New choices

Many readers have planned their January through December book selections. Other readers have chosen to follow a reading challenge online accepting the genres or perspectives that may be out of the ordinary for them. Some readers have set a monthly or yearly goal of books read. Most readers prefer reading books when available or what is appealing at that moment. With new books available each month at the Dunklin County Library, a reader has a steady selection of choices.

A quiet yet mesmerizing story, entitled The Mirror, reveals how a family was impacted by a curse over the centuries in volume two of The Lost Bride Trilogy by Nora Roberts. Sonya MacTavish inherited a mansion in a small coastal Maine town, only to discover ghosts known as the lost brides haunted it. In 1806, a malevolent witch named Hester Dobbs wanted the mansion and its owner for herself, so she killed his bride on their wedding night and then sealed the curse by killing herself. The first woman in each subsequent generation was killed by the curse on her wedding day. Dobbs has become a poltergeist that controls part of the mansion, while the ghosts of her victims inhabit the rest. Sonya and a family of supporters discover a magic mirror that reveal scenes from the past. They also discover that they can travel through the mirror. What is on the other side of the mirror is frightening yet necessary to drive out the evil in this house.

From the master of the medical thriller, Robin Cook, comes a new tale of suspense and horror about a first-year resident whose life-shattering visions reveal the truth behind some of the greatest medical advances in the history of medicine. Michael “Mitt” Fuller starts his surgical residency with great anticipation at the nearly three-hundred-year-old, iconic Bellevue Hospital, following in the footsteps of four previous, celebrated Fuller generations. The pressure is on for this newly minted doctor, and to his advantage, he has always had a secret sixth sense, a sensitivity to the nonphysical. One patient after another assigned to his care begin to die from mysterious causes. As he tries to juggle these inexplicable deaths with the demands of being a first-year resident, things rapidly spiral out of control. As bodies mount and Mitt’s stress level rises, he finds himself drawn to the monumental, abandoned Bellevue Psychopathic Hospital building. Cook brings the novel to an unforgettable ending in this latest novel, Bellevue.

In Ian Rankin’s 25th John Rebus novel, his main character has spent his life as a cop putting Edinburgh's most deadly criminals behind bars. Now having been convicted of a homicide, he has joined them. A convict is brutally murdered in his locked cell in Scotland’s most infamous prison, and sleeping across the cell floor lies John Rebus, the equally notorious detective. Stripped of his badge and estranged from his police family, he is now fighting for his own life. The death stirs Rebus’s deductive and manipulative impulses, which set off a domino-chain of scheming criminals, corrupt prison guards,

and perhaps only one or two good souls who may see it all through. How do you find a killer in a place full of them?

Seven months ago, Amelia Rivers was the unwitting subject of a paranormal experiment, one that left her with the ability to read people’s auras and the energy left behind in their footprints. Unfortunately, it also left her with a crippling fear of the dark, which is when people’s auras are most powerfully visible. Amelia uses her camera to capture the ghostly auras of a person who has been skulking around her apartment building, hoping the photos will convince private investigator Gideon Sweetwater that she has a stalker. Gideon is not sure Amelia is telling the truth, but he is determined to help her since he has secret paranormal talents of his own: He can send people into trance-like comas, trapping them in their own nightmares. After disrupting an attempted kidnapping, Gideon and Amelia find clues that lead back to the Lucent Springs hotel in the California desert. Since Lucent Springs was the site of the experiment that changed Amelia’s life, she hopes to discover why she was targeted and bring the mastermind behind the procedure to justice. As the two investigate, collect more clues, and use their powers, friendship and romance develop. Shattering Dawn by Jayne Ann Krentz is book three in The Lost Night Files series.