The Last Party

 By: Clare MacKintosh  

Location: FIC MAC

Genre: Mystery

Nilufer: This is a mind-spinning, complex, and deeply layered small-town murder mystery!

It's the party to end all parties....but not everyone is here to celebrate.

On New Year's Eve, Rhys Lloyd has a house full of guests. His vacation homes on Mirror Lake are a success, and he's generously invited the village to drink champagne with their wealthy new neighbors.

But by midnight, Rhys will be floating dead in the freezing waters of the lake.

On New Year's Day, Ffion Morgan has a village full of suspects. The tiny community is her home, so the suspects are her neighbors, friends and family—and Ffion has her own secrets to protect.

With a lie uncovered at every turn, soon the question isn't who wanted Rhys dead...but who finally killed him.

In a village with this many secrets, murder is just the beginning.

Alchemised

 By: SenLin Yu    

Location: FIC SEN

Genre: Epic Fantasy

ANGIE said this   "Heartbreaking. Devastating. Harrowing. This macabre tale will shatter your heart, tear it from your chest, and haunt you long after the last page. Prepare to be destroyed."

In this riveting dark fantasy debut, a woman with missing memories fights to survive a war-torn world of necromancy and alchemy—and the man tasked with unearthing the deepest secrets of her past.

“What is it you think you’re protecting in that brain of yours? The war is over. Holdfast is dead. The Eternal Flame extinguished. There’s no one left for you to save.”

Once a promising alchemist, Helena Marino is now a prisoner—of war and of her own mind. Her Resistance friends and allies have been brutally murdered, her abilities suppressed, and the world she knew destroyed.

In the aftermath of a long war, Paladia’s new ruling class of corrupt guild families and depraved necromancers, whose vile undead creatures helped bring about their victory, holds Helena captive.

According to Resistance records, she was a healer of little importance within their ranks. But Helena has inexplicable memory loss of the months leading up to her capture, making her enemies wonder: Is she truly as insignificant as she appears, or are her lost memories hiding some vital piece of the Resistance’s final gambit?

To uncover the memories buried deep within her mind, Helena is sent to the High Reeve, one of the most powerful and ruthless necromancers in this new world. Trapped on his crumbling estate, Helena’s fight—to protect her lost history and to preserve the last remaining shreds of her former self—is just beginning. For her prison and captor have secrets of their own . . . secrets Helena must unearth, whatever the cost.

Angie:

WHAT TO EXPECT:
✨ dark fantasy / romance / horror
✨ alchemy and necromancy
✨ post-war / wartime
✨ morally grey MCs
✨ healer x soldier/spy
✨ enemies-to-lovers
✨ romance under extreme conditions
✨ 1/5 spice (in parts 2 and 3, non-descriptive)
✨ captor x captive
✨ imprisonment
✨ memory loss
✨ mystery
✨ espionage
✨ non-linear narrative
✨ HEA - It's not quite like the fairytales, but it's the best you could hope for.

Trigger Warnings: wartime violence, religious abuse, depictions of complex trauma, suicidal ideation, self-harm, PTSD, medical torture, eugenics, cannibalism, s3xual assault, r4pe, and allusion to necrophilia.

Adventurer- Casanova

 By: Leo Damrosch 

Location: FIC DAM

Location: 920 MAD Explore

 Who was CASANOVA!!!!

“Fully succeeds in communicating that ‘vivid presentness,’ that ‘joyful eagerness’ for life, which is what keeps us reading Casanova―and reading about him.”―Gregory Dowling, Wall Street Journal
 
“A nuanced, deftly contextualized biography of an adventurer, an opportunist, and a man of voracious appetites. . . . Another top-notch work from Damrosch.”―Kirkus Reviews (starred review)

The life of the iconic libertine Giacomo Casanova (1725–1798) has never been told in the depth it deserves. An alluring representative of the Enlightenment’s shadowy underside, Casanova was an aspiring priest, an army officer, a fortune teller, a con man, a magus, a violinist, a mathematician, a Masonic master, an entrepreneur, a diplomat, a gambler, a spy—and the first to tell his own story. In his vivid autobiography Histoire de Ma Vie , he recorded at least a hundred and twenty love affairs, as well as dramatic sagas of duels, swindles, arrests, and escapes. He knew kings and an empress, Catherine the Great, and most of the famous writers of the time, including Voltaire and Benjamin Franklin.
 
Drawing on seldom used materials, including the original French and Italian primary sources, and probing deeply into the psychology, self-conceptions, and self-deceptions of one of the world’s most famous con men and seducers, Leo Damrosch offers a gripping, mature, and devastating account of an Enlightenment man, freed from the bounds of moral convictions.

NEW SANDERSON BOOKS!!!

 

Surviving White Island

By: Kelsey Waghorn    

Location: NF 920 WAG

Genre: Tough read from a courageous human!

Surviving the unsurvivable. Healing from the unhealable. This is an inspiring memoir of physical and mental recovery, from someone who lived through the Whakaari White Island volcanic eruption.

"I heard someone say, 'Wow!'

And someone else exclaimed, 'Look at that!'

I had my back to the crater. I turned around.

The moment I saw it, I knew what was happening. The island was erupting.

An enormous black-and-grey plume was rising above the island, already higher than the peak. It was beautiful actually, set against the bright blue sky. Beautiful and awful. Our radios were already blaring something along the lines of 'ERUPTION! TAKE COVER!' and I was yelling, 'Everyone, with me! Run!' "

Kelsey Waghorn, a guide on the ill-fated tour of Whakaari White Island in December 2019 tells her story for the first time, from physical rehab for her life-threatening burns to her mental struggle with PTSD.

By a brave and powerful woman with a wicked sense of humour, this is an uplifting story of acceptance, strength, perseverance and hope.

Brad Thorn: Champions Do Extra

 By: Brad Thorn                          

Location: NF 920 THO

Genre: Best sportsman ever and a Crusader to boot!

A transformational new book about mindset, from rugby and league icon Brad Thorn.

Brad Thorn's career rewrote the rules of what an athlete can achieve.

From his country upbringing on the frosty fields of Otago in New Zealand to the baked turf of Queensland in Australia, Brad Thorn reveals the powerful lessons he learned in his relentless pursuit of excellence, inspiring readers to unlock their own potential.

In a remarkable 30-year career, spanning 477 games of professional footy across two codes, the dual international played for some of the highest performing teams on the planet: the All Blacks, Kangaroos, Queensland Maroons, Brisbane Broncos and Canterbury Crusaders. He was still playing professionally at the age of 41.

Brad Thorn's trophy cabinet includes a Rugby World Cup, four Rugby League NRL premiership titles, two State of Origins series, one Super Rugby title, five Bledisloe Cups, three Tri Nations titles, two NPC titles, the Ranfurly Shield, and a European Rugby Champions Cup.

Thorn credits his achievements and longevity to the lessons in this book, and, above all, the credo his father taught him 'champions do extra'.

Champions Do Extra is an inspirational story about what family, faith and footy can teach us about how to succeed.

'I don't use the word "principle" about many people, but he is one of the most principled people I've ever met.' - Wayne Bennett

'A compass for anyone aspiring to achieve in sport or life.' - Robbie Deans

Formula One: The Worlds Most Brutal Sport

 By: Stewart Bell  

Location: NF 796.22 BELL

Genre: McLaren Forever

Get behind the scenes of the world's most gruelling and thrilling sport with an expert who has covered Formula One for more than 20 years – plus a Foreword from F1 legend Guenther Steiner.

Formula One is the world’s most brutal sport.

For the drivers, it’s the millions of dollars spent for a shot at making it to the top, with the real possibility of being washed-up before they even finish school. It’s the violent physical forces inherent in racing the fastest cars, with cockpit temperatures soaring to 60 degrees Celsius. And it’s the gruelling mental vice-like squeeze in constant international travel, celebrity and expectation for superhuman results from yourself, your team, and almost a billion people who watch the sport across the planet.

For the teams, it’s a 24/7 commitment and a multi-billion-dollar spend to design, manufacture, and race two cars around the globe every two weeks; with exceptional results demanded from all areas of these well-oiled, precision operations – be they technical, mechanical, commercial, and logistics. Don’t deliver? You’re out, and the voracious beast rolls on.

Stewart Bell, who has covered the sport for more than 20 years, takes you behind the scenes – and gives you the full picture of what it’s like to be inside the sport, well beyond what you might have seen on Netflix’s blockbuster show: Formula 1: Drive To Survive.