12 Books to Get You Through This Period of Social Distancing
12 Books to Get You Through This Period of Social Distancing
Everything is canceled. You’re staying in, singing songs while you wash your hands, and avoiding crowded areas to do your part in preventing the spread of Coronavirus. You’ve stocked up on hand sanitizer and toilet paper. Now what? Well, I suggest you pick up a book! There’s no better time to escape reality and lose yourself in a good book. Plus, you can support local bookstores, who might be struggling due to lost sales and canceled events, by purchasing a book from Bookshop.org. Two birds, one book.
1 - Stalker by Lars Kepler
12 Books to Get You Through This Period of Social Distancing
From the publisher:
The Swedish National Crime Unit receives a video of a young woman in her home, clearly unaware that she's being watched. Soon after the tape is received, the woman's body is found horrifically mutilated. With the arrival of the next, similar video, the police understand that the killer is toying with them, warning of a new victim, knowing there's nothing they can do. Detective Margot Silverman is put in charge of the investigation, and soon asks Detective Joona Linna for help. Linna, in turn, recruits Erik Maria Bark, the hypnotist and expert in trauma, with whom Linna's worked before. Bark is leery of forcing people to give up their secrets. But this time, Bark is the one hiding things.
Years before, he had put a man away for an eerily similar crime, and now he's beginning to think that an innocent man may be behind bars--and a serial killer still on the loose. . .
2 - Don't Read the Comments by Eric Smith
12 Books to Get You Through This Period of Social Distancing
From the publisher:
Divya Sharma is a queen. Or she is when she’s playing Reclaim the Sun, the year’s hottest online game. Divya—better known as popular streaming gamer D1V—regularly leads her #AngstArmada on quests through the game’s vast and gorgeous virtual universe. But for Divya, this is more than just a game. Out in the real world, she’s trading her rising-star status for sponsorships to help her struggling single mom pay the rent.
Gaming is basically Aaron Jericho’s entire life. Much to his mother’s frustration, Aaron has zero interest in becoming a doctor like her, and spends his free time writing games for a local developer. At least he can escape into Reclaim the Sun—and with a trillion worlds to explore, disappearing should be easy. But to his surprise, he somehow ends up on the same remote planet as celebrity gamer D1V.
At home, Divya and Aaron grapple with their problems alone, but in the game, they have each other to face infinite new worlds…and the growing legion of trolls populating them. Soon the virtual harassment seeps into reality when a group called the Vox Populi begin launching real-world doxxing campaigns, threatening Aaron’s dreams and Divya’s actual life. The online trolls think they can drive her out of the game, but everything and everyone Divya cares about is on the line…
And she isn’t going down without a fight.
3 - St. Francis Society for Wayward Pets by Annie England Noblin
12 Books to Get You Through This Period of Social Distancing
From the publisher:
Laid off, cheated on, mugged: what else can go wrong in Maeve Stephens’ life? So when she learns her birth mother has left her a house, a vintage VW Beetle, and a marauding cat, in the small town of Timber Creek, Washington, she packs up to discover the truth about her past.
She arrives to the sight of a cheerful bulldog abandoned on her front porch, a reclusive but tempting author living next door, and a set of ready-made friends at the St. Francis Society for Wayward Pets, where women knit colorful sweaters for the dogs and cats in their care. But there’s also an undercurrent of something that doesn’t sit right with Maeve. What’s the secret (besides her!) that her mother had hidden?
If Maeve is going to make Timber Creek her home, she must figure out where she fits in and unravel the truth about her past. But is she ready to be adopted again—this time, by an entire town…?
4 - The Caroline Paintings by Arthur D. Hittner
12 Books to Get You Through This Period of Social Distancing
From the publisher:
In 1968, Caroline McKellan, a precocious sixteen-year-old, appears at the Shenandoah Valley studio of her neighbor, the world-famous artist Grant Elliott, begging to pose for him. Tempted by her beauty and charisma, the artist can’t resist, dismissing the protestations of Caroline’s rigid parents and his own jealous wife. Their eighteen-month collaboration, a well-guarded secret for the next four decades, yields a trove of great art—and a complication. Pregnant and forsaken by her emotionally unsupportive parents, Caroline abandons home. Hitchhiking westward, she’s rescued at a truck stop cafe by Mike Grainger, a college dropout from an Iowa commune. There, she rebuilds her life in obscurity with Mike and young Elliott Grainger, her son by the artist, whom they raise without revealing his true paternity.
Four decades later, Jerry Deaver, a recently widowed Florida retiree, an unapologetic devotee of food, art, and baseball, buys the contents of the storage locker of deceased attorney Marty Becker in a foreclosure auction. Included in his bounty is a cache of unsigned paintings, by a supremely talented hand, of a beautiful young woman. Unbeknownst to Jerry, Becker, long ago tasked to deliver the paintings to Caroline upon the death of the artist and his wife, retained the paintings instead, his plans to sell them foiled by his untimely death. Teaming with Max Winter, a quirky, semi-retired Harvard art professor, Jerry scours libraries, probate records, museum basements, legal files, and the Shenandoah Valley countryside in his quest to discover the artist and origin of the paintings. Even as the unlikely duo unravels the mysteries behind the artworks, including Becker’s likely perfidy, Elliott Grainger, now aware of his own origins, pursues the hidden paintings on his mother’s behalf. When the paths of the parties ultimately converge, a battle for the artwork ensues, leaving Jerry to navigate a complex moral and ethical dilemma.
5 - Carved from Stone and Dream by T. Frohock
12 Books to Get You Through This Period of Social Distancing
From the publisher:
February 1939
Catalonia has fallen. Los Nefilim is in retreat.
With the Nationalist forces hard on their heels, the members of Los Nefilim—Spanish Nephilim that possess the power to harness music and light in the supernatural war between the angels and daimons—make a desperate run for the French border.
Diago Alvarez, a singular being of angelic and daimonic descent, follows Guillermo and a small group of nefilim through the Pyrenees, where the ice is as treacherous as postwar loyalties—both can kill with a single slip. When a notebook of Los Nefilim’s undercover operatives falls into a traitor’s hands, Diago and Guillermo risk their lives to track it down. As they uncover a pocket realm deep within the Pyrenees, Diago discovers his family is held hostage.
Faced with an impossible choice: betray Los Nefilim, or watch his family die, Diago must nurture the daimonic song he has so long denied in order to save those he loves.
6 - The Third to Die by Allison Brennan
12 Books to Get You Through This Period of Social Distancing
From the publisher:
An edgy female police detective…An ambitious FBI special agent. Together they are at the heart of the ticking-clock investigation for a psychopathic serial killer. The bond they forge in this crucible sets the stage for high-stakes suspense.
Detective Kara Quinn, on leave from the LAPD, is on an early morning jog in her hometown of Liberty Lake when she comes upon the body of a young nurse. The manner of death shows a pattern of highly controlled rage. Meanwhile in DC, FBI special agent Mathias Costa is staffing his newly minted Mobile Response Team. Word reaches Matt that the Liberty Lake murder fits the profile of the compulsive Triple Killer. It will be the first case for the MRT. This time they have a chance to stop this zealous if elusive killer before he strikes again. But only if they can figure out who he is and where he is hiding before he disappears for another three years. The stakes are higher than ever before, because if they fail, one of their own will be next…
7 - The Queen's Assassin by Melissa de la Cruz
12 Books to Get You Through This Period of Social Distancing
From the publisher:
Caledon Holt is the kingdom's deadliest weapon. No one alive can best him in speed, strength, or brains, which is why he's the Hearthstone Guild's most dangerous member. Cal is also the Queen's Assassin, bound to her by magic and unable to leave her service until the task she's set for him is fulfilled.
Shadow of the Honey Glade has been training all her life to join the Guild, hoping that one day she'll become an assassin as feared and revered as Cal. But Shadow's mother and aunts expect her to serve the crown as a lady of the Renovian Court.
When a surprise attack brings Shadow and Cal together, they're forced to team up as assassin and apprentice. Even though Shadow's life belongs to the court and Cal's belongs to the queen, they cannot deny their attraction to each other. But now, with war on the horizon and true love at risk, Shadow and Cal will uncover a shocking web of lies that will change their paths forever.
8 - The Scent Keeper by Erica Bauermeister
12 Books to Get You Through This Period of Social Distancing
From the publisher:
Emmeline lives an enchanted childhood on a remote island with her father, who teaches her about the natural world through her senses. What he won’t explain are the mysterious scents stored in the drawers that line the walls of their cabin, or the origin of the machine that creates them. As Emmeline grows, however, so too does her curiosity, until one day the unforeseen happens, and Emmeline is vaulted out into the real world--a place of love, betrayal, ambition, and revenge. To understand her past, Emmeline must unlock the clues to her identity, a quest that challenges the limits of her heart and imagination.
Lyrical and immersive, The Scent Keeper explores the provocative beauty of scent, the way it can reveal hidden truths, lead us to the person we seek, and even help us find our way back home.
9 - What It Seems by Emily Bleeker
12 Books to Get You Through This Period of Social Distancing
From the publisher:
Adopted by her controlling foster mother at the age of eight, twenty-year-old Tara has seen little of the outside world. Lonely, punished for the slightest offense, her only distraction comes from watching the Feely family’s online videos. They’re an affectionate vlogging quintet and an internet sensation. Most important, they are Tara’s mental refuge. Then the opportunity arises for them to be something more. When Tara accepts an internship with the close-knit clan, they’re her escape.
Daring to run away, and defying Mother’s rules, Tara is welcomed into the loving fold. But the more Tara gets to know them, the more she realizes that not everything is as it seems. As secrets slowly surface, the image of the perfect family begins to crack. For Tara, it’s another trap.
To claim a life of her own, she’ll need a new escape plan. Because as the show’s popularity explodes, reaching even more fascinated viewers, Tara can’t shake the feeling that Mother is among their ranks. She’s watching. She’s waiting. She’ll never let her go.
10 - Deprivation by Roy Freirich
12 Books to Get You Through This Period of Social Distancing
From the publisher:
After a mysterious, silent child is found abandoned on the beach clutching a handheld video game, residents and tourists alike find themselves utterly unable to sleep. Exhaustion impairs judgment, delusions become hysteria, and mob rule explodes into shocking violence. Told from three perspectives: Chief of Police Mays tries to keep order, teenaged tourist Cort and her friends compete in a dangerous social media contest for the most hours awake, while local physician and former Harvard psychiatrist Dr. Sam Carlson battles his guilt over a student's suicide and the blurriness of his own insomnia, to try to treat the sleepless—until he and the child must flee the violent mob that blames the child for the epidemic.
11 - The Forgotten Letters of Esther Durrant by Kayte Nunn
12 Books to Get You Through This Period of Social Distancing
From the publisher:
1951. Esther Durrant, a young mother, is committed to an isolated mental asylum by her husband. Run by a pioneering psychiatrist, the hospital is at first Esther’s prison but soon surprisingly becomes her refuge.
2018. Free-spirited marine scientist Rachel Parker embarks on a research posting in the Isles of Scilly, off the Cornish coast. When a violent storm forces her to take shelter on a far-flung island, she discovers a collection of hidden love letters. Captivated by their passion and tenderness, Rachel determines to track down the intended recipient. But she has no idea of the far-reaching consequences her decision will bring.
Meanwhile, in London, Eve is helping her grandmother, a renowned mountaineer, write her memoirs. When she is contacted by Rachel, it sets in motion a chain of events that threatens to reveal secrets kept buried for more than sixty years.
With an arresting dual narrative that immediately captivates the reader, The Forgotten Letters of Esther Durrant is an inspirational story of the sacrifices made for love.
12 - A Forgotten Murder by Jude Deveraux
12 Books to Get You Through This Period of Social Distancing
From the publisher:
After solving two murder cases in their hometown of Lachlan, Florida, Sara Medlar, her niece Kate and their friend Jack need a change of scenery. Sara arranges for them to visit an old friend of hers in England. Upon arrival at Oxley Manor, a centuries-old estate that has been converted to a luxury hotel, Kate and Jack quickly realize that Sara is up to something. They learn that Sara has also invited a number of others to join them at Oxley.
When everyone assembles, Sara lets them know why they are there. Decades earlier, two people ran off together from Oxley and haven’t been heard from since—and Sara wants to solve the case. As the people who were there the night the two went missing, the guests find themselves cast in a live mystery-theater event.
In reenacting the events of that night, it becomes clear that everyone has something to hide and no one is safe, especially when the discovery of a body makes it clear that at least one of the people who disappeared was murdered.
Sara, Jack and Kate are once again at the heart of a mysterious case that only they are able to solve. But someone is willing to continue to kill to keep the truth about Oxley Manor buried, and none of the guests are safe.
