Staff Picks
Stay in touch with the personal favorites of the KDL Staff. Each title is handpicked.
Matthew Amster-Burton
A food critic and writer shares his experiences as a stay-at-home parent to his young daughter, Iris, who he endeavored to expose to the richness of his culinary world, in an account that describes how he came to understand the wonder of tasting foods from a child’s first-time perspective.
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Nevada Barr
Embarking on a guided rafting trip with her husband, Paul, in Big Bend National Park on the Texas-Mexico border, Anna Pigeon is drawn into dangerous intrigue when one of their companions on the trip discovers a pregnant woman caught among tangled branches in the river.
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Dan Brown
On the eve of a high-stake presidential race in which NASA’s budget has become a pivotal issue, the space agency announces the discovery of an ancient meteorite filled with fossils deep in the Arctic ice, and a team of scientists, led by academic Michael Tolland and intelligence agent Rachel Sexton, is sent on a perilous mission to verify the discovery.
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Michael Byrnes
When an American geneticist is miraculously healed from cancer by bones she believes to be the remains of Jesus, an Israeli archaeologist and a noted Egyptologist team up to outmaneuver the Vatican, who would prevent the geneticist’s findings from becoming public.
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Elisha Cooper
From an award-winning illustrator and children’s book author comes a touching, honest, and laugh-out-loud funny memoir about parenting, love, and the wonder of new life.
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Tatiana de Rosnay
On the anniversary of the roundup of Jews by the French police in Paris, Julia is asked to write an article on this dark episode and embarks on an investigation that leads her to long-hidden family secrets and to the ordeal of Sarah.
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Howard Dully
The author describes his victimization at the hands of Dr. Walter Freeman, who performed a lobotomy on him at the age of twelve; his experiences with institutions, jail, and homelessness; and his determination to find out why he was forced to undergo a lobotomy.
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Joanne Fluke
When bakery owner Hannah Swensen stumbles upon a dead body floating in the new health club’s jacuzzi with a plate of her cream puffs—purchased by her boyfriend—decorating the crime scene, she suddenly has a lot on her plate.
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Rupert Isaacson
Describes the author’s attempts to help his autistic son, Rowan, by taking the family to a remote area of Mongolia in order to consult shamans and allow Rowan to interact with horses and other animals in a quiet, accepting environment.
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J.A. Jance
When a man is found murdered, apparently killed by a woman’s stiletto heels, Seattle Homicide Detective J. P. Beaumont uncovers illegal union activities and such elusive clues as a pay stub and a matchbook.
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Paulette Jiles
In post-Civil War Texas, ex-slave Britt Johnson, returning from a trip, discovers his family members murdered and kidnapped as a result of an Indian raid, and sets out to rescue his loved ones and seek revenge.
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Rukhsana Khan
Jameela, a young girl living in war-torn Afghanistan, struggles to find her place in the world after her mother dies and she moves to Kabul with her drunken father where she clashes with her stepmother and ends up in an orphanage.
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Laurie R. King
Returning home after seven months abroad, Mary Russell and Sherlock Holmes are met with a problem concerning one of Holmes’s beehives and the reappearance of his estranged son, Damien, who needs their help in finding his missing wife and daughter.
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Susan Kuklin
Explores life behind bars for teenage prisoners who have been sentenced to death and are awaiting execution on death row, discussing the effects of their past actions on themselves and others, and their personal views on the death penalty itself.
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Jonathan Littell
Hiding his past as a Nazi officer while living the life of an entrepreneur and family man in northern France, Dr. Max Aue remembers horrifying acts of violence he committed during World War II.
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Kate Morton
Abandoned on a 1913 voyage to Australia, Nell is raised by a dock master and his wife who do not tell her until she grows up that she is not their child, a situation that causes her to return to England and eventually hand down her quest for answers to her granddaughter.
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Marcia Muller
Fleeing to her California ranch to evaluate her future after a traumatic case, private investigator Sharon McCone is haunted by a troubled and secretive Native American woman until she uncovers evidence of violence and murder at a deserted Nevada resort.
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Abraham Verghese
Twin brothers born from a secret love affair between an Indian nun and a British surgeon in Addis Ababa, Marion and Shiva Stone come of age in an Ethiopia on the brink of revolution, where their love for the same woman drives them apart.
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Sarah Vowell
A cultural profile of Puritan life covers a wide range of topics, from their covenant communities and deep-rooted ideologies to their beliefs about church and state and their perspectives on other faiths, in an account that also evaluates their legacy in today’s world.
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Sherryl Woods
Returning home to Chespeake Shores to help her sister save the charming Inn at Eagle Point from foreclosure, Abby O’Brien Winters, along with her energetic twin daughters, must also deal with her own fractured family and the one man she has never been able to forget.
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