The Night Strangers by Chris Bohjalian

In a dusty corner of a basement in a rambling Victorian house in northern New Hampshire, a door has long been sealed shut with 39 six-inch-long carriage bolts.

The home's new owners are Chip and Emily Linton and their twin ten-year-old daughters. Together they hope to rebuild their lives there after Chip, an airline pilot, has to ditch his 70-seat regional jet in Lake Champlain after double engine failure. Unlike the Miracle on the Hudson, however, most of the passengers aboard Flight 1611 die on impact or drown. The body count? Thirty-nine—a coincidence not lost on Chip when he discovers the number of bolts in that basement door. Meanwhile, Emily finds herself wondering about the women in this sparsely populated White Mountain village—self-proclaimed herbalists—and their interest in her fifth-grade daughters. Are the women mad? Or is it her husband, in the wake of the tragedy, whose grip on sanity has become desperately tenuous?

 

The result is a poignant and powerful ghost story with all the hallmarks readers have come to expect from bestselling novelist Chris Bohjalian: a palpable sense of place, an unerring sense of the demons that drive us, and characters we care about deeply.

 

The difference this time? Some of those characters are dead.

 

375 pages (October 2011)

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Title Read-alikes: The Other Child by Joanne Fluke; The Grip of It by Jac Jemc; House of Echoes by Brendan Duffy; The Winter People by Jennifer McMahon; The Chill by Scott Carson; The Dead Path by Stephen M. Irwin; Those Across the River by Christopher Buehlman; The Twisted Ones by T. Kingfisher; The Shape of Night by Tess Gerritsen;  Stay Awake by Dan Chaon; Nightwoods by Charles Frazier; The Weird Sisters by Eleanor Brown; and I'd Know You Anywhere by Laura Lippman.

The Innocents by Francesca Segal

A smart and slyly funny tale of love, temptation, confusion, and commitment; a triumphant and beautifully executed recasting of Edith Wharton's The Age of Innocence.

Newly engaged and unthinkingly self-satisfied, twenty-eight-year-old Adam Newman is the prize catch of Temple Fortune, a small, tight-knit Jewish suburb of London. He has been dating Rachel Gilbert since they were both sixteen and now, to the relief and happiness of the entire Gilbert family, they are finally to marry. To Adam, Rachel embodies the highest values of Temple Fortune; she is innocent, conventional, and entirely secure in her community—a place in which everyone still knows the whereabouts of their nursery school classmates. Marrying Rachel will cement Adam's role in a warm, inclusive family he loves.

But as the vast machinery of the wedding gathers momentum, Adam feels the first faint touches of claustrophobia, and when Rachel's younger cousin Ellie Schneider moves home from New York, she unsettles Adam more than he'd care to admit. Ellie—beautiful, vulnerable, and fiercely independent—offers a liberation that he hadn't known existed: a freedom from the loving interference and frustrating parochialism of North West London. Adam finds himself questioning everything, suddenly torn between security and exhilaration, tradition and independence. What might he be missing by staying close to home?

282 pages (June 2012)

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Title Read-alikes: The Marriage of Opposites by Alice Hoffman; Mothering Sunday by Graham Swift; The Boston Girl by Anita Diamant; Someone by Alice McDermott; This Is Where I Leave You by Jonathan Tropper; The Lost Family by Jenna Blum; One Day in December by Josie Silver; American Stranger by David Plante; Eternal Life by Dara Horn; Astonish Me by Maggie Shipstead; The Possibilities by Kaui Hart Hemmings ; The Middlesteins by Jami Attenberg; and The Flight of Gemma Hardy by Margot Livesy.

All Other Nights by Dara Horn

How is tonight different from all other nights? For Jacob Rappaport, a Jewish soldier in the Union army during the Civil War, it is a question his commanders have already answered for him -- on Passover, 1862, he is ordered to murder his own uncle in New Orleans, who is plotting to assassinate President Lincoln. After this harrowing mission, Jacob is recruited to pursue another enemy agent, the daughter of a Virginia family friend. But this time, his assignment isn’t to murder the spy, but to marry her. Their marriage, with its riveting and horrifying consequences, reveals the deep divisions that still haunt American life today.

Based on real personalities like Judah Benjamin, the Confederacy’s Jewish Secretary of State and spymaster, and on historical facts and events ranging from an African-American spy network to the dramatic self-destruction of the city of Richmond, All Other Nights is a gripping and suspenseful story of men and women driven to the extreme limits of loyalty and betrayal. It is also a brilliant parable of the rift in America that lingers a century and a half later: between those who value family and tradition first, and those dedicated, at any cost, to social and racial justice for all.

In this eagerly-awaited third novel, award-winning author Dara Horn brings us page-turning storytelling at its best. Layered with meaning, All Other Nights presents the most American of subjects with originality and insight -- and the possibility of reconciliation that might yet await us.                

363 pages (April 2009)

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Title Read-alikes: Secessia by Kent Wascom; Rebel by Bernard Cornwell; On Secret Service by John Jakes; My Name Is Mary Sutter by Robin Oliveira; Sisters of Shiloh by Kathy Hepinstall; Neverhome by Laird Hunt; The March by E. L. Doctorow; I Shall Be Near to You by Erin Lindsay McCabe; The Wives of Henry Oades by Johanna Moran; The Invisible Bridge by Julie Orringer; Wherever You Go by Joan Leegant; If All the Seas Were Ink by Ilana Kurshan; and The Book of Separation: a memoir by Tova Mirvis.

Man's Search for Meaning by Viktor Frankl

Psychiatrist Viktor Frankl's memoir has riveted generations of readers with its descriptions of life in Nazi death camps and its lessons for spiritual survival. Between 1942 and 1945 Frankl labored in four different camps, including Auschwitz, while his parents, brother, and pregnant wife perished. Based on his own experience and the experiences of those he treated in his practice, Frankl argues that we cannot avoid suffering but we can choose how to cope with it, find meaning in it, and move forward with renewed purpose. Frankl's theory—known as logotherapy, from the Greek word logos ("meaning")—holds that our primary drive in life is not pleasure, as Freud maintained, but the discovery and pursuit of what we personally find meaningful.

At the time of Frankl's death in 1997, Man's Search for Meaning had sold more than 10 million copies in twenty-four languages. A 1991 reader survey by the Library of Congress and the Book-of-the-Month Club that asked readers to name a "book that made a difference in your life" found Man's Search for Meaning among the ten most influential books in America.

165 pages (January 1962)

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Title Read-alikes: Unbroken by Laura Hillenbrand; The Choice by Edith Eva Eger; Landscapes of the Metropolis of Death by Otto Dov Kulka; Thinking, Fast and Slow by Daniel Kahneman; Last Stop Auschwitz by E. de Wind; Sapiens by Yuval Noah Harari; Eyewitness Auswitz by Filip Müller; After Such Knowledge by Eva Hoffman; The Muselmann at the Water Cooler by Eli Pfefferkorn; By Chance Alone by Max Eisen; The Sunflower by Simon Wiesenthal; Quiet by Susan Cain; The Alchemist by Paulo Coelho; and Night by Elie Wiesel.

The House at Sugar Beach: in search of a lost African childhood by Helene Cooper

Helene Cooper is "Congo," a descendant of two Liberian dynasties -- traced back to the first ship of freemen that set sail from New York in 1820 to found Monrovia. Helene grew up at Sugar Beach, a twenty-two-room mansion by the sea. Her childhood was filled with servants, flashy cars, a villa in Spain, and a farmhouse up-country. It was also an African childhood, filled with knock foot games and hot pepper soup, heartmen and neegee. When Helene was eight, the Coopers took in a foster child -- a common custom among the Liberian elite. Eunice, a Bassa girl, suddenly became known as "Mrs. Cooper's daughter."

For years the Cooper daughters -- Helene, her sister Marlene, and Eunice -- blissfully enjoyed the trappings of wealth and advantage. But Liberia was like an unwatched pot of water left boiling on the stove. And on April 12, 1980, a group of soldiers staged a coup d'état, assassinating President William Tolbert and executing his cabinet. The Coopers and the entire Congo class were now the hunted, being imprisoned, shot, tortured, and raped. After a brutal daylight attack by a ragtag crew of soldiers, Helene, Marlene, and their mother fled Sugar Beach, and then Liberia, for America. They left Eunice behind.

A world away, Helene tried to assimilate as an American teenager. At the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill she found her passion in journalism, eventually becoming a reporter for the Wall Street Journal and the New York Times. She reported from every part of the globe -- except Africa -- as Liberia descended into war-torn, third-world hell.In 2003, a near-death experience in Iraq convinced Helene that Liberia -- and Eunice -- could wait no longer. At once a deeply personal memoir and an examination of a violent and stratified country, The House at Sugar Beach tells of tragedy, forgiveness, and transcendence with unflinching honesty and a survivor's gentle humor. And at its heart, it is a story of Helene Cooper's long voyage home.

354 pages (September 2008)

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Title Read-alikes: Another America by James Ciment; The Lost Daughter by Mary Williams; This Child Will Be Great by Ellen Johnson-Sirleaf; The Dressmaker of Khair Khana by Gayle Tzemach Lemmon; When a Crocodile Eats the Sun by Peter Godwin; First They Killed My Father by Loung Ung; The Barefoot Woman by Scholastique Mukasonga; Cocktail Hour Under the Tree of Forgetfulness by Alexandra Fuller; The Story of My Life by Farah Ahmedi; Brother I'm Dying by Edwidge Danticat; Blue Clay People by William Powers; Too Late to Turn Back by Barbara Greene; and Rainbow's End by Lauren St. John.

The Light Between Oceans by M.L. Stedman

The debut of a stunning new voice in fiction—a novel both heartbreaking and transcendent

After four harrowing years on the Western Front, Tom Sherbourne returns to Australia and takes a job as the lighthouse keeper on Janus Rock, nearly half a day’s journey from the coast. To this isolated island, where the supply boat comes once a season and shore leaves are granted every other year at best, Tom brings a young, bold, and loving wife, Isabel. Years later, after two miscarriages and one stillbirth, the grieving Isabel hears a baby’s cries on the wind. A boat has washed up onshore carrying a dead man and a living baby.

Tom, whose records as a lighthouse keeper are meticulous and whose moral principles have withstood a horrific war, wants to report the man and infant immediately. But Isabel has taken the tiny baby to her breast. Against Tom’s judgment, they claim her as their own and name her Lucy. When she is two, Tom and Isabel return to the mainland and are reminded that there are other people in the world. Their choice has devastated one of them.

M. L. Stedman’s mesmerizing, beautifully written novel seduces us into accommodating Isabel’s decision to keep this “gift from God.” And we are swept into a story about extraordinarily compelling characters seeking to find their North Star in a world where there is no right answer, where justice for one person is another’s tragic loss.

345 pages. (July 2012)

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Title Read-alikes: As Bright As Heaven by Susan Meissner; Latitudes of Melt by Joan Clark; The Orchardist by Amanda Coplin; We Must Be Brave by Frrances Liardet; The Lightkeeper's Wife by Karen Viggers; The Stars Are Fire by Anita Shreve; Ask Again, Yes by Mary Bet Keane; Grief Is the Thing with Feathers by Max Porter; The Memory Keeper's Daughter by Kim Edwards; Lucky Boy by Shanthi Sekaran; Paint Your Wife by Lloyd Jones; The Orphan Train by Christina Baker Kline; and The Invention of Wings by Sue Monk Kidd.

One Thousand White Women: the journals of May Dodd by Jim Fergus

Based on actual historical events, One Thousand White Women is the poignant story of May Dodd and a colorful assembly of pioneer women who, under the auspices of the U.S. government, travel to the western prairies in 1875 to intermarry among the Cheyenne Indians. The covert and controversial “Brides for Indians” program, launched by the administration of Ulysses S. Grant, is intended to help assimilate the Indians into the white man’s world. Toward that end May and her friends embark upon the adventure of their lifetime. Jim Fergus has so vividly depicted the American West that it is as if these diaries are a capsule in time.

Committed to an insane asylum by her blue-blood family for an affair with a man beneath her station, May finds that her only hope of freedom is to participate in a secret government program whereby women from the "civilized" world become the brides of Cheyenne warriors.

She soon falls in love with John Bourke, a gallant young army captain, even though she is married to the great chief Little Wolf. Caught between two worlds and two men, Dodd is forced to make tough decisions that will change her life forever.

434 pages (March 1998)

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Title Read-alikes:  Caroline by Sarah Elizabeth Miller; Treasured Grace by Tracie Peterson; Threads West by Reaid Lance Rosenthal; Daughter of a Daughter of a Queen by Sarah Bird; Sin Killer by Larry McMurtry; The Coming by David Osborne; The Lily of the West by Kathleen Morris; River with No Bridge by Karen Wills; Moloka'i by Alan Brennert; The Kitchen House by Kathleen Grissom; The Orphan Train by Christina Kaker Kline; The Book Woman of Troublesome Creek by Kim Michele Richardson; and The Birth of Venus by Sarah Dunant.

Wild: from lost to found on the Pacific Crest Trail by Cheryl Strayed

A powerful, blazingly honest memoir: the story of an eleven-hundred-mile solo hike that broke down a young woman reeling from catastrophe-and built her back up again.

At twenty-two, Cheryl Strayed thought she had lost everything. In the wake of her mother's death, her family scattered and her own marriage was soon destroyed. Four years later, with nothing more to lose, she made the most impulsive decision of her life: to hike the Pacific Crest Trail from the Mojave Desert through California and Oregon to Washington State - and to do it alone. She had no experience as a long-distance hiker, and the trail was little more than "an idea, vague and outlandish and full of promise." But it was a promise of piecing back together a life that had come undone.

Strayed faces down rattlesnakes and black bears, intense heat and record snowfalls, and both the beauty and loneliness of the trail. Told with great suspense and style, sparkling with warmth and humor, Wild vividly captures the terrors and pleasures of one young woman forging ahead against all odds on a journey that maddened, strengthened, and ultimately healed her.

315 pages (March 2012)

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Title Read-alikes: Turning by Jessica J. Lee; Eat, Pray, Love by Elizabeth Gilbert; Braver Than You Think by Maggie Downs; Alone Time by Stephanie Rosenbloom; Grandma Gatewood's Walk by Ben Montgomery; Claiming Ground by Laura Bell; Blue Plate Special by Kate Christensen; Pomegranate Season by Carolyn Polizzotto; A Blistered Kind of Love by Angela Ballard; Into the Wild by Jon Krakauer; The Glass Castle by Jeanette Walls; Dances with Marmots by George C. Spearing; and I Promise Not to Suffer by Gail Storey.

A Lady Cyclist's Guide to Kashgar by Suzanne Joinson

It is 1923. Evangeline (Eva) English and her sister Lizzie are missionaries heading for the ancient Silk Road city of Kashgar. Though Lizzie is on fire with her religious calling, Eva’s motives are not quite as noble, but with her green bicycle and a commission from a publisher to write A Lady Cyclist’s Guide to Kashgar, she is ready for adventure.

In present day London, a young woman, Frieda, returns from a long trip abroad to find a man sleeping outside her front door. She gives him a blanket and a pillow, and in the morning finds the bedding neatly folded and an exquisite drawing of a bird with a long feathery tail, some delicate Arabic writing, and a boat made out of a flock of seagulls on her wall. Tayeb, in flight from his Yemeni homeland, befriends Frieda and, when she learns she has inherited the contents of an apartment belonging to a dead woman she has never heard of, they embark on an unexpected journey together.

A Lady Cyclist’s Guide to Kashgar explores the fault lines that appear when traditions from different parts of an increasingly globalized world crash into one other. Beautifully written, and peopled by a cast of unforgettable characters, the novel interweaves the stories of Frieda and Eva, gradually revealing the links between them and the ways in which they each challenge and negotiate the restrictions of their societies as they make their hard-won way toward home. A Lady Cyclist’s Guide to Kashgar marks the debut of a wonderfully talented new writer.

374 pages. (May 2012)

 

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Title Read-alikes: Everything Under the Sky by Matilde Asensi; The Towers of Trebizond by Rose Macaulay; The Sandalwood Tree by Elle Newmark; Lost Roses by Martha Hall Kelly The Paying Guests by Sarah Waters; The Spies of Shilling Lane by Jennifer Ryan; The Map of Love by Ahdaf Soueif; The Ship of Brides by Jojo Moyes; The Space Between Us by Thrity N. Umrigar; A Thousand Days in Venice by Marlena de Blasi; Swimming with Elephants by Sarah Bamford Seidelmann; The Sandcastle Girls by Chris Bohjalian; and The Lifeboat by Charlotte Rogan.