in love, they both see hope for the future. But their newfound love is threatened when the residents of Salem Falls learn of Jack's conviction and begin harassing him. When, predictably, a teenage girl accuses Jack of raping her, he finds himself back in jail, fighting a serious charge and the town's prejudice. Addie wrestles with her doubts and memories of her own rape, but she believes in Jack and goes on a quest of her own to find out the truth about Jack's initial conviction, even as the Salem Falls trial opens.

Ali McNamara - From ​Notting Hill with Love… Actually
Scarlett ​O’Brien is in love . . . with the movies. Utterly hooked on Hugh Grant, crazy about Richard Curtis, dying with lust for Johnny Depp, Scarlett spends her days with her head in the clouds and her nights with her hand in a huge tub of popcorn. Which is not exactly what her sensible, DIY-obsessed fiancé David has in mind for their future. So when Scarlett has the chance to house-sit an impossibly grand mansion in Notting Hill – the setting of one of her all-time favourite movies – she jumps at the chance to live out her film fantasies one last time. It’s just a shame that her new neighbour Sean is so irritating – and so irritatingly handsome, too. As a chaotic comedy of her very own erupts around Scarlett, she begins to realise there’s more to life than seating plans and putting up shelves. What sort of happy ending does she really want? Will it be a case of Runaway Bride or Happily Ever After? The big white wedding looms, and Scarlett is running out of time to decide . . .

Patrick Süskind - Perfume
An ​acclaimed bestseller and international sensation, Patrick Suskind's classic novel provokes a terrifying examination of what happens when one man's indulgence in his greatest passion-his sense of smell-leads to murder. In the slums of eighteenth-century France, the infant Jean-Baptiste Grenouille is born with one sublime gift-an absolute sense of smell. As a boy, he lives to decipher the odors of Paris, and apprentices himself to a prominent perfumer who teaches him the ancient art of mixing precious oils and herbs. But Grenouille's genius is such that he is not satisfied to stop there, and he becomes obsessed with capturing the smells of objects such as brass doorknobs and frest-cut wood. Then one day he catches a hint of a scent that will drive him on an ever-more-terrifying quest to create the "ultimate perfume"-the scent of a beautiful young virgin. Told with dazzling narrative brillance, Perfume is a hauntingly powerful tale of murder and sensual depravity.

Amy Harmon - Making ​Faces
Ambrose ​Young was beautiful. He was tall and muscular, with hair that touched his shoulders and eyes that burned right through you. The kind of beautiful that graced the covers of romance novels, and Fern Taylor would know. She'd been reading them since she was thirteen. But maybe because he was so beautiful he was never someone Fern thought she could have...until he wasn't beautiful anymore. Making Faces is the story of a small town where five young men go off to war, and only one comes back. It is the story of loss. Collective loss, individual loss, loss of beauty, loss of life, loss of identity. It is the tale of one girl's love for a broken boy, and a wounded warrior's love for an unremarkable girl. This is a story of friendship that overcomes heartache, heroism that defies the common definitions, and a modern tale of Beauty and the Beast, where we discover that there is a little beauty and a little beast in all of us.

Krista Ritchie - Becca Ritchie - Addicted ​to You
No ​one would suspect shy Lily Calloway’s biggest secret. While everyone is dancing at college bars, Lily stays in the bathroom. To get laid. Her compulsion leads her to one-night stands, steamy hookups and events she shamefully regrets. The only person who knows her secret happens to have one of his own. Loren Hale’s best friend is his bottle of bourbon. Lily comes at a close second. For three years, they’ve pretended to be in a real relationship, hiding their addictions from their families. They’ve mastered the art of concealing flasks and random guys that filter in and out of their apartment. But when they go on a family boat trip, surrounded by open seas and limited male bodies in sight, Lily’s confronted with a big fear. Only one guy onboard can fill her addiction, and she’s sworn off going there with Loren Hale ever again. Now the only person who can truly help her can barely help himself.

Wilbur Smith - Assegai
It ​is 1913 and ex-soldier turned professional big game hunter, Leon Courtney, is in British East Africa guiding rich and powerful men from America and Europe on safaris in the Masai tribe territories. One of his clients, German industrialist Count Otto von Meerbach, has a company which builds aircraft and vehicles for the Kaiser’s burgeoning army. But Leon had not bargained for falling passionately in love with Eva, the Count’s beautiful and enigmatic mistress. Just prior to the outbreak of World War I, Leon is recruited by his uncle, Penrod Ballantyne, Commander of the British Forces in East Africa , to gather information from von Meerbach. He stumbles on a plot against the British involving the disenchanted survivors of the Boer War, but it is only when Eva and von Meerbach return to Africa that Leon finds out who and what is really behind the conspiracy.

Kerry Wilkinson - Playing ​with Fire
_Those ​who play with fire are going to get burned..._ Seven years ago Martin Chadwick set fire to a Manchester pub, not knowing a teenager was sleeping inside. Chadwick’s release from prison is imminent, with journalists gearing up for a good old-fashioned media lynching. With the victim’s father telling the papers he is out for revenge, DS Jessica Daniel is left to keep an eye on Chadwick and his fiery eighteen-year-old son. If that's not enough to keep her occupied, a private investigator is doing a fine job sticking his oar in, it looks like there's a schoolgirl suicide ring in operation, her car is working a little too well, and the endless rain continues to pound her northern home. Jessica's personal and professional life is in the balance - giving her barely enough time to focus on the person in her midst seemingly intent on burning everything to the ground.

Karen Rose - Nothing ​to Fear
After ​kidnapping 12-year-old Alec Vaughn, Sue Conway poses as an abused mother at a shelter for battered women. However, the more shelter director Dana Dupinsky gets to know Sue, the more alarmed she becomes. The only hope may be security expert Ethan Buchanan, who has joined the search for the missing Alec--his godson.

Kerry Wilkinson - Think ​of the Children
_One ​is dead. One is missing. Who is next?_ Detective Sergeant Jessica Daniel is first on the scene as a stolen car crashes on a misty, wet Manchester morning. The driver is dead, but the biggest shock awaits her when she discovers the body of a child wrapped in plastic in the boot of the car. As Jessica struggles to discover the identity of the driver, a thin trail leads her first to a set of clothes buried in the woods and then to a list of children’s names abandoned in an allotment shed. With the winter chill setting in and parents looking for answers, Jessica must find out who has been watching local children, and how this connects to a case that has been unsolved for 14 years.

Dan Brown - The ​Lost Symbol
The ​most anticipated publication of the decade, The Lost Symbol is the stunning new thriller featuring Robert Langdon. Six years in the writing, it is Dan Brown's extraordinary sequel to his internationally bestselling Angels & Demons and The Da Vinci Code. Nothing is ever what it first appears in a Dan Brown novel. Set over a breathtaking 12 hour time span, the book's narrative takes the reader on an exhilarating journey through a masterful and unexpected landscape as Professor of Symbology, Robert Langdon, is once again called into action.

Iain Banks - Complicity
Cameron ​Colley, a cheerfully subversive journalist, is suspected of committing a series of revenge crimes against vicious criminals and must clear his name by finding the vigilante--but the real culprit turns out to be very close to home.

Robert Ludlum - The ​Parsifal Mosaic
Michael ​Havelock's world died on a moonlit beach on the Costa Brava. He watched as his partner and lover, Jenna Karats, double agent, was efficiently gunned down by his own agency. There was nothing left for him but to quit the game, get out. Until, in one frantic moment on a crowded railroad platform in Rome, Havelock saw his Jenna alive. From then on, he was marked for death by both U.S. and Russian assassins, racing around the globe after his beautiful betrayer, trapped in a massive mosaic of treachery created by a top-level mole with the world in his fist—Parsifal.

Ngaio Marsh - Off ​With His Head
WHEN ​THE versatile Mrs. Bunz arrived at Mardian she said: "I am a student of the folk-dance. ... My little monographs on the Abram Circle Bush and the symbolic tea-pawt have been praised ". She was determined to investigate the rare survival of folk-dancing that was believed to continue to this day at Mardian. No one in the village, from Dame Alice Mardian (" a character out of Surtees") to the five sons of the smith, William Andersen, considered their strange annual ritual—the Dance of The Five Sons—to be any business of the rest of the world, or of Mrs. Biinz. They did not foresee the macabre tragedy that was to take place on " Sword Wednesday" of the winter solstice, amidst the disguises, the dancing, and the torches that lit the ruins of Mardian Castle for the ancient ceremony. Superintendent Roderick AUeyn found himself faced with a case of great complexity—and also with a flat impossibility. He made many surprising discoveries in his investigations, which required that he should understand the movements of the dancers in their prehistoric rites. At a gruesome reconstruction of the night of Sword Wednesday the impossibility is explained and the murderer revealed in an astonishing climax. This successor to Scales of Justice and Ngaio Marsh's other fine detective stories will again delight her many readers.

Carlos Ruiz Zafón - The ​Shadow of the Wind
Hidden ​in the heart of the old city of Barcelona is the 'cemetery of lost books', a labyrinthine library of obscure and forgotten titles that have long gone out of print. To this library, a man brings his 10-year-old son Daniel one cold morning in 1945. Daniel is allowed to choose one book from the shelves and pulls out LA SOMBRA DEL VIENTO by Julian Carax. But as he grows up, several people seem inordinately interested in his find. Then, one night, as he is wandering the old streets once more, Daniel is approached by a figure who reminds him of a character from LA SOMBRA DEL VIENTO, a character who turns out to be the devil. This man is tracking down every last copy of Carax's work in order to burn them. What begins as a case of literary curiosity turns into a race to find out the truth behind the life and death of Julian Carax and to save those he left behind. A page-turning exploration of obsession in literature and love, and the places that obsession can lead.

Kerry Wilkinson - Thicker ​than Water
When ​Cameron and Eleanor Sexton arrive home to find their teenage babysitter missing, their immediate concern is for their young daughter. Detective Sergeant Jessica Daniel is dispatched to find out what's going on, but with all apparently well, she thinks she’s been sent on a fool’s errand. Soon, the teenager’s body is discovered in an apparently random house on the other side of Manchester. The puzzle deepens when a journalist points out that someone placed an obituary for him just days before his disappearance. A string of clues point to a club whose owner has an unhealthy interest in Jessica, but then something happens which makes her question the very core of her beliefs. She is left to turn to the one person she knows she can rely on... but is that trust misplaced?

Kerry Wilkinson - The ​Woman in Black
_Severed ​body parts. A woman in shadows. These are the only clues._ Someone has left a severed hand in the centre of Manchester and the only clue Detective Sergeant Jessica Daniel has to go on is CCTV footage of a woman in a long black robe placing it carefully on the ground. With a lengthy missing persons list and frantic families wondering if the body part could belong to their absent loved ones, she has plenty to deal with – and that’s before a detached finger arrives for her in the post. By the time a second hand is found and a local MP’s wife goes missing, Jessica is left struggling to find out who the appendages belong to, how they are connected and just what the mysterious woman in black has to do with it all.