Selected New Books in Ekstrom Library: 2020

The simplest beginnings can unravel a life. For Sam Capra, it is the moment a beautiful young woman walks into his San Francisco bar. Sam doesn't want trouble. An ex-CIA agent, his only desire now is to build a quiet, peaceful home for himself and his infant son. But Diana Keene is no ordinary customer. She's pursued by two gunmen, and when she finds Sam, she whispers an urgent, desperate plea: "Help me." And without any warning, Sam is thrust into a fight for his life.

When Condé Nast offered Ruth Reichl the top position at America's oldest epicurean magazine, she declined. Yet Reichl had been reading Gourmet since she was eight; it had inspired her career. How could she say no? This is the story of a former Berkeley hippie entering the corporate world and worrying about losing her soul. It is the story of the moment restaurants became an important part of popular culture, a time when the rise of the farm-to-table movement changed, forever, the way we eat.

In 1953, Dr. Charles Wilson, a government scientist, died when he "jumped or fell" from the ninth floor of a Washington hotel. As his wife and children grieve, the details of the incident remain buried for twenty-two years. With the release of the Rockefeller Commission report on illegal CIA activities in 1975, the Wilson case suddenly becomes news again. Wilson's family and the public are demanding answers, especially as some come to suspect the CIA of foul play, and agents in the CIA, FBI, and White House will do anything to make sure the truth doesn't get out.

Portia Cuthcart never intended to leave Texas. Her dream was to run the Glass Kitchen restaurant her grandmother built decades ago. But after a string of betrayals, Portia starts a new life in Manhattan and promises to never cook again. When she moves into a dilapidated brownstone on the Upper West Side, she meets twelve-year-old Ariel and her widowed father Gabriel, a man trying to raise two daughters on his own. Soon, Portia's back into a world of magical food and swirling emotions, where she must confront everything she has been running from.

In North Devon, where two rivers converge and run into the sea, Detective Matthew Venn stands outside the church as his estranged father's funeral takes place. On the day Matthew left the strict evangelical community he grew up in, he lost his family too. Now, as he turns and walks away again, he receives a call from one of his team. A body has been found on the beach nearby: a man with a tattoo of an albatross on his neck, stabbed to death. The case calls Matthew back to the people and places of his past, as deadly secrets hidden at their hearts are revealed.

LAPD Lieutenant Milo Sturgis has solved a lot of murder cases. On many of them--the ones he calls "different"--he taps the brain of brilliant psychologist Dr. Alex Delaware. But neither Alex nor Milo are prepared for what they find on an early morning call to a deserted mansion in Bel Air. Four people have been slaughtered and left displayed bizarrely and horrifically in a stretch limousine. As Alex and Milo make their way through blind alleys and mazes baited with misdirection, they encounter a crime so vicious that it stretches the definitions of evil.

Journalist Tatiana Petrovna is on the move. Arkady Renko, iconic Moscow investigator and Tatiana's part-time lover, hasn't seen her since she left on assignment over a month ago. When she doesn't arrive on her scheduled train, he's positive something is wrong. No one else thinks Renko should be worried--Tatiana is known to disappear during deep assignments--but he knows her enemies all too well and the criminal lengths they'll go to keep her quiet. Renko embarks on a dangerous journey to find Tatiana and bring her back.

We Are Water is a disquieting and ultimately uplifting novel about a marriage, a family, and human resilience in the face of tragedy. After 27 years of marriage and three children, Anna Oh--wife, mother, outsider artist--has fallen in love with Viveca, the wealthy Manhattan art dealer who orchestrated her success. They plan to wed in the Oh family's hometown of Three Rivers in Connecticut. But the wedding provokes some very mixed reactions and opens a Pandora's Box of toxic secrets--dark and painful truths that have festered below the surface of the Ohs' lives.

Hitting a Straight Lick with a Crooked Stick is an outstanding collection of stories about love and migration, gender and class, racism and sexism that proudly reflect African American folk culture. These stories challenge conceptions of Hurston as an author of rural fiction and include gems that flash with her biting, satiric humor, as well as more serious tales reflective of the cultural currents of Hurston's world.

When two sisters discover a shocking secret about their father, Luella, the brazen elder sister, becomes emboldened to do as she pleases. Her rebellion comes with consequences, and one morning Luella is mysteriously gone. Effie suspects her father has sent Luella to the House of Mercy and hatches a plan to get herself committed to save her sister. But she made a miscalculation, and with no one to believe her story, Effie's own escape seems impossible--unless she can trust an enigmatic girl named Mable.

Described only as "a senior official in the Trump administration," the author provides eyewitness insight into White House chaos, administration instability, and the people working to keep Donald Trump's reckless impulses in check. With the 2020 election on the horizon, Anonymous is speaking out once again. In this book, the original author pulls back the curtain even further, offering a first-of-its-kind look at the president and his record -- a must-read before Election Day.

Anna Trent may be a supervisor in a chocolate factory...but that doesn't necessarily mean she knows how to make chocolate. So when a fateful accident gives her the opportunity to work at the most elite chocolatier in Paris--Le Chapeau Chocolat--Anna expects to be outed as a fraud. While she may never match her boss in the kitchen, Anna thinks she might be able to give him a second chance at love.

Kate Marshall was a promising young police detective when she caught the notorious Nine Elms serial killer. But her greatest victory suddenly turned into a nightmare and Kate could only watch as her career ended in scandal. Fifteen years later, Kate is a lecturer at a small coastal English university where a copycat killer has taken up the Nine Elms mantle. This time there's much more on the line: Kate was the original killer's intended fifth victim...and his successor means to finish the job.

Alexandr, Christine, Zachary, and Lydia have been friends since they first met in their twenties. Thirty years later, Alex and Christine receive a call from a distraught Lydia: Zach is dead. In the wake of this profound loss, the three friends find themselves unmoored and an inconsolable Lydia moves in with Alex and Christine. But instead of loss bringing them closer, the three of them find that it warps their relationships, as old grievances rise from the past, and love and sorrow give way to anger and bitterness.

Miranda's life and career has been a roller-coaster ride. Her successful rise to the top of the booming lifestyle industry as a social media influencer led to a humiliating fall after a controversial product she endorsed flopped. Desperate to get away from the hate-spewing trolls shaming her on the internet, she receives a mysterious letter from a young cousin in England that plunges her into a dark family mystery.

From Lynn Cullen comes a powerful novel set in the Midwest during the Great Depression, about two sisters bound together by love, duty, and pain. An emotional journey of redemption, inner strength, and the ties that bind families together, for better or worse, The Sisters of Summit Avenue is a heartfelt love letter to mothers, daughters, and sisters everywhere.

Occupied Paris, 1942. Just before he dies, a man being chased by the Gestapo hands off a strange-looking document to the unsuspecting novelist Paul Ricard. It looks like a blueprint of a part for a military weapon, one that might have important information for the Allied forces. Ricard realizes he must try to get the diagram into the hands of members of the resistance network. Ricard finds himself drawn deeper and deeper into anti-Nazi efforts and increasingly dangerous espionage assignments.

A video of Deputy Eve Ronin's arrest of an abusive movie star goes viral, turning her into a popular hero at a time when the Los Angeles County Sheriff's Department is plagued by scandal. The sheriff, desperate for more positive press, makes Eve the youngest female homicide detective in the department's history. Her first case comes when she is called to the blood-splattered home of a missing single mother and her two kids. The horrific carnage screams multiple murder--but there are no corpses.

Nia, a gifted but desperately lonely hacker, is living in isolation with her strict single dad. Cameron is on a quest for YouTube fame as a vlogger. While recording his latest video, he is knocked out by lightning in a freak storm. When Cameron awakens, he discovers the ability to manipulate computers and electronics with his mind. After a chance meeting online, the two teenagers--one born with extraordinary gifts, one unwillingly transformed--join together to right wrongs in the world.

By age twenty, Alex Stern is the sole survivor of a horrific, unsolved multiple homicide. But at her hospital bed, Alex is offered a second chance: to attend Yale on a full ride. Still searching for answers, Alex arrives in New Haven tasked by her mysterious benefactors with monitoring the activities of Yale's secret societies. But their occult activities are more sinister and extraordinary than any paranoid imagination might conceive. They tamper with forbidden magic. They raise the dead. And, sometimes, they prey on the living.

A year ago, Naomi, the investigator with an uncanny ability for finding missing children, made a promise that she would not take another case until she finds the younger sister who has been missing for years. The search takes her to Portland, Oregon, where scores of homeless children wander the streets. The sharp-eyed investigator soon discovers that young girls have been going missing for months. Though she doesn't want to get involved, Naomi is unable to resist the pull of children in need.

In a sprawling mansion filled with peculiar treasures, January Scaller is a curiosity herself. As the ward of the wealthy Mr. Locke, she feels little different from the artifacts that decorate the halls: carefully maintained, largely ignored, and utterly out of place. Then she finds a strange book. A book that carries the scent of other worlds, and tells a tale of secret doors, of love, adventure and danger.

Paris, 1919. Margot Rosenthal has arrived in France with her father, a German diplomat. As she contemplates returning to Berlin and a life she hardly knows anymore, she decides that being in Paris is not so bad after all. Margot strikes up unlikely alliances: with Krysia, an accomplished musician with radical acquaintances and a secret to protect; and with Georg, a naval officer who gives Margot a job--and a reason to question everything she thought she knew about where her true loyalties should lie.

CeCe D'Aplièse has always felt like an outcast. But following the death of her adoptive father, she finds herself more alone than ever. With nothing left to lose, CeCe delves into the mystery of her familial origins. One hundred years earlier, Kitty McBride abandoned her conservative upbringing to serve as the companion to a wealthy woman traveling to Adelaide. Her ticket to a new land brings the adventure she dreamed of...and a love that she had never imagined.

Chris Offutt's first work of fiction in nearly two decades, Country Dark is a taut, compelling novel set in rural Kentucky from the Korean War to 1970. Tucker, a young veteran, returns from war to work for a bootlegger. He falls in love and starts a family, and while the Tuckers don't have much, they have the love of their home and each other. But when his family is threatened, Tucker is pushed into violence, which changes everything.

Lisa Brennan-Jobs's childhood unfolded in a rapidly changing Silicon Valley. When she was young, Lisa's father was a mythical figure who was rarely present in her life. As she grew older, her father took an interest in her, ushering her into a new world of mansions, vacations, and private schools. When her relationship with her mother grew strained in high school, Lisa moved in with her father, hoping he'd become the parent she'd always wanted him to be.