The Reading List: Booklist

Sydney Green is Brooklyn born and raised, but her beloved neighborhood seems to change every time she blinks. Condos are sprouting like weeds, FOR SALE signs are popping up overnight, and the neighbors she's known all her life are disappearing. To hold onto her community's past and present, Sydney channels her frustration into a walking tour and finds an unlikely and unwanted assistant in one of the new arrivals to the block -- her neighbor Theo. But Sydney and Theo's deep dive into history quickly becomes a dizzying descent into paranoia and fear. Their neighbors may not have moved to the suburbs after all, and the push to revitalize the community may be more deadly than advertised. When does coincidence become conspiracy? Where do people go when gentrification pushes them out? Can Sydney and Theo trust each other -- or themselves -- long enough to find out before they too disappear?

*Audiobook & e-book on Libby
*Audiobook on hoopla

A Black father. A white father. Two murdered sons. A quest for vengeance. Ike Randolph has been out of jail for fifteen years, with not so much as a speeding ticket in all that time. But a Black man with cops at the door knows to be afraid. The last thing he expects to hear is that his son Isiah has been murdered, along with Isiah's white husband, Derek. Ike had never fully accepted his son but is devastated by his loss. Derek's father Buddy Lee was almost as ashamed of Derek for being gay as Derek was ashamed his father was a criminal. Buddy Lee still has contacts in the underworld, though, and he wants to know who killed his boy. Ike and Buddy Lee, two ex-cons with little else in common other than a criminal past and a love for their dead sons, band together in their desperate desire for revenge. In their quest to do better for their sons in death than they did in life, hardened men Ike and Buddy Lee will confront their own prejudices about their sons and each other, as they rain down vengeance upon those who hurt their boys. Provocative and fast-paced, S. A. Cosby's Razorblade Tears is a story of bloody retribution, heartfelt change - and maybe even redemption.

*Audiobook & e-book on Libby
*Audiobook on hoopla

A gritty, voice-driven thriller about a former getaway driver who thought he had escaped the criminal life who is pulled back in by race, poverty, and his own former life of crime. Beauregard "Bug" Montage is a man with many different titles: husband, father, friend, honest car mechanic. But before he gave it up, Bug used to be known from the hills of North Carolina to the beaches of Florida as the best Wheel Man on the East Coast. After a series of financial calamities, Bug feels he has no choice but to take one final job as the getaway driver for a daring diamond heist that could solve all his money troubles and allow him to go straight once and for all. Like "Ocean's Eleven" meets "Drive" (but with a mostly black cast of characters), Blacktop Wasteland is a searing, operatic story of sons living up (or down) to their fathers; of a heist gone sideways; of a man ground down by economic desperation; of fast cars and daring chases and identity and love.

*Audiobook & e-book on Libby
*Audiobook on hoopla

Lady Bird, an unlucky assassin, is tasked with grabbing a suitcase from a bullet train from Tokyo to Morioka and exiting at the next stop, but doesn't realize other dangerous passengers are trying to do the same.
A dark, satirical thriller by the bestselling Japanese author, following the perilous train ride of five highly motivated assassins--soon to be a major film from Sony. Nanao, nicknamed Lady Bird--the self-proclaimed "unluckiest assassin in the world"--boards a bullet train from Tokyo to Morioka with one simple task: grab a suitcase and get off at the next stop. Unbeknownst to him, the deadly duo Tangerine and Lemon are also after the very same suitcase--and they are not the only dangerous passengers onboard. Satoshi, "the Prince," with the looks of an innocent schoolboy and the mind of a viciously cunning psychopath, is also in the mix and has history with some of the others. Risk fuels him, as does a good philosophical debate...like, is killing really wrong? Chasing the Prince is another assassin with a score to settle for the time the Prince casually pushed a young boy off of a roof, leaving him comatose. When the five assassins discover they are all on the same train, they realize their missions are not as unrelated as they first appear. A massive bestseller in Japan, Bullet Train is an original and propulsive thriller that fizzes with an incredible energy and surprising humor as its complex net of double-crosses and twists unwind. Award-winning author Kotaro Isaka takes readers on a tension-packed journey as the bullet train hurtles toward its final destination. Who will make it off the train alive--and what awaits them at the last stop?

*E-book on Libby

A wild and terrifying adventure about three strangers who must work together to contain a highly contagious, deadly organism. When Pentagon bio-terror operative Roberto Diaz was sent to investigate a suspected biochemical attack, he found something far worse: a highly mutative organism capable of extinction-level destruction. He contained it and buried it in cold storage deep beneath a little-used military repository. Now, after decades of festering in a forgotten sub-basement, the specimen has found its way out and is on a lethal feeding frenzy. Only Diaz knows how to stop it. He races across the country to help two unwitting security guards--one an ex-con, the other a single mother. Over one harrowing night, the unlikely trio must figure out how to quarantine this horror again. All they have is luck, fearlessness, and a mordant sense of humor. Will that be enough to save all of humanity?

*Audiobook on Libby
*Audiobook & e-book on hoopla

It would be easy to underestimate Chloe Sevre ... She's a freshman honor student, a legging-wearing hot girl next door, who also happens to be a psychopath. She spends her time on yogalates, frat parties and plotting to kill Will Bachman, a childhood friend who grievously wronged her. Chloe is one of seven students at her DC-based college who are part of an unusual clinical study of psychopaths - students like herself who lack empathy and can't comprehend emotions like fear or guilt. The study, led by a renowned psychologist, requires then to wear smart watches that track their moods and movements. When one of the students in the study is found murdered in the psychology building, a dangerous game of cat and mouse begins, and Chloe goes from hunter to prey. As she races to identify the killer and put her own plan for revenge into action, she'll be forced to decide if she can trust and of her fellow psychopaths -- and everybody knows you should never trust a psychopath. "Never Saw Me Coming" is a compulsive, voice-driven thriller by an exciting new talent in fiction that will keep you pinned to the page and rooting for a would-be killer.

*Audiobook & e-book on Libby
*Audiobook & e-book on hoopla

When Amanda, the gorgeous wife of start-up millionaire Zach Grayson, is discovered dead at the bottom of the stairs in her stately Brooklyn brownstone, her husband is immediately fingered as the primary suspect. Zach calls Lizzie, his law school classmate, hoping their shared history will convince her to come to his aid. A former U.S. Attorney with no violent crime experience, Lizzie reluctantly agrees to represent him, though the two haven't seen each other in years. As she works to exonerate Zach, Lizzie is drawn into the privilege, passion, and excess churning beneath Park Slope, Brooklyn's idyllic, virtuous streets. It's a world that's completely foreign to Lizzie, but, if she's honest, also unexpectedly intriguing - particularly in light of the increasingly steep cost of keeping her own troubled marriage afloat. Zach's case proves less clear cut than Lizzie anticipated, though - especially after revelations surface about the racy party he and Amanda attended the night before she died. It's the event of the summer for wealthy Park Slope parents, a chance to blow off some steam while the kids are at camp, and it's all consensual, harmless fun. At least, that's the idea. Untitled McCreight Novel pulses with the energy of a legal thriller and the emotional urgency of page-turning domestic suspense. As Lizzie unwinds the truth about that night, she learns that Amanda was hiding far more than the cold reality of her distant marriage, and that other couples in the neighborhood harbor dark secrets of their own. In the end, Lizzie must confront not only her own marriage, but what it means to have a good marriage in the first place, and the dangerous compromises some couples make - and the secrets they keep - in order to stay together.

*Audiobook & e-book on Libby
*Audiobook on hoopla

Your phone rings. You child has been kidnapped. And to free her, you must abduct someone else's child. Your child will be released when your victim's parents kidnap another child. Rachel will be part of the chain... or her daughter Kylie will be killed. But the masterminds may have made a mistake this time. Rachel may be the one to finally break the chain.

*Audiobook & e-book on Libby

An upper-class Edinburgh housewife who enjoys listening to the sordid details of true-crime podcasts has her world turned upside down when a new podcast turns out to have connections to her own dark past.

*Audiobook & e-book on Libby

"The next heart-pounding thriller from New York Times bestselling author Riley Sager follows a young woman whose new job apartment sitting in one of New York's oldest and most glamorous buildings may cost more than it pays. No visitors. No nights spent away from the apartment. No disturbing the other residents, all of whom are rich or famous or both. These are the only rules for Jules Larsen's new job as an apartment sitter at the Bartholomew, one of Manhattan's most high-profile and mysterious buildings. Recently heartbroken and just plain broke, Jules is taken in by the splendor of her surroundings and accepts the terms, ready to leave her past life behind. As she gets to know the residents and staff of the Bartholomew, Jules finds herself drawn to fellow apartment sitter Ingrid, who comfortingly reminds her of the sister she lost eight years ago. When Ingrid confides that the Bartholomew is not what it seems and the dark history hidden beneath its gleaming facade is starting to frighten her, Jules brushes it off as a harmless ghost story. until the next day, when Ingrid disappears. Searching for the truth about Ingrid's disappearance, Jules digs deeper into the Bartholomew's sordid past and into the secrets kept within its walls. What she discovers pits Jules against the clock as she races to unmask a killer, expose the building's hidden past, and escape the Bartholomew before her temporary status becomes permanent".

*ebook & audiobook on Libby

It's the most sensational case of the decade. Fifteen-year-old Jessica Silver, heiress to a billion-dollar real estate fortune, vanishes on her way home from school. Her teacher Bobby Nock, a twenty-five-year-old African American man, is the prime suspect after illicit text messages are discovered between them--and Jessica's blood is found in his car. The subsequent trial taps straight into America's most pressing preoccupations: race, class, sex, law enforcement, and the lurid sins of the rich and famous. It's an open and shut case for the prosecution, and a quick conviction seems all but guaranteed. Until Maya Seale, a young woman on the jury, convinced of Nock's innocence, persuades the rest of the jurors to return the verdict of not guilty, a controversial decision that will change all of their lives forever. Flash forward ten years. A true-crime docuseries reassembles the jurors, with particular focus on Maya, now a defense attorney herself. When one of the jurors is found dead in Maya's hotel room, all evidence points to her as the killer. Now, she must prove her own innocence--by getting to the bottom of a case that is far from closed. As the present-day murder investigation weaves together with the story of what really happened during their deliberation, told by each of the jurors in turn, the secrets they have all been keeping threaten to come out--with drastic consequences for all involved.

*Audiobook on Libby