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A Delicate Truth

05/07/2013 by Leave a Comment

Delicate TruthBy John le Carré

A counter-terrorist operation, codenamed “Wildlife,” is being mounted on the British crown colony of Gibraltar. Its purpose: to capture and abduct a high-value jihadist arms buyer. Its authors: an ambitious Foreign Office Minister, a private defense contractor who is also his bosom friend, and a shady American CIA operative of the evangelical far-right. So delicate is the operation that even the Minister’s personal private secretary, Toby Bell, is not cleared for it.

Three years later, a disgraced Special Forces Soldier delivers a message from the dead. Was “Operation Wildlife” the success it was cracked up to be – or a human tragedy that was ruthlessly covered up? Summoned by Sir Christopher (“Kit”) Probyn, retired British diplomat, to his decaying Cornish manor house, and closely observed by Kit’s daughter, Emily, Toby must choose between his conscience and duty to his Service. If the only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is that good men do nothing, how can he keep silent?

Filed Under: Best Sellers, Popular Fiction Tagged With:

Reba White Williams Author Event

04/26/2013 by Leave a Comment

RestrikeOn Tuesday, July 23rd at 7:00 p.m., Byrd’s Books will be hosting an author event with Reba White Williams, author of the new book Restrike: Coleman and Dinah Greene Mystery No. 1. The book has been getting excellent reviews, and we at Byrd’s Books are thrilled to have her here for a discussion and signing of the title!

About the book:

Money and murder go hand in glove in the rarified art world of Reba White Williams’s exciting first novel, Restrike. Cousins Coleman and Dinah Greene moved from North Carolina to New York after college to make their mark on the art world: Coleman is the editor of an influential arts magazine and Dinah is the owner of a print gallery in Greenwich Village. But their challenges are mounting as one of Coleman’s writers is discovered selling story ideas to a competitor and The Greene Gallery is in the red because sales are down.

When billionaire Heyward Bain arrives with a glamorous assistant, announcing plans to fund a fine print museum, Coleman is intrigued and plans to get to know Bain and publish an article about him. Dinah hopes to sell him enough prints to save her gallery. At the same time, swindlers, attracted by Bain’s lavish spending, invade the print world to grab some of his money. When a print dealer dies in peculiar circumstances, Coleman is suspicious, but she can’t persuade the NYPD crime investigator of a connection between the dealer’s death and Bain’s buying spree. After one of Coleman’s editors is killed and Coleman is attacked, the police must acknowledge the connection, and Coleman becomes even more determined to discover the truth about Bain. In an unforgettable final scene, Coleman risks her life to expose the last deception threatening her, her friends, and the formerly tranquil print world.

About the author:

Reba White Williams, Ph.D. Art History, has written articles for American Artist, Art and Auction, Print Quarterly, and Journal of the Print World. She has also served on the print committees of the Museum of Modern Art, the Metropolitan Museum, and the Whitney Museum. Restrike is her first novel in the Coleman and Dinah Greene mystery series, and she is currently at work on her second, Fatal Impressions. Williams divides her time between Connecticut, New York City, and California.

Filed Under: Author Events, CT Authors Tagged With:

Who Done It?

04/09/2013 by Leave a Comment

Who Done ItEdited by Jon Scieszka

A star-studded anthology with a devilish hook, whose proceeds benefit 826nyc: the fabulous literacy non-profit founded by Dave Eggers.

Can you imagine the most cantankerous book editor alive? Part Voldemort, part Cruella de Vil (if she were a dude), and worse in appearance and odor than a gluttonous farm pig? A man who makes no secret of his love of cheese or his disdain of unworthy authors? That man is Herman Mildew.

The anthology opens with an invitation to a party, care of this insufferable monster, where more than 80 of the most talented, bestselling and recognizable names in YA and children’s fiction learn that they are suspects in his murder. All must provide alibis in brief first-person entries. The problem is that all of them are liars, all of them are fabulists, and all have something to hide…

Filed Under: Young Adult Fiction Tagged With: , , ,

What We Saw at Night

03/09/2013 by Leave a Comment

What We Saw at NightBy Jacquelyn Mitchard

Allie Kim suffers from Xeroderma Pigmentosum, a fatal allergy to sunlight that confines her and her two best friends, Rob and Juliet, to the night. When freewheeling Juliet takes up Parkour – the stunt-sport of scaling and leaping off tall buildings – Allie and Rob have no choice but to join her, if only to protect her. Though potentially deadly, Parkour after dark makes Allie feel truly alive, and for the first time equal to the “daytimers.”

On a random summer night, the trio catches a glimpse of what appears to be murder. Allie alone takes it upon herself to investigate, and the truth comes at an unthinkable price. Navigating the shadowy world of specialized XP care, extreme sports, and forbidden love, Allie ultimately uncovers a secret that upends everything she believes about the people she trusts the most.

Filed Under: Young Adult Fiction Tagged With: ,

After Visiting Friends: A Son’s Story

02/19/2013 by Leave a Comment

After Visiting FriendsBy Michael Hainey

A decade in the writing, the haunting story of a son’s quest to understand the mystery of his father’s death – a universal memoir about the secrets families keep and the role they play in making us who we are.

Michael Hainey had just turned six when his uncle knocked on his family’s back door one morning with the tragic news: Bob Hainey, Michael’s father, was found alone near his car on Chicago’s North Side, dead, of an apparent heart attack. Thirty-five years old, a young assistant copy desk chief at the Chicago Sun-Times, Bob was a bright and shining star in the competitive, hard-living world of newspapers, one that involved booze-soaked nights that bled into dawn. And then suddenly he was gone, leaving behind a young widow, two sons, a fractured family – and questions surrounding the mysterious nature of his death that would obsess Michael throughout adolescence and long into adulthood. Finally, roughly his father’s age when he died, and a seasoned reporter himself, Michael set out to learn what happened that night. Died “after visiting friends,” the obituaries said. But the details beyond that were inconsistent. What friends? Where?

At the heart of his quest is Michael’s all-too-silent, opaque mother, a woman of great courage and tenacity – and a steely determination not to look back. Prodding and cajoling his relatives, and working through a network of his father’s buddies who abide by an honor code of silence and secrecy, Michael sees beyond the long-held myths and ultimately reconciles the father he’d imagined with the one he comes to know – and in the journey discovers new truths about his mother.

A stirring portrait of a family and its legacy of secrets, After Visiting Friends is the story of a son who goes in search of the truth and finds not only his father, but a rare window into a world of men and newspapers and fierce loyalties that no longer exists.

Filed Under: Autobiography & Biography Tagged With: , ,

Liar & Spy

12/01/2012 by Leave a Comment

By Rebecca Stead

The instant New York Times bestseller from the author of the Newbery Medal book When You Reach Me, Liar & Spy is a story about spies, games, and friendship. Seventh grader Georges moves into a Brooklyn apartment building and meets Safer, a twelve-year-old self-appointed spy. Georges becomes Safer’s first spy recruit. His assignment? Tracking the mysterious Mr. X, who lives in the apartment upstairs. But as Safer becomes more demanding, Georges starts to wonder: what is a lie, and what is a game? How far is too far to go for your only friend? Like the dazzling When You Reach Me, Liar & Spy will keep readers guessing until the end.

This book and its predecessor, When You Reach Me (available in paper), are great gifts for young readers (ages 9-12) who enjoy stories that focus on espionage and are full of surprises.

Filed Under: Children 9-12, Holiday Picks Tagged With:

The Art Forger

11/04/2012 by 2 Comments

By B.A. Shapiro

On March 18, 1990, thirteen works of art worth today over $500 million were stolen from the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum in Boston. It remains the largest unsolved art heist in history, and Claire Roth, a struggling young artist, is about to discover that there’s more to this crime than meets the eye.

Claire makes her living reproducing famous works of art for a popular online retailer. Desperate to improve her situation, she lets herself be lured into a Faustian bargain with Aiden Markel, a powerful gallery owner. She agrees to forge a painting – one of the Degas masterpieces stolen from the Gardner Museum – in exchange for a one-woman show in his renowned gallery. But when the long-missing Degas painting – the one that had been hanging for one hundred years at the Gardner – is delivered to Claire’s studio, she begins to suspect that it may itself be a forgery.

Claire’s search for the truth about the painting’s origins leads her into a labyrinth of deceit where secrets hidden since the late nineteenth century may be the only evidence that can now save her life. B. A. Shapiro’s razor-sharp writing and rich plot twists make The Art Forger an absorbing literary thriller that treats us to three centuries of forgers, art thieves, and obsessive collectors. it’s a dazzling novel about seeing – and not seeing – the secrets that lie beneath the canvas.

One of the most popular new fiction titles available, this book would make an excellent gift for the book group reader, literary reader, or art/art history enthusiast.

Filed Under: Featured, Holiday Picks, Popular Fiction Tagged With: , ,

Phantom

10/10/2012 by Leave a Comment

By Jo Nesbø

Following from Jo Nesbø’s electrifying international best-sellers The Snowman and The Leopard, now comes Phantom, which plunges the brilliant, deeply troubled, now former police officer Harry Hole into a full-tilt investigation on which his own tenuous future will come to depend.

When Harry left Oslo again for Hong Kong – fleeing the traumas of life as a cop – he thought he was there for good. But then the unthinkable happened. The son of the woman he loved, lost, and still loves is arrested for murder: Oleg, the boy Harry helped raise but couldn’t help deserting when he fled. Harry has come back to prove that Oleg is not a killer. Barred from rejoining the police force, he sets out on a solitary, increasingly dangerous investigation that takes him deep into the world of the most virulent drug to ever hit the streets of Oslo (and the careers of some of the city’s highest officials), and into the maze of his own past, where he will find the wrenching truth that finally matters to Oleg, and to himself.

Filed Under: Popular Fiction Tagged With: , ,

Broken Harbor

07/26/2012 by Leave a Comment

By Tana French

The mesmerizing fourth novel of the Dublin murder squad by New York Times bestselling author Tana French.

Mick “Scorcher” Kennedy, the brash cop from Tana French’s bestselling Faithful Place, plays by the book and plays hard. That’s what’s made him the Murder squad’s top detective – and that’s what puts the biggest case of the year into his hands.

On one of the half-built, half-abandoned “luxury” developments that litter Ireland, Patrick Spain and his two young children are dead. His wife, Jenny, is in intensive care.

At first, Scorcher and his rookie partner, Richie, think it’s going to be an easy solve. But too many small things can’t be explained. The half dozen baby monitors, their cameras pointing at holes smashed in the Spains’ walls. The files erased from the Spains’ computer. The story Jenny told her sister about a shadowy intruder who was slipping past all the locks.

And Broken Harbor holds memories for Scorcher. Seeing the case on the news sends his sister Dina off the rails again, and she’s resurrecting something that Scorcher thought he had tightly under control: what happened to their family one summer at Broken Harbor, back when they were children.

With her signature blend of police procedural and psychological thriller, French’s new novel goes full throttle with a heinous crime, creating her most complicated detective character and her best book yet.

Filed Under: Best Sellers, Featured Tagged With: , ,

Ransom River

07/07/2012 by Leave a Comment

By Meg Gardiner

A stunningly complex and atmospheric crime novel from Edgar Award-winning author Meg Gardiner, Ransom River features a deeply flawed, compelling heroine, a murder trial, and the long-unsolved mystery it exposes.

Rory Mackenzie is juror number seven on a high-profile murder case in her hometown of Ransom River, California. It’s a place she vowed never to visit again, after leaving behind its surfeit of regret and misfortune and the specter of a troubled past that threatened to disturb the town’s peaceful facade.

Brilliant yet guarded, Rory has always felt like an outsider. She retreated into herself when both her career aspirations and her love affair with a childhood friend, undercover cop Seth Colder, were destroyed in a tragic accident.

While most of the town is focused on the tense and shocking circumstances of the trial, Rory’s return to Ransom River dredges up troubling memories from her childhood that she can no longer ignore. But in the wake of a desperate attack on the courthouse, Rory realizes that exposing these dark skeletons has connected her to an old case that was never solved, and bringing the truth to light just might destroy her.

Departing from her popular series novels, Meg Gardiner has gone deeper than ever into the utterly convincing lives and compelling pasts of her characters. Ransom River is an intimate crime thriller with a dark mystery at its heart–one that will keep readers breathless until the very last page.

Filed Under: Best Sellers, Popular Fiction Tagged With: , ,
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