The beasts of Paris / Penney, Stef

Paris, 1870. Three wandering souls find themselves in a city set to descend into war. Anne is a former patient from the women's asylum, La Salpêtrière, trying to carve out a new life for herself in a world that doesn't understand her. Newcomer Lawrence is desperate to develop his talent as a photographer and escape the restrictions of his puritanical Canadian upbringing. Ellis, an army surgeon, has lived through the horror of the American Civil War and will do anything to avoid another bloodbath. Each keeps company with the restless beasts of Paris's famous Menagerie, home and prison to the glamorous predators that draw visitors from all walks of life. Yet these fearsome animals are innocents alongside the looming dogs of war.

The #1 lawyer / Allen, Nancy
Number one lawyer
"Move over, John Grisham! Here's the fastest, sharpest legal thriller in years. Biloxi's best criminal defense attorney becomes the nation's prime suspect when his wife is murdered. He's never lost a case, but can he win when he's presumed guilty?"--

Everyone is watching / Gudenkauf, Heather

he Best Friend. The Confidant. The Senator. The Boyfriend. The Executive. Five contestants have been chosen to compete for ten million dollars on the game show One Lucky Winner. The catch? None of them knows what (or who) to expect, and it will be live streamed all over the world. Completely secluded in an estate in Northern California, with strict instructions not to leave the property and zero contact with the outside world, the competitors start to feel a little too isolated. When long-kept secrets begin to rise to the surface, the contestants realize this is no longer just a reality show--someone is out for blood. And the game can't end until the world knows who the contestants really are.

A great country : a novel / Gowda, Shilpi Somaya

Pacific Hills, California: Gated communities, ocean views, well-tended lawns, serene pools, and now the new home of the Shah family. For the Shah parents, who came to America twenty years earlier with little more than an education and their new marriage, this move represents the culmination of years of hard work and dreaming. For their children, born and raised in America, success is not so simple. For the most part, these differences among the five members of the Shah family are minor irritants, arguments between parents and children, older and younger siblings. But one Saturday night, the twelve-year-old son is arrested. The fallout from that event will shake each family member's perception of themselves as individuals, as community members, as Americans, and will lead each to consider: how do we define success? At what cost comes ambition? And what is our role and responsibility in the cultural mosaic of modern America?--

The truth about the Devlins / Scottoline, Lisa

"TJ Devlin is the charming disappointment in the prominent Devlin family, all of whom are lawyers at their highly successful firm-except him. After a stint in prison and rehab for alcoholism, TJ can't get hired anywhere except at the firm, in a make-work job with the title of investigator. But one night, TJ's world turns upside down after his older brother John confesses that he just murdered one of the clients, an accountant he'd confronted with proof of embezzlement. It seems impossible coming from John, the firstborn son and Most Valuable Devlin. TJ plunges into the investigation, seizing the chance to prove his worth and save his brother. But in no time, TJ and John find themselves entangled in a lethal web of deception and murder. TJ will fight to save his family, but what he learns might break them first"--

The laundryman's boy : a novel / Lee, Edward Y. C.

"Hoi Wing is immediately thrust into relentless, mind-numbing toil, washing clothes by hand for sixteen hours a day, six days a week. Without knowledge of English or western societal customs, he faces a daily onslaught of insults, taunts and physical violence from gangs of local bullies. Hoi Wing must also contend with Jonathan Braddock, a wealthy and influential entrepreneur who heads the Asiatic Exclusion League, which seeks to send the Chinese back to China. Isolated and friendless, Hoi Wing falls into despair as his dreams of education slip away. His greatest fear is that he will grow up to be uneducated and illiterate, knowing little more than how to darn socks or hem pants. But his life changes when he befriends Heather Ryan, an Irish scullery maid who shares his love of books and education. He also meets Martha MacIntosh, a former missionary to China, and her niece, Adele. With their help, Hoi Wing begins to learn English and wins a chance to achieve his greatest dream: attending secondary school in the town's public education system. A coming-of-age story that examines race, immigration, duty and friendship, The Laundryman's Boy is an enduring and moving tale about early newcomers to Canada and their struggle to succeed against all odds."--

The house of broken bricks : a novel / Williams, Fiona

"Set in a West Country farming village, The House of Broken Bricks lays bare the complexities of day-to-day life for a mixed-race family. Jess is a Londoner whose relationship with Richard transports her from a Jamaican diaspora in a city where she easily blends in into a creaking house on a floodplain where predatory birds hover over fields, eels coil in the river mud, buses run twice a day, neighbors barter honey for cider and no one looks like her. While Jess and Richard settle into the village rhythm, the dramatic arrival of their twin sons recasts the family dynamic, stirring up complicated feelings and questions of belonging. Full of surprises, deeply attuned to the rhythms of language and nature, this lyrical novel with a magical realist strand captures the pain and beauty of life and death as well as the transformational power of changing seasons."--

In the dark. Volume 1 / Chai, Jin Shisi
In the dark.
This is a story of a young police officer searching for the answer to "Who am I?" In the past, Xie Lanshan was an undercover drug enforcement officer who infiltrated the Golden Triangle's most feared armed organization as drug lord Mu Kun's right-hand man. After successfully returning to his post from the operation, an accidental case of police misconduct triggers a series of unexplainable headaches and hidden memories that begin to haunt him. While investigating the truth behind his father's death of many years ago, Xie Lanshan utilizes his unique and sharp thinking from the perspective of a psychotic murderer to solve difficult cases around him. Plagued by this growing change and instability of both his mental health and personality, he meets a mysterious forensic sketch artist named Shen Liufei. Together, the two men will maintain a strange relationship; as friends and enemies, they solve mysterious cases one by one. But, perhaps, there was another motive for the forensic artist to approach the young officer.

Judgment day / Shisi
Shisi's little mushroom.
"In the year 2020, Earth's magnetic poles disappeared and humankind was nearly wiped out by cosmic radiation. Within the span of a hundred years, living creatures began to mutate and devour each other while the remaining humans, numbering in the tens of thousands, struggled bitterly in their man-made bases. In the Abyss, home to the mutated xenogenics, there lived a sentient little mushroom. Because it had been nourished by the blood and flesh of the deceased human An Ze, not only did it take on a similar-looking human form, but a similar name as well: An Zhe. An Zhe is determined to go to the human base to search for his spore, which had been harvested by humans. Once there, however, he faces the omnipresent risk of discovery and certain death as he tries to keep his non-human nature hidden from the Judges, whose responsibility is to inspect for and eliminate xenogenics like himself. And of all the Judges, Colonel Lu Feng is the most perceptive and merciless -as soon as he determines that someone is a xenogenic, he will execute that person on the spot. But An Zhe's mutation goes undetected by Lu Feng's eyes, and so a tale of humans and xenogenics unfolds ... "--Back cover.

I am AI : a novelette / Jiang, Ai

"If you have the opportunity to give up humanity for efficiency, mechanical invincibility, and to surpass human limitations ... would you? Ai is a cyborg, under the guise of an AI writing program, who struggles to keep up with the never-blinking city of Emit as it threatens to leave all those like her behind."--Back cover.