Books of the month for September

General Fiction: Jill Alexander Essbaum – Hausfrau

Essbaum. Anna was a good wife, mostly ...Anna Benz lives in comfort and affluence with her husband and three young children in Dietlikon, a picture-perfect suburb of Zurich. Anna, an American expat, has chosen this life far from home; but, despite its tranquility and order, inside she is falling apart.

Feeling adrift and unable to connect with her husband or his family; with the fellow expatriates who try to befriend her; or even, increasingly, her own thoughts and emotions, Anna attempts to assert her agency in the only way that makes sense to her: by engaging in short-lived but intense sexual affairs. But adultery, too, has its own morality, and when Anna finds herself crossing a line, she will set off a terrible chain of events that ends in unspeakable tragedy. As her life crashes down around her, Anna must then discover where one must go when there is no going back …

British Crime: M. J. Carter – The Strangler Vine

Calcutta, 1837. Young Ensign William Avery is tasked by his employers - the East India Company - to track down disgraced agent Xavier Mountstuart, lost to the jungle. Forced to take with him dissolute, disillusioned, errant genius ex-officer Jeremiah Blake, Avery is sure their mission is doomed.

Tough Crime: F. H. Batagan – Smaller and Smaller Circles

This harrowing mystery, winner of the Philippine National Book Award, follows two Catholic priests on the hunt through Manila for a brutal serial killer

Payatas, a 50-acre dump northeast of Manila's Quezon City, is home to thousands of people who live off of what they can scavenge there. It is one of the poorest neighborhoods in a city whose law enforcement is already stretched thin, devoid of forensic resources and rife with corruption. So when the eviscerated bodies of preteen boys begin to appear in the dump heaps, there is no one to seek justice on their behalf.

In the rainy summer of 1997, two Jesuit priests take the matter of protecting their flock into their own hands.

Science Fiction: Kieran Shea – Koko Takes a Holiday

Five hundred years from now, ex-corporate mercenary Koko Martstellar is swaggering through an easy early retirement as a brothel owner on The Sixty Islands, a manufactured tropical resort archipelago known for its sex and simulated violence. Surrounded by slang-drooling boywhores and synthetic komodo dragons, Koko finds the most challenging part of her day might be deciding on her next drink. That is, until her old comrade Portia Delacompte sends a squad of security personnel to murder her.

Fantasy: Joshua Palmatier – Shattering the Ley (Trilogy Two #1)

“Palmatier kicks off an epic fantasy series with this complex tale set in a world where wonders are accomplished by manipulating the magical energy of ley lines.... Palmatier lets the story build slowly, introducing a sprawling cast and fascinating setting, before explosively upsetting the status quo.” —Publishers Weekly

Paranormal/Urban Fantasy: Jamie Schulz – Premonitions

"TWO MILLION DOLLARS..."
It's the kind of score Karyn Ames has always dreamed of--enough to set her crew up pretty well and, more important, enough to keep her safely stocked on a very rare, very expensive black market drug. Without it, Karyn hallucinates slices of the future until they totally overwhelm her, leaving her unable to distinguish the present from the mess of certainties and possibilities yet to come.
The client behind the heist is Enoch Sobell, a notorious crime lord with a reputation for being ruthless and exacting--and a purported practitioner of dark magic. Sobell is almost certainly condemned to Hell for a magically extended lifetime full of shady dealings. Once you're in business with him, there's no backing out.

Classic of the Month: Dashiell Hammett – Red Harvest

The Continental Op first heard Personville called Poisonville by Hickey Dewey. But since Dewey also called a shirt a shoit, he didn't think anything of it. Until he went there and his client, the only honest man in Poisonville, was murdered.

Then the Op decided to stay to punish the guilty. And that meant taking on the entire town…
"An acknowledged literary landmark" Robert Graves

Teen reading: Jenn Bennett – Night Owls

An edgy and romantic YA novel set in San Francisco, on the night bus known as The Owl. With appeal to fans of John Green and Rainbow Rowell, it follows Beatrix, who finds herself fascinated by Jack, an attractive graffiti artist. On midnight rides and city rooftops, Beatrix begins to see who this enigmatic boy really is. But Jack is hiding much more - and can she uncover the truth that leaves him so wounded?