Most Circulated Books of 2024

American women - American wives - have been mostly minor characters in the literature of the Vietnam War, but in Absolution they take center stage. Tricia is a shy newlywed, married to a rising attorney on loan to navy intelligence. Charlene is a practiced corporate spouse and mother of three, a beauty and a bully. In Saigon in 1963, the two women form a wary alliance as they balance the era's mandate to be "helpmeets" to their ambitious husbands...

"In 2016, author Amy Tan grew overwhelmed by the state of the world: Hatred and misinformation became a daily presence on social media, and the country felt more divisive than ever. In search of peace, Tan turned toward the natural world just beyond her window and, specifically, the birds flocking to the feeders in her yard. But what began as an attempt to find solace turned into something far greater--an opportunity to savor quiet moments during...

"It's 1951 in Blowing Rock, North Carolina. Blackburn Gant, his life irrevocably altered by a childhood case of polio, seems condemned to spend his life among the dead as the sole caretaker of a hilltop cemetery. It suits his withdrawn personality, and the inexplicable occurrences that happen from time to time rattle him less than interaction with the living. But when his best and only friend, the kind but impulsive Jacob Hampton, is conscripted to...

"When celebrated writer Alma Cruz inherits a small plot of land in the Dominican Republic, she turns it into a place to bury her untold stories--literally. She creates a graveyard for manuscript drafts and revisions and the characters whose lives she tried and failed to bring to life and who still haunt her. Alma wants her characters to rest in peace, but they have other ideas, and the cemetery becomes a mysterious sancctuary for their true narratives."--...

"Detective Hawthorne is once again called upon to solve an unsolvable case--a gruesome murder in an idyllic gated community in which suspects abound." Riverside Close is a picture-perfect community. The six exclusive and attractive houses are tucked far away from the noise and grime of city life, allowing the residents to enjoy beautiful gardens, pleasant birdsong, and tranquility from behind the security of a locked gate. It is the perfect idyll,...

"London, 1945: Four adolescent orphans with a dark wartime history are squatting in a vacant Belgravia mansion--the owners having fled London under heavy Luftwaffe bombing. Soon after a demobilized British soldier, ill and reeling from his experiences overseas, takes shelter with the group, Maisie Dobbs visits the mansion on behalf of the owners. Maisie is deeply puzzled by the children's reticence. Their stories are evasive and, more mysteriously,...

In 1943, 14-year-old Massimo, rescued by a mysterious man called Pietro Houdini who preserves the treasures within the Benedictine abbey's wall, accompanies him on a World War II art-heist adventure where they lie, cheat, steal, fight, kill and sin to survive, while smuggling Renaissance masterpieces they've rescued from the "safe keeping" of the Germans.

Manchuria, 1908. A young woman is found frozen in the snow. Her death is clouded by rumors of foxes involved, which are believed to lure people by transforming themselves into beautiful women and men. Bao, a detective with a reputation for sniffing out the truth, is hired to uncover the dead woman's identity. Since childhood, Bao has been intrigued by the fox gods, yet they've remained tantalizingly out of reach. Until, perhaps, now. Meanwhile, a...

Henry Shackleford, a slave boy from the Kansas Territory, is caught up in John Brown's crusade for freedom of slaves and when he escapes from his master's home, he must disguise himself as a girl in order to stay safe and is nicknamed Onion by John.

"In 1972, when workers in Pottstown, Pennsylvania, were digging the foundations for a new development, the last thing they expected to find was a skeleton at the bottom of a well. Who the skeleton was and how it got there were two of the long-held secrets kept by the residents of Chicken Hill, the dilapidated neighborhood where immigrant Jews and African Americans lived side by side and shared ambitions and sorrows. Chicken Hill was where Moshe and...