Happy Place
Harriet and Wyn have been the perfect couple since they met in college—they go together like salt and pepper, honey and tea, lobster and rolls. Except, now—for reasons they’re still not discussing—they don’t.
They broke up six months ago. And still haven’t told their best friends.
Which is how they find themselves sharing the largest bedroom at the Maine cottage that has been their friend group’s yearly getaway for the last decade. Their annual respite from the world, where for one vibrant, blue week they leave behind their daily lives; have copious amounts of cheese, wine, and seafood; and soak up the salty coastal air with the people who understand them most.
Only this year, Harriet and Wyn are lying through their teeth while trying not to notice how desperately they still want each other. Because the cottage is for sale and this is the last week they’ll all have together in this place. They can’t stand to break their friends’ hearts, and so they’ll play their parts. Harriet will be the driven surgical resident who never starts a fight, and Wyn will be the laid-back charmer who never lets the cracks show. It’s a flawless plan (if you look at it from a great distance and through a pair of sunscreen-smeared sunglasses). After years of being in love, how hard can it be to fake it for one week… in front of those who know you best?
A couple who broke up months ago make a pact to pretend to still be together for their annual weeklong vacation with their best friends in this glittering and wise new novel from #1 New York Times bestselling author Emily Henry.
Count My Lies
Perfect for fans of Lisa Jewell, Amy Tintera, and Laura Dave, this is a voice-driven, read-in-one-night suspense thriller narrated by a compulsive liar whose little white lies allow her to enter the life and comfort of a wealthy married couple who are harboring much darker secrets themselves.
Sloane Caraway is a liar.
Harmless lies, mostly, to make her self-proclaimed sad, little life a bit more interesting.
So when Sloane sees a young girl in tears at a park one afternoon, she can’t help herself—she tells the girl’s (very attractive) dad she’s a nurse and helps him pull a bee stinger from his daughter’s foot.
With this lie and chance encounter, Sloane becomes the nanny for the wealthy and privileged Jay and Violet Lockhart. The perfect New York couple, with a brownstone, a daughter in private school, and summers on Block Island.
But maybe Sloane isn’t the only one lying, and all that’s picture-perfect harbors a much more dangerous truth. Be careful what you lie for.
The Last Party
A loving mother. A notorious murderer. They both have reasons to hide their secrets in a novel of escalating shock and suspense by New York Times bestselling author A. R. Torre.
Perla Wultz lives with her husband, Grant, and their precious daughter, Sophie, in a gated Pasadena community. Affluent, sociable, and accomplished, Perla plays the part of loving wife and mother to perfection. It seems an ideal life, if not for a decades-old crime that has become Perla’s dark and consuming secret obsession.
Twenty-three years ago, Leewood Folcrum confessed to murdering two young girls during a birthday party. Though he’s been condemned to a life sentence, his crime is not forgotten. Not by Perla, nor by an inquisitive doctoral student interviewing Folcrum for his dissertation. He’s getting the killer to open up—about his motives, his confession, and the truth of what really happened on that horrible night.
As the past and the present entwine, the deceptions behind the infamous murder begin to surface. But who’s deceiving who now? And why? And as an ingeniously twisted plan is set in motion, who will be the next to die?
What Remains of Teague House
Three siblings reckon with the darkness hidden within their family after multiple graves are discovered behind their childhood home.
When the Rawlins family matriarch unexpectedly dies, all three adult children rush home. What they find is a house bursting with grief, dark memories surfacing around each corner, and multiple bodies buried deep in the woods. The Rawlinses want to believe these discoveries point to a crime long past. But one of the graves behind Teague House is fresh, the earth disturbed just that week—and its inhabitant is a local woman they knew.
Is the youngest Rawlins sibling with something to hide guilty of her murder? Is his sister experiencing false memories of her late father digging near the graves? Why is their aunt in such a rush to leave town after her sister's funeral?
Enter private detective Maddie Reed, who has her own reasons for being curious about the bodies buried behind Teague House. Detective Reed sets out to unmask a killer—one she may have been hunting all her life.
The Imagined Life
From the award-winning, internationally acclaimed writer, a taut, elegiac novel about a man trying to uncover the truth about the father who left him behind
Steven Mills has reached a crossroads. His wife and son have left, and they may not return. Which leaves him determined to find out what happened to his own father, a brilliant, charismatic professor who disappeared in 1984 when Steve was twelve, on a wave of ignominy.
As Steve drives up the coast of California, seeking out his father’s friends, family members, and former colleagues, the novel offers us tantalizing glimpses into Steve’s childhood—his parents’ legendary pool parties, the black-and-white films on the backyard projector, secrets shared with his closest friend. Each conversation in the present reveals another layer of his father’s past, another insight into his disappearance. Yet with every revelation, his father becomes more difficult to recognize. And, with every insight, Steve must confront truths about his own life.
Rich in atmosphere, and with a stunningly sure-footed emotional compass, The Imagined Life is a probing, nostalgic novel about the impossibility of understanding one’s parents, about first loves and failures, about lost innocence, about the unbreakable bonds between a father and a son.
