Ralph Cosham
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Rumors abound that the Paris Opera House is haunted by a ghost. Nobody has ever seen it, but it makes itself known through malevolent acts. First published in book form in 1911, this gothic novel by Gaston Leroux has been fascinating readers for more than a century and is the inspiration for the long-running hit musical.
2) Still life
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ATL Staff Picks: November & December
ATL: 2023 Book Club Reads
ATL: 2024 Book Club Reads
ATL: Cozy Reads by the Fire
ATL: 2023 Book Club Reads
ATL: 2024 Book Club Reads
ATL: Cozy Reads by the Fire
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Chief Inspector Armand Gamache of the Sûreté du Québec and his team of investigators are called in to the scene of a suspicious death in a rural village south of Montreal. Jane Neal, a local fixture in the tiny hamlet of Three Pines, just north of the U.S. border, has been found dead in the woods. The locals are certain it's a tragic hunting accident and nothing more, but Gamache smells something foul in these remote woods, and is soon certain...
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At first enjoying a peaceful retirement, former Quebec homicide detective Armand Gamache reluctantly agrees to help a neighbor search for her missing estranged husband and teams up with two former colleagues on a search that reveals the workings of a psychologically damaged mind.
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A stranger is found murdered in the village bistro and antiques store and all clues point to bistro owner Olivier being the killer. Once again, Chief Inspector Gamache and his team are called in to strip back layers of lies, exposing both treasures and rancid secrets long buried--but not forgotten.
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"Hearts are broken," Lillian Dyson carefully underlined in a book. "Sweet relationships are dead." But now Lillian herself is dead. Found among the bleeding hearts and lilacs of Clara Morrow's garden in Three Pines, shattering the celebrations of Clara's solo show at the famed Musee in Montreal. Chief Inspector Gamache, the head of homicide at the Surete du Quebec, is called to the tiny Quebec village and there he finds the art world gathered, and...
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Agatha Awards for Best Mystery Novel
HPL: Summer Reading Spotlight: What our community read this summer!
HPL: Summer Reading Spotlight: What our community read this summer!
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"No one liked CC de Poitiers -- not her family, not her lover, not her neighbors in Three Pines. When Chief Inspector Armand Gamache is called to investigate CC's sudden death on the day after Christmas, it seems like an impossible murder. How could she have been electrocuted in the middle of a frozen lake in the midst of Three Pines annual curling match without anyone seeing a thing? In the beautiful but deadly Quebec winter, Gamache digs for secrets...
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It is the height of summer, and Armand and Reine-Marie Gamache are celebrating their wedding anniversary at Manoir Bellechasse, an isolated, luxurious inn not far from the village of Three Pines. The Finney family - rich, cultured and respectable - has arrived for a celebration of their own. The beautiful inn is surrounded by nature, yet there is something unnatural looming. When a terrible summer storm leaves behind a dead body, and it is up to Chief...
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No outsiders are ever admitted to the monastery of Saint-Gilbert-Entre-les-Loups, hidden deep in the wilderness of Quebec, where two dozen cloistered monks live in peace and prayer. They grow vegetables, they tend chickens, they make chocolate. And they sing. Ironically, for a community that has taken a vow of silence, the monks have become world famous for their glorious voices, raised in ancient chants whose effect on both singer and listener is...
10) Animal farm
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George Orwell's famous satire of the Soviet Union, in which "all animals are equal but some animals are more equal than others." A satire on totalitarianism in which farm animals overthrow their human owner and set up their own government.
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A ne'er-do-well exploits his gentle daughter's beauty for social advancement in this masterpiece of tragic fiction. Hardy's 1891 novel defied convention to focus on the rural lower class for a frank treatment of sexuality and religion. Then and now, his sympathetic portrait of a victim of Victorian hypocrisy offers compelling reading.
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An obsessive historian's quest for the remains of the founder of Quebec, Samuel de Champlain, ends in murder. Could a secret buried with Champlain for nearly 400 years be so dreadful that someone would kill to protect it? Although he is supposed to be on leave, Chief Inspector Gamache cannot walk away from a crime that threatens to ignite long-smoldering tensions between the English and the French. Meanwhile, he is receiving disquieting letters from...
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Shadows are falling on the usually festive Québec Christmas season for Chief Inspector Armand Gamache. Most of his best agents have left, his old friend Jean-Guy Beauvoir hasn't spoken to him in months, and hostile forces are lining up against him. When he receives a message from Myrna Landers that a longtime friend has failed to arrive in Three Pines, Gamache welcomes the chance to get away from the city. Is there peace to be found in Three Pines?...
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The Screwtape Letters by C.S. Lewis is a classic masterpiece of religious satire that entertains readers with its sly and ironic portrayal of human life and foibles from the vantage point of Screwtape, a highly placed assistant to "Our Father Below." At once wildly comic, deadly serious, and strikingly original, C.S. Lewis's The Screwtape Letters is the most engaging account of temptation-and triumph over it-ever written.
17) Pure
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The clearing of a cemetery stokes the fires of revolution in eighteenth-century France.
Paris, 1785. An ambitious young engineer, Jean-Baptiste Baratte arrives in Paris charged with emptying the overflowing cemetery of Les Innocents, an ancient site whose stench is poisoning the neighborhood's air and water. A self-styled modern man of reason, Baratte sees his work as a chance to clear away the burden of history. But he soon suspects that the destruction...
18) Watership Down
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An allegorical tale of survival about a band of wild rabbits who leave their ancestral home to build a more humane society chronicles their adventures as they search for a safe place to establish a new warren where they can live in peace.
England's Downs were once an idyllic rural landscape, but plans for development are afoot. Facing the certain destruction of their homes, a band of very special creatures must plan a flight from the intrusion of...
19) The jungle book
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Selected stories from Kipling's two "Jungle Books" chronicle the adventures of Mowgli, the boy reared by a pack of wolves in an Indian jungle. Also includes "Rikki-Tikki-Tavi."
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"Meek little Mole, willful Ratty, Badger the perennial bachelor, and petulant Toad. Since their first appearance over a hundred years ago in 1908, they've become emblematic archetypes of eccentricity, folly, and friendship. And their misadventures--in gypsy caravans, stolen sports cars, and their beloved Wild Wood--continue to capture readers' imaginations and warm their hearts long after they grow up. Begun as a series of letters from Kenneth Grahame...