Remarkably bright creatures : a novel / Van Pelt, Shelby

A widow's unlikely friendship with a giant Pacific octopus reluctantly residing at the local aquarium-and the truths she finally uncovers about her son's disappearance 30 years ago"--

The inheritance : a novel / Goodman, Joanna

"From the bestselling author of The Home for Unwanted Girls and The Forgotten Daughter comes a compulsively readable mother-daughter story in which two women who share a difficult past must come to together to claim the future they deserve. Arden Moore enjoyed an affluent life thanks to her husband's high-paying job. But a year after his death, the 36-year-old is a grieving single mother deeply in debt and living paycheck to paycheck with her three children. Then an unexpected call from a well-known estate lawyer in New York offers a glimmer of hope. It is the beginning of a complex legal journey that could mean the difference between a life of abject poverty and unthinkable wealth thanks to her father, deceased billionaire Wallace Barclay. Thirty years before, Arden's mother Virginia Bunt, a flirtatious love addict with a string of failed affairs, met Wallace, an encounter that transformed her life. When he died unexpectedly without a will, Virginia fought to secure a comfortable future for her and the secret unborn daughter she shared with Wallace. Yet despite her best efforts, society and the legal system prevented her from receiving the money that should rightfully have been hers. Now, though, with changes in the legal system and science, her daughter Arden may finally succeed in claiming the inheritance that has been long denied. Told from both Arden and Virginia's viewpoints, straddling past and present, and moving from Toronto to New York City, The Inheritance is a poignant portrait of familial bonds, haunting pasts, the collateral damage of life choices, and the promise of hopeful futures as two venerable women fight for the life they deserve"--

The women : a novel / Hannah, Kristin

"When twenty-year-old nursing student Frances "Frankie" McGrath hears these unexpected words, it is a revelation. Raised on idyllic Coronado Island and sheltered by her conservative parents, she has always prided herself on doing the right thing, being a good girl. But in 1965 the world is changing, and she suddenly imagines a different choice for her life. When her brother ships out to serve in Vietnam, she impulsively joins the Army Nurse Corps and follows his path. As green and inexperienced as the men sent to Vietnam to fight, Frankie is overwhelmed by the chaos and destruction of war, as well as the unexpected trauma of coming home to a changed and politically divided America."--

The covenant of water : a novel / Verghese, Abraham

"From the New York Times-bestselling author of Cutting for Stone comes a stunning and magisterial epic of love, faith, and medicine, set in Kerala, South India, following three generations of a family seeking the answers to a strange secret. The Covenant of Water is the long-awaited new novel by Abraham Verghese, the author of the major word-of-mouth bestseller Cutting for Stone, which has sold over 1.5 million copies in the United States alone and remained on the New York Times bestseller list for over two years. Spanning the years 1900 to 1977, The Covenant of Water is set in Kerala, on South India's Malabar Coast, and follows three generations of a family that suffers a peculiar affliction: in every generation, at least one person dies by drowning -- and in Kerala, water is everywhere. At the turn of the century, a twelve-year-old girl from Kerala's long-existing Christian community, grieving the death of her father, is sent by boat to her wedding, where she will meet her forty-year-old husband for the first time. From this unforgettable new beginning, the young girl -- and future matriarch, known as Big Ammachi -- will witness unthinkable changes over the span of her extraordinary life, full of joy and triumph as well as hardship and loss, her faith and love the only constants. A shimmering evocation of a bygone India and of the passage of time itself, The Covenant of Water is a hymn to progress in medicine and to human understanding, and a humbling testament to the difficulties undergone by past generations for the sake of those alive today. Imbued with humor, deep emotion, and the essence of life, it is one of the most masterful literary novels published in recent years"--

Here one moment : a novel / Moriarty, Liane

In this new novel from Liane Moriarty, the passengers of a short, domestic flight experience something extraordinary: they learn how and when they are going to die. And for six passengers, their predicted deaths are not far away at all. If you were told you only had a certain amount of time left to live, would you do things differently? Would you try to dodge your destiny?

Playground : a novel / Powers, Richard

The tiny atoll of French Polynesia has been chosen for humanity's next adventure: a plan to send floating, autonomous cities out onto the open sea, but first, the island's residents must vote to greenlight the project or turn the seasteaders away.

Cher : the memoir, part one / Cher, 1946-
Memoir, part 1
"After more than seventy years of fighting to live her life on her own terms, Cher finally reveals her true story in intimate detail, in a two-part memoir. Her remarkable career is unique and unparalleled. The only woman to top Billboard charts in seven consecutive decades, she is the winner of an Academy Award, an Emmy, a Grammy, and a Cannes Film Festival Award, and an inductee to the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame who has been lauded by the Kennedy Center. She is a lifelong activist and philanthropist. As a dyslexic child who dreamed of becoming famous, Cher was raised in often-chaotic circumstances, surrounded by singers, actors, and a mother who inspired her in spite of their difficult relationship. With her trademark honesty and humor, Cher: The Memoir traces how this diamond in the rough succeeded with no plan and little confidence to become the trailblazing superstar the world has been unable to ignore for more than half a century. Cher: The Memoir, Part One follows her extraordinary beginnings through childhood to meeting and marrying Sonny Bono -- and reveals the highly complicated relationship that made them world-famous, but eventually drove them apart. Cher: The Memoir reveals the daughter, the sister, the wife, the lover, the mother, and the superstar. It is a life too immense for only one book"--

The comfort of ghosts / Winspear, Jacqueline

"London, 1945: Four adolescent orphans with a dark wartime history are squatting in a vacant Belgravia mansion - the owners having fled London under heavy Luftwaffe bombing. Soon after a demobilized British soldier, ill and reeling from his experiences overseas, takes shelter with the group, Maisie Dobbs visits the mansion on behalf of the owners. Maisie is deeply puzzled by the children's reticence. Their stories are evasive and, more mysteriously, they appear to possess self-defense skills one might expect of trained adults in wartime. Her quest to bring comfort and the promise of a future to the youngsters and to the ailing soldier brings to light a decades-old mystery concerning Maisie's first husband, James Compton, who was killed while piloting an experimental aircraft. As Maisie picks apart the threads of her dead husband's life, she is forced to examine her own painful past and question beliefs she has always accepted as true. The award-winning Maisie Dobbs series has garnered hundreds of thousands of followers around the world, readers who are drawn to a woman who is of her time, yet familiar in ours - and who inspires with her resilience and capacity for endurance at the worst of times. This final assignment of her own choosing not only opens a new future for Maisie Dobbs and her family, but serves as a fascinating portrayal of the challenges facing the people of Britain at the close of the Second World War"--

Grave danger / Grippando, James

After fleeing from Iran to Miami with her daughter, Jack Swyteck's new client is accused of kidnapping by her husband. Jack not only must plan a winning defense but, to stop the father from taking the girl back to Tehran, he must build a case under international law to prove that returning the child would put her at risk. But everything in this case isn't what it seems, as Jack discovers that his client is really the child's aunt, and that the biological mother may have been killed by Iran's morality police. What role did the father play in his wife's death, and why is Jack's wife, FBI agent Andie Henning, being pressured by her bosses to persuade Jack to drop the case? Plunging into an investigation unlike any other, Jack must discover who is behind the legal maneuvering and what their interest is. As politics threaten to derail the case and compromise the best interests of the child, Jack and Andie find themselves on opposite sides--with their marriage hanging in the balance. For their relationship to survive, the couple must navigate a treacherous web of deceit that extends from a Miami courthouse to the highest echelons of Washington, DC, and spells grave danger at every turn.

Holmes is missing / Patterson, James

In this second installment of the 'Holmes, Margaret and Poe' series, PI Brendan Holmes has committed the perfect crime -- he's made himself disappear.