The City of Lost Fortunes by Bryan Camp

After Hurricane Katrina, demigod Jude has decided to lay low as his power of finding lost things has gone haywire. In a city where so many have lost so much, he is forced to seclude himself from people so as not to be overwhelmed by their loss. He is pulled out of his six-year exile by Dodge, the Fortune god of New Orleans, to play a game of poker with the local trickster gods, the winner fated to become the new “Luck of New Orleans.” Jude is quickly pulled into a fight he wasn't ready for, a game he doesn’t understand, and consequences that will affect the future of New Orleans. When Dodge turns up dead and Jude is the main suspect, he finds himself neck deep in a world he couldn't imagine and forced to push himself and his magic further than he ever thought possible. At each turn, Jude becomes less sure of who he can trust (these are tricksters, after all). With such a complicated plot, this story could well-have gone off the rails, but I'm happy to say that the rich details and complex characters were well-crafted and imaginative. This is a great read for fans of Neil Gaiman’s American Gods or adult readers of Rick Riordan’s demigod series.

- Portia

Underground Fugue by Margot Singer

In a London neighborhood, the lives of four characters quickly become entangled over a few months in 2005. Esther has fled her marriage and life in New York to care for her mother, Lonia, as she battles cancer. As the disease takes hold, Lonia begins to spend more and more of her time in a dream-like state, remembering her escape from Czechoslovakia at the beginning of WWII. Next door is Javad Asghari, a neurosurgeon who fled Iran as a young man to escape the ayatollah’s fundamentalist regime. Javad’s 19-year-old son Amir is a college student struggling to find himself and reconcile his Iranian heritage and British upbringing. Over the long summer Esther and Javad form a friendship that has a possibility of blossoming into romance. When the London Underground is bombed by Islamic fundamentalists, Esther must make a decision that will change her, Javad, and Amir’s lives forever. 

A musical fugue is a piece of music where a musical theme is repeated or imitated throughout the piece by multiple voices, with the parts building onto and weaving in and out of sync with one another. In psychology, a fugue is a dissociation or loss of the self. In her debut novel, Margot Singer masterfully reflects both definitions in one unforgettable story. The fugue theme is prevalent throughout without feeling heavy-handed or forced. It is easy to see the differences among these four characters, and yet their lives are often reflections of one another’s. With plenty of tension and intrigue, Underground Fugue is a stark look at loneliness and isolation that reads like a thriller.

-Portia Kapraun

The Invisible Library by Genevieve Cogman

I will admit that I knew nothing about this book but the title when I picked it up. I assume that I will love any book about books and libraries, and I am rarely disappointed. That being said, The Invisible Library was an especially fun ride for me because the librarians were not just book lovers, but undercover book stealing spies!

Irene works for The Library, a repository that exists outside of time and space where Librarians work to collect and store all works of fiction written in the many alternate worlds of the multiverse. Irene and her new assistant, Kai, are sent to a world to retrieve an original manuscript written by the brothers Grimm. Unfortunately for them, this particular world has become infected by “chaos” making it that much more dangerous and unpredictable. Add in a rogue colleague, a nefarious fairy, giant mechanical insects, and a master villain intent on destroying the Library, and you’ve got an action packed adventure like none other. Fans of Jasper Fforde’s Thursday Next series will enjoy the quick banter, peculiar worlds and entertaining plots, though The Invisible Library underlines its quirkiness with a sense of foreboding.

It’s hard to believe that this is Cogman’s first novel. The characters are well-rounded, the settings written with such detail that I felt like I was there, and the plot was engaging and suspenseful. What’s not surprising is that this book made a number of “Best of” lists for 2016.

-Portia Kapraun

The Shut Eye by Belinda Bauer

 The Shut Eye is a spine-tingling, edge-of-your-seat thriller about a woman who gets involved with a psychic who may be able to find her missing son.

   
     James and Anna Buck live in a small flat, next door to the garage where James works. One day, some months before, James had popped out to buy some fireworks and left the front door open. Their little son, Daniel, wandered outside and went missing
    Five footprints are the only sign that four-year-old Daniel Buck was ever here. And now they are all his mother has left. Every day, Anna Buck guards the little prints in the cement. Polishing them to a shine. Keeping them safe. Spiraling towards insanity.
    When a flyer comes through her door, advertising a psychic, Richard Latham, Anna feels that he could be her last hope. Anna is desperate for hope, which she’s not getting from the police, or her husband James. DCI John Marvel knows Richard Latham. He was used in another case of a missing child – that of twelve year old Edie Evans – a space obsessed tomboy who went missing while riding her bike. The case of missing Edie Evans was never solved.  DCI John Marvel believes that Richard Latham is a fake and not a real "shut eye" at all, but when a woman tells Anna Buck that she has found a true psychic, she grasps at it.  Maybe he can tell her what happened to her son.
     But when she meets the psychic, what she gets is not at all what she suspected.
    The Shut Eye is a riveting read from one of our finest crime writers. Belinda Bauer's six award-winning novels have been translated into twenty-one languages.  The Shut Eye is her fourth novel to be published in North America.

IN A DARK, DARK WOOD by Ruth Ware

     "Why now?" That is the question Leonora Shaw (known to some as Lee, to others as Nora) keeps asking herself. Nora has received a text from someone called Flo and she doesn't know anyone named Flo.  Was this text sent to her by mistake?
       Subject of the text: CLARE'S HEN!!
       The text says, Flo, is Clare's best friend from the university and her maid of honor. The Hen is going to be a weekend away near her old college stomping ground in Northumberland. Nora and Clare Cavendish had been best friends when they were in college at the University at Durham.  Clare and Nora have not be in contact with each other for 10 years and had not left college on the best of terms.  Clare and Nora have some unsolved issues to overcome.
      The Hen weekend ends up being in a dark cold woods in a eerie glass house.  As the first night falls, revelations unfold among friends old and new, and old memories shatters Nora's reserve, and Nora decides to leave. But before Nora and Nina, (who is also a close friend from Nora's college days), can leave a haunting realization creeps in, the party is not alone in the woods.
       Forty-eight hours later, Nora wakes up in a hospital bed, with the knowledge that someone is dead.  She doesn't remember what happened and is wondering, "what have I done?" Nora tries to piece together the events of the last weekend, while the police are waiting outside her hospital door to question her about the chain of events.
      What should have been a cozy and fun-filled weekend deep in the English countryside takes a sinister turn in Ruth Ware's suspenseful, compulsive, and darkly twisted debut psychological thriller. IN A DARK, DARK WOOD is a good, quick read and just in time for Halloween.

A New York Christmas by Anne Perry

     Anne Perry's new Christmas novel is a tale of love, betrayal, greed, murder, and selfless devotion.  Perry's annual yuletide offering is set in New York City the year is 1904.  Twenty-three-year-old Jemima Pitt, the daughter of Thomas Pitt, head of Britain's Special Branch, is crossing the Atlantic.  She is traveling with an acquaintance, Delphinia Cardew, who is to marry the aristocratic Brent Albright in a high-society New York wedding. This wedding will join together two wealthy families.
     But Jemima senses a mysterious shadow darkening the occasion.  Missing from the festivities is Delphinia's mother, Maria, who is marked by disgrace.  Nearly sixteen years ago, Maria abandoned young Delphinia and disappeared-and now the Albrights refuse to mention her name.  But then Harley, the groom's charismatic brother, asks Jemima to help him search for Maria and forestall the scandal that would surely follow if she turned up at the wedding, Jemima agrees to assist him.
     Jemima searches from Hell's Kitchen to Fifth Avenue, the Lower East Side to Central Park looking for Delphinia's mother.  Along the way she meets a handsome young police officer named Patrick Flannery and he assists her in her search for the missing mother. Jemima walks into mortal danger, from which not even Patrick Flannery can protect her. Together they find a surprising ending to the mystery of what happened to Maria.
     Once more, Anne Perry delivers a suspenseful, deeply moving novel, and captures the essence of the holiday spirit.