No Mumbo Jumbo Here Just Good Books
Discover a curated list of good books without the mumbo jumbo. Find your next great read with our straightforward, no-nonsense recommendations.
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The Darkest Evening of the Year
by Dean Ray Koontz
Koontz delivers suspense for all seasons with a transcendent thriller--a heart-gripping tour de force featuring a dedicated dog rescuer, a very special golden retriever she saves, and the murderous adversaries they must face together.
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The Whole Truth
by David Baldacci
While the head of the world's largest defense contractor conspires to gain even more riches by instigating a war, an intelligence agent reluctantly travels to keep the world safe, and a journalist receives a mysterious offer to interview the sole survivor
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Careless in Red
by Elizabeth George
In her most eagerly anticipated novel yet, Elizabeth George brings back Scotland Yard's Thomas Lynley to investigate a ruthless crime. After the senseless murder of his wife, Detective Superintendent Thomas Lynley retreated to Cornwall, where he has spent six solitary weeks hiking the bleak and rugged coastline. But no matter how far he walks, no matter how exhausting his days, the painful memories of Helen's death do not diminish. On the forty-third day of his walk, at the base of a cliff, Lynley discovers the body of a young man who appears to have fallen to his death. The closest town, better known for its tourists and its surfing than its intrigue, seems an unlikely place for murder. However, it soon becomes apparent that a clever killer is indeed at work, and this time Lynley is not a detective but a witness and possibly a suspect. The head of the vastly understaffed local police department needs Lynley's help, though, especially when it comes to the mysterious, secretive woman whose cottage lies not far from where the body was discovered. But can Lynley let go of the past long enough to solve a most devious and carefully planned crime?
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The Memory Keeper's Daughter
by Kim Edwards
A #1 New York Times bestseller by Kim Edwards, The Memory Keeper’s Daughter is a brilliantly crafted novel of parallel lives, familial secrets, and the redemptive power of love Kim Edwards’s stunning novel begins on a winter night in 1964 in Lexington, Kentucky, when a blizzard forces Dr. David Henry to deliver his own twins. His son, born first, is perfectly healthy, but the doctor immediately recognizes that his daughter has Down syndrome. Rationalizing it as a need to protect Norah, his wife, he makes a split second decision that will alter all of their lives forever. He asks his nurse, Caroline, to take the baby away to an institution and never to reveal the secret. Instead, she disappears into another city to raise the child herself. So begins this beautifully told story that unfolds over a quarter of a century—in which these two families, ignorant of each other, are yet bound by the fateful decision made that winter night long ago. A family drama, The Memory Keeper’s Daughter explores every mother's silent fear: What would happen if you lost your child and she grew up without you? It is also an astonishing tale of love and how the mysterious ties that hold a family together help us survive the heartache that occurs when long-buried secrets are finally uncovered.
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Darkly Dreaming Dexter
by Jeff Lindsay
Meet Dexter Morgan, a polite wolf in sheep’s clothing. He’s handsome and charming, but something in his past has made him abide by a different set of rules. He’s a serial killer whose one golden rule makes him immensely likeable: he only kills bad people. • The Killer Character That Inspired the Hit Showtime Series Dexter And his job as a blood splatter expert for the Miami police department puts him in the perfect position to identify his victims. But when a series of brutal murders bearing a striking similarity to his own style start turning up, Dexter is caught between being flattered and being frightened–of himself or some other fiend.
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The Brass Verdict
by Michael Connelly
Things are finally looking up for defense attorney Mickey Haller. After two years of wrong turns, Haller is back in the courtroom. When Hollywood lawyer Jerry Vincent is murdered, Haller inherits his biggest case yet: the defense of Walter Elliott, a prominent studio executive accused of murdering his wife and her lover. But as Haller prepares for the case that could launch him into the big time, he learns that Vincent's killer may be coming for him next. Enter Harry Bosch. Determined to find Vincent's killer, he is not opposed to using Haller as bait. But as danger mounts and the stakes rise, these two loners realize their only choice is to work together. Bringing together Michael Connelly's two most popular characters, The Brass Verdict is sure to be his biggest book yet.
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Christine Falls
by Benjamin Black
The hero of Christine Falls, Quirke, is a surly pathologist living in 1950s Dublin. One night, after having a few drinks at a party, he returns to the morgue to find his brother-in-law tampering with the records on a young woman's corpse. The next morning, when his hangover has worn off, Quirke reluctantly begins looking into the woman's history. He discovers a plot that spans two continents, implicates the Catholic Church, and may just involve members of his own family. He is warned--first subtly, then with violence--to lay off, but Quirke is a stubborn man. The first novel in the Quirke series brings all the vividness and psychological insight of John Banville's writing to the dark, menacing atmosphere of a first-class thriller.
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Phantom Prey
by John Sandford
Lucas Davenport has had disturbing cases before, but never one quite like this. Filled with his brilliant trademark suspense, "Phantom Prey" is the shocking new novel from the #1 "New York Times"-bestselling author.
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Second Glance
by Jodi Picoult
A man's attempt to sell a piece of land and the resulting Abenaki tribe's protest that it is a sacred burial ground spurs an investigation by ghost hunter Ross Wakeman, who discovers a long-hidden murder haunting a small Vermont town.
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The Appeal
by John Grisham
#1 NEW YORK TIMES BEST SELLER • “Fascinating ... filled with deadly accurate characterizations by an author who knows both the law and politics from the inside.”—Los Angeles Times In a crowded courtroom in Mississippi, a jury returns a shocking verdict against a chemical company accused of dumping toxic waste into a small town’s water supply, causing the worst “cancer cluster” in history. The company appeals to the Mississippi Supreme Court, whose nine justices will one day either approve the verdict or reverse it. Who are the nine? How will they vote? Can one be replaced before the case is ultimately decided? The chemical company is owned by a Wall Street predator named Carl Trudeau, and Mr. Trudeau is convinced the Court is not friendly enough. With judicial elections looming, he decides to try to purchase himself a seat on the Court. The cost is a few million dollars, a drop in the bucket for a billionaire like Mr. Trudeau. Through an intricate web of conspiracy and deceit, his political operatives recruit a young, unsuspecting candidate. They finance him, manipulate him, market him, and mold him into a potential Supreme Court justice. Their Supreme Court justice. The Appeal is a powerful, timely, and shocking story of political and legal intrigue, a story that will leave readers unable to think about our electoral process or judicial system in quite the same way ever again. Don’t miss John Grisham’s new book, THE EXCHANGE: AFTER THE FIRM!
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Plain Truth
by Jodi Picoult
In the small town of Paradise, Pennsylvania, peace is shattered by the discovery of a dead infant in the barn of an Amish farmer.
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Nothing to Lose
by Lee Child
Arriving in the small town of Despair, Colorado, Jack Reacher finds himself taking on an entire town as he searches for the truths behind its sinister connection to a brutal war that is killing Americans thousands of miles away. 400,000 first printing.
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All the Pretty Horses
by Cormac McCarthy
NATIONAL BOOK AWARD WINNER • NATIONAL BESTSELLER • The first volume in the Border Trilogy, from the bestselling author of The Passenger and the Pulitzer Prize–winning novel The Road All the Pretty Horses is the tale of John Grady Cole, who at sixteen finds himself at the end of a long line of Texas ranchers, cut off from the only life he has ever imagined for himself. With two companions, he sets off for Mexico on a sometimes idyllic, sometimes comic journey to a place where dreams are paid for in blood.
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Bones
by Jonathan Kellerman
The anonymous caller has an ominous tone and an unnerving message about something "real dead ... buried in your marsh." The eco-volunteer on the other end of the phone thinks it's a prank, but when a young woman's body turns up in L.A.'s Bird Marsh preser
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After Dark
by Haruki Murakami
From the New York Times bestselling author—a gripping novel of late night encounters that’s “hypnotically eerie, sometimes even funny, but most of all … [a book] that keeps ratcheting up the suspense” (The Washington Post Book World). Now with a new introduction by the author. Nineteen-year-old Mari is waiting out the night in an anonymous Denny’s when she meets a young man who insists he knows her older sister, thus setting her on an odyssey through the sleeping city. In the space of a single night, the lives of a diverse cast of Tokyo residents—models, prostitutes, mobsters, and musicians—collide in a world suspended between fantasy and reality. Utterly enchanting and infused with surrealism, After Dark is a thrilling account of the magical hours separating midnight from dawn.
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Wash This Blood Clean from My Hand
by Fred Vargas
Commissaire Jean-Baptiste Adamsberg investigates a series of crimes that had taken place between 1943 and 2003 in which nine people are stabbed to death with an unusual trident, cases in which arrests are made, but in none of the presumed murderers have any recollection of the killings. Original.
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Devil Bones
by Kathy Reichs
When a plumber discovers the remains of a murdered girl and various dark religious objects in the cellar of a client's house, Temperance Brennan is called in to investigate the case and finds her efforts challenged by vigilante upheavals against Wiccans and occultists. 450,000 first printing.
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Beverly Hills Dead
by Stuart Woods
A top-ranking executive of a Hollywood movie studio finds his starlet wife and associates under investigation when a screenwriter friend is targeted by witch hunters from the House Un-American Activities Committee. By the author of The Prince of Beverly Hills.
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Friend of the Devil
by Peter Robinson
From the "New York Times"-bestselling author comes his latest novel of suspense revolving around two towns, two murders, and two detectives searching for one indisputable truth. William Morrow & Company
