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LETHAL LEGACY

 In Linda Fairstein’s outstanding new novel, the New York Public Library houses dazzling treasures—and deadly secrets.

When Assistant District Attorney Alex Cooper is summoned to Tina Barr’s apartment on Manhattan’s Upper East Side, she finds a neighbor convinced that the young woman was assaulted. But the terrified victim, a conservator of rare books and maps, refuses to cooperate with investigators. Then another woman is found murdered in that same apartment with an extremely valuable book, believed to have been stolen. As Alex pursues the murderer, she is drawn into the strange and privileged world of the Hunt family,

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A PERSON OF INTEREST

Almost no one in Susan Choi’s latest novel, A Person of Interest, ever calls the book’s protagonist anything except for his title, “Professor,” and his last name, “Lee.” An aging Asian-born mathematics professor with decidedly limited personal skills, Lee is a prickly colleague and a reclusive neighbor—seemingly the last person who might attract the attention of FBI agents investigating a series of terrorist attacks. However, when a professor in the office next to Lee’s, an outgoing, popular hotshot named Rick Hendley, becomes the latest victim of a technology-hating psychopath known only as the Brain Bomber, Lee’s detached response to the event and his persistent acts of social maladroitness lead not only the Bureau but also the national news media and his own close acquaintances to regard him with damning suspicion.

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THE LITTLE BOOK

 The Little Book is the extraordinary tale of Wheeler Burden, California-exiled heir of the famous Boston banking Burdens, philosopher, student of history, legend’s son, rock idol, writer, lover of women, recluse, half-Jew, and Harvard baseball hero. In 1988 he is forty-seven, living in San Francisco. Suddenly he is—still his modern self—wandering in a city and time he knows mysteriously well: fin de siècle Vienna. It is 1897, precisely ninety-one years before his last memory and a half-century before his birth.

It’s not long before Wheeler has acquired appropriate clothes, money, lodging, a group of young Viennese intellectuals as friends,

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THE DEVLIN DIARY

 London, 1672. The past twelve years have brought momentous changes: the restoration of the monarchy, a devastating plague and fire. Yet the city remains a teeming, thriving metropolis, energized by the lusty decadence of Charles II’s court and burgeoning scientific inquiry. Although women enjoy greater freedom, they are not allowed to practice medicine, a restriction that physician Hannah Devlin evades by treating patients that most other doctors shun: the city’s poor.

But Hannah has a special knowledge that Secretary of State Lord Arlington desperately needs. At the king’s Machiavellian court, Hannah attracts the attention of two men,

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COMFORTS OF A MUDDY SATURDAY

In the delectable fifth installment of the bestselling adventures of Isabel Dalhousie, our cherished inquisitive heroine returns to investigate a medical mystery.

A doctor’s career has been ruined by allegations of medical fraud and Isabel cannot ignore what may be a miscarriage of justice. Besides, Isabel’s insatiable interest is piqued and she finds herself asking questions. Would a respected doctor make such a grave mistake? If not, what explains the death of the patient? Clearly, an investigation is in order.

Meanwhile, there is her baby Charlie, who needs looking after; her niece Cat who needs someone to mind her deli;

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FINDING NOUF

When sixteen-year-old Nouf goes missing, her prominent family calls on Nayir al-Sharqi, a pious desert guide, to lead the search party. Ten days later, just as Nayir is about to give up in frustration, her body is discovered by anonymous desert travelers. But when the coroner’s office determines that Nouf died not of dehydration but from drowning, and her family seems suspiciously uninterested in getting at the truth, Nayir takes it upon himself to find out what really happened.

He quickly realizes that if he wants to gain access to the hidden world of women, he will have to join forces with Katya Hijazi,

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