Find Your Next Book

Emmy Award winner Bruce Vilanch is known as a go-to comedy writer for award shows, sitcoms, and top-heavy variety specials, but he has also been responsible for quite a few of the worst shows ever made--legendarily bad productions. From The Star Wars Holiday Special to Rob Lowe dancing with Snow White at the Oscars, Vilanch reveals how he helped create some of the worst moments in television--and beyond.

At once sweeping and intimate, The President's Wife is an astonishing portrait of a courageous First Lady and the sacrifices she made to protect her husband and her country at all costs.

Practical Magic meets Bewitched in this quirky rom-com with an enchanted twist.
When romance problems cause their powers to go berserk, a trio of witches whose family was banned from practicing magic risk getting into serious trouble with the Grand council. Can they get their magic – and their love lives – in order before it is too late?

This exhilarating novel transports you to the lush tropical landscape of 1920s Ecuador, blending family drama, dangerous mystery, and the real-life history of the coastal town known as the "birthplace of cacao." Perfect for fans of Julia Alvarez and Silvia Moreno-Garcia

Celebrating Baldwin's 100th as an ALL FAIRFAX READS selection.
One of the most brilliant and provocative American writers of the twentieth century chronicles a fourteen-year-old boy's spiritual, sexual, and moral struggle of self-invention in this "truly extraordinary" novel (Chicago Sun-Times).

Men in Black meets Firefly in this sci-fi debut.When Russ Wesley finds an unusual artifact in his grandfather's collection of rare antiquities, the last thing he expects is for it to draw the attention of a ferocious alien. Equally surprising is the adventurous team of intergalactic exterminators dispatched to deal with the alien threat. Worse yet, they're so impressed with Russ's marksmanship that they insist he join their squad . . . whether he wants to or not.

June is Audiobook month so we are featuring Edgar-finalist Eskens gripping mystery that pits homicide detective Max Rupert against long-time friend and defense attorney Boady Sanden in a murder case. Called an “unforgettable novel about justice, friendship, and redemption” by AudioFile magazine, The Heavens May Fall was an Audies award finalist in 2017.

Returning home from an extended honeymoon in Egypt aboard the state-of-the-art RMS Titanic, Madeleine is separated from her husband John Jacob “Jack” Astor – Jack helps her into a lifeboat and promises to see her soon. Four months later, the widowed Madeleine gives birth to their son. Her most important decision lies ahead: accept the role assigned to her, or carve out her own remarkable path.

Judith Potts is seventy-seven years old and blissfully happy. One evening, while swimming in the Thames (as one does), she witnesses a murder. The local police don't believe her story, so she decides to investigate for herself, and is soon joined in her quest by Suzie, a salt-of-the-earth dog-walker, and Becks, the prim and proper wife of the local vicar. Together, they are the Marlow Murder Club and are soon on the trail of a serial killer.

When three people suffer strokes after seeing dazzling lights over Edinburgh, then awake completely recovered, they're convinced their ordeal is connected to the octopus-like creature discovered on a nearby beach...
Acclaimed crime writing author Johnstone provides another brilliant read in this fast paced and thoughtful story about the beauty of true human connections.

Everything I Never Told You meets The Night Olivia Fell set against a vivid Southern backdrop. A story of a sister coming to terms with her brother’s life and death, this accomplished and insightful debut questions how well we really know the people we love.

From critically acclaimed author Donis Casey comes a vintage Hollywood mystery! When a string of baffling clues leads to 1920s film star Bianca LaBelle, it looks like her dark secrets have finally come back to haunt her. Because the only thing worth more than wealth and fame is revenge...

In the hard-luck cotton town of Bound, South Carolina, some bury their secrets close to home. Others scatter them to the wind and hope they land somewhere far away.

Judith Kratt inherited everything her family had to offer—the pie safe, the copper clock, the murder no one talks about. She's presided over the Carolina house quite well, thank you very much, with a little help from her companion, Olva.
When her wayward sister suddenly returns, Judith must make an inventory of all that belongs to them—and her sister is determined to include the skeletons the Kratt family had hoped to take to their graves.
Interweaving the present with chilling flashbacks from one fateful evening in 1929, Judith pieces together the devastating influence of the Kratt family on their small South Carolina cotton town, learning that the effects of dark family secrets can last a lifetime and beyond.

A heartwarming debut that explores the mysteries of family, the astonishing truth about home, and the wonders we make for ourselves.
Daniel Green makes crop circles. As a member of a secret organization, he travels across the country creating strange works of art that leave small-town communities mystified.
When a dying farmer hires him in a last-ditch effort to bring publicity to a small Vermont town, Daniel finds himself at odds with his heart. It isn't long before he gets drawn into a family struggling to stitch itself back together, and the consequences will change his life forever.

A charming tale of a ramshackle roadside motel: a heartwarming story of love, friendship, community, and the art of living, even when it's already too late.

The Pine Creek Motel has seen better days. Henny would call it charming, but she's always seen the best in things. Like now, when she's just met an untimely end crossing the road. She's not going to let a tiny thing like death stop her from living fully—not when her friends and family need her the most.

Maggie Banks arrives in Bell River to run her best friend's struggling bookstore. To help save the store, Maggie starts an underground book club, running a series of events celebrating the books readers actually love. But keeping the club quiet, selling forbidden books, and dodging the literary society is nearly impossible. Especially when Maggie unearths a town secret that could upend everything. Maggie will have to decide what's more important: the books that formed a small town's history, or the stories poised to change it all.

Something has gone terribly wrong to turn the Banks wedding into a murder mystery. Four different women rush to offer confessions, each insisting that they committed the crime—alone.
Four women, holding their friends close and their secrets closer. Four confessions. One murder. Only these women know what really happened—and they're not telling.

Part food memoir, part sociological investigation, Tastes Like War is a hybrid text about a daughter's search through intimate and global history for the roots of her mother's schizophrenia.
Winner: 2022 Asian/Pacific American Award in Literature
Finalist: 2021 National Book Award for Nonfiction

Margot Lee's mother is ignoring her calls. Margot can't understand why, until she makes a surprise trip home to Koreatown, LA, and finds that her mother has suspiciously died. Determined to discover the truth, Margot unravels her single mother's past as a Korean War orphan and an undocumented immigrant, only to realize how little she truly knew about her mother, Mina.
Told through the intimate lens of a mother and daughter who have struggled all their lives to understand each other, The Last Story of Mina Lee is a powerful and exquisitely woven debut novel that explores identity, family, secrets, and what it truly means to belong.

London, 1930. A headless corpse; an apparent suicide in a locked room; a man burned alive during an illusionist's show in front of thousands of people. Scotland Yard is baffled by the sequence of ghastly murders unfolding across the city and at the centre of it all is mysterious heiress Rachel Savernake.

After being medically discharged from the Army following a bombing that also killed her best friend, Larkin Bennet returns home to find she has inherited her friend's effects. They include a diary of Emily Wilson, who enlisted with her younger brother to fight in the Civil War after their father and older brother were killed. A diary that helps Larkin to heal. Two women, separated by a century and a half, survive life in the United States military in Estes' suspenseful, neatly structured second novel, which brings the Civil War era to life and effectively links it to contemporary times.

Available March 1 - March 15 thanks to Together We Read and OverDrive.
Award-winning Mexican-American and Indigenous author Jennifer Givhan brings us an exquisitely written, spell-binding psychological thriller -- weaving together folk magick with personal and cultural empowerment -- that is perfect for fans of Mexican Gothic. Borrow the title then join the book discussion at togetherweread.com

What does it mean to be a single black mother in America? In this timely, insightful memoir, novelist Austin (Eternity) examines adoption and child-rearing as a single black woman confronting gender and racial bias. Austin's experiences, both positive and negative, are recounted in this fast-paced, heartwarming memoir of motherhood and adoption told through an African American lens. Austin closes with first-person interviews with other black mothers who share their individual parenting journeys, helping to further bolster the author's argument that black motherhood is not monolithic.

We were going to choose a January eBook related to resolutions, goals or self-improvement. But, you know, we really just want everyone to be kind to themselves this year, whatever that means for you. If it’s fictional escapes, then we’ve got a great one for you! Happy New Year.

She built the Brooklyn Bridge, so why don't you know her name? Emily Roebling built a monument for all time. Then she was lost in its shadow. Based on the true story of an American icon, The Engineer's Wife delivers an emotional portrait of a woman transformed by a project of unfathomable scale, which takes her into the bowels of the East River, suffragette riots, the halls of Manhattan's elite, and the heady, freewheeling temptations of P.T. Barnum. Perfect for book clubs and fans of Marie Benedict.

Sponsored by OverDrive's Together We Read, available February 7th - 21st. "From an award-winning storyteller comes a stunning debut novel following a New Mexican family’s extraordinary year of love and sacrifice.”

Paige Parker has the perfect vacation planned to honor Singles Day. After all, what's better than celebrating her pride in being single? Because who needs a man anyway? Lucas Croft's life is simple and quiet. It's only him and his five year old daughter, which is just the way he likes it. Because who needs a woman anyway? But when Paige books a room Lucas' well-intentioned sister listed without his knowledge, their two worlds collide. If they can survive the week together, they just might discover exactly what they've both been missing.

The Similars are all anyone can talk about at the elite Darkwood Academy. Who are these six clones? What are the odds that all of them would be Darkwood students? Who is the madman who broke the law to create them? Emma couldn't care less. Her best friend, Oliver, died over the summer and all she can think about is how to get through her junior year without him. Then she comes face-to-heartbreaking-face with Levi--Oliver's exact DNA replica and one of the Similars. Emma wants nothing to do with the Similars, but she keeps getting pulled deeper and deeper into their clique, uncovering dark truths about the clones and her prestigious school along the way. But no one can be trusted...not even the boy she is falling for who has Oliver's face.

Turton's complex debut blends mystery with Groundhog Day and Quantum Leap At 11 p.m., during a party, Evelyn Hardcastle is murdered. Aiden Bishop is trapped inside a time loop with this murder mystery at its center. Each morning he awakens in another guest's body and relives that same day until Evelyn's death. If he does not find the killer by 11 p.m., Evelyn will die, and the cycle will begin again. However, there is a catch...

Our understanding of the Earth's fluctuating environment is an extraordinary story of human perception and scientific endeavor. It also began much earlier than we might think. In Our Biggest Experiment, Alice Bell takes us back to climate change science's earliest steps in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, through the point when concern started to rise in the 1950s and right up to today, where the “debate” is over and the world is finally starting to face up to the reality that things are going to get a lot hotter, a lot drier (in some places), and a lot wetter (in others), with catastrophic consequences for most of Earth's biomes.
This is part of FCPL's Year of Literacy; for more information visit https://research.fairfaxcounty.gov/yol

Parasite meets The Good Son in this piercing psychological portrait of three women haunted by a brutal, unsolved crime.

In this piercing psychological portrait that takes the shape of a crime novel, a woman haunted by her sister's unsolved murder transforms herself in order to cope with the pain of absence and unknowing.
In the summer of 2002 eighteen-year-old Kim Hae-on is killed in what becomes known as the High School Beauty Murder. Two suspects quickly emerge, but alibis and the lack of evidence means the case goes cold. Seventeen years pass without any resolution for those close to Hae-on, and the grief and uncertainty take a cruel toll on her younger sister, Da-on, in particular. Unable to move on with her life, Da-on tries in her own twisted way to recover some of what she’s lost, ultimately setting out to find the truth of what happened.

Shifting between the perspectives of Da-on and two of Hae-on’s classmates struck in different ways by her otherworldly beauty, Kwon Yeo-sun uses the well-worn form of a crime novel to craft a searing, timely exploration of privilege, jealousy, trauma, and how we live with the wrongs we have endured and inflicted in turn.

Sometimes the worst shows inspire the best stories. After hundreds of interviews with national headliners and beloved indie acts alike, entertainment journalist Jon Niccum has crafted a collection that chronicles the most embarrassing, most hilarious and most insane live show moments ever.
THE WORST GIG features outrageous stories from stars such as Wilco, Def Leppard, Tenacious D, Rush, John Mayer, and The Sex Pistols. Be it nature's wrath, equipment breakdowns or even military intervention, get the wild scoop on what really happened, straight from the artists themselves.

Wedding planner Carolina Santos has a great opportunity that could change her life. The hitch? She has to collaborate with the best (or is that the worst?) man from her own failed nuptials. Max is a marketing expert determined to land a new client, if only he can manage to work with his brother's whip-smart, stunning, ex-fiancee. This enemies to lovers Rom-Com is fun, flirty, sexy and smart, this book does not disappoint.

In this engrossing memoir, journalist Jensen takes the reader on his quest to hunt down killers using internet sleuthing and crowdsourcing. With 15 years spent investigating unsolved murders, including the Golden State killer with Michelle McNamara (I'll be gone in the dark), Jensen has a depth of experience to pull from. He details many cases where he helped find killers for police departments around the country and he writes about his elation the first time his methods solved a case.

2022 Newbery Award winner. Nina is a Lipan girl in our world. She still believes in the old stories. Oli is a cottonmouth kid, from the land of spirits and monsters. Like all cottonmouths, he's been cast from home. Nina and Oli have no idea the other exists. But a catastrophic event on Earth, and a strange sickness that befalls Oli's best friend, will drive their worlds together in ways they haven't been in centuries. And there are some who will kill to keep them apart.

Her beauty almost certainly saved her from the rising Nazi party and led to marriage with an Austrian arms dealer. Underestimated in everything else, she overheard the Third Reich's plans while at her husband's side, understanding more than anyone would guess. She devised a plan to flee in disguise from their castle, and the whirlwind escape landed her in Hollywood. She became Hedy Lamarr, screen star.
But she kept a secret more shocking than her heritage or her marriage: she was a scientist. And she knew a few secrets about the enemy. She had an idea that might help the country fight the Nazis...if anyone would listen to her.
A powerful novel based on the incredible true story of the glamour icon and scientist whose groundbreaking invention revolutionized modern communication, The Only Woman in the Room is a masterpiece.

Dara longs for stardom--but when she isn't cast in her middle school's production of The Sound of Music, she gets suspicious. It can't be because she's not the best. She was born to be a famous movie star. It must be because she's adopted from Cambodia and doesn't look like a typical fraulein. (That's German for girl.)
So irrepressible Dara comes up with a genius plan to shake up the school: write a play about her own life. Then she'll have to be the star.

Abraham Lincoln has long been admired for his leadership, honesty, and eloquence. But despite his somber reputation, the sixteenth president was quite funny. With an uncanny ability to mimic others and an irresistible midwestern twang, Lincoln, in fact, could be downright hilarious.

Brimming with his funniest quips, jokes, and stories, Lincoln's Gift explores the crucial role humor played throughout his tumultuous professional and private life.

When Tea accidentally resurrects her brother, Fox, from the dead, she learns she is different from the other witches in her family. Her gift for necromancy means that she's a bone witch, a title that makes her feared and ostracized by her community. But Tea finds solace and guidance with an older, wiser bone witch, who takes Tea and her brother to another land for training.

In her new home, Tea puts all her energy into becoming an asha--one who can wield elemental magic. But dark forces are approaching quickly, and in the face of danger, Tea will have to overcome her obstacles...and make a powerful choice.

Claire Cook has a perfect life. But behind closed doors, nothing is quite as it seems. That perfect husband has a temper that burns as bright as his promising political career, and what he doesn't know is that Claire has worked for months on a plan to vanish.

A chance meeting in an airport bar brings her together with a woman, Eva, whose circumstances seem equally dire. Together they make a last-minute decision to switch tickets. But when a flight goes down, Claire is cut off, out of options, with the news of her death about to explode in the media, Claire will assume Eva's identity, and along with it, the secrets Eva fought so hard to keep hidden.

Women have been doing amazing, daring, and dangerous things for years, but they're rarely mentioned in our history books as adventurers, daredevils, or rebels. This new compilation of brief biographies features women throughout history who have risked their lives for adventure - many of who you may not know, but all of whom you'll WANT to know, such as: Minnie Spotted Wolf, the first Native American marine; Valentina Tereshkova, the first woman to fly in space; Beatrice Ayettey, the first female ship captain from Ghana; and many more! This is the perfect read for anyone who wants to know what it means to explore, discover, play, climb, and fight like a girl!

On October 4, 1997, an amateurish gang robbed Loomis, Fargo & Co. in Charlotte, NC of $17 million, the second largest heist in U.S. history. Diamant, a journalist who reported on the case at the time, goes into meticulous detail on how the heist was pulled off and its aftermath, which became comical. Reading like a fast-paced novel, this book was made into the 2016 movie Masterminds with Zach Galifianakis and Kristen Wiig

Told from two viewpoints, Atlanta high school seniors Lena and Campbell, one black, one white, must rely on each other to survive after a football rivalry escalates into a riot.

2019 Indie Author Project of the Year brings us the story of Kamal Jackson, a black novelist who has reached an impasse in his career. His work is either too white for black audiences or too black for white audiences. He decides to do something about it, in spite of the opposition he gets from his new love interest, Yasmin.
Concocting a Caucasian-sounding pseudonym and a backstory to rival J. D. Salinger's, Kamal sets out to rework his most current novel for a new round of publishers.
Kamal must now ask if he is prepared to sacrifice his relationship with Yasmin and his identity as a writer of color in order to see his project through to its uncertain conclusion.

Eleven-year-old Liv fights to change the middle school dress code requiring girls to wear a skirt and, along the way, finds the courage to tell his moms he is meant to be a boy.
"My name is Liv (Not Olivia) ... I'm not technically a girl. "I'm transgender. Which is a bit like being a transformer. Only not quite as cool because I probably won't get to save the world one day." Liv knows he was always meant to be a boy, but with his new school's terrible dress code, he can't even wear pants. Only skirts. Operation Pants Project begins! The only way for Liv to get what he wants is to go after it himself. But to Liv, this isn't just a mission to change the policy―it's a mission to change his life. And that's a pretty big deal.

The incredible true story of the women who fought America's Undark danger
The Curies' newly discovered element of radium makes gleaming headlines across the nation as the fresh face of beauty, and wonder drug of the medical community. From body lotion to tonic water, the popular new element shines bright in the otherwise dark years of the First World War.
Meanwhile, hundreds of girls toil amidst the glowing dust of the radium-dial factories. The glittering chemical covers their bodies from head to toe; they light up the night like industrious fireflies. With such a coveted job, these "shining girls" are the luckiest alive — until they begin to fall mysteriously ill.
But the factories that once offered golden opportunities are now ignoring all claims of the gruesome side effects, and the women's cries of corruption. And as the fatal poison of the radium takes hold, the brave shining girls find themselves embroiled in one of the biggest scandals of America's early 20th century, and in a groundbreaking battle for workers' rights that will echo for centuries to come.

Adapted for young readers! The incredible true story of the young women exposed to the 'wonder drug' radium and their struggle for justice.

A young woman living in a supposedly safe society begins to realize that appearances can be deceptive.In 2090, America One has been walled off from the rest of the world, run by an anonymous board for the past 60 years for the good of the citizens. Patricia "Patch" Collins is generally happy with her life and her career, one which allows more freedom and less monitoring than most. Later, a surprise discovery during an unmonitored work trip with her best friend, Rexx, turns her life upside down. As she and Rexx embark on a perilous cross-country journey, they encounter additional horrors, meet like-minded citizens, and develop feelings for one another.

Seventeen-year-old Jessa has been having panic attacks since seventh grade. When Jessa's boyfriend, Wren, betrays her at a New Year's Eve party, she flees the scene and moments later gets into a traumatic car accident. As Jessa pushes through the center of her anxiety disorder and the effects of her accident, she begins to understand that things are not always as they seem and that she does not have to be perfect to be loved. Lauren Miller provides an authentic view of generalized anxiety disorder.

Two girls – separated by a thousand years, connected by a prophecy. A thrilling, dark fantasy perfect for fans of Leigh Bardugo (Shadow and Bone). When assassins ambush her best friend, Rielle Dardenne risks everything to save him, exposing herself as one of a pair of prophesied queens: a queen of light, and a queen of blood. To prove she is the Sun Queen, Rielle must endure seven elemental magic trials. If she fails, she will be executed...unless the trials kill her first. One thousand years later, the legend of Queen Rielle is a fairy tale to Eliana Ferracora. A bounty hunter for the Undying Empire, Eliana believes herself untouchable—until her mother vanishes. To find her, Eliana joins a rebel captain and discovers that the evil at the empire's heart is more terrible than she ever imagined. As their stories intersect, the shocking connections between them ultimately determine the fate of their world—and of each other.

Mystery crime fiction written in the Golden Age of Murder
Edwards combines the well-known (Conan Doyle, Dorothy Sayers) with the obscure (former actor Ernest Dudley) in this impressive anthology of 14 short stories featuring scientific and technical know-how...fans of TV's CSI will enjoy seeing the evolution of criminal forensics.

It is November 25, 1960, and three beautiful sisters have been found near their wrecked Jeep at the bottom of a 150-foot cliff on the north coast of the Dominican Republic. The official state newspaper reports their deaths as accidental. It does not mention that a fourth sister lives. Nor does it explain that the sisters were among the leading opponents of Gen. Rafael Leónidas Trujillo’s dictatorship. It doesn’t have to. Everybody knows of Las Mariposas—the Butterflies.

The Walking Dead meets Alien… Clover Martinez has always been a survivor, which is the reason she isn't among the dead when aliens invade and destroy Earth as she knows it. Clover is convinced she's the only one left until she hears a voice on the radio urging her to go to the former Area 51. When she arrives, she's greeted by a band of misfits who call themselves The Last Teenagers on Earth.
Only they aren't the ragtag group of heroes Clover was expecting. The seven strangers seem more interested in pretending the world didn't end than fighting back, and Clover starts to wonder if she was better off alone. But when she finds a hidden spaceship within the walls of the compound, she doesn't know what to believe...or who to trust.

A captivating blend of history, women in science, and true crime, 18 Tiny Deaths tells the story of how one woman changed the face of forensics forever. Frances Glessner Lee, born a socialite to a wealthy and influential Chicago family in the 1870s, was never meant to have a career, let alone one steeped in death and depravity. Yet she developed a fascination with the investigation of violent crimes, and made it her life's work. Best known for creating the Nutshell Studies of Unexplained Death, a series of dollhouses that appear charming—until you notice the macabre little details: an overturned chair, or a blood-spattered comforter. And then, of course, there are the bodies—splayed out on the floor, draped over chairs—clothed in garments that Lee lovingly knit with sewing pins. Her methods that used the Nutshells dioramas to train law enforcement officers to investigate violent crimes are still used today.

(Big Library Read)
She thought being stranded was the worst thing that could happen. She was wrong.

Mira needs to get home for the holidays. Badly. But when an incoming blizzard results in a canceled connecting flight, it looks like she might get stuck at the airport indefinitely.
And then Harper, Mira's glamorous seatmate from her initial flight, offers her a ride. Harper and her three friends can drop Mira off on their way home. But as they set off, Mira realizes fellow travelers are all total strangers. And every one of them is hiding something.

In An Indigenous Peoples' History of the United States, Dunbar-Ortiz challenges the founding myth of the United States and shows how policy against the Indigenous peoples was colonialist and designed to seize the territories of the original inhabitants, displacing or eliminating them. Spanning more than four hundred years, this classic bottom-up peoples' history radically reframes US history and explodes the silences that have haunted our national narrative. (from the Publisher)
The 2019 Young Readers' edition will also be made available.