Top 5 Fiction Selections At The Library

Senior reference librarian, Rosemary Jerome, chooses five of her favorite fiction books that are on the shelves at  right now.

Paula Brackston, The Witch's Daughter (2011)

Elizabeth Hardwick is immortal and a witch. She befriends Tegan, a lonely teenager, and gradually tells her about her past. In 1628 her father, brother and sister die of the plague and her mother is hanged for witchcraft. Fifteen-year-old Elizabeth seeks shelter with warlock Gideon Masters who becomes her mentor and wants her to become his soul mate. Bess escapes the witch hunters and Gideon throughout the centuries until Tegan becomes Gideon's target. Brackston blends historical fiction and fantasy in her first novel.

Aminatta Forna, The Memory of Love (2011)

Author of Ancestor Stones and The Devil that Danced on the Water. Set in postwar Sierra Leone, it centers around the lives of two doctors. Adrian Lockhart, a British psychiatrist, works with post-traumatic stress disorder patients. Kai Mansaray is an orthopedic surgeon born in Sierra Leone. They both must deal with tragedy and its aftermath in a country suffering from a decade of civil war.

Ida Hattemar-Higgins, History of History: A Novel of Berlin (2011)

In this debut novel, Margaret Taub, a young American woman, awakens in a forest outside Berlin in September of 2002 and she doesn't remember anything about the past few months. Two years later she receives a letter from a doctor she doesn't know confirming an upcoming appointment. She meets the doctor but when she leaves his office her entire world has transformed and she is overwhelmed by guilt.

Erin Kelly, The Poison Tree (2011)

British journalist Erin Kelly's debut suspense novel. Karen Clarke's ordinary life changes forever when she meets Biba Capel and her brother Rex. Karen moves in with the Capels and participates in their wild lifestyle that includes a double homicide that binds them together forever. Told through flashbacks, the book starts with Rex being released from prison and Karen is waiting for him. She has a secret that she is terrified someone will discover.

William C. Whitbeck, To Account for Murder (2010)

In 1945, Michigan state senator Warren G. Hooper was murdered and the case remains unsolved. In Whitbeck's fictionalized account of this murder, a death-bed confession by lawyer Charlie Cahill states that he is the person who shot the corrupt and depraved state senator Harry Maynard. Cahill worked on the grand jury investigation to implicate Wade Fleming for the murder. Cahill used bribery and the corrupt legal system to hide his crime. Whitbeck is the chief judge of the Michigan Court of Appeals.