Frank Carlson Library

"Downtown Los Angeles, 1990. Alone in her luxury hotel suite, the reclusive Lacey Crane receives a message: Edith is waiting for her in the lobby. Former best friends, Lacey and Edith haven't spoken to one another in over four decades. As young adults meeting at summer camp in Maine, and later making their way in the glitzy spotlight of postwar Hollywood, Edith and Lacey share a deep-rooted bond that once saved them from isolation and despair, providing...

"Defense attorney Mickey Haller is back, taking the long-shot cases, where the chances of winning are one in a million. After getting a wrongfully convicted man out of prison, he is innudated with pleas from incarcertaed people claiming innocence. He brings on board his half brother, retired LAPD Detective Harry Bosch, to weed through the letters, knowing most claims will be false. Bosch pulls a needle from the haystack: a woman in prison for five...

In 1949 Los Angeles, Lily Kessler, a former stenographer and spy for the OSS, is asked by her late fiancé's mother to find out what happened to his sister Kitty, an actress who is missing from her Hollywood boardinghouse. Although the aspiring starlets at the house insist that Kitty is off somewhere furthering her career, her body is found the next day in a ravine below the Hollywood sign. Unimpressed by the local police, Lily investigates on her...

"Food stall owners Yale and Celine Yee have scored an invitation to join an exclusive dinner with the local restaurant owners association. The members gather together for a relaxing hot pot feast . . . until Jeffery Vue, president of the group, receives a literal shock to his system and dies. Everyone at the meal is a suspect, but the authorities are homing in on family friend Ai Ho, owner of the restaurant where Jeffery was killed -- and Yale's dad...

"Winston Greene, a has-been film star, wakes one morning to find his six-year-old granddaughter at his bedside--traumatized, unattended, and gripping onto a thumb drive. She comes bearing video proof that her mother, Win's troubled adult daughter, has been kidnapped by a murderous gang demanding all his "movie money" for her safe return. But what they don't know is ... his movie money is long gone. Unable to go to the police for fear the kidnappers...

"The millions of readers of Amor Towles are in for a treat as he shares some of his shorter fiction: six stories set in New York City and a novella in Los Angeles. The New York stories, most of which are set around the turn of the millennium, take up everything from the death-defying acrobatics of the male ego, to the fateful consequences of brief encounters, and the delicate mechanics of comprise which operate at the heart of modern marriages. In...

Told in their separate voices, six Muslim teens are falsely accused of an alleged attack on a Los Angeles beach and must trust or turn their backs on each other to prove their innocence. "As fireworks pop off at a rowdy Fourth of July bonfire party, an explosion off the California coast levels an oil rig—resulting in chaos and worse, murder. At the center are six Muslim teens – six patriots, six strangers, and six suspects. An old soul...

"It was supposed to be the highlight of her career, the pinnacle for which she'd worked all her life. And as Hattie McDaniel took the stage in 1940 to claim an honor that would make her the first African-American woman to win an Academy Award, she tearfully took her place in history. Between personal triumphs and tragedies, heartbreaking losses, and severe setbacks, this historic night of winning best supporting actress for her role as the sassy Mammy...

To overcome her writer's block, romance author Sophie Lyon, who's never been in love, reunites with her exes to learn why, getting some social media assistance from her reclusive landlord, a former teen heartthrob, and as they grow closer, she suggests a friends-with-benefits arrangement-what could possibly go wrong? Romance author Sophie Lyon needs to overcome her writer's block. Her plan: reunite with her exes (including her last girlfriend. Carla)...