Appetizers:
Buried in a Book by Lucy Arlington: After losing her job as a journalist at the age of forty-five, Lila Wilkins accepts an internship at A Novel Idea, a thriving literary agency in North Carolina. Being paid to read seems perfect to Lila, although it's difficult with the cast of quirky co-workers and piles of query letters. But when a penniless aspiring author drops dead in the agency's waiting room-and Lila discovers a series of threatening letters-she's determined to find out who wrote him off.
No Parm No Foul by Linda Reilly: After a long hot summer in Balsam Dell, Carly Hale is ready for crisp Vermont weather and gourmet grilled cheeses at her Grilled Cheese Eatery. And the upcoming Halloween food competition is the perfect way to impress the locals. But Ferris Menard, the owner of Sub-a-Dub-Sub, is nursing a serious grudge against Carly. Two days before the competition, one of Carly's employees quit his part-time gig at Menard's sub shop, sending Menard into a serious snit.
Entrées:
Buried in a Good Book by Tamara Berry: A thriller writer who knows way more than anyone should about death and dismemberment. Her young daughter who's more intrigued by dead bodies than she probably should be. An isolated cabin in the woods that's probably―definitely―hiding something. The tiny mountain town that seems less than troubled by a sudden abundance of murders
Real Murders by Charlaine Harris: Though a small town at heart, Lawrenceton, Georgia, has its dark side-and crime buffs. One of whom is librarian Aurora "Roe" Teagarden, a member of the Real Murders Club, which meets once a month to analyze famous cases. It's a harmless pastime—until the night she finds a member killed in a manner that eerily resembles the crime the club was about to discuss.
Desserts:
Spoon to be Dead by Dana Mentink (Oct. 2023): Trinidad Jones is starting the festive season with sugary confections and a heaping scoop of worry as her shake shop enters its first Oregon winter. With snow abound and tourists trickling through, she'll do anything to keep her milkshake dreams afloat, even if it means catering a holiday steamboat party for some new arrivals in town. But when her good-for-nothing ex crashes through her shop's door claiming he's being charged with murder, things go sideways. With clues piling up like whipped cream on a sundae and motives abound, Trinidad and her fellow ex-wives must solve this murder before she's finally thrown for a scoop.
Last Word to the Wise by Ann Claire (Oct. 2023): To sleuth out the truth, the sisters must sift through secrets deeper than the February snowfall. Clues accumulate, but so do suspects, crimes, and betrayals. Ellie and Meg can’t afford to leave any page unturned. Romance may not be their forte, but hearts and lives are on the line, and the Christies know how to solve a mystery—especially when murder is involved.
Appetizers:
One of Us is Lying by Karen McManus: The story of what happens when five strangers walk into detention and only four walk out alive. Everyone is a suspect, and everyone has something to hide.
13 Reasons Why by Jay Asher: Clay Jensen returns home from school to find a strange package with his name on it lying on his porch. Inside he discovers several cassette tapes recorded by Hannah Baker--his classmate and crush--who committed suicide two weeks earlier. Hannah's voice tells him that there are thirteen reasons why she decided to end her life. Clay is one of them. If he listens, he'll find out why.
Entrées:
Grimrose Girls by Laura Pohl: After the mysterious death of their best friend, Ella, Yuki, and Rory are the talk of their elite school, Grimrose Académie. The police ruled Ariane's death as a suicide, but the trio is determined to find out what really happened.
A Good Girl's Guide to Murder by Holly Jackson: The case is closed. Five years ago, schoolgirl Andie Bell was murdered by Sal Singh. The police know he did it. Everyone in town knows he did it. But having grown up in the same small town that was consumed by the murder, Pippa Fitz-Amobi isn't so sure. When she chooses the case as the topic for her final year project, she starts to uncover secrets that someone in town desperately wants to stay hidden. And if the real killer is still out there, how far will they go to keep Pip from the truth?
Desserts:
The Summer She Went Missing by Chelsea Ichaso (March 2024): Last summer, they searched for Audrey Covington. This summer, they'll search for the truth. Paige Redmond has always felt lucky to spend her summers in Clearwater Ridge, with lazy days sunning at the waterfalls and nights partying at the sprawling houses of the rich families who vacation there. The Covingtons are one of these families, and beautiful, brilliant Audrey Covington is Paige's best friend. And last year, when Audrey's crush-worthy brother Dylan finally started noticing Paige, she was sure it would be the best summer ever. Except Audrey didn't seem quite like herself. Then one night, she didn't come home.
Tag, You're Dead by Kathryn Foxfield (Dec. 2023): When teen reality star Anton Frazer unveils his latest stunt - a live-streamed, citywide game of Tag in which the prize is to be one of his live-in acolytes - his fans go wild. The whole world is watching. The contestants are kitted out with body cams, GPS trackers and pressure sensors that, if activated by a competitor, will send them out of the running. They venture into night-time London to hunt each other down. Four contestants in particular have alternative motives for being there, secret reasons to want to win despite the risk: money, revenge, obsession, and fame. And one of them will stop at nothing to be the victor at the end of this adrenaline-and-fear fuelled night...
Appetizers:
How to Sell a Haunted House by Grady Hendrix: Louise's parents have passed away, and she's returning to Charleston, where she grew up, to get their house ready to sell. She doesn't want to deal with the remnants of her father's academic career and her mother's lifelong obsession with puppets and dolls. And she doesn't want to spend time with her younger brother, Mark: their old grudges make that a terrifying prospect. But childhood hurts pale in comparison to the dangers posed by what still lives inside the house. Some houses don't want to be sold... and Louise and Mark's home has other plans for both of them.
Black Sheep by Rachel Harrison: A cynical twentysomething must confront her cultish family in this fiery, irreverent novel. Vesper Wright is in hell. The night she gets fired from her unglamorous restaurant job, she comes home to find an envelope waiting on her doorstep. There's no return address, but she knows exactly who it's from --her estranged family. Inside the envelope is an invitation to the wedding of Vesper's cousin and childhood best friend, Rosemary, the one person she regrets losing touch with. She's getting married at the family home. A home that, according to the rules of her strictly religious family, Vesper shouldn't be allowed to return to. But Vesper has always been an exception to the rule, and something inside her is telling her she has to attend the wedding, even if it means suffering through a weekend in the staunchly religious community she defected from. Even if it means reuniting with her mother, Constance, a former horror film star and forever ice queen. When Vesper's homecoming exhumes a horrifying family secret, she's forced to reckon with her family's fanatical beliefs and her own unexpected identity. This haunting novel explores the way family ties can bind us as we struggle to define our own separate identities
Entrées:
The Last Thing to Burn by Will Dean: On an isolated farm in the United Kingdom, a woman is trapped by the monster who kidnapped her seven years ago. When she discovers she is pregnant, she resolves to protect her child no matter the cost, and starts to meticulously plan her escape. But when another woman is brought into the fold on the farm, her plans go awry. Can she save herself, her child, and this innocent woman at the same time? Or is she doomed to spend the remainder of her life captive on this farm?
The September House by Carrisa Orlando: A thrilling psychological horror debut about a woman who is determined to stay in her dream home even after it becomes haunted, no matter the cost... You can survive anything. That's what Margaret tells herself when the walls of her house start to drip blood every September. She's learned how to live with it...and the other terrifying apparitions that have made the sprawling Victorian house she and her husband bought four years ago turn from a dream home into a living nightmare. But she can outlast all of it. Hal felt differently, though. Her husband couldn't take the hauntings anymore, and he left. But now he's not returning calls, and their daughter Katherine arrives, intent on looking for her missing father, convinced something grim has happened to him. With every desperate attempt Katherine makes at finding Hal, the hauntings at the September House grow more harrowing, because there are some secrets the house needs to keep
Desserts:
A Haunting on the Hill by Elizabeth Hand: Open the door....Holly Sherwin has been a struggling playwright for years, but now, after receiving a grant to develop her play Witching Night, she may finally be close to her big break. All she needs is time and space to bring her vision to life. When she stumbles across Hill House on a weekend getaway upstate, she is immediately taken in by the mansion, nearly hidden outside a remote village. It's enormous, old, and ever-so eerie--the perfect place to develop and rehearse her play. Despite her own hesitations, Holly's girlfriend, Nisa, agrees to join Holly in renting the house for a month, and soon a troupe of actors, each with ghosts of their own, arrive. Yet as they settle in, the house's peculiarities are made known: strange creatures stalk the grounds, disturbing sounds echo throughout the halls, and time itself seems to shift. All too soon, Holly and her friends find themselves at odds not just with one another, but with the house itself. It seems something has been waiting in Hill House all these years, and it no longer intends to walk alone...
Bright Young Women by Jessica Knoll: The book opens on a Saturday night in 1978, hours before a soon-to-be-infamous murderer descends upon a Florida sorority house with deadly results. The lives of those who survive, including sorority president and key witness, Pamela Schumacher, are forever changed. Across the country, Tina Cannon is convinced her missing friend was targeted by the man papers refer to as the All-American Sex Killer--and that he's struck again. Determined to find justice, the two join forces as their search for answers leads to a final, shocking confrontation.
Appetizers:
The Invisible Hour by Alice Hoffman: One June day when Mia Jacob can no longer see a way to survive, the power of words saves her. The Scarlet Letter was written almost two hundred years earlier, but it seems to tell the story of Mia's mother, Ivy, and their life inside the Community--an oppressive cult in western Massachusetts where contact with the outside world is forbidden. But how could this be? How could Nathaniel Hawthorne have so perfectly captured the pain and loss that Mia carries inside her?
Home Before Dark by Riley Sager: Bells that ring themselves. Record players that turn on an play music to empty rooms. Ghosts that can climb out of wardrobes... Maggie Holt doesn't believe in these things, even though they are the details of the story that made her family famous. Twenty-five years ago, she and her parents, Ewan and Jess, moved to Baneberry Hall, a rambling Victorian estate in the Vermont woods. They spent twenty days there before fleeing in the dead of night, an ordeal Ewan later recounted in a horror memoir, House of Horrors. His tale of ghostly happenings and encounters with the malevolent spirits became a worldwide phenomenon, rivaling The Amityville Horror in popularity - and skepticism. Maggie has lived her life in the shadow of her father's book, so when she inherits Baneberry Hall after his death, she returns to renovate the house to prepare it for sale. However, her homecoming is anything but warm. People from the past, chronicled in the House of Horrors, lurk in the shadows. And locals aren't thrilled that their small town has been made infamous thanks to Maggie's father. Even more unnerving is Baneberry Hall itself - a place filled with relics from another era that hint at a history of dark deeds. As Maggie experiences strange occurrences straight out of Ewan's book, she starts to wonder if what he wrote was more fact than fiction. Alternating between Maggie's uneasy homecoming and chapters from her father's book, this is the story of a house with long-buried secrets and a woman's quest to uncover them - even if the truth is far more terrifying than any haunting.
Entrées:
The Square of Sevens by Laura Shepherd-Robinson: An orphaned fortune teller in 18th-century England searches for answers about her long-dead mother and uncovers shocking secrets in this immersive and atmospheric saga perfect for fans of Sarah Waters and Sarah Perry. Raised as a lady amidst the Georgian splendor of Bath, Red’s fortune-telling delights in high society. But she cannot ignore the questions that gnaw at her soul: who was her mother? How did she die? And who are the mysterious enemies her father was always terrified would find him? The pursuit of these mysteries takes her from Cornwall and Bath to London and Devon, from the rough ribaldry of the Bartholomew Fair to the grand houses of two of the most powerful families in England. And while Red’s quest brings her the possibility of great reward, it also leads to grave danger.
The Lighthouse Witches by C.J. Cooke: Two sisters go missing on a remote Scottish island. Twenty years later, one is found-but she's still the same age as when she disappeared. The secrets of witches have reached across the centuries in this chilling Gothic thriller from the author of the acclaimed The Nesting. When single mother Liv is commissioned to paint a mural in a 100-year-old lighthouse on a remote Scottish island, it's an opportunity to start over with her three daughters-Luna, Sapphire, and Clover. When two of her daughters go missing, she's frantic. She learns that the cave beneath the lighthouse was once a prison for women accused of witchcraft. The locals warn her about wildlings, supernatural beings who mimic human children, created by witches for revenge. Liv is told wildlings are dangerous and must be killed. Twenty-two years later, Luna has been searching for her missing sisters and mother. When she receives a call about her youngest sister, Clover, she's initially ecstatic. Clover is the sister she remembers-except she's still seven years old, the age she was when she vanished. Luna is worried Clover is a wildling. Luna has few memories of her time on the island, but she'll have to return to find the truth of what happened to her family. But she doesn't realize just how much the truth will change her.
Desserts:
Midnight is the Darkest Hour by Ashley Winstead: In her small hometown, librarian Ruth Cornier has always felt like an outsider, even as her beloved father rains fire-and-brimstone warnings from the pulpit at Holy Fire Baptist. Unfortunately for Ruth, the only things the townspeople fear more than the God and the Devil are the myths that haunt the area, like the story of the Low Man, a vampiric figure said to steal into sinners' bedrooms and kill them on moonless nights. When a skull is found deep in the swamp next to mysterious carved symbols, Bottom Springs is thrown into uproar--and Ruth realizes only she and Everett, an old friend with a dark past, have the power to comb the town's secret underbelly in search of true evil. A dark and powerful novel like fans have come to expect from Ashley Winstead, Midnight is the Darkest Hour is an examination of the ways we've come to expect love, religion, and stories to save us, the lengths we have to go to in order to take back power, and the monstrous work of being a girl in this world.
Murder by Degrees by Ritu Mukerji: Philadelphia, 1875: It is the start of term at Woman's Medical College of Pennsylvania. Dr. Lydia Weston, professor and anatomist, is immersed in teaching her students in the lecture hall and hospital. When the body of a patient, Anna Ward, is dredged out of the Schuylkill River, the young chambermaid's death is deemed a suicide. But Lydia is suspicious and she is soon brought into the police investigation. Aided by a diary filled with cryptic passages of poetry, Lydia discovers more about the young woman she thought she knew. Through her skill at the autopsy table and her clinical acumen, Lydia draws nearer the truth. Soon a terrible secret, long hidden, will be revealed. But Lydia must act quickly, before she becomes the next target of those who wished to silence Anna.
Westwood Public Library