Hit parade

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Stephen King. The Ransome women / by John Farris

The Ransome Women by John Farris: A psychological thriller that questions the role beauty plays in society and the cult of celebrity. A young and beautiful, starving artist catches a break when her idol, the reclusive portraitist John Ransome offers her a lucrative modeling contract. But how long will her excitement last when she discovers the fate shared by all Ransome's past subjects? [The Things They Left Behind][1] by Stephen King: A hauntingly moving tale of survival guilt in New York City after 9/11. Scott Staley called in sick for his job at the World Trade Center that Tuesday morning. Now in the aftermath of 9/11, he must face his guilty conscience as he begins to find the things his deceased coworkers left behind. [1]:

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Anne Emery

Long ago, Declan Burke fled Ireland in the dark of night, started a new life in New York City, and has never looked back--until one morning he picks up the newspaper and reads the obituary of one Cathal Murphy. He sees at once that the obituary is not about Murphy at all, but is instead a coded summary of his own life and probably a thinly veiled death threat. After turning to an attorney for advice, Declan decides not to reveal his IRA past, but keeping old secrets becomes much more difficult after a burst of gunfire at a family wedding and the appearance of Leo Killeen, the commanding officer of Declan's former battalion in Dublin. The subsequent discovery of a body in a rundown Brooklyn flat brings other enigmatic characters onto the scene, including a woman nursing a grudge; a shady importer of Irish artifacts; the owner of a nightclub frequented by the New York mob; a sultry chanteuse; and Declan's hotheaded son Francis, whose resentment and criminal activities force Declan, the past master of self-control, to confront the suspicion that he has been manipulated all along by an unseen hand.--Publisher description (

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Khilari Mantel

Alison Hart is a medium by trade: dead people talk to her, and she talks back. With her flat-eyed, flint-hearted sidekick, Colette, she tours the dormitory towns of London's orbital road, passing on messages from dead ancestors: 'Granny says she likes your new kitchen units.' Alison's ability to communicate with spirits is a torment rather than a gift. Behind her plump, smiling and bland public persona is a desperate woman. She knows that the next life holds terrors that she must conceal from her clients. Her days and nights are haunted by the men she knew in her childhood, the thugs and petty criminals who preyed upon her hopeless, addled mother, Emmie. They infiltrate her house, her body and her soul; the more she tries to be rid of them, the stronger and nastier they become. This tenth novel by Hilary Mantel is a witty and deeply sinister story of dark secrets and forces, set in an England that jumps at its own shadow, a country whose banal self-absorption is shot through by fear of the engulfing dark.

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Laird Hunt

"Laird Hunt's debut follows the amusing but deadly debacles of its narrator, an anonymous secret operative embroiled in the dark underworld of transnational organized crime. When he botches an assignment for the clandestine organization that employs him, everyone in his life - including his new girlfriend - is revealed to be either true-blue or double operative. As he frugally doles out clues about his dangerous work, the reader inevitably becomes both confidante and fellow gumshoe. The narrator's final assignment - to identify his own assassin - dismantles the reader's own analysis of the evidence and reveals that things are not always what they seem."--BOOK JACKET.