The fifth gospel
Ian Caldwell
A lost gospel, a contentious relic, and a dying pope's final wish converge to send two brothers--both Vatican priests--on an intellectual quest to untangle Christianity's greatest historical mystery.
Read Time: ~12.3 hr
Too close to home
by Linwood Barclay (2008)
About this book
"The night they killed our neighbors, we never heard a thing." In a quiet suburban neighborhood, in a house only one door away, a family is brutally murdered for no apparent reason. And you think to yourself: It could have been us. And you start to wonder: What if we're next?Linwood Barclay, critically acclaimed author of No Time for Goodbye, brings terror closer than ever before in a thriller where murder strikes in the place we feel safest of all. Promise Falls isn't the kind of community where a family is shot to death in their own home. But that is exactly what happened to the Langleys one sweltering summer night, and no one in this small upstate New York town is more shocked than their next-door neighbors, Jim and Ellen Cutter. They visited for the occasional barbecue and their son, Derek, was friends with the Langleys' boy, Adam; but how well did they really know their neighbors? That's the question Jim Cutter is asking, and the answers he's getting aren't reassuring. Albert Langley was a successful, well-respected criminal lawyer, but was he so good at getting criminals off that he was the victim of revenge--a debt his innocent family also paid in blood? From the town's criminally corrupt mayor to the tragic suicide of a talented student a decade before, Promise Falls has more than its share of secrets. And Jim Cutter, failed artist turned landscaper, need look no further than his own home and his wife Ellen's past to know that things aren't always what they seem. But not even Jim and Ellen are ready to know that their son was in the Langley house the night the family was murdered.Suddenly the Cutters must face the unthinkable: that a murderer isn't just stalking too close to home but is inside it already. For the Langleys weren't the first to die and they won't be the last.From the Hardcover edition.
Setting / LocationNew York City
Story EraModern Era
Protagonist / CoreToo close to home Lead Character
Readers who enjoyed this also loved
Ask me no questions
Marina Budhos
The lives of fourteen-year-old Nadira, her sister, and their parents are radically changed following the events of September 11, 2001, when being Muslim means being a suspected terrorist and their expired visas result in the arrest of Nadira's father when the family flees New York City for Canada.
Southern Lights
Danielle Steell
Danielle Steel sweeps us from a Manhattan courtroom to the Deep South in her powerful new novel--at once a behind-closed-doors look into the heart of a family and a tale of crime and punishment.Eleven years have passed since Alexa Hamilton left the South behind, fleeing the pain of her ex-husband's betrayal and the cruelty of his prominent Charleston family. Now an assistant D.A. in Manhattan, Alexa has finally put her demons to rest, making a name for herself as a top prosecutor, handling the city's toughest cases while juggling her role as devoted single mom to a teenage daughter. But everything changes when Alexa is handed her latest case: the trial of accused serial killer Luke Quentin. Sifting through mountains of forensic evidence, Alexa prepares for a high-stakes trial...until threatening letters throw her private life into turmoil. The letters are addressed to her beautiful seventeen-year-old daughter, Savannah, whom Alexa has been raising alone since her divorce. Alexa is certain that Quentin is behind the letters--and that they are too dangerous to ignore. Suddenly she must make the toughest choice of all--and send her daughter back to the very place she swore she would never return to: the place where her marriage ended in heartbreak...her ex-husband's world of southern tradition, memories of betrayal, and the antebellum charm of Charleston.Now, while Alexa's trial builds to a climax in New York, her daughter is settling into southern life, discovering a part of her family history and a father she barely knows--from the ice-cold stepmother who stole him away to a fascinating ancestry and a half-sister and half-brothers she comes to love. As secrets are exposed and old wounds are healed, Alexa and Savannah, after a season in different worlds, will come together again--strengthened by the challenges they have faced, changed by the mysteries they have unraveled, and with Savannah now at home in the southern world her mother fled.In this masterfully told tale, Danielle Steel creates a stunning array of contrasts: from the gritty chaos of Manhattan's criminal court system to the seductive gentility of the South, from the rage of a hardened criminal to the tender bond between a mother and daughter--and a loving father who has welcomed Savannah home at last. A novel that will catch you off guard at every turn, Southern Lights is Danielle Steel at her electrifying best.From the Hardcover edition.
Return to Oakpine
Ron Carlson
"In 1999, four friends who once played in a high school band reunite in their hometown, Oakpine, WY--Craig and Frank never left, Mason is back from Denver to sell his parents' home, and Jimmy, who had gone to New York and become a famous novelist, has returned because he is dying."--Library Journal.