January Adult Reading Challenge
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Seabiscuit
Seabiscuit was one of the most electrifying and popular attractions in sports history and the single biggest newsmaker in the world in 1938, receiving more coverage than FDR, Hitler, or Mussolini. But his success was a surprise to the racing establishment, which had written off the crooked-legged racehorse with the sad tail. Over four years, three unlikely partners survived a phenomenal run of bad fortune, conspiracy, and severe injury to transform Seabiscuit from a neurotic, pathologically indolent also-ran into an American sports icon.
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Leviathan Wakes
Two hundred years after migrating into space, mankind is in turmoil. When a reluctant ship's captain and washed-up detective find themselves involved in the case of a missing girl, what they discover brings our solar system to the brink of civil war, and exposes the greatest conspiracy in human history.
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Schindler's List
A stunning novel based on the true story of how German war profiteer and factory director Oskar Schindler came to save more Jews from the gas chambers than any other single person during World War II. In this milestone of Holocaust literature, Thomas Keneally, author of Daughter of Mars, uses the actual testimony of the Schindlerjuden—Schindler’s Jews—to brilliantly portray the courage and cunning of a good man in the midst of unspeakable evil.
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The Exorcist
Based on true events of a child's demonic possession in the 1940s, The Exorcist tells the story of eleven-year-old Regan MacNeil and her mother Chris, a famous actress and doting mother. When Regan's personality unexpectedly shifts and she starts exhibiting disturbing, often violent behavior, her desperate mother is driven to seek help from two Catholic priests, men who will risk everything--including their own souls-- to free the girl from the ancient malevolent force possessing her.
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True Grit
Mattie Ross is just fourteen years of age when a coward going by the name of Tom Chaney shoots her father down in Fort Smith, Arkansas, and robs him of his life, his horse, and $150 in cash money. Mattie leaves home to avenge her father's blood. With the one-eyed Rooster Cogburn, the meanest available U.S. Marshal, by her side, Mattie pursues the homicide into Indian Territory.
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Slow Horses
London, England: Slough House is where washed-up MI5 spies go to while away what’s left of their failed careers. The “slow horses,” as they’re called, have all disgraced themselves in some way to get relegated there. When a young man is abducted and his kidnappers threaten to broadcast his beheading live on the Internet, the slow horses see an opportunity to redeem themselves. But is the victim really who he appears to be?
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Killers of the Flower Moon
In the 1920s, the richest people per capita in the world were members of the Osage Nation in Oklahoma after oil was discovered beneath their land. Then, one by one, the Osage began to be killed off. The family of an Osage woman, Mollie Burkhart, became a prime target. As the death toll rose, the newly created FBI took up the case. Director, J. Edgar Hoover turned to a former Texas Ranger named Tom White to try to unravel the mystery.
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Virgin River
Recently widowed Melinda Monroe decides that the remote mountain town of Virgin River might be the perfect place to escape her heartache and to reenergize the midwifery / nursing career she loves. But her high hopes are dashed within an hour of arriving. Realizing she's made a huge mistake, Mel decides to leave town the following morning. But a tiny baby abandoned on a front porch changes her plans, and former marine Jack Sheridan cements them into place.
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The Dark Wind
The corpse had been “scalped,” its palms and soles removed after death. Sergeant Jim Chee of the Navajo Tribal Police knows immediately he will have his hands full with this case, a certainty that is supported by the disturbing occurrences to follow. A mysterious nighttime plane crash, a vanishing shipment of cocaine, and a bizarre attack on a windmill only intensify Chee’s fears. A dark and very ill wind is blowing through the Southwestern desert, a gale driven by Navajo sorcery and white man’s greed.
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The Last Wish
Geralt is a Witcher, a man whose magic powers, enhanced by long training and a mysterious elixir, have made him a brilliant fighter and a merciless hunter. Yet he is no ordinary killer. His sole purpose: to destroy the monsters that plague the world. But not everything monstrous-looking is evil and not everything fair is good. In every fairy tale there is a grain of truth.
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Killing Floor
Ex-military policeman Jack Reacher is a drifter. He’s just passing through Margrave, Georgia, and in less than an hour, he’s arrested for murder. Not much of a welcome. All Reacher knows is that he didn’t kill anybody. At least not here. Not lately. But he doesn’t stand a chance of convincing anyone. Not in Margrave, Georgia. Not a chance in hell.
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The Perfect Couple
The Otis-Winbury wedding promises to be an event to remember as a lavish ceremony at an oceanfront estate. When a body is discovered in Nantucket Harbor just hours before the ceremony, everyone in the wedding party is suddenly a suspect. As Chief of Police Ed Kapenash interviews the bride, the groom, the groom's famous mystery-novelist mother, and even a member of his own family, he discovers that every wedding is a minefield-and no couple is perfect.
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The Lincoln Lawyer
Mickey Haller is a Lincoln Lawyer, a criminal defense attorney who operates out of the backseat of his Lincoln Town Car, traveling between the far-flung courthouses of Los Angeles to defend clients of every kind. Bikers, con artists, drunk drivers, drug dealers -- they're all on Mickey Haller's client list. For him, the law is rarely about guilt or innocence, it's about negotiation and manipulation. Sometimes it's even about justice.
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Hidden Figures
Before John Glenn orbited the earth, or Neil Armstrong walked on the moon, a group of exceptionally talented female mathematicians known as “human computers” used pencils, slide rules and adding machines to calculate the numbers that would launch rockets, and astronauts, into space. When America’s aeronautics industry was in dire need of anyone who had the right stuff, these overlooked African-American women answered Uncle Sam’s call, moving to Hampton, Virginia. Even as Jim Crow laws required them to be segregated from their white counterparts, the women of Langley’s all-black “West Computing” group helped America achieve one of the things it desired most: a decisive victory over the Soviet Union in the Cold War, and complete domination of the heavens.
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The Handmaid's Tale
In Margaret Atwood’s dystopian future, environmental disasters and declining birthrates have led to a Second American Civil War. The result is the rise of the Republic of Gilead, a totalitarian regime that enforces rigid social roles and enslaves the few remaining fertile women. Offred is one of these, a Handmaid bound to produce children for one of Gilead’s commanders. Deprived of her husband, her child, her freedom, and even her own name, Offred clings to her memories and her will to survive.
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Holmes is Missing
The New York City agency led by three detectives--Brendan Holmes, "the brain," Margaret Marple, "the eyes," and Auguste Poe, the "muscle"--with famous names and mysterious pasts is one major case away from cementing its professional reputation. As a series of child abductions tests the PIs' legendary skills, the cerebral Holmes's absence leaves a gaping hole in the agency roster. Only by closing ranks and solving the mystery within can they recover all that's been lost.
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Framed in Death
Before dawn, Lt. Eve Dallas is speeding toward the home of the two art gallery owners whose doorway has been turned into a horrifying crime scene overnight. A lifeless young woman has been elaborately costumed and precisely posed to resemble the model of a long-ago Dutch master, and Dallas plunges into her investigation.
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The Writer
In a tower apartment on Central Park West, NYPD Detective Declan Shaw finds a woman waiting for him. She's covered in blood. A body is lying dead on the floor of the luxurious living room. Every book in the apartment's floor-to-ceiling shelves is by the same author: bestselling true-crime writer Denise Morrow. "This is you?" Shaw asks the woman. "You're a writer?" Only one person knows the ending to this story.
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Wuthering Heights
Emily Bronte's brutally passionate poetic masterpiece is about doomed love on the bleak Pennine moors. This haunting tale of uncontrolled, violent passion between the wilful Catherine Earnshaw and the wild, dark-natured Heathcliff has gripped readers since it was first published in 1847.
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The Widow
Simon Latch is a lawyer in rural Virginia, making just enough to pay his bills while his marriage slowly falls apart. Then into his office walks Eleanor Barnett, an elderly widow in need of a new will. Apparently, her husband left her a small fortune, and no one knows about it. Simon works quietly to keep her wealth under the radar. But when she is hospitalized after a car accident, Simon realizes that nothing is as it seems, and he finds himself on trial for a crime he swears he didn’t commit: murder.
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2 Sisters Murder Investigations
Rhonda and Barbara "Baby" Bird are half-sisters--and full partners in their Los Angeles detective agency. They agree on nothing. Rhonda, a former attorney, takes a by-the-book approach to solving crimes, while teenage Baby relies on her street smarts. When they take a controversial case of a loner whose popular wife has gone missing, they're accused of being PIs who can't tell a client from a killer. If they can stop fighting each other long enough to work together.
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The Hamptons Lawyer
The Hamptons on Long Island is known for its beautiful beaches, its luxury lifestyle--and its exclusive legal advice. When Jane Smith takes on a famous celebrity client, she's armed and ready: with brilliant arguments, hard evidence--and two Glocks. Yet she's chased down, shot at, and risks contempt of court. That's when mounting a legal defense turns into self-defense. Knowing every day in court could be her last, she's a survivor. For now.
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Never Flinch
When the Buckeye City Police Department receives a disturbing letter from a person threatening to “kill thirteen innocents and one guilty” in “an act of atonement for the needless death of an innocent man,” Detective Izzy Jaynes has no idea what to think. Are fourteen citizens about to be slaughtered in an unhinged act of retribution? As the investigation unfolds, Izzy realizes that the letter writer is deadly serious, and she turns to her friend Holly Gibney for help.
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The Waiting
When Renee Ballard and her LAPD Open-Unsolved Unit team move in on their suspect for the Pillowcase Rapist, they encounter a baffling web of secrets and legal hurdles. Then Ballard's badge, gun, and ID are stolen, and her enemies in the department will use the burglary against her if she doesn't get them back soon. Renee Ballard knocks on the door of Harry Bosch to solicit his help. At the same time, she takes on a new volunteer to the cold case unit: Bosch's daughter Maddie, now a patrol officer, who has ulterior motives for this assignment.
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The Winds from Further West
Dr. Neil Anderson has just started a new position at the University of Edinburgh. Things seem to be going well for him until an accusation of insensitive comments lands him in hot water with the university and he discovers a troubling secret about his relationship. Neil leaves his unraveling life behind for the remote and secluded beauty of the Isle of Mull off the west coast of Scotland. When a ship comes in to the harbor with two wolf cubs, his life will change drastically once again.
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Iron Flame (Standard Edition)
In her second year at Basgiath War College, the real training begins. Violet Sorrengail’s already wondering how she’ll get through. It’s not just that it’s grueling and maliciously brutal, or even that it’s designed to stretch the riders’ capacity for pain beyond endurance. It’s the new vice commandant, who’s made it his personal mission to teach Violet exactly how powerless she is–unless she betrays the man she loves. But Violet knows the real secret hidden for centuries at Basgiath War College—and nothing, not even dragon fire, may be enough to save them in the end.
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Hidden Nature
Natural Resources police officer Sloan Coope pulled in at a convenience store and walked right into a robbery in progress and subsequent gunshot. After being shocked back to life on the operating table, she moves back to her parents’ peaceful house in Heron’s Rest. When a woman vanishes, leaving her car behind in a supermarket parking lot, Sloan searches online for similar cases. She finds them: Men and women, old and young, with nothing apparent in common. And the abductions keep happening.
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Nobody's Fool
Sami Kierce, a young college grad backpacking in Spain with friends, wakes up covered in blood with a knife in his hand. Beside him, the dead body of his girlfriend Anna. His screams drown out his thoughts and then he runs. Twenty-two years later, Kierce, now a private investigator, is teaching wannabe sleuths at a night school in New York City. One evening, he recognizes Anna at the back of the classroom. She bolts when they make eye contact. Kierce knows he must find this woman and solve the impossible mystery that has haunted his every waking moment.
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Now Or Never
She said yes to Morelli. She said yes to Ranger. Now Stephanie Plum has two fiancés and no idea what to do about it. While Stephanie stalls for time, she buries herself in her work as a bounty hunter, tracking down an unusually varied assortment of fugitives from justice. With timely assists from her stalwart supporters Lula, Connie, and Grandma Mazur, Stephanie uses every trick in the book to reel in these men. But she can’t hold Ranger and Morelli at bay for long, and she’s keeping a secret from them that is the biggest bombshell of all.
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To Die for
Travis Devine is hoping to keep off the radar of an enemy -- the girl on the train. He's sent to Seattle to aid the FBI to escort orphaned, twelve-year-old Betsy Odom to a meeting with her uncle, who's under investigation for RICO charges. En route, Betsy is adamant that her parents never used drugs, but the police insist the Odoms died of an overdose. When Devine starts digging for answers, he finds a conspiracy bigger than he could've ever imagined. The question is, how do Betsy, her uncle, and various government agencies all fit into it.