Modern Fiction

Everyone says Luma has the world at her fingertips. Her trust fund can buy anything she wants, there's a modeling agency courting her, and most people would kill for her life - especially her stepmother, Tabitha. When Tabitha comes home mangled from a botched cosmetic procedure and finds out Luma's been offered a prestigious gig, jealousy rears its aging, puffy head. Tabitha wants Luma dead and she's got no choice but to flee. Alone and cut off from her resources, Luma's last refuge is a remote cottage where she prays Tabitha won't find her.

Billy Phelan, small-time bookie, pool hustler, and poker player, becomes an unlikely go-between in the 1938 kidnapping of an Albany, New York, political boss' son.

Alex Foaly, Morgan Tyron, and Vinny Jensen are wanted terrorists. Luckily for them, they are presumed dead. Mostly. In the months since the sinking of the MV Aguilar in the Hudson Bay, the three contractors-turned-"terrorists" have gone to ground, waiting it out and biding their time as they develop a plan to clear their names for an attack they did not commit, but the world blames them for.

Some women are born with an instinct for knowing how things work -and what to do when they break. Blueprints, the New York Times bestselling novel from Barbara Delinsky, is the story of two strong women, Caroline MacAfee, a skilled carpenter, and her daughter Jamie, a talented architect...

In Daniel Defoe’s 17th century masterpiece of English literature, hero Robinson Crusoe relates his story of shipwreck, perseverance, hope, and redemption. Full of adventure, suspense, and daring heroics, this celebration of Robinson Crusoe, updated for the modern young reader, retains all of the classic elements of Defoe’s original tale of courage, insight and the power of endurance.

Comfort for Isabella York is found buried in the pages of books. Bookended between two beautiful sisters, she is a different kind of princess, quiet and studious. Judged harshly on social media and in the tabloids, which compare her to her thin, outgoing sisters, a shy Bella has no desire to become a working royal for the House of Chadwick upon graduating from university, preferring to work in the family's dusty archives instead.

Princess Elizabeth "Liz" of York isn't interested in a fairy tale life. Determined to use her elite platform to champion children's causes, she'd much rather raise awareness than find her prince. If only she could stop picturing one certain gardener with vivid hazel eyes.... When the relentless paparazzi invade her space, Liz's crush comes to her rescue and steals her heart. Tossing aside centuries of tradition for something real, she takes Roman's calloused hand and braces for the backlash. One member of the monarchy vows to keep the princess locked in her ivory tower.

Welsh baker Poppy Davies is happily living her best life in London. Passionate about her work, there is nothing more she could possibly want - except to land the coveted job of baking the official biscuits for the upcoming royal wedding for Prince Christian, second in line to the throne. It's an assignment that could change the entire trajectory of her professional career. But what about her personal life? An accidental meeting with Prince Alexander of Wales, the future king, changes everything.

Boswell is Stanley Elkin's first and funniest novel: the comic odyssey of a twentieth-century groupie who collects celebrities as his insurance policy against death. James Boswell - a strong man and professional wrestler (his most heroic match is with the Angel of Death) - is a con man, a gate crasher, and a moocher of epic talent.

Val is expanding her horizons as she settles into her new abode. Her jewelry business is taking off, and she's also found a pub or two for relaxing. Plus, she's got the bodyguard business, and the occasional bouncing gig. Busy dwarf! She's also learning the art and science of having friends. One of them, Stella, will be moving, which forces Val to make a choice. Has she finally found a world that will accept her? Does she want to make it her home? Then Anne, her first client who is now a friend as well, calls her about another protection job, and she can't say no.

More than 1,500 years after his disappearance into the mists of Avalon, King Arthur has returned. This time, he's prepared to rule the Camelot of a new millennium: New York City. Handsome, charismatic Arthur Penn is running for mayor on a platform of common sense, humor, and knightly virtues. His advisors include a gifted 10-year-old named Merlin; Percival, an immortal accountant; and Gwen, a lovely young woman with no end of problems.

In this modern retelling of a fairy tale classic, Goldie Lax is a safecracking prodigy who learned her craft from her father and her grandfather before him. When she pairs up with Richard Campbell, who can hack any system, together they make the perfect team, mixing both business and pleasure. When Goldie's grandfather, who survived the Holocaust only to end up in a nursing home in his 80s, tells her about a horrific crime that robbed a good friend of his family's inheritance, Goldie enlists Campbell's help.

In her scenic hometown of Niagara-on-the-Lake, Anne is comfortable focusing on her successful career: filling her late mother’s shoes as town councilor and executive director of her theater company. She certainly keeps busy as the all-around wrangler of eccentric locals, self-centered family members, elaborate festivals, and the occasional attacking goose. But the more she tries to convince herself that her life is fine as is, the more it all feels like a show—and not nearly as good as the ones put on by her theater company.

Mysterious happenings to a small handicapped boy in a little Somerset village, way back in the 1930s, suddenly repeat themselves in the 21st Century. At the first event the villagers kept quiet about what they thought was either hallucination, witchcraft or a little boy’s mischief. They suspected, quite rightly, that they wouldn’t be believed. However, silence turns out to be impossible in the present media and online culture, with the result that the lives of two families are disrupted and changed forever.

Author of the New York Times Notable The Great Glass Sea (“The most unexpected second book by a writer of note to appear in years.” –John Freeman, Boston Globe) returns with a gripping adventure story that probes the expansive, shifting wilds of the Sierra Nevada during the Gold Rush...

Each of the best-selling writers represented in Legends II return to the special universe of the imagination that its author has made famous throughout the world. Whether set before or after events already recounted elsewhere, whether featuring beloved characters or compelling new creations, these masterful short novels are both mesmerizing stand-alones (perfect introductions to the work of their authors) and indispensable additions to the epics on which they are based.

In the early 17th century, a crippled, graying, almost toothless veteran of Spain's wars against the Ottoman Empire published a novel. It was the story of a poor nobleman, his brain addled from studying too many novels of chivalry, who deludes himself that he is a knight errant and sets off on hilarious adventures. That story, Don Quixote, went on to sell more copies than any other book beside the Bible, making its author, Miguel de Cervantes, the single most-read author in human history.

A deafening explosion. A shining metal disc crashed into a cornfield. A mysterious little girl with a cryptic mission. Longing to be like the heroes in his storybooks, Robbie Flynn embarks on a quest he hopes will lead him to his missing father. But nothing is as it seems. As the moments of this mythic journey divide and intertwine, Robbie is faced with an extraordinary realization: not all paths always lead ahead.

The story concerns a scientist, Victor Frankenstein, who conducts a great experiment to see if he can create a living being from the body parts of corpses. Only whe the experiment is successful does he begin to think of the ethics and consequences of what he has done. The creature he created becomes embittered when he finds that no one will love him becuase of his appearance.

Victor Frankenstein learns how to create life and creates a being in the likeness of man, but larger and more powerful than the average man. Frankenstein rejects the creature, and lives to regret his desire to create life, after it kills his brother William. Frankenstein is a warning against the "over-reaching" of modern man and the Industrial Revolution, alluded to in the novel's subtitle, The Modern Prometheus.