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The Californians : a novel / by Castleberry, Brian,author.;
"It's 2024, and Tobey Harlan-college dropout, temporary waiter, recently dumped-steals from the wall of his father's house three paintings by the venerated and controversial artist Di Stiegl. Tobey's just lost everything he owns to a Northern California wildfire, and if he can sell the paintings (albeit in a shady way to an infamous tech bro) he can start life anew in a place no one will ever find him, perhaps even Oregon. A hundred years before, Klaus Aaronsohn-German-Jewish immigrant, resident of the Lower East Side-inveigles his way into a film studio in Astoria, Queens. In love with silent cinema, Klaus restyles himself Klaus von Stiegl, a mysterious aristocratic German film director. In true Hollywood fashion, he will court fame, fortune, romance, and betrayal, and end his career directing Brackett: a radical, notorious 60s-era detective show. Weaving between Tobey and Klaus is the story of Diane "Di" Stiegl: Klaus's granddaughter, raised in Palm Springs, who claws out a career as an artist in gritty '80s NYC. As America yields the presidency to a Hollywood cowboy, as Diane's grifter father and free-spirited mother circle in and out of her life, Diane will reflect America's most urgent and hypocritical years back to itself, uneasily finding critical adoration as well as great fame and wealth. As dazzling as it is moving, The Californians is an ambitious and sweeping journey across a century. Nuanced and textured, gloriously funny, a critical portrait of the collective American consciousness that has brought us to today, it showcases Brian Castleberry as an inventive, stylish storyteller and a sharp observer of the human condition"--
Subjects: Historical fiction.; Sagas.; Novels.; Families; Intergenerational relations; Interpersonal relations; Women artists;
Available copies: 1 / Total copies: 1
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While the city slept : a love lost to violence and a young man's descent into madness / by Sanders, Eli,author.;
"A Pulitzer Prize-winning reporter's gripping account of one young man's path to murder--and a wake-up call for mental health care in America. On a summer night in 2009, three lives intersected in one American neighborhood. Two people newly in love--Teresa Butz and Jennifer Hopper, who spent many years trying to find themselves and who eventually found each other--and a young man on a dangerous psychological descent: Isaiah Kalebu, age twenty-three, the son of a distant, authoritarian father and a mother with a family history of mental illness. All three paths forever altered by a violent crime, all three stories a wake-up call to the system that failed to see the signs. In this riveting, probing, compassionate account of a murder in Seattle, Eli Sanders, who won a Pulitzer Prize for his newspaper coverage of the crime, offers a deeply reported portrait, in microcosm, of the state of mental health care in this country--as well as an inspiring story of love and forgiveness. Culminating in an account of Kalebu's dangerous slide toward violence--observed by family members, police, mental health workers, lawyers, and judges, but stopped by no one--While the City Slept is the story of a crime of opportunity and of the string of missed opportunities that made it possible. It shows what can happen when a disturbed member of society repeatedly falls through the cracks, and in the tradition of The Other Wes Moore and The Short and Tragic Life of Robert Peace, is an indelible human-level story, brilliantly told, with the potential to inspire social change"--Provided by publisher.
Subjects: Kalebu, Isaiah.; Lesbians; Mentally ill offenders; Murder; Rape;
Available copies: 1 / Total copies: 1
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Metropolis / by Kerr, Philip,author.;
"New York Times-bestselling author Philip Kerr treats readers to his beloved hero's origins, exploring Bernie Gunther's first weeks on Berlin's Murder Squad. A portrait of Bernie Gunther in his twenties: He's young, but he's seen four bloody years of trench warfare. And he's not stupid. So when he receives a promotion and a ticket out of Vice squad, he knows he's not really leaving behind the criminal gangs, the perverse sex clubs, and the laundry list of human corruption. It's 1928 and Berlin is a city on the edge of chaos, where nothing is truly verboten. But soon a new wave of shockingly violent murders sweeps up society's most vulnerable, prostitutes and wounded ex-soldiers begging on the streets. As Bernie Gunther sets out to make sense of multiple murders with different MOs in a city that knows no limits, he must face the fact that his own police HQ is not immune. The Nazi party has begun to inflitrate the Alex, Berlin's central office, just as the shakey Weimar government makes a last, desperate attempt to control a nation edging toward to the Third Reich. It seems like the only escape for most Berliners is the theater and Bernie's no exception. As he gets deeper into the city's sordid underground network, he seeks comfort with a make-up artist who is every bit a match for his quick wit and increasingly sardonic view of the world. But even this space can't remain untouched, not with this pervasive feeling that everything is for sale in Berlin if you're man enough to kill for it"--
Subjects: Thrillers (Fiction); Historical fiction.; Gunther, Bernhard (Fictitious character); Detectives; Murder;
Available copies: 1 / Total copies: 1
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1945 : the year that made modern Canada / by Cuthbertson, Ken,author.;
Includes bibliographical references and index."1945 was a watershed year for Canada and the world. It ushered in the modern era and set Canada on a new course. With the momentous dropping of the Atomic bomb on Japan, everything had changed. There was a sense of relief at the ending of hostilities, but there was also great uncertainty and fear of the brave new world unfolding. On the eve of WWII, Canada's population was just 10 million. The country was a sleepy backwater where nothing of much significance ever happened. If we accept that the country forged its national identity in World War I, it's fair to say that it came of age in the six years of WWII. As a result, Canada stepped into the modern era in 1945 completely changed and ready to assume its place in the world as an independent nation, no longer under the colonial sway of the mother country. As he did with The Halifax Explosion, bestselling author Ken Cuthbertson has written a compelling narrative about the year 1945 and the events and personalities that shaped our country and created our future. From Mackenzie King, Rocket Richard, and Emily Carr to E.P. Taylor, Igor Gouzenko, Hugh MacLennan, Agnes McPhail and Gabrielle Roy, among others, 1945 weaves an unforgettable portrait of our nation at the moment of its modern birth. Just as writer Bill Bryson's recent bestseller One Summer: America, 1927 chronicled a pivotal year in American history by focusing on the experiences of a select group of American historical figures, 1945: The Year That Made Modern Canada will tell the stories of Canadians - some celebrated, some just ordinary people - who left their mark on this country during 1945 as they seeded its future."-- Provided by publisher.
Subjects: History.; Canadians;
Available copies: 1 / Total copies: 1
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Last call : a true story of love, lust, and murder in queer New York / by Green, Elon,author.;
Includes bibliographical references.""In this astonishing and powerful work of nonfiction, Green meticulously reports on a series of baffling and brutal crimes targeting gay men. It is an investigation filled with twists and turns, but this is much more than a compelling true crime story. Green has shed light on those whose lives for too long have been forgotten, and rescued an important part of American history." -David Grann, #1 New York Times bestselling author of Killers of the Flower Moon The gripping true story, told here for the first time, of the Last Call Killer and the gay community of New York City that he preyed upon. The Townhouse Bar, midtown, July 1992: The piano player seems to know every song ever written, the crowd belts out the lyrics to their favorites, and a man standing nearby is drinking a Scotch and water. The man strikes the piano player as forgettable. He looks bland and inconspicuous. Not at all what you think a serial killer looks like. But that's what he is, and tonight, he has his sights set on a gray haired man. He will not be his first victim. Nor will he be his last. The Last Call Killer preyed upon gay men in New York in the '80s and '90s and had all the hallmarks of the most notorious serial killers. Yet because of the sexuality of his victims, the skyhigh murder rates, and the AIDS epidemic, his murders have been almost entirely forgotten. This gripping true-crime narrative tells the story of the Last Call Killer and the decades-long chase to find him. And at the same time, it paints a portrait of his victims and a vibrant community navigating threat and resilience"--
Subjects: Anderson, Peter Stickney.; Serial murderers; Murder; Trials (Murder); Gay men;
Available copies: 1 / Total copies: 1
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The golden gate / by Chua, Amy,author.;
"Amy Chua's debut novel, The Golden Gate, is a sweeping, evocative, and compelling historical thriller that paints a vibrant portrait of a California buffeted by the turbulent crosswinds of a world at war and a society about to undergo massive change. In Berkeley, California, in 1944, Homicide Detective Al Sullivan has just left the swanky Claremont Hotel after a drink in the bar when a presidential candidate is assassinated in one of the rooms upstairs. A rich industrialist with enemies among the anarchist factions on the far left, Walter Wilkinson could have been targeted by any number of groups. But strangely, Sullivan's investigation brings up the specter of another tragedy at the Claremont, ten years earlier: the death of seven-year-old Iris Stafford, a member of the Bainbridge family, one of the wealthiest in all of San Francisco. Some say she haunts the Claremont still. The many threads of the case keep leading Sullivan back to the three remaining Bainbridge heiresses, now adults: Iris's sister, Isabella, and her cousins Cassie and Nicole. Determined not to let anything distract him from the truth-not the powerful influence of Bainbridges' grandmother, or the political aspirations of Berkeley's district attorney, or the interest of China's First Lady Madame Chiang Kai-Shek in his findings-Sullivan follows his investigation to its devastating conclusion. Chua's page-turning debut brings to life a historical era rife with turbulent social forces and groundbreaking forensic advances, when race and class defined the very essence of power, sex, and justice, and introduces a fascinating character in Detective Sullivan, a mixed race former Army officer who is still reckoning with his own history"--
Subjects: Detective and mystery fiction.; Historical fiction.; Novels.; Murder; Presidential candidates; Racially mixed people;
Available copies: 1 / Total copies: 1
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The Boston girl : a novel / by Diamant, Anita.;
"From the New York Times bestselling author of The Red Tent and Day After Night, comes an unforgettable novel about family ties and values, friendship and feminism told through the eyes of a young Jewish woman growing up in Boston in the early twentieth century. Addie Baum is The Boston Girl, born in 1900 to immigrant parents who were unprepared for and suspicious of America and its effect on their three daughters. Growing up in the North End, then a teeming multicultural neighborhood, Addie's intelligence and curiosity take her to a world her parents can't imagine--a world of short skirts, movies, celebrity culture, and new opportunities for women. Addie wants to finish high school and dreams of going to college. She wants a career and to find true love. Eighty-five-year-old Addie tells the story of her life to her twenty-two-year-old granddaughter, who has asked her "How did you get to be the woman you are today." She begins in 1915, the year she found her voice and made friends who would help shape the course of her life. From the one-room tenement apartment she shared with her parents and two sisters, to the library group for girls she joins at a neighborhood settlement house, to her first, disastrous love affair, Addie recalls her adventures with compassion for the naive girl she was and a wicked sense of humor. Written with the same attention to historical detail and emotional resonance that made Anita Diamant's previous novels bestsellers, The Boston Girl is a moving portrait of one woman's complicated life in twentieth century America, and a fascinating look at a generation of women finding their places in a changing world"--Provided by publisher.
Subjects: Historical fiction.; Feminism; Jewish women;
Available copies: 1 / Total copies: 1
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Kin : a memoir / by Rodenberg, Shawna Kay,author.;
"A heart stopping memoir of a wrenching Appalachian girlhood and a multilayered portrait of a misrepresented people, from Rona Jaffe Writer's Award winner Shawna Kay Rodenberg. When Shawna Kay Rodenberg was four, her father, fresh from a ruinous tour in Vietnam, spirited her family from their home in the hills of Eastern Kentucky to Minnesota, renouncing all of their earthly possessions to live in the Body, an off-the-grid End Times religious community. Her father was seeking a better, safer life for his family, but the austere communal living of prayer, bible study and strict regimentation was a bad fit for the precocious Shawna. Disciplined harshly for her many infractions, she was sexually abused by a predatory adult member of the community. Soon after the leader of the Body died and revelations of the sexual abuse came to light, her family returned to the same Kentucky mountains that their ancestors have called home for three hundred years. It is a community ravaged by the coal industry, but for all that, rich in humanity, beauty, and the complex knots of family love. Curious, resourceful, rebellious, Shawna will ultimately leave her mountain home but only as she masters a perilous balancing act between who she has been and who she will become. Kin is a mesmerizing memoir of survival that seeks to understand and make peace with the people and places that were survived. It is above all about family-about the forgiveness and love within its bounds-and generations of Appalachians who have endured, harmed, and held each other through countless lifetimes of personal and regional tragedy"--
Subjects: Biographies.; Autobiographies.; Rodenberg, Shawna Kay.; Move (Christian sect); Appalachians (People); Ex-cultists; Women authors, American; Women;
Available copies: 1 / Total copies: 1
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The inheritance [text (large print)] : a novel / by Goodman, Joanna,1969-author.;
"From the bestselling author of The Home for Unwanted Girls and The Forgotten Daughter comes a compulsively readable mother-daughter story in which two women who share a difficult past must come to together to claim the future they deserve. Arden Moore enjoyed an affluent life thanks to her husband's high-paying job. But a year after his death, the 36-year-old is a grieving single mother deeply in debt and living paycheck to paycheck with her three children. Then an unexpected call from a well-known estate lawyer in New York offers a glimmer of hope. It is the beginning of a complex legal journey that could mean the difference between a life of abject poverty and unthinkable wealth thanks to her father, deceased billionaire Wallace Barclay. Thirty years before, Arden's mother Virginia Bunt, a flirtatious love addict with a string of failed affairs, met Wallace, an encounter that transformed her life. When he died unexpectedly without a will, Virginia fought to secure a comfortable future for her and the secret unborn daughter she shared with Wallace. Yet despite her best efforts, society and the legal system prevented her from receiving the money that should rightfully have been hers. Now, though, with changes in the legal system and science, her daughter Arden may finally succeed in claiming the inheritance that has been long denied. Told from both Arden and Virginia's viewpoints, straddling past and present, and moving from Toronto to New York City, The Inheritance is a poignant portrait of familial bonds, haunting pasts, the collateral damage of life choices, and the promise of hopeful futures as two venerable women fight for the life they deserve"--
Subjects: Domestic fiction.; Large print books.; Novels.; Families; Inheritance and succession; Single mothers; Widows; Women;
Available copies: 1 / Total copies: 1
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The museum detective / by Phillips, Maha Khan,1976-author.;
"When Dr. Gul Delani receives a call in the middle of the night from the Sindh police, she thinks they may have finally found her niece, Mahnaz-a precocious, politically conscious teenage girl who went missing three years prior. Gul has been racked with grief since Mahnaz's disappearance, and distracts herself through work: she's a talented curator at the Museum of Heritage and History in Karachi, one of the country's leading experts in archaeology and ancient civilizations, a hard-won position for a woman. But there is no news of Mahnaz. Instead, Gul is summoned to a narcotics investigation in a remote desert region in western Pakistan. In her wildest dreams, Gul couldn't have imagined what she'd find there: amid a drug bust gone wrong, there is a mummy-life-size, seemingly authentic, its sarcophagus decorated with symbols from Persepolis, the capital of the Achaemenid Empire. The discovery confounds everyone. It is both too good to be true, and for Gul, too precious to leave in careless or corrupt hands. Aided by her team of unlikely misfits, Gul will stop at nothing to get to the bottom of it, even as her quest for the truth puts her in the throes of a dangerous conspiracy and threatens to collide with her ongoing search for Mahnaz. A portrait of a city fueled by corruption and a woman relentlessly in pursuit of justice, this engrossing crime novel builds to an unforgettable, emotional conclusion readers won't soon forget.The Museum Detective is an exciting, gritty new crime thriller that announces a whip-smart and brilliant sleuth and builds to a stunning, emotional conclusion that readers won't soon forget"--
Subjects: Detective and mystery fiction.; Novels.; Corruption; Missing persons; Mummies; Museum curators; Organized crime; Women museum curators;
Available copies: 0 / Total copies: 1
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