Popular Adult Books of 2022

Jack Reacher is heading west, walking under the merciless desert sun, when he comes across a Jeep crashed into the only tree for miles around-- a woman slumped over the wheel. Michaela Fendon, an army veteran turned FBI agent, has been trying to find her twin brother, who might be mixed up Dendoncker and his dangerous people. Reacher offers to help, but taking on Dendoncker may be the riskiest job of his life. It's the kind of game in which the loser is always better off dead.

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"There's chaos in Hollywood on New Year's Eve. Working her graveyard shift, LAPD Detective Ren©♭e Ballard seeks shelter at the end of the countdown to wait out the traditional rain of lead as hundreds of revelers shoot their guns into the air. When reports start to roll in of shattered windshields and other damage, Ballard is called to a scene where a hardworking auto shop owner has been fatally hit by a bullet in the middle of a crowded street party. It doesn't take Ballard long to determine that the deadly bullet could not have fallen from the sky. Ballard's investigation leads her to look into another unsolved murder--a case at one time worked by Detective Harry Bosch. Ballard and Bosch team up once again to find out where the old and new cases intersect. All the while, they must look over their shoulders. The killer who has stayed undetected for so long knows they are coming after him." -- Back cover.

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In the city of Kiev, Mila Pavlichenko organizes her life around her library job - but Hitler's invasion of Russia sends her on a different path. Given a rifle and sent to join the fight, Mila must forge herself from studious girl to deadly sniper - a lethal hunter of Nazis known as Lady Death. Still reeling from war wounds, Mila finds herself isolated and lonely in Washington, DC. But when an old enemy from Mila's past joins forces with a deadly new foe lurking in the shadows, Lady Death finds herself battling her own demons and enemy bullets in the deadliest duel of her life.

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Texas, 1934. Millions are out of work and a drought has broken the Great Plains. Farmers are fighting to keep their land and their livelihoods as the crops are failing, the water is drying up, and dust threatens to bury them all. One of the darkest periods of the Great Depression, the Dust Bowl era, has arrived with a vengeance. In this uncertain and dangerous time, Elsa Martinelli-like so many of her neighbors-must make an agonizing choice: fight for the land she loves or go west, to California, in search of a better life.

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As an investigator for the Florida Board on Judicial Conduct, Lacy Stoltz sees plenty of corruption among the men and women elected to the bench. Stoltz took on a crime syndicate that was paying millions to a crooked judge. Now, the crimes are even worse. The man hiding behind the black robe is not taking bribes - but he may be taking lives.

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Before Owen Michaels disappears, he manages to smuggle a note to his beloved wife of one year: protect her. Despite her confusion and fear, Hannah Hall knows exactly to whom the note refers: Owen's sixteen-year-old daughter, Bailey. Hannah soon realizes her husband isn't who he said he was. And that Bailey just may hold the key to figuring out Owen's true identity - and why he really disappeared. Hannah and Bailey set out to discover the truth, together. But as they start putting together the pieces of Owen's past, they soon realize they are also building a new future.

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"You're a coward." Time and again, as the New Year approaches, that charge is leveled against Armand Gamache. While the residents of the Quebec village of Three Pines take advantage of the deep snow to ski and toboggan, to drink hot chocolate in the bistro and share meals together, the Chief Inspector finds his holiday with his family interrupted by a simple request. He's asked to provide security for what promises to be a non-event. A visiting Professor of Statistics will be giving a lecture at the nearby university. While he is perplexed as to why the head of homicide for the Surete du Quebec would be assigned this task, it sounds easy enough. That is until Gamache starts looking into Professor Abigail Robinson and discovers an agenda so repulsive he begs the university to cancel the lecture. They refuse, citing academic freedom, and accuse Gamache of censorship and intellectual cowardice. Before long, Professor Robinson's views start seeping into conversations. Spreading and infecting. So that truth and fact, reality and delusion are so confused it's nearly impossible to tell them apart. Discussions become debates, debates become arguments. As sides are declared, a madness takes hold. Abigail Robinson promises that, if they follow her, ca va bien aller. All will be well. But not, Gamache and his team know, for everyone. When a murder is committed, it falls to Armand Gamache, his second-in-command Jean-Guy Beauvoir, and their team to investigate the crime as well as this extraordinary popular delusion. And the madness of crowds.

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Jess needs a fresh start. She's broke and alone, and she's just left her job under less than ideal circumstances. Her half-brother Ben didn't sound thrilled when she asked if she could crash with him for a bit, but he didn't say no, and surely everything will look better from Paris. Only when she shows up, to find a very nice apartment, (could Ben really have afforded this?) he's not there. The longer Ben stays missing, the more Jess starts to dig into her brother's situation, and the more questions she has. Ben's neighbors are an eclectic bunch, and not particularly friendly. Jess may have come to Paris to escape her past, but it's starting to look like it's Ben's future that's in question. The socialite. The nice guy. The alcoholic. The girl on the verge. The concierge. Everyone's a neighbor. Everyone's a suspect. And everyone knows something they're not telling.

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Ellen Adams, a novice Secretary of State, has joined the administration of her rival, a president inaugurated after four years of American leadership that shrank from the world stage. A series of terrorist attacks throws the global order into disarray and the secretary is tasked with assembling a team to unravel the deadly conspiracy, a scheme carefully designed to take advantage of an American government dangerously out of touch and out of power in the places where it counts the most.

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For years, rumors of the "Marsh Girl" have haunted Barkley Cove, on the North Carolina coast. She's barefoot and wild; unfit for polite society. Kya Clark is not what they say. Abandoned at ten, she has survived on her own in the marsh. With just one day of school, she takes life lessons from the land, learning the real way of this world. But while she could have lived in solitude forever, the time comes when she yearns to be touched and loved. Drawn to two young men from town, who are each intrigued by her wild beauty, Kya opens herself to a new and startling world -- until the unthinkable happens.

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Diana O'Toole is not engaged just yet, but she knows her boyfriend, Finn, a surgical resident, is about to propose on their romantic getaway to the Galapagos. But then a virus that felt worlds away has appeared in the city, and on the eve of their departure, Finn has to stay behind. In the Galapagos Islands, where Darwin's theory of natural selection was formed, Diana finds herself examining her relationships, her choices, and herself - and wondering if when she goes home, she too will have evolved into someone completely different.

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1996 was the year that changed everything for Maggie Dawes. Sent away at sixteen to live with an aunt she barely knew in Ocracoke, a remote village on North Carolina's Outer Banks, she could think only of the friends and family she left behind . . . until she meets Bryce Trickett, one of the few teenagers on the island. Handsome, genuine, and newly admitted to West Point, Bryce gradually shows her how much there is to love about the wind-swept beach town-and introduces her to photography, a passion that will define the rest of her life. By 2019, Maggie is a renowned travel photographer. She splits her time between running a successful gallery in New York and photographing remote locations around the world. But this year she is unexpectedly grounded over Christmas, struggling to come to terms with a sobering medical diagnosis.

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