2023 Eisenhower Staff Favorites

Paris, 1974. Radha is living in Paris with her husband, Pierre, and their two daughters. She still grieves for the baby boy she gave up years ago, but has finally found her passion: the treasure trove of scents. When a friend's grandfather offered her a job at his parfumerie, Radha discovers she can find the perfect fragrance for any customer who walks in the door. Now she is helping to design new fragrances for clients. Her first major project takes...

"After posting a negative book review, a woman living in a remote location begins to wonder if the author is a little touchy -- or very, very dangerous -- in this pulse-pounding novel of psychological suspense and terror from the critically acclaimed author of No Exit and Hairpin Bridge. Emma Carpenter lives in isolation with her golden retriever Laika, house-sitting an old beach-front home on the rainy Washington coast. Her only human contact is...

"Vivvy Bouchet, daughter of a known psychic, was ten when she saved a boy's life by making an impossible prediction. Now she's an astrophysicist in Texas, devoted to science, but the boy she saved has become a cop who continues to believe she can see things no one else can. When he begs for help on the high-profile cold case of a kidnapped girl, Vivvy steps back into the ocean of voices that once nearly drowned her. She is forced to team up with detective...

A tale of first contact follows a range of characters as they question their place in the universe and what it means to be human when spaceships arrive at Earth and then depart just as suddenly. When the spaceships arrive-- and then depart suddenly without a word-- it creates many forms of uncertainty on our planet. When his kids blithely ponder skinning people to see if they're aliens, Blaine begins to crack. Half a continent away, Heather watches...

"Sadie Grace is wanted for witchcraft, dead (or alive). And every hired gun in Kansas is out to collect the bounty on her head, including bona fide witch hunter Old Tom and his mysterious, mute ward, Rabbit. On the road to Burden County, they're joined by two vagabond cowboys with a strong sense of adventure - but no sense of purpose - and a recently widowed school teacher with nothing left to lose. As their posse grows, so too does the danger. Racing...

Dreams are achieved and losses are mourned in the fourth volume of the critically-acclaimed time-hopping saga. After traveling billions of years into the past, Nadia finally reunites with her mother and sister in the hidden city of Arcola. But the happy reunion is shortlived as the city's hatred of robots soon forces her to choose between Kevin and her family, all while a mysterious threat plots to tear the futuristic city apart.

"One brilliant June day when Mia Jacob can no longer see a way to survive, the power of words saves her. The Scarlet Letter was written almost two hundred years earlier, but it seems to tell the story of Mia's mother, Ivy, and their life inside the Community -- an oppressive cult in western Massachusetts where contact with the outside world is forbidden, and books are considered evil. But how could this be? How could Nathaniel Hawthorne have so perfectly...

"In the spring of 2020, Lara's three daughters return to the family's orchard in Northern Michigan. While picking cherries, they beg their mother to tell them the story of Peter Duke, a famous actor with whom she shared both a stage and a romance years before at a theater company called Tom Lake. As Lara recalls the past, her daughters examine their own lives and relationship with their mother, and are forced to reconsider the world and everything...

"Beloved New York Times bestselling author Susan Wiggs returns with a compulsively readable tale of an idyllic California beach town forced to reckon with scandal when a high school valedictorian's speech reveals secrets that shake the town to its core"-- Provided by publisher. "Every town has its secrets... In idyllic Alara Cove, a California beach town known for its sunny charm and chill surfer vibe, it's graduation day. The students at the elite...

Clint Smith's vibrant and compelling new collection traverses the vast emotional terrain of fatherhood, and explores how becoming a parent has recalibrated his sense of the world. There are poems that interrogate the ways our lives are shaped by both personal lineages and historical institutions. There are poems that revel in the wonder of discovering the world anew through the eyes of your children, as they discover it for the first time. There are...