Melissa's Staff Picks

I'm a librarian at Southeast Regional Library, and these are some of my favorite reads! Feel free to email me at melissa.schultz@wakegov.com if you enjoyed one of these books!

Showing 1 - 20 of 30  There are a total of 209 valid entries on the list.
Book cover for "Apples never fall"
Star rating for Apples never fall
Average Rating:
3.8 stars
Description:
"A novel that looks at marriage, sibling rivalry, and the lies we tell others and ourselves"-- "After fifty years of marriage, Stan and Joy Delaney are ready to start what should be the golden years of their lives. One night a stranger named Savannah knocks on Stan and Joy's door. She says she chose their house because it looked the friendliest. And since Savannah is bleeding after a fight with her boyfriend, the Delaneys are more than happy to give...
Book cover for "The au pair"
Star rating for The au pair
Author:
Average Rating:
3.8 stars
Description:
"An addictive, highly commercial suspense novel featuring a grand estate, terrible secrets, and a young woman who bears witness to it all. If V.C. Andrews, Kate Morton, and Lexie Elliot had a love child, Emma Rous and THE AU PAIR would be it. Seraphine Mayes and her twin brother Danny were born in the middle of summer at their family's estate on the Norfolk coast. Within hours of their birth, their mother threw herself from the cliffs, the au pair...
Book cover for "Bleeding Heart Yard"
Star rating for Bleeding Heart Yard
Series:
Average Rating:
3.8 stars
Description:
"When Cassie Fitzgerald was at school in the late 1990s, she and her friends killed a fellow student. Almost twenty years later, Cassie is a happily married mother who loves her job--as a police officer. She closely guards the secret she has all but erased from her memory. One day her husband finally persuades her to go to a school reunion. Cassie catches up with her high-achieving old friends from the Manor Park School--among them two politicians,...
Book cover for "The cartographers"
Star rating for The cartographers
Average Rating:
3.7 stars
Description:
"What is the purpose of a map? Nell Young's whole life and greatest passion is cartography. Her father, Dr. Daniel Young, is a legend in the field and Nell's personal hero. But she hasn't seen or spoken to him ever since he cruelly fired her and destroyed her reputation after an argument over an old, cheap gas station highway map. But when Dr. Young is found dead in his office at the New York Public Library, with the very same seemingly worthless...
Book cover for "Celine"
Star rating for Celine
Average Rating:
3 stars
Description:
"From the best-selling author of The Dog Stars and The Painter, a luminous, spine-tingling novel of suspense--the story of Celine, an elegant, aristocratic private eye who specializes in reuniting families, trying to make amends for a loss in her own past"--
Book cover for "Comfort me with apples"
Star rating for Comfort me with apples
Average Rating:
4.5 stars
Book cover for "Counterfeit"
Star rating for Counterfeit
Average Rating:
3.4 stars
Description:
Ava Wong has always played it safe. As a strait-laced, rule-abiding Chinese American lawyer with a successful surgeon as a husband, a young son, and a beautiful home, she's built the perfect life. But beneath this facade, Ava's world is crumbling: her marriage is falling apart, her expensive law degree hasn't been used in years, and her toddler's tantrums are pushing her to the breaking point. Enter Winnie Fang, Ava's enigmatic college roommate from...
Book cover for "Devolution"
Star rating for Devolution
Author:
Average Rating:
4.3 stars
Description:
"Set in the wilds of Washington State, Greenloop was once a model eco-community--until nature's wrath made it a tragic object lesson in civilization's fragility. Offering a glorious back-to-nature experience with all the comforts of high-speed Internet, solar smart houses, and the assurance of being mere hours from Seattle by highway, Greenloop was indeed a paradise--until Mount Rainier erupted, leaving its residents truly cut off from the world,...
Book cover for "The dry"
Star rating for The dry
Series:
Average Rating:
3.8 stars
Description:
"A small town hides big secrets in The Dry. After getting a note demanding his presence, Federal Agent Aaron Falk arrives in his hometown for the first time in decades to attend the funeral of his best friend, Luke. Twenty years ago when Falk was accused of murder, Luke was his alibi. Falk and his father fled under a cloud of suspicion, saved from prosecution only because of Luke's steadfast claim that the boys had been together at the time of the...
Book cover for "Every last fear"
Star rating for Every last fear
Author:
Average Rating:
3.6 stars
Description:
"In one of the year's most anticipated debut psychological thrillers, a family made infamous by a true crime documentary is found dead, leaving their surviving son to uncover the truth about their final days. "They found the bodies on a Tuesday." So begins this twisty and breathtaking novel that traces the fate of the Pine family, a thriller that will both leave you on the edge of your seat and move you to tears. After a late night of partying, NYU...

11. Exiles

Book cover for "Exiles"
Star rating for Exiles
Series:
Average Rating:
4 stars
Description:
"At a busy festival site on a warm spring night, a baby lies alone in her stroller, her mother vanishing into the crowds. A year on, Kim Gillespie's absence casts a long shadow as her friends and loved ones gather deep in the heart of South Australian wine country to welcome a new addition to the family. Joining the celebrations is federal investigator Aaron Falk. But as he soaks up life in the lush valley, he begins to suspect this tight-knit group...
Book cover for "The guest list"
Star rating for The guest list
Average Rating:
3.8 stars
Description:
"On an island off the coast of Ireland, guests gather to celebrate two people joining their lives together as one... The cell phone service may be spotty and the waves may be rough, but every detail has been expertly planned and will be expertly executed. But perfection is for plans, and people are all too human. As the champagne is popped and the festivities begin, resentments and petty jealousies begin to mingle with the reminiscences and well wishes....
Book cover for "I was Anastasia"
Star rating for I was Anastasia
Average Rating:
4.2 stars
Description:
"A dual narrative exploring the mystery surrounding the death of Anastasia Romanov and the claims of Anna Anderson, the woman long-believed to be the young Grand Duchess' most famous imposter"--
Book cover for "The it girl"
Star rating for The it girl
Author:
Average Rating:
3.8 stars
Description:
"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...
Book cover for "The last flight"
Star rating for The last flight
Average Rating:
3.6 stars
Description:
"[This novel focuses] on two women who meet in an airport, both alone, both scared, and both urgently needing an escape from their lives. Claire Cook has a husband whose temper burns as bright as his promising political career, and she has worked for months on a plan to get out. A chance meeting in an airport bar brings her together with a stranger equally as desperate. Together they hatch a plan to switch tickets--Claire taking Eva's flight to Oakland,...
Book cover for "The last thing he told me"
Star rating for The last thing he told me
Author:
Average Rating:
3.9 stars
Description:
"When her husband of a year disappears, Hannah quickly learns he is not who he said he was and is left to sort out the truth with just one ally- her husband's teenage daughter, who hates her"--
Book cover for "The lies I tell"
Star rating for The lies I tell
Average Rating:
4 stars
Description:
"Meg Williams. Maggie Littleton. Melody Wilde. Different names for the same person, depending on the town, depending on the job. She's a con artist who erases herself to become whoever you need her to be. A college student. A life coach. A real estate agent. But nothing about her is real. She slides alongside you and tells you exactly what you want to hear, and by the time she's done, you've likely lost everything. Kat Roberts has been waiting ten...
Book cover for "The lost man"
Star rating for The lost man
Average Rating:
3.9 stars
Description:

INSTANT NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER
"I love Jane Harper's Australia-based mysteries." —Stephen King
Two brothers meet in the remote Australian outback when the third brother is found dead, in this stunning new standalone novel from Jane Harper

Brothers Nathan and Bub Bright meet for the first time in months at the remote fence line separating their cattle ranches in the lonely outback.
Their third brother,

...
Book cover for "The lying game"
Star rating for The lying game
Author:
Average Rating:
3.6 stars
Description:
The text message arrives in the small hours of the night. It's just three words: I need you. Isa drops everything, takes her baby daughter and heads straight to Salten. She spent the most significant days of her life at boarding school on the marshes there, days which still cast their shadow over her. At school Isa and her three best friends used to play the Lying Game They competed to convince people of the most outrageous stories. Now, after seventeen...
Book cover for "Mr. Penumbra's 24-hour bookstore"
Star rating for Mr. Penumbra's 24-hour bookstore
Average Rating:
3.7 stars
Description:
After a layoff during the Great Recession sidelines his tech career, Clay Jannon takes a job at the titular bookstore in San Francisco, and soon realizes that the establishment is a facade for a strange secret.