Summer 2009

Discover the best books of Summer 2009 with our curated list of top reads. Find your next favorite novel, thriller, or beach read from this must-have 2009 summer collection.

Choke Cover
Book

Choke

by Chuck Palahniuk

Victor Mancini's a medical school dropout with a problem. He needs to pay for elder care for his mother, who's got Alzheimer's. So he comes up with the perfect scam: pretending to choke in upscale restaurants and getting “saved” by fellow diners who, feeling responsible for Victor's life, offer him financial support.Meanwhile, he cruises sexual addiction recovery workshops and spends his days working at Colonial Dunsboro, where his stoner colleagues are sentenced to the stocks for any deviation from the colonial lifestyle. Oh, yeah, and he's desperate to find the truth of his paternity, which his addled mother suggests may be divine.
Speaker for the Dead Cover
Book

Speaker for the Dead

 

No summary available.
The Testament Cover
Book

The Testament

by John Grisham

#1 NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • In a plush Virginia office, a rich, angry old man is furiously rewriting his will. With his death just hours away, Troy Phelan wants to send a message to his children, his ex-wives, and his minions—a message that will touch off a vicious legal battle and transform dozens of lives. Because Troy Phelan’s new will names a sole surprise heir to his eleven-billion-dollar fortune: a mysterious woman named Rachel Lane, a missionary living deep in the jungles of Brazil. Enter the lawyers. Nate O’Riley is fresh out of rehab, a disgraced corporate attorney handpicked for his last job: to find Rachel Lane at any cost. As Phelan’s family circles like vultures in D.C., Nate goes crashing through the Brazilian jungle, entering a world where money means nothing, where death is just one misstep away, and where a woman—pursued by enemies and friends alike—holds a stunning surprise of her own. Don’t miss John Grisham’s new book, THE EXCHANGE: AFTER THE FIRM!
Velocity Cover
Book

Velocity

by Dean Ray Koontz

A series of communications from a deranged killer in which he is offered a number of devastating choices and deadlines draws Bill Wiles into a confrontation with pure evil as his life becomes a downward spiral into a nightmare in which he must risk everything in a desperate race against time. Reprint.
Item Not Found
ID: 030739638X
(Type: books)
See Delphi and Die Cover
Book

See Delphi and Die

by Lindsey Davis

Now married to his beloved Helena Justina, Marcus Didius Falco is hired to take on a murder investigation that will require him and Helena to travel to Olympia, Greece, to uncover the truth about a series of disappearances.
The good guy Cover
Book

The good guy

 

No summary available.
Life Expectancy Cover
Book

Life Expectancy

by Dean Ray Koontz

A dying man's clairvoyant prophesies about his grandson, Jimmy Tock, reveal five terrifying and horrific events, occuring on five different days at different periods in his life, that will turn the young man's world upside down. Reprint.
Intensity Cover
Book

Intensity

by Dean Ray Koontz

The sole survivor of a homicidal sociopath's latest killing spree, Chyna Shepherd unwittingly discovers the identity of the murderer's intended next victim and confronts her own troubled past and overwhelming fear to protect herself and the life of a complete stranger from the ultimate evil. Reissue.
The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao (Pulitzer Prize Winner) Cover
Book

The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao (Pulitzer Prize Winner)

by Junot DĂ­az

Winner of: The Pulitzer Prize The National Book Critics Circle Award The Anisfield-Wolf Book Award The Jon Sargent, Sr. First Novel Prize A Time Magazine #1 Fiction Book of the Year One of The New York Times’s 100 Best Books of the 21st Century One of the best books of 2007 according to: The New York Times, San Francisco Chronicle, New York Magazine, Entertainment Weekly, The Boston Globe, Los Angeles Times, The Washington Post, People, The Village Voice, Time Out New York, Salon, Baltimore City Paper, The Christian Science Monitor, Booklist, Library Journal, Publishers Weekly, New York Public Library, and many more... Nominated as one of America’s best-loved novels by PBS’s The Great American Read and named one of The Atlantic’s Great American Novels of the Past 100 Years Oscar is a sweet but disastrously overweight ghetto nerd who—from the New Jersey home he shares with his old world mother and rebellious sister—dreams of becoming the Dominican J.R.R. Tolkien and, most of all, finding love. But Oscar may never get what he wants. Blame the fukú—a curse that has haunted Oscar’s family for generations, following them on their epic journey from Santo Domingo to the USA. Encapsulating Dominican-American history, The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao opens our eyes to an astonishing vision of the contemporary American experience and explores the endless human capacity to persevere—and risk it all—in the name of love.
Child 44 Cover
Book

Child 44

 

No summary available.
Over Sea, Under Stone Cover
Book

Over Sea, Under Stone

by Susan Cooper

Three children on a holiday in Cornwall find an ancient manuscript which sends them on a dangerous quest for a grail that would reveal the true story of King Arthur.
The Secret Speech Cover
Book

The Secret Speech

by Tom Rob Smith

A new thriller set in the turmoil and upheaval of the post-Stalinist Soviet Union follows former state security officer Leo Demidov as he strives to protect his family from someone with a grudge against him--someone transformed beyond recognition into the
Item Not Found
ID: 1416949658
(Type: books)
The Strain Cover
Book

The Strain

by Guillermo Del Toro

The visionary creator of the Academy Award-winning Pan's Labyrinth and a Hammett Award-winning author bring their imaginations to this bold, epic novel about a horrifying battle between man and vampire that threatens all humanity. It is the first installment in a thrilling trilogy and an extraordinary international publishing event. The Strain They have always been here. Vampires. In secret and in darkness. Waiting. Now their time has come. In one week, Manhattan will be gone. In one month, the country. In two months—the world. A Boeing 777 arrives at JFK and is on its way across the tarmac, when it suddenly stops dead. All window shades are pulled down. All lights are out. All communication channels have gone quiet. Crews on the ground are lost for answers, but an alert goes out to the CDC. Dr. Eph Goodweather, head of their Canary project, a rapid-response team that investigates biological threats, gets the call and boards the plane. What he finds makes his blood run cold. In a pawnshop in Spanish Harlem, a former professor and survivor of the Holocaust named Abraham Setrakian knows something is happening. And he knows the time has come, that a war is brewing . . . So begins a battle of mammoth proportions as the vampiric virus that has infected New York begins to spill out into the streets. Eph, who is joined by Setrakian and a motley crew of fighters, must now find a way to stop the contagion and save his city—a city that includes his wife and son—before it is too late.
The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo Cover
Book

The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo

by Stieg Larsson

#1 NATIONAL BESTSELLER • The thrilling first book in the Millenium series featuring Lisbeth Salander: “Combine the chilly Swedish backdrop and moody psychodrama of a Bergman movie with the grisly pyrotechnics of a serial-killer thriller, then add an angry punk heroine and a down-on-his-luck investigative journalist, and you have the ingredients of Stieg Larsson’s first novel” (The New York Times). Harriet Vanger, a scion of one of Sweden's wealthiest families disappeared over forty years ago. All these years later, her aged uncle continues to seek the truth. He hires Mikael Blomkvist, a crusading journalist recently trapped by a libel conviction, to investigate. He is aided by the pierced and tattooed punk prodigy Lisbeth Salander. Together they tap into a vein of unfathomable iniquity and astonishing corruption.
Artemis Fowl (Artemis Fowl, Book 1) Cover
Book

Artemis Fowl (Artemis Fowl, Book 1)

 

No summary available.
City of Thieves Cover
Book

City of Thieves

by David Benioff

Documenting his grandparents' experiences during the siege of Leningrad, a young writer learns his grandfather's story about how a military deserter and he tried to secure pardons by gathering hard-to-find ingredients for a powerful colonel's daughter's wedding cake.
Congo Cover
Book

Congo

 

No summary available.
Sphere Cover
Book

Sphere

by Michael Crichton

"A page-turner...Chichton's writing is cinematic, with powerful visual images and nonstop action. This book should come with hot buttered popcorn." NEWSWEEK A group of American scientists are rushed to a huge vessel that has been discovered resting on the ocean floor in the middle of the South Pacific. What they find defines their imaginations and mocks their attempts at logical explanation. It is a spaceship of phenomenal dimensions, apparently, undamaged by its fall from the sky. And, most startling, it appears to be at least three hundred years old.... "The suspense is real." THE NEW YORK TIMES BOOK REVIEW
The Spiderwick Chronicles (Boxed Set) Cover
Book

The Spiderwick Chronicles (Boxed Set)

by Holly Black

It all started with a mysterious letter left at a tiny bookstore for authors Tony DiTerlizzi and Holly Black. Its closing lines: "We just want people to know about this. The stuff that has happened to us could happen to anyone." Little could they imagine the remarkable adventure that awaited them as they followed Jared, Simon, and Mallory Grace and a strange old book into a world filled with elves, goblins, dwarves, trolls, and a fantastical menagerie of other creatures. The oddest part is in entering that world, they didn't leave this one! Five captivating books! One thrilling adventure! The Spiderwick Chronicles
Artemis Fowl The Arctic Incident Cover
Book

Artemis Fowl The Arctic Incident

by Eoin Colfer

Artemis is at boarding school in Ireland when he suddenly receives an urgent video-email from Russia. In it is a plea from a man who has been kidnapped by the Russian Mafiya: his father. As Artemis rushes to the rescue, he is stopped by captain Holly Short of the LEPrecon fairy police. But this time, instead of battling the fairies, he is going to have to join forces with them if he wants to save one of the few people in the world he loves.
The Tales of Beedle the Bard Cover
Book

The Tales of Beedle the Bard

 

No summary available.
Item Not Found
ID: 0007203136
(Type: books)
It Cover
Book

It

by Stephen King

A group of teenagers stumbles upon an evil force that will eventually draw them all back to Derry, Maine, for a final showdown. Reissue.
Item Not Found
ID: 0553593331
(Type: books)
Item Not Found
ID: 0553587900
(Type: books)