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 28  There are a total of 209 valid entries on the list.
Book cover for "The 7 1/2 deaths of Evelyn Hardcastle"
Star rating for The 7 1/2 deaths of Evelyn Hardcastle
Average Rating:
3.7 stars
Description:
"The rules of Blackheath: Evelyn Harcastle will be murdered at 11:00p.m. There are eight days, and eight witnesses for you to inhabit. We will only let you escape once you tell us the name of the killer. Understood? Then let's begin... Every day Evelyn Hardcastle will die. Every day until Aiden Bishop can identify her killer and break the cycle. But every time the day begins again, Aiden wakes up in the body of a different guest. And some of his hosts...
Book cover for "The appeal"
Star rating for The appeal
Average Rating:
4.4 stars
Description:
"Welcome to Lockwood, proud home of The Fairway Players, who, under the creative control of Martin Hayward, the owner of the local country club, are putting on a production of Arthur Miller's "All My Sons." The star, as always: Martin's wife, Helen, the only person in the troupe with any real acting talent. But this is not a production like any other: just as rehearsals get under way, tragedy strikes: Poppy Reswick, Martin and Helen's beloved granddaughter,...
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 "Catch and kill"
Star rating for Catch and kill
Average Rating:
4.1 stars
Description:
Now an HBO documentary series streaming on HBO Max. 
One of the Best Books of the Year
 Time * NPR * Washington Post * Bloomberg News * Chicago Tribune * Chicago Public Library * Fortune * Los Angeles Times * E! News * The Telegraph * Apple * Library Journal  In...
Book cover for "The cuckoo's calling"
Star rating for The cuckoo's calling
Series:
Average Rating:
4.2 stars
Description:
"After losing his leg to a land mine in Afghanistan, Cormoran Strike is barely scraping by as a private investigator. Strike is down to one client, and creditors are calling. He has also just broken up with his longtime girlfriend and is living in his office. Then John Bristow walks through his door with an amazing story: His sister, thelegendary supermodel Lula Landry, known to her friends as the Cuckoo, famously fell to her death a few months earlier....
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 "Eight perfect murders"
Star rating for Eight perfect murders
Average Rating:
3.8 stars
Description:
Years ago, bookseller and mystery aficionado Malcolm Kershaw compiled a list of the genre's most unsolvable murders, those that are almost impossible to crack--which he titled "Eight Perfect Murders"--chosen from among the best of the best including Agatha Christie's A. B. C. Murders, Patricia Highsmith's Strangers on a Train, Ira Levin's Deathtrap, A. A. Milne's The Red House Mystery, Anthony Berkeley Cox's Malice Aforethought, James M. Cain's Double...

9. 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 "Furious hours"
Star rating for Furious hours
Average Rating:
4.1 stars
Description:
"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...
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 "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 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 "A line to kill"
Star rating for A line to kill
Series:
Average Rating:
3.9 stars
Description:
"When Ex-Detective Inspector Daniel Hawthorne and his sidekick, author Anthony Horowitz, are invited to an exclusive literary festival on Alderney, an idyllic island off the south coast of England, they don't expect to find themselves in the middle of murder investigation--or to be trapped with a cold-blooded killer in a remote place with a murky, haunted past. Arriving on Alderney, Hawthorne and Horowitz soon meet the festival's other guests--an...
Book cover for "Marple"
Star rating for Marple
Average Rating:
3.7 stars
Book cover for "The murder of Roger Ackroyd"
Star rating for The murder of Roger Ackroyd
Series:
Average Rating:
4.2 stars
Description:

"This is Agatha Christie's masterpiece, and if she never wrote another word, she'd have still gone down as the Queen." –LOUISE PENNY, #1 New York Times bestselling author

"Ingenious and unexpected." –NEW YORK TIMES

The official edition of the beloved classic voted by the British Crime Writers' Association as the "Best Crime Novel of all Time," now featuring a new introduction by

...
Book cover for "The postscript murders"
Star rating for The postscript murders
Series:
Average Rating:
4.2 stars
Description:
"Murder leaps off the page when crime novelists begin to turn up dead in this ... novel by ... Elly Griffiths, a literary mystery ... for fans of Anthony Horowitz and Agatha Christie"--
Book cover for "The right sort of man"
Star rating for The right sort of man
Average Rating:
4.4 stars
Description:
"In a London slowly recovering from World War II, two very different women join forces to launch a business venture in the heart of Mayfair--The Right Sort Marriage Bureau. Miss Iris Sparks, quick-witted and impulsive, and Mrs. Gwendolyn Bainbridge, practical and widowed with a young son, are determined to achieve some independence and do some good in a rapidly changing world. But the promising start to their marriage bureau is threatened when their...
Book cover for "The searcher"
Star rating for The searcher
Author:
Series:
Average Rating:
4.1 stars
Description:
"Cal Hooper thought a fixer-upper in a bucolic Irish village would be the perfect escape. After twenty-five years in the Chicago police force and a bruising divorce, he just wants to build a new life in a pretty spot with a good pub where nothing much happens. But when a local kid whose brother has gone missing arm-twists him into investigating, Cal uncovers layers of darkness beneath his picturesque retreat, and starts to realize that even small...
Book cover for "Searching for Sylvie Lee"
Star rating for Searching for Sylvie Lee
Author:
Average Rating:
3.9 stars
Description:
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.