Hot New Summer Reads
Make Mad the Guilty by William Norris
Description
The Trial of the Next Century
Jason Verne is an All-American Hero. As the first man to set foot on Mars after a solo journey into space, he quickly became a familiar figure in every living room. His good-will and human courage won over the hearts of many, including the daughter of world-famous televangelist, Timothy Grayson. His meteoric rise didn’t end there. While settling into the limelight with his wife and new baby Timmy, he became the perfect candidate to move into the White House.
But this kind of fame and power comes at a price. The midnight kidnapping of Timmy Verne leaves the world aghast. Who would commit the capital offence of breaking the Lindbergh Law?
Then veteran reporter Albert Choate notices suspicious parallels between the kidnapping of the president-elect’s only child and another event that occurred almost a hundred years ago—the Lindbergh Kidnapping. History seems to be repeating itself. Is this some sort of twisted coincidence, or could the Trial of the Century be occurring all over again for some other sinister purpose?
A Note From the Publisher
Make Mad the Guilty is a new edition of William Norris’s novel The Gonzago Principle, which first published in December 2001. The story stretched from the ’80s through what he considered the near future, 2012. The author’s imagination of what would come to pass in coming years did not align fully with reality, and so this book has become something of an alternate history against the author’s original intent. Norris set out to place the Lindbergh Trial in a new context that would help readers understand just how shocking and unjust were the circumstances of that infamous history. We defer to our readers to judge the result, and beg pardon for what has become the language of a man in an era brought to a close by dramatic cultural shifts over the past two decades.
The Child Who Never Was by Jane Renshaw
Description
Her child has been taken. But no-one believes her.
Sarah’s beautiful eighteen-month-old son, Oliver, has gone missing. And she will do anything – anything – to get him back.
But there’s a problem. Everyone around Sarah, even her beloved identical twin, Evie, tells her she never had a son, that he’s a figment of her imagination, that she’s not well, she needs help.
And they’re right, Sarah does need support. She has suffered massive trauma in the past and now she’s severely agoraphobic, very rarely leaves the house, avoids all contact with people.
But Sarah doesn’t care what anyone says - she’s utterly convinced that Oliver is real, that the love she feels for him is true.
And that can only mean one thing – someone has been planning this. And now they’ve taken her child.
The stunning psychological thriller with an ending you won’t see coming. Perfect for fans of K.L. Slater, Mark Edwards, Alex Michaelides.
The Second Mother by Jenny Milchman
Description
Opportunity: Teacher needed in one-room schoolhouse on remote island in Maine. Certification in grades K-8 a must.
Julie Weathers isn't sure if she's running away or starting over, but moving to a remote island off the coast of Maine feels right for someone with reasons to flee her old life. The sun-washed, sea-stormed speck of land seems welcoming, the lobster plentiful, and the community close and tightly knit. She finds friends in her nearest neighbor and Callum, a man who appears to be using the island for the same thing as she: escape.
But as Julie takes on the challenge of teaching the island's children, she comes to suspect that she may have traded one place shrouded in trouble for another, and she begins to wonder if the greatest danger on Mercy Island is its lost location far out to sea, or the people who live there.
The Subjects by Sarah Hopkins
Description
A group of teenagers, facing prison time for various crimes, are instead “rescued” from the legal system and given the opportunity to attend a special school. But the ‘school’ is an isolated rural house and lessons are more than a little unusual. A haunting exploration of incarceration, social engineering and the crimes adults commit against children.
Advance Praise
"The Subjects is a novel with an agenda, enticing us to engage with what is wrong but also to imagine something better...[T]imely, thought-provoking and inspirational.’ —The Saturday Paper
"This is a layered novel, ambitious in scope, its characters vividly drawn and resisting the cliches of delinquency. Its own narrative offers a masterclass, deftly pacing its reveals and alive to the questions they raise. And it does so with a stubborn optimism at its heart."—The Age
“Energetic and compelling from the opening pages. And in Daniel we find a voice that I was worried was disappearing from Australian fiction: unpretentious, smart and lacking in all mawkishness. It’s a joy to hear him, and it is a joy to read a book of such complex ideas that is also alert to the art of storytelling.”—Christos Tsiolkas, author of The Slap
"It's memorable cast of characters, rendered with such energy and compassion...seem to hum with life." — The Big Issue
The Girls Weekend by Jody Gehrman
Description
For fans of Ruth Ware and Lucy Foley, a riveting locked-room mystery about five college friends eager to reunite after years apart--only to be ripped apart again when their host's disappearance unearths dark secrets and old grudges.
Their reunion just became a crime scene . . .
June Moody, a thirty-something English professor, just wants to get away from her recent breakup and reunite with girlfriends over summer break. Her old friend and longtime nemesis, Sadie MacTavish, a mega-successful author, invites June and her college friends to a baby shower at her sprawling estate in the San Juan Islands. June is less than thrilled to spend time with Sadie--and her husband, June's former crush--but agrees to go.
The party gets off to a shaky start when old grudges resurface, but when they wake the next morning, they find something worse: Sadie is missing, the house is in shambles, and bloodstains mar the staircase. None of them has any memory of the night before; they wonder if they were drugged. Everyone's a suspect. Since June had a secret rendezvous with Sadie's husband, she has plenty of reason to suspect herself. Apparently, so do the cops.
A Celtic knot of suspense and surprise, this brooding, atmospheric novel will keep you guessing as each twist reveals a new possibility. It will remind you of friendships hidden in the depths of your own past, and make you wonder how well you really know the people you've loved the longest.
The Monsters We Make by Kali White
Description
For fans of Rene Denfeld and Shari Lapena comes a rich, atmospheric family drama set in the 1980's following the disappearances of two paperboys from a small midwestern town.
It's August 1984, and paperboy Christopher Stewart has gone missing.
Hours later, twelve-year-old Sammy Cox hurries home from his own paper route, red-faced and out of breath, hiding a terrible secret.
Crystal, Sammy's seventeen-year-old sister, is worried by the disappearance but she also sees opportunity: the Stewart case has echoes of an earlier unsolved disappearance of another boy, one town over. Crystal senses the makings of an award winning essay, one that could win her a scholarship - and a ticket out of their small Iowa town.
Officer Dale Goodkind can't believe his bad luck: another town and another paperboy kidnapping. But this time he vows that it won't go unsolved. As the abductions set in motion an unpredictable chain of violent, devastating events touching each life in unexpected ways, Dale is forced to face his own demons.
Told through interwoven perspectives--and based on the real-life Des Moines Register paperboy kidnappings in the early 1980's--The Monsters We Make deftly explores the effects of one crime exposing another and the secrets people keep hidden from friends, families, and sometimes, even themselves.