November 2019 Adult Top 10 Picks

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  1. The Family Upstairs
    by Lisa Jewell
    Atria Books
    Nov 05, 2019
    FICTION / Thrillers / Psychological
    Hardback
    The Family Upstairs
    by Lisa Jewell
    Atria Books
    Nov 05, 2019
    FICTION / Thrillers / Psychological
    Hardback
    INSTANT NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER

    A GOOD MORNING AMERICA COVER TO COVER BOOK CLUB PICK

    “Rich, dark, and intricately twisted, this enthralling whodunit mixes family saga with domestic noir to brilliantly chilling effect.” —Ruth Ware, New York Times bestselling author

    “A haunting, atmospheric, stay-up-way-too-late read.” —Megan Miranda, New York Times bestselling author

    From the #1 New York Times bestselling author of Then She Was Gone comes another page-turning look inside one family’s past as buried secrets threaten to come to light.

    Be careful who you let in.

    Soon after her twenty-fifth birthday, Libby Jones returns home from work to find the letter she’s been waiting for her entire life. She rips it open with one driving thought: I am finally going to know who I am.

    She soon learns not only the identity of her birth parents, but also that she is the sole inheritor of their abandoned mansion on the banks of the Thames in London’s fashionable Chelsea neighborhood, worth millions. Everything in Libby’s life is about to change. But what she can’t possibly know is that others have been waiting for this day as well—and she is on a collision course to meet them.

    Twenty-five years ago, police were called to 16 Cheyne Walk with reports of a baby crying. When they arrived, they found a healthy ten-month-old happily cooing in her crib in the bedroom. Downstairs in the kitchen lay three dead bodies, all dressed in black, next to a hastily scrawled note. And the four other children reported to live at Cheyne Walk were gone.

    In The Family Upstairs, the master of “bone-chilling suspense” (People) brings us the can’t-look-away story of three entangled families living in a house with the darkest of secrets.
    View this title on BNC CataList
  2. The Starless Sea
    by Erin Morgenstern
    Doubleday Canada
    Nov 05, 2019
    FICTION / Women
    Hardback
    The Starless Sea
    by Erin Morgenstern
    Doubleday Canada
    Nov 05, 2019
    FICTION / Women
    Hardback
    NATIONAL BESTSELLER
    NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER

    NAMED ONE OF THE BEST BOOKS OF 2019 BY TIME * E! News * The Guardian * NPR * Real Simple * Good Housekeeping * BookPage * Bustle


    From the New York Times bestselling author of The Night Circus, a timeless love story set in a secret underground world—a place of pirates, painters, lovers, liars, and ships that sail upon a starless sea.


    Zachary Ezra Rawlins is a graduate student in Vermont when he discovers a mysterious book hidden in the stacks. As he turns the pages, entranced by tales of lovelorn prisoners, key collectors, and nameless acolytes, he reads something strange: a story from his own childhood. Bewildered by this inexplicable book and desperate to make sense of how his own life came to be recorded, Zachary uncovers a series of clues—a bee, a key, and a sword—that lead him to a masquerade party in New York, to a secret club, and through a doorway to an ancient library hidden far below the surface of the earth. What Zachary finds in this curious place is more than just a buried home for books and their guardians—it is a place of lost cities and seas, lovers who pass notes under doors and across time, and of stories whispered by the dead. Zachary learns of those who have sacrificed much to protect this realm, relinquishing their sight and their tongues to preserve this archive, and also of those who are intent on its destruction. Together with Mirabel, a fierce, pink-haired protector of the place, and Dorian, a handsome, barefoot man with shifting alliances, Zachary travels the twisting tunnels, darkened stairwells, crowded ballrooms, and sweetly soaked shores of this magical world, discovering his purpose—in both the mysterious book and in his own life.
    View this title on BNC CataList
  3. The Worst Kind of Want
    by Liska Jacobs
    MCD
    Nov 05, 2019
    FICTION / Psychological
    Hardback
    The Worst Kind of Want
    by Liska Jacobs
    MCD
    Nov 05, 2019
    FICTION / Psychological
    Hardback

    “Dark, seductive . . . Noirish and sexy, this provocative novel explores what it’s like to be a woman on the edge.” —Adrienne Westenfeld, Esquire

    “[A] crispy biscotti of a novel . . . You’ll feel indecent reading it in public.” —Molly Young, Vulture

    A trip to Italy reignites a woman’s desires to disastrous effect in this dark ode to womanhood, death, and sex

    To cool-headed, fastidious Pricilla Messing, Italy will be an escape, a brief glimpse of freedom from a life that's starting to feel like one long decline.

    Rescued from the bedside of her difficult mother, forty-something Cilla finds herself called away to Rome to keep an eye on her wayward teenage niece, Hannah. But after years of caregiving, babysitting is the last thing Cilla wants to do. Instead she throws herself into Hannah's youthful, heedless world—drinking, dancing, smoking—relishing the heady atmosphere of the Italian summer. After years of feeling used up and overlooked, Cilla feels like she's coming back to life. But being so close to Hannah brings up complicated memories, making Cilla restless and increasingly reckless, and a dangerous flirtation with a teenage boy soon threatens to send her into a tailspin.

    With the sharp-edged insight of Ottessa Moshfegh and the taut seduction of Patricia Highsmith, The Worst Kind of Want is a dark exploration of the inherent dangers of being a woman. In her unsettling follow-up to Catalina, Liska Jacobs again delivers hypnotic literary noir about a woman whose unruly desires and troubled past push her to the brink of disaster.

    View this title on BNC CataList
  4. Swimming in Darkness
    by Lucas Harari
    Arsenal Pulp Press
    Nov 01, 2019
    COMICS & GRAPHIC NOVELS / Literary
    Hardback
    Swimming in Darkness
    by Lucas Harari
    Arsenal Pulp Press
    Nov 01, 2019
    COMICS & GRAPHIC NOVELS / Literary
    Hardback

    An NPR Best Book of the Year

    Pierre is a young man at a crossroads. He drops out of architecture school and decides to travel to Vals in the Swiss Alps, home to a thermal springs complex located deep inside a mountain. The complex, designed by architect Peter Zumthor, had been the subject of Pierre's thesis. The mountain holds many mysteries; it was said to have a mouth that periodically swallowed people up. Pierre, sketchbook in hand, is drawn to the enigmatic powers of the mountain and its springs, and attempts to uncover the truth behind them in the secret rooms he discovers deep within the complex. But he finds his match in a man named Valeret who is similarly obsessed, and who'd like nothing more than to eliminate his competitor.

    Gorgeously illustrated, Swimming in Darkness is an intriguing, noirish graphic novel about uncovering the powerful secrets of the natural world.

    View this title on BNC CataList
  5. City of Scoundrels
    by Victoria Thompson
    Berkley
    Nov 05, 2019
    FICTION / Mystery & Detective / Women Sleuths
    Hardback
    City of Scoundrels
    by Victoria Thompson
    Berkley
    Nov 05, 2019
    FICTION / Mystery & Detective / Women Sleuths
    Hardback
    An exciting new book in the series featuring Elizabeth Miles, con woman turned Lady, from the beloved national bestselling author of the Gaslight Mysteries.

    Elizabeth Miles finds herself in a position no con can help her escape. Her beloved fiancé, Gideon Bates, is awaiting his turn in the draft to fight in the Great War. Elizabeth is finding it hard to think of anything else, but Gideon has thrown himself into his work, preparing wills for soldiers before they ship out. Corporal Tom Preston is part owner of Preston Shoes, a company that is making footwear for the army, so he has a rather large estate. He needs a new will, however, because he has just been secretly married to a woman whom his family would never approve. He wants to make sure she and their unborn child are provided for if he does not return.

    When Tom is later reported killed, Elizabeth and Gideon learn that the new will has gone missing after Tom's bride revealed her identity to his family. Unless the new will is found and validated, the original will, which leaves everything to Tom's brother, will prevail and the wife and child will get nothing. If Tom's new bride survives, that is. Some terrible threats have been leveled against her, and Elizabeth and Gideon must figure out a way, legal or not quite, to secure Tom's fortune for his wife and child while saving her life in the process.
    View this title on BNC CataList
  6. A Long Night In Paris
    by Dov Alfon
    Quercus Publishing
    Nov 19, 2019
    FICTION / Thrillers / Espionage
    Paperback / softback
    A Long Night In Paris
    by Dov Alfon
    Quercus Publishing
    Nov 19, 2019
    FICTION / Thrillers / Espionage
    Paperback / softback

    From a former Israeli spy, comes the most realistic and authentic thriller of the year.

    TheTimes Number One Bestseller

    Winner of the CWA International Dagger.

    A Times, Telegraph and FT pick for Summer Reads 2019, and an FT Thriller of the Year

    "The year's best espionage thriller" Daily Telegraph Best Books of 2019

    "Gripping, smart and shot through with dry wit. A terrific read" Simon Beckett

    When an Israeli tech exec disappears from Charles de Gaulle airport with a woman in red, logic dictates youthful indiscretion. But Israel is on a state of high alert nonetheless. Colonel Zeev Abadi, the new head of Unit 8200's Special Section, just happens to have arrived on the same flight.

    For Commissaire Léger of the Paris Police, all coincidences are suspect. When a second young Israeli from the flight is kidnapped, this time at gunpoint from his hotel room, his suspicions are confirmed - and a diplomatic crisis looms. As the race to identify the victims and the reasons behind their abductions intensifies, a covert Chinese commando team watches from the rooftops, while hour by hour the morgue receives fresh bodies from around Paris.

    This could be one long night in the City of Lights.

    Translated from the Hebrew by Daniela Zamir

    View this title on BNC CataList
  7. Healthy Cocktails
    by Matt Dorsey
    Skyhorse
    Nov 19, 2019
    COOKING / Beverages / Alcoholic / Bartending & Cocktails
    Hardback
    Healthy Cocktails
    by Matt Dorsey
    Skyhorse
    Nov 19, 2019
    COOKING / Beverages / Alcoholic / Bartending & Cocktails
    Hardback
    50 Better-for-You Boozy Beverages to Shake Up Your Happy Hour!

    This photo-filled recipe book takes the guilt out of happy hour!

    These genuinely tasty cocktails use minimal added sugar, all-natural ingredients, and a mix of liquor and low-alcohol spirits to make drinking feel like the easiest diet to maintain.

    Most of the fifty recipes (and bonus recipes) contain five ingredients or less, most requiring fewer than three steps, so you'll be able to make most of these drinks quickly and with little effort.

    Recipes range from reinterpreted classics, like the Old Fashioned, to millennial favorites like green juice spritzers, using vodka, gin, rum, bourbon, rye, scotch, tequila, and mezcal. Other recipes include:
    • Raspberry Sour
    • Spicy Bee’s Knees
    • Coconut Water Colada
    • Blackberry Smash
    • Sugar-Free Paloma
    • Taste of the Tropics
    • Eat Your Peas
    • Gotham Sunset
    • Ramos Gin Fizz
    • The Green Hour
    • Mint Julep
    • And more!


    With a mix of cocktails for all occasions, from drinking al fresco to a warm night cap, Healthy Cocktails is perfect year-round, day or night, and will surely shake up your happy hour!
    View this title on BNC CataList
  8. Hinterland Remixed
    by Andrew Burke Canada
    McGill-Queen's University Press
    Nov 06, 2019
    SOCIAL SCIENCE / Poverty & Homelessness
    Paperback / softback
    Hinterland Remixed
    by Andrew Burke Canada
    McGill-Queen's University Press
    Nov 06, 2019
    SOCIAL SCIENCE / Poverty & Homelessness
    Paperback / softback
    Like the flute melody from Hinterland Who's Who, the 1970s haunt Canadian cultural memory. Though the decade often feels lost to history, Hinterland Remixed focuses on boldly innovative works as well as popular film, television, and music to show that Canada never fully left the 1970s behind. Andrew Burke reveals how contemporary artists and filmmakers have revisited the era's cinematic and televisual residues to uncover what has been lost over the years. Investigating how the traces of an analogue past circulate in a digital age, Burke digs through the remnants of 1970s Canadiana and examines key audiovisual works from this overlooked decade, uncovering the period's aspirations, desires, fears, and anxieties. He then looks to contemporary projects that remix, remediate, and reanimate the period. Exploring an idiosyncratic selection of works – from Michael Snow's experimental landscape film La Région Centrale, to SCTV's satirical skewering of network television, to L'Atelier national du Manitoba's video lament for the Winnipeg Jets – this book asks key questions about nation, nostalgia, media, and memory. A timely intervention, Hinterland Remixed demands we recognize the ways in which the unrealized cultural ambitions and unresolved anxieties of a previous decade continue to resonate in our current lives.
    View this title on BNC CataList
  9. Queen of Bones
    by Teresa Dovalpage
    Soho Crime
    Nov 12, 2019
    FICTION / Mystery & Detective / International Crime & Mystery
    Hardback
    Queen of Bones
    by Teresa Dovalpage
    Soho Crime
    Nov 12, 2019
    FICTION / Mystery & Detective / International Crime & Mystery
    Hardback
    Set between Cubas twenty years apart, Havana native Teresa Dovalpage’s new murder mystery explores lingering grudges between old friends and lovers separated by Castro's final sanctioned raft exodus.

    Juan, a Cuban construction worker who has settled in Albuquerque, returns to Havana for the first time since fleeing Cuba by raft twenty years ago. He is traveling with his American wife, Sharon, and hopes to reconnect with Victor, his best friend from college—and, unbeknownst to Sharon, he also hopes to discover what has become of two ex-girlfriends, Elsa and Rosita.

    Juan is surprised to learn that Victor has become Victoria and runs a popular drag show at the local hot spot Café Arabia. Elsa has married a wealthy foreigner, and Rosita, still single, works at the Havana cemetery. When one of these women turns up dead, it will cost Padrino, a Santería priest and former detective on the Havana police force, more than he expects to untangle the group’s lies and hunt down the killer.
    View this title on BNC CataList
  10. Tasty Every Day
    by Tasty
    Clarkson Potter
    Nov 12, 2019
    COOKING / Methods / Quick & Easy
    Hardback
    Tasty Every Day
    by Tasty
    Clarkson Potter
    Nov 12, 2019
    COOKING / Methods / Quick & Easy
    Hardback
    Meal prep, one pot, no cook, slow cooker or Instant Pot®—BuzzFeed’s Tasty has something for everyone with 75 time-saving, taste-tested recipes that make cooking easy and fun.

    We know you’re busy, so we'll make it quick. Or, actually, you’ll make it quick. With easy-clean-up one-pot wonders like Spaghetti with Caramelized Lemon, Shrimp, and Parsley and hands-off slow cooker life-savers like Shredded Chicken Tacos, you’ll get food on the table fast and effortlessly. Only have five ingredients? No problem—turn them into craveable Cauliflower Mac ’n’ Cheese. Wouldn’t it be magic if you could cook once and eat for the week? Spoiler alert: Meal prep makes it possible. Whether you’re short on time, ingredients, clean pans, motivation, or all of the above, there is food here for you. Mealtime can and should be Tasty every single day.
    View this title on BNC CataList

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