Graceling by Kristin Cashore (2008)

Katsa has been able to kill a man with her bare hands since she was eight—she’s a Graceling, one of the rare people in her land born with an extreme skill. As niece of the king, she should be able to live a life of privilege, but Graced as she is with killing, she is forced to work as the king’s thug. She never expects to fall in love with beautiful Prince Po. She never expects to learn the truth behind her Grace—or the terrible secret that lies hidden far away . . . a secret that could destroy all seven kingdoms with words alone. With elegant, evocative prose and a cast of unforgettable characters, debut author Kristin Cashore creates a mesmerizing world, a death-defying adventure, and a heart-racing romance that will consume you, hold you captive, and leave you wanting more. ---------- **Books in the Graceling Realm series** 1. Graceling 2. [Fire][2] 3. [Bitterblue][3] 4. [Winterkeep][4] [2]: https://openlibrary.org/works/OL11728428W [3]: https://openlibrary.org/works/OL16262971W [4]: https://openlibrary.org/works/OL15631967W

The Shadow of your Smile by Mary Higgins Clark (2010)

At age eighty-two and in failing health, Olivia Morrow knows she has little time left. The last of her line, she faces a momentous choice: expose a long-held family secret, or take it with her to her grave. Olivia has in her possession letters from her deceased cousin Catherine, a nun, now being considered for beatification by the Catholic Church—the final step before sainthood. In her lifetime, Sister Catherine had founded seven hospitals for disabled children. Now the cure of a four-year-old boy dying of brain cancer is being attributed to her. After his case was pronounced medically hopeless, the boy’s desperate mother had organized a prayer crusade to Sister Catherine, leading to his miraculous recovery. The letters Olivia holds are the evidence that Catherine gave birth at age seventeen to a child, a son, and gave him up for adoption. Olivia knows the identity of the young man who fathered Catherine’s child: Alex Gannon, who went on to become a world-famous doctor, scientist, and inventor holding medical patents. Now, two generations later, thirty-one-year-old pediatrician Dr. Monica Farrell, Catherine’s granddaughter, stands as the rightful heir to what remains of the family fortune. But in telling Monica who she really is, Olivia would have to betray Catherine’s wishes and reveal the story behind Monica’s ancestry. The only people aware of Olivia’s impending choice are those exploiting the Gannon inheritance. To silence Olivia and prevent Monica from learning the secret, some of them will stop at nothing—even murder.

Tumtum & Nutmeg by Emily Bearn (2008)

Hidden in the broom cupboard of Rose cottage are two grand gates that lead to the loveliest little house you've ever seen. This is the home of Tumtum and Nutmeg…

Temptation Ridge by Robyn Carr (2009)

At twenty-five, after five years as her mother's caregiver, it's time for Shelby to experience freedom and adventure. Time for travel, college and romance. But when she visits Virgin River, she runs into Luke Riordan, decidedly not whom she has in mind. A handsome Blackhawk pilot, Luke exited the army after twenty years, four wars and having been shot out of the sky three times. At thirty-eight he's tough and jaded. His major was in one-night stands, with a minor in commitment avoidance. Technically, these two are all wrong for one another. But sometimes what you want and what you need are two different things...two very good things.

The Calling of the Grave by Simon Beckett (2010)

It was eight years ago that they found the body buried on the moor. They were certain that this was one of psychotic rapist and multiple murderer Jerome Monk's teenage victims. Which left just two more bodies to find. But the ill-conceived search ended badly. and with Monk safely behind bars, the momentum faltered. For forensics expert David Hunter, and those others who were part of the recovery team, life moved on. And the dead were left undisturbed. Now, though, a nightmare scenario unfurls. Monk has escaped and seems to be targeting anyone involved in that original ill-fated operation.

El sueño del celta by Mario Vargas Llosa (2010)

Aquí se cuenta la peripecia vital de un hombre de leyenda: el irlandés Roger Casement. Héroe y villano, traidor y libertario, moral e inmoral, su figura múltiple se apaga y renace tras su muerte. Una novela mayor del Premio Nobel de Literatura 2010 Casement fue uno de los primeros europeos en denunciar los horrores del colonialismo. De sus viajes al Congo Belga y a la Amazonía sudamericana quedaron dos informes memorables que conmocionaron a la sociedad de su tiempo. Estos dos viajes y lo que allí vio cambiarían a Casement para siempre, haciéndole emprender otra travesía, en este caso intelectual y cívica, tanto o más devastadora. La que lo llevó a enfrentarse a una Inglaterra a la que admiraba y a militar activamente en la causa del nacionalismo irlandés. También en la intimidad, Roger Casement fue un personaje múltiple: la publicación de fragmentos de unos diarios, de veracidad dudosa, en los últimos días de su vida, airearon unas escabrosas aventuras sexuales que le valieron el desprecio de muchos compatriotas. El sueño del celta (2010) describe una aventura existencial, en la que la oscuridad del alma humana aparece en su estado más puro y, por tanto, más enfangado. La crítica ha dicho...«El sueño del celta reúne algunas de las mejores virtudes del escritor y se integra, además, en la estela de motivos temáticos fundamentales reiterados a lo largo de su obra.»Ricardo Senabre, El Cultural «Vargas Llosa no tiene rival: en El sueño del celta la tarea de lectura y documentación previa es ingente, descomunal y titánica. Pero jamás abruma al lector. He aquí el primer mérito de esta novela: contar una historia como si todo fuera verdad escondiendo la mentira. El segundo mérito estriba en el dominio absoluto y constante del creador sobre su criatura. Ha escrito novelas más complejas técnicamente, pero la estructura de esta queda perfectamente encajada en lo que el novelista se ha propuesto... Con un dominio absoluto de la novela, que empieza en 1903 y acaba en una cárcel de Londres en 1916, demuestra por qué la Academia sueca lo premió con el Nobel.»Ricardo Baixeras, El Periódico «El sueño del celta dibuja, con los recursos de la ficción, los despiadados entresijos del poder y la fuerza de la individualidad... La novela avanza envolvente, a ritmo impecable, y nos sumerge en una crónica sobrecogedora del despotismo, con unos personajes tan enraizados en su doliente y contradictoria humanidad que hacen de esta novela un gran regalo literario.»C. Méndez, Expansión «Una novela que aspira a abarcar todo el inabarcable espacio de la vida de un hombre... Con esa manera de contar de Vargas Llosa que emboba, arrastra, hipnotiza y demuestra una vez más que, en efecto, la muerte lo encontrará escribiendo, pues, pasados los 70 años, escribir un prodigio como El sueño del celta mueve a envidia, admiración ilimitada y aplauso cerrado.»Francisco García Pérez, Información «De nuevo en el mundo ficticio de Vargas Llosa se revela en toda su crudeza la verdad de las mentiras. Innecesarios los elogios.»Juan A. Masoliver Ródenas, La Vanguardia (Cultura/s)

Seras-tu là ? by Guillaume Musso (2006)

If you could go back in time what would you do differently? What mistakes would you correct? For Eliott there is no doubt in his mind. To all appearances, his life has been a success. At 60, he is an esteemed surgeon with a daughter he adores. The only thing missing is Ilena - a beautiful, generous-hearted girl who died thirty years ago. But then he is given an extraordinary opportunity to revisit his past: to go back to San Francisco when the seventies were in full swing and find the passionate young doctor who has yet to lose the love of his life ... What ensues is a story full of intelli.

Parce que je t'aime by Guillaume Musso (2007)

Where are you now? by Mary Higgins Clark (2008)

Ten years ago, twenty-one-year-old Columbia University senior Charles MacKenzie Jr. ("Mack") walked out of his Manhattan apartment without a word to his roommates and disappeared. He calls his mother once a year, on Mother's Day, but refuses to answer her frantic questions. This year when he calls, Mack's sister Carolyn, now twenty-six, announces her intention to track him down, no matter what it takes. Ignoring a cryptic warning note and the angry protests of her mother, Carolyn swiftly plunges into a world of unexpected danger and unanswered questions. What do Mack's old roommates—a charismatic club owner and a wealthy real estate tycoon—know about his disappearance? Can the police possibly believe that Mack is a shadowy predator—or even a murderer? Carolyn's passionate search for the truth leads her into a deadly confrontation with someone close to her whose secret he cannot allow her to reveal.

Schooled by Gordon Korman (2007)

Thirteen year old Anderson has never watched t.v., or never had pizza or even heard of a wedgie. The only thing he has ever done is been home schooled by his hippie grand mother, Rain. When she broke her hip after she fell out of a tree picking plums, he is forced to stay in a foster home. Will this be his only chance to try to stop from going to a real school? Or will his bananas go rotton?

Pigeon English by Stephen Kelman (2011)

Sunset by Karen Kingsbury (2008)

As John Baxter makes plans to marry Elaine, one of the Baxters enters into the most trying season of all.

Evil Star (The Power of Five / The Gatekeepers #2) by Anthony Horowitz (2006)

Having locked the Raven's gate, fourteen-year-old Matt travels to Peru where he meets the second of the five gatekeepers and works with him to try to stop the opening of a second gate somehow related to the Nazca Lines.

Oomphel in the Sky by H. Beam Piper (2006)

The natives of Kwannon practiced ritual magic under the watchful eyes of their Terran rulers. Hunting, farming, raising children -- it all required the special spells only a powerful shoonoo could cast. But when prophesies of the end of the world send the natives of Kwannon swarming, it may also be the end for the Terrans. The natives, it seems, actually want the end of the world -- for the promised afterlife will be far, far better. And who can argue with the shoonoon and their prophetic dreams? It's up to Miles Gilbert, reporter for the Kwannon Planetwide News Service, to save the day. For only he can turn the natives from the course with the special magic of Earth, the machine-giving Oomphel!

Too close to home by Linwood Barclay (2008)

"The night they killed our neighbors, we never heard a thing." In a quiet suburban neighborhood, in a house only one door away, a family is brutally murdered for no apparent reason. And you think to yourself: It could have been us. And you start to wonder: What if we're next?Linwood Barclay, critically acclaimed author of No Time for Goodbye, brings terror closer than ever before in a thriller where murder strikes in the place we feel safest of all. Promise Falls isn't the kind of community where a family is shot to death in their own home. But that is exactly what happened to the Langleys one sweltering summer night, and no one in this small upstate New York town is more shocked than their next-door neighbors, Jim and Ellen Cutter. They visited for the occasional barbecue and their son, Derek, was friends with the Langleys' boy, Adam; but how well did they really know their neighbors? That's the question Jim Cutter is asking, and the answers he's getting aren't reassuring. Albert Langley was a successful, well-respected criminal lawyer, but was he so good at getting criminals off that he was the victim of revenge--a debt his innocent family also paid in blood? From the town's criminally corrupt mayor to the tragic suicide of a talented student a decade before, Promise Falls has more than its share of secrets. And Jim Cutter, failed artist turned landscaper, need look no further than his own home and his wife Ellen's past to know that things aren't always what they seem. But not even Jim and Ellen are ready to know that their son was in the Langley house the night the family was murdered.Suddenly the Cutters must face the unthinkable: that a murderer isn't just stalking too close to home but is inside it already. For the Langleys weren't the first to die and they won't be the last.From the Hardcover edition.

Broken by Megan Hart (2007)

My name is different every month-Brandy, Honey, Amy...sometimes Joe doesn't even bother to ask-but he never fails to arouse me with his body, his mouth, his touch, no matter what I'm called or where he picks me up. The sex is always amazing, always leaves me itching for more in those long weeks until I see him again.My real name is Sadie, and once a month over lunch Joe tells me about his latest conquest. But what Joe doesn't know is that, in my mind, I'm the star of every X-rated one-night stand he has revealed to me, or that I'm practically obsessed with our imaginary sex life. I know it's wrong. I know my husband wouldn't understand. But I can't stop. Not yet.

Origin in Death by Nora Roberts (2005)

Eve Dallas Investigation In Death In 2059 in New York City, as scientists work to expand the limits of technology, Detective Eve Dallas tracks the cunning, cold-blooded killer. New York police lieutenant Eve Dallas and her partner Delia Peabody enter the hallowed halls of the Wilfred B. Icove Center for Reconstructive and Cosmetic Surgery on an open and shut case of self-defence. But before they can leave they are called to another crime scene. Dr. Wilfred B. Icove himself, a pioneer of modern reconstructive and cosmetic surgery, has been found dead in his office - murdered in a chillingly efficient manner: one swift stab to the heart. Struck by the immaculate condition of the crime scene, Dallas suspects a professional killing. Security discs show a stunningly beautiful woman calmly entering and leaving the building - the good doctor's final appointment. Known as "Dr. Perfect," the saintly Icove devoted his life to his family and his work. His record is clean. - Too clean for Dallas. She knows he was hiding something and suspects that his son - and successor - knows what it is. Then, like father like son, the young Dr. Icove is killed... with the same deadly precision. But who is the mystery woman - and what was her relationship with the good doctors? With her husband, Roarke, working behind the scenes, Dallas follows her darkest instincts into the Icoves' pasts. And what she discovers are men driven to create perfection - playing fast and loose with the laws of nature, the limits of science, and the morals of humanity....

Vaffelhjarte by Maria Parr (2005)

Trille og Lena Lid er to born på 9 år som bur i ei lita vik. Trille veit at Lena Lid er hans bestevenn, men han er ikkje sikker på om han er det same for Lena Lid. Uansett er dei to oppfinnsame niåringar, som lagar mykje liv og vaffelrøre rundt seg. Det kan ofte gå litt over styr, og innimellom alt leven og latter fortel Trille om sine tankar. Her er det både alvor og sorg, og redsle for å miste dei han er glad i. Dette er debutboka til Maria Parr.

Incantation by Alice Hoffman (2006)

Estrella is a Marrano: During the time of the Spanish Inquisition, she is one of a community of Spanish Jews living double lives as Catholics. And she is living in a house of secrets, raised by a family who practices underground the ancient and mysterious way of wisdom known as kabbalah. When Estrella discovers her family's true identity--and her family's secrets are made public--she confronts a world she's never imagined, where new love burns and where friendship ends in flame and ash, where trust is all but vanquished and betrayal has tragic and bitter consequences.Infused with the rich context of history and faith, in her most profoundly moving work to date, Alice Hoffman's first historical novel is a transcendent journey of discovery and loss, rebirth and remembrance.

The Girl with All the Gifts by Mike Carey (2014)

Melanie is a very special girl. Dr Caldwell calls her "our little genius." Every morning, Melanie waits in her cell to be collected for class. When they come for her, Sergeant keeps his gun pointing at her while two of his people strap her into the wheelchair. She thinks they don't like her. She jokes that she won't bite, but they don't laugh. Melanie loves school. She loves learning about spelling and sums and the world outside the classroom and the children's cells. She tells her favorite teacher all the things she'll do when she grows up. Melanie doesn't know why this makes Miss Justineau look sad. THE GIRL WITH ALL THE GIFTS is a sensational thriller, perfect for fans of Stephen King, Justin Cronin and Neil Gaiman.