Melissa's Staff Picks

"Ever since she was young, Julie Klam has been fascinated by the Morris sisters, cousins of her grandmother. According to family lore, early in the 20th century the sisters' parents decided to move the family from Eastern Europe to Los Angeles so their father could become a movie director. On the way, their pregnant mother went into labor in St. Louis, where the baby was born and where their mother died. The father left the children in an orphanage...

4.6 stars

Captain Charles Ryder, stationed at Brideshead, recalls his boyhood associations with the odd but charming members of an English noble family.

4.4 stars

#1 NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • From the bestselling author and master of narrative nonfiction comes the enthralling story of the sinking of the Lusitania
“Both terrifying and enthralling.”—Entertainment Weekly
“Thrilling, dramatic and powerful.”—NPR
“Thoroughly engrossing.”—George R.R. Martin
On May 1, 1915, with...

4.1 stars

"The stunning true story of an Alabama serial killer, and the trial that obsessed the author of To Kill a Mockingbird in the years after the publication of her classic novel--a complicated and difficult time in her life that, until now, has been very little examined. Willie Maxwell was a Baptist reverend in Alabama; he also happened to be a serial killer. Between 1970 and 1977, his two wives and brother all died under suspicious circumstances -- each...

3.9 stars

"April Clarke-Cliveden was the first person Hannah Jones met at Oxford. Vivacious, bright, occasionally vicious, and the ultimate It girl, she quickly pulled Hannah into her dazzling orbit. Together, they developed a group of devoted and inseparable friends--Will, Hugh, Ryan, and Emily--during their first term. By the end of the year, April was dead. Now, a decade later, Hannah and Will are expecting their first child, and the man convicted of killing...

"A lush and vivid mystery set in Yellowstone National Park where a skirmish between a local hunter and a wolf biologist turns violent, and a park ranger, facing his own personal demons, sets out to determine what really happened"--

3.9 stars

"Lydia Smith lives her life hiding in plain sight. A clerk at the Bright Ideas bookstore, she keeps a meticulously crafted existence among her beloved books, eccentric colleagues, and the BookFrogs--the lost and lonely regulars who spend every day marauding the store's overwhelmed shelves. But when Joey Molina, a young, beguiling BookFrog, kills himself in the bookstore's upper room, Lydia's life comes unglued. Always Joey's favorite bookseller, Lydia...

3.9 stars

Sylvie, the beautiful, brilliant, successful older daughter of the Lee family, vanishes. Terrified yet determined, Amy, the sheltered baby of the family, retraces her movements, but instead of simple answers, she discovers something much more valuable: the truth.

3.7 stars