Northampton Staff Picks - Julie

"Dr. Briana Ortiz's life is seriously flatlining. Her divorce is just about finalized, her brother's running out of time to find a kidney donor, and that promotion she wants? Oh, that's probably going to the new man-doctor who's already registering eighty-friggin'-seven on Briana's "pain in my ass" scale. But just when all systems are set to hate, Dr. Jacob Maddox completely flips the game... by sending Briana a letter. And it's a really good letter....

"Connecticut, 2022. Mallory Dunne has spent her life trying to be a good mother to her son, Sam. Raising him alone is hard, even with the help of her sister. Two years ago, Sam ingested a toxic mushroom and fell into a coma. Now recovered, he needs a new kidney to live a normal life, forcing Mallory to track down his father in the hope that they're a match. Her journey to find him again transports her back to the summer they spent on the paradise...

Local woman Etta Hardgrove, a consignor at the Tough Nickel thrift shop, catches the eye of a Cowgirl Camper with her distinctive jewelry. But when Etta is found dead, the Campers swiftly become suspects, mired in a town teeming with those who harbored ill-will against Etta. The mystery deepens, and no one can be trusted. Meanwhile, campground owner Mae and her partner Hank have their hands full. Hank is preoccupied with a missing teenager's case...

"Welcome to the St. Cecelia, a landmark hotel on the coast of Georgia, where traditions run deep and scandals run even deeper. . . . Everyone refers to the St. Cecelia as "the Saint." If you grew up coming here, you were "a Saint." If you came from the wrong side of the river, you were "an Ain't." Traci Eddings was one of those outsiders whose family wasn't rich enough or connected enough to vacation here. But she could work here. One fateful summer...

"The last place Lana Lee thought she would ever end up is back at her family's restaurant. But after a brutal break-up and a dramatic workplace walk-out, she figures that helping wait tables is her best option for putting her life back together. Even if that means having to put up with her mother, who is dead-set on finding her a husband. Lana's love life soon becomes yesterday's news once the restaurant's property manager, Mr. Feng, turns up dead--after...

"As strangers and seatmates Maryam Aziz and Anna Gibson fly to Toronto over the holidays--Maryam to her sister's impromptu wedding, and Anna to meet her boyfriend's wealthy family for the first time--neither expect that severe turbulence will scare them into confessing their deepest hopes and fears to one another. At least they'll never see each other again. And the love of Maryam's life, Saif, wasn't sitting two rows behind them hearing it all. Oops....

"Fiona Davis, author ofThe Dollhouse, returns with a compelling novel about the thin lines between love and loss, success and ruin, passion and madness, all hidden behind the walls of The Dakota, New York City's most famous residence. After a failed apprenticeship, working her way up to head housekeeper of a posh London hotel is more than Sara Smythe ever thought she'd make of herself. But when a chance encounter with Theodore Camden, one of the architects...

Eugenicist arguments ranking the presumed genetic virtue of various ethnic groups helped keep hundreds of thousands of Jews, Italians, and other unwanted groups out of the United States for more than forty years. By 1921 Vice President Calvin Coolidge declared that 'biological laws' had proven the inferiority of southern and eastern Europeans; the restrictive law that remained U.S. policy until 1965 was enacted three years later. Okrent connects the...

Fresh off a bad breakup with a longtime boyfriend, Nantucket sweetheart Lizbet Keaton is desperately seeking a second act. When she's named the new general manager of the Hotel Nantucket, a once Gilded Age gem turned abandoned eyesore, she hopes that her local expertise and charismatic staff can win the favor of their new London billionaire owner, Xavier Darling, as well as that of Shelly Carpenter, the wildly popular Instagram tastemaker who can...

1992: French-Canadian factions renew Quebec's fight to gain independence. Véronique Fortin, daughter of a radical separatist convicted of kidnapping and murdering a prominent politician in 1970, has embraced her father's cause. Then she falls for James Phénix, a journalist of French-Canadian heritage who opposes Quebec separatism. Their love affair is as passionate as it is turbulent. His sister, Elodie Phénix, one of the Duplessis Orphans, becomes...