These titles were recently added to the collection of Yakima Valley Libraries
A drop of corruption : an Ana and Din mystery
Bennett, Robert Jackson, 1984- author.
In the canton of Yarrowdale, at the very edge of the Empire's reach, a Treasury officer has disappeared into thin air-vanishing from a room within a heavily guarded tower, its door and windows locked from the inside. To solve the case, the Empire calls on its most brilliant and mercurial detective, the great Ana Dolabra. At her side, as always, is her bemused assistant Dinios Kol. Ana soon discovers that they are investigating not a disappearance but a murder-and one of surpassing cunning, carried out by an opponent who can pass through warded doors like a ghost. Worse still, the killer may be targeting the high-security compound known as the Shroud, where the Empire harvests fallen titans for the volatile magic found in their blood. Should it fall, the Empire itself will grind to a halt, robbed of the magic that allows its wheels of power to turn. Din has seen his superior solve impossible cases before. But as the death toll grows and their quarry predicts each of Ana's moves with uncanny foresight, he fears that she has at last met an enemy she can't defeat.....
View in Catalog
Mỹ documents : a novel
Nguyen, Kevin, author.
Ursula, Alvin, Jen, and Duncan grew up as cousins in the sprawling Nguyen family, but the truth about their family is much more complicated. As young adults, they're on the precipice of new ventures -- Ursula as a budding journalist in Manhattan, Alvin as an engineering intern for Google, Jen as a naive freshman at NYU, and Duncan as a promising newcomer on his high school football team. Their lives are upended when a series of violent, senseless attacks across America create a national panic, prompting a government policy forcing Vietnamese Americans into internment camps. Jen and Duncan are sent with their mother to Camp Tacoma while Ursula and Alvin receive exemptions. Cut off entirely from the outside world, Jen and Duncan try to withstand long dusty days in camp, forced to work jobs they hate and acclimate to life without the internet. That is until Jen discovers a way to get messages to the outside. Her first instinct is to reach out to Ursula, who sees this as an opportunity to tell the world about the horrors of detention -- and bolster her own reporting career in the process. Informed by real-life events from Japanese incarceration, the Vietnam War, and modern-day immigrant detention, Kevin Nguyen gives us a version of reality only a few degrees away from our own--much too close for comfort. Moving and finely attuned to both the brutalities and mundanities of racism in America, Mỹ Documents is a strangely funny and touching portrait of American ambition, fear, and family. The story of the Nguyens is one of resilience and how we return to each other, and to ourselves, after tragedy.....
View in Catalog
Bearer of bad news : a novel
Dini, Elisabeth, author.
For someone who hates secrets, Las Vegas hairdresser Lucy Rey is about to be faced with a whole bunch of them. After discovering that her fiancé has been cheating on her with someone from his improv class, Lucy finds herself short on funds and desperate for a change of scenery. Enter a most unusual job opportunity: a Bearer of Bad News. Sure, it's a little weird, but Lucy's employer is wealthy beyond compare, so who can blame her for wanting to outsource? Despite the few details, and the fact that the bad news sounds more like a vaguely worded threat, Lucy can't say no to the perks: an-all-expenses-paid trip to the Italian Dolomites plus a generous bonus if she proves she's found her client's sister and delivered the message. Then she learns that her mission is just the tip of the iceberg. Launched into a world of betrayal and greed involving eighty-year-old secrets, stolen jewels, and a World War II-era mystery, Lucy is in way over her head. And she's connected to this story in ways she never could have imagined.....
View in Catalog
Shopgirls : a novel
Blau, Jessica Anya, author.
Nineteen-year-old Zippy can hardly believe it: she's the newest and youngest salesgirl at I. Magnin, "San Francisco's Finest Department Store." Every week, she rotates her three spruced-up Salvation Army outfits and Vaseline-shined pumps; still, she's thrilled to walk those pumps through the employee entrance five days a week as she saves to buy something new. For a girl who grew up in a one-bedroom apartment above a liquor store with her mother and her mother's madcap boyfriend, Howard; a girl who wanted to go to college but had no help in figuring out how; I. Magnin represents a real chance for a better and more elegant life. Or, at the very least, a more interesting one. Zippy may not be in school, but she's about to get an education that will stick with her for decades. Her fellow salesgirls (lifetime professionals) run the gamut from mean and indifferent to caring and helpful. The cosmetics ladies on the first floor share both samples and advice ("only date a man with a Rolex"); and her new roommate, Raquel, an ambitious lawyer, tells Zippy she can lose ten pounds easy if she joins Raquel in eating only every other day. Just when Zippy thinks she's getting a handle on how to be an adult woman in 1985, two surprises threaten both her sense of self and her coveted position at I. Magnin. Set in the Day-Glo colors of 1980s San Francisco, Shopgirls is an intoxicating novel of self-discovery, outrageous fashion, and family both biological and found.....
View in Catalog
I will blossom anyway : a novel
Bose, Disha, author.
Durga is named after the Bengali goddess, pure of heart, filled with goodness. But the goddess has an alter-ego, fearless Kali, of fire and crackling with energy. The third of four children born to a middle-class Calcutta family, quiet Durga is surprisingly the first to leave the nest of her loving, overbearing family. She is not as charming as her older sister, Tia, as lighthearted as her brother, Arjun, or as clever as her younger sister, Parul. But when she arrives in Ireland to work at a tech company, she finds that for the first time ever she is free--to have fun, to stay out, to sample everything that life has to offer. Suddenly, Durga can be whoever she wants to be. And she wants it all. But freedom comes at a price. Durga falls in love with handsome, charismatic Jacob, and grows close with his sister, Joy, now Durga's flatmate, and best friend. But when Jacob breaks up with Durga, she's unmoored. Who will she choose to be: fearless Kali or peace-loving Durga? Will she stay in Ireland with her newfound identity and livelihood, or will she return to India, where she is comfortable? Perhaps neither option is enough. Durga must summon her inner Kali, the brave and fearless warrior, and fight for the life she truly desires.....
View in Catalog
Broken fields
Rendon, Marcie R., author.
1970s Minnesota: It's spring in the Red River Valley and Cash Blackbear is doing summer field work for Bud Borgerud, a local farmer-until she finds him dead on the kitchen floor of the property's rented farmhouse. The only possible witness to the murder is the young daughter of a Native field laborer who was renting the house. The girl, Shawnee, is too terrified to speak about what she's witnessed, and her parents seem to have vanished. In the wake of the murder, Cash can't deny her intuitive abilities: she is suspicious of the dead man's grieving widow, who offers to take in Shawnee temporarily. While Cash scours the county and White Earth reservation trying to find the missing mother before the Shawnee is placed in the care of a social worker-the same woman who placed Cash in foster care a decade earlier-another body turns up. Concerned about the girl's fate, and with the help of local Sheriff Wheaton, Cash races against the clock to figure out the truth of what happened in the farmhouse. Broken Fields is a compelling, fast read with seamlessly woven in details of rural life, the American Indian Movement, abusive farm labor practices, and women's liberation.....
View in Catalog
People of means : a novel
Johnson, Nancy (Novelist), author.
Two women. Two pivotal moments. One dream for justice and equality. In the fall of 1959, Freda Gilroy arrives on the campus of Fisk University full of hope, carrying a suitcase and the voice of her father telling her she's part of a family legacy of greatness. Soon, the ugliness of the Jim Crow South intrudes, and she's thrust into a movement for social change. Freda is reluctant to get involved, torn between a soon-to-be doctor her parents approve of and an audacious young man willing to risk it all in the name of justice. Freda finds herself caught between two worlds, and two loves, and must decide how much she's willing to sacrifice for the advancement of her people. In 1992 Chicago, Freda's daughter Tulip is an ambitious PR professional on track for an exciting career, if workplace politics and racial microaggressions don't get in her way. But with the ruling in the Rodney King trial weighing heavily on her, Tulip feels called to action. When she makes an irreversible professional misstep as she seeks to uplift her community, she must decide, just like her mother had three decades prior, what she's willing to risk in the name of justice and equality. Insightful, evocative, and richly imagined with stories of hidden history, People of Means is an emotional tour de force that offers a glimpse into the quest for racial equality, the pursuit of personal and communal success, and the power of love and family ties.....
View in Catalog
Blood ties
Nesbø, Jo, 1960- author.
By all accounts, Carl and Roy Opgard are doing quite well for themselves. Or at least they're doing as well as can be expected in a small town like Os. Carl manages the area's swanky and successful spa and hotel, while Roy runs a nearby gas station and harbors grand plans to build it out into an entire amusement park complete with a roller coaster. But when news breaks about a new highway to be built nearby, bypassing Os and leaving the town cut-off and isolated, it's clear that something has to be done... even if the methods are bound to be dirty. Fortunately, Carl and Roy have experience with just that kind of work. Meanwhile, the town sheriff has gotten his hands on new technology that will enable him to take a deeper look at a slate of unsolved murders from years past - including that of his own father. And just as the sheriff reopens his investigation, the death toll begins to climb. It's like Roy says about his roller coaster: "Once it's rolling, it's too late to get off." ....
View in Catalog
The murder machine
Graham, Heather, author.
This state-of-the-art smart home has everything: a next-generation entertainment system, an ultramodern kitchen where every appliance is online and even a personal AI to control it all. Standing above its owner's lifeless body, FBI agent Jude Mackenzie is faced with the daunting task of discovering how the woman was killed by her own home. How do you catch a murderer that doesn't leave any fingerprints? Enter Special Agent Victoria Tennant, whose familiarity with cybercrime reveals the stark truth: a machine can only do what it's been directed to. As the number of grisly "accidents" begins to rise, the pair must race to uncover the perpetrator even as they find themselves caught in their digital crosshairs! There's nowhere to hide when danger may be as close as the very phones in their pockets.....
View in Catalog
The ones we loved
Ngangura, Tarisai, author.
A wrenching love story and literary debut following two strangers whose paths converge in a series of seemingly chance encounters and shared histories... On a bus moving across rural landscapes from town to town, two young people are escaping with nothing to hold except hope. She has committed a horrifying act for which there will certainly be retribution. He is staggering from a devastating discovery. They will find each other and attempt to move forward, even as their grief leaves wounds on their new beginnings. Seamlessly transitioning between past lives and present realities, The Ones We Loved tenderly weaves both myth and memory into an account of two people desperate for connection and yearning for a place to belong. They will find sunflowers carrying death, rivers that whisper secrets and trees that will see it all. The Ones We Loved is told in the rhythms of oral retellings practiced in Zimbabwe, where a ngano (story) — its melodies, pauses and lifts — creates a call-and-response with the audience. It is a breathtakingly beautiful story about the homes we leave behind, the lonely voices that find us and the painful consequences of experiencing a love that has never known how to let go. ....
View in Catalog
Audition
Kitamura, Katie, 1979- author.
One woman, the performance of a lifetime. Or two... Two people meet for lunch in a Manhattan restaurant. She's an elegant and accomplished actress in rehearsals for an upcoming premiere. He's attractive, troubling, and young--young enough to be her son. Who is he to her--and who is she to him? In this compulsively readable, brilliantly constructed novel, two competing narratives unspool, rewriting our understanding of the roles we play every day -- partner, parent, creator, muse -- and the truths every performance masks, especially from those who think they know us best. ....
View in Catalog
Emily Wilde's compendium of lost tales : a novel
Fawcett, Heather (Heather M.), author.
Emily Wilde has spent her life studying faeries. A renowned dryadologist, she has documented hundreds of species of Folk in her Encyclopedia of Faeries. Now she is about to embark on her most dangerous academic project studying the inner workings of a faerie realm--as its queen. Along with her former academic rival--now fianč--the dashing and mercurial Wendell Bambleby, Emily is immediately thrust into the deadly intrigues of Faerie as the two of them seize the throne of Wendell's long-lost kingdom, which Emily finds a beautiful nightmare filled with scholarly treasures. Emily has been obsessed with faerie stories her entire life, but at first she feels as ill-suited to Faerie as she did to the mortal world: How can an unassuming scholar such as herself pass for a queen? Yet there is little time to settle in, for Wendell's murderous stepmother has placed a deadly curse upon the land before vanishing without a trace. It will take all of Wendell's magic--and Emily's knowledge of stories--to unravel the mystery before they lose everything they hold dear.....
View in Catalog
2 Sisters murder investigations
Patterson, James, 1947- author.
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. But 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. The Bird sisters share a late father, but not much else... except their willingness to fight. Fight the system. Fight for the underdog. Fight for the truth. If they can stop fighting each other long enough to work together.....
View in Catalog