Juiced-Up Fiction
Discover 'Juiced-Up Fiction'—a curated list of electrifying fiction books packed with action, drama, and adrenaline. Find your next thrilling read today!
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The Other Boleyn Girl (Movie Tie-In)
by Philippa Gregory
The daughters of a ruthlessly ambitious family, Mary and Anne Boleyn are sent to the court of Henry VIII to attract the attention of the king, who first takes Mary as his mistress, in which role she bears him an illegitimate son, and then Anne as his wife. Reprint. 250,000 first printing. (A Columbia Pictures film, written by Peter Morgan, directed by Justin Chadwick, releasing Fall 2007, starring Natalie Portman, Scarlett Johansson, Eric Bana, and others) (Historical Fiction)
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Peony in Love
by Lisa See
“I finally understand what the poets have written. In spring, moved to passion; in autumn only regret.” For young Peony, betrothed to a suitor she has never met, these lyrics from The Peony Pavilion mirror her own longings. In the garden of the Chen Family Villa, amid the scent of ginger, green tea, and jasmine, a small theatrical troupe is performing scenes from this epic opera, a live spectacle few females have ever seen. Like the heroine in the drama, Peony is the cloistered daughter of a wealthy family, trapped like a good-luck cricket in a bamboo-and-lacquer cage. Though raised to be obedient, Peony has dreams of her own. Peony’s mother is against her daughter’s attending the production: “Unmarried girls should not be seen in public.” But Peony’s father assures his wife that proprieties will be maintained, and that the women will watch the opera from behind a screen. Yet through its cracks, Peony catches sight of an elegant, handsome man with hair as black as a cave–and is immediately overcome with emotion. So begins Peony’s unforgettable journey of love and destiny, desire and sorrow–as Lisa See’s haunting new novel, based on actual historical events, takes readers back to seventeenth-century China, after the Manchus seize power and the Ming dynasty is crushed. Steeped in traditions and ritual, this story brings to life another time and place–even the intricate realm of the afterworld, with its protocols, pathways, and stages of existence, a vividly imagined place where one’s soul is divided into three, ancestors offer guidance, misdeeds are punished, and hungry ghosts wander the earth. Immersed in the richness and magic of the Chinese vision of the afterlife, transcending even death, Peony in Love explores, beautifully, the many manifestations of love. Ultimately, Lisa See’s new novel addresses universal themes: the bonds of friendship, the power of words, and the age-old desire of women to be heard.
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Water for Elephants
by Sara Gruen
Ninety-something-year-old Jacob Jankowski remembers his time in the circus as a young man during the Great Depression, and his friendship with Marlena, the star of the equestrian act, and Rosie, the elephant, who gave them hope. Reader's Guide included. Reprint.
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Tangerine Dream
by Ken Douglas
Best friends Haley and Taylor must deal with a terrible loss when Taylor's twin sister, Dylan, is killed in a car crash. Meanwhile, Taylor and Dylan's father, a senator running for president and supposedly somewhere on the campaign trail, can't be reached because he is in the arms of a prostitute. While the girls and the twins' mother try to recover and avoid the press in New Zealand, Nick Nesbitt, a television news reporter, senses a story and will stop at nothing to get it.
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Every Last Cuckoo
by Kate Maloy
A seventy-five-year old widow, Sarah finds new meaning brought to her life after her home becomes a kind of refuge for her restless granddaughter, an Israeli pacifist, a homeless mother and son, and a victim of domestic violence.
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A Golden Age
by Tahmima Anam
As she plans a party for her son and daughter, Rehana Haque's life will be transformed forever in a story of one family caught in the middle of the 1971 Bangladesh war of independence, as they face changes and decisions that will have a profound impact on their lives forever.
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The Collaborator of Bethlehem
by Matt Rees
The murder of a leader of the Palestinian Martyrs Brigade leads to the arrest of George Saba, a Palestinian Christian accused of collaborating with the Israelis. Omar Yussef, a modest history teacher at a United Nations school in the West Bank, is impelled to investigate the murder to exonerate his former pupil, whom he knows is innocent. As he struggles to save George, Omar Yussef is drawn into a complex plot where it is impossible to tell friend from enemy.
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World Made by Hand
by James Howard Kunstler
Kunstler makes an imaginative leap into the future, a few decades hence, and shows what life may be like after these coming catastrophes--the end of oil, climate change, global pandemics, and resource wars--converge.
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The Jewel Trader of Pegu
by Jeffrey Hantover
Adventure, treasure, and forbidden love are interwoven in this beautiful and original debut novel set in the lush land of 16th-century Southeast Asia.
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River
by Lowen Clausen
From a remote corner of a vanishing American landscape, a bereaved father begins a journey down the river that has been all but inseparable from his life. At the river’s origin the shallow stream courses through the ranch where he was born. It is where he fell in love the first time and where the ashes of his son have been poured. “Now, before it’s too late, before I lose the will to do anything, I am leaving this land to follow the sticks I dropped into the river so long ago.” But this man’s passage along the interlacing rivers to the ocean will not be simple or disconnected from the life he leaves behind. His estranged son’s last angry words echo in his memory, and despite moments of pure concentration on the waters ahead, the solitary voyager finds the past seeping into his thoughts and dreams. InRiver,novelist Lowen Clausen has created a story of deep beauty and seriousness, in which he weaves together the complex threads of one man’s search for wholeness. Clausen’s rich, elegiac prose becomes its own landscape and river, transporting the reader on a journey through despair and doubt into discovery.
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The Age of Shiva
by Manil Suri
Following his debut novel "The Death of Vishnu," Suri returns with a mesmerizing story of modern India richly layered with themes from Hindu mythology.
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Gentlemen of the Road
by Michael Chabon
Michael Chabon's Pulitzer Prize-winning bestseller, The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay, sprang from an early passion for the derring-do and larger-than-life heroes of classic comic books. Now, once more mining the rich past, Chabon summons the rollicking spirit of legendary adventures-from The Arabian Nights to Alexandre Dumas to Fritz Leiber's Fafhrd and the Gray Mouser stories-in a wonderful new novel brimming with breathless action, raucous humor, cliff-hanging suspense, and a cast of colorful characters worthy of Scheherazade's most tantalizing tales. They're an odd pair, to be sure: pale, rail-thin, black-clad Zelikman, a moody, itinerant physician fond of jaunty headgear, and ex-soldier Amram, a gray-haired giant of a man as quick with a razor-tongued witticism as he is with a sharpened battle-ax. Brothers under the skin, comrades in arms, they make their rootless way through the Caucasus Mountains, circa A.D. 950, living as they please and surviving however they can-as blades and thieves for hire and as practiced bamboozlers, cheerfully separating the gullible from their money. No strangers to tight scrapes and close shaves, they've left many a fist shaking in their dust, tasted their share of enemy steel, and made good any number of hasty exits under hostile circumstances. None of which has necessarily prepared them to be dragooned into service as escorts and defenders to a prince of the Khazar Empire. Usurped by his brutal uncle, the callow and decidedly ill-tempered young royal burns to reclaim his rightful throne. But doing so will demand wicked cunning, outrageous daring, and foolhardy bravado . . . not to mention an army. Zelikman and Amram can at least supply the former. But are these gentlemen of the road prepared to become generals in a full-scale revolution? The only certainty is that getting there-along a path paved with warriors and whores, evil emperors and extraordinary elephants, secrets, swordplay, and such stuff as the grandest adventures are made of-will be much more than half the fun.
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Father Michael's Lottery
by Johan Steyn
A beleaguered doctor and his staff struggle to maintain a hospital in a remote, rural community on the front lines of the African AIDS epidemic in this inspirational and life-affirming novel. The hospital and its patients do battle against meddlesome superiors, find eccentric saviors from the village, and provide readers with an unflinching look at the human cost of ignorance and apathy. The good doctor's daily struggles for the people, land, and wildlife of Africa tell a story of humor, realism, and compassion.
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The Last Cowgirl
by Jana Richman
In the tradition of Pam Houston and Anita Shreve, a powerhouse new talent delivers an unforgettable emotional journey of loss, love, and healing.
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My Enemy's Cradle
by Sara Young
Cyrla has been warned that her neighbors know she is half Jewish--grounds for certain arrest in their Nazi-occupied town. A cruel twist of fate places Cyrla in a terrible dilemma in this page-turning debut novel.
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A Summer Affair
by Elin Hilderbrand
Claire Danner Crispin, mother of four young children and nationally renowned glassblower, bites off more than she can chew when she agrees to co-chair the Nantucket's Children Summer Gala. Claire is asked to chair the benefit, in part, because she is the former high school sweetheart of rock star Max West. Max agrees to play the gala and it looks like smooth sailing for Claire-until she promises a "museum-quality" piece of glass for the auction, offers her best friend the catering job, goes nose-to-nose with her Manhattan socialite co-chair, and begins a "good-hearted" affair with the charity's Executive Director, Lockhart Dixon. Hearts break and emotions are pushed to the limit in this riveting story of one woman's attempt to deal with loves past and present, family, business, and high-powered social pressures. Elin Hilderbrand's unique understanding of the joys and longings that animate women's lives will make this her newest summer bestseller.
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Silent in the Grave
by Deanna Raybourn
"Let the wicked be ashamed, and let them be silent in the grave." These ominous words, slashed from the pages of a book of Psalms, are the last threat that the darling of London society, Sir Edward Grey, receives from his killer. Before he can show them to Nicholas Brisbane, the private inquiry agent he has retained for his protection, Sir Edward collapses and dies at his London home, in the presence of his wife, Julia, and a roomful of dinner guests. Prepared to accept that Edward's death was due to a longstanding physical infirmity, Julia is outraged when Brisbane visits and suggests that Sir Edward has been murdered. It is a reaction she comes to regret when she discovers the damning paper for herself, and realizes the truth. Determined to bring her husband's murderer to justice, Julia engages the enigmatic Brisbane to help her investigate Edward's demise. Dismissing his warnings that the investigation will be difficult, if not impossible, Julia presses forward, following a trail of clues that lead her to even more unpleasant truths, and ever closer to a killer who waits expectantly for her arrival.
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Now You See Him
by Eli Gottlieb
His name was Rob Castor. Quite possibly, you've heard of him. He became a minor cult celebrity in his early twenties for writing a book of darkly pitch-perfect stories set in a stupid upstate New York town. About a dozen years later, he murdered his writer-girlfriend and committed suicide. . . . The deaths of Rob Castor and his girlfriend begin a wrenching and enthrallingly suspenseful story that mines the explosive terrains of love and paternity, marriage and its delicate intricacies, family secrets and how they fester over time, and ultimately the true nature of loyalty and trust, friendship and envy, deception and manipulation. As the media takes hold of this sensational crime, a series of unexpected revelations unleashes hidden truths in the lives of those closest to Rob. At the center of this driving narrative is Rob's childhood best friend, Nick Framingham, whose ten-year marriage to his college sweetheart is faltering. Shocked by Rob's death, Nick begins to reevaluate his own life and his past, and as he does so, a fault line opens up beneath him, leading him all the way to the novel's startling conclusion. In this ambitious and thrilling novel, award-winning author Eli Gottlieb—with extraordinarily luxuriant and evocative prose—takes us deep into the human psyche, where the most profound of secrets are kept.
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The Somnambulist
by Jonathan Barnes
This extraordinary tale involves Edward Moon, stage magician and detective, his silent sidekick the Somnambulist, and a devilish plot to re-create the apocalyptic prophecies of Samuel Taylor Coleridge and bring the British Empire crashing down.
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The Invention of Everything Else
by Samantha Hunt
Before the week is out, Louisa must come to terms with her own understanding of love, death, and the power of invention."--BOOK JACKET.
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The Boys in the Trees
by Mary Swan
“This is a mesmerizing novel, that can truly claim to be filled with a ‘terrible beauty.’”—Alice Munro Newly arrived to the countryside, William Heath, his wife, and two daughters appear the picture of a devoted family. But when accusations of embezzlement spur William to commit an unthinkable crime, those who witnessed this affectionate, attentive father go about his routine of work and family must reconcile action with character. A doctor who has cared for one daughter, encouraging her trust, examines the finer details of his brief interactions with William, searching for clues that might penetrate the mystery of his motivation. Meanwhile the other daughter’s teacher grapples with guilt over a moment when fate wove her into a succession of events that will haunt her dreams. In beautifully crafted prose, Mary Swan examines the volatile collisions between our best intentions—how a passing stranger can leave an indelible mark on our lives even as the people we know most intimately become alienated by tides of self-preservation and regret. In her nuanced, evocative descriptions a locket contains immeasurable sorrow, trees provide sanctuary and refuge to lost souls, and grief clicks into place when a man cocks the cold steel barrel of a revolver. A supreme literary achievement, The Boys in the Trees offers a chilling story that swells with acutely observed emotion and humanity.