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List: 2026 Book Bingo: Character Name in the Title
Violet Thistlewaite is Not a Villain Anymore
Guy Shadowfade is dead, and after a lifetime as the dark sorcerer's right hand, Violet Thistlewaite is determined to start over - not as the fearsome Thornwitch but as someone kind. Someone better. Someone good. The quaint town of Dragon's Rest, Violet decides, will be her second chance - she'll set down roots, open a flower shop, keep her sentient (mildly homocidal) houseplant in check, and prune dark magic from the twisted boughs of her life.
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The Seven Husbands of Evelyn Hugo
Aging and reclusive Hollywood movie icon Evelyn Hugo is finally ready to tell the truth about her glamorous and scandalous life. But when she chooses unknown magazine reporter Monique Grant for the job, no one in the journalism community is more astounded than Monique herself. Summoned to Evelyn's Upper East Side apartment, Monique listens as Evelyn unfurls her story: from making her way to Los Angeles in the 1950s to her decision to leave show business in the late 80s, and, of course, the seven husbands along the way. As Evelyn's life unfolds, Monique begins to feel a very a real connection to the actress. But as Evelyn's story catches up with the present, it becomes clear that her life intersects with Monique's own in tragic and irreversible ways.
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Vera Wong's Unsolicited Advice for Murderers
Vera Wong is a lonely little old lady--ah, lady of a certain age--who lives above her forgotten tea shop in the middle of San Francisco's Chinatown. Despite living alone, Vera is not needy, oh no. She likes nothing more than sipping on a good cup of oolong and doing some healthy detective work on the Internet about what her Gen Z son is up to. Then one morning, Vera trudges downstairs to find a curious thing--a dead man in the middle of her tea shop. In his outstretched hand is a flash drive. Vera doesn't know what comes over her, but after calling the cops like any good citizen would, she sort of...swipes the flash drive from the body and tucks it safely into the pocket of her apron. Why? Because Vera is sure she will do a better job than the police possibly can--nobody sniffs out a wrongdoing quite like a suspicious Chinese mother with time on her hands. Vera knows the killer will be back for the flash drive; all she has to do is watch the increasing number of customers at her shop and figure out which one among them is the killer. What Vera does not expect is to form friendships with her customers and start to care for each and every one of them. As a protective mother hen, will she end up having to give one of her newfound chicks to the police?
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Queenie
Queenie Jenkins is a 25-year-old Jamaican British woman living in London, straddling two cultures and slotting neatly into neither. She works at a national newspaper, where she's constantly forced to compare herself to her white middle class peers. After a messy break up from her long-term white boyfriend, Queenie seeks comfort in all the wrong places...including several hazardous men who do a good job of occupying brain space and a bad job of affirming self-worth...As Queenie careens from one questionable decision to another, she finds herself wondering, “What are you doing? Why are you doing it? Who do you want to be?”-all of the questions today's woman must face in a world trying to answer them for her.
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Frankenstein
A monster assembled by a scientist from parts of dead bodies develops a mind of his own as he learns to loathe himself and hate his creator.
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Nefertiti
Raised far from the Egyptian court with her sister, Mutnodjmet, the beautiful and ambitious Nefertiti becomes the wife of the radical new pharaoh, Amunhotep, encouraging his plans to overturn Egypt's state religion and making powerful enemies in the process.
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Dewey : The Small-Town Library Cat Who Touched the World
The charming story of Dewey Readmore Books, the beloved library cat of Spencer, Iowa.
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Still Alice
Alice Howland, happily married with three grown children and a house on the Cape, is a celebrated Harvard professor at the height of her career when she notices a forgetfulness creeping into her life. As confusion starts to cloud her thinking and her memory begins to fail her, she receives a devastating diagnosis: early onset Alzheimer's disease.
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Rebecca
At the great Cornwall estate of Manderley, Maxim de Winter and his frightened new wife try to live with the haunting legacy of Maxim's first wife, the beautiful and cold Rebecca, who died in a sailing accident.
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The Song of Achilles
Patroclus, an awkward young prince, follows Achilles into war, little knowing that the years that follow will test everything they have learned, everything they hold dear. And that, before he is ready, he will be forced to surrender his friend to the hands of Fate. Set during the Trojan War.
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The Talented Mr. Ripley
In order to convince his son to come home, Herbert Greenleaf, a rich shipbuilder, sends Tom Ripley to Italy, but is unaware of his son's friend's criminal activities.
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The Storied life of A.J. Fikry : a novel
The irascible A.J. Fikry, owner of Island Books, has already lost his wife. Now his most prized possession, a rare book, has been stolen from right under his nose. One night upon closing, he discovers a toddler in his children's section with a note from her mother saying she can no longer raise her. It doesn't take long for the locals to notice the transformation of both bookstore and owner, especially to the lovely yet eccentric sales rep, Amelia Loman.
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Binti
Binti, a young Himba girl with the chance of a lifetime: to attend the prestigious Oomza University. Despite her family's concerns, Binti's talent for mathematics and her aptitude with astrolabes make her a prime candidate to undertake this interstellar journey. But everything changes when the jellyfish-like Medusae attack Binti's spaceship, leaving her the only survivor. Now, Binti must fend for herself, alone on a ship full of the beings who murdered her crew, with five days until she reaches her destination. There is more to the history of the Medusae--and their war with the Khoush--than first meets the eye. If Binti is to survive this voyage and save the inhabitants of the unsuspecting planet that houses Oomza Uni, it will take all of her knowledge and talents to broker the peace. Collected now for the first time in omnibus form.
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Sarah's Key
On the sixtieth anniversary of the 1942 roundup of Jews by the French police in the Vel d'Hiv section of Paris, American journalist Julia Jarmond is asked to write an article on this dark episode during World War II and embarks on an investigation that leads her to long-hidden family secrets and to the ordeal of Sarah, a young girl caught up in the raid.
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A Man Called Ove
A curmudgeon hides a terrible personal loss beneath a cranky and short-tempered exterior while clashing with new neighbors, a boisterous family whose chattiness and habits lead to unexpected friendship.
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Jane Eyre
In early nineteenth-century England, an orphaned young woman accepts employment as a governess and soon finds herself in love with her employer who has a terrible secret.
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Anna Karenina
Anna Karenina tells of the doomed love affair between the sensuous and rebellious Anna and the dashing officer, Count Vronsky. Tragedy unfolds as Anna rejects her passionless marriage and must endure the hypocrisies of society. Set against a vast and richly textured canvas of nineteenth-century Russia, the novel's seven major characters create a dynamic imbalance, playing out the contrasts of city and country life and all the variations on love and family happiness. While previous versions have softened the robust, and sometimes shocking, quality of Tolstoy's writing, Pevear and Volokhonsky have produced a translation true to his powerful voice. This award-winning team's authoritative edition also includes an illuminating introduction and explanatory notes. Beautiful, vigorous, and eminently readable, this Anna Karenina will be the definitive text for generations to come.
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Oona Out of Order
It's New Year's Eve 1982 and Oona Lockhart has her whole life before her. At the stroke of midnight she will turn nineteen, and the year ahead promises to be one of consequence. Should she go to London to study economics or remain at home in Brooklyn to pursue her passion for music and be with her boyfriend? As the countdown to the New Year begins, Oona faints and awakens thirty-two years in the future to her fifty-one-year-old body. Greeted by a friendly stranger in a beautiful house she's told is her own, Oona learns that with each passing year she will leap to another age at random ... Hopping through decades, pop-culture fads, and much-needed stock tips, Oona is still a young woman on the inside but ever changing on the outside. Who will she be next year?
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The Death of Vivek Oji
One afternoon, in a town in southeastern Nigeria, a mother opens her front door to discover her son's body, wrapped in colorful fabric, at her feet. What follows is the ... story of one family's struggle to understand a child whose spirit is both gentle and mysterious. Raised by a distant father and a compassionate but overprotective mother, Vivek Oji suffers disorienting blackouts, moments of disconnection between self and surroundings. As adolescence leads to adulthood, Vivek finds solace in friendships with the warm, boisterous daughters of the Nigerwives, foreign-born women married to Nigerian men. But Vivek's closest bond is with Osita, the worldly, high-spirited cousin whose teasing confidence masks a guarded private life. As their relationship deepens--and Osita struggles to understand Vivek's escalating crisis--the mystery gives way to a heart-stopping act of violence in a moment of exhilarating freedom.
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The Invisible Life of Addie LaRue
France, 1714: in a moment of desperation, a young woman makes a Faustian bargain to live forever, and is cursed to be forgotten by everyone she meets. Thus begins the extraordinary life of Addie LaRue and a dazzling adventure that will play out across centuries and continents, across history and art, as a young woman learns how far she will go to leave her mark on the world. But everything changes when, after nearly 300 years, Addie stumbles across a young man in a hidden bookstore and he remembers her name.
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A Prayer for Owen Meany
Owen Meany hits a foul ball while playing baseball in the summer of 1953 that kills his best friend's mother, an accident that Owen is sure is the result of divine intervention.
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Betty
A young girl, with only the compass of her father's imagination, must navigate racism, sexism, and the dark secrets that will haunt her for the rest of her life ... Against overwhelming odds, she may be the first member of her family to break the cycle of abuse and trauma--and escape.
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The Brilliant Life of Eudora Honeysett
Eudora Honeysett has lived a full life and witnessed the indignities and suffering of old age. At eighty-five, her end will be on her terms. A call to a clinic in Switzerland sets the plan in motion. Then she meets ten-year-old Rose Trewidney, a pint-sized rainbow of color and sparkling cheer. Eudora finds herself embarking on a series of adventures with Rose and their neighbor, the recently widowed Stanley. Eudora is reminded of her own childhood--and realizes she must come to terms with what lies ahead.
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Daisy Darker
After years of avoiding one other, Daisy Darker's entire family is assembling for Nana's eightieth birthday party in Nana's crumbling gothic house on a tiny tidal island. They're finally back together one last time, and when the tide comes in, they will be cut off from the rest of the world for eight hours. The family arrives, each of them harboring secrets. Then at the stroke of midnight, as a storm rages, Nana is found dead. And an hour later, the next family member follows... Trapped on an island where someone is killing them one by one, the Darkers must reckon with their present mystery as well as their past secrets before the tide goes out and all is revealed.
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The Murder of Roger Ackroyd
The death of a wealthy widow is believed to be an accident until her future husband is killed. The police bring in Hercule Poirot to help with the investigation.
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Holly
Stephen King's HOLLY marks the triumphant return of beloved King character Holly Gibney. Readers have witnessed Holly's gradual transformation from a shy and reclusive (but also brave and ethical) homebody in Mr. Mercedes to Bill Hodges's partner in Finders Keepers and End of Watch to a full-fledged, smart and occasionally tough private detective on her own in The Outsider and If It Bleeds. In this new novel, Holly once again claims the spotlight, and must face some of her most depraved adversaries yet. When Penny Dahl calls the Finders Keepers detective agency hoping for help locating her missing daughter, Holly is reluctant to accept the case. Her own mother has just died, and Holly is supposed to be taking time off. But something in Penny Dahl's desperate voice makes it impossible for Holly to turn her down. Mere blocks from where Bonnie Dahl disappeared live Professors Rodney and Emily Harris. They are the picture of bourgeois respectability: married octogenarians, devoted to each other, semi-retired lifelong academics. But they are harboring an unholy secret in their well-kept, book-lined home, one that may be related to Bonnie's disappearance. And it will prove nearly impossible to discover what they are up to: they are smart, they are patient, and they are ruthless. Holly must summon all her formidable talents to outhink and outmaneuver this brilliant and twisted pair.
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Molly's Game
Molly Bloom reveals how she built one of the most exclusive, high-stakes underground poker games in the world--an insider's story of excess and danger, glamour and greed. In the late 2000s, Molly Bloom, a twentysomething petite brunette from Loveland Colorado, ran the highest stakes, most exclusive poker game Hollywood had ever seen--she was its mistress, its lion tamer, its agent, and its oxygen. Everyone wanted in, few were invited to play. Hundreds of millions of dollars were won and lost at her table. Molly's game became the game for those in the know--celebrities, business moguls, and millionaires. Molly staged her games in palatial suites with beautiful views and exquisite amenities. She flew privately, dined at exclusive restaurants, hobnobbed with the heads of Hollywood studios, was courted by handsome leading men, and was privy to the world's most delicious gossip, until it all came crashing down around her. Molly's Game is a behind the scenes look at Molly's game, the life she created, the life she lost, and what she learned in the process.
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Eleanor Oliphant is Completely Fine
Smart, warm, uplifting, the story of an out-of-the-ordinary heroine whose deadpan weirdness and unconscious wit make for an irresistible journey as she realizes the only way to survive is to open her heart. Meet Eleanor Oliphant: she struggles with appropriate social skills and tends to say exactly what she's thinking. That, combined with her unusual appearance (scarred cheek, tendency to wear the same clothes year in, year out), means that Eleanor has become a creature of habit (to say the least) and a bit of a loner. Nothing is missing in her carefully timetabled life of avoiding social interactions, where weekends are punctuated by frozen pizza, vodka, and phone chats with Mummy. But everything changes when Eleanor meets Raymond, the bumbling and deeply unhygienic IT guy from her office. When she and Raymond together save Sammy, an elderly gentleman who has fallen on the sidewalk, the three become the kind of friends who rescue each other from the lives of isolation they have each been living. And it is Raymond's big heart that will ultimately help Eleanor find the way to repair her own profoundly damaged one.
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